The Death Of Jean Pierre Grumbach

The film industry has gone through many different eras and genres, but one of the most significant in all of the industry’s history was film noir. Film noir is not necessarily a type of genre but rather a tone that branched off from the crime/gangster sags of the 1930’s. It has certain elements such as crime, sex, greed, and violence that are supposed to represent the same type of evils found in society. As any noir film, Double Indemnity also contains a moral conflict at the base of its plot. Film noir is generally defined as a dark, suspenseful thriller with a plot-line revolving around crime or mystery. Film noir gained more recognition after World War II. Particularly because Hollywood thrillers were been watched in French cinemas. The idea of film noir

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,

Orson Welles was born on the 6th of May in 1915 and died in 1985, on the 10th of October. He used to play magic, paint, and play the piano as a child, a later on he found himself directing, producing, writing and acting. Orson Welles performed in Romeo and Juliet, and started a radio career at the same time in 1934.

The major influences that led to Leni Riefenstahl’s rise to prominence includes a fateful event that kindles her fascination with film, the continual influence of mountain (Berg) films and acclaimed director Dr Arnold Fanck as well as her first début as a director and producer.

Alfred Hitchcock is widely regarded as a prime example of an auteur, a theory that emerged in the 1950s by Truffaut, in the ‘politique des auteurs’ of Cahiers du Cinema (Tudor 121). The auteur theory, as defined by Andrew Tudor, is premised on the assumption that “any director creates his films on the basis of a central structure”(140) and thus, if you consider their films in relation to each other, commonalities can be found within them. These commonalities work to demonstrate the view of the director as “the true creator of the film” (Tudor 122). Evidence of an auteur can be found in examining a director’s creative tendencies, in their distinctive themes and motifs, stylistic choices,

Film Noir, a term coined by the French to describe a style of film characterized by dark themes, storylines, and visuals, has been influencing cinematic industries since the 1940’s. With roots in German expressionistic films and Italian postwar documentaries, film noir has made its way into American film as well, particularly identified in mob and crime pictures. However, such settings are not exclusive to American film noir. One noteworthy example is Billy Wilder’s film Sunset Boulevard, which follows the foreboding tale of Joe Gillis, the desperate-for-success protagonist, who finds himself in the fatal grips of the disillusioned femme fatale Norma Desmond. Not only does the storyline’s heavy subject matter and typical character

Being one of the world’s most popular art forms, it was inevitable that these archetypes would find their way into film as well. In this essay I will argue that the

1959 was an exciting year in the history of filmmaking. An extraordinary conjunction of talent throughout the globe existed. In France, Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, Rohmer, Rivette, and Resnais all directed their first films, thus establishing the French New Wave. In Italy, Fellini created the elegant La Dolce Vita, and Antonioni gave us L’avventura. Most importantly, though, in America, famed British director Alfred Hitchcock gave us the classic thriller North by Northwest, the father of the modern action film.

What makes for a classic Hollywood film? Increasingly, films have evolved to the point where the standard by which one calls a “classic Hollywood film” has evolved over time. What one calls a classic film by yesterday’s standards is not the same as that of today’s standards. The film Casablanca is no exception to this. Although David Bordwell’s article, “Classical Hollywood Cinema” defines what the classical Hollywood film does, the film Casablanca does not exactly conform to the very definition that Bordwell provides the audience with in his article. It is true that the film capers closely to Bordwell’s definition, but in more ways than not, the film diverges from Bordwell’s definition of the typical Hollywood film.

The Lumiere brothers debuted their first motion picture on their brand new invention, the Cinematographe, in 1895. Since then, the movie industry has soared on to become one of the most influential mediums of the 20th and 21st century. 100 years later, Sarah Moon’s documentary Lumiere and Company (1995) reflected on the impact of the Lumiere brothers’ first films using testimonies and cinematic tributes from multiple international directors. Focusing on two Lumiere films; Workers Leaving the Factory (1895), and Demolition of a Wall (1896), as well as two cinematic tributes from two different directors; David Lynch, and Merzak Allouache, the everlasting impact of the Lumiere films can be recognized in both a current context and the context of

This film analysis will delineate the diverse directorial decisions of The French New Wave cinema movement, and how they have been utilised and developed to challenge and subvert the typical Hollywood filmmaking conventions and techniques of the 1950s and 60s Hollywood cinema, in François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959). Hollywood produced films of the time used a very limited variation in film techniques such as camera, acting, mise-en-scene, editing and sound. This can be mainly attributed to the low innovative thought of creative and expressive camera movements, angles, etc… due to technological hindrances. In particular, this film analysis will de-construct the filmmaking elements of the revelatory French New Wave movement in Truffaut’s The 400 Blows ending scene (01:34:42 – 01:39:32) portraying the main character Antoine Doinel’s escape from juvie and trek to the bespoken beach.

To fully comprehend why and how this cinematic motion took place, it is valuable here to establish the wider social climate of France at the time, and the active forces which heavily shaped New Wave cinema. Between the years of 1945 and 1975, France would undergo “thirty glorious years” of economic growth, urbanization, and a considerable baby boom, all of which came to expand and radically alter the parameters of French culture (Haine 33). Beneath the surface affluence however, France was in a state of deep self-evaluation and consciousness. Following WW11, the

Little do many Americans know that some of the most commendable movies of modern film have been derived from a French man and his passion for American Cinema. Directors like Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino have some of the most recognizable names in the industry, and rightfully so draw inspiration from this director and his non- traditional French films of the early 1960’s (Kolker 210). As a leader of the French New Wave movement, Jean- Luc Godard dually managed to purposefully and successfully change how both films were made, and the meanings being enforced in cinematography. Godard, as a director of movies, artfully employed this form of communication to bring a reality to film and shed a new light on the industry “and the ‘something’ that it can do” (Silverman), changing films internationally, and specifically influencing American directors, from the start of his career to the present day.

Leni Riefenstahl’s rise to prominence is multifaceted and her background, context and circumstances all contributed significantly to her notoriety. She is regarded as one of the most controversial and influential figures in the world of cinematography, and due to the growth of the film industry in Germany during the Weimer Republic, the continual influence of the expressionistic and nationalistic genre and the auspicious event that kindled her fascination with filmmaking, she became a ‘rising star’.

In answering the claim that “the heterogeneity of art cinema makes a mockery of the attempts that have been made to treat it as a distinct genre”, I felt it important to choose readings that I felt tried to deal with the elements of art cinema in a wider sense as opposed to focusing solely on a particular film/director or country. With this in mind the readings I found most apt for this task were, “Art Cinema” by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith whose essay the topic arose from, “The Art Cinema as Mode of Film Practice” by David Bordwell, “The French New Wave” by T Jefferson Kline and finally “The European Art Movie” by Thomas Elsaesser. The films I have decided to apply these readings to are “Vivre sa Vie” (Godard, 1962)