Lecture: Film movements that changed history

By: Alaina Gizzo
Posted In: News

On February 27, Dr. D. Matthew Ramsey McKillop lead a lecture in the special collections room on the ground floor of McKillop Library The room was crowded with professors from the English department, student communication majors, and others interested in media.

The lecture discussed five world cinema movements and how they affected Hollywood films in the United States.

The first film movement discussed, German Expressionism, took place roughly from 1920 until 1931. Its features include exaggeration in acting, settings, and makeup, emphasis on emotional states, and lighting that stresses extreme contrast between light and dark. The film Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922) is one of the more popular films from this movement. German Expressionism was Germany’s attempt to compete with Hollywood films being produced at the time, according to Dr. Ramsey. Many American horror films contain features of this film movement.

Soviet Montage followed German Expressionism from the years 1925 through 1930. This movement stressed quick editing and distracting focus from the individual, bringing it more to crowds and anonymous characters. The montage, according to Dr. Ramsey is “.the joining of shots that go beyond the meaning of each individual shot.” One idea that came of this is the Kuleshov Effect, which is the theory that what the viewer interprets from the shots is most important. Films from this era include Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925) and Mother (Vsevolod Pudovkin, 1926).

The third movement that Dr. Ramsey discussed is Italian Neo-Realism, which took place from 1943 to 1952. Films from this era include Open City (Roberto Rossellini, 1945) and Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica, 1948). These films focused on the poor and working class, usually dealing with issues of post- World War II. Natural lighting and the blending of realism and melodrama are also characteristics of this film movement. This movement attempted to get as close to realism as possible, which resulted in the use of music for Hollywood Suspense.

French New Wave occurred right after Italian Neo-Realism from 1958 until 1965, with such films as Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1959) and The 400 Blows (Francoise Truffaut, 1959). According to Ramsey, this movement was known for jump cuts, which is editing that eliminates a small amount of frames without a 30 degree or more repositioning of the camera. “Another feature is discontinuity editing which often upsets the audience’s sense of space,” said Ramsey, “Hollywood action sequences almost always make use of this kind of editing in order to disorient the audience and ratchet up the excitement. Music videos also rely on this kind of fast editing.” The influence of this movement can be seen in The Bourne Ultimatum.

Cinema Novo, which occurred from 1963 through 1970, featured nonprofessional actors, life in the Brazilian backlands, overexposure, bleak plots, and the aesthetics of hunger and vomit. “All of this was designed to make the cinema-going experience uncomfortable and disturbing, something most Hollywood audiences aren’t particularly interested in,” Dr. Ramsey said. This movement was not as influential as the other four. According to Ramsey, the movement was created for the native villagers; however, they preferred American Hollywood films.