Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Skill enhancement course – II

English Honours, semester iV
Prepared for the Undergraduate Students of
The University of Burdwan

Arindam Ghosh
Assistant Professor, Department of English
Krishna Chandra College, Hetampur, Birbhum, West Bengal
Affiliated under The University of Burdwan
Syllabus

Serial Topics No. of

No. Classes
1. Evolution of the Cinema: Silent Film, Talkie, Colour 4(L)+1(T)
Film, Digital Age, 3D Films.
2. Cinematographic Technique: Panning of the Camera, 8(L)+2(T)
Zooming, Fade in, Fade Out, Flashback, Close up, Long
Shot, Reverse Shot.
3. Adaptation and Appropriation 6(L)+1(T)
4. Response and Review: (Illustrative film shows & 7(L)+1(T)
appreciation programme to be arranged)
Total No. of Classes: 25 Lectures + 5 Tutorials = 30
Recommended Readings:
1. James Monako. How To Read a Film. New York: OUP, 2009.
2. Andrew Dix. Beginning Film Studies. Manchester university Press, 2008.
3. Satyajit Ray. Our Films, Their Films. Orient Blackswan, 2001.
4. Satyajit Ray. Deep Focus: Reflection on Indian Cinema. Ed. Sandip Ray.
Harper Collins India. 2011.

1|Page
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Marks Division of SEC

Serial Criterion Marks Duration

No.
1. End Semester Exam 40 2 Hours
2. Internal Assessment 10 To be decided by
(On the basis of the concerned
Component I & II) Department
depending on the
number assigned
to the class Test.
Total Marks Allotted: 50

Question Pattern of End-Semester Examination in SEC

Serial Type of Distribution of Number Marks

No. Question
1. Objective Type Answer 05 questions out of 5x2 = 10
08 carrying 02 marks each
2. Explanatory Answer 02 questions out of 2x5 = 10
04 carrying 05 marks each
3. Broad Answer 02 questions out of 2x10 = 20
04 carrying 10 marks each
However, questions, Total Marks: 40
carrying 5 or 10 marks,
need not necessarily to be
a single question.

What is Film Studies? (5 Marks)

Film studies is an academic discipline that deals with various theoretical, historical,
and critical approaches to films. It is sometimes subsumed within media studies and is often
compared to television studies. Film studies is less concerned with advancing proficiency
in film production than it is with exploring the narrative, artistic, cultural, economic,
and political implications of the cinema. In searching for these social-ideological values,
film studies takes a series of critical approaches for the analysis of production, theoretical
framework, context, and creation. In this sense the film studies discipline exists as one in
which the teacher does not always assume the primary educator role; the featured film itself
serves that function. Also, in studying film, possible careers include critic or production.

What is Film Theory? (5 Marks)

2|Page
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Film theory is a set of scholarly approaches within the academic discipline of cinema
studies that questions the essentialism of cinema and provides conceptual frameworks for
understanding film‘s relationship to reality, the other arts, individual viewers, and society at
large. Film theory is not to be confused with general film criticism, or film history, though
these three disciplines interrelate. Film theory often includes the study of conflicts between
the aesthetics of film and the textual analysis of screenplay.

In the 1960s and 1970s, film theory took up residence in academia importing
concepts from established disciplines like psychoanalysis, gender studies, anthropology,
literary theory, semiotics and linguistics. However, not until the late 1980s or early 1990s
did film theory per se achieve much prominence in American universities by displacing the
prevailing humanistic, auteur theory that had dominated cinema studies and which had been
focused on the practical elements of film writing, production, editing and criticism.

Section 1
Evolution of the Cinema: Silent Film, Talkie, Colour Film,
Digital Age, 3D Films
The Beginnings: Invention of Various Devices (5 Marks/2 Marks)
The earliest precursors to film began with image projection through the use of a
device known as the magic lantern, which utilized a glass lens, a shutter, and a persistent
light source (such as a powerful lantern) to project images from glass slides onto a wall.
These slides were originally hand-painted, but, after the advent of photography in the 19th
century, still photographs were sometimes used. Thus the invention of a practical
photography apparatus preceded cinema by only fifty years.

The next significant step toward the invention of cinema was the development of an
understanding of image movement. Simulations of movement date as far back as to 1828—
only four years after Paul Roget discovered the phenomenon he called ―Persistence of
Vision.‖ Roget showed that when a series of still images is shown at a considerable speed in
front of a viewer‘s eye, the images merge into one registered image that appears to show
movement. This is an optical illusion, since the image is not actually moving. This experience
was further demonstrated through Roget‟s introduction of the thaumatrope, a device that
spun at a fairly high speed a disk with an image on its surface.

The three features necessary for motion pictures to work were ―a camera with
sufficiently high shutter speed, a filmstrip capable of taking multiple exposures swiftly, and
means of projecting the developed images on
a screen.‖ The first projected proto-movie
was made by Eadweard Muybridge
between 1877 and 1880. Muybridge set up a
row of cameras along a racetrack and timed

3|Page
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

image exposures to capture the many stages of a horse‘s gallop. The oldest surviving film
(of the genre called “pictorial realism”) was created by Louis Le Prince in 1888. It was a
two-second film of people walking in “Oakwood streets” garden, titled Roundhay
Garden Scene. The development of American inventor Thomas Edison‘s Kinetograph, a
photographic device that captured sequential images, and his Kinetoscope, a device for
viewing those images, allowed for the creation and exhibition of short films. Edison also
made a business of selling Kinetograph and Kinetoscope equipment, which laid the
foundation for widespread film production.

A Zoetrope in action; the figures

inside seemed to move when the disc
was rotated.

Due to Edison‘s lack of securing an international patent on his film inventions, similar
devices were ―invented‖ around the world. In France, for example, Auguste and Louis
Lumière created the Cinématographe, which proved to be a more portable and
practical device than both of Edison‟s as it combined a camera, film processor, and
projector in one unit. In contrast to Edison‘s ―peepshow‖-style kinetoscope, which only one
person could watch through a viewer, the cinematograph allowed simultaneous viewing by
multiple people. Their first film, Sortie de l‟usine Lumière de Lyon, shot in 1894, is
considered the first true motion picture. The invention of celluloid film, which was
strong and flexible, greatly facilitated the making of motion pictures (although the
celluloid was highly flammable and decayed quickly). This film was 35 mm wide and was
pulled using four sprocket holes, which became the industry standard (see 35 mm film). This
doomed the cinematograph, which only worked with film with a single sprocket hole.

4|Page
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

[left]: A sequence of action stills by Eadweard Muybridge; the beginnings of the modern
motion picture. [right]: Étienne-Jules Marey‘s ―shotgun‖ camera, first devised in 1882, and
adapted for paper film in 1888.

Brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière

Birth of movies
Within eleven years of motion pictures, the films moved from a novelty show to an
established large-scale entertainment industry. Films moved from a single shot, completely
made by one person with a few assistants, towards films several minutes long consisting of
several shots, which were made by large companies in something like industrial conditions.
By 1900, the first motion pictures that can be considered as ―films‖ – emerged, and film-
makers began to introduce basic editing techniques and film narrative. Early movie cameras
were fastened to the head of a tripod with only simple levelling devices provided. These
cameras were effectively fixed during the course of a shot, and the first camera movements
were the result of mounting a camera on a moving vehicle. The Lumière brothers shot a
scene from the back of a train in 1896.

Some Important Inventions: (2 Marks)

 The first rotating camera for taking panning shots was built by Robert W. Paul in
1897, on the occasion of Queen Victoria‘s Diamond Jubilee. He used his camera to
shoot the procession in one shot.
 Georges Méliès built one of the first film studios in May 1897. It had a glass roof and
three glass walls constructed after the model of large studios for still photography, and
it was fitted with thin cotton cloths that could be stretched below the roof to diffuse
the direct rays of the sun on sunny days.
 The Execution of Mary Stuart, produced by the Edison Company for viewing with the
Kinetoscope, showed Mary Queen of Scots being executed in full view of the camera.

5|Page
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

 The other basic technique for trick cinematography was the double exposure of the
film in the camera. This was pioneered by George Albert Smith in July 1898 in
England.
 G.A. Smith also initiated the special effects technique of reverse motion. He did this
by repeating the action a second time, while filming it with an inverted camera, and
then joining the tail of the second negative to that of the first.
 Cecil Hepworth took this technique further, by printing the negative of the forwards
motion backwards frame by frame, so producing a print in which the original action
was exactly reversed.
 The use of different camera speeds also appeared around 1900 in the films of Robert
W. Paul and Hepworth. Paul shot scenes from On a Runaway Motor Car through
Piccadilly Circus (1899) with the camera turning very slowly.

Films of Silent Era (1895 – 1927) (10 Marks)

The silent film era extends from the late nineteenth century, with the earliest work by the
Lumière Brothers in France and Edison in America, into the early 1930s, when silent film
gave way to ―talkies.‖ However, most scholars situate the silent era in America during
the 1910s and 1920s, when it matured as a tightly organized industry privileging the
multi-reel feature film after the waning of the nickelodeon, the move to Hollywood from
earlier production headquarters in New York and New Jersey, and the decline in
competition from European filmmakers caused by World War I. D. W. Griffith‘s twelve reel
feature The Birth of a Nation (1915) was a major commercial and cinematic success
showcasing many of the directions the industry was to take into the 1920s.
While the term ―silent‖ in silent cinema refers to the lack of synchronized sound,
early cinema was far from silent in other respects. From the nickelodeon era into the 1920s,
films were accompanied with live music, ranging from single pianos or reed organs to
large orchestras, depending on the nature and location of the venue—which also ranged
from small store-front theaters to thousand-seat picture palaces. Some studio releases
came with specifically-composed musical scores, and almost all with cue sheets that
suggested musical themes for specific scenes. Often, solo musicians more or less expert
at reading the visual cues of the film improvised a score on the spot, and exhibitors also
drew on large published collections of sheet music appropriate for stock scene types.
Outside of musical accompaniment, theaters in the silent period could employ
―descriptive talkers‖ or ―lecturers‖ who narrated the film, sometimes from printed matter
of varying degrees of specificity. Other lecturers improvised dialogue not included, for
instance, on intertitles. In urban immigrant communities, this feature was represented as
a means of self-improvement, and it continued to be employed whenever visual narrative
clarity was compromised. As the feature film became the central industry product, the
use of lecturers declined and the use of title cards for dialog became more realistic,
gradually supplanting exposition cards. In 1925, Warner Brothers created the Vitaphone
process, a sound-on-disc system that began the end of silent film, releasing The Jazz
Singer in 1927; however, silent films would continue to be made into the 1930s, and

6|Page
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Charlie Chaplin‘s Modern Times (1936) is sometimes described as the last silent film.
Indeed, it is difficult to imagine the cinematic experience during the silent period because
of individualism in respect to the varieties both of aural accompaniment and projection
speeds. Though the standard projection speed was 16 fps, exhibitors would often project
films faster or slower than taking speed to ensure the program began and ended on time.
The evolution of the film industry‘s structure during the silent era was complex, and it
is marked by new refinements in cinematic production, distribution, and exhibition that
brought about the feature film. The tenor of the film industry in the silent era is presaged
by development of The Motion Picture Patents Company (1908-1918), a licensing and
trade association set up among established production companies to discourage
competition, chiefly by controlling the availability of raw film stock—though it also
consolidated resistance among the independents. Throughout the period, the industry
worked toward standardization; contracts, patents, and licenses bound the industry into a
tight network. Studios affiliated with the MPPC controlled the distribution of their films
—generally short one- to three-reel pictures—through The General Film Company.
Controlling distribution enabled established east-coast companies to achieve a monopoly.
These early efforts to control the film industry also included the development of the film
exchange, a commercial arrangement between patent companies and exhibitors in which
exhibitors rented their films—which changed almost daily—at set prices. In the early
silent period, this established exchange system was not calibrated for multi-reel features;
exhibitors, exchanges, and production houses themselves were reluctant to push multireel
films both because of audience expectations and the costs associated with them.
Within the existing system, multi-reel films were released one reel at a time, ensuring
quick audience turnover but retarding the development of complex narratives. Multi-reel
features would typically be shown as special attractions or outside of the established
distribution and exhibition system, and states rights distribution practices evolved to
allow local exchanges to contract with major distributors for territorial exhibition rights.
Longer films were exhibited in this fashion, because they could travel throughout a
territory as a special attraction until the audience pool was exhausted. Thus, early multi reel
films tended to emerge from independent production houses or European film
studios, which didn‘t experience the same limitations as mainstream American outfits.
While distributors had separate arms specializing in features, as more large first-run
theaters were constructed and demand increased, longer films became the order of the
day. The devastation caused by the First World War had all but decimated the
mainstream European industry, and American companies, often building on already
existing import agreements, began to compete vigorously for prestige pictures.
The Great Train Robbery was making its mark in cinema history, many other
cineastes around the world were also advancing cinema both as a commercial medium and an
art form. Cecil M. Hepworth, working in England, began his career as an actor in director
James Williamson‘s Fire (1903) before making his famous narrative film Rescued by Rover
(1905), which Hepworth produced, wrote, directed, and starred in, along with his wife and
child. Rescued by Rover is often cited as the first film that used paid actors, in the person of
Hepworth‘s immediate family; it is also the forerunner of the Rin Tin Tin and Lassie films, in
that an omniscient dog, the Hepworths‘ own Rover, is really the star of the film.

7|Page
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Independent American houses and European companies realized that to compete they
must be able to distribute their products as well, and they set up their own corporations;
ultimately, a small number of these corporations would gain tight control over the
industry. Carl Laemmle‘s move from the east coast to the west in 1915, where he set up
Universal City, allowed his company to escape the patent and licensing wars in some
measure, and production houses began cropping up in what was to become Hollywood.
Laemmle launched several important silent stars, though he for some time resisted the
feature film movement. Despite the success of some early Universal features, like Traffic
in Souls (1913), it was only in the 1920s that Laemmle sought to elevate the company‘s
profile. The assembly-line methods of Universal City meant harsh working conditions,
and many talented actors were easily lured away. Nonetheless, the star system was
emerging and the prestige film, the star‘s vehicle, was on the rise. In 1914, Adolph Zukor
released the New York-based Famous Players films through a newly-created corporation,
Paramount, which soon merged with the Lasky Company to become Famous PlayersLasky;
Paramount Pictures quickly dominated the industry as the MPPC weakened,
benefiting from Zukor‘s cunning business practices, the collapse of Triangle Film, a high
concentration of star power, and the institution of block booking practices. Exhibitors
threatened by Paramount banded together to form the powerful First National, which
used states rights practices to distribute exclusively to the near 6,000 theaters they
owned, and soon moved into production as well, acquiring a significant amount of talent.
The battle between Paramount and First National for industry control and the distribution
of prestige feature films had far-reaching effects. Amidst these power plays, and
concerned with salary caps, the restriction of creative freedom, and a rumored merger
between Paramount and First National, actors and directors entered the fray to form
United Artists in 1919; however, without access to theaters, and burdened by hefty actors‘
contracts, it foundered—despite Joseph Schenck‘s inspired reorganization of the company
in 1924. Zukor‘s vast acquisitions spurred Marcus Loew‘s expansion into feature films
and the creation of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and even Fox Film Corporation, which like
Universal had been profitable with shorter and less prestigious films, moved after 1925 to
strengthen their American real estate holdings, acquire new technological patents, and
elevate the level of their productions, most notably in their expressionistic experiments
inspired by F. W. Murnau. One important cause of the dramatic changes to the industry
during the silent era was the method by which filmmaking was financed; by selling their
stock on the public market, production and distribution companies not only acquired the
influx of capital needed to compete but also made the industry more business-like. In
conjunction with factory production methods, which ensured consistent quality and
regular release schedules, these methods of financing transformed cinema into one of the
nation‘s leading industries. Cinema, trending towards the feature film, was becoming
both art and product.
With standardization in production came a decrease in radical technological and
artistic innovation, but an elevation in production values, set quality, costumes, acting, and
lighting. Very early silent film tended to minimize the camera‘s presence, composing
short films of single, static shots or simple linear cuts, typically showing actors full-frame
as on a stage. With the multi-reel feature, scene dissection became much more common,

8|Page
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

and a grammar of film emerged. D. W. Griffith pioneered cross-cutting and editorial

techniques designed to control pacing, and Mack Sennet used quick cuts to develop a
distinguishing comedic style. As the variety show waned, spectacle was incorporated
into the feature film, in part under the pressure of foreign imports like Queen Elizabeth
(French, 1912) and Cabiria (Italian, 1914). The extreme long shot and the wide pan
could capture the spectacular expanses of the American landscape, and vast, detailed
indoor sets could recreate images of elsewhere. With the rise of multi-reel feature films
came a corresponding need for continuity, clarity, and character development; filmmakers
introduced a more restrained acting style that emphasized facial expression over broad
pantomime. The close-up became an important—though sometimes derided—stylistic
device in the silent era, creating a new intimacy between audience and actor that opened
the way for the star system. With the emergence of the star system, fan magazines like
Motion Picture Story Magazine (1911) and Photoplay (1911) galvanized a mass audience
of consumers, and some of the most enduring actors captured the public imagination—
Lillian Gish, Norma Talmadge, Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino, Mary
Pickford, Theda Bara, Douglas Fairbanks. In the 1920s, few dramatic American
innovations in cinematography occurred, but abroad, flourishing avant-garde movements
produced a variety of experimental cinema in the wake of war; surrealism, expressionism,
and impressionism offered alternatives to mainstream narrative film, and Soviet
filmmakers like Sergei Eisenstein developed rich montage techniques.
The significance of the silent era in film history cannot be overstated. During the first
decades of the twentieth century, a truly commercial popular art emerged bound closely
to the image of a modern America. With the development of synchronized sound, the era
drew to a close, but the modes of production, distribution, exhibition, and consumption
inaugurated during the silent film era persisted, creating the film industry as we know it
today.

A Ready Reckoner (2 Marks)

Silent Films:

These are the films of the early era that were without synchronized sound, from the
earliest film (around 1891), until 1927, when the first ‗talkie‘, The Jazz Singer
(1927) was produced, although there were a few other ‗silents‘ later on, such as City
Lights (1931).

Calling them silent films is something of a misnomer - movie theatres and other dream
palaces provided pianists, wurlitzers, and other sound machines, and some films were
produced with complete musical scores. Most early silents were accompanied with a
full-fledged orchestra, organist or pianist to provide musical background and to
underscore the narrative on the screen. Some even had live actors or narrators.
Unfortunately, many of the early classics have been lost to decomposing nitrate film
bases and outright destruction.

Many early silent films were either dramas, epics, romances, or comedies (often

9|Page
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

slapstick). One-reelers (10-12 minutes) soon gave way to four-reel feature-length films.

Early masters of cinema during the silent years included Cecil B. De Mille, known for
his epics such as The Ten Commandments (1923), Erich Von Stroheim‘s dramatic tale
of the degenerative effects of avarice in Greed (1924), King Vidor‘s war drama The
Big Parade (1925) and his simple yet dramatic story The Crowd (1928) of a young
couple in the city experiencing the plight of Everyman. In addition, F. W. Murnau is
most famous for his silent melodramatic masterpiece Sunrise (1927).

Early pioneering director D. W. Griffith was often identified with epics including:

 the Civil War saga The Birth of a Nation (1915)

 the spectacular saga Intolerance (1916) with four inter-woven narratives
 Broken Blossoms (1919), the melodramatic story of an abused girl (Lillian
Gish) who is cared for by a young Chinese man
 Orphans of the Storm (1921) - a tale set during the French Revolution

The most-remembered films from the silent years are the visual comedies from the Mack
Sennett Keystone Kops series, starring Fatty Arbuckle and Mabel Normand, and
slapstick from the ‗silent clowns.‘ Tragi-comic superstar Charlie Chaplin is most noted
forThe Kid (1921), his classics including The Gold Rush (1925), the
exquisite City Lights (1931), and his first mute ―silent film‖ with sound Modern
Times (1936) - a satire on the machine age.

Physically-daring comedian Buster Keaton (―Old or Great Stoneface‖) appeared in many

other classic comedies, including Sherlock Jr. (1924), The General (1927),
and Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928). Harold Lloyd‘s most famous silent film found him
dangling from a clock on the side of a city building in Safety Last (1923).

Talkie/Sound Era in Film History (10 Marks)

It can be asserted that the cinema is arguably still the greatest, of the industrialized art
forms which have dominated the cultural life of the twentieth century. Paul Rotha, thus,
rightly observes that the cinema ‗is the great unresolved equation between art and industry‘.
At the end of the 1920s the cinema, underwent a revolution. The centre of this revolution was
the introduction of synchronized sound dialogue. It was a revolution that began in America
and spread inexorably to the rest of the world.
During late 1927, Warners released The Jazz Singer, which was mostly silent but
contained what is generally regarded as the first synchronized dialogue (and singing) in a
feature film; but this process was actually accomplished first by Charles Taze Russell in 1914
with the lengthy film The Photo-Drama of Creation. This drama consisted of picture slides
and moving pictures synchronized with phonograph records of talks and music. The early
sound-on-disc processes such as Vitaphone were soon superseded by sound-on-film methods
like Fox Movietone, DeForest Phonofilm, and RCA Photophone. The trend convinced the
largely reluctant industrialists that ―talking pictures‖, or ―talkies‖, were the future. A lot of

10 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

attempts were made before the success of The Jazz Singer, that can be seen in the List of film
sound systems.
The change was remarkably swift. By the end of 1929, Hollywood was almost all-talkie,
with several competing sound systems (soon to be standardized). Total changeover was
slightly slower in the rest of the world, principally for economic reasons. Cultural reasons
were also a factor in countries like China and Japan, where silents co-existed successfully
with sound well into the 1930s, indeed producing what would be some of the most revered
classics in those countries, like Wu Yonggang‘s The Goddess (China, 1934) and Yasujirō
Ozu‘s I Was Born, But... (Japan, 1932). But even in Japan, a figure such as the benshi, the
live narrator who was a major part of Japanese silent cinema, found his acting career was
ending.
Sound further tightened the grip of major studios in numerous countries: the vast expense
of the transition overwhelmed smaller competitors, while the novelty of sound lured vastly
larger audiences for those producers that remained. In the case of the U.S., some historians
credit sound with saving the Hollywood studio system in the face of the Great Depression
(Parkinson, 1995). Thus began what is now often called ―The Golden Age of Hollywood‖,
which refers roughly to the period beginning with the introduction of sound until the late
1940s. The American cinema reached its peak of efficiently manufactured glamour and
global appeal during this period. The top actors of the era are now thought of as the classic
film stars, such as Clark Gable, Katharine Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, Greta Garbo, and the
greatest box office draw of the 1930s, child performer Shirley Temple.
„The Studio Years‘ was the heyday for the Hollywood studios. The studios, however,
were not entirely free to make films simply for the market. The system also encountered
problems of how to regulate itself to take account of political, social, and moral concern.
While other countries experienced political censorship of varying degrees of severity, the
Hollywood cinema suffered relatively little interference from central government. Along with
spoken dialogue, the major innovation of the sound cinema was synchronized music. This
rapidly developed into a highly sophisticated art, musically and dramatically as well
technically. Composition, performance, and recording were all subject to studio control, and
the production of musical tracks of high quality can be counted one of the greatest
achievements of the system.
Technologically, the main innovations of the studio years, apart from sound itself, were
colour (beginning inthe 1930s) and new widescreen formats (in the early 1950s). Although
developed outside the studios, Technicolor was very much a studio phenomenon, being both
expensive and cumbersome. Simplified colour systems (Agfacolor, Eastman Color) found
their way on to the marketafter the war, allowing colour to be used in cheaper films and even
in documentary. The first area of film-making to make extensive use of Technicolor was
animation, in the person of Walt Disney. It was Disney, too, who turned animation from a
cottage industry into a form of mainstream studio production, as highly specialized as the
making of live-action films.
Creatively, however, the rapid transition was a difficult one, and in some ways, film
briefly reverted to the conditions of its earliest days. The late 1920s were full of static, stagey
talkies as artists in front of and behind the camera struggled with the stringent limitations of
the early sound equipment and their own uncertainty as to how to utilize the new medium.

11 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Many stage performers, directors and writers were introduced to cinema as producers sought
personnel experienced in dialogue-based storytelling. Many major silent filmmakers and
actors were unable to adjust and found their careers severely curtailed or even ended.
This awkward period was fairly short-lived. 1929 was a watershed year: William
Wellman with Chinatown Nights and The Man I Love, Rouben Mamoulian with Applause,
Alfred Hitchcock with Blackmail (Britain‘s first sound feature), were among the directors to
bring greater fluidity to talkies and experiment with the expressive use of sound (Eyman,
1997). In this, they both benefited from, and pushed further, technical advances in
microphones and cameras, and capabilities for editing and post-synchronizing sound (rather
than recording all sound directly at the time of filming).
Sound films emphasized black history and benefited different genres more so than silents
did. Most obviously, the musical film was born; the first classic-style Hollywood musical was
The Broadway Melody (1929) and the form would find its first major creator in
choreographer/director Busby Berkeley (42nd Street, 1933, Dames, 1934). In France, avant-
garde director René Clair made surreal use of song and dance in comedies like Under the
Roofs of Paris (1930) and Le Million (1931). Universal Pictures began releasing gothic
horror films like Dracula and Frankenstein (both 1931). In 1933, RKO Pictures released
Merian C. Cooper‘s classic ―giant monster‖ film King Kong. The trend thrived best in India,
where the influence of the country‘s traditional song-and-dance drama made the musical the
basic form of most sound films (Cook, 1990); virtually unnoticed by the Western world for
decades, this Indian popular cinema would nevertheless become the world‘s most prolific.
(See also Bollywood.)
At this time, American gangster films like Little Caesar and Wellman‘s The Public
Enemy (both 1931) became popular. Dialogue now took precedence over ―slapstick‖ in
Hollywood comedies: the fast-paced, witty banter of The Front Page (1931) or It Happened
One Night (1934), the sexual double entrendres of Mae West (She Done Him Wrong, 1933)
or the often subversively anarchic nonsense talk of the Marx Brothers (Duck Soup, 1933).
Walt Disney, who had previously been in the short cartoon business, stepped into feature
films with the first English-speaking animated feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs;
released by RKO Pictures in 1937. 1939, a major year for American cinema, brought such
films as The Wizard of Oz and Gone with The Wind.
The first sound feature film to receive near-universal critical approbation was Der Blaue
Engel (The Blue Angel); premiering on April 1, 1930, it was directed by Josef von Sternberg
in both German and English versions for Berlin‘s UFA studio. The first American talkie to be
widely honored was All Quiet on the Western Front, directed by Lewis Milestone, which
premiered April 21. The other internationally acclaimed sound drama of the year was
Westfront 1918, directed by G. W. Pabst for Nero-Film of Berlin. Historian Anton Kaes
points to it as an example of ―the new verisimilitude [that] rendered silent cinema‘s former
emphasis on the hypnotic gaze and the symbolism of light and shadow, as well as its
preference for allegorical characters, anachronistic.‖ Cultural historians consider the French
L’Âge d’Or, directed by Luis Buñuel, which appeared late in 1930, to be of great aesthetic
import; at the time, its erotic, blasphemous, anti-bourgeois content caused a scandal. Swiftly
banned by Paris police chief Jean Chiappe, it was unavailable for fifty years. The earliest
sound movie now acknowledged by most film historians as a masterpiece is Nero-Film’s M,

12 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

directed by Fritz Lang, which premiered May 11, 1931. As described by Roger Ebert, ―Many
early talkies felt they had to talk all the time, but Lang allows his camera to prowl through the
streets and dives, providing a rat‘s-eye view.‖
In conclusion it can be said that an important effect of the new technology
(synchronisation of the sound) was the revival of film production in many countries in
response to the sudden demand for talking pictures in native languages. French cinema
peaked with 157 feature films in 1932.Small nations like Hungary, the Netherlands, and
Norway, formerly dependent on film imports altogether, enjoyed an unexpected renaissance
of national film production in their own languages. Most impressive, however, was the
recovery of Czech cinema. Protected by language barriers and import restrictions,
Czechoslovakia witnessed a boom in film-making, cinema attendance, and theatre-building.
The success of Czech cinema was surpassed only by India, where local film production
benefited immensely from the transition to sound, integrating musical numbers with action
scenes, thus reconciling cinema with long-standing popular traditions. Without sound, India
might not have become the world‘s largest producer of motion pictures.

Colour Film/Colour in Motion Picture (10 Marks)

Overview: Tracing the Evolution of the Use of Colour in Films

The first motion pictures were photographed using a simple homogeneous photographic
emulsion that yielded a black-and-white image—that is, an image in shades of gray, ranging
from black to white, corresponding to the luminous intensity of each point on the
photographed subject. Light, shade, form and movement were captured, but not color. The
first color cinematography was by additive color systems such as the one patented by Edward
Raymond Turner in 1899 and tested in 1902. A simplified additive system was successfully
commercialised in 1909 as Kinemacolor. These early systems used black-and-white film to
photograph and project two or more component images through different color filters.
During 1920, the first practical subtractive color processes were introduced. These
also used black-and-white film to photograph multiple color-filtered source images, but the
final product was a multicolored print that did not require special projection equipment.
Before 1932, when three-strip Technicolor was introduced, commercialized subtractive
processes used only two color components and could reproduce only a limited range of color.
In 1935, Kodachrome was introduced, followed by Agfacolor in 1936. They were
intended primarily for amateur home movies and ―slides‖. These were the first films of the
―integral tripack‖ type, coated with three layers of differently color-sensitive emulsion, which
is usually what is meant by the words ―color film‖ as commonly used. The few color
photographic films still being made in the 2010s are of this type. The first color negative
films and corresponding print films were modified versions of these films. They were
introduced around 1940 but only came into wide use for commercial motion picture
production in the early 1950s. In the US, Eastman Kodak‘s Eastmancolor was the usual

13 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

choice, but it was often re-branded with another trade name, such as ―WarnerColor‖, by the
studio or the film processor.
Later color films were standardized into two distinct processes: Eastman Color
Negative 2 chemistry (camera negative stocks, duplicating interpositive and internegative
stocks) and Eastman Color Positive 2 chemistry (positive prints for direct projection), usually
abbreviated as ECN-2 and ECP-2. Fuji‘s products are compatible with ECN-2 and ECP-2.
Current color films do this with three layers of differently color-sensitive
photographic emulsion coated on one strip of film base. Early processes used color filters to
photograph the color components as completely separate images (e.g., three-strip
Technicolor) or adjacent microscopic image fragments (e.g., Dufaycolor) in a one-layer
black-and-white emulsion. Film was the dominant form of cinematography until the 2010s,
when it was largely replaced by digital cinematography.
Colour in Films
The history of colour in the motion picture is as long as that of the motion picture
itself. Edison‘s Annabelle‘s Dance (1895) was hand-coloured to simulate, as David Parker
informs us, the coloured stage lights playing on the fabric of her dress as she dances. But
unlike sound, which also began with Edison‘s first Kinetoscopes, colour took considerably
longer to establish itself as a standard for motion picture presentation. From 1895 through
the early 1950s, colour was relegated to the status of a novelty. This was due, in part, to the
marginal status of colour within the industry. With over 100 different colour processes (with
over 100 different names) introduced to the public in fewer than 60 years (up to the early
1960s), it was no wonder that the industry regarded colour with some scepticism. And it was
no wonder that colour processes competed with one another to provide more and more
spectacular colour renditions and effects, further associating colour with novel presentations.
The history of motion picture colour is traditionally written as a gradual evolution
from ‗artificial‘ to ‗natural‘ colour. ‗Artificial‘ colour encompasses the early hand-colouring,
stencil colouring, dying, and toning processes in which colour is applied to black and white
film. ‗Natural‘ colour originally refered to processes whereby the actual colours of a scene
are recorded, through filters, on black and white film and reproduced in projection or in the
processing of prints.
It was assumed by many historians that hand colouring had disappeared by the early
1920s, giving way to various ‗natural‘ colour processes such as Kinemacolor, Prizmacolor,
and two-strip Technicolor. Kinemacolor was the first successful colour motion picture
process, used commercially from 1908 to 1914. It was invented by George Albert Smith of
Brighton, England in 1906. He was influenced by the work of William Norman Lascelles
Davidson and, more directly, Edward Raymond Turner. In his essay on Gustav Brock,
Foolish Wives, and the Museum of Modern Art, Richard Koszarski reveals that hand
colouring remained a mode of novel presentation for certain first-run films in certain first-run
theatres well into the 1920s. A two-colour process for the majority of its history, Cinecolor
exemplifies the ‗frozen‘ nature of the development of colour technology prior to the
introduction of Eastman colour negative and positive film in the early 1950s. Though various
aspects of the Cinecolor process improved, it remained trapped in its identity as a two-colour
process.

14 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

From the camera negative, the red and green frames were separated onto their own
film rolls. This yielded a green separation and a red separation. The green separation was
dyed red and the red separation was dyed green. By printing on film half as thick as normal
film and lining up the two dyed separations carrier side to carrier side using a special solvent
that adhered the two pieces of film together (the resulting film had emulsion on both sides),
colors were subtracted from the print rather than added together as was done through the
prisms (In the subtractive process, the primary colors are cyan, magenta and yellow. The
presence of all three in proper ratio produces black). Prints from the new system could now
be projected on any existing projector and required no modifications.
A note about the ―two strip‖ process as the red/green subtractive Technicolor process
came to be known. While it ignored blue, the third primary additive color, it rendered skin
tones accurately. Through careful photography that kept the need to reproduce blues to a
minimum, acceptable results were obtained. Sequences of major silent films such as ―The
Ten Commandments‖ (1923), ―The Phantom of the Opera‖ (1925) and ―Ben-Hur‖ (1925)
were shot using the red/green process. But the two strip adhesive system still presented
technical problems mostly due to the heating and cooling of the print as it ran past the hot arc
lamps of film projectors. They were also prone to scratching due to the presence of the
emulsion on both sides of the print. This two strip scheme became a stop gap. Technicolor
was already hard at work on an improved process.
In 1926, Technicolor introduced their version of the dye transfer process that
eliminated the sandwiching of the two strips of film. Dye transferring for still photography
had been around since the turn of the century. And it had been used before in motion picture
films. Cecil B De Mille first used it in his film ―Joan the Woman‖ about the life of Joan of
Arc in 1916. However, it was not used in the photography of the film but in coloring it as
previous films had done with tinting.
The first film to use the new Technicolor version of the process was ―The Viking‖ in
1928. It continued to use the same cameras and red/green breakdown of colors as the
previous system. However, the physical marriage of two dyed prints that had caused so much
trouble in projection booths was gone. It was replaced with a single piece of film that was
stable and also able to accommodate optical soundtracks that were allowing movies to speak
for the first time. Luck was on the side of Technicolor when the world suffered financial
calamity with the onset of the Great Depression. As studios began to abandon plans to shoot
films in the two color system to save money, Herbert Kalmus was completing plans to once
again bring the studios and the audiences back to color.
Kalmus had commissioned the building of a new Technicolor camera and a
modification of the dye transfer system. Both would accommodate three strips of film
allowing red, green and now blue separation negatives. The camera would photograph three
strips in the three primary light colors (red, green and blue) while the subtractive dye transfer
process would allow all three complementary colors (cyan, magenta and yellow) to be placed
on one strip of film. The first producer into the three strip color market was Walt Disney. In
1932, Kalmus approached Disney with the offer to use the new three-color process for the
first time. Disney jumped at the opportunity. He even scrapped a film that was currently in
production in black and white and started over using the three strip color camera. ―Flowers
and Trees,‖ one of Disney‘s Silly Symphonies series, while not the first animated film to be

15 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

shot in some form of color, was a sensation with audiences and critics and won the Academy
Award for Best Animated Short Subject that year. Disney negotiated an exclusive contract
with Technicolor and all subsequent Silly Symphony cartoons were shot in the Technicolor
three strip process as well as the first animated feature ―Snow White‖ (1937).
Technicolor was the second major color process, after Britain‘s Kinemacolor, and the
most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952. Technicolor became
known and celebrated for its highly saturated color, and was initially most commonly used
for filming musicals such as The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Down Argentine Way (1940),
costume pictures such as The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and Gone with the Wind
(1939), and animated films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Gulliver’s
Travels (1939), and Fantasia (1940). As the technology matured it was also used for less
spectacular dramas and comedies. Occasionally, even a film noir—such as Leave Her to
Heaven (1945) or Niagara (1953)—was filmed in Technicolor.
Colour is not merely a question of aesthetics; economic demands drive its
development as well. The economic analysis of Technicolor by White, Weld & Co. provides
a snapshot of the corporation at the height of its success. Though Eastman had already
introduced its colour negative and positive materials, the future of Technicolor seemed secure
Eastman colour and Ansco colour in 1953, 1954, in October of 1952. The widespread
diffusion of and thereafter marked a dramatic reversal of fortune for Technicolor during the
remainder of the decade. The problems related to the development of colour technology are
very much the problems related to the preservation of our colour film heritage. Chief among
these are securing the basic colour records on more or less stable black and white film in the
form of ‗colour separations‘. Robert Harris warns us of the danger that confronts colour films
of the 1950s and 1 960s due to the fading of original camera negatives. Harris also recounts
his struggles, along with his partner James Katz, to save major motion picture monuments of
that era - Lawrence of Arabia, Spartacus, My Fair Lady, Vertigo and Rear Window. Harris
and Katz‘s work restores the spectacle to these fading colour spectacles and, through heralded
colour reconstructions, maintains the crucial connection between colour and novelty.
Technicolor remained the gold standard for color motion pictures into the 1950‘s. A
producer who contracted with Technicolor meant they would provide the camera (an
especially cumbersome piece of equipment), specially trained crews to operate it, all film
stock and processing and an expensive finishing process. It was an expensive system that was
finally overcome by companies like Eastman Kodak who in 1950 introduced its first motion
picture negative film that allowed producers and studios to use the same cameras they had
been using to shoot black and white films as well as their own crews and processing plants.
But Technicolor‘s three strip and dye transfer process couldn‘t be matched and
continued until 1954. As history has shown, Technicolor‘s films are very stable and films
produced in the process maintain their vivid colors even today. The simpler emulsion layer
based systems such as Eastmancolor were prone to color fading and it‘s very difficult if not
impossible in many cases to revive them to their original luster even using today‘s digital
tools. In the end, the cost advantage of the simpler technology finally overcame Technicolor
and the final three strip production, ―Foxfire,‖ was shot in 1954 by Universal Pictures.

16 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

The dye transfer process yielded such superior quality prints, Technicolor was able to
adapt it to convert single strip color emulsions, such as Eastmancolor, and continued it until
the early 1970‘s. Ultimately, it also became too expensive not only in monetary costs but in
time. With the number of screens increasing in the mid-1960‘s, producers needed more prints
faster and in more locations. One of the last American films printed in Technicolor‘s process
was the second ―Godfather‖ film in 1974 although it revived briefly in the late 1990‘s with a
shorter time frame. The first film to use the revived version was Warner Brothers‘ ―Batman
and Robin.‖ Later it was used for new dye transfer reissues of ―Wizard of Oz,‖ ―Gone with
the Wind,‖ ―Apocalypse Now Redux‖ and others until it was discontinued right after the
company was sold to Thomson Multimedia S.A. in 2001. Little can be found about the
revived process as there was scant publicity on it.
Today, digital has made film photography and printing obsolete. That can be a good
thing or a bad thing depending on who you talk to. As you can see throughout the article, an
upside is that digital can save some of the defining moments of earliest years of the medium.
But whether they are black and white or color, they have to be in a restorable condition.
Hopefully the discovery of treasures such as Méliès‘ handcolored version of ―A Trip to the
Moon‖ will continue to turn up.

Digital Age in Film-making (10 Marks)

A renewed interest in film realism influenced motion picture technology during and after
World War II. In order to afford greater versatility and mobility, filmmakers took to using
smaller cameras that could shoot on location without tripods or heavy equipment. Shortly
after World War II, director Morris Engel (1918–2005), whose low-budget films shot in New
York City would later influence John Cassavetes, helped Charlie Woodruff construct a
portable 35mm camera that prefigured the Steadicam. By the middle of the 1950s,
cinematographer Richard Leacock (b. 1921) and sound recording specialist D. A.
Pennebraker (b. 1925) innovated a portable 16mm synchronized-sound camera that rested on
the operator‘s shoulder. These light and highly mobile sync-sound cameras were instrumental

17 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

in renewing a movement in documentary filmmaking during the 1960s. Filmmakers such as

Shirley Clark, Robert Drew, and Frederick Wiseman helped popularize the 16mm cameras,
which were famously used in productions such as Primary (1960) and High School (1968).
Thanks to new developments in film technology, and inspired by new waves of filmmaking
around the world, including Italian neorealism and cinéma vérité, handheld cinematography
became not only feasible but also popular in both documentary and narrative movie
production.
Beginning in the late 1970s, the Steadicam offered a new means of shooting handheld
while maintaining steadiness of image. The Steadicam is a mount that stabilizes the camera
by isolating it from all but the cinematographer‘s largest movements. In addition to absorbing
shocks from movement, the mount also continually keeps the camera at its center of gravity.
The Steadicam enabled filmmakers to shoot in tight spaces and accomplish difficult shots
(such as circulars, extensive pans, and crowd scenes), while providing a degree of steadiness
previously attained only by dolly shots or zooms. More recently, Hi-8 cameras, camcorders,
and digital cameras have increased personal (and occasionally professional) handheld
filmmaking practices. Director Martin Scorsese and his cinematographer Michael Chapman
used the Steadicam quite effectively in a famous sequence in Raging Bull (1980), in which
the camera follows Jake LaMotta (Robert De Niro) as he winds through a throng of fans and
reporters on his way to the boxing ring.
Computer- and digital-based filmmaking technologies have picked up where the
Steadicam left off, allowing for even greater portability and image steadiness. In addition,
these new technologies are able to heighten special effects, intermix digital or virtual domains
with live action, convey scale, and reduce the labor necessary in setting up difficult shots and
constructing complex settings. Indeed, the new age of cinema signals the end of perforated
film strips, 35mm cameras, and editing methods that have remained largely the same since
motion pictures were born. While many of these changes are yet to be standardized and
institutionalized, the technology has been around in some form since the early 1980s.
Disney‘s Tron (1982) was the first movie to include high-resolution digital imagery, but it
did so sparingly. Several years later, in 1989, James Cameron took the technology to a new
level, intermixing live action and computer graphics in The Abyss. Cameron proved that
computer-generated imagery (CGI) could add complex yet realistic special effects while
remaining cost-effective (Cook, p. 955). Cameron‘s success invited further experimentation
with digital technologies. Since the early 1990s, many productions have implemented CGI in
some form. Robert Zemeckis, in Forrest Gump (1994), blended virtual history (past US
presidents, for instance) with live action. Cameron created digital replicas of Miami as
background in True Lies (1994). In Star Wars: Episode 1, The Phantom Menace (1999),
George Lucas‘s crew shot every scene with computer-generated technology, simulating entire
battle sequences with digitally designed extras multiplied to fill the screen. These effects are
especially suitable for action-adventure films, of course, but they are being increasingly used
across genres to reduce costs and save labor time.
Like previous phases of film technology, the digital age of cinema has had to weigh the
advantages of spectacle with more practical matters of efficiency, economy, and realism.
Digital technology has also resurrected stereoscopic filmmaking. After the success of IMAX
3-D in the 1990s, James Cameron‘s Ghosts of the Abyss (2003), a documentary on the

18 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Titanic, and Steven Spielberg‘s digitally animated The Polar Express (2004) both played on
IMAX‘s giant screens. Directors Lucas and Cameron have also explored a new 3-D process
in which technicians can render flat films stereoscopic using digital means. This conversion
process would be applicable not only to newly made films but also to reissues of previously
released movies. The technology is in place for both the conversion and projection of digital
3-D, but theaters will need first to make the conversion to digital projection, which will be the
next costly—but perhaps inevitable—overhaul.

3D Films (10 Martks)

A three-dimensional film is a motion picture that enhances the illusion of depth

perception, hence adding a third dimension. The most common approach to the production of
3D films is derived from stereoscopic photography. In this approach, a regular motion picture
camera system is used to record the images as seen from two perspectives (or computer-
generated imagery generates the two perspectives in post-production), and special projection
hardware or eyewear is used to limit the visibility of each image to the viewer‘s left or right
eye only.
Though, 3D films have existed in some form since 1915, 3D films were prominently
featured in the 1950s in American cinema, and later experienced a worldwide resurgence in
the 1980s and 1990s driven by IMAX high-end theaters and Disney-themed venues. 3D films
became increasingly successful throughout the 2000s, peaking with the success of 3D
presentations of Avatar in December 2009, after which 3D films again decreased in
popularity. Certain directors have also taken more experimental approaches to 3D
filmmaking, most notably celebrated auteur Jean-Luc Godard in his films 3X3D and
Goodbye to Language.
The earliest confirmed 3D film shown to an out-of-house audience was The Power of
Love, which premiered at the Ambassador Hotel Theater in Los Angeles on 27 September
1922. The camera rig was a product of the film‘s producer, Harry K. Fairall, and
cinematographer Robert F. Elder. It was filmed dual-strip in black and white, and single strip
color analglyphic release prints were produced using a color film invented and patented by
Harry K. Fairall.
Experimentation continued for several decades, but high costs and the pressures of the
Great Depression prevented studios from wholeheartedly adopting 3D. One notable success
story during the Depression was Audioscopiks. This film relied on the red/cyan anaglyph
format. Audioscopiks earned an Academy Award in 1936 in the Best Short Subject, Novelty
category.
Another promising new technology emerged that showed potential to replace
traditional stereoscopic 3D films. Edwin H. Land invented the polarizing sheet and went on
to help found Polaroid. Land saw potential in using his polarized sheets for 3D projection.
Though stereoscopic 3D movies were often printed on red and cyan reels, the films
themselves remained in black and white. That finally changed when a movie called Bwana
Devil became the first 3D color film in 1952. The film made use of Milton Gunzberg‘s

19 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Natural Vision process. Bwana Devil also saw Land‘s Polaroid filters rise to prominence.
These filters would become the standard for most 3D films of this period.

A still from Bwana Devil (1952) U.S. adventure B movie written, directed, and produced by Arch
Oboler and stars Robert Stack, Barbara Britton, and Nigel Bruce. Bwana Devil is based on the true
story ofMany
the Tsavo
viewmaneaters andas
the 1950‘s filmed withgolden
the first the Natural Vision
age of 3D system. Thanks to a booming
3D filmmaking.
postwar economy, more consumers and theater owners were receptive to the new technology.
3D glasses were becoming popularized among children thanks to the numerous 3D comic
books and their included anaglyph glasses. Comics still make occasional use of this format
today, with one recent example being Final Crisis: Superman Beyond.

The audience at the premiere of Bwana Devil, photographed by J. R. Eyerman for Life magazine

20 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Disney also entered the 3D field during the ‗50s. The Disney short film Melody accompanied
another 3D feature, Fort Ti. Melody was later shown at Disneyland as part of a live act called
3D Jamboree.
For the most part, studios seemed to gravitate towards horror movies when it came to
3D. Besides the aforementioned Vincent Price movies, another popular 3D attraction was the
monster movie classic The Creature From the Black Lagoon. Even Alfred Hitchcock began
experimenting with the format, which led to the much beloved Dial M for Murder. Both of
these helped bring a greater popularity and legitimacy to 3D movies.
Despite these advances, 3D movies fell out of popularity by the middle of the decade.
The reasons for the decline were mostly technical. 3D projectors required two reels to be
displayed in perfect synchronization. Small errors in synchronization could easily lead to eye
strain and headaches among viewers. Keeping reels in good repair was also an ongoing
concern. Small physical defects over time could lead to the same types of problems as
improperly synced film strips or faulty equipment. Coupled with the advent of unique and
expensive 3D equipment, theaters saw 3D movies as a less than ideal investment.
3D‘s second renaissance came in 1960‘s when producer Arch Gobler found a way to
eliminate the need for dual-reel movies. His new technique, Space-Vision 3D, worked by
overlaying two stereoscopic images on a single reel. A company called Stereovision
developed another new technology in 1970. Stereovision‘s 3D format displayed reels side-by-
side on a single, anamorphic film strip. Not to be confused with the term ―anamorphic
widescreen‖, anamorphic film displays a widescreen image so that it is horizontally squeezed
to take up the entire film strip.
The first movie to take advantage of Stereovision‘s technology was a low-budget,
raunchy comedy called The Stewardesses. This was the beginning of a new trend in 3D
movies. Many of these films in the ‗70s and ‗80s were marketed squarely at older viewers
and fans of violent horror films. Many popular horror franchises celebrated their third
installment by adopting 3D. This proved to be the case for movies like Friday the 13th Part
III, Jaws 3D, and Amityville 3D. Except in a handful of cases, including Friday the 13th Part
III, these films did not receive 3D versions when released on the home video market. Despite
3D‘s resurgence in the ‗70s and ‗80s, it was ultimately unable to avoid another crash. As
much as technology had improved, 3D movies still proved cumbersome for theaters and
expensive for filmmakers. Audiences, meanwhile, were growing disinterested in the cheap
anaglyph glasses that had been the standard for 30 years by that point. 3D once again all but
vanished from the movie industry.
3D movies retreated from the public eye once again, but as always, an intrepid few
were researching methods of making 3D cheaper and more visually impressive. IMAX
became one of the strongest proponents of 3D filmmaking in the mid-‘80s. A hallmark of
their philosophy was a rigid, almost mathematical approach to 3D projection. By taking great
pains to ensure film reels were kept in sync, IMAX could ensure its viewers didn‘t suffer
from the all-too-familiar eye strain and headaches associated with 3D movies. IMAX 3D, as
the process came to be known, offered viewers large screens and stronger production values
than the cheap 3D films of yesteryear.
IMAX began to expand its array of 3D films. A turning point for the format came at
Expo ‗86 in Vancouver. The film Transitions became the first 3D movie to be paired with

21 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

polarized lenses rather than the typical anaglyph glasses. With polarized lenses, an image is
beamed towards the viewer ad refracted through through the glasses. Because each lens is
polarized differently, the image received by each eye is slightly varied. When the brain
receives these two similar but unique streams of visual data, it combines them into one 3D
image. A great advantage of polarized lenses is that many viewers could watch a movie at
once and from varying angles without a degradation of quality.
Through the late ‗80s and ‗90s, IMAX theaters and certain theme park locations
added dozens of new projects to their repertoire. Many of these films were educational
documentaries, but some adapted popular mainstream franchises into new adventures. These
included Honey, I Shrunk the Audience, T-2 3D: Battle Across Time, and Jim Henson‘s
Muppet-Vision 3D.
Ghosts of the Abyss, a Titanic documentary directed by James Cameron, was another
example of how far 3D technology had come. Cameron employed HD video cameras and
digital film for his latest project. This tech was later adopted for a new round of commercial
3D releases. Director Robert Rodriguez was a strong proponent of 3D during this time, and
he released both Spy Kids 3D: Game Over and The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl in
3D.
Perhaps the most significant turning point for 3D came with the 2004 release of The
Polar Express. This CG animated film was released simultaneously in standard theaters and
IMAX 3D theaters. Despite the IMAX 3D screens only comprising a tiny fraction of the
overall number, the IMAX theaters managed to account for a full quarter of Polar Express‘
box office receipts. Studios quickly began to see the lucrative potential in modern 3D
filmmaking.
In late 2005, Steven Spielberg told the press he was involved in patenting a 3D
cinema system that does not need glasses, and which is based on plasma screens. A computer
splits each film-frame, and then projects the two split images onto the screen at differing
angles, to be picked up by tiny angled ridges on the screen. Animated films Open Season, and
The Ant Bully, were released in analog 3D in 2006. Monster House and The Nightmare
Before Christmas were released on Xpan D 3D, Real D and Dolby 3D systems in 2006. On
May 19, 2007 Scar3D opened at the Cannes Film Market. It was the first US-produced 3D
full-length feature film to be completed in Real D 3D. It has been the #1 film at the box office
in several countries around the world, including Russia where it opened in 3D on 295
screens.
On January 19, 2008, U2 3D was released; it was the first live-action digital 3D film.
In the same year others 3D films included Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both
Worlds Concert, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Bolt. On January 16, 2009,
Lionsgate released My Bloody Valentine 3D, the first horror film and first R-rated film to be
projected in Real D 3D. It was released to 1,033 3D screens, the most ever for this format,
and 1,501 regular screens. Another R-rated film, The Final Destination, was released later
that year in August on even more screens. It was the first of its series to be released in HD
3D.
Major 3D films in 2009 included Coraline, Monsters vs. Aliens, Up, X Games 3D:
The Movie, The Final Destination, Disney‘s A Christmas Carol, and Avatar. Avatar has gone
on to be one of the most expensive films of all time, with a budget at $237 million; it is also

22 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

the second highest-grossing film of all time. The main technologies used to exhibit these
films, and many others released around the time and up to the present, are Real D 3D, Dolby
3D, XpanD 3D, MasterImage 3D, and IMAX 3D.
March and April 2010 saw three major 3D releases clustered together, with Alice in
Wonderland hitting US theaters on March 5, 2010, How to Train Your Dragon on March 26,
2010, and Clash of the Titans on April 2, 2010. On May 13 of the same year, China‘s first
IMAX 3D film started shooting. The pre-production of the first 3D film shot in France,
Derrière les murs, began in May 2010 and was released in mid-2011.
Undoubtedly the most successful 3D film to date is James Cameron‘s Avatar. As with
Ghosts of the Deep, Avatar was filmed with custom-built cameras and 3D software. No
official numbers were ever released, but Avatar is widely regarded as the most expensive
movie ever made thanks to the cost of this new technology. However, Avatar now stands as
the highest-grossing film of all time, proving more than ever that audiences are willing to foot
the bill for expensive 3D tickets if the experience justifies the cost. The next frontier for 3D
movies appears to be the home market. While some home video releases have included
anaglyph glasses, consumers have only recently gained the ability to buy true 3D-capable
televisions. 3D-ready televisions offer a 3D mode that works in conjunction with a pair of
battery-powered LCD shutter lenses.
Film critic Mark Kermode, a noted detractor of 3D, has surmised that there is an
emerging policy of distributors to limit the availability of 2D versions, thus ―railroading‖ the
3D format into cinemas whether the paying filmgoer likes it or not. This was especially
prevalent during the release of Prometheus in 2012, where only 30% of prints for theatrical
exhibition (at least in the UK) were in 2D. His suspicions were later reinforced by a
substantial number of complaints about Dredd from those who wished to see it in 2D but
were denied the opportunity. In July 2017, IMAX announced that they will begin to focus on
screening more Hollywood tent-pole movies in 2D (even if there‘s a 3D version) and have
fewer 3D screenings of movies in North America, citing that moviegoers in North America
prefer 2D films over 3D films.

Introduction to Major Film Movements (10 Marks/5 Marks)

 CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD CINEMA

Classical Hollywood cinema or the classical Hollywood narrative, are terms used in
film history which designate both a visual and sound style for making motion pictures and a
mode of production used in the American film industry between 1927 and 1963. Classical
Hollywood Cinema is a term that has been coined by David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and
Kristin Thompson in their seminal study of the same name. This period is often referred to as
the ―golden age of Hollywood.‖ Classical style is fundamentally built on the principle of
continuity editing or ―invisible‖ style.
During the golden age of Hollywood, which lasted from the end of the silent era in
American cinema in the late 1920s to the early 1960s, films were prolifically issued by the
Hollywood studios. The start of the golden age was arguably when The Jazz Singer was
released in 1927. Most Hollywood pictures adhered closely to a genre—Western, slapstick

23 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

comedy, musical, animated cartoon, biopic (biographical picture). Film making was still a
business, however, and motion picture companies made money by operating under the studio
system. MGM dominated the industry and had the top stars in Hollywood, and was also
credited for creating the Hollywood star system altogether. Another great achievement of
American cinema during this era came through Walt Disney‘s animation. In 1937, Disney
created the most successful film of its time, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The apogee of
the studio system may have been the year 1939, which saw the release of such classics as The
Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Stagecoach, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Destry Rides
Again,Young Mr. Lincoln, etc. The style of classical Hollywood cinema has been heavily
influenced by the ideas of the Renaissance and its resurgence of mankind as the focal point.
Thus, classical narration progresses always through psychological motivation, i.e. by
the will of a human character and its struggle with obstacles towards a defined goal. In the
classical Hollywood style space and time are unified, continuous and linear. They appear as a
unified whole to match our perception of time and space in reality. Time in classical
Hollywood is continuous, since nonlinearity calls attention to the illusory workings of the
medium. The only permissible manipulation of time in this format is the flashback. Likewise,
the treatment of space in classic Hollywood strives to overcome or conceal the two-
dimensionality of film (―invisible style‖) and is strongly centred upon the human body.
The classic Hollywood narrative is structured with an unmistakable beginning, middle
and end, and generally there is a distinct resolution at the end. The characters in Classical
Hollywood Cinema have clearly definable traits, are active, and very goal oriented. They are
causal agents motivated by psychological rather than social concerns. Maybe the single most
important and most influential element of cinematic form that characterizes classical
Hollywood cinema is continuity editing. The editing is subservient to the flow of the
narrative and is usually constructed in a way that it does not draw attention onto itself.

 GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM
German Expressionism is an artistic genre that originated in Europe in the 1920s, and
is broadly defined as the rejection of Western conventions, and the depiction of reality that is
widely distorted for emotional effect. German expressionism refers to a number of related

24 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

creative movements beginning in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in
Berlin during the 1920s. These developments in Germany were part of a larger Expressionist
movement in north and central European culture in fields such as architecture, dance,
painting, sculpture, as well as cinema.
Expressionist films were initially born out of Germany‘s relative isolation during the
1910s, and quickly generated high demand due to the government‘s ban on foreign films. The
films‘ appeal soon spread to an international audience, and by the early 1920s, many
European filmmakers had begun experimenting with the absurd and wild aesthetics of
German cinema.
Besides the films‘ popularity within Germany, by 1922 the international audience had
begun to appreciate German cinema, in part due to a decreasing anti-German sentiment
following the end of World War I. A number of artists and craftsmen working in the Berlin
Theatre brought the Expressionist visual style to the design of stage sets. This, in turn, had an
eventual influence on films dealing with fantasy and horror.
Among the first Expressionist films, The Student of Prague (1913), The Cabinet of
Dr. Caligari (1920), From Morn to Midnight (1920), The Golem: How He Came into the
World (1920), Destiny (1921), Nosferatu (1922), Phantom (1922), Schatten (1923), and The
Last Laugh (1924) were highly symbolic and stylized.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (German: Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari)
It is a 1920 German silent horror film, directed by Robert Wiene and written by Hans
Janowitz and Carl Mayer, which is universally recognized as an early classic of
Expressionist cinema. Filmed in 1920, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari tells the story of Francis,
who, through flashbacks, recounts his terrifying experiences at a carnival in a small German
village, where he first encountered Dr. Caligari, a man with the power to control people in
their sleep. When Francis‘s friend is mysteriously murdered and his fiancée is kidnapped, he
pursues Dr. Caligari to an insane asylum, determined to unravel the mystery surrounding
these terrible events.
The film thematizes brutal and irrational authority; Dr. Caligari represents the German
war government, and Cesare is symbolic of the common man conditioned, like soldiers,
to kill. In his influential book. From Caligari to Hitler, Siegfried Kracauer says the film
reflects a subconscious need in German society for a tyrant, and is an example of
Germany‘s obedience to authority and unwillingness to rebel against deranged authority.
He says the film is a premonition of the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, and says
the addition of the frame story turns an otherwise ‗revolutionary‘ film into a
―conformistic‖ one. Other themes of the film include the destabilized contrast between
insanity and sanity, the subjective perception of reality, and the duality of human nature.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was released just as foreign film industries were easing
restrictions on the import of German films following World War I, so it was screened
internationally. Accounts differ as to its financial and critical success upon release, but
modern film critics and historians have largely praised it as a revolutionary film. Critic
Roger Ebert called it arguably ―the first true horror film‖. Considered a classic, it helped
draw worldwide attention to the artistic merit of German cinema and had a major

25 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

influence on American films, particularly in the genres of horror and film noir.
Stylistic elements taken from German Expressionism are common today in films that
need not reference contemporary realism, such as science fiction films.
 ITALIAN NEOREALISM
Italian Neorealism is a national film movement characterized by stories set amongst
the poor and the working class, filmed on location, frequently using non-professional actors.
Italian Neorealist films mostly contend with the difficult economic and moral conditions of
post-World War II Italy, representing changes in the Italian psyche and conditions of
everyday life, including poverty, oppression, injustice and desperation. Italian Neorealism
came about as World War II ended and Benito Mussolini‘s government fell, causing the
Italian film industry to lose its center. Neorealism was a sign of cultural change and social
progress in Italy. Its films presented contemporary stories and ideas, and were often shot in
the streets because the film studios had been damaged significantly during the war.
In the spring of 1945, Mussolini was executed and Italy was liberated from German
occupation. This period, known as the ―Italian Spring,‖ was a break from old ways and an
entrance to a more realistic approach when making films. Italian cinema went from utilizing
elaborate studio sets to shooting on location in the countryside and city streets in the realist
style. Neorealism became famous globally in 1946 with Roberto Rossellini‘s Rome, Open
City, when it won the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival as the first major film
produced in Italy after the war. Italian Neorealism rapidly declined in the early 1950s.
Neorealist movies are generally filmed with nonprofessional actors. They are shot almost
exclusively on location, mostly in run-down cities as well as rural areas due to its forming
during the post-war era. The topic involves the idea of what it is like to live among the poor
and the lower working class. The focus is on a simple social order of survival in rural,
everyday life. Neorealist films often feature children in major roles, though their characters
are frequently more observational than participatory. Vittorio De Sica‘s 1948 film Bicycle
Thieves is a representative of the genre, with non-professional actors, and a story that details
the hardships of working-class life after the war. Some Major works are Open City (Roberto
Rossellini, 1945), Shoeshine (Vittorio De Sica, 1946), Paisan (Roberto Rossellini, 1946)
Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica, 1948)The Earth Trembles (Luchino Visconti, 1948)Bitter
Rice (Giuseppe De Santis, 1949) Umberto D. (Vittorio De Sica, 1952).
Characteristics of Italian Neo realism
Ideologically, the characteristics of Italian Neo realism were:
 a new democratic spirit, with emphasis on the value of ordinary people
 a compassionate point of view and a refusal to make facile (easy) moral judgments
 a preoccupation with Italy‘s Fascist past and its aftermath of wartime devastation
 a blending of Christian and Marxist humanism
 a critical appraisal of the role of church, state and Government in the life of the
 common man.
 an emphasis on emotions rather than abstract ideas
Stylistically, Italian Neo realism was:
 an avoidance of neatly plotted stories in favor of loose, episodic structures that evolve
organically
 a documentary visual style

26 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

 the use of actual locations - usually exteriors - rather than studio sites
 the use of nonprofessional actors, even for principal roles
 use of conversational speech, not literary dialogue
 avoidance of artifice in editing, camerawork, and lighting in favor of a simple
‗styless‘ style

Bicycle Thieves (1948)

Adapted for the screen by Cesare Zavattini from a novel by Luigi Bartolini, and
starring Lamberto Maggiorani as the desperate father and Enzo Staiola as his plucky young
son, Bicycle Thieves is widely regarded as a masterpiece of Italian neorealism. It received an
Academy Honorary Award (most outstanding foreign language film) in 1950 and, just four
years after its release, was deemed the greatest film of all time by Sight & Sound magazine‘s
poll of filmmakers and critics; fifty years later the same poll ranked it sixth among the
greatest-ever films.
Neorealist films often feature children in major roles, though their characters are
frequently more observational than participatory. Vittorio De Sica‘s 1948 film Bicycle
Thieves is a representative of the genre, with non-professional actors , and a story that details
the hardship of working-class life. Ricci, an unemployed man in the depressed post World
War II economy of Italy, gets at last a good job- for which he needs a bike- hanging up
posters. But soon his bicycle is stolen. He and his son walk the streets of Rome, looking for
the bicycle. Ricci finally manages to locate the thief but since he has no proof; he has to
abandon his cause. But he and his son know perfectly well that without a bike, Ricci won‘t be
able to keep his job. They are shot almost exclusively on location, mostly in rundown cities
as well as rural areas due to its forming during the postwar era.

 FRENCH NEW WAVE

The New Wave (French: La Nouvelle Vague) was a term coined by critics for a group
of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s. Although never a formally organized
movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of the
literary period pieces being made in France and written by novelists, their spirit of youthful
iconoclasm, the desire to shoot more current social issues on location, and their intention of
experimenting with the film form. ―New Wave‖ is an example of European art cinema. Many
also engaged in their work with the social and political upheavals of the era, making their
radical experiments with editing, visual style and narrative part of a general break with the
conservative paradigm. Using portable equipment and requiring little or no set up time, the
New Wave way of filmmaking presented a documentary style. The films exhibited direct
sounds on film stock that required less light. Filming techniques included fragmented,
discontinuous editing, and long takes. The combination of objective realism, subjective
realism, and authorial commentary created a narrative ambiguity in the sense that questions
that arise in a film are not answered in the end.
Some of the most prominent pioneers among the group, including François Truffaut,
Jean-Luc Godard, Éric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, and Jacques Rivette, began as critics for the
famous film magazine Cahiers du cinéma. Cahiers co-founder and theorist André Bazin was a

27 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

prominent source of influence for the movement. By means of criticism and editorialization,
they laid the groundwork for a set of concepts, revolutionary at the time, which the American
film critic Andrew Sarris called auteur theory. Cahiers du cinéma writers critiqued the classic
―Tradition of Quality‖ style of French Cinema.
The auteur theory holds that the director is the ―author‖ of his movies, with a personal
signature visible from film to film. They praised movies by Jean Renoir and Jean Vigo, and
made then-radical cases for the artistic distinction and greatness of Hollywood studio
directors such as Orson Welles, John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock and Nicholas Ray. The
beginning of the New Wave was to some extent an exercise by the Cahiers writers in
applying this philosophy to the world by directing movies themselves. Apart from the role
that films by Jean Rouch have played in the movement, Chabrol‘s Le Beau Serge (1958) is
traditionally credited as the first New Wave feature. Truffaut, with The 400 Blows (1959) and
Godard, with Breathless (1960) had unexpected international successes. The French New
Wave was popular roughly between 1958 and 1964, although New Wave work existed as late
as 1973.
New Wave critics and directors studied the work of western classics and applied new
avant garde stylistic direction. The low-budget approach helped filmmakers get at the
essential art form and find what was, to them, a much more comfortable and contemporary
form of production. The movies featured unprecedented methods of expression, such as long
tracking shots. Also, these movies featured existential themes, such as stressing the individual
and the acceptance of the absurdity of human existence.

 SOVIET MONTAGE:
The principal contribution of Soviet film theorists to global cinema was Montage
Theory, which brought formalism to bear on filmmaking. Soviet montage theory is an
approach to understanding and creating cinema that relies heavily upon editing (montage is a
French word for ―assembly‖ or ―editing‖). Its influence is far reaching commercially,
academically, and politically. In fact, montage is demonstrated in the majority of narrative
fiction films available today.
Although Soviet filmmakers in the 1920s disagreed about how exactly to view
montage, Sergei Eisenstein marked a note of accord in ―A Dialectic Approach to Film Form‖

28 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

when he noted that montage is ―the nerve of cinema‖, and that ―to determine the nature of
montage is to solve the specific problem of cinema‖. Its influence is far reaching
commercially, academically, and politically. Alfred Hitchcock cites editing (and montage
indirectly) as the lynchpin of worthwhile filmmaking. In fact, montage is demonstrated in the
majority of narrative fiction film available today. Post-Soviet film theories relied extensively
on montage‘s redirection of film analysis toward language, a literal grammar of film. A
semiotic understanding of film, for example, is indebted to and in contrast with Sergei
Eisenstein‘s wanton transposition of language ―in ways that are altogether new.‖ While
several Soviet filmmakers, such as Lev Kuleshov, Dziga Vertov, Esfir Shub and Vsevolod
Pudovkin put forth explanations of what constitutes the montage effect, Eisenstein‘s view
that ―montage is an idea that arises from the collision of independent shots‖ wherein ―each
sequential element is perceived not next to the other, but on top of the other‖ has become
most widely accepted.
The production of films—how and under what conditions they are made—was of
crucial importance to Soviet leadership and filmmakers. Films that focused on individuals
rather than masses were deemed counterrevolutionary, but not exclusively so. The
collectivization of filmmaking was central to the programmatic realization of the Communist
state. Kino-Eye forged a film and newsreel collective that sought the dismantling of
bourgeois notions of artistry above the needs of the people. Labor, movement, the machinery
of life, and the everyday of Soviet citizens coalesced in the content, form, and productive
character of Kino-eye repertoire.
The bulk of influence, beginning from the October 1917 Revolution until the late
1950s (oftentimes referred to as the Stalin era), brought a cinematic language to the fore and
provided the groundwork for contemporary editing and documentary techniques, as well as
providing a starting point for more advanced theories.
Though not the inventor of montage, Eisenstein codified its use in Soviet and
international filmmaking and theory. Beginning with his initial work in the Proletkult,
Eisenstein adapted montage to the cinema and expanded his theories throughout his
career to encompass the internal nature of the image. He was the most outspoken and
ardent advocate of montage as revolutionary form. His work has been divided into two
periods. The first is characterised by ―mass dramas‖ in which his focus is on formalizing
Marxist political struggle of the proletariat. His films, Strike and The Battleship Potemkin
among the most noted of the period, centered on the capacity for the masses to revolt.
The second period is characterized by a shift to individualized narratives that sprang from
a synchronic understanding of montage inspired by his foray into dialectical materialism
as a guiding principle.
Distance, lack of access, and regulations meant that the formal theory of montage was
not widely known until well after its explosion in the Soviet Union. It was only until 1929,
for example, that Eisenstein‘s theories reached Britain in Close Up. Additionally,
filmmakers in Japan during the 1920s were ―quite unaware of montage‖ according to
Eisenstein. Despite this, both nations produced films that used something tantamount to
continuity editing.

29 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Montage
Montage Theory, in its rudimentary form, asserts that a series of connected images
allows for complex ideas to be extracted from a sequence and, when strung together,
constitute the entirety of a film‘s ideological and intellectual power. In other words, the
editing of shots rather than the content of the shot alone constitutes the force of a film. Many
directors still believe that montage is what defines cinema against other specific media.
Post-Soviet film theories relied extensively on montage‘s redirection of film analysis
toward language, a literal grammar of film. Sergei Eisenstein‘s view that ―montage is an
idea that arises from the collision of independent shots‖ wherein ―each sequential element
is perceived not next to the other, but on top of the other‖ has become most widely
accepted. In an experiment, Kuleshov combined independent shots of Ivan Mosjoukine
and a bowl of soup, a woman in a coffin, and a woman on a sofa. The strategic ordering
of the shots had a marked effect on audience interpretation of the Mosjoukine‘s neutral
expression. This experiment demonstrated cinema‘s unique capacity as an art form to
conjure specific reactions from the relationship between indexical images.
The production of films- how and under what conditions they are made- was of crucial
importance to Soviet leadership and filmmakers. Films that focused on individuals rather
than masses were deemed counter revolutionary, but not exclusively so.
Ultimately, the over-regulation of film form under Joseph Stalin, the absorption of
Hollywood cinematic standards, and the alienation of filmmakers from their craft
prompted the fizzling of Soviet influence in global cinema. The bulk of influence,
beginning from the October 1917 Revolution until the late 1950s, brought a cinematic
language to the fore and provided the groundwork for contemporary editing and
documentary techniques, as well as providing a starting point for more advanced theories.

 A Brief Outline of Indian Cinema (10 Marks)

The cinema of India consists of films produced across India. Following the screening
of the Lumière moving pictures in London (1895) cinema became a sensation across Europe
and by July 1896 the Lumière films had been in show in Bombay. The first Indian film
released in India was Shree pundalik a silent film in Marathi by Dadasaheb Torne on 18 May
1912 at ‗Coronation Cinematograph‘, Mumbai. Some have argued that Pundalik does not
deserve the honour of being called the first Indian film because it was a photographic
recording of a popular Marathi play, and because the cameraman—a man named Johnson—
was a British national and the film was processed in London. The first full-length motion
picture in India was produced by Dadasaheb Phalke. Dadasaheb is the pioneer of Indian film
industry a scholar on India‘s languages and culture, who brought together elements from
Sanskrit epics to produce his Raja Harishchandra (1913), a silent film in Marathi. The
female roles in the film were played by male actors. The film marked a historic benchmark in
the film industry in India. Dadasaheb Phalke is the Father of Indian cinema. The Dadasaheb
Phalke Award, for lifetime contribution to cinema, was instituted in his honour, by the
Government of India in 1969, and is the most prestigious and coveted award in Indian
cinema.
Raghupathi Venkaiah Naidu was an Indian artist and a pioneer in the production of

30 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

silent Indian movies and talkies. Starting from 1909, he was involved in many aspects of
Indian cinema‘s history, like travelling to different regions in Asia, to promote film work.
During the early twentieth century cinema as a medium gained popularity across India‘s
population and its many economic sections. Tickets were made affordable to the common
man at a low price. The content of Indian commercial cinema was increasingly tailored to
appeal to these masses. Young Indian producers began to incorporate elements of India‘s
social life and culture into cinema. Others brought with them ideas from across the world.
This was also the time when global audiences and markets became aware of India‘s film
industry.
Ardeshir Irani released Alam Ara which was the first Indian talking film, on 14 March
1931. The Indian People‘s Theatre Association (IPTA), an art movement with a communist
inclination, began to take shape through the 1940s and the 1950s. A number of realistic IPTA
plays, such as Bijon Bhattacharya‘s Nabanna in 1944 prepared the ground for the
solidification of realism in Indian cinema, exemplified by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas‘s Dharti Ke
Lal (Children of the Earth) in 1946. Following India‘s independence, the period from the late
1940s to the 1960s is regarded by film historians as the ‗Golden Age‘ of Indian cinema.
Some of the most critically acclaimed Indian films of all time were produced during this
period. This period saw the emergence of a new Parallel Cinema movement, mainly led by
Bengali cinema.
Pather Panchali (1955), the first part of The Apu Trilogy (1955–1959) by Satyajit
Ray, marked his entry in Indian cinema. Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak went on to direct
many more critically acclaimed ‗art films‘, and they were followed by other acclaimed Indian
independent filmmakers such as Mrinal Sen, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Mani Kaul and
Buddhadeb Dasgupta. Some filmmakers such as Shyam Benegal continued to produce
realistic Parallel Cinema throughout the 1970s, alongside Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak,
Mrinal Sen, Buddhadeb Dasgupta and Gautam Ghose in Bengali cinema; Adoor
Gopalakrishnan, Shaji N. Karun, John Abraham and G. Aravindan in Malayalam cinema;
Nirad Mohapatra in Oriya cinema; and Mani Kaul, Kumar Shahani, Ketan Mehta, Govind
Nihalani and Vijaya Mehta in Hindi cinema. However, the ‗art film‘ bent of the Film Finance
Corporation came under criticism during a Committee on Public Undertakings investigation
in 1976, which accused the body of not doing enough to encourage commercial cinema.
The 1970s did, nevertheless, see the rise of commercial cinema in form of enduring
films such as Sholay (1975), which solidified Amitabh Bachchan‘s position as a lead actor.
The devotional classic Jai Santoshi Ma was also released in 1975. India is the world‘s largest
producer of films. Enhanced technology paved the way for upgrading from established
cinematic norms of delivering product, altering the manner in which content reached the
target audience. Visual effects based, super hero and science fiction films like Krrish,
Enthiran, Ra One and Eega emerged as blockbusters. Indian cinema found markets in over
90 countries where films from India are screened.

Notes on Some Great Masters (Filmmakers/Actors) and their Creations (5

Marks)

31 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Georges Méliès (1861-1938)

Georges Méliès (1861–1938), was a French illusionist and film director who led
many technical and narrative developments in the earliest days of cinema. Georges Méliès
was a former magician who became involved in film as a way to further his obsession with
illusion. His trademark brand of phantasmagorical wizardry made him the godfather of
special effects cinema in the hundreds of films he created in his Paris studio, including Le
Spectre (Murder Will Out, 1899) and Le Rêve de Noël (The Christmas Dream, 1900). In
Escamotage d’une dame chez Robert-Houdin (The Conjuring of a Woman at the House of
Robert Houdin, 1896), Méliès makes a woman vanish before our eyes. In L’Hallucination de
l’alchemist (The Hallucinating Alchemist, 1897), he presents the viewer with a gigantic star
sporting five female heads. Les Aventures de baron de Munchhausen (Baron Munchhausen’s
Dream, 1911) features a woman/spider construct that anticipates the Scorpion King in a much
later film, Stephen Sommers‘s The Mummy Returns (2001). In Le Chaudron infernal (The
Infernal Boiling Pot, 1903), three young women are boiled alive in a gigantic cauldron.

George Méliès‟s Le Voyage dans le lune (A Trip to the Moon, 1902) made science fiction
a “reality” for early cinema audiences.

D.W Griffith (1875-1948)

David Wark Griffith was an American director, writer, and producer who pioneered
modern cinematic techniques. He is remembered for The Birth of a Nation (1915) and
Intolerance (1916). Griffith is one of the founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts
and Sciences and among the most important figures in the history of film.

Griffith saw the potential of film as a narrative form, and, borrowing techniques from
Porter, Guy, Méliès, and other early cineastes, he directed his first one-reel short, The
Adventures of Dollie. Once launched as a director, Griffith found that he liked the speed and
immediacy of film. Between 1908 and 1913, he directed roughly 450 short films, mining not
only cinema‘s technical and narrative past but also Victorian literature and drama to create a

32 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

style that owed much to his literary predecessors yet was deeply popular with the public.
While his early films used intercutting of simultaneous events to create suspense - and The
Lonely Villa (1909), for example, used a then-unprecedented number of camera setups to
enhance the speed of the narrative — Griffith was most at home with the conventions of
Victorian melodrama.

The Birth of a Nation made use of advanced camera and narrative techniques, and its
popularity set the stage for the dominance of the feature-length film in the United States. The
film has sparked significant controversy surrounding racism in the United States, focusing on
its negative depiction of black people and the glorification of the Ku Klux Klan. Today, it is
both acclaimed for its radical technique and condemned for its inherently racist philosophy.
This film reflects Griffith‘s stubborn prejudices, for which he is also well remembered. He
was a deeply patriarchal director who viewed women as either icons of virtue or maidens in
distress, and he was also a thoroughgoing racist. Like most of his films, The Birth of a Nation
reflects a narrow worldview based on the director‘s limited social experience. A sweeping
epic of the South during the Civil War, the film used meticulous period reconstructions, a
large cast, and a then-unheard-of budget of $110,000.

Billy Bitzer at the camera (left) and director D. W. Griffith (right) on the set of one of Griffith‟s
films.

Griffith‘s ultimate response to his critics was to create the massive epic Intolerance
(1916), intercutting four different narratives of social and political intolerance from history—
war in Belshazzar‘s Babylon, the persecution of the Huguenots in Renaissance France, the
story of a young man wrongly accused in the then-contemporary slums of America, and the
crucifixion of Jesus—to prove his point that revolutionary ideas have always been
persecuted.
Griffith never recovered commercially; he retreated into more conventional Victorian
melodramas such as Orphans of the Storm (1921) to pay the bills. When sound came, he was

33 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

resolutely unable to adapt, and his final feature, The Struggle (1931), an earnest tract about
the perils of alcoholism, was so dated that distributors changed the title to Ten Nights in a Bar
Room and attempted to sell it as a comedy to increase revenue. Griffith reluctantly retired
from the industry, except for rare public appearances at social events, and died, all but
forgotten, in 1948.

Charles Chaplin (1889-1977)

Sir Charles Spencer ―Charlie‖ Chaplin KBE (16 April 1889 – 25 December 1977)
was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent
film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, ―The Tramp‖, and is
considered one of the most important figures in the history of the film industry. His career
spanned more than 75 years, from childhood in the Victorian era until a year before his death
in 1977, and encompassed both adulation and controversy.

In 1919, Chaplin co-founded the distribution company United Artists which gave him
complete control over his films. His first feature-length film was The Kid (1921), followed by
A Woman of Paris (1923), The Gold Rush (1925), and The Circus (1928). He refused to move
to sound films in the 1930s, instead producing City Lights (1931) and Modern Times (1936)
without dialogue. He became increasingly political, and his next film The Great Dictator
(1940) satirized Adolf Hitler. The 1940s were a decade marked with controversy for Chaplin,
and his popularity declined rapidly. He was accused of communist sympathies, while he
created scandal through his involvement in a paternity suit and his marriages to much
younger women. An FBI investigation was opened, and Chaplin was forced to leave the
United States and settle in Switzerland. He abandoned the Tramp in his later films, which
include Monsieur Verdoux (1947), Limelight (1952), A King in New York (1957), and A
Countess from Hong Kong (1967).

34 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

The Little Tramp prospecting in the harsh conditions of the Yukon: The Gold Rush (1925)

Chaplin felt increasing responsibility to use his comic gifts for critical commentary on
his times. He courted grave unpopularity in isolationist America with his satire on Hitler and
Mussolini, The Great Dictator (1940); and risked even more, in the first days of Cold War
paranoia, with Monsieur Verdoux (1946), in which he ironically compared the activities of a
Landru-style mass murderer with the wholesale killing licensed by war. Chaplin‘s situation in
America was already insecure. His outspoken liberal views, his appeal to leftish thinkers and
his refusal to take American nationality had long made him anathema to the FBI, which had
files on him stretching back to the 1920s. The Bureau pushed an unstable young woman, Joan
Barry, into bringing a series of charges, including a paternity claim, against Chaplin.

The paternity claim was later proved to be false; but the mud stuck, and the FBI went
on to manipulate a smear campaign charging Chaplin with Communist sympathies. Limelight
(1952), a dramatic film set in the theatrical London of Chaplin‘s childhood, and dealing with
the difficulties of making comedy and the fickleness of the public, seemed at once a
reflection on his own impaired reputation and a retreat into nostalgia. When Chaplin left for
Europe for the London premiere of Limelight, the FBI persuaded the Attorney General to
rescind the re-entry permit that, as an alien, he required. He was to spend the rest of his life in
Europe, returning only briefly in 1972 to accept an honorary Oscar and fulsome eulogies that
seemed to be Hollywood‘s atonement. His home from 1953 was in Vevey, Switzerland,
where he lived with his wife, the former Oona O‘Neill, and a family that eventually
numbered eight children.

35 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

He continued to work in exile. The uneven A King in New York (1957) ridiculed
America‘s McCarthyist paranoia. Though hurt by the poor press for his last film, A Countess
from Hong Kong (1967), starring Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren, Chaplin worked, almost
to the end, on a new project The Freak. In addition he produced two autobiographical
volumes, and composed musical scores for his old silent films. Knighted in 1975, Sir Charles
Chaplin died on Christmas Day 1977. In recent years Chaplin‘s achievement has sometimes
been underestimated by critics without historical perspective, or perhaps influenced by the
public smears of the 1940s. His popularity contributed much to Hollywood‘s prosperity and
rise to worldwide pre-eminence in the period of the First World War. The sophisticated
intelligence and skills he brought to slapstick comedy forced intellectuals to recognise that art
could reside in a wholly popular entertainment, and not just in those self-consciously ‗artistic‘
products with which the cinema first tried to court respectability. In the 1910s and 20s
Chaplin‘s Tramp, combating a hostile and unrewarding world with cheek and gallantry,
afforded a talisman and champion to the underprivileged millions who were the cinema‘s first
mass audience.

The Kid (1921), with Jackie Coogan, combined comedy with drama and was Chaplin‟s first film
to exceed an hour.

Fritz Lang (1890-1976)

Friedrich Christian Anton ―Fritz‖ Lang (1890 – 1976) was an Austrian-German-
American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best-
known émigrés from Germany‘s school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the ―Master of
Darkness‖ by the British Film Institute.
Lang‘s most famous films include the groundbreaking futuristic Metropolis (1927)
and the also influential M (1931), a film noir precursor that he made before he moved to the
United States.
Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948)

Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein: (1898–1948) was a pioneering Soviet Russian film

director and film theorist, often considered to be the ―Father of Montage.‖ He is noted in
particular for his silent films Strike (1924), Battleship Potemkin (1925) and October (1927),
as well as the historical epics Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ivan the Terrible. His work

36 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

profoundly influenced early filmmakers owing to his innovative use of and writings about
montage.
Eisenstein was a pioneer in the use of montage, a specific use of film editing. He and
his contemporary, Lev Kuleshov, two of the earliest film theorists, argued that montage was
the essence of the cinema. His articles and books- particularly Film Form and The Film Sense
- explain the significance of montage in detail.
His writings and films have continued to have a major impact on subsequent
filmmakers. Eisenstein believed that editing could be used for more than just expounding a
scene or moment, through a ―linkage‖ of related images. Eisenstein felt the ―collision‖ of
shots could be used to manipulate the emotions of the audience and create film metaphors. He
believed that an idea should be derived from the juxtaposition of two independent shots,
bringing an element of collage into film. He developed what he called ―methods of montage‖:
1. Metric: where the editing follows a specific number of frames, cutting next shot no
matter what is happening within the montage. This montage is used to elicit the most
basal and emotional of reactions in the audience.
2. Rhythmic: includes cutting based on continuity, creating visual continuity from
edit to edit
3. Tonal: uses the emotional meaning of the shots to elicit a reaction from the
audience even more complex than from the metric or rhythmic montage.
4. Over tonal: is the culmination of metric, rhythmic and tonal montage to synthesize
its effects on the audience for an even more abstract and complicated effect.
5. Intellectual: uses shots which, combined, elicit an intellectual meaning.
Luis Buñuel (1900-1983)
Luis Buñuel Portolés was a Spanish born Mexican filmmaker who worked in France,
Mexico and Spain. When Buñuel died at age 83, his obituary in The New York Times called
him ―an iconoclast, moralist, and revolutionary who was a leader of avant-garde surrealism in
his youth and a dominant international movie director half a century later‖. His first picture,
Un Chien Andalou—made in the silent era—was called ―the most famous short film ever
made‖ by critic Roger Ebert, and his last film, That Obscure Object of Desire—made 48
years later—won him Best Director awards from the National Board of Review and the
National Society of Film Critics. Writer Octavio Paz called Buñuel‘s work ―the marriage of
the film image to the poetic image, creating a new reality...scandalous and subversive‖.
Often associated with the surrealist movement of the 1920s, Buñuel created films
from the 1920s through the 1970s. His work spans two continents, three languages, and an
array of genres, including experimental film, documentary, melodrama, satire, musical,
erotica, comedy, romance, costume dramas, fantasy, crime film, adventure, and western.
Despite this variety, filmmaker John Huston believed that, regardless of genre, a Buñuel film
is so distinctive as to be instantly recognizable, or, as Ingmar Bergman put it, ―Buñuel nearly
always made Buñuel films‖.

37 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Un Chien Andalou, the 1929 short film by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, began with a simple
conversation the men had at a restaurant about dreams. Buñuel had dreamt about a cloud
slicing the moon in half “like a razor blade slicing through an eye.”

John Ford (1894-1973)

John Ford was an American film director. He is renowned both for Westerns such as
Stagecoach (1939), The Searchers (1956), and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), as
well as adaptations of classic 20th-century American novels such as the film The Grapes of
Wrath (1940). His four Academy Awards for Best Director (in 1935, 1940, 1941, and 1952)
remain a record. One of the films for which he won the award, How Green Was My Valley,
also won Best Picture.
In a career that spanned more than 50 years, Ford directed more than 140 films
(although most of his silent films are now lost) and he is widely regarded as one of the most
important and influential filmmakers of his generation. Ford‘s work was held in high regard
by his colleagues, with Orson Welles and Ingmar Bergman among those who have named
him one of the greatest directors of all time. Ford made frequent use of location shooting and
long shots, in which his characters were framed against a vast, harsh, and rugged natural
terrain.

38 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Jean Renoir (1894-1979)

Jean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a
film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the
1960s. His films La Grande Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939) are often cited
by critics as among the greatest films ever made. He was ranked by the BFI‘s Sight & Sound
poll of critics in 2002 as the fourth greatest director of all time. Among numerous honors
accrued during his lifetime, he received a Lifetime Achievement Academy Award in 1975 for
his contribution to the motion picture industry. Renoir was the son of the painter Pierre-
Auguste Renoir. He was one of the first filmmakers to be known as an auteur.
During the 1930s Jean Renoir produced many of his most notable works, but their
freedom of composition was confusing to critics of the period, and the films achieved only
middling success. These films include La Nuit du carrefour (1932; Night at the Crossroads),
based on a novel by Georges Simenon; Boudu sauvé des eaux (1932; Boudu Saved from
Drowning), an anarchistic and unconstrained comedy; Madame Bovary (1934), based on
Gustave Flaubert‘s classic novel; and Le Crime de M. Lange (1936; The Crime of Monsieur
Lange), which, in contrast to the rather stilted manner of the first years of sound films,
foretells a reconquest of the true moving-picture style, especially in use of improvisation and
of montage—the art of editing, or cutting, to achieve certain associations of ideas.
In 1936, in sympathy with the social movements of the French Popular Front, Renoir
directed the communist propaganda film La Vie est à nous (The People of France). The same
year, he recaptured the flavour of his early works with a short film, Une Partie de campagne
(released 1946; A Day in the Country), which he finished with great difficulty. A masterpiece
of impressionist cinema, this film presents all the poetry and all the charm of the pictorial
sense that is, far more than his technique, the basis of his art as a filmmaker. The late 1930s
saw such major works as La Grande Illusion (1937; Grand Illusion), a moving story of World
War I prisoners of war; La Bête humaine (1938; The Human Beast, or Judas Was a Woman),
an admirable free interpretation of Zola; and especially La Règle du jeu (1939; The Rules of
the Game), his masterpiece. Cut and fragmented by the distributors, this classic film was also
regarded as a failure until it was shown in 1965 in its original form, which revealed its
astonishing beauty.
During World War II, when the Nazis invaded France in 1940, Renoir, like many of
his friends, went to Hollywood and continued his career there. His American period includes
films of varying merit, which mark a departure from his previous style: Swamp Water (1941),
The Southerner (1945), Diary of a Chambermaid (1946), and The Woman on the Beach
(1947). In 1944, after being divorced from Catherine Hessling, he married Dido Freire,
daughter of Brazilian filmmaker Alberto Cavalcanti. He made The River (1951), his first
colour film, in India.

39 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Erich von Stroheim (left) and Pierre Fresnay in La Grande Illusion (1937), directed by Jean
Renoir.

Howard Hawks (1896-1997)

Howard Winchester Hawks (May 30, 1896 – December 26, 1977) was an American
film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era. Critic Leonard Maltin
called him ―the greatest American director who is not a household name.‖
A versatile film director, Hawks explored many genres such as comedies, dramas,
gangster films, science fiction, film noir, and westerns. His most popular films include
Scarface (1932), Bringing Up Baby (1938), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), His Girl Friday
(1940), To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Red River (1948), The Thing
from Another World (1951), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), and Rio Bravo (1959). His
frequent portrayals of strong, tough-talking female characters came to define the ―Hawksian
woman‖.
In 1942, Hawks was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for
Sergeant York. In 1974, he was awarded an Honorary Academy Award as ―a master
American filmmaker whose creative efforts hold a distinguished place in world cinema.‖ His
work has influenced various popular and respected directors such as Martin Scorsese, Robert
Altman, Jean-Luc Godard, John Carpenter, and Quentin Tarantino.

Howard Hawks in 1929 or 1930

Frank Capra (1897-1991)

40 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Frank Russell Capra (born Francesco Rosario Capra; May 18, 1897 – September 3,
1991) was an Italian-American film director, producer and writer who became the creative
force behind some of the major award-winning films of the 1930s and 1940s. Born in Italy
and raised in Los Angeles from the age of five, his rags-to-riches story has led film historians
such as Ian Freer to consider him the ―American Dream personified.‖
Capra became one of America‘s most influential directors during the 1930s, winning
three Academy Awards for Best Director from six nominations, along with three other Oscar
wins from nine nominations in other categories. Among his leading films were It Happened
One Night (1934), You Can’t Take It with You (1938), and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
(1939); Capra was nominated as Best Director and as producer for Academy Award for Best
Picture on all three films, winning both awards on the first two. During World War II, Capra
served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps and produced propaganda films, such as the Why We
Fight series.
After World War II, Capra‘s career declined as his later films, such as It’s a
Wonderful Life (1946), performed poorly when they were first released. In ensuing decades,
however, It’s a Wonderful Life and other Capra films were revisited favorably by critics.
Outside of directing, Capra was active in the film industry, engaging in various political and
social issues. He served as President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,
worked alongside the Writers Guild of America, and was head of the Directors Guild of
America.

Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980)

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock KBE (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English
film director and producer, widely regarded as one of the most influential filmmakers in the
history of cinema. Known as ―the Master of Suspense‖, he directed over 50 feature films[a]
in a career spanning six decades, becoming as well known as any of his actors thanks to his
many interviews, his cameo roles in most of his films, and his hosting and producing of the
television anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955–1965).
Born in Leytonstone, Essex, Hitchcock entered the film industry in 1919 as a title card
designer after training as a technical clerk and copy writer for a telegraph-cable company. He
made his directorial debut with the silent film The Pleasure Garden (1925). His first
successful film, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927), helped to shape the thriller
genre, while his 1929 film, Blackmail, was the first British ―talkie‖. Two of his 1930s
thrillers, The 39 Steps (1935) and The Lady Vanishes (1938), are ranked among the greatest
British films of the 20th century.
By 1939 Hitchcock was a filmmaker of international importance, and film producer
David O. Selznick persuaded him to move to Hollywood. A string of successful films
followed, including Rebecca (1940), Foreign Correspondent (1940), Shadow of a Doubt
(1943), and The Paradine Case (1947); Rebecca was nominated for 11 Oscars and won the
Academy Award for Best Picture. His 53 films have grossed over US $223.3 million
worldwide and garnered a total of 46 Oscar nominations and six wins.

41 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

The ―Hitchcockian‖ style includes the use of camera movement to mimic a person‘s
gaze, thereby turning viewers into voyeurs, and framing shots to maximise anxiety and fear.
The film critic Robin Wood wrote that the meaning of a Hitchcock film ―is there in the
method, in the progression from shot to shot. A Hitchcock film is an organism, with the
whole implied in every detail and every detail related to the whole.‖ By 1960 Hitchcock had
directed four films often ranked among the greatest of all time: Rear Window (1954), Vertigo
(1958), North by Northwest (1959), and Psycho (1960). In 2012, Vertigo replaced Orson
Welles‘s Citizen Kane (1941) as the British Film Institute‘s greatest film ever made. By 2018
eight of his films had been selected for preservation in the United States National Film
Registry, including his personal favourite, Shadow of a Doubt (1943). He received the AFI
Life Achievement Award in 1979 and was knighted in December that year, four months
before he died.

Cameo appearance of Hitchcock next to Grant in his To Catch a Thief

Sir Walt Disney (1901-1966)

Disney with Mickey Mouse

Walter Elias Disney was an American entrepreneur, animator, voice actor and film producer.
A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the
production of cartoons. As a film producer, Disney holds the record for most Academy
Awards earned by an individual, having won 22 Oscars from 59 nominations. He was
presented with two Golden Globe Special Achievement Awards and an Emmy Award,
among other honors. Several of his films are included in the National Film Registry by the
Library of Congress.

42 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Born in Chicago in 1901, Disney developed an early interest in drawing. He took art
classes as a boy and got a job as a commercial illustrator at the age of 18. He moved to
California in the early 1920s and set up the Disney Brothers Studio with his brother Roy.
With Ub Iwerks, Walt developed the character Mickey Mouse in 1928, his first highly
popular success; he also provided the voice for his creation in the early years. As the studio
grew, Disney became more adventurous, introducing synchronized sound, full-color three-
strip Technicolor, feature-length cartoons and technical developments in cameras. The
results, seen in features such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Pinocchio,
Fantasia (both 1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942), furthered the development of
animated film. New animated and live-action films followed after World War II, including
the critically successful Cinderella (1950) and Mary Poppins (1964), the latter of which
received five Academy Awards.
In the 1950s, Disney expanded into the amusement park industry, and in 1955 he
opened Disneyland. To fund the project he diversified into television programs, such as Walt
Disney‘s Disneyland and The Mickey Mouse Club; he was also involved in planning the
1959 Moscow Fair, the 1960 Winter Olympics, and the 1964 New York World‘s Fair. In
1965, he began development of another theme park, Disney World, the heart of which was to
be a new type of city, the ―Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow‖ (EPCOT).
Disney was a heavy smoker throughout his life, and died of lung cancer in December 1966
before either the park or the EPCOT project were completed.
Disney was a shy, self-deprecating and insecure man in private but adopted a warm
and outgoing public persona. He had high standards and high expectations of those with
whom he worked. Although there have been accusations that he was racist or anti-Semitic,
they have been contradicted by many who knew him. His reputation changed in the years
after his death, from a purveyor of homely patriotic values to a representative of American
imperialism. He nevertheless remains an important figure in the history of animation and in
the cultural history of the United States, where he is considered a national cultural icon. His
film work continues to be shown and adapted; his namesake studio and company maintains
high standards in its production of popular entertainment, and the Disney amusement parks
have grown in size and number to attract visitors in several countries.
Vittorio De Sica (1901-1974)
Vittorio De Sica was an Italian director and actor, a leading figure in the neorealist
movement.
Four of the films he directed won Academy Awards: Sciuscià and Bicycle Thieves
(honorary), while Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow and Il giardino dei Finzi Contini won the
Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Indeed, the great critical success of
Sciuscià (the first foreign film to be so recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts
and Sciences) and Bicycle Thieves helped establish the permanent Best Foreign Film Award.
These two films are considered part of the canon of classic cinema. Bicycle Thieves was cited
by Turner Classic Movies as one of the 15 most influential films in cinema history.
De Sica was also nominated for the 1957 Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for playing
Major Rinaldi in American director Charles Vidor‘s 1957 adaptation of Ernest Hemingway‘s

43 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

A Farewell to Arms, a movie that was panned by critics and proved a box office flop. De
Sica‘s acting was considered the highlight of the film.

De Sica in 1959

Laurence Olivier (1907-1989)

Laurence Kerr Olivier, (1907 – 1989) was an English actor and director who, along
with his contemporaries Ralph Richardson, Peggy Ashcroft and John Gielgud, dominated the
British stage of the mid-20th century. He also worked in films throughout his career, playing
more than fifty cinema roles. Late in his career, he had considerable success in television
roles.
His family had no theatrical connections, but Olivier‘s father, a clergyman, decided
that his son should become an actor. After attending a drama school in London, Olivier
learned his craft in a succession of acting jobs during the late 1920s. In 1930 he had his first
important West End success in Noël Coward‘s Private Lives, and he appeared in his first
film. In 1935 he played in a celebrated production of Romeo and Juliet alongside Gielgud and
Ashcroft, and by the end of the decade he was an established star. In the 1940s, together with
Richardson and John Burrell, Olivier was the co-director of the Old Vic, building it into a
highly respected company. There his most celebrated roles included Shakespeare‘s Richard
III and Sophocles‘s Oedipus. In the 1950s Olivier was an independent actor-manager, but his
stage career was in the doldrums until he joined the avant garde English Stage Company in
1957 to play the title role in The Entertainer, a part he later played on film. From 1963 to
1973 he was the founding director of Britain‘s National Theatre, running a resident company
that fostered many future stars. His own parts there included the title role in Othello (1965)
and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (1970).
Among Olivier‘s films are Wuthering Heights (1939), Rebecca (1940), and a trilogy
of Shakespeare films as actor-director: Henry V (1944), Hamlet (1948), and Richard III
(1955). His later films included The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968), Sleuth (1972), Marathon
Man (1976), and The Boys from Brazil (1978). His television appearances included an
adaptation of The Moon and Sixpence (1960), Long Day’s Journey into Night (1973), Love

44 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Among the Ruins (1975), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1976), Brideshead Revisited (1981) and
King Lear (1983).
Olivier‘s honours included a knighthood (1947), a life peerage (1970) and the Order
of Merit (1981). For his on-screen work he received four Academy Awards, two British
Academy Film Awards, five Emmy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards. The National
Theatre‘s largest auditorium is named in his honour, and he is commemorated in the
Laurence Olivier Awards, given annually by the Society of London Theatre.

Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998)

Akira Kurosawa was a Japanese film director and screenwriter, who directed 30 films
in a career spanning 57 years. He is regarded as one of the most important and influential
filmmakers in the history of cinema.
Kurosawa entered the Japanese film industry in 1936, following a brief stint as a
painter. After years of working on numerous films as an assistant director and scriptwriter, he
made his debut as a director during World War II with the popular action film Sanshiro
Sugata (a.k.a. Judo Saga). After the war, the critically acclaimed Drunken Angel (1948), in
which Kurosawa cast then-unknown actor Toshiro Mifune in a starring role, cemented the
director‘s reputation as one of the most important young filmmakers in Japan. The two men
would go on to collaborate on another 15 films.
Rashomon, which premiered in Tokyo, became the surprise winner of the Golden
Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival. The commercial and critical success of that film
opened up Western film markets for the first time to the products of the Japanese film
industry, which in turn led to international recognition for other Japanese filmmakers.
Kurosawa directed approximately one film per year throughout the 1950s and early 1960s,
including a number of highly regarded (and often adapted) films, such as Ikiru (1952), Seven
Samurai (1954) and Yojimbo (1961). After the 1960s he became much less prolific; even so,
his later work—including his final two epics, Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985)—continued
to win awards, though more often abroad than in Japan.
In 1990, he accepted the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement. Posthumously,
he was named ―Asian of the Century‖ in the ―Arts, Literature, and Culture‖ category by
AsianWeek magazine and CNN, cited there as being among the five people who most
prominently contributed to the improvement of Asia in the 20th century. His career has been
honored by many retrospectives, critical studies and biographies in both print and video, and
by releases in many consumer media formats.

45 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Original Japanese poster of Rashomon (1950) from 1962 re-release

Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-2007)

Antonioni in 1992
Michelangelo Antonioni, was an Italian film director, screenwriter, editor, and short
story author. Best known for his ―trilogy on modernity and its discontents‖ — L’Avventura
(1960), La Notte (1961), and L’Eclisse (1962) —as well as the English-language films
Blowup (1966) and The Passenger (1975), Antonioni produced ―enigmatic and intricate
mood pieces‖ that rejected action and plot in favor of contemplation, image, and design.
According to AllMovie, he ―redefined the concept of narrative cinema‖ and challenged
traditional approaches to storytelling, realism, and drama.
Antonioni received numerous awards and nominations throughout his career,
including the Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize (1960, 1962), Palme d‘Or (1966), and 35th
Anniversary Prize (1982); the Venice Film Festival Silver Lion (1955), Golden Lion (1964),

46 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

FIPRESCI Prize (1964, 1995), and Pietro Bianchi Award (1998); the Italian National
Syndicate of Film Journalists Silver Ribbon eight times; and an honorary Academy Award in
1995. He is one of three directors to have won the Palme d‘Or, the Golden Lion and the
Golden Bear, and the only director to have won these three and the Golden Leopard.

Orson Welles (1915-1985)

Orson Welles as Charles Foster Kane Favoured to win election as governor, Kane makes a
campaign speech at Madison Square Garden.
George Orson Welles was an American actor, director, writer and producer who is
remembered for his innovative work in radio, theatre and film. He is considered one of the greatest
film directors of all time.
While in his twenties Welles directed a number of high-profile stage productions for the
Federal Theatre Project, including an adaptation of Macbeth with an entirely African American cast
and the political musical The Cradle Will Rock. In 1937 he and John Houseman founded the Mercury
Theatre, an independent repertory theatre company that presented a series of productions on
Broadway through 1941, including Caesar (1937), a Broadway adaptation of William Shakespeare‘s
Julius Caesar.
In 1938, his radio anthology series The Mercury Theatre on the Air gave Welles the platform
to find international fame as the director and narrator of radio adaptation of H. G. Wells‘s novel The
War of the Worlds, which caused widespread panic because many listeners thought that an invasion
by extraterrestrial beings was actually occurring. Although some contemporary sources say these
reports of panic were mostly false and overstated, they rocketed Welles to notoriety.
His first film was Citizen Kane (1941), which is consistently ranked as one of the greatest
films ever made, which he co-wrote, produced, directed and starred in as Charles Foster Kane. Welles
released twelve other features, the most acclaimed of which include The Magnificent Ambersons
(1942), The Lady from Shanghai (1947), Touch of Evil (1958), The Trial (1962), Chimes at Midnight
(1966) and F for Fake (1973).
Welles was an outsider to the studio system, and struggled for creative control on his projects
early on with the major film studios in Hollywood and later in life with a variety of independent
financiers across Europe, where he spent most of his career. Many of his films were either heavily
edited or remained unreleased. Some, like Touch of Evil, have been painstakingly re-edited from his

47 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

notes. With a development spanning almost 50 years, Welles‘s final film, The Other Side of the Wind,
was released in 2018.
His distinctive directorial style featured layered and nonlinear narrative forms, uses of
lighting such as chiaroscuro, unusual camera angles, sound techniques borrowed from radio, deep
focus shots and long takes. He has been praised as ―the ultimate auteur‖. Welles had three marriages,
including one with Rita Hayworth, and three children. Known for his baritone voice, Welles
performed extensively across theatre, radio and film. He was a lifelong magician noted for presenting
troop variety shows in the war years. In 2002 he was voted the greatest film director of all time in two
British Film Institute polls among directors and critics.

Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007)

Ernst Ingmar Bergman was a Swedish director, writer, and producer who worked in
film, television, theatre and radio. Considered to be among the most accomplished and
influential filmmakers of all time, Bergman‘s films include Smiles of a Summer Night (1955),
The Seventh Seal (1957), Wild Strawberries (1957), Persona (1966), Cries and Whispers
(1972), Scenes from a Marriage (1973), and Fanny and Alexander (1982); the last two exist
in extended television versions.
Bergman directed over sixty films and documentaries for cinematic release and for
television screenings, most of which he also wrote. He also directed over 170 plays. He
eventually forged a creative partnership with his cinematographers Gunnar Fischer and Sven
Nykvist. Among his company of actors were Harriet and Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann,
Gunnar Björnstrand, Erland Josephson, Ingrid Thulin and Max von Sydow. Most of his films
were set in Sweden, and many films from Through a Glass Darkly (1961) onward were
filmed on the island of Fårö.
Philip French referred to Bergman as ―one of the greatest artists of the 20th century ...
he found in literature and the performing arts a way of both recreating and questioning the
human condition.‖ Director Martin Scorsese commented; ―If you were alive in the 50s and
the 60s and of a certain age, a teenager on your way to becoming an adult, and you wanted to
make movies, I don‘t see how you couldn‘t be influenced by Bergman ....It‘s impossible to
overestimate the effect that those films had on people.

Bergman during production of Wild Strawberries (1957)

48 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Federico Fellini (1920-1993)

Original theatrical poster of 8½

Federico Fellini, was an Italian film director and screenwriter. Known for his distinct
style that blends fantasy and baroque images with earthiness, he is recognized as one of the
greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time. His films have ranked, in polls such as
Cahiers du cinéma and Sight & Sound, as some of the greatest films of all time. Sight &
Sound lists his 1963 film 8½ as the 10th-greatest film of all time.
In a career spanning almost fifty years, Fellini won the Palme d‘Or for La Dolce Vita,
was nominated for twelve Academy Awards and won four in the category of Best Foreign
Language Film, the most for any director in the history of the Academy. At the 65th Annual
Academy Awards in Los Angeles, he received an honorary award for Lifetime Achievement.
Besides La Dolce Vita and 8½, his other well-known films include La Strada, Nights of
Cabiria, Juliet of the Spirits, Satyricon, Amarcord and Fellini‘s Casanova.
Satyajit Ray (1921-1992)

Satyajit Ray was an Indian Bengali filmmaker, screenwriter, music composer, graphic
artist, lyricist and author, widely regarded as one of the greatest filmmakers of the 20th

49 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

century. Ray was born in Calcutta into a Bengali family which was prominent in the field of
arts and literature. Starting his career as a commercial artist, Ray was drawn into independent
filmmaking after meeting French filmmaker Jean Renoir and viewing Vittorio De Sica‘s
Italian neorealist film Bicycle Thieves (1948) during a visit to London.
Ray directed 36 films, including feature films, documentaries and shorts. He was also
a fiction writer, publisher, illustrator, calligrapher, music composer, graphic designer and film
critic. He authored several short stories and novels, meant primarily for young children and
teenagers. Feluda, the sleuth, and Professor Shonku, the scientist in his science fiction stories,
are popular fictional characters created by him. He was awarded an honorary degree by
Oxford University.
Ray‘s first film, Pather Panchali (1955), won eleven international prizes, including
the inaugural Best Human Document award at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival. This film,
along with Aparajito (1956) and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) (1959), form The Apu
Trilogy. Ray did the scripting, casting, scoring, and editing, and designed his own credit titles
and publicity material. Ray received many major awards in his career, including 32 Indian
National Film Awards, a Golden Lion, a Golden Bear, 2 Silver Bears, a number of additional
awards at international film festivals and award ceremonies, and an Academy Honorary
Award in 1992. The Government of India honored him with the Bharat Ratna, its highest
civilian award, in 1992. Ray had received many noticeable awards and gained a prestigious
position over his life time.
Satyajit Ray‘s own use of Western narrative forms - and certainly his ironic vision -
grows out of this total Bengali cultural context. It resonates with the ways in which the
coloniser had interacted with the colonised and left its impact behind. For this reason, many
of his great works exploit the condition of the Indian in the context of a colonial world whose
values invariably invade the text from the margins of his cinema. The Apu Trilogy,
Charulata, Devi, Jalsaghar all work out the Bengali intellectual‘s tussle with essentially
imperialist renditions of our history and the new forms of knowledge brought by the West.
Satyajit Ray‘s narratives are therefore symptomatic of the Indian absorption in the narratives
of the Empire (especially in so far as the ironic mode of the European bourgeois novel frames
his texts). Again, coming from Bengal, that absorption has given way to a subaltern
historicity that now finds in Ritwick Ghatak, Kumar Shahani, Shyam Benegal, Bimal Roy
and Guru Dutt its cinematic points of departure. Bengal gets dragged into a kind of Indian
postmodernism.
Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999)

Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He is

frequently cited as one of the most influential filmmakers in cinematic history. His films,
which are mostly adaptations of novels or short stories, cover a wide range of genres, and are
noted for their realism, dark humor, unique cinematography, extensive set designs, and
evocative use of music.
Kubrick was raised in the Bronx, New York City, and attended William Howard Taft
High School from 1941 to 1945. He only received average grades, but displayed a keen
interest in literature, photography, and film from a young age, and taught himself all aspects

50 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

of film production and directing after graduating from high school. After working as a
photographer for Look magazine in the late 1940s and early 1950s, he began making short
films on a shoestring budget, and made his first major Hollywood film, The Killing, for
United Artists in 1956. This was followed by two collaborations with Kirk Douglas, the war
picture Paths of Glory (1957) and the historical epic Spartacus (1960). His reputation as a
filmmaker in Hollywood grew, and he was approached by Marlon Brando to film what would
become One-Eyed Jacks (1961), though Brando eventually decided to direct it himself.
Creative differences arising from his work with Douglas and the film studios, a dislike
of the Hollywood industry, and a growing concern about crime in America prompted Kubrick
to move to the United Kingdom in 1961, where he spent most of the remainder of his life and
career. His home at Childwickbury Manor in Hertfordshire, which he shared with his wife
Christiane, became his workplace, where he did his writing, research, editing, and
management of production details. This allowed him to have almost complete artistic control
over his films, but with the rare advantage of having financial support from major Hollywood
studios. His first British productions were two films with Peter Sellers, Lolita (1962) and Dr.
Strangelove (1964).
A demanding perfectionist, Kubrick assumed control over most aspects of the
filmmaking process, from direction and writing to editing, and took painstaking care with
researching his films and staging scenes, working in close coordination with his actors and
other collaborators. He often asked for several dozen retakes of the same scene in a movie,
which resulted in many conflicts with his casts. Despite the resulting notoriety among actors,
many of Kubrick‘s films broke new ground in cinematography. The scientific realism and
innovative special effects of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) were without precedent in the
history of cinema, and the film earned him his only personal Oscar, for Best Visual Effects.
Steven Spielberg has referred to the film as his generation‘s ―big bang‖, and it is regarded as
one of the greatest films ever made. For the 18th-century period film Barry Lyndon (1975),
Kubrick obtained lenses developed by Zeiss for NASA, to film scenes under natural
candlelight. With The Shining (1980), he became one of the first directors to make use of a
Steadicam for stabilized and fluid tracking shots. While many of Kubrick‘s films were
controversial and initially received mixed reviews upon release—particularly A Clockwork
Orange (1971), which Kubrick pulled from circulation in the UK following a mass media
frenzy—most were nominated for Oscars, Golden Globes, or BAFTA Awards, and
underwent critical reevaluations. His last film, Eyes Wide Shut, was completed shortly before
his death in 1999 at the age of 70.

Kubrick, age 21, 1949

51 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

François Truffaut (1932 -1984)

François Truffaut was a French film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film
critic. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave.[1] In a film
career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry,
having worked on over 25 films. Truffaut‘s film The 400 Blows came to be a defining film of
the French New Wave movement, and was followed by four sequels, Antoine et Colette,
Stolen Kisses, Bed and Board, and Love on the Run, between 1958 and 1979.
Truffaut‘s 1973 film Day for Night earned him critical acclaim and several accolades,
including the BAFTA Award for Best Film and the Academy Award for Best Foreign
Language Film. His other notable films include Shoot the Piano Player (1960), Jules and Jim
(1961), The Soft Skin (1964), The Wild Child (1970), Two English Girls (1971), The Last
Metro (1980), and The Woman Next Door (1981).
Andrei Tarkovsky (1932 -1986)
Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky was a Russian filmmaker, writer, and film theorist. He
is considered one of the greatest directors of 20th century cinema, and one of Russia‘s most
influential filmmakers. His films are noted for their slow long takes, dreamlike imagery, and
spiritual and metaphysical themes.
Tarkovsky directed his first five feature films in the Soviet Union: Ivan’s Childhood
(1962), Andrei Rublev (1966), Solaris (1972), Mirror (1975), and Stalker (1979). After years
of conflict with Soviet authorities over his work, Tarkovsky left the country in 1979 and
made his final two films abroad; Nostalghia (1983) and The Sacrifice (1986) were produced
in Italy and Sweden respectively. He died of cancer in 1986.

Tarkovsky in 1980

Jean-Luc Godard (1930 -Present)

Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He rose
to prominence as a pioneer of the 1960s French New Wave film movement.
Like his New Wave contemporaries, Godard criticized mainstream French cinema‘s
―Tradition of Quality‖, which ―emphasized craft over innovation, privileged established
directors over new directors, and preferred the great works of the past to experimentation.‖

52 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

As a result of such argument, he and like-minded critics started to make their own films.
Many of Godard‘s films challenge the conventions of traditional Hollywood in addition to
French cinema. In 1964, Godard described his and his colleagues‘ impact: ―We barged into
the cinema like cavemen into the Versailles of Louis XV.‖ He is often considered the most
radical French filmmaker of the 1960s and 1970s; his approach in film conventions, politics
and philosophies made him arguably the most influential director of the French New Wave.
Along with showing knowledge of film history through homages and references, several of
his films expressed his political views; he was an avid reader of existential and Marxist
philosophy. Since the New Wave, his politics have been much less radical and his recent
films are about representation and human conflict from a humanist, and a Marxist
perspective.
Godard‘s first feature film, À bout de souffle (1959; Breathless), which was produced
by François Truffaut, his colleague on the journal Cahiers du cinéma, won the Jean Vigo
Prize. It inaugurated a long series of features, all celebrated for the often drastic nonchalance
of Godard‘s improvisatory filmmaking procedures. Breathless was shot without a script;
Godard sketched the dialogue overnight and revised it between and during rehearsals. In
subsequent films he even resorted to speaking the characters‘ replies to the actors from
behind the camera during takes.
For some years, Godard‘s work showed an increasingly desperate obsession with
themes of fickleness (both male and female), indignity, caprice, and the impossibility of
distinguishing a meaningful reality from the imposture perpetrated by others, by one‘s own
mind, by ideology, and by art. Godard used the face of the actress who was then his wife,
Anna Karina, as a sphinxlike icon representing this existential duplicity in several films,
notably Le Petit Soldat (1960; The Little Soldier), an ironically flippant tragedy, banned for
many years, about torture and countertorture. Vivre sa vie (1962; My Life to Live), a study of
a young Parisian prostitute, used, with ironical solipsism, pastiches of documentary form and
clinical jargon. Godard‘s 1963 film Le Mépris (Contempt), based on a story by the Italian
novelist Alberto Moravia, marked his only venture into orthodox and comparatively
expensive filmmaking. Afterward he maintained an almost unique position as an absolute,
independent creator, using extraordinarily cheap alfresco production methods and enjoying
repeated success on the international ―art cinema‖ circuit. On the strength of Pierrot le fou
(1965; ―Pierrot the Madman‖), he was asked to direct what was to be an immensely
successful American film, Bonnie and Clyde (he refused it because of his distrust of the
Hollywood system). His collaborations with Karina—which included such critically
acclaimed films as Bande à part (1964) and Pierrot le Fou (1965)—was called ―arguably the
most influential body of work in the history of cinema‖ by Filmmaker magazine.
In 2010, Godard was awarded an Academy Honorary Award, but did not attend the
award ceremony. Godard‘s films have inspired many directors including Martin Scorsese,
Quentin Tarantino, Brian De Palma, Steven Soderbergh, D. A. Pennebaker, Robert Altman,
Jim Jarmusch, Wong Kar-wai, Wim Wenders, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Pier Paolo Pasolini.

53 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Roman Polanski (1933- Present)

Rajmund Roman Thierry Polański (born 18 August 1933) is a French-Polish film

director, producer, writer, and actor. Since 1978, he has been a fugitive from the U.S.
criminal justice system, having fled the country while awaiting sentencing in his sexual abuse
case, in which he pleaded guilty to statutory rape.
Polanski was born in Paris, and his Polish-Jewish parents moved the family back to
Poland in 1936. Three years later, Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany starting World War
II and the Polanskis found themselves trapped in the Kraków Ghetto. After his mother and
father were taken in raids, Polanski spent his formative years in foster homes under an
adopted identity, trying to survive the Holocaust. Polanski‘s first feature-length film, Knife in
the Water (1962), was made in Poland and was nominated for a United States Academy
Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He has since received five more Oscar nominations,
along with two BAFTAs, four Césars, a Golden Globe Award and the Palme d‘Or of the
Cannes Film Festival in France. In the United Kingdom he directed three films, beginning
with Repulsion (1965). In 1968, he moved to the United States and cemented his status by
directing the horror film Rosemary’s Baby (1968).
A turning point in his life took place in 1969, when his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate,
and four friends were brutally murdered by members of the Manson Family. Following her
death, Polanski returned to Europe and eventually continued directing. He made Macbeth
(1971) in England and back in Hollywood, Chinatown (1974), which was nominated for
eleven Academy Awards.
In 1977, Polanski was arrested and charged with drugging and raping a 13-year-old
girl. He subsequently pled guilty to the lesser offence of unlawful sex with a minor. After
spending 42 days undergoing psychiatric evaluation in prison in preparation for sentencing,
Polanski, who had expected to be put on probation, fled to Paris after learning that the judge
planned to imprison him.
In Europe, Polanski continued to make films, including Tess (1979), starring
Nastassja Kinski. It won France‘s César Awards for Best Picture and Best Director, and
received three Oscars. He later produced and directed The Pianist (2002), a drama about a
Jewish-Polish musician escaping Nazi persecution, starring Adrien Brody and Emilia Fox.
The film won three Academy Awards including Best Director, along with numerous
international awards. He also directed Oliver Twist (2005), a story which parallels his own
life as a ―young boy attempting to triumph over adversity‖. He was awarded Best Director for
The Ghost Writer (2010) at the 23rd European Film Awards. He also received Best
Screenwriter nomination at the aforementioned awards for Carnage (2011).

At the premiere of Carnage in Paris, November 2011

54 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Woody Allen (1935 - Present)

Heywood ―Woody‖ Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg) is an American director,
writer, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades. He began his career as
a comedy writer in the 1950s, writing jokes and scripts for television and publishing several
books of short humor pieces. In the early 1960s, he performed as a stand-up comedian,
emphasizing monologues rather than traditional jokes, where he developed the persona of an
insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish, which he maintains is quite different from his real-life
personality. In 2004 Comedy Central ranked Allen fourth on a list of the 100 greatest stand-
up comedians, while a UK survey ranked Allen the third-greatest comedian.
By the mid-1960s Allen was writing and directing films, first specializing in slapstick
comedies before moving into dramatic material influenced by European art cinema during the
1970s, and alternating between comedies and dramas to the present. He is often identified as
part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmakers of the mid-1960s to late 1970s. Allen often
stars in his films, typically in the persona he developed as a standup. Some of the best-known
of his over 50 films are Annie Hall (1977), Manhattan (1979), Hannah and Her Sisters
(1986), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), and Midnight in Paris (2011). In 2007 he said
Stardust Memories (1980), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), and Match Point (2005) were
his best films.
Allen has received many accolades and honors throughout his career. He has won four
Academy Awards: three for Best Original Screenplay and one for Best Director. He also
garnered nine British Academy Film Awards. His screenplay for Annie Hall was named the
funniest screenplay by the Writers Guild of America in its list of the ―101 Funniest
Screenplays‖.

Ridley Scott (1937 - Present)

Sir Ridley Scott is an English filmmaker. Following his commercial breakthrough in

1979 with the science fiction horror film Alien, further works include the neo-noir dystopian
film Blade Runner, the road adventure film Thelma & Louise, the historical drama Gladiator
(which won the Academy Award for Best Picture) and the science fiction film The Martian.

55 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Beginning his career in advertising where he honed his filmmaking skills by making
inventive mini-films for television commercials, Scott‘s work is known for its atmospheric,
highly concentrated visual style. Though his films range widely in setting and period, they
frequently showcase memorable imagery of urban environments, whether 2nd-century Rome
(Gladiator), 12th-century Jerusalem (Kingdom of Heaven), Medieval England (Robin Hood),
contemporary Mogadishu (Black Hawk Down), the future cityscapes of Blade Runner, or the
distant planets in Alien, Prometheus, The Martian and Alien: Covenant. Several of his films
are also known for their strong female characters.
Scott has been nominated for three Academy Awards for Directing (for Thelma &
Louise, Gladiator and Black Hawk Down). In 1995, both Ridley and his brother Tony
received a BAFTA for Outstanding British Contribution To Cinema. In 2003, Scott was
knighted for his ―services to the British film industry‖. In a 2004 BBC poll, Scott was named
the tenth most influential person in British culture. In 2015, he received an honorary
doctorate from the Royal College of Art in London, and in 2018 received the BAFTA
Fellowship for lifetime achievement.
Francis Ford Coppola (1939 -Present)

Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, film

composer, and vintner. He was a central figure in the New Hollywood filmmaking movement
of the 1960s and 1970s. After directing The Rain People in 1969, Coppola co-wrote Patton
(1970), earning the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay along with Edmund H.
North. Coppola‘s reputation as a filmmaker was cemented with the release of The Godfather
(1972). The film revolutionized movie-making in the gangster genre, and was adored by the
public and critics alike. The Godfather won three Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actor,
and Best Adapted Screenplay (shared with Mario Puzo).
The Godfather Part II, which followed in 1974, became the first sequel to win the
Academy Award for Best Picture. Highly regarded by critics, the film brought Coppola three
more Academy Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture, and made
him the second director (after Billy Wilder) to be so honored three times for the same film.
The Conversation, which Coppola directed, produced and wrote, was released that same year,
winning the Palme d‘Or at the Cannes Film Festival. His next film, Apocalypse Now (1979),
which notoriously had a lengthy and strenuous production, was widely acclaimed for its vivid
depiction of the Vietnam War. The film won the Palme d‘Or, making Coppola one of only
eight filmmakers to have won that award twice.
While a number of Coppola‘s ventures in the 1980s and 1990s were critically lauded,
he has never quite achieved the same commercial success with films as in the 1970s.[6][7][8]
His best-known films released since the start of the 1980s are the dramas The Outsiders and
Rumble Fish (both 1983), the crime dramas The Cotton Club (1984) and The Godfather Part
III (1990), and the horror film Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992). A number of Coppola‘s
relatives and children have become famous actors and filmmakers in their own right: his
sister is the actress Talia Shire; his daughter Sofia Coppola and granddaughter Gia Coppola
are actresses and directors, and the actors Jason Schwartzman and Nicolas Cage are his
nephews.

56 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Martin Scorsese (1942 -Present)

Martin Charles Scorsese is an American-Italian filmmaker and historian, whose career

spans more than 50 years. Scorsese‘s body of work addresses such themes as Italian-
American identity (most notably Sicilian), Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption,
faith, machismo, modern crime, and gang conflict. Many of his films are also known for their
depiction of violence and liberal use of profanity.
Part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmaking, he is widely regarded as one of the
most significant and influential filmmakers in cinematic history. In 1990, he founded The
Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he
founded the World Cinema Foundation. He is a recipient of the AFI Life Achievement
Award for his contributions to the cinema, and has won an Academy Award, a Palme d‘Or,
Cannes Film Festival Best Director Award, Silver Lion, Grammy Award, Emmys, Golden
Globes, BAFTAs, and Directors Guild of America Awards.
He has directed works such as the crime film Mean Streets (1973), the vigilante-
thriller Taxi Driver (1976), the biographical sports drama Raging Bull (1980), the black
comedies The King of Comedy (1983), and After Hours (1985), the religious epic drama The
Last Temptation of Christ (1988), the crime film Goodfellas (1990), the psychological thriller
Cape Fear (1991) and the crime film Casino (1995), some of which he collaborated on with
actor and close friend Robert De Niro. Scorsese has also been noted for his successful
collaborations with actor Leonardo DiCaprio, having directed him in five films, beginning
with Gangs of New York (2002) and most recently The Wolf of Wall Street (2013). Their
third film together, The Departed (2006), won Scorsese the Academy Award for Best
Director in addition to the film winning the award for Best Picture. Their collaborations have
resulted in numerous Academy Award nominations for both as well as them winning several
other prestigious awards.
Scorsese‘s other film work includes the biographical drama The Aviator (2004), the
psychological thriller Shutter Island (2010), the historical adventure drama Hugo (2011) and
the religious epic Silence (2016). His work in television includes the pilot episodes of the
HBO series Boardwalk Empire and Vinyl, the latter of which he also co-created. With eight
Best Director Oscar nominations, he is the most nominated living director and is tied with
Billy Wilder for the second-most nominations overall. As a fan of rock music, he has directed
several documentaries on the subject, including The Last Waltz (1978), No Direction Home
(2005), Shine a Light (2008), George Harrison: Living in the Material World (2011), and
Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story (2019).

Scorsese in 2010

57 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Steven Spielberg (1946 -Present)

Steven Allan Spielberg is an American filmmaker. He is considered one of the
founding pioneers of the New Hollywood era and one of the most popular directors and
producers in film history. Spielberg started in Hollywood directing television and several
minor theatrical releases. He became a household name as the director of Jaws (1975), which
was critically and commercially successful and is considered the first summer blockbuster.
His subsequent releases focused typically on science fiction/adventure films such as Close
Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), E.T. the Extra-
Terrestrial (1982), and Jurassic Park (1993), which became archetypes of modern
Hollywood escapist filmmaking.
Spielberg transitioned into addressing serious issues in his later work with The Color
Purple (1985), Empire of the Sun (1987), Schindler’s List (1993), Amistad (1997), and Saving
Private Ryan (1998). He has largely adhered to this practice during the 21st century, with
Munich (2005), Lincoln (2012), Bridge of Spies (2015), and The Post (2017).
He co-founded Amblin Entertainment and DreamWorks Studios, where he has also
served as a producer or executive producer for several successful film trilogies, tetralogies
and more including the Gremlins, Back to the Future, Men in Black, and the Transformers
series. He later transitioned into producing several games within the video-game industry.
Spielberg is one of the American film industry‘s most critically successful
filmmakers, with praise for his directing talent and versatility, and he has won the Academy
Award for Best Director twice. Some of his movies are also among the highest-grossing
movies of all-time, while his total work makes him the highest-grossing film director in
history.
Quentin Tarantino (1963 - Presnet)

Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American filmmaker, actor, film programmer, and

cinema owner. His films are characterized by nonlinear storylines, satirical subject matter, an
aestheticization of violence, extended scenes of dialogue, ensemble casts, references to
popular culture and a wide variety of other films, soundtracks primarily containing songs and
score pieces from the 1960s to the 1980s, and features of neo-noir film.
In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with the release
of Reservoir Dogs in 1992, which was funded by money from the sale of his script True
Romance. Empire deemed Reservoir Dogs the ―Greatest Independent Film of All Time‖. Its
popularity was boosted by his second film, Pulp Fiction (1994), a black comedy crime film
that was a major success both among critics and audiences. For his next effort, Tarantino paid
homage to the blaxploitation films of the 1970s with Jackie Brown (1997), an adaptation of
Elmore Leonard‘s novel Rum Punch.
Kill Bill, a highly stylized ―revenge flick‖ in the cinematic traditions of Kung fu films,
Japanese martial arts, Spaghetti Westerns and Italian horror, followed six years later, and was
released as two films: Volume 1 in 2003 and Volume 2 in 2004. Tarantino next directed
Death Proof in 2007, as part of a double feature with Robert Rodriguez, under the collective
title Grindhouse. His long-postponed Inglourious Basterds, which tells an alternate history of

58 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Nazi Germany, was released in 2009 to positive reviews. After that came critically acclaimed
Django Unchained (2012), a Western film set in the Antebellum South. His eighth film, The
Hateful Eight (2015), was released in its roadshow version in 70 mm film format, with
opening ―overture‖ and halfway-point intermission. His ninth film, Once Upon a Time in
Hollywood, was released in 2019.
Tarantino‘s films have garnered both critical and commercial success as well as a
dedicated cult-following. He has received many industry awards, including two Academy
Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, two BAFTA Awards and the Palme d‘Or, and has been
nominated for an Emmy and a Grammy. In 2005, he was included on the annual Time 100
list of the most influential people in the world. Filmmaker and historian Peter Bogdanovich
has called him ―the single most influential director of his generation‖. In December 2015,
Tarantino received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the film
industry.
Christopher Nolan (1970 – Present)

Christopher Edward Nolan, CBE (/ˈnoʊlən/; born 30 July 1970) is an English-

American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He is known for making personal,
distinctive films within the Hollywood mainstream and is regarded as an auteur. Having
made his directorial debut with Following (1998), Nolan gained considerable attention for his
second feature Memento (2000). He made the transition from independent to studio
filmmaking with Insomnia (2002), and found further critical and commercial success with
The Dark Knight Trilogy (2005–2012), The Prestige (2006), Inception (2010), Interstellar
(2014), and Dunkirk (2017). Nolan has co-written several of his films with his brother
Jonathan, and runs the production company Syncopy Inc. with his wife Emma Thomas. In
addition to his filmmaking, he is an advocate for film preservation and the analog medium.
Nolan‘s films are typically rooted in epistemological and metaphysical themes,
exploring human morality, the construction of time, and the malleable nature of memory and
personal identity. His body of work is permeated by materialistic perspectives, nonlinear
storytelling, cross-cutting, practical special effects, experimental soundscapes, large-format
film photography, and analogous relationships between visual language and narrative
elements.
Throughout his career, Nolan has received many awards and honours. His ten films
have grossed over US$4.7 billion worldwide and garnered a total of 34 Oscar nominations
and ten wins.

A still from the Nolan‟s Inception (2010)

59 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Section-II
Cinematographic Technique: Panning of the Camera,
Zooming, Fade in, Fade Out, Flashback, Close up, Long
Shot, Reverse Shot
Cinematographic Technique and Styles
Cinematography is the art and craft of the authorship of visual images for the cinema extending from
conception and pre-production through post-production to the ultimate presentation of these images.
All and any processes, which may affect these images, are the direct responsibility and interest of the
cinematographer. Cinematography is not a subcategory of photography. Rather, photography is but one
craft, which the cinematographer uses in addition to other physical, organizational, managerial,
interpretive, and image manipulating techniques to affect one coherent process. Cinematography is a
creative and interpretative process, which culminates in the authorship of an original work rather than
the simple recording of a physical event. The images which the cinematographer brings to the screen
come from the artistic vision, imagination, and skill of the cinematographer working within a
collaborative relationship with fellow artists.

This is a definition of cinematography by the American Society of Cinematographers

itself, the most highly reputed guild of cinematographers. They see the cinematography as an
art process, that exists through the whole production of a film and that everything that
happens connected to cinematography, is the responsibility of the cinematographer.
Cinematography is further not like photography; the cinematographer uses more different
techniques like the physical, managerial and image manipulating technique. The images that
are brought to the screen of a cinema, are the creation of the vision, imagination and skill of a
cinematographer.

Camera Angles (10 Marks/ 5 Marks)

There are five basic camera angles used to shoot scenes in a film. The angles are
determined by where the camera is placed.

For the Bird‟s-Eye View, the camera is placed above the subject, looking down toward
the subject and the ground. This kind of shot can seem disorienting because it is rarely the
way audiences themselves see the world. Because of this, directors often use the bird‘s-eye
view when they want to make some kind of dramatic comment on a character or scene. In
Gilles MacKinnon‘s Regeneration (1997), an incredible bird‘s-eye shot of a World War I
battlefield is used to open the movie. The effect of this shot is to suggest the madness of war
and the brutality it inflicts on soldiers.

The High Angle, looking downwards, tends to draw attention to the importance of the
environment or setting for a scene. High angle shots also tend to make characters look small
and are often used by directors to symbolically suggest insignificance or withering authority.

60 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

The Eye-Level shot is the most common angle seen in movies. Scenes are shot at roughly
the same level as an observer would see the scene. These are not terribly dramatic shots but
are used to photograph scenes that explain story development.

The Low Angle, looking upwards, has the opposite effect of a high angle shot. It tends to
focus attention on the size and significance of a character or object. Often directors will use
this kind of shot to symbolically announce the power and authority of one of their characters
without literally telling the audience this information. For instance, in Star Wars the first time
the audience meets Darth Vader, he is shot from a low angle to immediately announce his
role as the arch villain in the story. In Ridley Scott‘s classic science fiction movie Blade
Runner (1982), the building occupied by the Tyrel Corporation is shot from a low angle to
suggest the ominous power of the people who reside within.

The Oblique Angle is shot by literally tilting the camera frame. It can be used to suggest
a sense of ―crookedness‖ and anxiety, or, in the case of some television news shows and
music video programs, a sense of playfulness.

The use of these different angles can create point of view shots where the camera is
placed in such a way as to represent or reproduce a character‘s perspective on an environment
or event. The camera effectively acts as the character‘s eyes, and so point of view shots are
often used to create empathy with a character.
Camera Movement (10/5 Marks)
Panning of the Camera:

In cinematography and photography panning means swivelling a still or video camera

horizontally from a fixed position. This motion is similar to the motion of a person when they
turn their head on their neck from left to right. In the resulting image, the view seems to ―pass
by‖ the spectator as new material appears on one side of the screen and exits from the other,
although perspective lines reveal that the entire image is seen from a fixed point of view. The
term panning is derived from panorama, suggesting an expansive view that exceeds the gaze,
forcing the viewer to turn their head in order to take everything in. Panning, in other words, is
a device for gradually revealing and incorporating off-screen space into the image. Panning
should never be confused with tracking or ―travelling,‖ in which the camera is not just
swivelled but is physically displaced left or right, generally by being rolled parallel to its
subject. In video technology, panning refers to the horizontal scrolling of an image wider than
the display.
During a pan, the camera is aimed sideways along a straight line. Note that the camera
itself is not moving. It is often fixed on tripod, with the operator turning it either left or
right.Panning is commonly utilized to capture images of moving objects like cars speeding or
people walking; or to show sweeping vistas like an ocean or a cliff. One of the earliest and
best appearances of panning was in Edwin S. Porter‘s 1903 movie Life of An American
Fireman. While the camera follows the fire brigade approaching their destination, the
operator pans to reveal it – a house burning. Remember: the best pans are used to reveal
information.
Tilt

61 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Tilts refer to the up or down movement of the camera while the camera itself does not
move. Tilts are often employed to reveal vertical objects like a building or a person.
Dolly
When the entire camera is moved forward or backward, this move is called dolly. If
the camera is on tripod, the tripod will also be moved. Dollies are often used when recording
a subject that moves away or toward the camera, in which case the goal would probably be
keeping the subject at the same distance from the camera. For an optimal dolly, the camera
should be mounted on a wheeled-platform, such as an actual dolly, or a shopping cart,
depending on the budget. Moving the camera forward is called dolly in. Moving the camera
backward is called dolly out.
Track
Tracking is similar to dolling. The main difference being that in dollies the camera is
moved toward or away from the subject, whereas in a track shot, the camera is moved
sideways, parallel to an object.
Pedestal
In a pedestal move, the camera body will physically be lowered or elevated. The
difference between tilts and pedestals is that in the former, the camera lens is just being
aimed up or down, whereas in the latter, the camera is being vertically moved.
Zoom
Despite a common misconception, the terms ―zoom‖ and ―dolly‖ are not
interchangeable. With dollies, the camera is being moved in a physical space. With zooms,
the camera remains at a constant position, but the lens magnify or minimize the size of the
subject.
Zooms happen at the push of a button. Zoom in refers to seemingly ―approaching‖
the subject, thus making it look bigger in the frame. Zoom out refers to seemingly
―distancing‖ the subject, thus making it look smaller.
Note that zooms change focal length, thus affecting depth of field. Zoom in transforms the
lens into telephoto, while zoom out changes it into wide-angle. Zooming is considered
amateurish and is not preferred by professional. An interesting exception is the opening shot
of The Conversation (1974), in which Francis Ford Coppola elects zoom to articulate the
film‘s themes of espionage or voyeurism.
Note: Zooms are not really moves, for the camera doesn‘t change position. But, in film
studies and filmmaking courses, they have been traditionally combined with real camera
moves.

An example of Zoom: In these shots from Alfred Hitchcock‘s Psycho, composition,

lighting, and selective focus work together to draw us into the scene and make us want to
see what Norman Bates (Anthony Hopkins) is seeing through that hole. (Universal)

Dolly Counter Zoom

62 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

A dolly counter zoom is a rare type of shot of great stylistic effect. To accomplish it,
the camera must dolly closer or further away from the subject while the zoom is adjusted so
the subject‘s size remains the same. Notably, Hitchcock‘s Vertigo (1958),
Spielberg‘s Jaws(1975), and Scorsese‘s Goodgellas (1990) used dolly counter zoom to
demonstrate a character‘s uneasiness.
In crane and helicopter shots the camera and mounting are free from the ground and
can be manoeuvred quite precisely. Crane shots have traditionally been used at the start of
films to move into the action, drawing the audience with it, and at the end of films to draw
the audience out of intimate relationships with characters, returning them to their wider
environment. Crane and helicopter shots can survey wide areas and create an extreme sense
of movement, again affecting the audience‘s sense of time and space.
With handheld shots the camera is carried by the operator, often creating an uneven
movement. These shots allows the operator to follow action very closely, creating a greater
sense of immediacy for the audience, and may mimic the movement of a character in point of
view shots. Due to its traditional use in documentary filmmaking (with no time to set up
tracks etc. when reacting to a live event), the use of handheld camera shots in a fiction film
can create a sense of ―reality‖ about what is being filmed. A common visual metaphor in
movies is also created by handheld cameras creating a shaking, trembling effect in horror
films.
A Steadicam is a camera is placed in a harness worn by the camera operator which
―suspends‖ the camera in such a way as to remove the jerkiness of handheld shots as the
operator moves across the ground. Like handheld shots, the Steadicam allows characters to be
followed through complex surroundings, but it creates a floating sensation, often providing an
eerie or dreamlike effect.
Close up
A close-up in filmmaking, television production, still photography, and the comic
strip medium is a type of shot that tightly frames a person or object. Close-ups are one of the
standard shots used regularly with medium and long shots (cinematic techniques). Close-ups
display the most detail, but they do not include the broader scene. Moving toward or away
from a close-up is a common type of zooming.
Most early filmmakers—such as Thomas Edison, Auguste and Louis Lumière and
Georges Méliès—tended not to use close-ups and preferred to frame their subjects in long
shots, similar to the stage. Film historians disagree as to which filmmaker first used a close-
up. One of the best claims is for George Albert Smith in Hove, who used medium close-ups
in films as early as 1898 and by 1900 was incorporating extreme close-ups in films such as
As Seen Through a Telescope and Grandma‘s Reading Glass. In 1901, James Williamson,
also working in Hove, made perhaps the most extreme close-up of all in The Big Swallow,
when his character approaches the camera and appears to swallow it. D. W. Griffith, who
pioneered screen cinematographic techniques and narrative format, is associated with
popularizing the close up with the success of his films.
Close-ups are used in many ways and for many reasons. They are often employed as
cutaways from a more distant shot to show detail, such as characters‘ emotions, or some
intricate activity with their hands. Close cuts to characters‘ faces are used far more often in
television than in movies; they are especially common in soap operas. For a director to
deliberately avoid close-ups may create in the audience an emotional distance from the
subject matter.
Close-ups are used for distinguishing main characters. Major characters are often
given a close-up when they are introduced as a way of indicating their importance. Leading
characters will have multiple close-ups. There is a long-standing stereotype of insecure actors
desiring a close-up at every opportunity and counting the number of close-ups they received.

63 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

An example of this stereotype occurs when the character Norma Desmond in Sunset
Boulevard, announces ―All right, Mr. DeMille, I‘m ready for my close-up‖ as she is taken
into police custody in the film‘s finale.
Close-up shots do not show the subject in the broad context of its surroundings. If
overused, they may leave viewers uncertain as to what they are seeing. Close-ups are rarely
done with wide-angle lenses, because perspective causes objects in the center of the picture to
be unnaturally enlarged. This may convey a sense of confusion, intoxication, or other unusual
mental state.
There are various degrees of close-up depending on how tight (zoomed in) the shot is.
The terminology varies between countries and even different companies, but in general these
are:

 Medium Close Up (―MCU‖ on camera scripts): Halfway between a mid-shot and a close-
up. Usually covers the subject‘s head and shoulders.
 Close Up (―CU‖): A certain feature, such as someone‘s head, takes up the whole frame.
 Extreme Close Up (―ECU‖ or ―XCU‖): The shot is so tight that only a detail of the
subject, such as someone‘s eyes, can be seen.
 Lean-In: when the juxtaposition of shots in a sequence, usually in a scene of dialogue,
starts with medium or long shots, for example, and ends with close-ups.
 Lean-Out: the opposite of a lean-in, moving from close-ups out to longer shots.
 Lean: when a lean-in is followed by a lean-out.
When the close-up is used in shooting, the subject should not be put in exactly the middle of
the frame. Instead, it should be located in the frame according to the law of golden section.
Long Shot
In photography, filmmaking and video production, a long shot (sometimes referred to
as a full shot or wide shot) typically shows the entire object or human figure and is usually
intended to place it in some relation to its surroundings. These are typically shot now using
wide-angle lenses (an approximately 25 mm lens in 35 mm photography and 10 mm lens in
16 mm photography).
There are a variety of ways of framing that are considered as being wide shots; these include:

 Wide shot (WS) – The subject comfortably takes up the whole frame. In the case of a
person, head to toe. This usually achieves a clear physical representation of a character
and can describe the surroundings as it is usually visible within the frame. This results in
the audience having a desired (by the director) view/opinion of the character or location.
 Very wide shot (VWS) – The subject is only just visible in the location. This can find a
balance between a ‗wide shot‘ and an ‗Extreme Wide Shot‘ by keeping an emphasis on
both the characters and the environment almost finding a harmony between the two of
them. Enabling the ability to use the benefits of both type, by allowing the scale of the
environment but also maintaining an element of focus on the character(s) or object(s) in
frame.
 Extreme wide shot (EWS) – The shot is so far away from the subject that they are no
longer visible. This is used to create a sense of a character being lost or almost engulfed
by the sheer size of their surroundings. Which can result in a character being made small
or insignificant due to their situation/surroundings.
 Establishing shot (ES) – A shot typically used to display a location and is usually the
first shot in a new scene. These establish the setting of a film, whether that is the physical

64 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

location or the time period. But mainly it gives a sense of place to the film and brings the
viewer to wherever the story requires them to.
 Master Shot (MS) – This shot can be commonly mistaken for an establishing shot as it
displays key characters and locations. However, it is actually a shot in which all relevant
characters are in frame (usually for the whole duration of the scene). With inter cut shots
of other characters to shift focus. This is a very useful method for retaining audience
focus as most shots in this style refrain from using cuts and therefore will keep the
performances and the dialogue in the forefront of what is going on for the duration of the
scene.
Many directors are known for their use of the variety of wide shots. A key example of
them is the frequent use of establishing shots and very wide shots in Peter Jackson‘s The Lord
of the Rings trilogy showing the vast New Zealand landscape to instil awe in the audience.
In the 1993 film Schindler’s List, there is a running image of a small girl trapped
within a concentration camp wearing a red coat (the only colour in the film). She is
frequently pictured in a wide shot format as a way to display both her and the horrific
surroundings to build a disturbing contrast.
In the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, a very wide shot is used that keeps all the
protagonists on screen with the Wizard‘s palace in clear view. The Wizard of Oz was also one
of the first mainstream motion pictures to include colour.
The 1962 Lawrence of Arabia contains an enormous number of extreme wide shots
which successfully induced the feeling of scale of the lead in his surrounding and
aesthetically dwarfed him due to his surroundings making him seem more vulnerable and
weak.
In the 1981 the first film in the Indiana Jones film series, Raiders of the Lost Ark,
contains the use of a long shot to show the dangerous scale of a boulder that is chasing the
protagonist.
The 2008 film The Dark Knight featured a practical stunt in which a large truck and
trailer are flipped nose first. This is shot very far back to give the shot more clarity and to see
the flip through its entirety as opposed to cutting midway through.
In the 2015 Ridley Scott film The Martian the protagonist Mark Watney is stranded
on Mars and the film contains an enormous amount of all the wide shots (EWS, VWS, WS).
These are used to show the Martian landscape and give the character the sense of isolation
that the film would want.

An extreme long shot in the trailer to the 1963 film Cleopatra gives an expansive view of
the set.

65 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Editing Techniques (5 Marks/10 Marks)

Fade in/Fade Out/ Dissolve

In the post-production process of film editing and video editing, a dissolve
(sometimes called a lap dissolve) is a gradual transition from one image to another. The terms
fade-out (also called fade to black) and fade-in are used to describe a transition to and from a
blank image. This is in contrast to a cut where there is no such transition. A dissolve overlaps
two shots for the duration of the effect, usually at the end of one scene and the beginning of
the next, but may be used in montage sequences also. Generally, but not always, the use of a
dissolve is held to indicate that a period of time has passed between the two scenes. Also, it
may indicate the change of location or show the character‘s interior such as flashback of his
or her personal retrospections.
In narrative terms, the length of the dissolve is dictated by the mood or pacing the
director or editor wishes to create. For instance, in the opening sequence of Citizen Kane, the
dissolves between the master shots are slow because of the pervading sense of
morbidity Welles and his collaborators wished to create. In the ―News on the March‖
(montage) sequence shortly afterwards, however, the dissolves are much shorter as the
intention is to create a sense of vitality in the life of the still mysterious lead character and
speed in the (supposedly) newsreel sequence.
Dissolves are most common in classic cinema (see continuity editing), but are now
less often used. The device began to fall into disuse as film makers fell under the influence of
the French New Wave directors and their innovative use of the jump cut and as the absence
of a linear narrative became more common. It is also sometimes held that the effect was best
utilised in monochrome cinematography, where gradations of gray are mixed rather than
possibly incompatible color tones. The impact of television news reporting may also have
resulted in the device losing any pretense of having a contemporary feel.
Dissolves are usually kept to a minimum in most films. This is due mainly to stylistic
taste. It is very rare to see a shot which both begins and ends with a dissolve. A very rare (and
effective) example of this is seen in A Place in the Sun, directed by George Stevens, shortly
after the climactic sequence when Montgomery Clift‘s protagonist has drowned Shelley
Winters and is now fleeing.
Flashback

A flashback (sometimes called an analepsis) is an interjected scene that takes the

narrative back in time from the current point in the story. Flashbacks are often used to
recount events that happened before the story‘s primary sequence of events to fill in crucial
backstory. In the opposite direction, a flashforward (or prolepsis) reveals events that will
occur in the future. Both flashback and flashforward are used to cohere a story, develop a
character, or add structure to the narrative. In literature, internal analepsis is a flashback to an
earlier point in the narrative; external analepsis is a flashback to a time before the narrative
started.
In film, flashbacks depict the subjective experience of a character by showing a
memory of a previous event and they are often used to ―resolve an enigma‖. Flashbacks are
important in film noir and melodrama films. In movies and television, several camera
techniques, editing approaches and special effects have evolved to alert the viewer that the
action shown is a flashback or flash forward; for example, the edges of the picture may be

66 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

deliberately blurred, photography may be jarring or choppy, or unusual coloration or sepia

tone, or monochrome when most of the story is in full color, may be used. The scene may
fade or dissolve, often with the camera focused on the face of the character and there is
typically a voice-over by a narrator (who is often, but not always, the character who is
experiencing the memory).
The creator of the flashback technique in cinema was Histoire d’un crime directed
by Ferdinand Zecca in 1901. Flashbacks were first employed during the sound era in Rouben
Mamoulian‗s 1931 film City Streets, but were rare until about 1939 when, in William
Wyler‗s Wuthering Heights as in Emily Brontë‗s original novel, the housekeeper Ellen
narrates the main story to overnight visitor Mr. Lockwood, who has witnessed Heathcliff‘s
frantic pursuit of what is apparently a ghost. More famously, also in 1939, Marcel Carné‗s
movie Le Jour Se Lève is told almost entirely through flashback: the story starts with the
murder of a man in a hotel. While the murderer, played by Jean Gabin, is surrounded by the
police, several flashbacks tell the story of why he killed the man at the beginning of the
movie.
One of the most famous examples of a flashback is in the Orson Welles‗ film Citizen
Kane (1941). The protagonist, Charles Foster Kane, dies at the beginning, uttering the
word Rosebud. The remainder of the film is framed by a reporter‘s interviewing Kane‘s
friends and associates, in a futile effort to discover what the word meant to Kane. As the
interviews proceed, pieces of Kane‘s life unfold in flashback, but Welles‘ use of such
unconventional flashbacks was thought to have been influenced by William K. Howard‗s The
Power and the Glory. Hitchcock used a flashback in Marnie (1956) to reveal the enigma that
led to psychological disturbances for the female lead; as with Welles‘ film, he delayed the
flashback until the end of the movie.
Though usually used to clarify plot or backstory, flashbacks can also act as
an unreliable narrator. Alfred Hitchcock‗s Stage Fright from 1950 notoriously featured a
flashback that did not tell the truth but dramatized a lie from a witness. The multiple and
contradictory staged reconstructions of a crime in Errol Morris‗s 1988 documentary The Thin
Blue Line are presented as flashbacks based on divergent testimony. Akira Kurosawa‗s
1950 Rashomon does this in the most celebrated fictional use of contested multiple
testimonies.
Sometimes a flashback is inserted into a film even though there was none in the
original source from which the film was adapted. The 1956 film version of Rodgers and
Hammerstein‗s stage musical Carousel used a flashback device which somewhat takes the
impact away from a very dramatic plot development later in the film. This was done because
the plot of Carousel was then considered unusually strong for a film musical. In film version
of Camelot (1967), according to Alan Jay Lerner, a flashback was added not to soften the
blow of a later plot development but because the stage show had been criticized for shifting
too abruptly in tone from near-comedy to tragedy.
In Billy Wilder‗s film noir Double Indemnity (1944), a flashback from the main
character is used to provide a confession to his fraudulent and criminal activities. A good
example of both flashback and flash-forward is the first scene of La Jetée (1962). As we learn
a few minutes later, what we are seeing in that scene is a flashback to the past, since the
present of the film‘s diegesis is a time directly following World War III. However, as we
learn at the very end of the film, that scene also doubles as a prolepsis, since the dying man
the boy is seeing is, in fact, himself. In other words, he is proleptically seeing his own death.
We thus have an analepsis and prolepsis in the very same scene.

67 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Occasionally, a story may contain a flashback within a flashback, with the earliest
known example appearing in Jacques Feyder‗s L’Atlantide. Little Annie Rooney (1925)
contains a flashback scene in a Chinese laundry, with a flashback within that flashback in the
corner of the screen. In John Ford‗s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), the main
action of the film is told in flashback, with the scene of Liberty Valance‘s murder occurring
as a flashback within that flashback. Other examples that contains flashbacks within
flashbacks are the 1968 Japanese film Lone Wolf Isazo and 2004‘s The Phantom of the
Opera, where almost the entire film (set in 1870) is told as a flashback from 1919 (in black-
and-white) and contains other flashbacks; for example, Madame Giry rescuing the Phantom
from a freak show. An extremely convoluted story may contain flashbacks within flashbacks
within flashbacks, as in Six Degrees of Separation, Passage to Marseille, and The Locket.
This technique is a hallmark of Kannada movie director Upendra whose futuristic
flick Super (2010) is set in 2030 and contains multiple flashbacks ranging from 2010 to 2015
depicting a utopian India.
Satyajit Ray experimented with flashbacks in The Adversary (Pratidwandi, 1972),
pioneering the technique of photo-negative flashbacks. Quentin Tarantino makes extensive
use of the flashback and flashforward in many of his films. In Reservoir Dogs (1992), for
example, scenes of the story present are intercut with various flashbacks to give each
character‘s backstory and motivation additional context. In Pulp Fiction (1994), which uses a
highly nonlinear narrative, traditional flashback is also used in the sequence titled ―The Gold
Watch‖. Other films, such as his two-part Kill Bill (Part I 2003, Part II 2004), also feature a
narrative that bounces between present time and flashbacks.
Flash forward

A flash forward (also spelled flash-forward and more formally known as prolepsis) is
a scene that temporarily takes the narrative forward in time from the current point of the story
in literature, film, television and other media. Flash forwards are often used to represent
events expected, projected, or imagined to occur in the future. They may also reveal
significant parts of the story that have not yet occurred, but soon will in greater detail. It is
similar to foreshadowing, in which future events are not shown but rather implicitly hinted at.
It is also similar to an ellipsis, however an ellipsis takes the narrative forward and is intended
to skim over boring or uninteresting details, for example the aging of a character. It is
primarily a postmodern narrative device, named by analogy to the more traditional flashback,
which reveals events that occurred in the past.
An early example of prolepsis which predates the postmodern period is Charles
Dickens‘ novel A Christmas Carol, in which the protagonist Ebenezer Scrooge is shown the
future following his death. The subsequent events of the story imply that this future will be
averted by this foreknowledge.
Midway through the film, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, there is an abrupt flash
forward when Robert, the character played by Michael Sarrazin, is seen being thrust into a
jail cell by a police officer, even though he has done nothing to provoke such treatment. The
audience is notified, later in the story, that Sarrazin‘s character would have indeed made
choices that warrant his arrest.
The film Arrival relies extensively on prolepsis throughout the movie. The main
character gains this ability after learning the language of the aliens, and proceeds to use it to
prevent the outbreak of war. She uses information revealed to her in the future to convince a
military leader not to attack the aliens in the present.

68 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

The series finale of Star Trek: Voyager, ―Endgame―, uses a technique similar to a
flash-forward. It depicts a future in which the U.S.S. Voyager has returned home after
decades lost in deep space with various personal tragedies, prompting the ship‘s captain to
use time travel to return to the timeframe of the series and return the crew home more
directly.
Breaking Bad uses flash forwards throughout its second season showing a mystery
regarding debris and corpses in Walter White‘s house and neighbourhood, revealed to be the
result of two planes crashing overhead. The first half of the fifth season begins with a flash
forward one year into the future where Walter is fifty-two years old, and the second half
begins with a continuation of the story, where he returns to his abandoned home. The plot of
these flash forwards is resumed in the series finale.

List of Important Terms related to Cinematographic Technique (2 Marks)

 Aerial shot
A shot taken from an airborne device, generally while moving. This technique has gained
popularity in recent years due to the popularity and growing availability of drones.
 Backlighting (lighting design)
The main source of light is behind the subject, silhouetting it, and directed toward the camera.
 Bridging shot
A shot used to cover a jump in time or place or other discontinuity. Examples are a clock face
showing advancing time, falling calendar pages, railroad wheels, newspaper headlines and
seasonal changes.
 Camera angle
The point of view or viewing position adopted by the camera with respect to its subject. Most
common types are
 High-angle shot (the camera is higher than its subject)
Low-angle shot (the camera is lower than its subject)
 Close-up
A frame depicting the human head or an object of similar size.
 Cut
An editorial transition signified by the immediate replacement of one shot with another.
 Cross-cutting
Cutting between different events occurring simultaneously in different locations. Especially
in narrative filmmaking, cross-cutting is traditionally used to build suspense or to suggest a
thematic relationship between two sets of actions.
 Continuity editing
An editorial style that preserves the illusion of undisrupted time and space across editorial
transitions (especially cuts).
 Deep focus
A technique in which objects in the extreme foreground and objects in the extreme
background are kept equally in focus.
 Dissolve
An editorial transition overlapping a fade in and a fade out in such a way that one image
gradually disappears while another simultaneously emerges. This transition generally suggest
a longer period of narrative elapses than is suggested by cuts.
 Camera Dolly
A wheeled cart or similar device upon which a movie camera is mounted to give it smooth,
horizontal mobility.

69 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

 Dollying or Dolly shot

A shot in which the camera moves toward or away from its subject while filming.
Traditionally dolly shots are filmed from a camera dolly but the same motion may also be
performed with a Steadicam, gimbal, etc. A dolly shot is generally described in terms of
―dollying in‖ or ―dollying out‖. Trucking in and out is also a common synonym.
 Editing
The selection and organization of shots into a series, usually in the interest of creating larger
cinematic units. Adding music is also a great way to make it more cinematic
 Ellipsis
A term referring to ―chunks‖ of time left out of a narrative, signaled in filmmaking by
editorial transitions
 Establishing shot
A shot, often a long shot, usually placed at the beginning of a scene to establish the general
location of the action to follow. This shot is also known as an Extreme Long Shot.
 Eyeline match
A type of editorial match involving two, subsequent shots in which shot 1 contains an agent
(a person, animal, etc.) gazing in the direction of some unseen, off-screen vision, and shot 2
contains an image presumed by the spectator to be the object of the agent‘s gaze.
 Extreme close-up
A shot framed so closely as to show only a portion of the face or of some object.
 Extreme long shot
A shot in which the human figure would be extremely insignificant compared to its
surroundings. Basically a panoramic view photographed from a considerable distance and
made up essentially of landscape or distant background.
 Fade in/out
An editorial transition in which the image either gradually appears out of (―fade in‖) or
gradually fades into (―fade out‖) a black screen.
 Fill light
An auxiliary light placed to the side of the subject that softens shadows and illuminates areas
not lit by the key light (see ―key light‖).
 Flashback
A scene or sequence inserted into a scene set in the narrative present that images some event
set in the past.
 Flash forward
A scene or sequence inserted into a scene set in the narrative present that images some event
set in the future.
 Focus
The optical clarity or precision of an image relative to normal human vision. Focus in
photographic images is usually expressed in terms of depth.
 Framing
The organization of visible phenomena with respect to the boundaries of the image.
 Inter-title
A piece of filmed, printed text edited into the midst of (i.e. inter-) the photographed action at
various points. Most commonly used in silent movies to convey elements of dialogue and
other commentary.
 Iris in/out
An editorial transition popular during the silent period utilizing a diaphragm placed in front
of the lens and which, when opened (iris in) or closed (iris out), functions like a fade in or
fade out. A partially opened iris can also be used to focus attention on a detail of the scene in
the manner of vignetting.

70 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

 Jump cut
An editorial transition between two shots in which the illusion of temporal continuity is
radically disrupted.
 Key light
The main light on a subject, usually placed at a 45 degree angle to the camera-subject axis. In
high-key lighting, the key light provides all or most of the light in the scene. In low-key
lighting, the key light provides much less of the total illumination.
 Long shot
A shot in which the human figure would be relatively insignificant compared to its
surroundings.
 Master shot
A shot, often a medium shot or longer, which shows all the important action in a scene. In
editing, the master can be used to a greater or lesser extent as the ‗skeleton‘ of the edit, which
is fleshed out by replacing parts of the master with tighter coverage such as closeups and
cutaways.
 Match cut
One of various editorial devices used to preserve a sense of spatio-temporal integrity or
continuity between cuts.
 Medium close-up
A shot depicting the human figure from approximately the chest up.
 Medium shot
A shot depicting the human figure from approximately the waist up.
 Mise en scène
Everything that has been placed in front of or is revealed by the camera while shooting.
 Pan
A shot in which the camera is made to pivot horizontally left or right (about its vertical axis)
while filming. Pans are always described in terms of ―panning left‖ or ―panning right‖. It is
incorrect to discuss pans in terms of vertical, ―up‖/‖down‖ movement, which is properly
called tilting.
 Point of view shot
(Often abbreviated as ‗POV‘). A shot which shows an image from the specific point of view
of a character in the film.
 Racking focus
A shot employing shallow focus in which the focal distance changes so that the background
is gradually brought into focus while the foreground is gradually taken out of focus or visa
versa.
 Reverse angle
In a dialogue scene, a shot of the second participant understood as the opposing or ―reverse‖
view of the shot showing the first participant.
 Scene
A unit of narration generally composed of a series of shots that takes place in a single
location and concerns a central action.
 Shot
1.) The image produced by a motion picture camera from the time it begins shooting until the
time is stops shooting
2.) (in an edited film) the uninterrupted record of time and space depicted between editorial
transitions.
 Steadicam
A lightweight, highly-mobile camera transportation and stabilization device developed by
inventor / cinematographer Garrett Brown which permits hand-held filming with an image

71 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

steadiness comparable to tracking or dolly shots. The device involves 1.) a vest redistributing
the weight of the camera to the hips of the cameraman and, 2.) a spring-loaded arm working
to minimize the effects of camera movement. A video tap simultaneously frees the camera
operator from the eyepiece, who is then free to travel through any walkable terrain while
filming.
 Story board
A series of drawings and captions (sometimes resembling a comic strip) that shows the
planned shot divisions and camera movements of the film.
 Tilt
A shot in which the camera is made to pivot vertically up or down (about its horizontal
transverse axis) while filming.
 Tracking shot/traveling shot
A shot in which the camera moves alongside or parallel to its subject while filming.
Traditionally tracking shots are filmed while the camera is mounted on a track dolly and
rolled on dedicated tracks comparable to railroad tracks, In recent years, however, parallel
camera moves performed with a Steadicam, gimbal, etc. may also be called a tracking shot.
Tracking shots often ―follow‖ a subject while it is in motion: for instance, a person walking
on a sidewalk seen from the perspective of somebody walking on a parallel path several feet
away. Shots taken from moving vehicles that run parallel to another moving object are also
referred to as tracking or traveling shots. A tracking shot may also be curved, moving around
its subject in a semi-circular rotation.
 Two shot
A shot in which the frame encompasses two people, typically but not exclusively a medium
shot.
 Whip pan
A type of pan shot in which the camera pans so quickly that the resulting image is badly
blurred. It is sometimes used as an editorial transition and is also known as a swish pan or
―flash pan.‖
 Wipe
An optical editorial transition in which an image appears to be pushed or ―wiped‖ to one
aside of the screen to make way for the next.
 Zoom
A shot taken from a stationary position using a special zoom lens that magnifies or de-
magnifies the center of the image. This creates an illusion that the camera is moving toward
or away from its subject by making the subject more or less prominent in the frame. Not to be
confused with dollying in which the camera itself actually physically moves closer to or
further away from its subject.

Section-III
Adaptation and Appropriation
What is Adaptation in Film? (5 Marks)

Film adaptation is the transfer of a written work to film. It is recognized as a type of

derivative work. Whether adhering strictly to the source material or interpreting concepts
derived from the original work, adaptation are necessarily extensions or interpretations of the
original story. These interpretations can augment or detract from the original work.

72 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

The debate on cinematic adaptations of literary works was for many years dominated
by the questions of fidelity to the source and by the tendencies to prioritize the literary
originals over their film versions.1 Adaptations were seen by most critics as inferior to the
adapted texts, as ―minor‖, ―subsidiary‖, ―derivative‖ or ―secondary‖ products, lacking the
symbolic richness of the books and missing their ―spirit‖. Critics could not forgive what was
seen as the major fault of adaptations: the impoverishment of the book‘s content due to
necessary omissions in the plot and the inability of the filmmakers to read out and represent
the deeper meanings of the text.

Theories of Adaptation (10 Marks)

The idea that it is possible to achieve the same effects in Cinema as in literature has a
long history in film theory. In his essay ―Word and Images‖ Eisenstein proposes a cinematic
method for equaling the emotional impact of midnight striking for Georges Du Ray in
Maupassant‘s Bel Ami: ―... 12 ‗O‘ clock in sound is denoted by means of a whole series of
shots from different camera angles‖. This striking of clocks from various distances intensifies
the impact as in the look. Eisenstein discovered shooting scripts in almost all literary works.
He established the principal of equivalence in his seminal essay ―Dickens, Griffith and Film
Today‖ (1949) in which he argues that the root of American film aesthetics are to be found in
the Victorian novel. He discovers a dissolve in A Tale of Two Cities (1859), a montage in
Oliver Twist and camera technique everywhere. In his essay ―Word and Image‖, he implies
that through montage equal effects can be achieved both on page and screen:
Before the inner vision, before the perception of the creator, however a given image, emotionally
embodying his theme - the task that confronts him is to transform this image into a few basic partial
representations which, in their composition and juxtaposition shall evoke in the consciousness and
feelings of the spectator, reader or auditor, that same initial general image which originally hovered
Eisenstein, ―Word and Image‖ in The Film Sense 21)
before the creative artist. (Sergei
The influential French critic André Bazin is of the view that reality is multi layered.
Empirical reality, the world as depicted from sensory perception, contains interrelationship
that the film can discover. According to him, an artist‘s vision should be ascertained from the
selection he makes of reality. The medium of film creates not purely from technical means,
but from the presentations of select aspects of subject matter. In contrast to the ―raw material‖
of Balazs, Bazin believed that faithfulness to a literary source, its ―spirit‖ was its fundamental
nature of adaptation. The novel and the drama are not raw material to take from and render
visually. Bazin concludes that Cinema rediscovers the essential experience of the subject
matter by its own technical devices keeping in mind the vision of the creator and the spirit of
the work‘ by an infusion of tone. Cinema adaptation, according to him intensifies and reveals
nuances and details of its literary source. Bazin feels that a film is neither the product of
translation or free inspiration, but the result of a creative dialectic. Film according to Bazin, is
a question of building a secondary work with the novel as foundation. In no sense is the film
―comparable‖ to the novel or ―worthy‖ of it. It is a new aesthetic creation, the novel so to
speak, multiplied by the Cinema.
Lester Asheim, another film theorist contends that the film oversimplifies,
exaggerates, overstates, romanticises and dramatises the theme of the novel. His basic

73 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

assumption is that the film trivializes its original. He believes that the movement from novel
into film necessitates changes:
Essentially this is a stylistic change which substitutes a pictorial style for the literary style of the novel.
It alters the manner of storytelling but need not alter the matter.
Asheim fails to recognise that form or content, style and matter cannot be divorced. The form
determines the content as completely as the content determines the form. The emphasis on
faithfulness to the written text makes the adaptations lose its creative claims.
The famous film director of France, Bresson had claimed that his movie Diary of a
Country Priest (1950) follows its original source by the same name and written by Bernanos,
page by page. Bazin commented upon the film by saying that Bresson‘s film is not better than
but ―more than the book‖. Inspite of the fidelity to the text which Bazin insisted upon, the
film by Bresson provides a wholly different experience. A direct verbal borrowing from a
book is changed totally when seen and heard along with a visual.
The French Auteurists never treated filmmaking as a ―seventh art‖ or as a separate
art but as an equal member of cultural pantheon. They spoke of film as language and the film
director as a kind of writer, motivated by a desire for personal expression wielding a lens
instead of a pen. They elevated the cinematic mise-en-scene (the director‘s treatment of
camera movement, space, decor and editing) to a greater importance than the scenario. Some
of the filmmakers deliberately avoided adaptations of great literature in order to foreground
their own artistry. When French New Wave critic Francois Truffaut published the auteur
theory in the Cahiers du Cinema in 1954, it took the world of film criticism by storm (Grant
55). The origins of auteurism can be traced to the article Truffaut wrote, titled ―A Certain
Tendency in French Cinema‖ (Caughie 23). According to Truffaut, an auteur transforms the
film into something personal, ―an expression of his own personality‖ (Caughie 23). Jacques
Rivette made a similar argument, saying that an auteur, rather than being at the mercy of a
good or bad script, can take the material and turn it into his work (Hillier 38). The original
French version of auteur theory was the idea of making a film distinct to the director by
infusing ideas of his own into the characters and story beyond what the script required. Jean-
Luc Godard, in his article ―Sufficient Evidence,‖ shows that despite the ―conventional
scenario‖ of a film, an auteur will probe stereotypes and archetypes to turn them into ―living
beings‖ (Hillier 48). This is why the French critics were so obsessed with filmmakers like
Alfred Hitchcock because of his tendency to add personal expression throughout his
filmography (Truffaut 314). In fact, idolizing of Hitchcock led Truffaut to conduct an
extensive, in-depth interview with the filmmaker and allowed him to publish it as Hitchcock.
Truffaut holds that a filmmaker, like any artist, fundamentally tries to show his audience how
to understand themselves through artistic expression (Truffaut 20). Rather than a theory of
authorship, Truffaut‘s auteur theory argued that a director is an artist rather than a technician
(Hess 50).
Since the 1960‘s, writing on adaptation has made use of important theoretical writings
on both literature and film, including the structuralist and postructuralist Poetics of Roland
Barthes, the Narratology of Gerard Genette and the Neo-Formalism of David Bordwell
and Kirstin Thompson. In general, however it continues to waver back and forth between
the two approaches; one exemplified by Bluestone and the second by the Auteurists. The
Bluestone approach relies on an implicit metaphor of translation, which governs all

74 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

investigations of how codes move across sign systems. Writing in this category pays close
attention to the problem of textual fidelity in order to identity the specific formal capabilities
of the media. By contrast, the Auteurists approach relies on a metaphor of performance. They
also deal with questions of textual fidelity but it emphasizes difference rather than similarity,
individual styles rather than formal systems.
Roland Barthes while defining the essence of a narrative function claims that, ―a
narrative is never made up of anything other than functions: in differing degrees, everything
in it signifies‖. He distinguishes between two main groups of narrative functions; distribution
and integration and he names them as Functions Proper and Indices. The former refers to
actions and events; they are horizontal in nature and they are strung together linearly in a text
and refer to a functionality of doing. Indices denotes a ‗more or less diffuse concept which is
nevertheless necessary to the meaning of the text‘. They are vertical in nature and refers to
data of identity, place atmosphere i.e. to a functionality of being. The most important kinds of
transfer possible from novel to film are located in the category of Functions Proper rather
than Indices. Barthes further subdivides functions to include Cardinal Functions (nuclei)
and Kernels in Seymour Chatman‘s terms. Cardinal Functions are hinge point of narratives.
They are the risky moments of the narrative they provide the possibility of alternatives of
consequence to the development of the story. Deletion or alteration of Cardinal Functions
may result in critical disappointment towards a film version. Catalysers are the other part of
Function Proper which are complementary to Cardinal Functions and denotes small actions.
Their role is to root the Cardinal Functions in a particular kind of reality, and enrich it. In
Barthes‘ words unlike the risky moments laid out by Cardinal Functions, the Catalysers
‗layout areas of safety, rests, luxuries‘.
Dudley Andrew in his book Concepts in Film Theory talks about three modes of
relation between the film and the text: borrowing, intersection and fidelity of
transformation. While borrowing meant simple process of transfer of ‗generality of the
original‘ which continues to exist as an archetype in culture. Intersection would at best be
understood as initiating a direct interplay of between aesthetic forms of one period and the
cinematic forms of our period and trying to adapt what forms of our period, trying to adapt
what resists adaptation. Adaptation for Dudley Andrew then becomes a search in two‘
systems of communication for elements of equivalent positions, for example the description
of a narrative action.
Michael Klein and Gillian Parker identified three types of adaptation. In the first
category are the faithful impressions that is literal translation; the second category , retains
the core of the structure of the narrative while significantly re-interpreting or in some cases
de-constructing the source text; and the third regards, the source material merely as raw
material. Apocalypse Now (1979) based on Conrad‘s Heart of Darkness (1902) in cited as an
example for the third category. Geoffrey Wagner, identifies three methods of dramatisation
1. Transposition – in which the screen version sticks closely to the literary sources,
with a minimum of interference.
2. Commentary – where the original is purposely or unwittingly altered due to the
intentions of the film-maker.
3. Analogy – a completely different work of art which is a substantial departure from
the original (Cartmell and Whelehan 5).

75 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Wagner provides examples for various categories, among which are Robert
Stevenson‘s film Jane Eyre (1944), William Wyler‘s Wuthering Heights (1939) and Vincent
Minnelli‘s Madame Bovary (1949) are seen as transpositions; Mike Nichols‘ Catch 22 (1970)
as a commentary and Luchtino Visconti‘s Death in Venice (1971) as an analogy.
Julie Sanders uses the word ‗appropriation‘ to distuinguish the kind adaptations
which transpose the source culture to a different culture. An appropriation uses the general
characters, plot, and themes of the source text, but shifts both language and setting into a new
context. These films often suggest the same universality of theme and have the task of
creating verbal, visual, and/or aural analogies that bridge two cultures. Some of the impacts
of the adaptation depends upon the audience‘s awareness of its relationship with the source
texts. In anticipation of this most formal adaptations carry the same title as their source text.
For appropriations this is not necessary. Sanders observes: ―An adaptation signals a
relationship with an informing source text…On the other hand, appropriation frequently
affects a more decisive journey away from the informing source into a wholly new cultural
product and domain‖ (26).
To sum up, the reading of the film text is based on perceptual understanding of the
preverbal and the concrete images that are arranged in a particular context to achieve the
connotative and the denotative meanings. Films have borrowed extensively from literature.
The understanding of cinematic adaptations as translations of literary texts into a different
medium is governed by a number of factors. The symbiotic exchange of energy between the
two has been of interest to film as literary critics. Cinematic translations have enabled to add
to the essence of literature and pervade and propagate through time and space.

A Brief Outline of Literature to Film Adaptations (10 Marks)

After debating upon the ―how‖ of adaptation, we inevitably come to the ―why‖ of
adaptation. The sociological issues such as the methods of production, distribution and
consumption of the novel and film are also an area of consideration. Adaptations are
obviously undertaken for a variety of reasons, ranging from bringing of a literary text to a
wider audience, sometimes to cash in on its cultural respectability and popularity or
sometimes to comment upon or develop an aspect of the original text. In the history of
Cinema, repeated cinematic adaptations of a particular classic are not a rarity. The
compulsion to transcreate a particular text over and over again is an interesting phenomenon.
It is like rereading or rewriting a text in different times, from different points of view. The
varied renderings of a written text no doubt enrich the source text by providing it with
footnotes and a fresh interpretation.
There is a long established tradition of film adaptations of literary sources from the
very early years of cinema itself. The Italian and French filmmakers first adapted literary
material into film. Jules Verne was one of the first writers to be adapted to screen. George
Melies‘ A Trip to Moon (1902) was based on Verne‘s From Earth to the Moon (1865). Later
he adapted Verne‘s Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. D W Griffith, one of the
pioneers of cinema based his films on poems, plays, short stories and novels. Griffith‘s

76 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Broken Blossoms (1919) was based on Thomas Burke‘s The Chink and the Child (1917) and
The Birth of the Nation (1915) from Thomas Dixon‘s bestseller, The Clansmen (1905). By
1910, adaptations of the established literary canon had become a marketing ploy by which
producers and exhibitors could legitimize cinema going as a venue of ‗taste‘ and thus attract
the middle class to cinema. Literary adaptations gave film the respectable cachet of
entertainment as art. In 1908, Societe Film d‘Art was formed in France to translate
prestigious literary works onto screen. Prominence was given to dramas and novels, notable
of Hugo, Balzac and Dickens. In Italy, historical works like Bulwer Lytton‘s The Last Days
of Pompeii (1908) and Henriek Sienkiewicks‘ Quo Vadiz (1912) were adapted as super
spectacular movies. In 1911, Stephen Bush published a book on film called The Moving
Picture World, in which he stated that the mission of motion picture itself was to introduce
literary classics to the masses. However, most of the filmmakers did not share this idea.
Though they were both supporters and detractors for adaptation, by the next two decades
adapted films acquired a respectability and distinction, a tendency that has gone on to remain.
It is also to be noted that the prestigious award winning films are often adaptations. In 1939,
for instance, almost every competing film for Academy Awards were adaptations, namely,
Wuthering Heights, The Wizard of Oz, Good Bye Mr. Chips, and Gone With The Wind.
After the advent of film, most of the writers of fiction were greatly influenced by the
medium; the writings of most of the modern novelists of twentieth century were ‗cinematic‘
as they were naturally excited by the discoveries of the cinema and attempted to borrow from,
and even rival these in their own medium. Eisenstein provided one of the practical
explorations into the relation between film and literature in an essay entitled ‗Dickens,
Griffith and the Film Today‘. His main point was the manner in which Griffith‘s montage
techniques are indebted to Dicken‘s use of close-up detail in his novels. Griffith adapted
Tennyson in Enoch Arden (1911), Browning in Pippa Passes and Jack London in The Call of
the Wild (1908). In The Cricket of the Hearth (1909), he adapted Dickens who inspired him
to use parallel editing, the close-ups montage and even dissolve, which gained the Griffith the
title ―Father of the Film Technique‖ (Boyum 3). William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway
can be considered the other two cinematic writers of the twentieth century. Practically, every
resource of modern film - the close-up, the medium shot, the long shot, the moving camera,
parallel editing, referential cross cutting, colour, and even sound recording can be seen in
their work.
Gerald Genette, in his book Narrative Discourse names the flashback as ‗analepsis‘
(ana/ after + lepse / to take on) and flash forward as ‗prolepsis‘ (pro/before+lepse/to take on).
Griffith, during the era of silent filmmaking employed the method of analepsis in his
Intolerance. Orson Welles in his Citizen Kane (1941) made use of the possibilities of
analepsis to perfection. The flashback is by now a familiar piece of film‘s story telling
grammar. However, the structurally opposite device of prolepsis is used less often and
remains potentially disorienting. Whereas the flashback evokes the routine workings of
memory, prolepsis has connotations of odd mental processes like prophecy and premonition.
Prolepsis is employed in Chris Marker‘s short science fiction film La Jetee (1962) and in
Alan Resnais‘ La Guerre est finie (1968).
Fiction relates especially to one of the senses - the eye. From the reader‘s spectator‘s
point of view, fiction and film provide two distinct kinds of experiences, essentially the

77 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

private experience of an individual. Fiction excites the imagination of the reader, encouraging
him to reflect on what he reads. A film on the other hand, is a multisensory experience, most
often enjoyed in the company of others. Hence responses of a spectator to a film may be
immediate and spontaneous, often conditioned by the responses of other viewers. The two
forms are equally capable of summarizing - literature does it with a studied choice of words
in which meaning is condensed, while film compresses meaning into sensory experiences.
Film can summarize events extending over years into a matter of few moments through a
montage of several scenes.
Ever since Edwin S. Porter made the first story telling film, The Great Train Robbery
in 1903, critical opinion has maintained that the film is essentially a form of literature. This,
however, need not exactly be so. While film and literature both aim to express concrete
situations involving the development of a plot and the exposition of the character and
environment, the medium through which they seek to accomplish these ends are entirely
different. Film depicts concrete situations involving plot development and characterization,
setting and environment, emotional reactions and philosophic attitudes and concepts, by
means of a series of plastic images—visual representations projected upon a screen in a
darkened room before an audience.
David Lean‘s film in 1946 is considered to be a literal translation of the Dickens‘
novel Great Expectations. It is a Transposition in Geoffrey Wagner‘s term in which a novel is
directly given to the screen with minimum interference. However, Alfonso Cuaron‘s 1997
version may at best be called a Commentary in, which there is a refusal to literally translate.
It is purposely altered to re-emphasise and reconstruct. Though the David Lean version is
thematically close to the novel; it is in the process of selective omissions that Lean‘s film
shifts focus. To conform to the film form the first person narration of Pip is the first casualty.
Pip an orphan in the novel has perhaps only the reader for his company and his self-discovery
is both poignant and humorous as he trudges alone. But a straightforward depiction of a poor,
orphan boy merely evokes pity.
Traditional film criticism employed the critical tools of literature to evaluate a film,
especially an adapted film. In order to reveal how the film translates the literary text to
screen, the mise-en-scene analysis of the film has been very essential. Comparison of the
summaries of the narrative contents of fiction and film were inadequate to study how the
adaptation was made possible. However, it is, in fact, the specific character of the filmic
medium that makes it distinct from all other art forms. Unfortunately, much of the discourse
on film is weakened by insensitivity towards the material properties of films. Thorough
understanding about the elements of mise-en-scene is necessary for analyzing a film in
general and adapted film in particular. Those contents of a film‘s visual field that are
considered to exist prior to and independent of the camera‘s activity are called pro-filmic
elements of mise-en-scene. They are the attributes of setting, props, costume, lighting and
acting which cinema shares with forms of staged spectacle such as theatre, opera and dance.
The setting or the place where the events are happening are not merely back drops to
the action, but are perceived as a signifier of authenticity. At the most basic level, locations
serve in narrative cinema to reinforce the plausibility of particular kinds of story. Cinematic
settings vary in scale from interplanetary distances of science fiction films to claustrophobic
rooms and dungeons in a gothic horror film. The setting of the film anticipates the kind of

78 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

story that follows. The setting of a film like A Fist Full of Dollars (1964) emphasizes the
rough and tough life of the central characters while the two-dimensional set in The Cabinet of
Dr.Caligari (1919), with the expressionist lighting suggests danger and paranoia. The setting
helps to specify the geographical co-ordinates, socio-economic status and occupation of the
film protagonists or even symbolize their psychological conditions. For example, when the
vampiric protagonist in F W Murnau‘s Nosferatu (1922) is seen in one shot standing behind
the latticed window of an apartment block, it not only reveals his living conditions but, more
profoundly, something about his sense of estrangement within the society.
Julie Sanders uses the word ‗appropriation‘ to distuinguish the kind adaptations which
transpose the source culture to a different culture. An appropriation uses the general
characters, plot, and themes of the source text, but shifts both language and setting into a new
context. Though the appropriation are not tied to the source text by an acknowledgement, a
juxtaposition of the source text against the appropriated text widens the possibility of its
reading. West Side Story (1961) is a modern day adaptation of Romeo and Juliet in the back
ground of racial conflicts between two rival gangs in the New York City in 1950s. The
protagonists in the film, Tony and Maria are clearly modern reworkings of Shakespeare‘s
‗star-crossed‘ lovers in a 1950s New York context. Though West Side Story can stand
independently, the awareness of the film‘s intertextuality deepens and enriches the reading.
This is an example of appropriation where the source text is embedded within the film text. In
such works the real interest lies not in the source texts, but in the new text. The practice of
displacing the setting is commonly applied to Shakespeare‘s plays both on stage and screen in
order to preserve the effect of their poetry, while suggesting a more contemporary relevance.
For example, the 1995 version of Richard III, directed by Richard Locraine, and adapted by
Locraine and Ian McKellen, situates the play in the 1930‘s. Baz Luhrmann‘s William
Shakespeare‘s Romeo + Juliet (1996) is another case to point. The scene has been moved to a
sultry urban center in the present day where contemporary youth are immersed in a world of
violence, sex, and drugs. The modern setting had already been suggested by West Side Story,
but Luhrmann‘s vision also utilizes the visual language of the youth by shooting and editing
the film in the disorienting fast-paced style of MTV, and incorporating a corresponding
soundtrack. Michael Almereyda‘s Hamlet (2000) tries to imitate Luhrmann‘s success. It
places the melancholy Danish prince as an aspiring filmmaker in New York City, trying to
stop the uncle who has usurped control of his father‘s Denmark Corporation.
Briane Mcfarlane‘s methodology is useful in analyzing an appropriation. When
choosing a text for appropriation, ‗transfer‘ and ‗adaptation proper‘ are considered. The
cardinal functions, character functions, and the psychological patterns of the source text,
which comes under the consideration of transfer, are carefully transmuted. As appropriations
transpose the cultural setting of the source text, the elements of the transfer are appropriated
suitably to the target culture. The psychological patterns which reveal certain universal
human experiences are usually transferred directly to screen. Once the elements of transfer
are appropriated, aspects of adaptation proper are transferred. The mise-en-scene and the
extra cinematic codes specific to the target culture are employed. Akira Kurosawa‘s
appropriations employ styles of Noh Theatre, a quite, stylized Japanese dramatic dance form.
Kurosowa‘s adaptations of Shakesperean texts like Macbeth, Hamlet and King Lear, as
Throne of Blood (1957) The Bad Sleep Well (1960) and Ran (1985) are examples of

79 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

appropriation. Though these films do not acknowledge their intertextual relationship with the
source texts, the awareness about the embedded text widens the scope of reading the films.
The films offer an opportunity to compare and contrast how the film maker bridges the
distance between the two cultural settings. Often, the appropriated films transfer the universal
issues directly while the culturally specific issues are appropriated according to the target
setting. Francis Ford Coppola‘s adaptation of Joseph Conrad‘s Heart of Darkness as
Apocalypse Now (1979) is another instance.
Many recent adaptations engage in postmodern retrospection through their use of
pastiche, mixing and matching past styles and genres in order to modernize, reinvent, or
deconstruct their source texts. Quentin Tarantino‘s Pulp Fiction (1996) is an example of a
post-modern pastiche where it recreates the stylistic patterns of the 1950s. Andrew Leman‘s
The Call of Cthulhu (2005), an adaptation of H.P Lovecraft‘s story (1926) of same name into
a silent film that pretends to be made in 1926 is another example of a post-modern pastiche.
In case of these films, the new technology is employed to create a previous text in a
retrospective manner. In this sense, film adaptations can be regarded as post-modern pastiche
as it employs multiple texts to create its system of signification.
Considering literature versus film debate with a special focus on the problems of
adaptation, one can only accept the fact that as long as popular novels or literary masterpieces
continue to be adapted to the screen, such problems will persist and some critics will continue
to harp on the sanctity of the literary text. It might be appropriate to quote Joy Gould Boyum:
In assessing an adaptation, we are never really comparing book with the film, but an interpretation with
an interpretation - the novel that we ourselves have recreated in our imaginations, out of which we have
constructed our own individualized ‗movie‘ and the novel on which the film maker has worked a
parallel transformation. For just as we are readers, so implicitly is the filmmaker offering us, through
his work, his perceptions, his visions, his particular insight into his source. An adaptation is always,
whatever else it may be, an interpretation (61-62).

Section-IV
Response and Review: (Illustrative film shows & appreciation
programme to be arranged)
Some Illustrations of Movie Review
Battleship Potemkin (1925)

80 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Left: A still from the movie where a baby in a carriage falling down the ―Odessa Steps‖;
Right: A poster of The Battleship Potemkin

There is no art without conflict, Eisenstein once wrote, and Battleship Potemkin was the classic
example of a film that attempted to become a banner for revolution. Made with the utmost rigour and
almost mathematically conceived piece by piece, this story of the abortive 1905 revolution in Russia
still manages to be extraordinarily spontaneous in its effect. If the actual text is often propagandist, the
editing and building of pace and tension circumvents that. Study the famous Odessa Steps sequence
and you will see what editing is really about. But although the film has been studied by countless
students rather than enjoyed, which it should be, it remains a masterwork that has seldom if ever been
bettered, not just a primer.
- Derek Malcolm
Battleship Potemkin presents a dramatized version of the mutiny that occurred in 1905
when the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin rebelled against its officers. Sergei
Eisenstein‘s Battleship Potemkin (USSR, 1925), on the other hand, reconstructs through the
power of dramatic montage an episode in the 1905 Black Sea mutiny which includes the
notorious massacre of civilians on the Odessa Steps.
The film is composed of five episodes:
 “Men and Maggots”, in which the sailors protest at having to eat rotten meat;
 “Drama on the Deck”, in which the sailors mutiny and their leader, Vakulinchuk, is
killed;
 “A Dead Man Calls for Justice”, in which Vakulinchuk‘s body is mourned over by
the people of Odessa;
 “The Odessa Steps”, in which imperial soldiers massacre the Odessans.
 “One against all”, in which the squadron tasked with intercepting the Potemkin
instead declines to engage; lowering their guns, its sailors cheer on the rebellious
battleship and join the mutiny.
Eisenstein wrote the film as a revolutionary propaganda film, but also used it to test his
theories of montage. The revolutionary Soviet filmmakers of the Kuleshov school of
filmmaking were experimenting with the effect of film editing on audiences, and Eisenstein
attempted to edit the film in such a way as to produce the greatest emotional response, so that
the viewer would feel sympathy for the rebellious sailors of the Battleship Potemkin and
hatred for their overlords. In the manner of most propaganda, the characterization is simple,
so that the audience could clearly see with whom they should sympathize.
Battleship Potemkin presents itself as a take on the traditional five-act drama. In ‗Men
and Maggots‘ sailors angrily protest against rotten meat in a sequence hinting at male
impotence through extreme violence and uncompleted action as a frustrated young sailor
smashes the same plate twice against a table; Triumph of the Will, by contrast, maintains a
sense of powerful male muscularity, self-control and composure throughout.
In the second segment, ‗Drama on the Quarterdeck‘, great psychological tension is
created when marines are summoned to execute the protestors, and the mutiny begins. Here
wide shots are juxtaposed with extreme close-ups as the ship‘s old, white-bearded priest
pompously prays for the condemned. This inter-cutting between the priest tapping his palm
with a crucifix and a junior officer nervously patting the handle of his sword hints at tensions

81 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

between Church and State in Tsarist Russia, just as Riefenstahl later renders a tension in the
German case. It also points to an oppressive parallel between the crucifix and sword as the
former eventually is left stuck in the deck when the priest is slain. This sequence creates
extreme psychological tension through the rapid inter-cutting of shots. of varying scales and
lengths in a tonal montage. This emotional peak ends in a trough of sombre nocturnal calm.
Compared to this treatment, in Triumph of the Will the psychological tension is linked to a
mythological aura and a determinate ideology of war.
The third segment of Battleship Potemkin, ‗An Appeal from the Dead‘, sees the dead
sailor Vakulinchuk lying in state on the harbour mole. Eisenstein intercuts shots of the harbor
with studies of mourners as they file endlessly across the breakwater, in the luminous haze of
the fog, in an expression of solidarity between the sailors and the townsfolk. The famous
sequence which follows on the Odessa Steps (Act-IV), with the dreadful massacre of citizens
by Tsarist troops, is perhaps the most powerful montage sequence in the history of cinema.
The sequence embraces the mechanical and primitive temporal lengths of metric montage,
involving the rhythmic montage of soldiers‘ feet descending the stairs, in murderous martial
unison, to create a high degree of ―contrapuntal tension‖.
In a montage of close shots of the churning, plunging pistons, rotating camshafts,
waves, battleships, squadron, canons at the port, and the huge muzzle canon of the
‗Potemkin‘ we conclude with the climactic and eventually triumphal ‗Meeting the Squadron‘
sequence, where the ‗Potemkin‘ waits to know if she will be joined in solidarity by other
vessels. Reversing the truth of history, the mutiny is represented as successful.

City Lights (1931)

Charlie Chaplin as The Tramp and The Blind Girl (Virginia Cherrill) in a scene from
the film. Courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Collection.

82 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

―City Lights‖ (1931) is not only Charles Chaplin‘s masterpiece; it is an act of

defiance. The film premiered four years into the era of talking pictures, which had roared into
cinemas with ―The Jazz Singer‖ (1927). ―City Lights‖ audaciously mocks the ―talkies‖ in the
opening scene and reminds the world of the beauty and artistry of silent film. ―City Lights‖ is
Chaplin‘s most satisfying balance of comedy and pathos (the film is subtitled ―A Comedy
Romance in Pantomime‖) and the apotheosis of the Little Tramp character. The perfection of
―City Lights‖ was not achieved without pain. The film took two years to make. Chaplin was
nervous about the talking film revolution, distressed by the death of his mother, and obsessive
in his quest for simplicity in his storytelling. But in the end, despite all the difficulties making
it, Chaplin‘s favorite of all his films was ―City Lights.‖
Chaplin‘s unwillingness to discard the universality of the Tramp, compounded by the
technical failures of the first talkies and the clumsy, stilted, and inartistic use of the new
medium in its early stages, led him to begin his next film as a silent. As Chaplin wrote in his
1964 autobiography: ―I did not wish to be the only adherent of the art of silent pictures…
Nevertheless, ―City Lights‖ was an ideal silent picture, and nothing could deter me form
making it.‖ His only concession to the new medium would be a musical score of his own
creation and sound effects that would be recorded for the film soundtrack. Thus, ―City
Lights,‖ arguably the biggest gamble of Chaplin‘s career, became one of his greatest
triumphs, a lyrical and sublime comedy of timeless humor and beauty. The film contains
some of Chaplin‘s greatest sequences, including the film‘s opening scene in which a stone
statue is unveiled to reveal the Tramp asleep in its lap; later scenes in which the Tramp
accidentally swallows a whistle; his fighting in a boxing match; and the celebrated finale in
which the once-blind flower girl recognizes the Tramp as her benefactor.
The genius of ―City Lights‖ lies in its simplicity. The film tells the story of the
Tramp‘s love for a blind flower girl who mistakes him for a rich man. The Tramp‘s devotion
to the girl forces him to undertake a slew of menial jobs to earn the money to play the part of
a gentleman. He also befriends an eccentric millionaire whom he saves from suicide in a
moment of drunken depression. An alcoholic, the millionaire is expansive and treats the
Tramp lavishly when intoxicated but forgets knowing him when he becomes sober.
The Tramp learns that the girl‘s sight might be restored if she travels to Vienna for an
operation. He unsuccessfully works as a street cleaner and as an amateur boxer to earn the
money for her trip. Once again he encounters the inebriated millionaire, who gives him the
money. A burglary of the millionaire‘s home coincides with the gift; the event sobers up the
millionaire, and the Tramp is suspected of the theft. He goes to prison, but not before he has
given the money to the blind girl. The Tramp is eventually released from prison in a dejected
and tattered state. The flower girl, however, is now cured of her affliction and manages her
own flower shop. She longs to meet her benefactor—whom she imagines to be handsome and
rich.
When the Tramp wanders in front of her prosperous shop, he gazes upon her with
delight. She takes pity on him by offering him a flower and a coin. As he attempts to shuffle
away, she presses the coin into his hand, which she gradually recognizes by the touch.
―You?‖ she asks him in an intertitle, realizing that he is the man who was her benefactor. He
nods and says, ―You can see now?‖ ―Yes, I can see now,‖ she responds. This moment of

83 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

recognition, which concludes the film, is perhaps the most sublime and celebrated sequence
in all of silent cinema.
Throughout much of the work on ―City Lights,‖ Chaplin was in an unusually nervous
state over the risks of making an anachronistic silent film. Adding to his anxiety was
Chaplin‘s desire to create for the first time a fully developed and believable romance for the
Tramp. It is with typical Chaplinesque irony that he would achieve his most satisfying
cinematic romance with the one leading lady to whom he felt the least romantically attached.
Chaplin had auditioned many young actresses before he noticed twenty-year-old Virginia
Cherrill when they both sat ringside at a boxing match at the Hollywood Legion Stadium.
Although a beautiful blonde, it was the manner in which she coped with her near-sightedness
that earned her the role.
Chaplin devoted much time and energy to Cherrill, spending days choreographing and
filming the first meeting sequence. He would not hesitate to retake a scene if he felt she was
holding a flower improperly, if the timing of her movement was off, if she was not
completely concentrating on the scene, or even if she spoke the line of dialogue, ―flower,
sir?‖—which no one would hear in the finished film—incorrectly. Another problem that
plagued Chaplin was his inability to craft a plausible reason for why she should assume the
Tramp to be a rich man. His unrelenting direction of Cherrill in his quest for perfection was
such that the scene in which they first meet would be filmed hundreds of times before
Chaplin was satisfied.
It continues to hold the Guinness World Record for most retakes of any one scene.
The final cut is one of the most poignant scenes in cinema history. Although the sequence is
so sublime in its perfectly executed pantomime that it is almost impossible to describe in
words, famed critic James Agee has perhaps captured it better than anyone: ―It is enough to
shrivel the heart to see, and it is the greatest piece of acting and the highest moment in
movies.‖
On January 30, 1931, the world premiere of ―City Lights‖ was held at the new Los
Angeles Theatre, the last and most lavish of the great movie palaces built in Los Angeles. It
was said to be one of the greatest premieres in Hollywood history up to that time, with a
crowd of over 25,000 nearly causing a riot. Chaplin‘s personal guests were Professor and
Mrs. Albert Einstein. In the intervening three years since the advent of talking pictures, silent
film had become a curiosity. Yet Chaplin turned the novelty of the film‘s non-talking status
to his advantage as a daring artistic choice. Chaplin‘s negative cost for ―City Lights‖ was
$1,607,351.63. The film eventually earned him a worldwide profit of $5 million dollars ($2
million domestically and $3 million in foreign distribution), an enormous sum of money for
the time.
In the final analysis, Chaplin had done what many thought impossible. He had
produced a critically and commercially successful silent film three years after the demise of
American silent cinema. More astonishingly was the ―City Lights‖ reissue in 1950, when it
was praised by ―Life‖ magazine as ―the best movie of 1950.‖ ―City Lights‖ is Chaplin at the
height of his powers, providing a loving look — and farewell — to the pure art of silent
filmmaking.

84 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Pather Panchali (1955)

Still from the movie: Apu and Durga running to catch a glimpse of a train, a famous scene of the film.
Arrival of a train in Ray‟s Pather Panchali is an indication of connectedness of the old and the new, the
feudal and the capital, the rural and the urban, the nature and the industrial.

In a backdrop of early 20th century rural Bengal, Pather Panchali, the masterpiece of
Bengali writer Bibhutibhusan Bandopadhyay and a path-breaking film in the tradition of
Indian cinema by Satyajit Ray, delineates the spiritual, moral, psychological growth of the
individuals in the context of contemporary social system. Perhaps so the film was felicitated
as ―the greatest human document‖ and was also instrumental in winning the ―Best Human
Document‟ award at the Cannes Film Festival of 1956. Pather means the path or journey
while Panchali means a folk poem or song which can be loosely translated as Song of the
Little Road.
Both the novel and the film reveal an in depth picture of the predicament of the
rustics, shattered with poverty. It essentially deals with Apu, the protagonist, his poverty, his
responses and a gradual psychological development from his adolescent to youth. It focuses
on the life and gradual development of the poverty-stricken Roy family in their ancestral
village with their agonized torment. The captivating depiction of the four members of the
Roy family, their responses to the social happenings and their agonized existence in the
native village of Nischindipur, till they move to Benaras in search of new life, happens to be
the staple material to fabricate the story. In film, Ray chose mostly natural locations while
shooting Pather Panchali. He wanted the backdrop of each shot to speak for itself. Ray
stated,
The differences appear to emerge from evaluating the status of the narrative form through whichthe
real would be articulated, through what means of representation, styles of acting, aestheticstrategies the
real would be invoked. Here the popular compendium- studio shooting, melodramatic, externalized
forms for the representation of character psychology, non- or intermittently continuous forms of
cutting, diversionary story lines, performance sequences – was not acceptable within the emergent
artistic canon, for they undermined plausibility and a desirable regime of verisimilitude (Ray,
1976).
Based on a book by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay, Pather Panchali is a series of
loosely knit episodes in a poor Brahmin family in rural Bengal. Harihar (Kanu Banerjee) is a
priest who also dabbles in play writing. His wife, Sarbojaya (Karuna Banerjee) manages the

85 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

household and her two children Durga (Uma Das Gupta) and Apu (Subir Banerjee). There is
also their old ―aunt‖ Indir (Chunibala Devi) who loves eating the fruits given to her by
Durga. Then there are their neighbours, the well-off Mukherjees, who share a love-hate
relationship with their family. Mrs. Mukherjee helps out when Durga falls sick almost as her
surrogate mother (as Ray hints early in his mise en scène) and Sarbojaya does the cooking in
Mrs. Mukherjee‘s daughter‘s wedding. It‘s a warm and isolated little world of theirs.
The biggest curse for Pather Panchali is that it was made immediately after the war.
More precisely, at a time when neo-realism was the almost the in-thing. Almost every
description or review of the film seems to kick off by assigning the neo-realistic tag to the
film, perhaps more so after Ray‘s enthusiastic comments about The Bicycle Thief (1947). It
is beyond doubt that Ray‘s employment of non-professional actors, use of natural locations,
refusal of make-up and high-key lighting, the tendency of having the backdrop speak for
itself and a complete abstinence from the exaggerated gestures and practices of popular
cinema owe their debt to the masters of the neo-realist movement. But broadly calling Pather
Panchali a neorealist film, basing arguments on the above conditions alone, is but unfair to
Ray and his style. In fact, Pather Panchali often works against the ―written principles‖ of neo-
realism that pioneers like Zavattini proposed.
The story is about little ones, the reader/spectator lives and grows with them, feels
with and for them, looks through their eyes and knows the world and the people in it as
he/she knows him/her. Harihar portrays an intelligent but impracticable man, fails to meet the
ends of his family, Shorbojoya, his wife has to maintain the family somehow, represents the
poor mother, who in spite of loving her children cannot provide them with their minimum
requirements except the palpable motherly affection. And the profound emotional bond, the
playful pristine childhood of the brother and sister- Apu- Durga, their root of happiness –
Nischindipur with its galaxy of children, the trees, fruits and flowers, the path through the
village, the birds, the sky, the clouds and Apu‘s constant friend, the evening star, all
collectively develop the story line of the novel.
In the film, the growth of Apu and Durga from their adolescent to maturity is
delineated beautifully. The transformation is manifested with the change of their feelings and
responses to different incidents come in their way. Their tranquil ecstasy in the agonized
existence, their secret picnics, getting lost while searching for the railway tracks, their habit
of stealing from the neighborhood etc. marked their childhood with unspoiled elation. Apu
often shifts himself in his self-made world, tried to see the unseen. Mere awareness of
distance was enough to fill his little mind with a feeling of wonder and make him happy.
Arrival of a train in Ray‘s Pather Panchali is an indication of connectedness of the
old and the new, the feudal and the capital, the rural and the urban, the nature and the
industrial.
Most of what transpires is shown through the eyes of either Sarbojaya or Durga, and,
as a result, we identify most closely with these two. Harihar is absent for more than half of
the movie, and, before the penultimate scene, Apu is a mere witness to events, rather than a
participant. Until the closing moments, we don‘t get a sense of the young boy as a fully
formed individual, since he‘s always in someone else‘s shadow.
With its often-poetic black-and-white images and heartfelt method of storytelling,
Pather Panchali speaks intimately to each member of the audience. This tale, as crafted by

86 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Ray, touches the souls and minds of viewers, transcending cultural and linguistic barriers.
The languorous pace, which initially seems detrimental, proves to be an asset -- Pather
Panchali would not have been the same experience had material been cut. Each scene builds
upon what has come before. This is the kind of motion picture that will stay with you for
hours, or perhaps even days, after you‘ve left the theater, and that‘s a rare characteristic for
any movie.
Throughout the film, there is almost no shot where life is not seen. We always see
some life form or the other playing around on the screen. Dogs, cats, cattle and humans
galore, Pather Panchali is a film that overflows with vitality. However, such reductive
mapping would only lead to another over-simplification that Pather Panchali has been
regularly subjected to. Both Pather Panchali and Ray have been called, rather labeled,
humanist by admirers and critics all over the world. But such a reading of the film would just
conform to a pseudo-liberal view of destitution and reinforce Nargis Dutt‘s claims of selling
of poverty to the West. In Pather Panchali, Ray turns out to be an animist rather than a
humanist and the film itself, pro-life and anti-mankind.
Death of Durga in Pather Panchali was ―the most dramatic‖ one in Ray‘s films.The
loss of a loved one is like an earthquake that fractures our emotional landscape. The pain
from loss is also related to the nature of the relationship. A child experiences the most
distress when he is close to and dependent upon the one he is separated from. If the move or
the separation takes the child away from the loved one, he may experience the same intensity
of pain as if this were a death. In the same way, the film appeals directly to the sub-
conscious, it is hypnotic. Throughout the film, there is almost no shot where life is not seen.
Perhaps it is true to name life as Panchali which means the never ending story of
road. People walk along wondering what the road has in store for them round the next bend.
Some are lush with grass and fruit, gay with flowers and bird-song, but others are hard under
foot and strewn with thorns, sometimes lashed by storms and darkened by threatening clouds
though always there is hope that the air will be kinder. The road is eternal. Opu and Durga
still walk on, growing continuously in character and experience and in the nature of their
dreams and their hopes for the future. The film has been hailed by critics, filmmakers and
cinema lovers across the world as one of the greatest of all times. The essence of Pather
Panchali is adventure, commitment and discovery. In both, film and fiction, Pather Panchali,
we are captured in a ring of truth that touches the souls and minds, transcending cultural and
linguistic barriers. It deals with the grim struggle for survival by a poor family and it projects
the respect for human dignity. It allows the readers the simple but deep emotions of everyday
life- its joys, its bitterness, its anger, its resentment and its sorrows. It brings all back to
revisit the time left behind. It reminds the serene flow of a big river- people are born, live out
their lives and then accepts their death. Time passes, names alter but still families deal with
random catastrophe, still parents love their children unconditionally. And from this, emerges
a unique, if not ultimate, idiom that enriches intensity of human consciousness.

List of some canonical films important for review (10 Marks)

Citizen Kane (1941)

87 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Bicycle Thieves (1948)

Ben-Hur (1959)
The 400 Blows (1959)
Vertigo (1958)
Breathless (1960)
The Sound of Music (1965)
Andrei Rublev (1966)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
The Godfather (1972)
Sholay (1975)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Blade Runner (1982)
Ran (1985)
Jurassic Park (1993)
Schindler’s List (1993)
Matrix (1999)
The Dark Knight (2008)
Avengers: Endgame (2019) …..
…………………………..
(The list seems endless)

List of Model Questions for Film Studies

Specimen for 10 Marks Questions

1. Write a short essay on Silent Era (1895 – 1927)

2. Talkie/Sound Era in Film History
3. Use of Colour in Motion Picture
4. Digital Age in Film-making
6. Write a short essay on 3D films.
7. Write a short essay on the use of various cinematographic techniques.
8. Write a short essay on the various theories of adaptation in Film Studies.
9. Write a short article on citing some examples of literature to film adaptations.
10. Movie Review

Specimen for 5 Marks Questions

1. Georges Méliès (1861-1938)
2. D.W Griffith (1875-1948)
3. Charles Chaplin (1889-1977)
4. Fritz Lang (1890-1976)
5. Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948)
6. Luis Buñuel (1900-1983)

88 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

7. John Ford (1894-1973)

8. Jean Renoir (1894-1979)
9. Howard Hawks (1896-1997)
10. Frank Capra (1897-1991)
11. Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980)
12. Sir Walt Disney (1901-1966)
13. Vittorio De Sica (1901-1974)
14. Laurence Olivier (1907-1989)
15. Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998)
16. Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-2007)
17. Orson Welles (1915-1985)
18. Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007)
19. Federico Fellini (1920-1993)
20. Satyajit Ray (1921-1992)
21. Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999)
22. François Truffaut (1932-1984)
23. Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986)
24. Jean-Luc Godard (1930-Present)
25. Roman Polanski (1933- Present)
26. Woody Allen (1935- Present)
27. Ridley Scott (1937- Present)
28. Francis Ford Coppola (1939-Present)
29. Martin Scorsese (1942-Present)
30. Steven Spielberg (1946-Present)
31. Quentin Tarantino (1963- Presnet)
32. Christopher Nolan (1970- Present)
33. 400 Blows
34. Citizen Kane
35. 2001: A Space Odyssey
36. Man with a Movie Camera
37. Rashomon
38. Metropolis
39. City Lights
40. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
41. Schindler’s List (1993)
42. Psycho (1960)
43. Forrest Gump (1994)
44. Panning of the Camera
45. Zooming, Fade in
46. Fade Out
47. Flashback
48. Close up
49. Long Shot
50. Reverse Shot

89 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

51. Mise en scene

Sample of 2 Marks Questions:
1. Who directed the famous film ‗Ikiru‘?
Ans : Akira Kurosawa

2. Who was the music director of ‗Pather Panchali‘?

Ans : Ravi Shankar

3. ‗The 400 Blows‘, a film which marked the beginning of the French New Wave Movement
was directed by?
Ans : François Truffaut

4. Who directed the film Gulabi Talkies?

Ans : Girish Kasaravalli

5. The famous American action-comedy film True Lies is directed by?

Ans : James Cameron
6. Elipathayam is a film directed by?
Ans : Adoor Gopalakrishnan

7. Who is the director of the film Battleship Potemkin?

Ans: Sergei Eisenstein

8. Bicycle Thieves is considered as a/an_____?

A) French new wave film B) German surrealist film
C) Italian neorealist film D) American underground film
Ans : Italian neorealist film

9. Satyajit Ray‘s Pather Panchali (1955), regarded as India‘s first neo-realist film,
was voted ―the best human document‖ at the --------- in 1956.
Ans : Cannes Film Festival

10. --------- was the first film maker who introduced parallel action editing (cross-cut)
in feature film to heighten the anxiety of the audience.
Ans : D. W. Griffith

11. Robert Flaherty‘s classical documentary film, Nanook of the North pictured the
life of_______?
Ans : Eskimos

12. Which one of the following is a talkie made by Charlie Chaplin?

A) The Kid B) The Pilgrim
C) Monsieur Verdoux D) The Gold Rush

90 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

Ans : Monsieur Verdoux

13. Odessa Steps is a famous sequence in the classic movie ______?

Ans : Battleship Potemkin

14. French critic Andre Bazin‘s classic work on film theory is titled ______?
Ans : What is Cinema

15. Which among the following movies had a long speech of Charlie Chaplin against
war?
A) Limelight B) Modern Times
C) A King in New York D) The Great Dictator
Ans: The Great Dictator
16. The film The Great Train Robbery was made by?
Ans : Edwin S. Porter

17. The pioneer of silent feature film in India?

Ans : Dadasaheb Phalke

18. What is Film noir?

Ans : Hollywood crime dramas (The term was originally applied (by a group of French
critics) to American thriller or detective films made in the period 1944–54 and to the work of
directors such as Orson Welles, Fritz Lang, and Billy Wilder.)

19. Who directed Ecstasy?

Ans : Gustav Machatý

20. Swedish film, Wild Strawberries was directed by?

Ans : Ingmar Bergman

21. What is the name of Will Smith‘s character in Independence Day?

Ans. Captain Steven Hiller

22. Which 1997 film stars Nicolas Cage, John Cusack, and John Malkovich?
Ans. Con Air

23. How many people were killed in the 1996 film Scream?
Ans. Seven

24. What year was Forrest Gump released?

Ans. 1994

25. Lumière brothers, the pioneer of motion-picture are from

(a) French

91 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

(b) USA
(c) England
(d) Germany
Answer: (a) French

26. The first ever poster designed to promote an individual film is

(a) Partie de cartes
(b) Baby‘s Meal
(c) Les Forgerons
(d) L‘Arroseur Arrosé
Answer: (d) L‟Arroseur Arrosé

27. From which year, Oscar Award was first awarded

(a) 1921
(b) 1929
(c) 1932
(d) 1935
Answer: (b) 1929
28. Which one is the longest film to be shown in a cinema
(a) Grandmother Martha
(b) The Cure for Insomnia
(c) The Clock
(d) Heimat: A Chronicle of Germany

Answer: (b) The Cure for Insomnia

29. Who is the man with most oscar awards

(a) Edith Head
(b) John Ford
(c) Walt Disney
(d) Katharine Hepburn
Answer: (c) Walt Disney

30. Charlie Chaplin was born in

(a) USA
(b) England
(c) Switzerland
(d) Germany
Answer: (b) England

31. Which one is Charlie Chaplin‘s first film

(a) Between Showers
(b) The Star Boarder
(c) Making a Living

92 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

(d) A Busy Day

Answer: (c) Making a Living

32. In which movie Charlie Chaplin first play a speaking role

(a) The Great Dictator
(b) City Lights
(c) The Gold Rush
(d) The Kid
Show Answer/Hide Answer
Answer: (a) The Great Dictator

33. Who was the director of the movie ‗The Bridge on the River Kwai‘
(a) Akira Kurosawa
(b) Trevor Howard
(c) Omar Sharif
(d) David Lean
Show Answer/Hide Answer
Answer: (d) David Lean

34. World famous director Akira Kurosawa is from

(a) Japan
(b) South Korea
(c) China
(d) USA
Answer: (a) Japan

35. Which one is Bruce Lee‘s final film appearance before his death
(a) Fist of Fury
(b) Enter the Dragon
(c) The Big Boss
(d) The Way of the Dragon
Answer: (b) Enter the Dragon

36. When the cartoon character Mickey Mouse was first appeared in film
(a) 1923
(b) 1925
(c) 1928
(d) 1932
Answer: (c) 1928

37. Which one is first James Bond movie series

(a) Dr No
(b) From Russia with Love
(c) Goldfinger

93 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

(d) Thunderball
Answer: (a) Dr No

38. Which director is also known as master of suspense

(a) Martin Scorsese
(b) Woody Allen
(c) Steven Spielberg
(d) Alfred Hitchcock
Answer: (d) Alfred Hitchcock

39. The movie ‗The Godfather‘ wins the Oscar for Best Picture in the year
(a) 1969
(b) 1970
(c) 1972
(d) 1975
Answer: (c) 1972
40. Which one world‘s first full-length animated feature and the first in the Disney animated
features cartoon
(a) Melody Time
(b) Pinocchio
(c) Fantasia
(d) Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Answer: (d) Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

41. Which one is most expensive movies ever made

(a) Spiderman 3
(b) John Carter
(c) Pirates of the Caribbean: At World‘s End (d) Avatar
Answer: (c) Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

42. Who is the director of the movie ‗Avatar‘

(a) James Cameron
(b) Ridley Scott
(c) Steven Spielberg
(d) George Lucas
Answer: (a) James Cameron

43. The movie ‗Titanic‘ was released in the year

(a) 1995
(b) 1996
(c) 1997
(d) 1999
Answer: (c) 1997

94 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

43. The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy was filmed entirely in
(a) Australia
(b) New Zealand
(c) Malaysia
(d) Fiji
Answer: (b) New Zealand

44. Who played the role of James Bond in the movie ‗Dr. No‘
(a) Barry Nelson
(b) Pierce Brosnan
(c) Roger Moore
(d) Sean Connery
Answer: (d) Sean Connery

45. Who played the role of Don Vito Corleone in the movie ‗The Godfather‘
(a) Robert De Niro
(b) Marlon Brando
(c) Al Pacino
(d) James Caan
Answer: (b) Marlon Brando

46. For which film did Robert de Niro won the Oscar Award for best actor
(a) The Deer Hunter
(b) The Godfather Part II
(c) Raging Bull
(d) Taxi Driver
Answer: (c) Raging Bull

47. Which one is the oldest international film festival in the world
(a) Cairo
(b) Cannes
(c) Berlin
(d) Venice
Answer: (d) Venice

48. In which film festival Palme d‘Or award is given

(a) Toronto
(b) Cannes
(c) Berlin
(d) Montreal
Answer: (b) Cannes

49. The first film of the Lumiere brothers was shot in

(a) 1890

95 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

(b) 1892
(c) 1894
(d) 1899
Answer: (c) 1894

50. Who wrote the original book trilogy of the Lord Of The Rings
(a) Peter Jackson
(b) J. R. R. Tolkien
(c) J K Rowling
(d) Christopher Lee
Answer: (b) J. R. R. Tolkien

51. Where the headquaters of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios is located

(a) California
(b) Florida
(c) Chicago
(d) Paris
Answer: (a) California

52. First Indian movie submitted for Oscar

(a) The Guide
(b) Mother India
(c) Madhumati
(d) Amrapali
Answer: (b) Mother India

53. Satyajit Ray win Oscar in the year

(a) 1992
(b) 1994
(c) 1986
(d) 1990
Answer: (a) 1992

54. First Indian sound film was

(a) Alam Ara
(b) Raja Harishchandra
(c) Kishan Kanya
(d) None of the above
Answer: (a) Alam Ara

55. Filmfare awards started from the year

(a) 1952
(b) 1964
(c) 1954

96 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

(d) 1960
Answer: (c) 1954

56. From which year Indian Government sponsored National Film Award
(a) 1972
(b) 1973
(c) 1984
(d) 1980
Answer: (b) 1973

57. Total number of award won by Satyajit Ray in National Film Award
(a) 10
(b) 32
(c) 12
(d) 8
Answer: (b) 32

58. First Indian to win an Oscar award

(a) Bhanu Athaiya
(b) AR Rahman
(c) Rasul Pookutty
(d) None of the Above
Answer: (a) Bhanu Athaiya

59. Total number of Best Actor nomination for Amitabh Bachan in Filmfare Award
(a) 28
(b) 22
(c) 30
(d) 12
Answer: (a) 28

60. First Filmfare Award for best actor awarded to

(a) Ashok Kumar
(b) Dilip Kumar
(c) Raj Kapoor
(d) None of the Above
Answer: (b) Dilip Kumar

61. Last film directed by Satyajit Ray

(a) Agantuk
(b) Bala
(c) Pikoo
(d) Jana Aranya
Answer: (a) Agantuk

97 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

62. First 3D animated film from India is

(a) Roadside Romeo
(b) Ghayab Aaya
(c) Hanuman
(d) Bal Ganesh
Answer: (a) Roadside Romeo

63. First Indian animation film ―Ek Anek Aur Ekta‖ in 1974 directed by
(a) Ram Mohan
(b) Vijaya Mulay
(c) Milind Ukey
(d) None of the above
Answer: (b) Vijaya Mulay

64. Doordarshan founded in India in the year

(a) 1962
(b) 1965
(c) 1952
(d) 1959
Answer: (d) 1959

65. Which one is the longest film in India by running time

(a) Thavamai Thavamirundhu
(b) Mera Naam Joker
(c) LOC Kargil
(d) Parthiban Kanavu
Answer: (a) Thavamai Thavamirundhu

66. For which film Satyajit Ray won Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival in 1956
(a) Aparaijito
(b) Apur Sansar
(c) Pather Panchali
(d) Jalsaghar
Answer: (a) Aparaijito

67. Who was the first Indian Actress won Best Actress award in an International Film festival
(a) Suchitra Sen
(b) Waheeda Rahman
(c) Nutan
(d) Nargis Dutt
Answer: (a) Suchitra Sen

68. Who is called the ―Father of Indian Cinema‖ ?

98 | P a g e
 Krishna Chandra College – Department of English

a) AK Hangal
b) Dileep Kumar
c) Dada Saheb Phalke
d) Jatin Lalit
Answer c) Dada Saheb Phalke

69. The first Dada Saheb Phalke award is won by?

a) Devika Rani
b) Dileep Kumar
c) Dada Saheb Phalke
d) Jatin Lalit
Answer a) Devika Rani

70. Which one is india‘s first television soap opera

(a) Buniyaad
(b) Hum Log
(c) Ramayan
(d) Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi
Answer: (b) Hum Log

Prepared by
Arindam Ghosh

99 | P a g e