1 00:00:00,090 --> 00:00:02,500 The following content is provided under a Creative 2 00:00:02,500 --> 00:00:04,030 Commons license. 3 00:00:04,030 --> 00:00:06,360 Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare 4 00:00:06,360 --> 00:00:10,730 continue to offer high quality educational resources for free. 5 00:00:10,730 --> 00:00:13,340 To make a donation or view additional materials 6 00:00:13,340 --> 00:00:17,217 from hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare 7 00:00:17,217 --> 00:00:17,842 at ocw.mit.edu. 8 00:00:21,260 --> 00:00:23,560 DAVID THORBURN: This afternoon, by welcoming 9 00:00:23,560 --> 00:00:25,660 our virtual audience, the audience that's 10 00:00:25,660 --> 00:00:31,080 looking at this lecture on MIT'S OpenCourseWare, some of you 11 00:00:31,080 --> 00:00:33,880 attentive viewers may notice what the students here 12 00:00:33,880 --> 00:00:36,961 would not notice-- that seven years have elapsed. 13 00:00:36,961 --> 00:00:39,210 There's no podium-- some of you may have gotten that-- 14 00:00:39,210 --> 00:00:41,640 and a much older professor. 15 00:00:41,640 --> 00:00:45,290 I hope that our completion of these lectures seven years 16 00:00:45,290 --> 00:00:52,140 later will not result in a reduced or less energetic 17 00:00:52,140 --> 00:00:53,040 performance. 18 00:00:53,040 --> 00:00:54,510 I'll do my best. 19 00:00:54,510 --> 00:01:01,510 We come now to the end of our first segment 20 00:01:01,510 --> 00:01:04,080 in the course on silent film. 21 00:01:04,080 --> 00:01:08,340 And I thought it would be helpful to use 22 00:01:08,340 --> 00:01:12,920 today's lecture in part to create some perspectives 23 00:01:12,920 --> 00:01:16,270 on both the silent film, the idea of the silent film-- 24 00:01:16,270 --> 00:01:18,110 not just the particular films we've 25 00:01:18,110 --> 00:01:20,950 looked at, but more generally the phenomenon of silent film, 26 00:01:20,950 --> 00:01:26,280 the whole phenomenon-- and some perspectives that will also 27 00:01:26,280 --> 00:01:29,120 help us look forward to what will follow, 28 00:01:29,120 --> 00:01:32,100 to the sound films that will follow this week. 29 00:01:32,100 --> 00:01:36,240 I'd like in a certain way to do this 30 00:01:36,240 --> 00:01:39,320 by complicating an idea I've already 31 00:01:39,320 --> 00:01:41,950 suggested to you about the notion 32 00:01:41,950 --> 00:01:44,500 of the film as a cultural form. 33 00:01:44,500 --> 00:01:46,700 What does it actually mean to say 34 00:01:46,700 --> 00:01:49,130 that a film is a cultural form? 35 00:01:49,130 --> 00:01:56,170 What, in a concrete sense, does this phrase signify? 36 00:01:56,170 --> 00:01:59,780 Well, one answer I think I can offer by drawing 37 00:01:59,780 --> 00:02:01,510 on your own experience. 38 00:02:01,510 --> 00:02:05,330 My guess is that all of you have watched older films, films 39 00:02:05,330 --> 00:02:08,960 from 20 or 30 or 40 years ago, and immediately 40 00:02:08,960 --> 00:02:10,770 been struck as soon as you began to watch 41 00:02:10,770 --> 00:02:13,930 the film by certain kinds of differences 42 00:02:13,930 --> 00:02:16,940 that the original filmmakers would have been oblivious to. 43 00:02:16,940 --> 00:02:20,370 And I'm talking about things like the hairdos of people, 44 00:02:20,370 --> 00:02:24,330 the clothing that they wear, the way automobiles look, or even 45 00:02:24,330 --> 00:02:27,800 a world in which there are no automobiles, 46 00:02:27,800 --> 00:02:30,220 the physical environment that is shown. 47 00:02:30,220 --> 00:02:32,320 One of the things that this reminds us of 48 00:02:32,320 --> 00:02:35,895 is that always, even the most surreal 49 00:02:35,895 --> 00:02:38,410 and imaginative and science-fictiony 50 00:02:38,410 --> 00:02:42,660 films, always inevitably in some deep way, 51 00:02:42,660 --> 00:02:46,110 in some essential ways, reflect the society 52 00:02:46,110 --> 00:02:47,212 from which they come. 53 00:02:47,212 --> 00:02:48,920 They may reflect more than that, and they 54 00:02:48,920 --> 00:02:50,915 may be influenced by other factors as well, 55 00:02:50,915 --> 00:02:53,970 but they are expressions of the culture that 56 00:02:53,970 --> 00:02:57,145 gave rise to them in certain really essential ways. 57 00:02:57,145 --> 00:02:58,520 And one of the things this means, 58 00:02:58,520 --> 00:03:02,560 among other significance, one of the most interesting aspects 59 00:03:02,560 --> 00:03:05,210 of this recognition is the fact that films 60 00:03:05,210 --> 00:03:06,780 get richer over time. 61 00:03:06,780 --> 00:03:11,530 They become artifacts of immense anthropological interest, 62 00:03:11,530 --> 00:03:13,950 even if they're terrible films, because they show us 63 00:03:13,950 --> 00:03:19,170 what the world of 50 or 25 or 30 years ago actually looked like 64 00:03:19,170 --> 00:03:21,780 and how people walked and how people combed their hair 65 00:03:21,780 --> 00:03:23,240 and what kind of makeup they wore, 66 00:03:23,240 --> 00:03:25,660 all of the things, many of the things, which 67 00:03:25,660 --> 00:03:28,990 in many respects, the people making the original film 68 00:03:28,990 --> 00:03:32,290 would simply have taken for granted as part of the reality 69 00:03:32,290 --> 00:03:35,310 they were trying to dramatize. 70 00:03:35,310 --> 00:03:38,430 So one way of thinking about film as a cultural form 71 00:03:38,430 --> 00:03:40,700 is to recognize that as films grow older, 72 00:03:40,700 --> 00:03:42,100 they create meaning. 73 00:03:42,100 --> 00:03:43,650 They become more interesting. 74 00:03:43,650 --> 00:03:48,600 They become richer, and a corollary implication 75 00:03:48,600 --> 00:03:52,810 of this idea that films become richer 76 00:03:52,810 --> 00:03:59,100 is that the meaning of any individual artifact, 77 00:03:59,100 --> 00:04:02,340 cultural artifact, especially cultural artifacts as complex 78 00:04:02,340 --> 00:04:05,430 as films, is always in process. 79 00:04:05,430 --> 00:04:07,920 But the meaning is never fully fixed or finished, 80 00:04:07,920 --> 00:04:11,820 that new significance and new meanings emerge 81 00:04:11,820 --> 00:04:14,230 from these texts with the passage of time, 82 00:04:14,230 --> 00:04:15,900 as if the texts themselves undergo 83 00:04:15,900 --> 00:04:18,120 a kind of transformation. 84 00:04:18,120 --> 00:04:21,320 One final point about this, just to sort of tweak 85 00:04:21,320 --> 00:04:24,910 your broader understanding of these kinds of questions-- 86 00:04:24,910 --> 00:04:27,000 one of the kinds of transitions that 87 00:04:27,000 --> 00:04:31,260 occurs with particular artifacts is they sometimes move or make 88 00:04:31,260 --> 00:04:34,230 a kind of transition from being recognized 89 00:04:34,230 --> 00:04:38,710 as merely ordinary and uninteresting parts 90 00:04:38,710 --> 00:04:43,420 of the society from which they grow, from which they emerge, 91 00:04:43,420 --> 00:04:47,170 simply ordinary routine aspects of the experience of society. 92 00:04:47,170 --> 00:04:51,510 Later ages may value these routine objects 93 00:04:51,510 --> 00:04:54,176 as profoundly valuable works of art. 94 00:04:54,176 --> 00:04:55,550 And in a certain sense, one could 95 00:04:55,550 --> 00:04:58,030 say that the film in the United States 96 00:04:58,030 --> 00:05:00,126 underwent a transition of that kind, 97 00:05:00,126 --> 00:05:03,180 that at a certain point in the history of our understanding 98 00:05:03,180 --> 00:05:07,660 of movies, American culture began to recognize that movies 99 00:05:07,660 --> 00:05:12,090 were actually works of art, that they deserved comparison 100 00:05:12,090 --> 00:05:15,972 with novels and plays and poems and so forth, probably 101 00:05:15,972 --> 00:05:17,930 an idea that all of you folks take for granted. 102 00:05:20,530 --> 00:05:22,050 Many of members of your generation 103 00:05:22,050 --> 00:05:25,890 admire movie directors more than they do novelists and poets-- 104 00:05:25,890 --> 00:05:27,870 a radical mistake it seems to me, 105 00:05:27,870 --> 00:05:29,970 but that's my literary bias showing through. 106 00:05:29,970 --> 00:05:33,340 I certainly admire great directors certainly as much 107 00:05:33,340 --> 00:05:35,030 as I do good novelists. 108 00:05:35,030 --> 00:05:37,930 But the fact is that this is really not the case. 109 00:05:37,930 --> 00:05:41,670 This recognition of the film as an artistic object, 110 00:05:41,670 --> 00:05:44,090 as I've suggested earlier in the course, 111 00:05:44,090 --> 00:05:46,532 is not some fixed or stable identity 112 00:05:46,532 --> 00:05:48,240 that the film has had from the beginning. 113 00:05:48,240 --> 00:05:51,480 It's an identity that the film has garnered, 114 00:05:51,480 --> 00:05:54,640 that has been laid on the film later 115 00:05:54,640 --> 00:05:57,370 as cultural changes have occurred 116 00:05:57,370 --> 00:06:00,170 and as other forms of expression have emerged 117 00:06:00,170 --> 00:06:03,250 that have put the film in a kind of different position 118 00:06:03,250 --> 00:06:09,000 hierarchically from other kinds of imaginative expressions. 119 00:06:09,000 --> 00:06:11,542 And as I've already suggested many times in this course, 120 00:06:11,542 --> 00:06:13,500 we'll come back to this principle, because it's 121 00:06:13,500 --> 00:06:17,700 such a central historical fact about the nature, the content 122 00:06:17,700 --> 00:06:19,400 of American movies especially. 123 00:06:19,400 --> 00:06:21,960 It's the advent of television that 124 00:06:21,960 --> 00:06:24,210 is partly responsible for the transformation, 125 00:06:24,210 --> 00:06:27,420 although it takes some time for the transformation 126 00:06:27,420 --> 00:06:30,260 in American attitudes toward what movies are, 127 00:06:30,260 --> 00:06:32,870 because television became the throwaway item, 128 00:06:32,870 --> 00:06:34,800 the routine item, the thing Americans 129 00:06:34,800 --> 00:06:36,370 experienced every day. 130 00:06:36,370 --> 00:06:39,800 And the consequence of that was to change our understanding 131 00:06:39,800 --> 00:06:40,740 of what the film was. 132 00:06:40,740 --> 00:06:43,790 Now of course, the Europeans had an insight like this long 133 00:06:43,790 --> 00:06:45,430 before the Americans did, and that's 134 00:06:45,430 --> 00:06:48,390 something I'll talk about a bit later today 135 00:06:48,390 --> 00:06:51,650 and also at other times in our course. 136 00:06:51,650 --> 00:06:54,570 So that's one way of thinking about what it means to say 137 00:06:54,570 --> 00:06:56,260 that a film is a cultural form. 138 00:06:56,260 --> 00:06:58,190 It means that it's unstable in the sense 139 00:06:58,190 --> 00:07:00,420 that its meanings are not fixed, and the way 140 00:07:00,420 --> 00:07:03,870 in which a culture categorizes and understands 141 00:07:03,870 --> 00:07:07,040 a particular artifact is also something that's unstable, 142 00:07:07,040 --> 00:07:09,270 that undergoes change over time. 143 00:07:09,270 --> 00:07:10,710 But there are other ways to think 144 00:07:10,710 --> 00:07:13,920 about this problem of film as a cultural formation, 145 00:07:13,920 --> 00:07:16,190 as an expression of society, and I 146 00:07:16,190 --> 00:07:18,965 want to tease out some of those meanings for you as well. 147 00:07:21,500 --> 00:07:24,330 One way to come at this problem is 148 00:07:24,330 --> 00:07:28,270 to think of a kind of tension or even contention 149 00:07:28,270 --> 00:07:31,530 between our recognition that film is a global form-- that 150 00:07:31,530 --> 00:07:34,970 is to say that because the movies are watched 151 00:07:34,970 --> 00:07:37,529 across national boundaries, movies that are made 152 00:07:37,529 --> 00:07:39,820 in the United States can influence movies that are made 153 00:07:39,820 --> 00:07:41,820 in Europe and vice versa. 154 00:07:41,820 --> 00:07:46,120 So in one sense, the film, especially 155 00:07:46,120 --> 00:07:50,070 after film got going within the first 10 years of its life, 156 00:07:50,070 --> 00:07:53,280 it had become an international phenomenon, 157 00:07:53,280 --> 00:07:55,060 and American films were watched in Europe, 158 00:07:55,060 --> 00:07:58,470 and European films influenced American directors, even 159 00:07:58,470 --> 00:08:00,980 at very early stages so that we begin 160 00:08:00,980 --> 00:08:03,370 to get certain kinds of films that certainly appealed 161 00:08:03,370 --> 00:08:05,460 across national boundaries. 162 00:08:05,460 --> 00:08:07,850 And so there is a kind of global dimension 163 00:08:07,850 --> 00:08:10,602 to what film might be. 164 00:08:10,602 --> 00:08:12,060 And there's another way of thinking 165 00:08:12,060 --> 00:08:13,820 about what it means to talk about film 166 00:08:13,820 --> 00:08:19,150 as a global phenomenon, not as a merely national expression. 167 00:08:19,150 --> 00:08:21,560 And that has to do specifically with the way in which 168 00:08:21,560 --> 00:08:25,830 particular directors and films in particular societies 169 00:08:25,830 --> 00:08:28,010 can influence world cinema. 170 00:08:28,010 --> 00:08:31,010 And from the very earliest days of cinema, as I suggested, 171 00:08:31,010 --> 00:08:32,870 this has been a reality. 172 00:08:32,870 --> 00:08:36,370 As David Cook's History of Narrative Film informs you, 173 00:08:36,370 --> 00:08:38,289 and I hope you'll read the assigned chapters 174 00:08:38,289 --> 00:08:41,409 on Russian film closely, because I can only skim 175 00:08:41,409 --> 00:08:43,610 these topics in my lecture. 176 00:08:43,610 --> 00:08:46,180 What you'll discover among other things 177 00:08:46,180 --> 00:08:48,980 is that the great American director, DW Griffith, 178 00:08:48,980 --> 00:08:52,530 had a profound impact on Russian films 179 00:08:52,530 --> 00:08:54,950 and that, in fact, at a certain point 180 00:08:54,950 --> 00:08:56,570 in the history of Russian films, there 181 00:08:56,570 --> 00:08:59,920 was a workshop run by a man named Kuleshov, 182 00:08:59,920 --> 00:09:02,580 who actually took DW Griffith's movies 183 00:09:02,580 --> 00:09:05,540 and disassembled them shot by shot 184 00:09:05,540 --> 00:09:09,500 and studied the editing rhythms in his workshop. 185 00:09:09,500 --> 00:09:13,520 This had a profound impact not only on Russian cinema, 186 00:09:13,520 --> 00:09:17,340 but Griffith's practices had a profound impact 187 00:09:17,340 --> 00:09:19,900 on virtually all filmmakers. 188 00:09:19,900 --> 00:09:22,650 And there's a kind of reverse influence, 189 00:09:22,650 --> 00:09:25,300 because certain Russian directors, Eisenstein 190 00:09:25,300 --> 00:09:30,880 especially, but also Dziga Vertov, 191 00:09:30,880 --> 00:09:35,550 their work had a profound impact on the films 192 00:09:35,550 --> 00:09:37,880 from Western Europe and from the United States. 193 00:09:37,880 --> 00:09:39,120 So it's a two-way process. 194 00:09:39,120 --> 00:09:42,970 It's too simple to say that particular films are only 195 00:09:42,970 --> 00:09:45,270 an expression of French culture or only an expression 196 00:09:45,270 --> 00:09:48,920 of Russian culture or only an expression of American culture. 197 00:09:48,920 --> 00:09:51,030 They are also global phenomena, and they 198 00:09:51,030 --> 00:09:53,980 were global phenomena from almost the earliest stages. 199 00:09:53,980 --> 00:09:56,640 So it's important to recognize this tension or this balance. 200 00:09:56,640 --> 00:09:58,680 There are dimensions of film that reach 201 00:09:58,680 --> 00:10:00,640 across national boundaries. 202 00:10:00,640 --> 00:10:02,530 And as we've already suggested, one 203 00:10:02,530 --> 00:10:05,160 of the explanations for the success of American movies 204 00:10:05,160 --> 00:10:08,440 in the United States was in part a function 205 00:10:08,440 --> 00:10:10,890 of the fact that they did not require language 206 00:10:10,890 --> 00:10:12,480 in nearly the same degree. 207 00:10:12,480 --> 00:10:16,150 They were visual experiences, and an immigrant population 208 00:10:16,150 --> 00:10:18,380 coming into the large cities of the United States 209 00:10:18,380 --> 00:10:22,320 at the turn of the century was one of the primary factors that 210 00:10:22,320 --> 00:10:25,950 helps to explain the phenomenal quick growth of the movies 211 00:10:25,950 --> 00:10:31,310 from a novelty into a profound embedded cultural experience. 212 00:10:31,310 --> 00:10:34,180 So it is a global phenomenon in a certain way 213 00:10:34,180 --> 00:10:37,270 and reaches across national boundaries. 214 00:10:37,270 --> 00:10:39,450 But there's also-- and we need to acknowledge 215 00:10:39,450 --> 00:10:42,690 this side of the equation too-- there's also a profound, 216 00:10:42,690 --> 00:10:45,180 a really deep fundamental sense in which 217 00:10:45,180 --> 00:10:47,780 films, at least until very recently, 218 00:10:47,780 --> 00:10:50,860 are an expression of the individual national cultures 219 00:10:50,860 --> 00:10:52,720 from which they come. 220 00:10:52,720 --> 00:10:54,960 I say until very recently, because some of you 221 00:10:54,960 --> 00:10:57,590 must be aware of the fact that a new kind of film 222 00:10:57,590 --> 00:11:00,960 is being made now by which I mean a film that 223 00:11:00,960 --> 00:11:03,990 seems to appeal across all national boundaries, that 224 00:11:03,990 --> 00:11:08,520 doesn't seem to have a decisive national identity. 225 00:11:08,520 --> 00:11:09,770 At least some films like that. 226 00:11:09,770 --> 00:11:12,170 I think the Bollywood people are making films like this. 227 00:11:12,170 --> 00:11:14,520 Americans are certainly making films like this now. 228 00:11:14,520 --> 00:11:16,810 And sometimes if you think of some of the action 229 00:11:16,810 --> 00:11:19,360 adventure films that will have a cast that 230 00:11:19,360 --> 00:11:22,140 is drawn from different cultures, a sort 231 00:11:22,140 --> 00:11:26,040 of multiethnic and multilingual cast, all of them dubbed 232 00:11:26,040 --> 00:11:30,100 into whatever language the film is being exhibited in, 233 00:11:30,100 --> 00:11:31,160 you'll see an example. 234 00:11:31,160 --> 00:11:34,740 What's begun to emerge now in our 21st century world 235 00:11:34,740 --> 00:11:37,550 is a kind of movie that already conceives of itself 236 00:11:37,550 --> 00:11:39,920 as belonging to a kind of global culture. 237 00:11:39,920 --> 00:11:43,970 So far I'm not sure these movies have as much artistic interest 238 00:11:43,970 --> 00:11:46,450 as one would like, but it's a new phenomenon, 239 00:11:46,450 --> 00:11:50,910 and the globalizing tendencies of digital technology 240 00:11:50,910 --> 00:11:53,130 are certainly encouraging new ways 241 00:11:53,130 --> 00:12:00,160 to think about the origins or the central sources of movies. 242 00:12:00,160 --> 00:12:02,450 But until very recently, it is still the case 243 00:12:02,450 --> 00:12:06,390 that virtually every film made in any society 244 00:12:06,390 --> 00:12:09,170 reflected in deep and fundamental ways 245 00:12:09,170 --> 00:12:10,790 aspects of that society. 246 00:12:10,790 --> 00:12:13,560 And one of the reasons that this is such an important thing 247 00:12:13,560 --> 00:12:16,280 to recognize is it means that, especially 248 00:12:16,280 --> 00:12:19,180 in cultures like the European societies 249 00:12:19,180 --> 00:12:24,770 and those in the United States, the movies are profoundly 250 00:12:24,770 --> 00:12:28,830 illuminating source of cultural and social history. 251 00:12:28,830 --> 00:12:31,440 Even if they had no artistic interest, 252 00:12:31,440 --> 00:12:33,800 they would be worth teaching and studying. 253 00:12:33,800 --> 00:12:36,970 And the fact that some of them are luminous works of art 254 00:12:36,970 --> 00:12:42,680 makes teaching them a particular pleasure, a particular joy, 255 00:12:42,680 --> 00:12:44,640 a real vocation. 256 00:12:44,640 --> 00:12:49,760 So if we talk about films as a national expression, what we're 257 00:12:49,760 --> 00:12:52,720 talking about here is the extent to which 258 00:12:52,720 --> 00:12:55,100 the assumptions about personal relationships 259 00:12:55,100 --> 00:12:57,525 and the assumptions about the way society operates 260 00:12:57,525 --> 00:13:00,570 are going to be grounded in culturally, socially 261 00:13:00,570 --> 00:13:04,570 specific phenomena, socially specific practices. 262 00:13:04,570 --> 00:13:07,820 And we're also talking not just about the content of movies, 263 00:13:07,820 --> 00:13:11,470 but also about the structure of the industries which end up 264 00:13:11,470 --> 00:13:13,270 providing movies to the public. 265 00:13:13,270 --> 00:13:16,560 And part of what I want to at least allude 266 00:13:16,560 --> 00:13:19,500 to today in the lectures and materials 267 00:13:19,500 --> 00:13:23,680 that we're looking at today is to crystallize or concretize 268 00:13:23,680 --> 00:13:26,090 this idea that the variations that 269 00:13:26,090 --> 00:13:32,100 are possible within the broad universe of the cinema so 270 00:13:32,100 --> 00:13:36,680 that, for example, the individual and atomistic system 271 00:13:36,680 --> 00:13:38,470 that developed in the United States 272 00:13:38,470 --> 00:13:42,632 for the production of movies, the capitalist arrangements 273 00:13:42,632 --> 00:13:44,090 that developed in the United States 274 00:13:44,090 --> 00:13:46,540 for the development of movies, are in many ways 275 00:13:46,540 --> 00:13:48,570 radically different from the systems that 276 00:13:48,570 --> 00:13:50,720 were developed in some European societies 277 00:13:50,720 --> 00:13:52,620 or in the Soviet Union. 278 00:13:52,620 --> 00:13:54,110 And there's a particular contrast 279 00:13:54,110 --> 00:13:56,640 with the Soviet Union, which developed movies 280 00:13:56,640 --> 00:13:59,570 in a quite different way and had a quite different notion 281 00:13:59,570 --> 00:14:00,580 about them. 282 00:14:00,580 --> 00:14:02,890 The emergence of the movies coincides 283 00:14:02,890 --> 00:14:05,750 in some degree with the turmoil in the Soviet Union. 284 00:14:05,750 --> 00:14:09,670 The Russian Revolution is 1917. 285 00:14:09,670 --> 00:14:17,090 Movies become a central source of information and propaganda 286 00:14:17,090 --> 00:14:21,140 for the emerging of Soviet culture. 287 00:14:21,140 --> 00:14:25,220 Lenin called movies our greatest art form, 288 00:14:25,220 --> 00:14:28,110 because he understood how important they 289 00:14:28,110 --> 00:14:31,070 were in promulgating certain ideals 290 00:14:31,070 --> 00:14:33,590 and embedding those ideals in the society. 291 00:14:33,590 --> 00:14:35,840 And in fact, there were not in Russia 292 00:14:35,840 --> 00:14:39,200 a series of independent companies that produced films. 293 00:14:39,200 --> 00:14:41,554 There was a top-down arrangement in which the government 294 00:14:41,554 --> 00:14:42,470 controlled filmmaking. 295 00:14:42,470 --> 00:14:44,220 It doesn't mean that they didn't make 296 00:14:44,220 --> 00:14:45,730 remarkable and interesting films, 297 00:14:45,730 --> 00:14:46,980 but it was a different system. 298 00:14:46,980 --> 00:14:48,660 It was a top-down system. 299 00:14:48,660 --> 00:14:51,410 We had central government financing 300 00:14:51,410 --> 00:14:57,250 in which the genres in Soviet films 301 00:14:57,250 --> 00:14:59,340 could be said to have had what we 302 00:14:59,340 --> 00:15:01,870 might call rhetorical sources. 303 00:15:01,870 --> 00:15:08,400 For example, a revolution story is one genre of Russian film, 304 00:15:08,400 --> 00:15:11,520 celebrating the heroic struggle of the people. 305 00:15:11,520 --> 00:15:14,240 There were even sort of genres that we 306 00:15:14,240 --> 00:15:17,370 might call building genres or creating genres, 307 00:15:17,370 --> 00:15:21,720 and they were about creating a farm or building a skyscraper. 308 00:15:21,720 --> 00:15:25,930 And the film was put in the service by the Soviet state, 309 00:15:25,930 --> 00:15:28,450 was put in the service of this emerging society. 310 00:15:28,450 --> 00:15:32,550 It was understood as a system that 311 00:15:32,550 --> 00:15:35,310 would mobilize mass social forces 312 00:15:35,310 --> 00:15:37,550 for the betterment of society. 313 00:15:37,550 --> 00:15:43,480 And these differences in attitudes and in the ways films 314 00:15:43,480 --> 00:15:47,370 are financed and who makes the decisions about what films will 315 00:15:47,370 --> 00:15:49,950 go forward, of course, has a profound impact 316 00:15:49,950 --> 00:15:52,720 on the nature of those movies. 317 00:15:52,720 --> 00:15:58,030 Our demonstration instance today will 318 00:15:58,030 --> 00:16:01,480 be one of the most famous passages from Eisenstein's 319 00:16:01,480 --> 00:16:05,190 Potemkin to demonstrate some of the, 320 00:16:05,190 --> 00:16:07,080 in a much more concrete way, some 321 00:16:07,080 --> 00:16:09,130 of the implications of this difference 322 00:16:09,130 --> 00:16:12,150 between American and Russian film that I'm suggesting. 323 00:16:12,150 --> 00:16:15,470 There also profound differences, and I'll develop this argument 324 00:16:15,470 --> 00:16:17,870 a little more fully to this evening when we shift over 325 00:16:17,870 --> 00:16:21,240 to the great German silent film that we're 326 00:16:21,240 --> 00:16:24,190 going to look at tonight. 327 00:16:24,190 --> 00:16:27,330 There are profound differences between the American and German 328 00:16:27,330 --> 00:16:29,410 systems of moviemaking and attitudes 329 00:16:29,410 --> 00:16:31,060 toward the making of movies. 330 00:16:31,060 --> 00:16:37,660 And I'll elaborate on some of those notions later today 331 00:16:37,660 --> 00:16:39,440 in the evening lecture. 332 00:16:39,440 --> 00:16:41,380 But for the moment then, suffice it 333 00:16:41,380 --> 00:16:46,060 to say that virtually all movies are going to reveal 334 00:16:46,060 --> 00:16:48,084 or are going to embody the values 335 00:16:48,084 --> 00:16:50,250 and assumptions of the culture from which they come, 336 00:16:50,250 --> 00:16:52,770 that that makes them anthropological artifacts 337 00:16:52,770 --> 00:16:56,820 of profound significance and distinguishes French film 338 00:16:56,820 --> 00:16:59,000 from British film from American film 339 00:16:59,000 --> 00:17:03,890 in ways that continue to be illuminating and significant. 340 00:17:03,890 --> 00:17:08,869 But there's certain other contrasts or potential tensions 341 00:17:08,869 --> 00:17:11,220 in this notion of film as a cultural form 342 00:17:11,220 --> 00:17:14,160 that I'd also like to develop or spend 343 00:17:14,160 --> 00:17:15,359 a little bit more time on. 344 00:17:15,359 --> 00:17:19,130 One of them is the notion that there's a profound, even 345 00:17:19,130 --> 00:17:21,500 a fundamental difference, more broadly, 346 00:17:21,500 --> 00:17:23,680 not just between French and American cinema, 347 00:17:23,680 --> 00:17:26,180 but between all forms of European cinema 348 00:17:26,180 --> 00:17:27,762 and the American version. 349 00:17:27,762 --> 00:17:30,220 And this is a principle we'll talk about more this evening, 350 00:17:30,220 --> 00:17:31,780 but I want to allude to it now. 351 00:17:31,780 --> 00:17:33,289 One of the ways to crystallize this 352 00:17:33,289 --> 00:17:35,080 is to remind you of something we've already 353 00:17:35,080 --> 00:17:37,230 talked about briefly in the course, which 354 00:17:37,230 --> 00:17:40,220 is the migration of filmmaking from the east coast 355 00:17:40,220 --> 00:17:42,830 to the west coast in the early days of filmmaking 356 00:17:42,830 --> 00:17:46,430 in the United States, the flight of filmmakers to California. 357 00:17:46,430 --> 00:17:48,440 And we've talked a little bit about why 358 00:17:48,440 --> 00:17:52,190 that's a significant transformation 359 00:17:52,190 --> 00:17:54,090 and a significant move. 360 00:17:54,090 --> 00:18:00,340 But perhaps, the most important aspect of this historical fact, 361 00:18:00,340 --> 00:18:03,070 the migration of the movies to the west coast, 362 00:18:03,070 --> 00:18:06,550 is that what this meant is that the movies in the United States 363 00:18:06,550 --> 00:18:12,650 were able to develop in a culture whose intellectual 364 00:18:12,650 --> 00:18:15,550 and artistic and cultural authorities 365 00:18:15,550 --> 00:18:19,490 were on the east coast, as far away as possible from where 366 00:18:19,490 --> 00:18:20,960 movies were developing. 367 00:18:20,960 --> 00:18:23,150 In other words, the American movie 368 00:18:23,150 --> 00:18:28,030 is much more fundamentally in its emergence a popular form, 369 00:18:28,030 --> 00:18:32,550 a form that has no consciousness of itself as a work of art. 370 00:18:32,550 --> 00:18:34,150 It knows that what it's trying to do 371 00:18:34,150 --> 00:18:35,850 is make money and entertain people, 372 00:18:35,850 --> 00:18:38,570 and the earliest-- very early, there 373 00:18:38,570 --> 00:18:41,250 were some directors like DW Griffith who 374 00:18:41,250 --> 00:18:43,409 recognized the artistic importance of movies. 375 00:18:43,409 --> 00:18:45,700 I don't mean there weren't directors who recognized it. 376 00:18:45,700 --> 00:18:48,620 Chaplin surely thought of himself as making works of art, 377 00:18:48,620 --> 00:18:50,360 especially later in his career. 378 00:18:50,360 --> 00:18:52,050 But the fact is the American movies 379 00:18:52,050 --> 00:18:55,440 begin on the farthest Western verge of the society. 380 00:18:55,440 --> 00:18:56,770 Nothing developed there. 381 00:18:56,770 --> 00:18:58,850 New York is the cultural center. 382 00:18:58,850 --> 00:19:00,630 Boston is a cultural center. 383 00:19:00,630 --> 00:19:03,279 Maybe we could even say some of the great Midwestern cities 384 00:19:03,279 --> 00:19:04,820 have some kind of cultural authority, 385 00:19:04,820 --> 00:19:06,450 but there's nothing on the west coast. 386 00:19:06,450 --> 00:19:08,720 And what that means is that all the writers, all 387 00:19:08,720 --> 00:19:12,840 the dramatists, all the actors, all the theater actors, 388 00:19:12,840 --> 00:19:14,634 all the poets, all the musicians-- 389 00:19:14,634 --> 00:19:15,550 they were in the East. 390 00:19:15,550 --> 00:19:18,850 They lived in New York, and there was a kind of freedom 391 00:19:18,850 --> 00:19:22,030 that this imparted to American movies. 392 00:19:22,030 --> 00:19:25,650 And this is a very sharp contrast 393 00:19:25,650 --> 00:19:29,900 with the development of almost all forms of European cinema, 394 00:19:29,900 --> 00:19:33,290 partly because the cultures are literally geographically more 395 00:19:33,290 --> 00:19:36,150 limited, unlike the vast expanse of the United States. 396 00:19:36,150 --> 00:19:39,620 But also because of the much stronger traditions 397 00:19:39,620 --> 00:19:45,280 in these European societies of high culture, the much stronger 398 00:19:45,280 --> 00:19:49,930 respect in these societies for theater and for poetry 399 00:19:49,930 --> 00:19:52,930 and for prose narrative. 400 00:19:52,930 --> 00:19:55,610 In the European societies, and this was especially true 401 00:19:55,610 --> 00:19:57,740 in Germany, but it was true in some degree 402 00:19:57,740 --> 00:20:00,370 in every European society, including the Soviet Union, 403 00:20:00,370 --> 00:20:02,370 there was a sense that the movies 404 00:20:02,370 --> 00:20:07,350 were emerging in the shadow of older art forms whose greatness 405 00:20:07,350 --> 00:20:11,940 and grandeur shadowed, menaced this emerging form. 406 00:20:11,940 --> 00:20:15,196 And in a way, the distinction I'm mentioning, 407 00:20:15,196 --> 00:20:16,820 the difference I'm mentioning, accounts 408 00:20:16,820 --> 00:20:19,740 both for the limitations and for the glories 409 00:20:19,740 --> 00:20:23,030 of both kinds of film, because if the European film 410 00:20:23,030 --> 00:20:25,020 was more static-- and we'll talk much more. 411 00:20:25,020 --> 00:20:26,853 I'll give you some examples of this tonight. 412 00:20:26,853 --> 00:20:29,450 If the European film was more static, 413 00:20:29,450 --> 00:20:32,430 it was less cinematic in a way in its early years, 414 00:20:32,430 --> 00:20:35,900 because it thought of itself as emerging from literature, 415 00:20:35,900 --> 00:20:39,160 from theater, from poetry. 416 00:20:39,160 --> 00:20:42,630 And in fact, some of the important early German 417 00:20:42,630 --> 00:20:45,450 filmmakers especially were people who came from theater, 418 00:20:45,450 --> 00:20:48,690 and they had theatrical notions of what art was. 419 00:20:48,690 --> 00:20:51,800 We'll talk more about this this evening. 420 00:20:51,800 --> 00:20:53,810 So because that was true, the glory 421 00:20:53,810 --> 00:20:56,650 of the early European cinema was its recognition 422 00:20:56,650 --> 00:20:59,390 that it could be artistically powerful, 423 00:20:59,390 --> 00:21:03,480 its sense that it was talking about important subjects. 424 00:21:03,480 --> 00:21:04,990 But of course, the limitations were 425 00:21:04,990 --> 00:21:08,440 that it was often very boring visually, that it was serious, 426 00:21:08,440 --> 00:21:11,890 but not a movie, that it didn't exploit 427 00:21:11,890 --> 00:21:14,400 the properties of the medium nearly as quickly. 428 00:21:14,400 --> 00:21:17,860 It didn't try to explore the unique properties of the medium 429 00:21:17,860 --> 00:21:21,770 nearly as quickly, in part because it was so in thrall 430 00:21:21,770 --> 00:21:25,790 to inherited ideas of artistic value and artistic expression. 431 00:21:25,790 --> 00:21:29,860 This isn't entirely a disadvantage, as I said, 432 00:21:29,860 --> 00:21:32,740 because it also imparted to European filmmakers 433 00:21:32,740 --> 00:21:35,649 a sense of dignity and the importance of their enterprise 434 00:21:35,649 --> 00:21:37,190 that served them well in certain ways 435 00:21:37,190 --> 00:21:39,554 and made them pick ambitious subjects. 436 00:21:39,554 --> 00:21:41,470 And you'll see the outcome, the final outcome, 437 00:21:41,470 --> 00:21:45,190 once the European film was liberated into a greater 438 00:21:45,190 --> 00:21:46,180 cinematic freedom. 439 00:21:46,180 --> 00:21:49,170 And I'll show you an example or two tonight of that. 440 00:21:49,170 --> 00:21:51,810 It became something immensely rich 441 00:21:51,810 --> 00:21:54,440 in part because it had this legacy of high art 442 00:21:54,440 --> 00:21:56,580 behind it and high artistic ambitions. 443 00:21:56,580 --> 00:21:59,160 The United States' story is almost the opposite. 444 00:21:59,160 --> 00:22:01,490 In the United States, there was a kind 445 00:22:01,490 --> 00:22:05,610 of glorious sense of having no responsibility toward older art 446 00:22:05,610 --> 00:22:06,110 forms. 447 00:22:06,110 --> 00:22:11,550 There was something exuberant, experimental, joyous, 448 00:22:11,550 --> 00:22:14,479 unembarrassed about early American films. 449 00:22:14,479 --> 00:22:16,270 They didn't think of themselves as artwork, 450 00:22:16,270 --> 00:22:18,080 so it gave them a kind of freedom. 451 00:22:18,080 --> 00:22:19,490 They were also vulgar as hell. 452 00:22:19,490 --> 00:22:22,140 They were often trivial and silly. 453 00:22:22,140 --> 00:22:25,640 They often had limited artistic ambitions, 454 00:22:25,640 --> 00:22:27,920 but they explored the nature of the medium 455 00:22:27,920 --> 00:22:31,790 in a way that became the legacy of movies and a legacy 456 00:22:31,790 --> 00:22:35,806 that was communicated to other societies as well. 457 00:22:35,806 --> 00:22:38,180 Well, this distinction then between American and European 458 00:22:38,180 --> 00:22:40,300 cinema is something I'll develop a little bit more 459 00:22:40,300 --> 00:22:42,229 fully with examples this evening. 460 00:22:42,229 --> 00:22:43,520 But it's a crucial distinction. 461 00:22:43,520 --> 00:22:46,230 It's a crucial difference, and it tells us a lot 462 00:22:46,230 --> 00:22:48,730 about both forms of filmmaking. 463 00:22:48,730 --> 00:22:51,030 There's one final tension that I want to mention here. 464 00:22:51,030 --> 00:22:53,250 We'll return to it again when we come 465 00:22:53,250 --> 00:22:55,650 to look at Singing in the Rain later 466 00:22:55,650 --> 00:22:59,050 in the course, which dramatizes this subject among others. 467 00:22:59,050 --> 00:23:01,760 There's another kind of tension implicit in what I've already 468 00:23:01,760 --> 00:23:04,980 said, which is the tension between what we might call 469 00:23:04,980 --> 00:23:08,730 popular culture, notions of culture that are enjoyed 470 00:23:08,730 --> 00:23:12,250 by the masses, by everyone as against high culture like opera 471 00:23:12,250 --> 00:23:17,370 and poetry and theater, which only the educated people go to. 472 00:23:17,370 --> 00:23:21,530 And this tension is especially important-- it's 473 00:23:21,530 --> 00:23:23,365 important in many films-- but it's 474 00:23:23,365 --> 00:23:26,290 an especially important tension in American movies. 475 00:23:26,290 --> 00:23:31,270 And one of things that we will come back to in different ways 476 00:23:31,270 --> 00:23:34,680 as we think about these American films is the way in which 477 00:23:34,680 --> 00:23:37,630 very often, American films position themselves 478 00:23:37,630 --> 00:23:39,597 as the antagonist of high culture. 479 00:23:39,597 --> 00:23:41,180 And there are many films that actually 480 00:23:41,180 --> 00:23:43,790 do that, and some of the Marx Brothers 481 00:23:43,790 --> 00:23:47,410 films systematically dismantle the objects of high culture. 482 00:23:47,410 --> 00:23:50,450 There's one Marx Brothers film called A Night 483 00:23:50,450 --> 00:23:52,420 at the Opera, which takes place in an opera, 484 00:23:52,420 --> 00:23:54,030 and the whole set comes crashing down. 485 00:23:54,030 --> 00:23:58,450 The whole place falls apart in the course of the film, 486 00:23:58,450 --> 00:24:01,990 acting out a kind of aggression against the older art form. 487 00:24:01,990 --> 00:24:04,990 And this is a tension also that we will see played out 488 00:24:04,990 --> 00:24:07,890 in some of the films we're going to be looking at a bit 489 00:24:07,890 --> 00:24:08,755 later in the course. 490 00:24:11,830 --> 00:24:17,690 So this notion of Hollywood as the embodiment 491 00:24:17,690 --> 00:24:23,380 of a certain kind of demotic vigor and populist energy 492 00:24:23,380 --> 00:24:26,610 is a helpful way of thinking about 493 00:24:26,610 --> 00:24:28,960 how, especially in the early years, 494 00:24:28,960 --> 00:24:32,200 American film was somewhat different from European film, 495 00:24:32,200 --> 00:24:35,390 and how it also very aggressively was 496 00:24:35,390 --> 00:24:40,300 happy to distinguish itself from established art forms. 497 00:24:40,300 --> 00:24:43,450 I want to take a quick, what will appear to be a digression, 498 00:24:43,450 --> 00:24:44,310 but actually isn't. 499 00:24:44,310 --> 00:24:49,320 I want to talk a bit now about two crucial terms that 500 00:24:49,320 --> 00:24:52,881 will be useful in our discussions of the matters I've 501 00:24:52,881 --> 00:24:54,630 already raised and some other matters that 502 00:24:54,630 --> 00:24:56,540 will come up later in the course, 503 00:24:56,540 --> 00:25:02,790 and then return after clarifying these terms to an example 504 00:25:02,790 --> 00:25:06,100 from Battleship Potemkin, Eisenstein's most famous film, 505 00:25:06,100 --> 00:25:08,290 to demonstrate something of what I mean 506 00:25:08,290 --> 00:25:15,810 by the principles of top-down organization and film 507 00:25:15,810 --> 00:25:18,360 as propaganda that I was talking about earlier, 508 00:25:18,360 --> 00:25:20,160 as well as calling your attention to some 509 00:25:20,160 --> 00:25:23,490 of the artistic innovations that we still 510 00:25:23,490 --> 00:25:27,650 attribute to Sergei Eisenstein. 511 00:25:27,650 --> 00:25:32,920 The two terms I want to discuss are the terms montage and mise 512 00:25:32,920 --> 00:25:33,860 en scene. 513 00:25:33,860 --> 00:25:36,980 They're contrasting elements of what is in all movies. 514 00:25:36,980 --> 00:25:39,800 In a certain way, the term montage and the term mise 515 00:25:39,800 --> 00:25:42,310 en scene describe the most essential features 516 00:25:42,310 --> 00:25:43,930 of what movies are. 517 00:25:43,930 --> 00:25:48,130 Mise en scene, a term drawn from the theater, which 518 00:25:48,130 --> 00:25:49,380 literally, it's a French word. 519 00:25:49,380 --> 00:25:51,660 It literally means what is put or placed 520 00:25:51,660 --> 00:25:55,840 in the scene, what is in the scene. 521 00:25:55,840 --> 00:25:58,050 Mise en scene refers to the single shot, 522 00:25:58,050 --> 00:26:02,500 to what goes on within the single continuous unedited shot 523 00:26:02,500 --> 00:26:06,260 of film, the frame of film, however long it lasts. 524 00:26:06,260 --> 00:26:09,210 And the mise en scene of that shot 525 00:26:09,210 --> 00:26:12,120 is virtually everything inside that frame. 526 00:26:12,120 --> 00:26:16,650 In other words, even how the actors move in the frame 527 00:26:16,650 --> 00:26:19,716 is part of the mise en scene, but especially, the mise 528 00:26:19,716 --> 00:26:22,600 en scene emphasizes what is the environment like, 529 00:26:22,600 --> 00:26:24,289 what's the furniture like, what's 530 00:26:24,289 --> 00:26:26,580 the relation between the foreground, the middle ground, 531 00:26:26,580 --> 00:26:27,490 and the background. 532 00:26:27,490 --> 00:26:32,640 And in mise en scene, the emphasis 533 00:26:32,640 --> 00:26:35,240 is on the composition within the frame, 534 00:26:35,240 --> 00:26:36,790 and sometimes very great directors 535 00:26:36,790 --> 00:26:39,150 will compose their frames with such subtlety 536 00:26:39,150 --> 00:26:42,160 that if you freeze them, they look like paintings. 537 00:26:42,160 --> 00:26:44,820 They're balanced or unbalanced if that's 538 00:26:44,820 --> 00:26:47,370 the artist's intention in particularly 539 00:26:47,370 --> 00:26:50,100 artistic and complex ways. 540 00:26:50,100 --> 00:26:52,740 So we can think of this in some sense 541 00:26:52,740 --> 00:26:56,380 almost as having a kind of painterly equivalent. 542 00:26:56,380 --> 00:26:59,740 What goes on in the scene within? 543 00:26:59,740 --> 00:27:03,260 The other great term, montage, which is also a French term, 544 00:27:03,260 --> 00:27:06,830 comes from the verb the French verb monter, which means 545 00:27:06,830 --> 00:27:08,540 to assemble or to put together. 546 00:27:08,540 --> 00:27:12,000 And a montage means what is put together, what is edited, 547 00:27:12,000 --> 00:27:15,280 what is linked together. 548 00:27:15,280 --> 00:27:20,060 So a montage means the editing of continuous shots 549 00:27:20,060 --> 00:27:21,490 in a sequence. 550 00:27:21,490 --> 00:27:27,900 So the montage of a film is the rhythm of its editing. 551 00:27:27,900 --> 00:27:30,059 So all films have both elements in them, 552 00:27:30,059 --> 00:27:32,100 and in fact, we need to be aware of both of them. 553 00:27:32,100 --> 00:27:34,570 When we look at a film, it's often very helpful 554 00:27:34,570 --> 00:27:37,740 to ask yourself questions about the rhythm of the editing, 555 00:27:37,740 --> 00:27:40,280 to pay attention to how long the shots are held, 556 00:27:40,280 --> 00:27:41,860 to the way the film is edited. 557 00:27:41,860 --> 00:27:43,371 Again, the Eisenstein example we're 558 00:27:43,371 --> 00:27:45,120 going to look at in a minute will give you 559 00:27:45,120 --> 00:27:48,470 some dramatic instances of why manipulating 560 00:27:48,470 --> 00:27:50,030 the editing and the montage can be 561 00:27:50,030 --> 00:27:52,400 so dramatic and so signifying. 562 00:27:55,000 --> 00:27:59,800 So there's a kind of convention that has developed, 563 00:27:59,800 --> 00:28:02,530 and though ti radically simplifies in some ways, 564 00:28:02,530 --> 00:28:05,340 it's a simplification that's immensely instructive. 565 00:28:05,340 --> 00:28:07,790 One way you can talk about directors 566 00:28:07,790 --> 00:28:11,240 is to categorize them as montage directors 567 00:28:11,240 --> 00:28:13,744 or mise en scene directors. 568 00:28:13,744 --> 00:28:15,660 Mise en scene directors-- I'm oversimplifying, 569 00:28:15,660 --> 00:28:18,380 remember, because there's montage in every film. 570 00:28:18,380 --> 00:28:19,870 So a mise en scene director can be 571 00:28:19,870 --> 00:28:22,970 a master of editing too, and a director 572 00:28:22,970 --> 00:28:25,650 that we identify as a montage director certainly 573 00:28:25,650 --> 00:28:27,880 has to know how to manipulate his mise en scene. 574 00:28:27,880 --> 00:28:30,240 So it's not as if one kind of director 575 00:28:30,240 --> 00:28:33,670 doesn't do the other thing, but what it does try to signify, 576 00:28:33,670 --> 00:28:36,500 what it does try to indicate is that directors 577 00:28:36,500 --> 00:28:40,290 we call montage directors are directors whose effects come 578 00:28:40,290 --> 00:28:43,740 in a central way from the way they edit the film, 579 00:28:43,740 --> 00:28:46,350 from the quickness of their editing, 580 00:28:46,350 --> 00:28:49,460 from the way their editing manipulates or controls 581 00:28:49,460 --> 00:28:50,590 meaning in some sense. 582 00:28:50,590 --> 00:28:54,560 And we therefore would think of montage directors-- Eisenstein 583 00:28:54,560 --> 00:28:55,660 is a classic example. 584 00:28:55,660 --> 00:28:58,495 Hitchcock is probably the contemporary example, 585 00:28:58,495 --> 00:29:01,120 near contemporary example, that most of you might have in mind, 586 00:29:01,120 --> 00:29:05,060 in which the editing of the film, the quickness with which 587 00:29:05,060 --> 00:29:07,990 the shots develop, the way the music 588 00:29:07,990 --> 00:29:11,740 is superimposed on the editing rhythm, 589 00:29:11,740 --> 00:29:16,490 to increase your emotional response to the film. 590 00:29:16,490 --> 00:29:19,340 What we would say is that that's what 591 00:29:19,340 --> 00:29:24,190 a montage director embodies. 592 00:29:24,190 --> 00:29:26,840 So if we say that Hitchcock is a montage director, what we mean 593 00:29:26,840 --> 00:29:29,910 is that most of his most profound meanings 594 00:29:29,910 --> 00:29:33,480 come from the way in which he edits his film. 595 00:29:33,480 --> 00:29:36,550 And a contrast would be, let's say, with a director 596 00:29:36,550 --> 00:29:40,630 like the director we're going to see in a few weeks later 597 00:29:40,630 --> 00:29:43,980 in the term, Jean Renoir, a realistic director 598 00:29:43,980 --> 00:29:48,670 who might be called much more fully a mise en scene director, 599 00:29:48,670 --> 00:29:50,030 because he does edit. 600 00:29:50,030 --> 00:29:52,190 His editing rhythms are subtle, but he's 601 00:29:52,190 --> 00:29:54,510 interested in long takes. 602 00:29:54,510 --> 00:29:57,440 Montage directors like short takes, 603 00:29:57,440 --> 00:29:59,330 shots that last only a short time. 604 00:29:59,330 --> 00:30:03,810 In the most dramatic segments of the segment 605 00:30:03,810 --> 00:30:05,970 from Battleship Potemkin that I'm 606 00:30:05,970 --> 00:30:09,460 going to show you this afternoon in a few minutes, 607 00:30:09,460 --> 00:30:12,410 sometimes the edits are so brief that they don't even 608 00:30:12,410 --> 00:30:14,660 last a second and a half. 609 00:30:14,660 --> 00:30:17,190 The average number of shots in the film as a whole, 610 00:30:17,190 --> 00:30:19,290 in Battleship Potemkin as a whole, 611 00:30:19,290 --> 00:30:20,870 the shots last four seconds. 612 00:30:20,870 --> 00:30:24,305 That's not very long. 613 00:30:24,305 --> 00:30:28,720 In a Renoir film, they might last 10, 15 seconds, sometimes 614 00:30:28,720 --> 00:30:32,060 much longer than that. 615 00:30:32,060 --> 00:30:34,590 That's a very long time for a shot to be held, 616 00:30:34,590 --> 00:30:37,800 and if a shot is held that long, it means the camera will move, 617 00:30:37,800 --> 00:30:40,290 action will occur in it, but it'll still be a single shot. 618 00:30:40,290 --> 00:30:42,623 And can you see that if you hold the shot for that time, 619 00:30:42,623 --> 00:30:44,971 and the camera moves like this, what is it encouraging? 620 00:30:44,971 --> 00:30:46,970 It's encouraging you to think about the relation 621 00:30:46,970 --> 00:30:48,980 between characters and the environment. 622 00:30:48,980 --> 00:30:53,600 It's encouraging a kind of realistic response 623 00:30:53,600 --> 00:30:56,190 to what the film is showing you, whereas if you're 624 00:30:56,190 --> 00:30:59,420 looking at a film in which the cuts occur every two seconds, 625 00:30:59,420 --> 00:31:00,915 you don't have time to sort of take 626 00:31:00,915 --> 00:31:05,540 in what's the relation between the actor and the furniture. 627 00:31:05,540 --> 00:31:08,270 You're disoriented, and in fact, Hitchcock often 628 00:31:08,270 --> 00:31:11,650 brought his editing to a point just below the threshold 629 00:31:11,650 --> 00:31:13,630 of disorientation. 630 00:31:13,630 --> 00:31:16,830 When Eisenstein was theorizing about the power of editing-- 631 00:31:16,830 --> 00:31:19,060 he was one of the first great film theorists-- 632 00:31:19,060 --> 00:31:21,990 he talked about the way in which you could control an audience 633 00:31:21,990 --> 00:31:25,797 physiologically by manipulating montage. 634 00:31:25,797 --> 00:31:26,380 And it's true. 635 00:31:26,380 --> 00:31:28,520 You can, as you will know, and something 636 00:31:28,520 --> 00:31:33,210 that fascist societies are fully aware of and make use of. 637 00:31:33,210 --> 00:31:36,600 So this distinction between montage and mise en scene 638 00:31:36,600 --> 00:31:40,950 is immensely useful, and in some degree, 639 00:31:40,950 --> 00:31:45,670 if you apply the terms generously 640 00:31:45,670 --> 00:31:49,470 and tactfully, you can learn something about every film 641 00:31:49,470 --> 00:31:53,130 you look at by thinking about how these elements work 642 00:31:53,130 --> 00:31:54,960 in the film. 643 00:31:54,960 --> 00:32:00,040 I want to turn now to arguably, certainly 644 00:32:00,040 --> 00:32:03,620 one of the most famous films in the history of cinema 645 00:32:03,620 --> 00:32:08,090 and to a particular fragment from the film 646 00:32:08,090 --> 00:32:12,320 or an extended one, which I think 647 00:32:12,320 --> 00:32:15,910 embodies and will help clarify many of the abstract ideas I've 648 00:32:15,910 --> 00:32:17,820 just been suggesting to you. 649 00:32:17,820 --> 00:32:19,470 Let me say a word about the film. 650 00:32:19,470 --> 00:32:23,170 The film Battleship Potemkin was produced in 1925 651 00:32:23,170 --> 00:32:26,150 at a point when Eisenstein was now at the height of his power 652 00:32:26,150 --> 00:32:28,440 and authority. 653 00:32:28,440 --> 00:32:36,470 And it commemorates a moment in an abortive revolution of 1905 654 00:32:36,470 --> 00:32:40,220 so that by the time Eisenstein came to make the film, 655 00:32:40,220 --> 00:32:45,240 Battleship Potemkin was kind of like a founding story, 656 00:32:45,240 --> 00:32:48,640 or at least, it was about an abortive founding that 657 00:32:48,640 --> 00:32:50,330 would then occur years later. 658 00:32:53,070 --> 00:32:56,550 What it dramatized was a historical fact. 659 00:32:56,550 --> 00:33:01,770 There was a rebellion by the crew of the Battleship Potemkin 660 00:33:01,770 --> 00:33:05,630 against its officers, and it the battleship 661 00:33:05,630 --> 00:33:13,480 sailed into the port of Odessa, and its mutineers 662 00:33:13,480 --> 00:33:17,120 were welcomed by the people in the port of Odessa. 663 00:33:17,120 --> 00:33:22,210 And then the czar, angry that his Navy and his Naval officers 664 00:33:22,210 --> 00:33:25,840 had been mutinied against, sent soldiers to Odessa 665 00:33:25,840 --> 00:33:29,140 to decimate not just the mutineers, 666 00:33:29,140 --> 00:33:30,900 but the population of Odessa. 667 00:33:30,900 --> 00:33:34,980 And so the film, it was understood in a way, 668 00:33:34,980 --> 00:33:39,660 it was a revolutionary document or an attempt 669 00:33:39,660 --> 00:33:42,590 to sort of create a kind of founding myth 670 00:33:42,590 --> 00:33:45,420 for Russian society, because everyone watching the film 671 00:33:45,420 --> 00:33:49,520 would have known that the real revolution occurred only 672 00:33:49,520 --> 00:33:52,570 whatever it was, 12 or 13 years later, 673 00:33:52,570 --> 00:33:57,200 and that this was a kind of rehearsal. 674 00:33:57,200 --> 00:34:03,480 And so the film would have had a kind of patriotic aura 675 00:34:03,480 --> 00:34:05,320 for its audience. 676 00:34:05,320 --> 00:34:11,090 So the passage I'm going to show you is the famous passage. 677 00:34:11,090 --> 00:34:14,530 I think David Cook calls this the most famous montage 678 00:34:14,530 --> 00:34:16,730 sequence in the history of cinema. 679 00:34:16,730 --> 00:34:18,446 It was certainly profoundly influential, 680 00:34:18,446 --> 00:34:20,154 and as we're watching it, I may interrupt 681 00:34:20,154 --> 00:34:22,210 it to say a few things as you're watching, 682 00:34:22,210 --> 00:34:24,870 but I'll try not to do too much interruption. 683 00:34:24,870 --> 00:34:27,790 What I want you to watch for especially is not only-- 684 00:34:27,790 --> 00:34:31,159 I will have to make some commentary-- as you're watching 685 00:34:31,159 --> 00:34:35,250 it, among other things, watch for the way 686 00:34:35,250 --> 00:34:41,590 in which the length of the shots or the time between shots 687 00:34:41,590 --> 00:34:42,510 varies. 688 00:34:42,510 --> 00:34:47,909 And as this passage begins to increase 689 00:34:47,909 --> 00:34:52,910 in intensity and terror, the cuts become even briefer. 690 00:34:52,910 --> 00:34:54,409 And then watch also the way in which 691 00:34:54,409 --> 00:34:58,550 certain other strategies of Eisenstein's reinforce 692 00:34:58,550 --> 00:34:59,920 these montage strategies. 693 00:34:59,920 --> 00:35:02,050 For example, where the camera is positioned. 694 00:35:02,050 --> 00:35:05,369 Is it looking up at a character, or is it looking down? 695 00:35:05,369 --> 00:35:06,410 And very different thing. 696 00:35:06,410 --> 00:35:09,560 If you look up, you enlarge, and you mythify. 697 00:35:09,560 --> 00:35:12,240 If you look down, you humiliate and minimize. 698 00:35:12,240 --> 00:35:14,760 Watch how he does that sort of thing. 699 00:35:14,760 --> 00:35:20,330 You'll find it, I think, very illuminating and significant. 700 00:35:20,330 --> 00:35:24,705 The sequence is often seen today, 701 00:35:24,705 --> 00:35:27,282 and rightfully, I suppose, as deeply heavy-handed, 702 00:35:27,282 --> 00:35:29,740 because you're not allowed when you're looking at this film 703 00:35:29,740 --> 00:35:32,870 to have an alternative view of things. 704 00:35:32,870 --> 00:35:35,300 The film doesn't leave you room. 705 00:35:37,830 --> 00:35:39,560 Eisenstein's strategies don't leave you 706 00:35:39,560 --> 00:35:40,970 room for independent judgment. 707 00:35:40,970 --> 00:35:46,150 You're immersed in a spectacle so emotional and so wrenching 708 00:35:46,150 --> 00:35:48,330 that you don't have time to sort of sit back 709 00:35:48,330 --> 00:35:49,770 and think and come to conclusions. 710 00:35:49,770 --> 00:35:51,186 And one could say that this is one 711 00:35:51,186 --> 00:35:53,820 of the great differences between montage directors 712 00:35:53,820 --> 00:35:55,270 and mise en scene directors. 713 00:35:55,270 --> 00:35:58,310 Not an accident most horror movies, all horror movies 714 00:35:58,310 --> 00:36:02,420 really, are a form of montage, because your feelings are 715 00:36:02,420 --> 00:36:03,280 being manipulated. 716 00:36:03,280 --> 00:36:05,750 You're not supposed to be allowed to sit back 717 00:36:05,750 --> 00:36:08,820 and say how ridiculously implausible these events are. 718 00:36:08,820 --> 00:36:12,007 If that happened, it would spoil the film. 719 00:36:12,007 --> 00:36:13,340 We'll come back to these things. 720 00:36:13,340 --> 00:36:17,470 So here is the Odessa step sequence 721 00:36:17,470 --> 00:36:20,387 from the Battleship Potemkin. 722 00:36:20,387 --> 00:36:23,670 [MUSIC PLAYING] 723 00:36:25,550 --> 00:36:30,820 These are the Odessans welcoming the mutineers. 724 00:36:30,820 --> 00:36:34,440 One of the things that Eisenstein was fond of 725 00:36:34,440 --> 00:36:39,070 was a theory of montage that was based on two principles. 726 00:36:39,070 --> 00:36:44,227 One he called typage, typage-- T-Y-P-A-G-E. 727 00:36:44,227 --> 00:36:46,560 And what he meant by typage was the idea that there were 728 00:36:46,560 --> 00:36:49,690 ethnic, very racist in a way, that there were ethnic 729 00:36:49,690 --> 00:36:53,530 and social types that could be recognized visually. 730 00:36:53,530 --> 00:36:55,880 So he would type. 731 00:36:55,880 --> 00:36:58,250 So he felt, if I show you this face, 732 00:36:58,250 --> 00:37:00,320 you'll know he's a working class character. 733 00:37:00,320 --> 00:37:04,170 If I show you a woman with a parasol, 734 00:37:04,170 --> 00:37:06,807 you'll know that she belongs to the upper classes. 735 00:37:06,807 --> 00:37:08,640 And in fact, he's probably right about that. 736 00:37:22,340 --> 00:37:27,777 Here are the czar's forces, come to punish the mutineers 737 00:37:27,777 --> 00:37:28,735 and the city of Odessa. 738 00:37:31,600 --> 00:37:35,960 So the soldiers are on top, and they're forcing people down 739 00:37:35,960 --> 00:37:38,749 the steps, and they are presumably shooting them. . 740 00:38:04,240 --> 00:38:07,090 Kristen, freeze it for a second. 741 00:38:07,090 --> 00:38:09,710 I don't want to distract you by talking while it's running, 742 00:38:09,710 --> 00:38:11,220 so let me interrupt it for a second 743 00:38:11,220 --> 00:38:13,420 and say something else about the way the film works. 744 00:38:13,420 --> 00:38:16,050 One of the things Eisenstein understood was-- 745 00:38:16,050 --> 00:38:18,470 and it's actually a brilliant discovery. 746 00:38:18,470 --> 00:38:23,510 He realized that he could create through his strategies, 747 00:38:23,510 --> 00:38:25,730 especially of dramatic editing, he 748 00:38:25,730 --> 00:38:27,290 could create a situation in which 749 00:38:27,290 --> 00:38:30,950 the actual time of the experience that you're watching 750 00:38:30,950 --> 00:38:34,280 was not real time, but was what might be called emotional time. 751 00:38:34,280 --> 00:38:37,640 That is to say what's happening here, it's probably in the film 752 00:38:37,640 --> 00:38:39,760 taking longer than it took in reality, 753 00:38:39,760 --> 00:38:43,520 because in moments of horror, the horror is extended. 754 00:38:43,520 --> 00:38:47,160 And watch how those kinds of rhythms operate in the film. 755 00:38:47,160 --> 00:38:47,660 OK. 756 00:40:22,820 --> 00:40:24,220 Seems like a naive hope. 757 00:41:06,770 --> 00:41:08,250 Freeze it again, Kristen. 758 00:41:08,250 --> 00:41:10,030 One other quick observation. 759 00:41:10,030 --> 00:41:12,040 I hope you recognize how artful this 760 00:41:12,040 --> 00:41:14,175 is, even if you're not moved in the way 761 00:41:14,175 --> 00:41:15,800 the original audiences would have been. 762 00:41:15,800 --> 00:41:17,390 I think contemporary audiences often 763 00:41:17,390 --> 00:41:19,650 feel it's too heavy-handed. 764 00:41:19,650 --> 00:41:22,790 They resist the extent to which the film is manipulating them, 765 00:41:22,790 --> 00:41:25,086 but think back to the earliest days of film. 766 00:41:25,086 --> 00:41:29,190 What an unbelievable, shocking, incredibly exciting experience 767 00:41:29,190 --> 00:41:31,450 it must have been for early film-goers 768 00:41:31,450 --> 00:41:34,610 to have an experience that-- certainly 769 00:41:34,610 --> 00:41:37,270 for the Russian audience, but I think for every audience-- that 770 00:41:37,270 --> 00:41:40,440 was so intense and so emotionally powerful, so full 771 00:41:40,440 --> 00:41:43,160 of fear and violence that can be evoked 772 00:41:43,160 --> 00:41:46,250 by the rhythms of the editing, by the music, 773 00:41:46,250 --> 00:41:48,150 by how close-- I hope you noticed the way 774 00:41:48,150 --> 00:41:51,380 he mixes in closeups in incredibly powerful ways trying 775 00:41:51,380 --> 00:41:52,790 to create certain effects. 776 00:41:52,790 --> 00:41:56,250 Again, you're not given a choice about how to feel about this. 777 00:41:56,250 --> 00:42:00,050 You can descend from it by withdrawing your interest, 778 00:42:00,050 --> 00:42:02,900 but you can't say, oh, I really love those soldiers 779 00:42:02,900 --> 00:42:04,210 who were doing the shooting. 780 00:42:04,210 --> 00:42:05,870 Let's make a case for them. 781 00:42:05,870 --> 00:42:08,170 The film won't allow you to do that, will it? 782 00:42:08,170 --> 00:42:10,730 In that sense, it's manipulating you, 783 00:42:10,730 --> 00:42:15,540 but it's telling us a story about the creation 784 00:42:15,540 --> 00:42:17,960 of a revolutionary society. 785 00:42:17,960 --> 00:42:20,100 Finally, remember, I said that this 786 00:42:20,100 --> 00:42:25,457 is a question about emotional time as against real time. 787 00:42:25,457 --> 00:42:27,040 Think how long this has been going on. 788 00:42:27,040 --> 00:42:29,720 You think that this massacre is over, 789 00:42:29,720 --> 00:42:31,750 but in fact, it's only half over, as you'll see. 790 00:42:31,750 --> 00:42:34,860 There's going to be a moment when 791 00:42:34,860 --> 00:42:38,290 horse-mounted cossacks, horsemen, show up 792 00:42:38,290 --> 00:42:42,037 at the bottom of the steps and get them in a pincher. 793 00:42:42,037 --> 00:42:42,537 Go on. 794 00:43:07,500 --> 00:43:11,300 I don't think this soundtrack is the original soundtrack. 795 00:43:11,300 --> 00:43:15,076 It's very good though. 796 00:43:15,076 --> 00:43:16,200 This is a brilliant moment. 797 00:43:16,200 --> 00:43:18,640 I don't know whether we can attribute this to Eisenstein 798 00:43:18,640 --> 00:43:21,780 or not when suddenly the music stops. 799 00:43:35,710 --> 00:43:37,729 There should be sound now. 800 00:43:37,729 --> 00:43:39,270 Maybe something wrong with our print. 801 00:44:16,025 --> 00:44:17,900 I wanted to wait at least until you saw this, 802 00:44:17,900 --> 00:44:19,490 because some of you may recognize 803 00:44:19,490 --> 00:44:22,780 this moment as something that's been copied 804 00:44:22,780 --> 00:44:27,830 in recent American movies, a kind of allusion 805 00:44:27,830 --> 00:44:29,749 or a reference to this scene. 806 00:45:08,210 --> 00:45:10,865 The moment I wanted you to think about is this baby carriage. 807 00:46:04,630 --> 00:46:05,300 OK. 808 00:46:05,300 --> 00:46:06,500 Thanks, Kristen. 809 00:46:06,500 --> 00:46:08,330 Blood in the eyeglasses-- can you 810 00:46:08,330 --> 00:46:10,580 think of a movie in which you've seen that recently? 811 00:46:10,580 --> 00:46:11,700 Maybe not that recently. 812 00:46:11,700 --> 00:46:14,960 It's actually an ancient film now by your standards. 813 00:46:14,960 --> 00:46:16,771 How about The Godfather? 814 00:46:16,771 --> 00:46:18,520 There's a wonderful scene in The Godfather 815 00:46:18,520 --> 00:46:21,230 where a guy looks up from a massage table, 816 00:46:21,230 --> 00:46:23,680 and he's shot through the eyeglasses. 817 00:46:23,680 --> 00:46:24,860 Very memorable moment. 818 00:46:24,860 --> 00:46:26,570 It's surely an allusion to this movie, 819 00:46:26,570 --> 00:46:28,719 but how about the carriage going down? 820 00:46:28,719 --> 00:46:30,510 There have been several films that actually 821 00:46:30,510 --> 00:46:32,050 recreate that moment, but the one 822 00:46:32,050 --> 00:46:33,970 I'm thinking of-- Who is it? 823 00:46:33,970 --> 00:46:35,927 AUDIENCE: The Untouchables. 824 00:46:35,927 --> 00:46:36,760 DAVID THORBURN: Yes. 825 00:46:36,760 --> 00:46:37,849 From The Untouchables. 826 00:46:37,849 --> 00:46:38,640 Who's the director? 827 00:46:38,640 --> 00:46:39,411 Do you remember? 828 00:46:39,411 --> 00:46:39,910 Yes. 829 00:46:39,910 --> 00:46:42,300 Brian De Palma's film, The Untouchables, 830 00:46:42,300 --> 00:46:43,810 has a moment just like that. 831 00:46:43,810 --> 00:46:46,810 And De Palma, of course, is a kind of historian of movies. 832 00:46:46,810 --> 00:46:49,730 Virtually every scene in a De Palma film 833 00:46:49,730 --> 00:46:52,390 is a reference or an allusion to an earlier film. 834 00:46:52,390 --> 00:46:56,000 And part of the importance of Battleship Potemkin 835 00:46:56,000 --> 00:46:59,410 is that it is still a fruitful and fructifying source 836 00:46:59,410 --> 00:47:02,070 of imagery for contemporary filmmakers. 837 00:47:02,070 --> 00:47:05,380 So let me conclude then by simply reminding you 838 00:47:05,380 --> 00:47:09,160 that, as Cook suggests in his book, 839 00:47:09,160 --> 00:47:11,420 this is the single most influential montage 840 00:47:11,420 --> 00:47:15,460 sequence in cinema history, and that it's 841 00:47:15,460 --> 00:47:21,460 a wonderful instance for us, I think, of the way in which film 842 00:47:21,460 --> 00:47:24,640 in a different kind of culture, in an authoritarian culture, 843 00:47:24,640 --> 00:47:27,840 in a revolutionary culture, full of moral fervor, 844 00:47:27,840 --> 00:47:30,570 would be conceived both as an apparatus, 845 00:47:30,570 --> 00:47:38,780 as an engine of social transformation by a society 846 00:47:38,780 --> 00:47:42,670 that controlled film in a way fundamentally different 847 00:47:42,670 --> 00:47:44,870 from the way in which film developed, let's say, 848 00:47:44,870 --> 00:47:46,470 in the United States. 849 00:47:46,470 --> 00:47:48,100 We will continue these arguments, 850 00:47:48,100 --> 00:47:51,730 and I hope complicate them this evening.