Film History

Directions: Using word processing software to save and submit your work, please answer the following short answer questions. All responses to questions should be one to two paragraphs, composed of five to seven sentences, in length. Your responses should include examples from the reading assignments.

1. Perhaps the most important artistic trend of the early twentieth century was labeled modernism. Summarize some of the principal tenets of modernism, and specify how these ideas influenced the development of the French Impressionism (or German Expressionist [Ch. 5] or Soviet Montage [Ch. 6]) movement in film.

2. What created the problems confronting French film production between 1918 and 1928? Identify the three primary factors as identified in the text, and summarize the effects of each of these causes.

3. The formal qualities of French Impressionism derived partly from the directors’ beliefs about the cinema as an art form. What were these beliefs? Explain how the Impressionists’ theories on the cinema translated to their films with regard to either cinematography or editing.

4. Why did French Impressionism decline as a unified filmmaking movement in the late 1920s? What was the role of pressures from both inside and outside the movement in this decline?

5. Compare the activities of the Soviet film industry during the War Communism period (1918-1920) and during the years of the New Economic Policy (1921-1924). What difficulties arose for the industry during War Communism, and how were these problems remedied or addressed by the New Economic Policy?

6. What were the objectives of Constructivism, and which of those aims were especially important to the development of the Montage movement in film?

7. How did the theories on filmmaking advanced by Lev Kuleshov, Dziga Vertov, and Sergei Eisenstein differ with regard to editing?

8. How was mise-en-scene used as an element of montage in the films of Soviet directors? Give examples of how mise-en-scene was typically employed in Montage films.

9. What is the difference between vertical integration and horizontal integration?

10. What were the factors behind the nickelodeon boom of the middle 1900s? What were the reasons for the nickelodeon’s popularity—what advantages did this type of exhibition venue offer to both theater owner and patron?

11. In what ways did the motion picture industry in the late 1900s attempt to make films more prestigious and film going more respectable? What pressures were producers and exhibitors responding to?

12. How did the animated film develop during the early twentieth century? What types of animation techniques did the earliest animators use? Give examples of specific animators or from specific films.