David O. Russell's Love For Film

Citizen Kane has long been regarded as a cinematic masterpiece and one of the greatest movies ever made. One look at the scene “Thatcher Taking Young Charles”, and you can see exactly why. The storytelling style of this film is a “successful fusion of the flashier devices of 1930s films, and techniques adapted from radio, theater, and prose narrative. “There is pro not a single device in Citizen Kane that cannot be found in earlier films, but Citizen Kane synthesizes elements of various traditions in a totally original way.” (Carringer,1978) This sequence makes use of various cinematic techniques to employ the auteur’s narrative.

At a very young age of eight, David Fincher’s passion for cinema grew when he was inspired by the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). Born in 1962 Denver, Colorado, David Fincher moved to Ashland, Oregon in his teens, where he graduated from Ashland High School. During high school, he directed plays, designed sets, and managed lighting after school. One summer, he and a friend attended the Berkley Film Institute’s summer program, where he hoped to learn film as a true art form but instead was taught the technical production. Either way he was happy to engage is this and as his early film industry career started, he was a production assistant at his local television news station. Years went by as he directed propaganda films followed by becoming a well-known music director until his first movie feature debut Aliens 3 in 1992. However, the American director David Fincher didn’t become a modern 21st century visionary until his creation of the film Se7en (1995). The huge success from this film started Fincher’s popularity in the film industry. From there he continued to make ironic movies we know today such as: Fight Club (1999), Zodiac (2007), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), The Social Network (2010), Gone Girl, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

During the course of this essay it is my intention to discuss the differences between Classical Hollywood and post-Classical Hollywood. Although these terms refer to theoretical movements of which they are not definitive it is my goal to show that they are applicable in a broad way to a cinema tradition that dominated Hollywood production between 1916 and 1960 and which also pervaded Western Mainstream Cinema (Classical Hollywood or Classic Narrative Cinema) and to the movement and changes that came about following this time period (Post-Classical or New Hollywood). I intend to do this by first analysing and defining aspects of Classical Hollywood and having done that,

What were Edwin S. Porter's significant contributions to the development of early narrative film? In what sense did Porter build upon the innovations of contemporaneous filmmakers, and for what purposes?

The 1990 documentary, Berkeley in the Sixties, offers a retrospective of the realization and evolution of the Free Speech Movement (FSM) at the University of California, Berkeley. Through a mixture of archival footage and “talking head” interviews, the film makes a compelling argument about the importance of Berkeley in the protest movements of the 1960s, but at the same time falls victim to some of the pitfalls common in documentary films that make them unreliable as historical documents. The film offers plenty of firsthand accounting and contemporary footage that give it a sheen of authenticity, however, in its lionization of UC alums it also manages to conflate an entire decade and a complex national gestalt with static instances and the hindsight remembrances of a handful of activists.

Should we as a society set a monetary value on life, or let it exist on an emotional level? Are the accomplishments we achieve and the money we make throughout our lifetime the only things that determine what our life is worth after death; or should it be based on the value that the individual put upon their own experiences. In contemporary American Society, this question remains to be asked when someone loses their life. In the excerpt from Chris Jones’ “Roger Ebert: The Essential Man” The struggles which Ebert Endures, and the high value he remained to keep on his own life was revealed, which displayed his own personal value of life and how it is precious throughout the conflict. I agree with this mentality completely, because one’s circumstances may outweigh another’s, meaning that there is

Russell Westbrook was born on November 12, 1988, in Long Beach, California. Westbrook grew up loving the game of basketball from his dad who was really big on the sport. Russell’s dad was a playground star and spent countless hours teaching his son the sport. Russell practiced drills everyday because his dad wanted him to become a basketball star. Aside from basketball Russell’s mom made him really focus on academics which set Russell up for becoming an honor student.

Rarely has a film impacted an audience and held the test of time as the film Gone with the Wind. I have always been curious if director, Victor Fleming and producer, David O. Selznick and screenplay writer, Sidney Howard knew what they were creating a masterpiece and how this film would have such an enormous impact on audiences for years to come. Interestingly enough there were some who thought the film should not be made, as Irving Thalberg said to Louis B. Meyer in 1936, “Forget it Louis, no Civil War picture ever made a nickel” (Ten Films that Shook the World).

In the film industry, there are directors who merely take someone else’s vision and express it in their own way on film, then there are those who take their own visions and use any means necessary to express their visions on film. The latter of these two types of directors are called auteurs. Not only do auteurs write the scripts from elements that they know and love in life, but they direct, produce, and sometimes act in their films as well. Three prime examples of these auteurs are: Kevin Smith, Spike Lee and Alfred Hitchcock.

As one of the most widely acclaimed and influential directors of the postwar era, Stanley Kubrick enjoyed a reputation and a standing unique among the filmmakers of his day. He had a brilliant career with relatively few films. An outsider, he worked beyond the confines of Hollywood, which he disliked, maintaining complete control of his projects and making movies according to his own ideas and time constraints. To him, filmmaking was a form of art and unlike Hollywood, not a business.

Since the beginning of the Industrial Age, Americans have idealized the journey towards economic success. One thing people do not realize, however, is that that journey is not the same for every individual. For Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles), the main character of Citizen Kane, directed by Orson Welles, the path towards riches and a fulfilled life is being well liked. He serves to please others. He strives for that attention. This view cost him his happiness in the end. In this man’s rise and fall through prosperity, Welles shows the futility of striving solely for likeability.

The absolutely stunning film, Citizen Kane (1941), is one of the world’s most famous and highly renowned films. The film contains many remarkable scenes and cinematic techniques as well as innovations. Within this well-known film, Orson Welles (director) portrays many stylistic features and fundamentals of cinematography. The scene of Charles Foster Kane and his wife, Susan, at Xanadu shows the dominance that Kane bears over people in general as well as Susan specifically. Throughout the film, Orson Welles continues to convey the message of Susan’s inferiority to Mr. Kane. Also, Welles furthers the image of how demanding Kane is of Susan and many others. Mr. Welles conveys the message that Kane has suffered a hard life, and will

Kubrick made his first film in 1953 and has continued to make films till his death shortly after the film Eyes Wide Shut in 1999. With a film career spanning over four decades, he crafted consistent themes, and honed a highly personalized style which was woven into the films he made. Stanley Kubrick was a very stylistic film maker and paid

The intention of this essay is to discuss the romantic notion of a film director who has etched their own cinematic vision into the body of their film work, and whether the theory and practice is dead and an infringement of the spectator’s imagination and is it the spectator who finds meaning in the film. I will be closely looking at critical material, primarily André Bazin and Roland Barthes and applying them to several case study films directed by Christopher Nolan including The Following (1998), The Prestige (2006) and Inception (2010), to examine whether Nolan possesses the qualities of an auteur and if so, does that imply an ideological view of what the auteur resembles or an artistic one.

Steven Spielberg is one of the most successful directors of all time (in fact, may people would argue that he is the most successful director there has ever been) and his movies have been some of the most profitable and well known in history. His opening sequences are noted for being captivating, gripping and often scary, building tension and suspense. Born in 1946 in Ohio, Spielberg has become elite among directors. The gross of the films he has directed is estimated at $8.5 billion, and three of his films – Jurassic Park, Jaws and E.T. the extra-terrestrial – have achieved box office records.