Film Resources
Dear WHFC members and friends —
I want to pass along two excellent resources for our class that I think you will find very helpful. In fact, you may want to print out and hang onto the first of these for future reference.
The first is an illustrated glossary of film terms — you’ve already heard many of these used by Michael and me, I’m sure. (And there’s a handy bonus; since the website that did this glossary is from a German school, you also will get the German name for things like ‘close-up.’ Hey, you never know when a German filmmaker will come to town looking for a friend.)
The glossary can be found here:
http://www.schuleplus.de/Englisch/films/filmanalysis-language.htm
The other resource for the month is an excellent example of the kind of visual analysis I've been talking about, by the British critic V.F. Perkins:
http://rouge.com.au/9/moments_choice.html
Previous recommendations of links to on-line glossaries of film terms.
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~writing/materials/student/humanities/film.shtml
http://www.filmeducation.org/staffroom/film_in_the_classroom/film_language/
And here is a good working explanation of mise-en-scene:
http://userpages.umbc.edu/~landon/Local_Information_Files/Mise-en-Scene.htm
Supplemental Films
Finally, your homework for next class is simple:
George Cukor’s 1954 version of A Star Is Born will be shown on TCM (Channel 82 up here in northern Manhattan) on Sunday evening, February 26 at 5 p.m. When you see it, concentrate on the “Man Who Got Away” number and the scene between Garland and Charles Bickford in her dressing room when she tries to explain how she feels about her husband. Each of these is a single, long take (i.e., an uninterrupted piece of film with no cuts). What does that choice by Cukor do to those scenes, especially in comparison to other scenes where he uses more conventional cutting to break up a scene?
The film is also available on Netflix.
Happy movie-going,
George Robinson
WHFC
