Film History Midterm

Film History I

The zoetrope was:

A nineteenth century optical toy

The first series photos captured by a single camera were taken by:

Marey

Who was W.K.L. Dickson?

Edison’s lab assistant and the principle inventor of the Kinetographe and the Kinetoscope

What was the Black Maria?

The nickname of the Edison movie studio, which looked like a police vehicle

The first true motion picture camera was

The Kinetographe

Edison’s Kinetoscope viewing box was initially highly profitable, but it’s popularity declined:

Because other inventors found ways to project films onto a screen

What influential early camera also doubled as a projector?

Cinématographe

The Lumière Brothers:

Were the first to project films to a paying audience

George Méliès:

All of the above (worked as a magician, owned and operated his own theatre, showed his own movies in his act)

Which was NOT a Méliès innovation:

Hand tinted color

Which aspect of Méliès approach to cinema was least influential?

Elaborate sets and costumes to create a rich mis en scene

Edwin S. Porter:

All of the above (was influenced by George Méliès, was first hired by Edison to update and improve his equipment, became the primary director for Edison)

“The Great Train Robber” (1903) is significant because:

All of the above (it cuts away from scenes before they are even completed, it made the shot, rather than the scene, the basic unit of cinematic meaning, it was the first film to exploit the violence of armed crime)

Porter’s work demonstrated the fundamental concept that cinematic narration depends on:

The arrangement of shoes in relation to one another

The Nickelodeon:

Was a movie theatre

The Nickelodeon Boom:

All of the above (occurred between 1904-1908, was fielded by the demand for “The Great Train Robbery”, initially showed movies from overseas)

From 1897 on, the Edison Company tried to force it’s competitors out of business by:

Suing them for patent infringement

The first distributor to effectively defy the MPPC trust and start its own production film:

Carl Laemmle

The first American film companies were located in:

New York and New Jersey

The Motion Picture Patents Company:

All of the above (was an oligopoly because it’s member firms cooperated to control the US market, was formed by Edison, held the 16 most important patents and copyrights for cinema)

In the earliest years of the cinema, film actors’ names were not published:

because producers were afraid publicity would drive up their fees

In his work with actors, Griffith:

all of the above (built a stock company, many who became great actors; insisted on rigious rehearsals, just like for stage performance; encouraged subtlety of expression, distinguishing him from other directors

Griffith and Bitzer discovered that camera angle:

could be used to create visual metaphors

All of the follower are Griffith/Bitzer innovations EXCEPT:

they are all Griffith/Bitzer innovations

The 180-degree system:

assures consistent screen direction from shot to shot

The technique that Griffith called “objects of attention” refers to:

a cut from a character looking off screen to a shot of what the character sees

In using analytical editing, a filmmaker:

breaks down a space into separate framings- ie: cutting closer to a view of the action

The use of the “cut in” in “The Greasers Gauntlet” was for the purpose of:

heightening the emotion of the scene

The film Griffith structured using three-way parallel action was:

The Lonely Villa

Accelerated montage as practiced by Griffith was:

alternating shots of shorter and shorter duration

Griffith’s desire for increased length of film was driven by":

a desire to see film develop as a serious art

Which of the following techniques are used in *Birth of a Nation*:

all of the above (composition in depth; complex parallel editing; period accurate mise-en-scene)

Which of the following events is NOT seen in *Birth of a Nation*:

Lincoln’s election

*Birth of a Nation* was extremely controversial because

its racist account of the role of African Americans in the post Civil War South

*Birth of a Nation:*

all of the above (contained far more shots than a foreign spectale film of a similar length; was the longest and most expensive US film when it was first released; was refused distribution by all existing exchanges because of its length)

*Birth of a Nation:*

was the first film ever presented in a White House screening for the President

*Birth of a Nation:*

was seen by more people in its first year than any other film in history

*Intolerance* was noted for its:

all of the above (revolutionary continuity editing techniques; elaborate tracking shots; metaphorical intercutting)

Of the following, who was NOT part of the United Artists company with Griffith:

Cecil B. DeMille

Griffith:

discovered and articulated the language of cinema

The company formed in 1917 through a forced merger of German production, distribution, and exhibition companies was:

UFA

UFA:

was established by government decree

Before the end of WWI, UFA did all of the following EXCEPT:

seel shares in the company to private investors

Expressionism in the arts:

began in painting, music, and theatre before influencing cinema

During the 1920s, descriptions of German Expressionist films referred to the sets as:

acting

The visual world of Caligari:

represents the narrator’s tortured psyche

Cinematic expressionism:

all of the above (deals with morbid psychological states and troubled dreams, created mood with lighting and set design, represented a psychological reality as a tangible visual image)

The influence of Caligari on the German cinema that followed can be seen in:

its objective depiction of the internal subjective world of the character

The primary themes of the Schauerfilme was:

the human soul in search of itself

Nosferatu:

was shot on location in central Europe

which is the LEAST important techinque of Nosferatu’s expressionist style:

production design

In German expressionist films, the narrative often pauses or slows briefly while:

elements of mise-en-scene align into eye-catching compositions

Which was NOT a common tactic for blending the elements of mise-en-scene in a German expressionist film:

the use of elaborate tracking shots

The Kammerspielfilm:

superseded expressionism as the creatively dominant style in German cinema

The most influential techinque of The Last Laugh on Hollywood films was:

camera movement

The subjective camera:

physically becomes the eyes of the character

One of the significant factors in the decline of German expressionist cinema was:

the departure of expressionist filmmakers to Hollywood

The street film:

was characterized by cynicism, resignation, and disillusionment

Pandora’s Box:

all of the above (tells the story of a party girl who eventually turns to prostitution; cast an American actress in the lead; was directed by G.W. Pabst)

Which of the following is NOT a fundamental technique of Pabst’s continuity editing:

they are all part of his continuity editing

During WWI the Tsarist Russian government attempted to stimulate production:

by funding the production of propoganda films

The Soviet leader who said, “the cinema is for us the most important of the arts” was:

Lenin

Lev Kuleshov:

all of the above (was one of the few pre-revolutionary filmmakers to stay in the Soviet Union, was a theorist and filmmaker as well as a teacher, was 20 when he started teaching at the Moscow Film School)

The Kuleshov Workshop:

included both Pudovkin and Eisenstein as students

The D.W. Griffith film that would become the first great success of the Soviet film industry was:

*Intolerance*

The Kuleshov effect concluded that:

meaning is primarily determined by the edit and not the content of the shot alone

Kuleshov’s experiments in “creative geography” demonstrated that:

none of the above

The “Kuleshov effect” is based on the use of editing to:

lead the spectator to infer spatial or temporal continuity from the shtos of separate elements

*Eisenstein’s Strike* (1924):

was envisioned as being an assault on the tradition of the bourgeois cinema

The shot of a bull being slaughtered in *Strike* is best described as a:

nondiegetic insert

*Battleship Potemkin:*

represents a new editing technique based on psychological stimulation

The type of Eisensteinian montage that is concerned with the temporal (time) length of the individual shot is:

metric montage

Eisenstein’s intellectual montage is concerned with:

the metaphorical significance of the shots as their juxtaposition creates something new

The primary form of montage used by Eisenstein in *Old and New* was:

overtonal

In Pudovkin’s early career:

he attended the Kuleshov workshop

Like *Battleship Potemkin,* Pudovkin’s *Mother*:

was an immediate international success

In comparison with Eisenstein, Pudovkin had a greater interest in:

acting performance

Pudovkin’s *The End of St. Petersburg*:

was commissioned by the Central Committee of the Communist Party

In what capacity did Dziga Vertov work for the Red Army during the civil war:

editor

Stalin’s contribution to Soviet cinema was:

the imposition of socialist realism as the only approved film style

The figure responsible for setting the practices of the Hollywood studio system was:

Thomas Ince

Which of the following was a component of Ince’s production system:

he divided the work among several production units, each headed by a director

The American cinema after WWI:

began to reflect the materialism and sexual license of the Jazz Era

The primary purpose of the Hays office was:

to hold off threats of censorship by giving Hollywood the appearance of self-regulation

The director of the Keystone film company was:

Mack Sennett

Which of the following would be in the best description of a Keystone film:

violent, chaotic physical comedy with fast-paced editing and frantic action

the studeio where Chaplin first developed his “little tramp” persona was:

none of the above

Chaplin’s short films:

contained a great deal of social satire at the expense of the rich and powerful

Chaplin’s first sound films:

were not made until the 1940s

Buster Keaton began his career as a costar for:

Fatty Arbuckle

During the 1920’s, Buster Keaton:

had complete creative control of his films

Buster Keaton’s *The General*:

is widely considered Keaton’s masterpiece

Harold Lloyd:

specialized in the “comedy of thrills”

The great adventure star of the 1920s whose athletic, optimistic persona made him one of the biggest stars in Hollywood was:

Douglas Fairbanks

The director who most fully embodied the sexual freedoms of the “new morality” was:

Cecil B. DeMille

The best description of DeMille’s work would be:

displays of sex and violence made acceptable by tacking on a moralistic conclusion

When his comedies came under fire from censorship groups, DeMille responded by:

producing films that mixed risque material with religious subject matter

A sophisticated hadnling of sexual innuendo, a refined sense of visual wit, and a light comic continental touch describe the films of:

Ernst Lubitsch

Von Stroheim’s use of sexual perversion in his films is the result of his desire to:

create a metaphor for cultural decay

The demise of individualistic directors like von Stroheim and Keaton was the result of:

both a and b