Here we are in 2012, blogging for class credit! Can you even
believe it? I admit to being an active member of the
“Internet-Is-Taking-Over-Our-Lives” camp. I’ll also admit that my main soapbox
for this point of view is, well, the Internet. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,
right? And besides, with all of the junk that litters our minds via the good
ole’ WWW, it’s nice to be a part of a blog that has potential to actually
educate someone on something they might not have known much
about before.
One of the most significant consequences of our rapidly
growing consumer-driven Internet is the availability and the mass circulation
of film. Netflix estimates “more than 20 million subscribers worldwide watched
more than 2 billion hours of old TV shows and movies on devices with high-speed
Internet connections during the final three months of last year.”[1]
That means that I, one of the 20 million, watched about 100 hours of film and
television last semester. With Winter Break, that number is probably a lot
higher for me (and most college kids), I’m ashamed to admit.
Now, I enjoy the quirky Indie movie every once in a while,
but I am, by no means, a film buff. I have no idea what I’m looking at
aesthetically. While many the Hipster looks through their thrift store bifocals
at Wes Anderson movies and tells me how “magnificent the exposure” is, I’m
clueless. I could go into detail about the musical structure of the film’s
score, or even the psychological situation of the protagonist; but mention
aperture or motion capture to me, you might as well be speaking Latin.
After screening The
Student of Prague (1913) today in class with little to no film expertise,
it became clear that those 100 hours of extra exposure to film have a strong effect
on my perspective. Instead of viewing the film for what it is – a telling of
the psyche of good vs. evil, an observation of the social circumstance of 1913
Prague, or even a beautiful view of 1913 Prague – I simply came up with one
adjective: “outdated.” The intense level of exposure to excessive amounts of
film, which only grows more defined, accurate, and detailed as filming and
viewing technology evolves, make it impossible for us, 21st century movie
novices, to watch the 99 year-old film without bias. The ability to view a film
this foreign and, indeed, “outdated”, is diminished by our superabundant
experience of modern, “advanced” film at an 8 hour per week rate.
Here in 2012, where we post our homework assignments for
billions of people to read at the click of a button, and watch 100 hours of
film a semester, it’s hard to accept something as silent and simple as The Student of Prague without some
ageism.
I didn't really find it outdated. I felt genuinely interested in how a film in the 1910s might be portrayed. It's kind of like a little snapshot of the German mind in 1913. How do they handle expressing emotions without voice? How do they create continuity? What kind of problems were on the minds of the people of the early 1900s?
ReplyDeleteI think having studied some German literature previously, I was able to make some connections to concepts (especially the Faustian aspect of the film) that are age-old but still retain a modern influence. I think if you are watching this film as "entertainment," it will do you little good, but if you look at it as a historical work, it's very interesting. For instance, the exaggerated emotional responses-- is it a movie technique, or is it really how people behaved?! Well, obviously we know that it was a movie technique-- their way of expressing emotion without a voice.
For a film, I think it has more depth than many modern attempts at creating entertainment, but I think in this respect that it comes off more as a story than as entertainment. It speaks some truth to the early 1900s-- classicism is quite evident here, and the struggle for the lower and middle class to break the barrier between them and the bourgeoisie is a central theme.
I had the same type of response to this entry. Speaking as someone who knows very little about German culture and a reasonable amount about film, what I like comparing more is the elements of form (lighting, camera angles and scale, mis-en-scene, etc) that changed over the course of time. What shines through when you compare a film that was made recently and something like "The Student of Prague" or "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" is a line that exists between technical aspects that existed out of necessity and those that exist for aesthetic reasons. Take, for instance, Rachel's example from "The Student of Prague": the exaggerated emotional responses present in silent film (and furthermore, the repetition of said emotional responses) are largely reduced after the introduction of sound, and are completely absent now that cameras have evolved to the point of perfect clarity. However, other aspects of form--like the surreal sets of "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari"--are still visible today in experimental films. As someone who definitely hits the "100 hours" threshold, it seems to me that no given time period has more or less merit, and that each one has different elements that stand out uniquely.
ReplyDeleteI like Sophie's comment, and I feel that the more in-depth film students may need to defend our studies. It is pretty great that there is such a wide range/mixture of students in this class.
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