Film studies note for NTA UGC NET EXAMS

1. Film Studies
Muhammed Musthafa.KP
Assistant Professor
Department of Journalism and Mass Communication
Farook College

2. Major Areas
Film as a Technology
Film History
Film as an Arts
Film as Business

3. Film as Technology
Kinetoscope and Kinetograph-1889
1900- sound on Disc - KL Dickson
35 mm and 70 mm wide films- Filoteo Alberini-1914 Panorama
Sound to talkie- 1923
Jazz Singer- American- Alan Croseland- October 1927-BGM-Sync Sound
Shot-Scene-Sequence-
Kinema to Cinema- Lumiere Brothers

4. Shot
Close up- Medium- Long-
Angles
Low angle- Medium Angle- High Angle
Pov Shot- Eye level Angle- Bird’s eye view shot.
Cmarea movement

5. What is a Dutch angle?
A Dutch angle (known as a Dutch tilt, canted angle, or oblique angle) is a type of camera shot
that has a noticeable tilt on the camera’s “x-axis.” It’s a camera technique that was used by the German
Expressionists in the 1920s — so it's not actually Dutch. Directors often use a Dutch angle to signal to the
viewer that something is wrong, disorienting, or unsettling.
Eg. Citizen kane

6. **Digital and Analogue technology
DSLR camera
Virtual Reality
Animation and 3D
Chroma Keying
Editing techniques

7. expressionism
From theatre painting and music
Background
It reject realism and its realistic modes of representation, pre occupation of
sexuality and emotional uncertainty
Max Reinhauld 1873-1943-, austrian theatre director-
Germany’s defeated in first world war
Film Movements

8. Film Movement
German Expressionism 1920-30s
Major figures
Fritz Lang, F. W. Murnau, Robert Wiene etc.
● Film noir
● Classical Hollywood cinema
● The Student of Prague(1913),
● The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920),
● From Morn to Midnight (1920),
● The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920),
● Destiny (1921),
● Nosferatu(1922),
● Phantom (1922), and
● Schatten (1923)

9. Soviet Montage-1925
"montage is an idea that arises from the collision of independent shots" wherein "each
sequential element is perceived not next to the other, but on top of the other"
Kuleshov Experiment-
Lev Vladimirovich Kuleshov
Creative geography or Artificial Landscape
Moscow film school- Kuleshov effect.

10. Sergei Eisenstein
"A Dialectic Approach to Film Form" -Essay-montage is "the nerve of cinema"
Books
Film Form - The Film Sense- towards theory of montage- Note of a film Director
"methods of montage":
1. Metric
2. Rhythmic
3. Tonal
4. Overtonal
5. Intellectual

11. ● 1925 Strike
● 1925 Battleship Potemkin- Odessa step sequence
● 1928 October: Ten Days That Shook the World
● 1929 The Storming of La Sarraz,
● 1929 The General Line, also known as Old And New
● 1929 Women's Misery - Women's Happiness, also known as Misery and
Fortune of Woman
● 1930 Romance sentimentale
● 1944 Ivan The Terrible, Part I
● 1945 Ivan The Terrible, Part II

12. Italian Neo Realism-1943–1952
Major figures
Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica, Cesare Zavattini, Luchino Visconti, Giuseppe De Santis, Federico Fellini, Bruno
Caruso
Influenced
French New Wave, Cinema Novo, Iranian New Wave
Films

13. Films
● Ossessione (Luchino Visconti, 1943)
● The Children Are Watching Us (Vittorio De Sica, 1944)
● Open City (Roberto Rossellini, 1945)
● Shoeshine (Vittorio De Sica, 1946)
● Paisan (Roberto Rossellini, 1946)
● Germany, Year Zero (Roberto Rossellini, 1948)
● Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica, 1948)
● The Earth Trembles (Luchino Visconti, 1948)
● Bitter Rice (Giuseppe De Santis, 1949)
● Stromboli (Roberto Rossellini, 1950)
● Bellissima (Luchino Visconti, 1951)
● Miracle in Milan (Vittorio De Sica, 1951)
● Rome 11:00 (Giuseppe De Santis, 1952)
● Europe '51 (Roberto Rossellini, 1952)
● Umberto D. (Vittorio De Sica, 1952),
● Journey to Italy (Roberto Rossellini, 1954)

14. French Realism/ Poetic Realism
Key Directors
Jean Renoir, Marcel Carné, Jean Vigo, Julien
Duvivier, Jean Grémillon, Jacques Feyder, Pierre
Chenal
STARS
Jean Gabin, Michel Simon, Simone Signoret,
Michèle Morgan

15. French New Wave -1958 -1960s
Major figures
Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda, André Bazin, Jacques Demy, François Truffaut, Éric Rohmer,
Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette
Cahiers du cinéma-1951-André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca
Cahiers du cinéma directors
● Jean-Luc Godard
● Éric Rohmer
● François Truffaut
● Claude Chabrol
● Jacques Rivette
Left Bank directors
● Agnès Varda
● Alain Resnais
● Chris Marker
● Henri Colpi
● Jacques Demy

16. Jean Luc Godard
Breathless
Week End
My Life to Live
Contempt
Pierrot le Fou
Two or Three Things I Know About Her
Histoire(s) du cinéma

17. François Roland Truffaut
The 400 Blows -1959
four sequels, Antoine et Colette, Stolen Kisses, Bed and Board, and Love on the Run, between 1958
and 1979.
Day for Night -1873
Shoot the Piano Player (1960),
Jules and Jim (1961),
The Soft Skin (1964),
The Wild Child (1970),
Two English Girls (1971),
The Last Metro (1980), and The Woman Next Door (1981).

18. Realism- Jean Renoir
La Grande Illusion (1937)
The Rules of the Game (1939)
● 1924: Backbiters
● 1925: The Whirlpool of Fate
● 1926: Nana
● 1927: Charleston Parade
● 1927: Une vie sans joie
● 1927: Marquitta
● 1928: The Sad Sack
● 1928: The Tournament
● 1928: The Little Match Girl
The River-1951
Indian story- meeting with Sathyajith Ray-

19. Film Theories

20. Apparatus theory
Cinema is ideological- editing and camera intended to represent reality
The passive viewers cannot tell the difference between the world of cinema and film and
the real world. These viewers identify with the characters on screen so strongly that they
become susceptible to ideological positioning. In Baudry's theory of the apparatus he
likens the movie-goer to someone in a dream. He relates the similarities of being in a
darkened room, having someone else control your actions/what you do, and the
inactivity and passivity of the two activities. He goes on to say that because movie-goers
are not distracted by outside light, noise, etc., due to the nature of a movie theater, they
are able to experience the film as if it were reality and they were experiencing the events
themselves.

21. Theorists
● Gregory Ulmer
● Louis Althusser -
● Jean-Louis Comolli
● Christian Metz - Giorgio Agamben
● Laura Mulvey
● Peter Wollen
● Jean-Louis Baudry
"Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus" (1970) and "The Apparatus:
Metapsychological Approaches to the Impression of Reality in Cinema" (1975),

22. Auteur theory
Director as the major creative force in film making
Or Director is the author of Film
Andre Bazin- What is cinema- Cahier du cinema
Alexander Austruck- Camera pen or camera stylo
Andrew Sarris-"Notes on Auteur Theory"- 1962

23. Pshycho analysis
Sigmund Freud- interpretation of dreams- id -ego- super ego
Jacques Lacan- Mirror stage- identification- imaginary identification and symbolic
identification
scopophilia
Laura Mulvey- Gaze studies-Phallocentrism
5 types of Gaze- Films of Melvie

24. Semiotics
Ferdinand D saussure
Louise Althuser
Christian metz
Signifier- signified
Indexical-Iconic and Symbolic

26. Christian Metz- Semiotics
Books
Imaginary Signifier
Film Language
Language and Cinema
Semiotic Essays
The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema
Impersonal Enunciation.

27. Feminist Film Theory
Laura Mulvey
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
Filmography
Penthesilea: Queen of the Amazons (1974), Riddles of the Sphinx (1977 – perhaps their most influential film),
AMY! (1980), Crystal Gazing (1982), Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti (1982), and The Bad Sister (1982).
Books
Visual and other pleasures, Citizen Kane,Fetisism and Cureosity,Death 24x a
second,Stillness and moving images

28. Andre Bazin
What is Cinema-1967
Jean Renoir-1973
Sathyajith Ray
Our film, their film,
My years with Apu, a memoir
What is wrong with Indian Cinema- Essay

29. The End