Wealth and Frailty, Episode Two: Die Nibelungen and German Pride

     In May of 2016, I completed a three episode documentary film on the history of the early Weimar Republic, i.e. 1920's Germany. This was done as my capstone or "Keystone" project for the Honors Humanities program at the University of Maryland. The documentary, entitled Wealth and Frailty, seeks to understand the relationship between the economic and political instability of the early Weimar Republic and the cultural vibrancy that simultaneously emerged. Each one-hour episode relates a different portion of the Weimar Republic's history to an artistic product of the time. The time frame covered is roughly 1918-1924.

     This film examines the reemergence of nationalism following the Republic's founding, and points out parallels between that development and the plot of the 1924 film, Die Nibelungen.

Submitted by William Whitmore.

Wealth and Frailty, Episode One: Caligari and the Founding

     In May of 2016, I completed a three episode documentary film on the history of the early Weimar Republic, i.e. 1920's Germany. This was done as my capstone or "Keystone" project for the Honors Humanities program at the University of Maryland. The documentary, entitled Wealth and Frailty, seeks to understand the relationship between the economic and political instability of the early Weimar Republic and the cultural vibrancy that simultaneously emerged. Each one-hour episode relates a different portion of the Weimar Republic's history to an artistic product of the time. The time frame covered is roughly 1918-1924.

     This episode chronicles the founding of the Republic, and places the silent film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, within the context of those events.

Submitted by William Whitmore

Film Blog Essay: Film as a Mirror: Our Anxieties on Screen

"This is an election they'll be studying for ages."  Anyone with the boldness to discuss politics with family and friends over the past few months has heard some variation of this thought uttered.  The economists, the politicians, the journalists, the psychologists, the philosophers, and the researchers are all trying to have the foresight - or perhaps the clairvoyance - to see not only how the future will unfold, but how the history books of the next generation will interpret today's events.  Consequently, I can't resist the urge to practice the same anticipation of tomorrow’s textbooks in my own field of interest – cinema.  As a film studies major, I must wonder: how will the current time period in American cinema be remembered?  It would seem that there is already a very common answer to this question  (and it’s the other quote I’ve heard about a thousand times over the past few months) – "Everything is a sequel or a remake now."  We must recognize, however, that this is not true, and perhaps more importantly, this is probably not the main focus of the "2010s" chapter of 2050's film textbooks.

I should be perfectly clear that this is not intended to undercut the significance of the Reboot Movement.  The past few years have most definitely demonstrated a cultural desire to reflect on everything that our culture’s media has given us thus far, revisiting the stories, themes, characters, genres, and franchises that have shaped the way we think about the world.  Just within the past year, audiences have seen the unexplored nooks and crannies of the Death Star, the American side of the Wizarding World, and a universe in which the Ghostbusters are women, not to mention a reworking of the mid-century musical with La La Land and multiple retellings of classic Disney stories.  As nice as it is to think of this as a time when Western culture simply feels like reflecting on its accomplishments, this is clearly the desire of the film industry’s bigwigs more than it is what the audiences are demanding.  Sequels have always worked at bringing in crowds with reliability because people have a strong impulse to return to the familiar and to check up on the people (even fictional people) who matter to them.  It should not be surprising that Hollywood has only gotten better at using these urges to entice us, and it should be expected that Hollywood will continue to stick to what is safe, reliable, and faithful for as long as possible.

What should interest us, then, is the group of original films on which Hollywood is willing to take a chance.  If producing a sequel or a remake is always Hollywood’s safest bet, there must be something about the other films they produce that offers a sense of security for them.  (I am specifically focusing on films made for adults, if only because children’s films rely more on the name of the studio [Dreamworks, Pixar, etc.] to do the selling, so they probably deserve an entirely separate analysis.)  Apart from reboots, the most recent films that are designed for mass audiences seem to be mostly based on popular pre-existing properties from non-cinematic media, giving the studios the sense that they only need to sell a story that has already sold well in another form.  Some upcoming examples of this include Ghost in the Shell, The Circle, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, Before I Fall, and The Dark Tower.  That being said, since analyzing these stories would be an analysis of novels rather than the film industry, I think it would be best to focus specifically on the films that seem designed to attract a very large crowd – the “blockbusters” – and find some common themes that run throughout.

I am focusing on themes and motifs because I suspect that future film critics and historians will see this time period’s cinema as trying to address some of our culture’s fears, and my first theme that evidences this is Hollywood’s obsession with big governments and giant corporations.  Obviously, the absurdly wealthy businessman has been the villain in a great many movies going back to Classical Hollywood, but at present, it is the corporations and governments with a very friendly face – or no known face at all – that scare us the most, because they seem more godlike (and yet somehow more realistic) than a “Tex Richman” type.  One family of contemporary dystopian science fiction has been designed by writers who all seem to share the same goal: to come up with the worst ideas for structuring governments as possible.  The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Giver, and arguably Maze Runner are all novel adaptations that exemplify this family, and I think they may be cousins to the films about enormous, omnipotent, and omniscient businesses.  Because we live in a time when Facebook, Google, and other similar services are collecting a frightening amount of information about each and every person who regularly uses the Internet, it is only natural that stories about gigantic technology companies intrigue us.  Consider the upcoming thriller The Circle, which is playing with the idea of an untrustworthy Steve Jobs-type figure, and has a weirdly anxiety-inducing trailer in spite of the fact that it tells us so little about what to expect from the movie.  2016’s Nerve seems to be in a similar vein, with a mysterious game developer collecting all of the protagonist’s data and, in a sense, controlling everything she does.

This theme of the all-powerful technology corporation is closely related to, or perhaps a part of, the theme of technological advancements.  Consider all of the recent and upcoming dramas about surviving in outer space (The Martian, Passengers, Life, Europa Report, Interstellar, Gravity, etc.).  I try to keep up with the news about human activity in outer space and, when last I checked, we haven’t been to outer space in a long time now, and I don’t think all of these films have simply been inspired by the debate about whether or not we should go to Mars.  There is definitely a concern in our culture about whether or not we’re ready for the technology that lies just around the bend, and be it with serious dramas like Arrival or “popcorn flicks” like Independence Day: Resurgence, we moviegoers are showing that human interaction with higher intelligence is one can of worms (or can of Borg?) we’d rather not open.  (I am also considering the idea that films about aliens in the vein of Independence Day or The Fifth Wave could be related to fears in both the U.S. and the U.K. of immigration, but I am skeptical.)

The most interesting form of our fears of progressing technology is almost certainly the return of HAL 9000 anxieties – the fear of artificial intelligence.  Among philosophers and social analysts, and (more recently) a few prominent computer scientists, a fear has been rising over the past few years about the difficulties our species may face should it create a more advanced species with higher intelligence.  Some of these stories make the A.I. into a classical villain, such as the Transformers films and Avengers: Age of Ultron, whereas others explore more personal relationships and make dramas that rest on sci-fi premises rather than sci-fi movies with some added drama.  Spike Jonze’ Her (2013) is perhaps an earlier example of this, and 2015’s Ex Machina is probably the most prominent example.  While I’ve tried to stay away from noting our recent reboots, it must be recognized that one of the determining factors in which franchises from decades ago are getting a resurgence seems to be a relationship to this theme of A.I. – I’m thinking particularly of Blade Runner, The Terminator, and Robocop.  I know it may seem like I’m being too selective or narrow-minded with my focus in order to make my argument, but if even the obscure 1973 cult film Westworld has become a hit TV series on HBO, surely it is this theme of A.I. itself, not just how well these properties are remembered, that grabs us.

Of course, all of this conjecture is rooted in the theory that a period’s cinema reflects its culture’s timely fears, changing with the politics and current events of the time, and I am very open to skepticism of this reading of history.  I would not want to go so far as to say that the current flood of superhero films is rooted in the same anxious desperation for a rule-breaking anti-hero who’ll fix all of our problems that led to the rise of Donald Trump.  Obviously the Marvel/D.C. obsession is worthy of serious analysis, but the Caligari to Hitler method of studying this subject is too simplistic.  What we can say safely, however, is that it is convenient and popular for academics to view the American Western movie and the film noir as responses to post-war anxiety, and I expect the same kind of reading will be applied to the films that come out this year.  This means that now is the time to either appreciate the catharsis that Hollywood is offering us to manage our current worries, or get our counter-arguments ready immediately to preempt any myopic readings that the film scholars of 2040 attempt to apply to 2017.

Or we might all be dead from climate change by 2040, but I’ll worry about that problem when all of 2025’s movies address it.

Submitted by J.D. Hansel.

Montage

Sergei Eisenstein

Image against an image

Meaning together

Submitted by Michael Levy

Loneliness in "The Asphalt Jungle"

     John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle (1950) seems to have an underlying theme of loneliness. This is often shown through the narrative and the mise-en-scene. The most obvious example of this is Mrs. Emmerich (Dorothy Tree), given her desire to spend time with her husband and get out of the house. She is also only ever shown lying alone, lost in a bed that is intended for two people. However, this underlying theme of loneliness follows the other characters throughout the film as well.

     In the opening sequence of the film, Dix (Sterling Hayden) is shown running through a big, empty city alone. The angles of the shots used in this sequence, reminiscent of German Expressionism, further emphasize this feeling of loneliness by showing more of the landscape and how there is no one else around. These angles also help to create a subjective feeling of anxiety that Dix is feeling as he is running from the police.

(Shots from opening sequence)

     Dix’s loneliness follows him to the end of the film. Even when Doll (Jean Hagen) is with him, it is clear that Dix has no interest in her being around, but rather seems to take pity in her loneliness and lets her come with him. However, when Dix dies, he is shown alone in the shot. As he approaches the farmhouse and falls, Doll is not in the frame. As soon as she does enter the frame, she almost immediately runs out and leaves Dix with the horses, as if to signify that the only companionship Dix ever needed was that of a horse.

     Another depiction of loneliness comes with the conversation between Doc (Sam Jaffe) and Cobby (Marc Lawrence) after paying Louis. While Cobby and Doc are in the same room, they are shown sitting very far from each other. This shows that even though the characters in the film are interacting with each other, there are few personal connections being made.

     Perhaps the most interesting case of loneliness in the film is that of Mr. Emmerich (Louis Calhern). However, Emmerich seems to be unwilling to face this loneliness. With no romance left in his marriage, he has a relationship with Angela (Marilyn Monroe); however even that relationship seems to be unfulfilling. This is shown through the rather passionless kiss the two share before Angela goes to bed. Emmerich finally faces his loneliness near the end of the film with his suicide. The mere thought of going prison for any period of time, totally alone and surrounded by men unlike him, forces Emmerich to accept the fact that he seems to be destined to be alone.

     Doc seems to be the most accepting of his loneliness. After being in prison for as long as he was, he seems to long the presence of women, looking at the calendar in Cobby’s place, talking about chasing girls in Mexico, and watching the girl dance in the restaurant on the way to Cleveland. However, he does not seem to act on his desires, merely talking to a prostitute instead of doing anything else. While he does ask Dix to accompany him to Mexico, Doc seems to prefer to be alone, having always planned on traveling to Mexico alone.

Submitted by Michael Levy

Review: Rogue One

The latest entry in the Star Wars film franchise, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Gareth Edwards, 2016), gives the audience the story of the opening crawl to Star Wars (1977). This story gives us new characters as well as background on long-established characters, many of whom had Expanded Universe stories that have since been deemed "Legends" and are no longer part of the official Star Wars canon. The film also provides the audience with some tying up of loose ends and a small amount of fan-service that thankfully comes nowhere near the amount of fan-service J.J. Abrams gave us in The Force Awakens (2015).

The film brings back the characters of Red Leader, Garvin Dreis, (Drewe Henley) and Gold Leader, John "Dutch" Vander, (Angus McInnes). This is a logical move given that the events of the film take place roughly ten minutes before the beginning of Star Wars and it is unlikely that there would be many, if any, changes in rank amongst the Rebel fleet. The film is also notable for the appearance of Blue Squadron. The Red Squadron in Star Wars was originally written as Blue Squadron, however due to filming before a blue screen, the color was changed to red so the blue markings on the X-Wings would not appear as stars in the film. Also notable in Rogue One is the death of Red 5, which explains why Luke would later be known as Red 5 when there was a fleet already in existence. But what is one of the most interesting pieces of fan-service in this film is the display of death sticks[1] being stored in a Rebel soldier's helmet.

One of the most interesting aspects of the film is the special effects. The CGI in the film is often used to emulate the effects used in Star Wars during the production of the film in 1976. A striking example of this is can be seen when a Star Destroyer is destroyed. The entirely CGI ship appears as a plastic model breaking apart (the original Star Destroyers themselves were built from pieces of plastic model sets). However, the CGI in the film also serves as the most controversial aspect of the film. Rogue One uses CGI to resurrect Peter Cushing to reprise his role as Grand Moff Tarkin. The film also creates a young Carrie Fisher to reprise her role at the end of the film. The noticeable difference in appearance of these two characters, in part due to the level of CGI technology and the prior knowledge of the death of Peter Cushing and the appearance of Carrie Fisher at the time, brings the viewer out of the realism of the film. Similar to how Kracauer describes the juxtaposition of a real ocean and the fabricated set of Elsinore in Laurence Olivier's Hamlet, the unnatural movements of Tarkin's mouth and facial expressions next to a living human serve as a reminder that the character is in fact CGI. [2]

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, aside from being a film created without the input of George Lucas, seems to detract from Lucas's original concept behind 1977's Star Wars. Originally, Lucas had intended to create a film that would come across as a foreign film. For example, if we watch a film by Akira Kurosawa, we see references to a rich culture that we may know little to nothing about, but they appear in the films and we are able to follow what is going on even though we may not know the specifics of a samurai. In Star Wars, Lucas added a lot of references to things such as the Clone Wars and the Kessel Run, but these are never explained in the film. By making a film that shows the sequences of the crawl, Rogue One detracts from the mystery of the story of the 1977 film. Granted, this same argument can be made about all of the Star Wars films, but there is the difference that Lucas himself detracted from the mystery, thus making an artistic choice of what to explain and what to keep mysterious, pre-existing culture.

All this aside, Rogue One is a promising start to the "Star Wars Story" films after what was generally a disappointment from The Force Awakens. With less pressure in continuing the Skywalker story, the "Star Wars Story" films should allow for different styles of films and stories to be set in the Star Wars universe, something that was originally explored through the Expanded Universe and the fan films that have been lovingly embraced by George Lucas himself. However, it is unclear as to how these new films will affect the original six films. For example, I have not watched Star Wars since I saw Rogue One, but I imagine there will be things that will be hard to not think of, such as how Captain Antilles knows that Vader knows that they were, in fact, not on a diplomatic mission since they were just seen leaving the Rebels', "first victory over the evil Galactic Empire," the battle of Scarif.

[1] Obi-Wan Kenobi was offered death sticks in a bar on Coruscant by Sleazbaggano in Attack of the Clones (Lucas, 2002)

[2] Kracauer, Siegfried, Theory of Film p. 36

Submitted by Michael Levy

Review: The Fifth Element

     The Fifth Element is, hands down, my favorite science fiction movie. Upon looking at IMDb, I'm disappointed to see that users have only given the film 7.7 out of 10 stars. That's downright heartbreaking (not bad for IMDb standards, but the equivalent of a C+, it deserves better!). The dialogue is creative, the costumes are imaginative, and the kitsch that the film exudes is an aspect that I adore.
     The movie takes place on Earth, very far into the future. New York City soars even higher into the sky; people drive flying cars above the "fog," underneath which is a forgotten NYC. Gary Oldman plays the villain of the film, named Zorg, sporting an impressive American accent. He works for some mysterious man, and conspires to retrieve four mystical stones, which have the power to destroy an evil force, floating somewhere in space. It's vague, and the villain doesn't seem to have much motivation, but it's enough of a problem (meaning, incipient apocalypse) to motivate Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis) to come out of retirement for one last hoorah. Meanwhile, Leeloo (Milla Jovovich) is cloned from ancient DNA - this "supreme being" has been engineered to save Earth, and she knows where the stones are. Being the kitschy movie that it is, the movie ends happily - Korben and Leeloo save the planet, and fall in love.
     When I watch this movie, I'm not watching for the plot; I just about know it by heart. Instead, I'm taking in the zany costumes and hair colors, I'm relishing the chemistry between Willis and Jovovich, I'm enjoying the playful camera work and the mostly fluid representation of gender. I've seen this movie tons of times, and sure, there is comfort in familiarity, but I never seem to get sick of the kitsch. Leeloo has a moment of crisis as she begins to think saving humans isn't worth it, until Korben starts listing things that are worth saving. "Like love?" Leeloo asks. It's cheesy, but it's heartwarming to the romantic in me. Zorg's temper tantrums, too, are alluring in a way. Zorg is a dangerous man, but not dangerous in the way of Kylo Ren's bumbling, childish fits of rage; he's a cunning villain that knows how, when, and who to strike.
     I could go on for days about The Fifth Element. Sci-fi movies have always intrigued me; the successful combination of the genre with humor and romance only makes me love the movie even more.