478 CHAPTER 10FILM HISTORY
✔Also learn about the film’s aesthetic context:
Was it made as part of a particular film move-
ment (e.g., Italian Neorealism), or does it break
from the prevailing tradition of the period? If it
is representative of a movement, how does it
measure up against the movement’s ideals and
achievements? Is it part of a “national cinema”
with its own aesthetic, political, and cultural val-
ues? Or is it part of the international movement
of surrealist films?
✔Learn something about its director’s overall
body of work. Is he regarded as an auteur? If so,
how is this movie similar to, or different from,
his other films? If the director’s work is charac-
terized by varying stylistic approaches, is this
movie a recognizable example of his style or a
break from that tradition? Since you may not
have time to see many of the director’s movies,
compare the movie you are considering with
their most famous movie.
✔Similarly, following the above approach, you may
want to study the history of another creative
artist in the historical context of a particular
genre. A few suggestions are Hayao Miyazaki’s
anime style within the history of animation,
Pres ton Sturges’s screenplays for 1930s screw-
ball comedies, Freddie Young’s cinematography
for the historical epics directed by David Lean,
Ann Roth’s approach to designing costumes for
period movies, Walter Murch’s sound designs for
the movies of Francis Ford Coppola, or the pro-
duction design of films about the Civil War from
D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation(1915) to
Anthony Minghella’s Cold Mountain(2003).
✔When an historic event has inspired various
movies (e.g., the Great Depression, the Vietnam
War, Watergate), you have a rich opportunity to
analyze and understand those cinematic inter-
pretations. First, you should understand the
complexity of this (and any) historic event by
taking notes on how different historians have
treated it—in other words, to understand that
all historical accounts are themselves interpreta-
tions of events. This will establish a context for
determining the scope, thoroughness, and effec-
tiveness of the movies inspired by the event.✔Have you found that a particular movie has
made important innovations in cinematic lan-
guage or in the use of technology? If so, what
are they? Who was principally responsible for
them (e.g., the director, sound designer, cine-
matographer)? Was this a momentary blip on
history’s screen, or did it become a permanent
part of cinematic technique or language? Can
you name a specific innovation and its influence
on a particular director or movie?
✔If your movie was the product of a particular
Hollywood studio, find out if that studio had
a unified style for most of its movies or
encouraged its directors to use different styles.
If the former, how well does the movie evoke
that style? If the latter, how is it different?
And did it influence subsequent studio
productions?
✔Many independent movies, those made in the
poststudio years, are characterized, on one
hand, by adhering to the traditional aspects of
cinematic language and, on the other, by making
recognizable breaks from tradition. If your movie
fits into this category, how “independent” is its
director? Is he someone who works solely to
fulfill his own vision (e.g., Stanley Kubrick),
a maverick who works within the much looser
configuration of the New American Cinema
(e.g., Clint Eastwood), or a trailblazer who tack-
les edgy subjects in a bid for new audiences
(e.g., Quentin Tarantino)?
✔Are you interested in the interaction between a
movie’s ideology and its marketing? If so,
choose a movie such as Gus Van Sant’s Milk
(2008)—about the beginnings of the gay-rights
movement—and (following the analytical model
of Jason Reitman’s Juno[2007] in Chapter 1),
identify its ideology, determine the audiences
for which it was produced, and how it was mar-
keted and received. In this, you might provide a
context of other films on gay issues, including,
among others, Basil Dearden’s Victim(1961),
John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy(1969),
William Friedkin’s Boys in the Band(1970),
Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia(1993), and Ang
Lee’s Brokeback Mountain(2005).