Week 5: Warwick, Introduction to Film and Cinema Studies (23/10/10)

Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming, USA, 1939): a study in Expressionism?
(The growth of the American studio system and development in sound and colour technology)

A screenshot from Gone with the WInd - demonstrarting the dramatic pictoralism.
This shot becomes a motif as it is repeated several time in he film but in diffrent circumstances due to changes in Scarlet's life throughout the narrative. With 'Tara' in the background, Scarlet and Gerald O'Hara are sheltered by the security of an oak tree; representing home.

This week Julia gave us a lecture about the film Gone With the Wind (Victor Fleming, USA, 1939); not only in is relationship to technological developments, the introduction of colour and sound to American Cinema, but also its relationship to earlier film movements.

We explored the aesthetics of Gone With the Wind and applied its influence to German Expressionism, particularly Murnau, and discussed how its sound and colour design developed on Expressionism’s power to connote meaning visually. The work of Griffith was acknowledged: not only in the subject matter of the civil war, which links in with Birth of a Nation (DW Griffith, USA, 1915), but also early cinema’s pictorialism.  

There was also discussion of other literary genres (e.g. Southern Gothic, Fairytales, Romanticism) and the issue of  authorship surrounding the film; in particular the influence of producer David O. Selznick and Production Designer Williams Cameron Menzies.

I made extensive notes, both from the lecture and the screening. Now that I have got my student card, I am able to login into the student website so I have researched the information that is on there.

As it was a single study of a text, there was little scope for general reading. Further reading consisted of quite specific texts. Though I kept in mind the previous reading I had done on German Expressionism.

As well as screening my own copy of the Gone with the Wind to view in its entirety, I also watched the original (1924) and the remake (1940) of the Thief of Baghdad in consideration of the influence of William Cameron Menzies.

Unfortunately, as the course is about the history and development of narrative cinema we were not able to go into discussion regarding the representation of race in Gone with the Wind. I will hopefully be able to look into the critical debates surrounding this during my own time.

I also explored early colour film both two-strip Technicolor, Mystery of the Wax Musuem (Michael Curtiz, USA, 1933), and three-strip Technicolor: The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, USA, 1939), The Adventures of Robin Hood (Michael Curtiz, USA, 1938), Becky Sharp (Rouben Mamoulian, USA, 1935) and La Cucaracha (Lloyd Corrigan, USA, 1934).

Concerning my assignments, I have chosen Nosferatu (FW Murnau, Germany, 1921) for 500 word shot analysis and “Discuss the ways in which  Battleship Potemkin demonstrates Eisenstein’s theory of montage” for the 2,000 word academic assessment.


Bibliography

Bordwell, David., Thompson, Kristin. 2009. Film History: An Introduction. 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

Bordwell, David., 1988. ‘Technicolor’. In: D. Bordwell, J. Staiger, K. Thompson, Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960. London: Routledge, pp. 353-357.

Bordwell, D., 2010. William Cameron Menzies: One Forceful, Impressive Idea. [online] Available at: < http://www.davidbordwell.net/essays/menzies.php > [Accessed 23 October 2010]

Higgins, Scott. 2007. Harnessing the Technicolor Rainbow: Color Design in the 1930s. Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. Chapter 7: ‘A Fully Integrated Design: Light and Color in Gone With the Wind’.

Larden, J. (2010). Gone with the Wind: A study in Expressionism?, [Lecture]. Introduction to Film and Cinema Studies. The University of Warwick. Open Studies Certificate. Stone Hall Adult Education Centre, 1083 Warwick Road, Acocks Green, Birmingham,23rd October.

Maltby, Richard. 2003. Hollywood Cinema. 2^nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Robertson Wojcik, Pamela.  2008. ‘Gone with the Wind’. In: P. Cook, ed. The Cinema Book. London: BFI Publishing, pp. 544-545


Filmography

The Adventures of Robin Hood (Michael Curtiz, Warner Bros. Pictures, USA, 1938)
Becky Sharp (Rouben Mamoulian, Pioneer Pictures Corporation , USA, 1935)
La Cucaracha (Lloyd Corrigan, Pioneer Pictures Corporation, USA, 1934)
Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming, Selznick International Pictures, USA, 1939)
Mystery of the Wax Musuem (Michael Curtiz, Warner Bros. Pictures, USA, 1933)
The Thief of Baghdad (Raoul Walsh, Douglas Fairbanks Pictures, USA, 1924)
The Thief of Baghdad (Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell, Tim Whelan, London Film Productions, UK, 1940)
The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, MGM, USA, 1939)



Image Source:
‘A screenshot from Gone with the Wind...' [online] Available at: < http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/?m=200903&paged=2> [Accessed 04 November 2010]