Gun Crazy byJim Kitses

Quickly read "Gun Crazy" by Jim Kitses, from BFI Film Classics (1996) to prep for Lifelong Learning talk last week. Short book but great to encapsulate a large number of discussion topics.

Also read select portions of "Dalton Trumbo, Hollywood Rebel: a critical survey and filmography" by Peter Hanson. Good book but didn't want to commit to reading it cover to cover for this one talk. 

Working Girls in the West

Working Girls in the West: Representations of Wage-Earning Women by Lindsey McMaster. 2008. 

Monsterous Progeny

Monsterous Progeny: a history of the Frankenstein narratives by Lester D. Friedman and Allison B. Kavey, 2016

First chapters on intellectual history, medical history, and page to stage are likely written by Kavey. They are much more academic with much information I'd never known or considered, but required more/greater concentration. The later chapters on film and pop culture representations are likely written by Friedman and are interesting and well researched but also thinner and quicker to read. 

have monster, will travel

Expressionism in the Cinema

Expressionism in the Cinema edited by Olaf Brill adn Gary D. Rhodes, 2016

Expresionist Cinema - style and design in film history by Thomas Elsaesser
Page 22, Pommer quoted sayijng "The German film industry made 'stylized films' to make money"
Bunuel influenced by Lang's "Destiny"

Page 29, Lang, Murnau, Pabst adn others had great technical skills: "This high level of proficiency in film technique and film design, combined with the formation of teams, suggests that filmmakers, camermen and art directors were not concerned about questions of individual talent asmuch as they were engaged in a process of unifying differnt elements, citing or recycling aesthetic styles as set-pieces, according to story, situation and demand. ... Expressionism in film, too, falls under this verdict of a 'borrowed' idiom"

Page 30. German Expressionist film in general, whose identity is stylistic only insofar as story and style are interdependent, because driven by exigencies of technique and the state-of-the-art of film technology, not the other way round.

Page 30, "...expressionism is the moment of cinema expressing itself, performing itself -- which is one of the clues as to why it can periodically return, as it has done in teh 1940s as film noir, in the 1970s as neo-noir, ..."

Page 33. When the cyborgs and avatars of today are second cousins to the somnambulists and hypnotists of Weimar. In other words,: the secret affinities are also with ecstatic bodies and psychic prosthetics, with techno-mutants and the post-human.

Franjo Ledic: a forgotten pioneer of German Expressioonism by Daniel Rafaelic
 Page 65. Franjo Lodic is Croatian director who started off in Germany and diected one lost film "Angelo" in 1920, before Caligari.

Expressionist Film and Gender: Genuine, A Tale of a Vampire (1920) by Mirjam Kappes
Second expressionist film by Robert Wiene.
Page 84. New woman in Germany in 1920s "oscillated between privilege and discrimination, between emancipation and subordination"
Anton Kaes quoted: "Even uncritical entertainment films this often have a compensatory, unintended critical function: they show something that is missing in life outside cinema, something that cannot happen in reality".

"The Secrets of Nature and its Unifying Principles": Nosferatu (1922) and Jokob von Uexkull on Umwelt by Steve Choe
page 95. 1922 arguments that cinema image is a form of life (akin to a vampire), "charactorizes this aspect of expressionist cinema as an uncanny form of non-human life"
Page 107. Jussi Parikka's "insect media cited for alternate perseption of world through insect or camera eye.

Raskolnikow (1923): Russian literature as impetus for German Expressionism by John T. Soister
Page 118-124, summary of novel "Crime and Punishment"

"The Reawakening of French Cinema": Expression and Innovation in Abel Gance's J'Accuse (1919) by Paul Cuff
Page 151. "J'accuse offers uniquely cinematic alternatives to the purely textual form of language. The most obvious example of this occurs early in the film, when Jean reads his poetry (an 'ode to the sun') to his mother. Instead of being shown the text of his speech, we are given a visual representation of his ideas. This series of lyrical images includes beautifully composed shots of sunlit exteriors, as well as painted images of idyllic scenes of nature and man in harmony."
Page 163. "the most common complaint is that the form and content of his films are irreconcilable."

Here Among the Dead: The Phantom Carriage (1921) and the Cinema of the Occulted Taboo by Robert Guffey
Pag 178. "Etheric Web" is "The protection provided by nature to prevent a premature opening up of a connection between teh planes". according to C.W. Leadbeater in 1927 book Chakras: a monograph.

Page 182-183. Romantic description of traditional SFX over "cold" digital effects. (copy page)
Page 187. Bergman cast director Sjostrom in Wild Strawberries. "Cocteau was the Grand Master of a centuries old occult secret society known as the Prieure de Sion".

"True, Nervous": American Expressionist Cinema and the Destabilized Male by Robert Singer
Copied article for P.M.
Page 249. "form from deformation"
Page 251. "fixed ideas" = obsessions, impulsions, phobias .. a lunatic tormented with fixed ideas, whether he accords them full credence or struggles against the encroaching delirium, has always an exact knowledge of the thoughts, which torment him"
Page 261. Eyes Wide Shut as expressionist.
Page 262-3 for Xin

Dos Monjes (1934) and the Tortured Search for Truth by David J. Hogan
Page 266. "expressionist art ... is pointedly self referential. It is conscious of its own form, and invites exaggerated viewer attention to the medium" (intentional artifice)

Maya Deren in Person in Expressionism by Graeme harper
Page 294, Peter Dellolio quoted: "Another important ingredient of Expressionism is its attack upon the primordial issue of identity, often resulting in the alienation of the individual from what was formerly incontrovertible and familiar"
Page 295. Expressionism's anxiety about the importance and possibilities of self-hood.
Page 299. Deren quoted in 1947. "The function of film is to create experience". 

Cinema of Preston Sturges, a critical study

Cinema of Preston Sturges, a critical study by Alessandro Pirolini
Page 7, Wife quote on "change" being natural to Sturges in his life.
Page 8, 1930 failures, offer from Hollywood, acclaimed as an "author".
In less than 15 years wrote 40 screenplays and directed 12 movies.
married 4 times.
Page 13, Sullivan ending discussed.
Pager 22, mistaken identity as a motif
Page 24-25, non-preachy nature of dialogue.
Page 34, Postmodernism "exposing cinema's awareness of its own past"
Page 41-42, sight gags, look for in each film. pratfalls.
Page 53, "history as a malleable story ... one of the points of post modernism" (Steven Scott)
Page 59, exposes cliches of the genre
Page 78, "executive and investors drawn to new forms of media in their early stages of development have always looked with suspicion at the meta-linguistic approach -- as the unveiling of the mediums's language and its rules runs counter to the audience's fundamental need to enjoy the text without critical involvement."
Page 78, "On the Air" a 1992 David Lynch tv show.
Page 105, "Sturges's lack of cinematic virtuosity was so blatant as to appear almost in conflict with his complex narrative style"
Page 106, Sturges's comic style relies entirely on an unpreventable chain of self-triggered events that unfold 'naturally' before our eyes and rely on fast-paced, witty dialogue, fully appreciable only through a high degree of technical transparency."
Page 108, long takes noted, 4 minute shot at beginning of Sullivan.
Purpose: for audience to sit back and learn what the characters have to say.
Page 109, "narratage" is a voice over narration superimposed on silent images, a technique by which the narrator comments on the characters' actions, and sometimes even loans his voice to the actors concerned".
Page 122, the girl/love interest is the only one who understands the passion of the protagonist as well as the pragmatism of the antagonist.
See lecture notes to LLC from February 12
http://www.nmsl.uregina.ca/saul/documents/PrestonSturgesatLifelongLearningCentre.pdf
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Reel Families by Zimmermann

Reel Families: A Social History of Amateur Film by Patricia R. Zimmermann, 1995.

Chapter 1 is great. Has analysis and summary of evolution of 19th century professionals versus amateurs.
Page 12, "in his America by Design, David Noble has noted that technology can function as a powerful instrument of corporate consolidation and protection from competition"
Page 14, Kodak patents and monopoly.
Page 15-16, origin of Bell and Howell in 1906, eliminating flicker and standardized 24 fps.
Page 21, 1923 Kodak started reversal process.
Page 23, "amateur film became the domain where one mastered and controlled technology, in contradiction to work where technology and technocracy controlled the worker.
Page 23, "A 1910 Scientific American article explained how to build a 35mm motion picture camera.
Page 33, "The cultural and, by this time, common sensical distinctions between the amateur as spontaneous and the professional as disciplined emerged in amateur photography from 1888 to 1923, most pervasively on the level of content".
Page 36, "The relationship between amateur and art photography was grounded in idealist conceptions of the artist as being removed and protected from corrupting external influences like society or money".
Page 43, Susan Sontag book "On Photography" discusses amateurs.
Page 46, "Writers in both popular technical journals and mass-market magazines directed amateurs toward crafting narrative spectacles of idealized family life".
Page 64-65, Compare amateur with Hollywood.
Page 67, "Professional touted tripods to stabilize technique"
Page 82, Cecil B. DeMille using 16mm aesthetic in Ten Commandments and "Zeppelin Square in Madame Satan".
Page 85, "[Bertolt] Brecht argued for a redefinition of 'folk' or 'popular' culture in his sessay "The Popular and the Realistic", published in the 1930s."
Page 91-92, in 1944 Hollywood cinematographer James Howe observes artificial Hollywood vs realistic 16mm newsreel.
Page 109, Hopi Horizons by Mary L. DeGive and Margaret Cussler for Kiath.
Page 117, "consumption compensated for lack of control and creativity at work"
Page 127, "Narrative organization and common sense united to stave off chaotic confusing and incomprehensibility"
Pge 129, Maya Deren writing on amateur film.
Page 134, "parenting as a leisure time hobby"
Page 146, Experimental film using home movies.
Page 152, George Kuchar on video.
Page 154, Gay and Lesbian filmmakers. Sadie Benning with FIsher Price camera.
Page 157, Rodney King beating on tape.