ESSAY 2

Select one of the following seven questions and write a response of approximately 5 pages. Feel free to modify the topic, but please discuss any modification with me in person before you start writing. Submissions should be typed and double-spaced. Please return the essay by October 20, 4 pm.

1. Compare the image of the city in Fritz Lang's M and Roberto Rossellini's Open City. Why do we tend to consider one more "realistic" than the other?
2. How would Jean Renoir have shot this sequence of M? Why?
3. Could Roberto Rossellini have shot this sequence of Grand Illusion? How would a neo-realist version have looked like? Explain!
4. Discuss this clip from Open City in terms of Andre Bazin's article, "An Aesthetics of Reality."
5. What is "realist" about "poetic realism"? What is "poetic" about it?
6. Compare the composition of natural spaces, as well as the positioning of human bodies in nature, in the final sequences of Grand Illusion and Sansho the Bailiff. How do they differ? What does this say about different cinematic styles and projects?
7. Compare the construction of space in the opening sequence of Lang's M with the articulation of space in this sequence of Sansho the Bailiff. To what extent can we call the style of both films "closed"?
8. Compare Ingmar Bergman's notion of art cinema to either Godard's or Herzog's self-conception as an auteur director.
9. Name a variety of visual, aural, and narrative strategies that typify films such as Breathless or Persona as "art cinema." Provide examples!
10. What would Dogme 95 say about Persona? What would Bergman say about Dogme 95? (Materials: Dogme Manifesto | Dogme "Vow of Chastity")