A Babe at Its Mother's Breast

In the film The Passion of Joan of Arc as the title character is executed by being burned alive, the camera interrupts the gruesome images of the flames and cuts to a baby feeding at its mother's teat. The child breaks contact with the mother and turns from the breast. In another cut, the child eventually returns to its meal. In class many of us found this image disconcerting and incongruous, generating a few gasps of incomprehension. Yet, is there a reason this image is included in the scene? Could that image have some symbolic importance to the film?

Tragedy of the Common Man?

The film The Last Laugh tells the story of the demotion of a doorman at a swank hotel to the position of bathroom attendant. Using the techniques of expressionist cinema, the film tries to capture the doorman's point of view, his "subjective truth."

Is this film successful? Is this man's story worthy of such a treatment? Is this the tragedy of the common man (like "Death of a Salesman") or is this just a story "full of sound and fury signifying nothing"?

Favorite Flics

Is there a movie that you could watch again and again? One that you watch when you are feeling down? A film that changed your life?

What is one of your favorite movies? What makes it a favorite? Is there a scene that you could describe and analyze that demonstrates its emotional or intellectual chops?

The Ideology Behind the Image

Two films from which we have seen excerpts Birth of a Nation and the Battleship Potemkin have a political message: either a justification of a racist, Jim Crow South or a communist Russia, respectively. How do these films use the language of film (shots, cuts, lighting, images) to make their political statements? What about other films we have seen? Do they have a political message? If so, how do they state that message using the techniques of cinema? How do they appeal to and/or manipulate our emotions? How do they tell a politically relevant story?

The Thrill is Gone?

We can no longer view the Lumieres Brothers first films with an "innocent eye." We no longer dive under our seats as we watch an oncoming train approach the screen. From our perspective of computer-generating special effects, early cinema can often appear "charming," but also primitive, naive and perhaps a bit boring. But is that true of all silent film we have seen in this class? Can early cinema having any intellectual or entertainment value for our times (beyond the historical value of trying to recapture the innocent eye)?