Sample Exams for Exam #1 (American Film History, 1894-1941)

First Sample Exam #1  (American Film History, 1894-1941)

The exam is worth 100 points.

• You have 50 minutes to complete the exam.
• Please use a blue book.

Identifications

Please write a sentence demonstrating your knowledge about the following people, films, or concepts. Then, in another sentence, indicate the importance of each item to this course. Each question is worth 4 points each. Suggested time per question: 2 minutes each.

I1. Motion Picture Patents Corporation

I2. Lois Weber

I3. Sylvia Landry

I4. A Fool There Was

I5. Janet Staiger

Quotations

Please identify the source of the following quotations (author’s name and/or approximate article title). Then, in one sentence, briefly describe how the quoted passage is relevant to the course. Each question is worth 5 points. Suggested time per question: 2 minutes each.

Q1. "I should like to confront a conclusion in the history of the American film industry now accepted almost as gospel: Warner Brothers’ impending bankruptcy caused its innovation of sound. Numerous writers of the history of the American film industry have set forth this claim."

Q2. "A certain still image of [her] has circulated in European and American discourse for a number of years. We know that this pose was not spontaneously assumed; according to John Baxter’s source, "her casual pose on the stage with one leg upraised was arrived at only after much experiment...."

Q3. "However appealing the individual gags are, [the film] patterns its comic aspects as strictly as it does its other motifs. The film’s journey pattern often arranges a series of gags according to a formal principle of theme and variations."

Q4. "Harry conceived of an idea of how to use this new invention. He later remarked to Catchings: ‘If it can talk, it can sing.’ [They] could record the greatest vaudeville and musical acts and present them in small- to medium-sized theatres. This would provide for these theatres presentations equal to, or better than, those currently available, at a much lower cost."

Short Answer Questions

Write a brief paragraph (4 or 5 sentences) in response to each of the following questions. Each question is worth 15 points. Suggested time per question: 8 minutes each.

S1. In lecture, Walter discussed the way in which femininity as a gender position was defined in teens cinema, through the concepts of the True and New Woman. Briefly describe the features of the True and New Woman. Then, discuss how these concepts might help us understand gender in Our Hospitality.

S2. In their chapter on the subject in Film Art, Bordwell and Thompson define mise-en-scene. Briefly explain what they mean by mise-en-scene. Then, briefly discuss the mise-en-scene in the opening sequence of Blonde Venus.

S3. Briefly discuss how silent slapstick comedy’s development throughout the 1920s can help demonstrate the significant narrative developments produced during the early days of the Classical Hollywood Cinema. Be sure to mention two specific silent slapstick comedy films in order to support your answer.

S4. What is the thesis of Tom Gunning’s essay, "Heard Over the Phone?" Describe how Gunning’s approach in this essay might help us to understand The Lonedale Operator’s representation of the use-value of technology.

Second Sample Exam #1  (American Film History, 1894-1941)

Identifications

I1. Thomas Ince

Answer: Thomas Ince was an early film producer and director (of such films as 1916's Civilization) (2 points). He is important because he built Inceville, a studio complex, for which he is generally credited with concretizing the modern Hollywood studio (2 points).

I2. Gus Chase Sequence

Answer: The "Gus Chase" sequence in The Birth of a Nation features a black soldier Gus chasing a Southern white woman; at the end of the chase she throws herself off of a cliff rather than allowing herself to be caught (2 points). This is important because it shows how aesthetics and ideology cannot be so easily separated (as traditional film historians argue by saying, "The Birth of a Nation is a racist film, but it is an aesthetically brilliant film anyway"): the aesthetic practice of parallel editing that relies on a distance between Gus and the woman also articulate the ideological practices of racism (the enforced separation of blacks and whites through anti-miscegenation laws) (2 points).

I3. Picture Personality

Answer: The Picture Personality is a transitional figure in the history of the Hollywood star system, prominent from 1909-1914 (2 points). This is important because, unlike the full-blown movie star, the Picture Personality’s fame was exclusively constructed through her appearance in films, not through studio publicity about her private life (2 points).

I4. Our Dancing Daughters

Answer: Our Dancing Daughters was a 1928 film first conceptualized as a silent film, but then quickly converted into a sound film (2 points). The film is also important because it featured Joan Crawford as a vamp; thus Walter’s (bad) pun that the film was re-vamp-ed for sound (2 points).

I5. Old Ned

Answer: Old Ned is the Uncle Tom preacher in Within Our Gates (2 points). This is important because, unlike Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1903), which celebrates the Uncle Tom (a black who supports the racist power structure), Within Our Gates reveals Old Ned’s self-loathing and realization that he has sold his people down the river by toadying up to the racist whites (2 points).

Quotations

Q1. "Unquestionably [the film], like many films of its genre, transmits a sense of compassion for the poor and the exploited. But at the level of real conditions we cannot tell why the poor are poor nor who their exploiters are."

Answer: This quote comes from Charles Eckert, "The Anatomy of a Proletarian Film," page 420. The quote explores how Marked Woman as a gangster film fits in with the Depression-era valorization of the proletariat, yet is not very radical (the film does not theorize how and why poverty works and how it can be fixed) (5 points).

Q2. "In the classical Hollywood narrative the chain of actions that results from predominantly psychological causes tends to motivate most or all other narrative events. Time is subordinated to the cause-effect chain in a host of ways. The plot will omit significant durations in order to show only events of causal importance. . . . Motivation in the classical narrative film will strive to be as clear as possible--even in the fanciful genre of the musical, in which song and dance numbers become motivated as either expressions of the characters’ emotions or stage shows mounted by the characters."

Answer: The quote comes from Bordwell and Thompson, Film Art, Chapter 4 ("Narrative as a Formal System"), page 109. The quote explores the classical narrative’s tight chain of cause and effect events, which is important because it is the cornerstone of the classical Hollywood narrative (where we could pull an event out of the Buster Keaton short, One Week, we could not do so with Our Hospitality without breaking the tight cause and effect chain of its narrative) (5 points).

Q3. "Anxious, the wife calls her husband at the friend’s home to which he had telephoned earlier. The phone call bridges the scene change, the second scene opening in the friend’s apartment as the telephone rings. Marex at first tries to dispel his wife’s anxiety, but suddenly she chokes with fear and Marex hears his home being broken into. He listens helplessly to the sounds of violent struggle, the screams of his child, and then complete silence. Marex cries out, ‘they have murdered them,’ and the curtain falls."

Answer: The quote comes from Tom Gunning, "Heard Over the Phone," page 192. The quote describes the end of Andre de Lorde’s Grand Guignol play which serves as the source for Griffith’s The Lonely Villa and Weber’s Suspense; this is important because both films re-write this tragedy into a happy ending where the husband rescues the family (5 points).

Q4. "[The film] affirmed and dramatizes this new. . . ideal--the grasping after ‘the finer things, the higher hopes, and higher aims.’ Throughout the film, visual images symbolize this point; success symbols are good; poverty symbols are bad. Life in the parlor is good; on the street corner, bad. The message is so strong that the hero’s success at the expense of his suicidal woman is seen as a tolerable price to pay for a victory over shabbiness and poverty."

Answer: The quote comes from Thomas Cripps, "Race Movies as Voices of the Black Bourgeoisie," page 50. The quote describes how race movies like Scar of Shame so authorized the black middle-class’s project of living life as role models for the black working-class that it was OK for Scar of Shame to end with the suicide of the working-class Louise so that her middle-class Alvin could marry the "proper" middle-class woman, Alice (5 points).

Short Answer Questions

S1. List the four kinds of film history that Walter outlined in lecture. Write one sentence for each kind which indicates a fact pertinent to applying this area of film history to the coming of sound to Hollywood.

Answer: The four kinds of film history are: aesthetic, technological, economic (or institutional), and social (or cultural) (8 points). Aesthetic: The coming of sound initially caused the visual reversion of American cinema to the days of 1903, when the camera did not move and shot everything in long shot without cutting. Technological: The coming of sound was faciliated by Lee DeForest’s invention of the audion amplifier tube, which allowed the sound to be amplified to a large audience. Economic: Warner Bros.’s bold financing strategy to fix its problem of having too many small theatres was largely responsible for initiating the coming of sound in 1926-28. Social: The coming of sound had large cultural effects on Hollywood genres, initiating a spate of gangster films, musicals, and dialogue comedies (7 points).

S2. In lecture, Walter defined the concept of "discursive authority" in order to explain the differences between The Lonedale Operator and How Men Propose. Briefly define "discursive authority." Then, briefly apply the concept to the ending of The Cheat.

Answer: Discursive authority is a term which refers to which character’s claim to power is being supported by film itself. For example, in Jurassic Park, Ian Malcolm has discursive authority since his prediction that the island is a really bad idea comes true when the dinosaurs begin eating all of the characters in the film (8 points). The discursive authority at the end of The Cheat revolves around the outcome of the trial. First, it is important that Arakau has absolutely no discursive authority: when Edith reveals her branded shoulder, he is lucky not to be lynched on the spot by the racist mob. Richard and Edith perhaps share discursive authority at the end of the film, although it is really important that Edith gets to speak, but is not listened to until she reveals her mutilated body. I would ultimately claim that Richard has discursive authority, since Edith’s quest to be involved in public life has merely led to her own body’s mutilation, and nothing that Richard does at the end of the film indicates his inclination to change his attitude toward his wife’s role in their marriage (7 points).

S3. In lecture, Walter argued that the thematic interest of The Crowd lay partly in its ability to express American fears regarding modernization and urbanization. In this same lecture, Walter argued that the silent slapstick comedy is just as interesting thematically as melodramatic epics like The Crowd. Briefly test out this assertion by demonstrating how Our Hospitality expresses through comedy some of the same fears about modernization and urbanization that The Crowd expresses dramatically.

Answer: Our Hospitality builds its entire plot around rural-urban and pastoral-modern conflicts. The film’s funniest gag, in my opinion, is when the title card indicates that we are about to see a historical reconstruction of Broadway in 1830, and then we cut to a shot of two farm roads intersecting. Through the production of laughter, the gag diffuses anxiety over Broadway’s (i.e. New York City’s) crowdedness compared to what it once was (unpopulated land). The modern-pastoral tensions are also represented in the sequence featuring the train, as we see the citizens celebrate the technology of the train, yet realize that nature is just as good at transportation (the dog runs just as fast as the train) (8 points). The rural-urban tensions are played out by the feud itself. The film emperils the urban character, Willie McCay (Buster Keaton), through the rural tradition of feuding, but also shows how the feud is ended by Mr. Canfield’s application of the down-home "Love Thy Neighbor" motto (7 points).

S4. Briefly explain how the Classical Hollywood continuity editing system is used in the scenes in Blonde Venus located in Johnny’s bedroom (which particular scene is your choice). Briefly speculate on what effects these aesthetic practices have on the thematic significance of your chosen scene.

Answer: Continuity editing is built on the principle that the shots should be put together in such a way as to avoid the spectator noticing the cuts. This is accomplished through the 180 degree rule, shot-reverse shot, and glance-object cutting (8 points). In the scene where Helen and Ned are first putting Johnny to bed, the 180 degree rule is established on "our" side of Johnny’s crib. The camera never crosses the axis behind the crib. The scene, particularly at the end, when Ned and Helen go "walking" is constructed through glance-object cuts between Ned and Helen on one side and Johnny on the other. Thematically, this latter part of the scene is all about the child’s attempt to understand his place in the psycho-sexual workings of the family. We get a shot of Ned joking "and then we thought of you" (i.e., he and Helen had sex and conceived Johnny) and a cut to Johnny rubbing his eyes and falling asleep (7 points).

Third Sample Exam #1  (American Film History, 1894-1941)

Identifications

I1. Alice Guy-Blache

Answer: Alice Guy-Blache, one of the most powerful women in early cinema, owned her own studio in New Jersey (2 points). This is important because often traditional film historians discuss only D.W. Griffith when presenting early teens American cinema (2 points).

I2. The Lights of New York

Answer: The Lights of New York is the early sound film which Warner Bros. marketed as the first 100% all-talkie (2 points). The film is important because it demonstrates some of the many problems with early sound recording: at one moment, a man has to walk across the set to where the microphone is placed in order to be heard (2 points).

I3. Nick Townsend

Answer: Nick Townsend is the character Cary Grant plays in Blonde Venus (2 points). This is important because the star system positions Nick as the desirable mate for Helen, the Marlene Dietrich character, precisely because he is Cary Grant and not the lackluster Herbert Marshall (2 points).

I4. Sound Dissolve

Answer: A sound dissolve is an aural aesthetic practice in which the sound volume is brought up accompanying one shot while being lowered on the next shot, and vice versa (2 points). This is important because it is a technique only possible with multi-track recording, not possible until the early 1930s, when sound films began to achieve maturity, as in the sound dissolve in Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde (Dr. Jeckyl’s lecture followed by noisy reactions by the students) that we heard in class (2 points).

I5. Charles Eckert

Answer: Charles Eckert is the author of "Anatomy of a Proletarian Film," an exploration of the class politics in Marked Woman (2 points). The essay is important because it offers a complex model for doing class-based film criticism sensitive to the film’s cultural context (in this case the Depression) (2 points).

Quotations

Q1. "Our examples suggest the powerful effects that narration can achieve by manipulating the range of story information. Restricted narration tends to create greater curiosity and surprise for the viewer. For instance, if a character is exploring a sinister house and we see and hear no more than the character does, a sudden revelation of a hand thrusting out from a doorway will startle us."

Answer: The quote comes from Bordwell and Thompson, Film Art, Chapter 4 ("Narrative as a Formal System"), page 104. The quote is important because it reveals how our spectatorial experience with a film is so closely connected to the film’s narration, a point which helps explain the effect of the flashback telling Sylvia’s story at the end of Within Our Gates (5 points).

Q2. "[T]raditional Puritan ethics about productive and restrained behavior were contradicted by the new norms of leisure and display. Moreover, it would have been foolish to act in such a way as to destroy the very message one wanted to send. Spending too much money could lead to financial ruin. Spending on the wrong things could endanger the home. A consumption well regulated in degree and object orientation was necessary for the maintenance of the household unit."

Answer: The quote comes from Janet Staiger, "The Butterfly," page 164. The quote is important because it analyzes the central concern of The Cheat: whether Edith Hardy’s desire for access to money is a threat to her family life (5 points).

Q3. "For [the studio] one man secured the financial backing and provided much of the necessary business acumen. He was Waddill Catchings, the chief investment banker of Wall Street’s Goldman, Sachs Company. . . . Central to Catchings’s economic theory was the necessity for the businessman-entrepreneur to take bold action."

Answer: The quote comes from Douglas Gomery, "Writing the History of the American Film Industry," page 113. The quote is important because it describes the coherent economic practice engaged in by Warner Bros. to convert to sound, unlike the traditional film historians who argued incorrectly that Warner Bros. was desperate to convert to sound because they were going bankrupt (5 points).

Q4. "In a 1917 handbook for freelance writers of movies, Marguerite Bertsch writes, ‘By the subjective we mean all that takes place within the mind or soul of a character, either in thought or feeling, influencing his future behavior.’ She then describes two techniques: the double exposure, in which both the character and the subjective thoughts are represented simultaneously in the image, and editing with dissolves. . . . Of course, Bertsch is disseminating and formalizing conventions we recognize, as did she, as part of the standard techniques of the Hollywood film of 1917."

Answer: The quote comes from Janet Staiger, "Mass-Produced Photoplays," page 145. The quote is important because it indicates how stabilized Hollywood aesthetic practices were by 1917, the year of the "solidification" of the Classical Hollywood Studio System (5 points).

Short Answer Questions

S1. Both Walter in lecture and Janet Staiger in her essay, "Mass-Produced Photoplays," emphasize the importance of standardization and differentiation as complimentary concepts for understanding the functioning of the Classical Hollywood Studio System. Briefly define these concepts. Then, briefly explain how these concepts might help us understand Blonde Venus by applying them to one scene of your choice.

Answer: Standardization is the economic principle that describes the attempt to maximize profits by minimizing costs through streamlining the production process. Differentiation is the necessary counterweight to standardization: it describes the process through which each film is made to appear different from the previous one released by that studio (8 points). Blonde Venus is a standardized studio film: Paramount’s crew use the standardized continuity editing system to build the film’s narration (as in the scenes where Johnny goes to bed), yet uses bizarre musical numbers like "Hot Voodoo" featuring Marlene Dietrich to differentiate it from other Paramount releases (7 points).

S2. Briefly describe the visual aesthetic practices of very early cinema (circa 1903). Briefly argue whether these features can be seen in the actualite, McKinley at Home.

Answer: Very early cinema, such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1903) features one shot for one scene, and the use of long shots to convey the action (8 points). McKinley at Home (1896), showing President McKinley in long shot walking toward the camera and doffing his hat, consisting of only one shot, is a perfect example of the visual aesthetic practices of very early cinema (7 points).

S3. Briefly differentiate the two sorts of pleasure in watching movies with which Walter began this course. Briefly demonstrate how these two different perspectives on spectatorial pleasure would lead to two different views on the film, Our Hospitality.

Answer: Walter claimed that there is a visceral, emotion-based pleasure which describes our going to the movies for entertainment and an intellectual, critical pleasure which desribes our going to the movies as thoughtful and intellectually-aware scholars (8 points). Entertainment-based values would lead one to emphasize how funny (and thus enjoyable) the gags in Our Hospitality were (such as the one where the intertitle tells us we are about to see a historical reconstruction of Broadway in the early 19th century when what we get is two barren farm roads). Critical or intellectual pleasure would build interpretations of the film linking it to aesthetic, technological, economic, or cultural film histories. The Broadway gag’s production of critical pleasure could involve its commentary about American culture’s anxieties over modernization and urbanization (7 points).

S4. Briefly describe the thesis (central argument) of Thomas Cripps’ essay, "Race Movies as the Voice of the Black Bourgeoisie." Then, briefly indicate how Cripps’ argument might help us understand Within Our Gates. Be sure to mention at least one specific scene from Within Our Gates in order to support your answer.

Answer: Thomas Cripps, in discussing The Scar of Shame, argues that race movies sympathize with the black middle-class’s desire to uplift the black working-class through setting themselves up as moral role-models for those less well-off (8 points). Although produced by Oscar Micheaux, an African-American (unlike the white-produced Scar of Shame), Within Our Gates still praises the well-educated Sylvia’s quest to work at the school in the South to educate the poor black farmers’ children who come to the school to escape their lives of destitution as sharecroppers (7 points).

Fourth Sample Exam #1  (American Film History, 1894-1941)

Identifications

I1. The Black Maria

A1. The world’s first motion picture studio, constructed by W.K.L. Dickson in 1893 at the Edison Company’s facilities in West Orange, NJ (1 point). This is important because the industrial history of American cinema is dependent upon the formation of a studio-based mode of filmmaking (1 point).

I2. A Girl’s Folly

A2. A 1917 film, directed by Maurice Tourneur, about a movie idol who falls in love with a True Woman and tries unsuccessfully to convert her into a movie star (1 point). This is important because it served as our example of why films by 1917 could be considered fully-formed examples of the Classical Hollywood Cinema (1 point).

I3. Tom Gunning

A3. The author of "Heard Over the Phone," the essay that we read on D.W. Griffith’s one-reeler, The Lonely Villa (1909) (1 point). This is important because Gunning’s essay provides material for performing a cultural historical analysis of The Lonely Villa: its representation of the uses and abuses of technology, its differences from the Grand Guignol theater of Andre de Lorde, etc. (1 point).

I4. Lillian Travers

A4. The female protagonist of A Florida Enchantment (1914) (1 point). This is important because Lillian Travers’ experience in the film--having a dream about eating magic seeds which transform her into a more aggressive, masculine person--allows us to discuss the identity politics of the film (whether Lillian is a True Woman or a New Woman) (1 point).

I5. Discursive Authority

A5. A critical term used by Walter to describe the character(s) to whom the film gives power, especially at the end (1 point). This is important because it allows us to make claims about a particular film’s stance on identity political issues: The Lonedale Operator wrenches (pardon the pun!) discursive authority away from Blanche Sweet by having her father come and make the crooks bow to her in deference to her superior intellect in tricking them with the wrench (1 point).

Quotations

Q1. "The concern in industry self-regulation of these films focused on showing that characters who aspired to a higher station through sex with rich men were punished in the course of the narrative--at best by being returned to their working-class origins, often also by suffering through the loss of a child or other family connections. The aim of such narrative recuperation of erring women, especially as enforced by PCA head Breen, was to illustrate that illicit sexuality does not pay. . . . Charles Eckert’s analysis of Marked Woman (1937) shows how even a social realist ‘fallen woman’ film works to displace and then generally to reassert established class hierarchies. This 1930s film cycle thus communicated the pleasures of higher class status and conspicuous consumption while warning at least female viewers against aspiring to those."

A1. Ramona Curry, "The Prostitute, the Production Code, and the Depression," page 50 (3 points). This quote is relevant to the course because we studied Marked Woman in a different context (as a Depression-era gangster film), but came to similar conclusions about how its female protagonist was contained by the end of the film (2 points).

Q2. "[Film X’s] most important and pervasive influence, however, did not begin to be felt until the mid-fifties, after the advent of the widescreen processes, when European critics--notably Bazin--discovered in it (and, less emphatically, in Renoir’s films) the model for a new film aesthetic based not upon montage but upon the ‘long take,’ or sequence shot. The primary concern of the long take aesthetic is not the sequencing of images, as in montage, but the disposition of space within the frame, or mise-en-scene. [Director Y] is today regarded for all practical purposes as the founder and master of this aesthetic. . . ."

A2. David Cook, "Orson Welles and the Modern Sound Film," page 410 (3 points). This quote is relevant to the course because we studied Film X (Citizen Kane) from a different analytical perspective (one which decenters the importance of Director Y, Orson Welles), which might make us question, given Bordwell and Thompson’s detailed discussion of mise-en-scene in many Hollywood films (including Buster Keaton’s Our Hospitality), whether Welles is truly "the founder and master of this aesthetic" (2 points).

Q3. "It appears that her images (both on screen and her star persona) as a woman of masculine strength was so powerful that the studio believed her persona needed to be contained, and the denial that she was a suffragette was one way to do so. Yet [Actress Z’s] denial is riddled with contradictions. Though her words state that she is not a suffragette, her actions and defiant attitude, such as reflected in this interview, are those characteristic of a self-confident and independent woman, traits one would expect to find in a suffragette."

A3. R. Bruce Brasell, "A Seed for Change: The Engenderment of A Florida Enchantment," page 15 (3 points). This quote is relevant to the course because it offers a particular example of a much larger contradiction in Hollywood’s gender politics: actresses who portrayed True Women in teens cinema were ironically, as actresses making a living displaying their bodies in the public space, New Women (2 points).

Q4. "The set of all the events in a narrative, both the ones explicitly presented and those the viewer infers, comprises the story. . . The total world of the story action is sometimes called the film’s diegesis. . . The term plot is used to describe everything visibly and audibly present in the film before us."

A4. Bordwell and Thompson, "Narrative as a Formal System," page 92 (3 points). This quote is relevant to the course because it offers the basic terms for understanding whether a narrative is classical or modernist. A narrative which clearly links the plot to the story is classical, while one that makes the viewer perform hard work to reconstruct the story out of the plot is associated with modernism (2 points).

Short Answer Questions

S1. In this course, we have been relying on two very different kinds of textbooks: David Cook’s book about film history and Bordwell and Thompson’s book about film aesthetics. At particular moments, these authors’ interests converge on the same film. Choose a film that they both discuss in order to briefly explore the different analytical methods employed by the authors of each book. What does each book imply is interesting or important about the film? What terms do the authors deploy to make these claims? How much attention is given to the film, and why?

A1. David Cook and Bordwell and Thompson both discuss, for example, Buster Keaton’s Our Hospitality. Cook is a great man historian, and thus focuses on a laundry list of films by major directors, in this case, Buster Keaton. He spends one paragraph on Our Hospitality, in the course of showing the development of Keaton’s films from early one-reelers to his late silent features. Cook uses a discussion of the long take (sequence shot) to define the film’s brilliance (8 points). As different as its methods are (as aesthetic analysts, Bordwell and Thompson are interested in Our Hospitality for their 5 page case study in which they can apply their definition of the critical term, mise-en-scene), Film Art comes to the same conclusion as Cook about what makes Our Hospitality brilliant. Bordwell and Thompson also argue that the film’s mise-en-scene is characterized by a complex play within images composed in depth (7 points).

S2. In lecture, Walter discussed the way in which femininity as a gender position was defined in teens cinema, through the concepts of the True and New Woman. Briefly describe the features of the True and New Woman. Then, discuss how these concepts might help us understand gender in She Done Him Wrong.

A2. The discourse of True Womanhood indicates that Woman’s role is in the home, where she can protect the family from the physically and morally dirty practices of the male, public world. The New Woman was someone who rejected this role, advocating Woman’s place and rights in the public sphere (8 points). Mae West’s character Lou in She Done Him Wrong is unquestionably a New Woman, someone who takes responsibility for her own material and sexual pleasure by manipulating men in the public space (7 points).

S3. In two separate lectures, we studied 1) the coming of sound and 2) the star persona of Mae West. What relationships are there between these two topics? Briefly discuss at least two ways in which the rise of Mae West’s film career is linked to the coming of sound.

A3. The renewed calls for censorship of Hollywood in the early 1930s were a direct result of the coming of sound. According to Ramona Curry, the moralists’ clamoring against early sound gangster films resulted in the studios seeking out other stories, including those featuring women protagonists: thus Paramount’s construction of a vehicle for Mae West. West’s verbal double entendres, an effect rendered far more compelling in a sound film, produced further clamoring for censorship (8 points). In the coming of sound lecture, Paul Monaco indicated that one of the solutions to the lack of technical skills in sound narrative was the importation to Hollywood of talent from Broadway: the playwright and actress Mae West was one of the most prominent women in this influx of talent (7 points).

S4. Briefly differentiate the two sorts of pleasure in watching movies with which Walter began this course. Briefly demonstrate how these two different perspectives on spectatorial pleasure would lead to two different views on the film, The Three Ages.

A4. Walter argued that there are two kinds of pleasure in watching films: visceral pleasure, an emotional response, and intellectual pleasure, a thoughtful one (8 points). A response to The Three Ages rooted in visceral pleasure would attend to the film as a comedy, eliciting the response of laughter. For example, when Buster Keaton looks at his watch, a sundial, in the Roman section of the film, we laugh because it is anachronistic: a sundial could not possibly work as a wristwatch. On the other hand, an intellectual response to The Three Ages might focus on its historical status as a parody of Intolerance. Or, the viewer might ponder the film’s identity political position, as when the four black slaves in the Roman section leave their jobs so that they can play craps (7 points).

Fifth Sample Exam #1 (American Film History, 1894-1941)

Identifications

I1. Mary Barton

A1. The central female protagonist of Traffic in Souls (2 points). This is important to the course because Mary problematizes seeing the True and New Woman as binary oppositions: Mary is a New Woman (she solves the crime) who endorses the values of the True Woman (marrying Officer Burke at the end of the film) (2 points).

I2. Broken Earth

A2. A "race film" from the late 1930s, starring Clarence Muse as a farmer who, in the clip that we saw, sings to his dying son (2 points). This is important to the course because a film like Broken Earth allows Muse to show off his acting ability in ways that he was not allowed in Hollywood films (such as his role as a porter in Shadow of a Doubt) (2 points).

I3. Lee DeForest

A3. An inventor who, in the early 1920s, invented a sound-on-film system, which he unsuccessfully tried to sell to the studios. He also invented the Audion Amplifier Tube, which resolved the amplification problems which plagued early attempts at mechanically-reproduced sound in the movies (2 points). This is important to the course because it illustrates a crucial point for technological film history: just because you invent something fabulous does not necessarily imply that you will become rich and famous. Even though a similar sound-on-film system was eventually adopted as the industry standard, DeForest’s system was pushed out of the way by the rival Vitaphone sound-on-disk system (2 points).

I4. Actualities

A4. A type of early cinema which recorded events that were happening in front of the camera. Before the invention of the term documentary in the 1920s, early cinema spectators would not have made as much of the distinction between fiction films and actualities as we do today (2 points). This is important to the course because we saw an example of an actualite, McKinley at Home, as we explored the development of the classical documentary.

I5. Thomas Cripps

A5. The author of the article, "Race Movies as the Voice of the Black Bourgeoisie," the essay we read for this class about the race movie, Scar of Shame (2 points). This is important to the course because Scar of Shame is one of the most complicated race movies for analysis, as it grapples with the intersections between race and class in American life (2 points).

Quotations

Q1. "In considering recent mainstream films, Eddie Murphy presents an interesting case for the analysis of the problematic ‘identification’ between the black (male) spectator and the image of the black (male) character. Throughout the films in which Murphy has starred--Trading Places [and] Forty-Eight Hours. . .--his persona is that of the street-wise Afro-American dude, which might appear somewhat threatening."

A1. This quotation is taken from page 71 of Manthia Diawara’s "Black Spectatorship: Problems of Identification and Resistance" (3 points). This is important to the class because it shows that Diawara’s historical analysis of race issues in The Birth of a Nation are equally applicable to films from our own contemporary moment (2 points).

Q2. "The plot of D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation begins by recounting how slaves were brought to America and how people debated the need to free them. . . . At the climax, we know that the Klan is riding to rescue several characters beseiged in a cabin, but the beseiged people do not know this. On the whole, in The Birth of a Nation the narration is very unrestricted: We know more, we see and hear more, than any or all of the characters can. Such extremely knowledgeable narration is often called omniscient narration."

A2. This quotation is taken from page 102 of Bordwell and Thompson’s chapter 4 ("Narrative as a Formal System") (3 points). This is important to the class because we studied The Birth of a Nation from an ideological point-of-view, while Bordwell and Thompson study it from a narratological perspective, seemingly contradicting their method of collapsing form and content articulated in chapter 3 (2 points).

Q3. "A Massachusetts Vice Commission research report indicated that 51 percent of the prostitutes studied were mentally defective. If women did not (or could not) think, they were also not yet cognizant of some of their own passions. Working in department stores was dangerous because the clerks ‘become aware of needs that they did not know they had’."

A3. This quotation is taken from page 125 of Janet Staiger’s essay, "The White Slave" (3 points). This is important to the course because we studied the vilification of the New Woman by the Hollywood cinema; for example, here the New Women who work in department stores (such as Mary and her sister in Traffic in Souls) are seen to be in danger of losing their moral values (2 points).

Q4. "Warner Bros., however, continued to lead the way. . . . Lights of New York [was] a clumsily plotted tale of two small-town barbers who come to the city to seek their fortunes and become dangerously involved with a gang of bootleggers. Lights of New York ran only fifty-seven minutes and was awkwardly directed. . . . [but] the enormous popular success of Lights of New York demonstrated to Hollywood that. . . [they] could draw huge audiences as well."

A4. This quotation is taken from page 248 of David Cook’s chapter 7 ("The Coming of Sound and Color") (3 points). This is important to the course because we discussed the historical significance of Lights of New York as being "the first 100% all-talkie" (2 points).

Short Answer Questions

S1. What are the two main ideas that Andrew Sarris presents in his essay, "Toward a Theory of Film History"? Write a few brief sentences explaining these two main ideas. Then, in one sentence each, briefly explain how each of these ideas might be brought to bear on the film, Sunrise.

A1. Sarris’ two main ideas are indicated by his two chapter sub-headings: "the forest and the trees" and "the auteur theory." Sarris believes that we should be paying attention to the trees (individual filmmakers’ films) and not the forest (the studio system). He also believes that the director is the controller of meaning in a Hollywood film production (this is the auteur theory) (8 points). To analyze Sunrise as a "trees" critic, one would focus on the artistic genius of F.W. Murnau; while to analyze the film as a "forest" critic, one would focus on William Fox’s desire to lift Fox Studios’ reputation by making the film. To analyze Sunrise as an auteur critic, one would compare Murnau’s work on Sunrise to his other films, particularly the German Expressionist films such as Nosferatu and The Last Laugh (7 points).

S2. In his lecture on the "Golden Age of Silent Cinema," Walter defined the difference between gag-based and genteel romance comedy. Briefly explain this difference. Next, briefly describe one example of each sort of film which defines these two types of comedy. Finally, in a few brief sentences, reflect on whether Mr. Deeds Goes to Town is a good example of either of these sorts of comedy, or both.

A2. Gag-based silent slapstick comedy relied on a series of loosely bound comedic moments (gags), that if re-arranged, would not affect the enjoyment of the film. Genteel romance classical Hollywood silent comedy harnessed these gags to a narrative about the slapstick hero getting the girl at the end (5 points). Buster Keaton’s One Week, with its string of gags about building the house, is an example of a gag-based comedy. Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill Jr. is an example of a genteel romance narrative, as the gags in Keaton surviving the storm are all leading toward his rescuing and marrying the girl (5 points). Mr. Deeds Goes to Town is obviously not a silent slapstick comedy, and therefore, since the silent slapstick comedy had died out with the coming of sound, does not really have anything to do with either tradition. However, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town is narratively structured according to the genteel romance narrative (Deeds marrying the reporter at the end). There is some gag-based comedy, mostly centering on Gary Cooper’s lanky body, but this is all certainly harnessed to the central genteel romance narrative (5 points).

S3. In his lecture on the "First American Features," Walter defined the term, "discourse," as it is used in contemporary media studies. What is the definition of discourse? Next, briefly explore how the term discourse would allow you to compellingly analyze a particular moment from The Lonely Villa.

A3. "A discourse is a set of cultural practices which subtly yet monotonously teach us how to behave" (8 points). {Note that this is related to, but not the same as, discursive authority. In other words, the determination of discursive authority gives us evidence for the prominent discourses in play, but does not necessarily define the discourses themselves.} The limited use-value of technology is a discourse forwarded by The Lonely Villa. The discursive position that The Lonely Villa most often takes to the use-value of technology for humans is that it is highly unreliable and can be easily subverted by evil or accident (the telephone, the gun, the car). The discursive position that The Lonely Villa takes with respect to technology’s displacement of traditional, agrarian American values is best exemplified in the moment when the husband’s car, racing home to save the family, breaks down, yet the old reliable horse saves the day (7 points).

S4. In his lecture on "Pre-Classical American Cinema," Walter explained the devices of Classical Hollywood Continuity Editing. List three of the devices employed by the continuity editing system. Next, briefly explain how one of these devices establishes continuity between shots. Finally, briefly explore how continuity editing is or is not used in the opening moments (i.e., within the first 3 minutes or so) of Citizen Kane.

A4. Some of the devices of the classical Hollywood continuity editing system are: establishing shots, classical breakdown of space, shot/reverse shots, the 180 degree rule, and eyeline matching (5 points). The classical breakdown of space refers to a shot sequence in which we move from long shots which establish the overall space of the scene into medium shots and then close-ups, giving us the detail we need to understand the scene (5 points). The opening scene of Citizen Kane, Kane’s death, is shot using the classical breakdown of space, as we are given first extreme long shots of Xanadu with one light on (the room in which Kane is dying), then medium shots of the window, and finally an extreme close-up on Kane’s lips speaking, "Rosebud" (5 points).

Sixth Sample Exam #1

Identifications

I1. Leo Marx

A1. Leo Marx wrote the important 1960s American Studies treatise entitled The Machine in the Garden, a book which concerns the tension in American life between technology and the natural environment (2 points). This is important to the course because it allowed Walter to talk about the complexity of the shot in Jurassic Park in which the DNA code is projected onto the hide of the dinosaur (2 points).

I2. Vertical Integration

A2. Vertical integration is a phrase from economics which describes a monopolistic industry in which the creation of the product is controlled by one company from beginning to ending of the manufacturing process (2 points). In the case of Hollywood cinema, the major motion picture studios of the classical era were vertically integrated, controlling movie making from production through distribution to exhibition (2 points).

I3. Robert Flaherty

A3. Robert Flaherty is a documentary filmmaker, responsible for making Nanook of the North, a 1922 film which was the first financially successful documentary in American film history (2 points). This is important to the course because Flaherty used fiction film techniques to shoot the film, including shot-reverse shots, similar to D.W. Griffith’s Way Down East, thus setting up our discussion of The River as a classical documentary, a form in which heavily stylized techniques are used (voice-over, music, poetic images) to manipulate the audience watching the film (2 points).

I4. The Finish of Brigit McKeen

A4. The Finish of Brigit McKeen is a 1902 film made by Edwin S. Porter at the Edison Co. (2 points). This is important to the course because it is a film which consists of 2 shots (one of Brigit’s oven exploding in her face and the next of her grave site), demonstrating how Porter at Edison developed the notion of the shot, modeled after comic strip panels (2 points).

I5. Mack Sennett

A5. Mack Sennett is a famous producer of silent slapstick comedy shorts during the teens (2 points). This is important to the course because we studied the mature silent slapstick comedy work of Buster Keaton during the 1920s, none of which would have been possible without the 1910s comic innovators described by Robert Sklar in his textbook (2 points).

Q1. "What triggers [Character A’s] silence, I now want to say, is the complete and legally sanctioned denial of his ‘feminine’ capacity for nurturance, in which light [philosopher-film critic Stanley] Cavell’s various hints to the effect that [Character A] in his silence is related to the unknown women of melodrama acquire considerable explanatory force. Indeed, the ‘isolated heroine’ of melodrama in this case is [Character A], and the isolation is less a function of ignorance on the part of some representative male than of an institutionalized ‘maleness’ that locks [Character A] away and puts him on trial."

A1. This quotation comes from Leland Poague’s article, "Questions of Difference," page 122 (3 points). This is important to the course because Poague engages in a bravura critical examination of the gender issues in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, arguing that Deeds (Character A) is feminized (2 points).

Q2. "Though not abstract, Manhatta attempted to convey a mood rather than tell a story; its high-angle shots of skyscrapers, roofs, and pedestrians viewed from above communicate a sense of the individual dwarfed by the city’s cold immensity. A few years later King Vidor’s M-G-M fiction feature [Film B] echoed Manhatta in its opening sequence, with similar views of the lower Manhattan skyline approached from the Staten Island ferry and shots of the blank geometric windows of an office building in which the film’s protagonist toils amid vast rows of desks."

A2. This quote comes from chapter 5 ("Hollywood in the 1920s") of Robert Sklar’s textbook, page 123 (3 points). This is important to the course because it shows how an avant-garde film (Manhatta) served as the influence on a big-budget Hollywood film, The Crowd (Film B) (2 points).

Q3. "[Director C], as he recalled it, wanted two things the talkies had not before done: a moving camera shot of the scene, and dual microphones to pick up both the song and the prayer. The camera box was placed on rollers, and two mikes put in place. Though the scene lasts nearly five minutes as a single shot, it has none of the immobile, static feeling that made the long takes of early ‘all-talkies’ seem interminable. . . . [Film D] is filled with many such sound innovations."

A3. This quote comes from chapter 8 ("The Transition to Sound") of Robert Sklar’s textbook, pages 190-191 (3 points). This is important to the course because Rouben Mamoulian (Director C) was discussed in class as a major innovator of early American sound films through Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde, whereas Sklar uses his film Applause (Film D) as his example (2 points).

Q4. "If this is the potential of all cinema, it is the realization of a very few works indeed. And if we sense something beyond respect and admiration for this film we must find a new word for our experience: awe. [Film E] partakes of the awesome. And it insists that we return to it, not in blind obsessive reenactment but in a deepening comprehension of both work and self insured by the oscillation of positioning and unbalance we undergo. If this film is a masterwork, its mastery is something that changes hands."

A4. This quote comes from Dudley Andrew’s essay, "The Turn and Return of Sunrise," page 58 (3 points). This is important to the course because Andrew makes a defense of talking about films as artworks, an important claim for teaching artistic films like Sunrise (Film E) as different from populist films like Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (2 points).

Q5. "The film industry expressed interest as early as 1930 in featuring [Actor F] in screen adaptations of [the] most successful Broadway plays. Recruiting [Actor F] fit within the industry drive after 1928 to offer ‘the biggest stars while they’re still playing on Broadway.’ In 1929-30, [Actor F] toured major U.S. cities in [Play G], following the play’s successful run in 1928. In January 1930, Universal studio founder and head Carl Laemmle requested that Jason Joy. . . attend the production of [Play G] to evaluate its suitability for adaptation, with a view to its passing the state movie censor boards. Laemmle’s gesture was in keeping with MPPDA policy since 1924 that member studios seek guidance in purchasing plays and novels for adaptation to the screen."

A5. This quote comes from Ramona Curry’s article, "The Prostitute, the Production Code, and the Depression," page 29 (3 points). This is important to the course because it demonstrates that Actor F’s (Mae West’s) film adaptation of her play, Diamond Lil (Play G), She Done Him Wrong (1933), was censored under the weaker MPPDA guidelines of the early 1920s, and not the stricter Production Code of 1934 (2 points).

Q6. "The copresence of these two narrative projectories inverts the body/mind polarity for a woman, the body after inversion becoming associated with man and the mind with woman (though this woman is likewise inverted, a lesbian). This inversion, though, depends upon the simultaneous presence of both readings for its occurrence. . . . [Film H] is a hermaphroditic text, containing both of these readings, and any attempt to disentangle one as ‘true’ over the other is futile."

A6. This quote comes from Bruce Brasell’s essay, "A Seed for Change," page 4 (3 points). This is important to the course because, as Dudley Andrew asserts about Sunrise, great artworks call out for re-evaluation. Here, we have a film that initially strikes us as about gender, but then struck the gay and lesbian film festival organizers as a film about lesbianism (2 points).

S1. In his opening lecture, Walter described one of the focii of this course as being an operation of "rescuing popular cinema" from snobbish critics who assume popular must mean inartistic. Briefly explain one of Walter’s examples from this opening lecture. Then, in a few sentences, explain how such a "rescue operation" might be performed on Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, a very popular comedy of the 1930s.

A1. Walter rescued the film Jurassic Park by using Leo Marx’s The Machine in the Garden as a template for analyzing the technological contradiction in current special effects blockbusters; that is, the film’s diegetic material is about how horrible technology is, yet at the meta-diegetic level, these stories are told by highly technological computer-generated imagery (5 points). Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, even though popular for telling an escapist story about a man who inherits $20 million, could be discussed in terms of its complex gender politics (a la Poague) or its meditation on the proper role of art (a la Metz) (5 points).

S2. Briefly compare and contrast Uncle Tom’s Cabin and She Done Him Wrong as examples of films adapted from plays. Explain how the filmmaking standards of their respective times would have influenced the sort of film that resulted from the adaptational process.

A2. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Edwin S. Porter, Edison, 1903) was adapted from the George Aiken stage play, itself based on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel. As an example of very early cinema, it was shot using one scene-one shot principles. Its limited running time (14 minutes) meant that the film had to pare the play down to 14 of the most crucial moments in the story. This meant that the film required the viewers to already be familiar with the plot before entering the theater (5 points). She Down Him Wrong (Lowell Sherman, 1933) is a film adaptation of Mae West’s Broadway play, Diamond Lil. The film adaptation represents Hollywood’s desire to utilize Broadway talent like Mae West in its early sound features. 1933 also marks the final year before the implementation of the Production Code, making She Done Him Wrong a much more scandalous film ("there’s more to me than hands") than it would have been had it been adapted one year later (5 points).

S3. Briefly define what is meant by the phrase "the great man theory of history," which Walter explained during the "First American Features" lecture. Use this definition to evaluate whether Robert Sklar’s, Dudley Andrew’s, or Walter Metz’s discussion of Sunrise is more indicative of using the "great man theory of history."

A3. "The great man theory of history" refers to an historical method which privileges the contributions of individuals, rather than focus on complex historical forces that make things happen. In the case of American political history, this would result in organizing the story around the presidents, rather than around transformations in social life (such as the invention of the railroad, or the victory of the Suffragette movement). In film history, this would result in concentrating on great directors rather than industrial forces (the collapse of the Trust in 1912 or the solidification of the Hollywood studio system in 1917) (5 points). Of these 3 historians, Robert Sklar is the most prone to lapse into discussions grounded in the great man theory of history. For example, his discussion of Depression-era cinema is built out of discussions of the directorial work of Frank Capra and John Ford, and not around generic responses to the Great Depression, as presented in Walter’s lecture. However, none of these critics’ discussion of Sunrise is very much grounded in great man history. An emphasis on Murnau’s style would be, but Sklar focuses on sound, Andrew on art, and Metz on the golden age of late silent cinema (5 points).

S4. What were the two crucial problems with early attempts at developing mechanically recorded sound for motion pictures as experienced by the Edison Co.? Explain how these two problems were solved in the middle of the 1920s. Briefly analyze to what extent Sunrise would be a useful example for demonstrating the solution to these two sound recording problems.

A4. The two problems are synchronization and amplification. The synchronization problem was temporarily solved in the sound-on-disk system with a crystal linking the projector to the record player, ensuring that the devices would play at the same rate. Synchronization was finally solved completely by the sound-on-film technique of wedding the optical sound track to the image track. The amplification problem was solved by Lee DeForest’s audion amplifier tube, the aural equivalent of a lens for light (5 points). As Sklar indicates, Sunrise was a sound film, having been released in some areas with a sound-on-film soundtrack of the orchestra playing the music, and often shouting out sound effects. The fact that Sunrise would have been played in large Fox-owned movie palaces, indicates that amplification equipment was in use in these theatres (5 points).

S5. What are the three phases of the development of the star system according to the film historian Richard DeCordova, as presented by Walter in his lecture on the 1930s? Explain how the case of Edith Storey could be used as an example of one of these phases.

A5. Richard DeCordova’s three phases are: actor (1894-1909), picture personality (1909-1914), and star (1914 onward) (5 points). A Florida Enchantment, the Edith Storey film that we saw, was made in 1914. Thus, the possibility exists that Storey could be either a picture personality or a star. The fact that Brasell describes Storey’s private life (she was an athlete, she disliked suffragettism) indicates that she is a star and not a picture personality (5 points).

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This page was last updated on May 30, 2001

Questions or Comments?  Please phone me at (406) 994-6403 or send e-mail to:  metz@montana.edu

Walter Metz, Department of Media and Theatre Arts, Montana State University--Bozeman