Film Course Issues
REGARDING a new student's question whether missing the first semester places her at a disadvantage in the second semester, the answer (in one sense) is obviously yes. But only in the sense that redundancy (repetition) is the basis of learning. If you hear classical music ten times (even by ten different composers) you're better off listening to your eleventh classical composition than the person who has never heard a single classical piece. But strictly speaking there's nothing that should prevent the novice listener from learning about that new piece of music, because education in the arts is recursive: that is, elements of an art form are taught throughout the year.
It's impossible, for example, to focus on a Beethoven symphony in terms of rhythmic patterns without exposing related elements of composition as well (melody, harmony, orchestral textures, dynamics, etc.).
At the same time, as my comments below show, it's well (from the point of view of learning as distinct from grading) that our new students view previously assigned films when possible (they're all in the library or online), especially when these are discussed in class or by email (as below).
In a related issue, I wish to address a passage from your textbook (p. 143f.):
Although today the default choice for feature film production is color, the period from 1940 to 1970 was a time during which the choice between color and black and white needed to be carefully considered, and many films shot in color during that period might have been even stronger if they had been shot instead in black and white. John Ford's The Searchers (1956; cinematographer: Winton C. Hoch), a psychological western that is concerned less with the traditional western's struggle between good and evil than with the lead characters' struggle against personal demons, might have been an even more powerful film had it been shot in black and white instead of color. Doing so might have produced a visual mood, as in film noir, that complemented the darkness at the heart of the movie's narrative.
This text brings up a number of related issues.
First, the issue of aesthetic (=artistic feeling) judgments. Recently I saw the western, 3:10 to Yuma, which nearly all critics considered a revival masterpiece in the western genre but I consider a dismal failure on nearly all levels.
So what standards are being used? In the end, all the critic can do is give educated reasons for an opinion. There's a difference between a mere opinion and an informed opinion (that is, informed by previous encounters with art of that kind, artistic principles, moral values, etc.).
Second, Richard Barsam (our text's author) gives educated reasons for his opinion that Ford's film would have been better in black and white. They are reasonable, but I disagree with them.
Third, when we generalize (as he does) one must be specific about the period being discussed. I doubt if anyone believes that color can't paint as seedy a picture of life today as black and white did years ago. (I'm not saying Barsam is ignorant of these changes, for he's clearly aware of them.) Otherwise Gordon Willis would not have filmed masterpieces of color cinematography in Francis Coppola's Godfather films. No one would argue these classics of low-key lighting would have looked better in black and white.
True, color film stock was slower when Winton Hoch filmed Ford's The Searchers in color. But here we have to consider the issue of trade-offs.
Even assuming Barsam is correct that film stock should match subject matter (gangster movie=black and white; musical=color), whatever "film noir" elements are in The Searchers, the film clearly falls within the western film genre more than in the film noir genre. In fact, it's precisely the tension between an idealized western landscape and community (the homesteaders) and the twisted mind of Ethan Edwards that is the subject of Ford's film; it is the conflict between racism and democracy that is the real subject (the "subtext") of Ford's film.
To have made the film in black and white would not only have deprived viewers of some of the most beautiful images in the western film genre but would have destroyed that tension I mentioned above. We must assume that Ford believed in American democracy and the moral achievement of the American settlement even as he recognizes the racist impulses that made that achievement possible. It is the delicate balance between these values that gives his film its power. Black and white film stock would have destroyed that balance in my opinion.
Nor is The Searchers film noir, though Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) may fit comfortably in a film noir movie. Film noir involves an entire community, often even the "good" people. There's no indication that anyone is evil in Ford's film except Edwards. In fact, Edwards' madness is purposely contrasted against the sanity of the other characters.
This is not to "prove" my view is correct. Aesthetics (art appreciation) is a continuing dialogue, as poet T. S. Eliot (among others) have pointed out. Every new work and each new artist forces a new evaluation of everything that has come before.
Even Shakespeare was considered a "barbarian" by Neoclassical French critics. Bach and the Blues needed revival: Bach by the Romantics and the Afro-American Blues by middle-classic white youth in the 1960s. Mozart (in the iconic shadow of Beethoven) suffered neglect up to early in the last century, while Vivaldi was almost forgotten for hundreds of years until his music was rediscovered in the 1930s. Today, The Four Seasons may well be the most popular music in the classical repertoire; while no rational person would question that Mozart plumbed the depths of emotion as much as Beethoven ever did, or more so.
For students, the important thing is to keep your mind open, read critically, trust your own (aesthetic) responses, but (above all) see as many films as possible and try to analyze and explain them as well as you can, based on evolving aesthetic principles and a seasoned (or disciplined) sensibility.
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