Beginning of Film History

  Dominic Mayhall Is Citizen Kane the G.O.A.T?          The G.O.A.T debate is a strong opinion held by people who think they're right. People have every right to think they're correct, but everyone thinks differently on different subjects. For me, my favorite movie and what movie I think is the greatest of all time is "Ghostbusters". And not everyone would think it is the greatest film of all time. Now, you can call Citizen Kane ONE of the greatest films of all time and most people would respect that opinion. But if you say it IS the greatest movie of all time, that could cause controversy.           One thing about this movie that I liked just in the first 10 minutes was the realism that it brought to the table. Some things where over exaggerated for the big screen, but it mostly felt like the plot could be real. Almost like a documentary type the way they talk about Charles Foster Kane and what his ideals where and who he ass...

Dominic Mayhall The Colors of Gone with the Wind          The use of color in film didn't start looking realistic until movies like "The Wizard of Oz" and "Gone with the Wind" came out. Both films have a bright and wide range of natural looking color never before seen in theaters. Though, I'd say The Wizard of Oz has a brighter scheme of colors. But each different color fits its respective film. I chose to view "Gone with the Wind" as my movie of choice this week.          I have never seen "Gone with the Wind" before, but I know the famous line at the end of the movie it's famous for. When Rhett Butler, played by Clark Gable, says his final lines to his love interest Scarlett O'Hara, played by Vivien Leigh, saying "Frequently my dear, I don't give a damn." The only reason I know that line is from a trivia question. I now know this is technically the first curse word to be used in a movie. Anyway, I really appreciate...

Dominic Mayhall Gold Diggers and M          This week we were shown a glimpse of the golden age of Hollywood and the overwhelming number of movies that were produced in just a couple of decades.  Movies seemed to grow at a rapid rate and in a short amount of time. In that short slide of all those movie titles passing by, it looked like more than a couple hundred movies were made in just one to three years. And I see a production difference in two movies that came out only two years a part.           Comparing these two films, Gold Diggers and M, is like water and oil. These movies are acted and written polar opposite to one another. One is German and the other is an American film. Both have different feels for their own genres, and you can see the differences that are portrayed in Germany and America. The movie M had pretty much no music in it, you could just hear the static or the wind in the backgrounds of every shot. The thi...

 Dominic Mayhall German Expressionism          Film without expression would be a pretty bland form of art. People like to see the reactions and gestures of other people, it's what makes us human. And like all things, film has evolved to show us different emotions through close ups. Which is what I think German Expressionism does well.           I watched two movies, the one you requested to watch, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and one of the suggestions, Nosferatu. I know of Nosferatu through pop culture, specifically a SpongeBob episode. On season 2, episode 16, they had an episode called "Graveyard Shift" and at the very end there's a shot of Count Orlok standing in the doorway flipping the light switch to scare them. I didn't know it was from a film the first time I watched it. Being a kid and all, I just thought they threw him in there to be scary. I find out a couple years later when I was rewatching the episode with my pa...

 Dominic Mayhall Birth of a Nation and it's Legacy     In the early years of film, it was mostly experimentation to see what works. People got to see what worked and what didn't, but they were the pioneers of the whole film industry. In earlier films you can see some aspects of these films that have carried into today's modern cinematography. And in David Wark Griffth's epic "The Birth of a Nation" he uses angles and practical effects that could still be used today. But there are a lot of practical effects and acting that would be too ridiculous to use today.      This film has it's good and it's bad when it comes to today's standards in both film and in politics. Most of its bad comes from the depiction and actions of some of the people during this time period. Actions and depictions of mostly African American people during this Civil War era were overly exaggerated to the extreme. Which politics wise, can be seen as a form of propaganda. And as t...