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Teaching Experimental Film For The New A LevelsMaxine Crampton
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WJEC SPECIFICATION
1. Daisies (Chytilova, Czechoslovakia, 1965) 15
2. Saute ma ville (Akerman, Belgium, 1968) 15
a. Core study areas:
Key elements of film form, meaning and response and contexts
b. Narrative
c. Auteur
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OCR SPECIFICATION1. Un Chien Andalou (1929).
Directed by Luis Bunuel. France. 15
2. L’Age D’or (1930).
Directed by Luis Bunuel. France. 15
How a movement (surrealist film) shares similar ideas about style,
aesthetics, or political or social-cultural objectives; and agrees on
methods of furthering these through approaches to film
narrative/style/genre
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Daisies‘A philosophical documentary in
the form of a farce’ Vera Chytilova
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‘There is no involvement, no conventional
chronology, no psychological
development……no narration’ Film
Quarterly Spring 1968
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Featuring two women:
Marie 1
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Marie 2
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Themes
• Time and death
• Feminism
• Nihilism
• Anti-war - Dada influence
• Conformity
• Film as art
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The Opening from 1.52 – 4.28
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Key Elements of Film Form
Mise-en-scene: 60s fashion juxtaposed with a former
era – surreal and exaggerated: apple tree, make up.
Innocence. Dolls.
Cinematography: long shots where the action
unfolds – lack of alignment.
Editing: colour to black and white, filters, jump cuts,
surreal match on action, long takes.
Sound: enhanced diegetic sounds, abrupt changes in
music
Performance: self-aware/conscious – identity, youth
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Context• Czech New Wave
• State approved script
• A ‘morality play’ design to criticise the morals of the protagonists (?)
• Initially banned for its depiction of ‘food wastage’.
• Chytilova barred from working in film for 6 years 1969-1975
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The Second Date 24.10 –
25.57
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Chytilova has argued that the social criticism
would have greater effect if the comedy was
accentuated, her intention was:
• ‘to divert the spectator’s attention from the
psychology of the characters’
• 'to restrict his feeing of involvement and lead
him to an understanding of the underlying idea
or philosophy'.
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Vera Chytilova as an
Auteur
• 3 previous films concerned with the position of
women in society, in fashion (Ceiling), in the
factory (A Bagful of Fleas), in gymnastics, and
marriage (Something Different).
• ‘The desire to make unexpected combinations is
a characteristic of most of her work. Also the
communication of subjective female experience’.
Peter Hames
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Collaboration – 3 important film-makers
from the Czech New Wave
• 3 ‘authors’, Chytilova, her husband
cinematographer Jaroslav Kucera (abrupt colour
shifts, jump cuts, rapid-edit photomontages) and
Ester Krumbachova as designer.
• Creative freedom around ‘fixed dialogue’ – state
approved screenplay and typical of the
nationalised Czech film industry.
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The Bath 44.30 – 46.46
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Narrative
• Episodic – montage –musical structure
• Quest for meaning
• Excursions and discussions at home
• Inciting incident, climax and a resolution
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The Countryside 48.30 – 52.37
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Feminist reading
‘a latent feminist delight in the heroines’ ability to
effect reversals in the patriarchal order. This study
espouses a counter -reading of Daisies that
corresponds neither to the director’s account nor to
the censors’ ill-considered objections to the film.’
Lim
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Collage 53.42 – 55.13
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Subversive surrealism
‘Daisies’s surrealist motifs of montage and collage
are epitomized in striking images of the heroines’
bodies splintered and recomposed. These formal
strategies suggest an appropriation of surrealist
tenets — incongruity and surprise, the denial of
mimetic representation, and the revelatory power of
fragmentation—by a Czech feminist film- maker.’
Lim
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The Banquet 1.03.54-
1.07.04
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Social Criticism
Jitka Cerhova (Marie 1) interviewed in 2013;
‘The two of us were really tools of the critique of a
society that didn’t advance, it didn’t evolve in any
way. Vera also wanted to explore the idea of
destruction……shocking in a country where people
waited in line for hours in front of grocery stores.’
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Response• Lack of characterisation
• Fragmented narrative
• The behaviour of the two Maries – the impact of sound in particular – female more positive?
• The use of filters and black and white
• What has ‘gone bad’ the Maries or the society?
• ‘An existential story’ VC
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Un Chien Andalou‘A masterwork from every aspect: it’s
certainty of direction, its brilliance of
lighting, its perfect amalgam of visual
and ideological associations, it’s
sustained dreamlike logic, its
admirable confrontation between the
subconscious and the rational’
Jean Vigo
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The famous opening sequence
from 1.04 once upon a time to 4.30
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Key Elements of Film Form
1. Mise-en-scene - suburban Paris
2. Cinematography - conventional use of shot types
and camera movement
3. Editing - continuity features used for symbolism or
aesthetics, iris and slow motion
4. Performance - indications of emotions/desires as
motivating forces, but no characterisation
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NarrativeA story of frustration both for the protagonist (if there is
such a thing) and the viewer.
Continuity treated with irony: inter titles and graphic
matches used for aesthetics and symbolism, absurd use
of match on action.
Episodic - subverts dominant story telling conventions of
mainstream cinema
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Context
Surrealism: the expression of the unconscious mind
Freud’s theory of personality: the ego, id and super ego
Film as art, as a creative medium
Film as shocking and subversive
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L’Age D’or‘the howls of protest that greeted L’age D’or were
music to surrealist ears’ Robert Short
• Still concerned with Freud
• More overtly political: influence of Marxism
• Blasphemous/ anti catholic
• Less absurd more satirical
• Documentary elements
• More meaningful title
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The Lovers 13.02 – 15.10
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Key Elements of Film Form
Mise-en-scene: Contradictory- primitive rocks and
mud, formal, religious, patriarchal clothing
Cinematography: conventional
Sound: startling sounds of female passion juxtaposed
with solemn hymnal style music
Editing: the unconscious mind/ association -cut away
shot to the toilet and dissolve to bubbling mud as the
toilet flushes and then a close up of his muddy face
Performance: example of absurd human behaviour –
lust, violence, pomposity and an obsolete religion
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Bibliography
• ‘The Czechoslavak New Wave’, Peter Hames
• Senses of Cinema ‘This Film’s Going Bad: Collaborative Cutting in Daisies, Dylan Rainforth
• The New Yorker, DVD review of Daisies, Richard Brody
• Camera Obscura 47, Volume 16, ‘Dolls in Fragments: Daisies as Feminist Allegory’, Bliss Cua Lim
• Senses of Cinema Cinemateque Annotations on Film, L’Age D’Or
• Notes on Un Chien Andalou and L’Age D’Or with the BFI box set by Robert Short