Notes From Chapter 2

    I enjoyed reading chapter 2 because as I have mentioned before I am someone interested in psychology as much as I am interested in Film. I started studying Psychology in my home country before I moved to the US and decided to study Graphic Design and Film. I love the connection between cinema and psychology and in my opinion those two things are deeply connected because if there was no human psychology there would not be a Theater, and later Film and Series. As the chapter mentions Cinema has always had an affinity for dreams, distortions, and delusions. I also find Sigmund Freud psychoanalytic theory interesting and I have studied and discussed that few times while in High School and at the University.

    It it not strange how many film directors were inspired from the Sigmund Freud's psychology and how they included psychological elements in their films. When it comes to psychological movies my favorite film director is Alfred Hitchcock. In my opinion nobody is good as he was in that sphere. I enjoyed watching his film even that they are somehow old now. I like how he used different psychological methods in them that keep the viewers interested and uncertain since the last minute. Alfred Hitchcock's characters play very well with human psychology, thoughts, emotions, feelings. The use of memories in his films is incredible they talk about the subconscious mind and they trigger psychotic episode. Alfred Hitchcock's film Spellbound (1945) was the first film which plot focused on Psychoanalysis.

    From the reading, I also find very interesting Jacques Lacan's mirror stage theory. It is interesting to think that infants can recognize themselves in a mirror from the age of about six months. To this theory I connected the video that is posted on our class blog. We can see the influence that the psychology have on films with that. There are plenty of films in which a scene with a mirror is used and how in many of them the mirror is used in a way to scare the character or to talk about their unconscious mind. 

 Film Summary and Critique First Draft

 

Reading Notes Pages 51-62

    I have heard about the French film critic Andre Bazin before but I did not know a lot about him, so it is great that the textbook talks about him and his influence of Film Theory. In my previous film classes I have studied about his Auteur Theory that the film director is the author of the film and that the auteur is a film director that has the same distinctive style in each film. 

    The first auteur director that came in my mind is Alfred Hitchcock. As an auteur he collaborated with the same people for different films, he has recurring themes and motives in his films, similar story composition and similar portrayal of gender roles. Also, most of his movies are psychological thrillers, the main character is usually a blonde woman. Hitchcock uses dramatic camera angles, different types of camera angles to create suspicion, danger, shock, mystery. He also uses different lighting, colors, and extreme close-ups scenes to show details and to portray suspense.

    I like how Bazin classified the cinema and how he put it before everything. How he talks that the cinema has the ability to record event in time and how it is above painting and photography. As an artist who is interested in all of the things painting, drawing, photography and film I agree with Bazin that nothing can be compared with the cinema and the film. That is like that because neither the paintings or the photography have the ability to move. The film represents all of the things because it has motion, so it is like a painting or photography that is moving. The film is the most complex thing and it can show a hundred of things and details even in a minute. 

This is a great video that talks about how Andre Bazin defined cinema

The trailer of Vertigo, my favorite Alfred Hitchcock's film

The best portrayal of human's obsession and psychology

 

Breathless 1960 Reflective Writing

    As I have mentioned before I am someone who is interested in watching old films, so I was really excited when I saw that we are going to watch a black and white film from 1960 during our class. I am also interested in watching international films as me myself being born in Europe. I have never heard about the film Breathless before, even that it is not my first watched Neo-noir film from that period. Drama and crime are my favorite film genres so that was another reason that made me interested to see the film even more and to add it on my already watched films list. I have watched French films before, I do not want to sound biased but I do not find French films in general very interesting and they are not my favorite ones. While watching Breathless I had that thought on my mind that the film might be boring but it surprised me positively.

    I found the plot of the film very engaging and it kept me interested till the end. I also did not know what will happen next till the last scene. To be honest I did not like both of the main characters. I found Patricia somehow weird and hard to understand, and Michel get on my nerves all of the time. In my opinion Patricia is someone who does not know what she wants from her life. I kind of expected different ending and in my opinion the film ends like being cut and there should be more scenes in it as we know that its running time is only 90 minutes. 

 I still ended up liking the film in some way and I am glad that I got the opportunity to see it in our class, because probably I would not chose to watch it on my own. I have heard about the famous french film director Jean Luc Goddard before and I have watched his movie The 400 Blows. It was great that we chose to watch his film Breathless in class at the day when he died at the age of 91. In that way we honored his wonderful film career. 

 Film Story Narrative Final Version:

Hugo Münsterberg's Photoplay (Jordan Schonig, Binghamton University)

Hugo Münsterberg's Photoplay (Jordan Schonig, Binghamton University)

I found this video very interesting because it explains very well Munsterberg's theory. I am interested in both of the things film and psychology and because of that I enjoyed hearing things from his book where he combined both. 

I like how Munsterberg approached the film theory by asking questions of whether film is an independent art or it is connected to the history of theater. I also found fascinating the examples with movement used in the video.

As someone who is also interested in photography I like how there is also mentioned the connection between the photography and film and La Jette illusion of depth. 

 Reading Notes From Pages 29-44

In such a hard period of wars in Europe and Russia even a Moscow Film School and All Union State Institute of Cinematography were established. That is somehow unbelievable but I am happy that it happened because thanks to that nowadays we have the film technology that we have and we are working on inventing even more sophisticated things in the film industry. 

Many years later I still agree with Kuleshov effect formula that an actor's appearance in the shot is determined more by what he is looking at than by his facial expressions. It is true that by watching a film we focus on actors facial expressions but by focusing on that we always have in mind of why he or she is making that expressions and what is going on next, what he or she is looking at.

I found interesting the part in the book that talks about the Soviet Russia and the Montage Theory. I was born and raised in Europe, so I know a lot of things about that and as someone interested in History it is great to connect my previous knowledge now with a film theory of a specific period in the history. It is great how in such a hard period of wars the film still survived in Europe and even it developed and improved. I have heard before about the montage theory and editing in 1920 developed by the film theorists Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov. The montage theory was a very important technique in that period of film as it is still due today's perspective of film. We keep the same theories and techniques that were developed back then we just work on improving them and making better things with better results. I also found interesting how Karl Marx theories had influences even on the theories of film. 

It is also fascinating how people in Germany focused on film even in the period of the wars and how directors as Robert Wiene made great films such as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari.

I found interesting to read Kracauer's concepts and his film theories.

This reading reminded me of the Russias film that I have watched Ivan's Childhood which is directed by the Soviet Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky.

 

Reading Notes From The Textbook Pages 11-29

From this reading I found interesting how Lindsay and Munsterberg both considered the relationship between film and theater and in my opinion both of the things are deeply connected as theater being the film ancestor and inspiration. I also love their ideas of connecting the film and the moving picture to the hieroglyphs in Ancient Egypt. I like their point of view how they say that something more is represented through every item used in a film and connecting them to the poetry of Edgar Allen Poe. 

It is interesting how their film theory make connections with so many things as the universal language idea- Esperanto. As someone interested in Psychology I also think that the book Photoplay by Munsterberg played a huge role in the film theory because it contains important information from psychological view.

Rudolf Arnheim medium specificity thesis contains also important information for film as film composition, editing and special affects.

I agree with Munsterberg that both close-up and flashbacks that are used in movies are very important and that they play part in psychological impact and awareness of people in a way that they elicit a strong emotional connections of the viewers. 

By using close-ups in a film the film directors know how to capture viewers attention on a specific thing on the scene which is shown entirely. Also by using close-ups the viewers can pay more attention to the characters by following their facial expressions and by that getting inside the character's mind what they are thinking and how they are feeling. From the facial expressions the characters can predict many things as what will the next move of the character in the movie be.

Flashbacks help the viewers to see the things that are happening in the movie from the character point of view. They can also tell us what the character thinks about, imagines, or remembers.

I also agree with Munsterberg theory that films need to be considered as a real art. Because a film contains a visual perspective and combines two-dimensional images with the depth of three-dimensionality and that is a real depth. 

France role in the film culture and cinephilia. Hollywood films were more modern and dynamic. Photogenie.

An example of the use of flashbacks in film is this scene from my favorite film The Godfather part III:

In this scene there is used flashbacks with Michael Corleone's memories of his loved one Apollonia. 

An example of the use of close-ups in film is this scene of my second favorite film Titanic:

 

 

 

Film Story Narrative First Draft