MINUTES

Class was divided into small groups to go over the questions for the film Blue.  Afterwards we went over the questions as a class.  Discussion of the questions went as follows:

                1.  Examples of coincidence...

                     *Julie comes to help Lucille at the club she works in and sees pics of the mistress on tv~the movie requires Julie to show up at Lucille’s work in order to find out that her husband had an affair

                       Here Professor Reimer mentions that no matter what we do, we keep going back; everything leads to something else, particularly when we start at the  end and play it back.

                      *Julie talking of love with the mistress~she notices the necklace leading her to give the mistress the house

                      *Mistress is pregnant~after the death of her husband, Julie finds out about the affair.  This aids Julie in her decision to give the mistress her home

                2.  Scenes which seem to have no connection with anything else...

                     *Pool scenes~show the athleticism of Julie.  What occurs in the pool clues us in on other things such as Julie’s refusal to admit her feelings.  Much  emotion is tied into what is going on in the pool.

                      *Older man bungee jumping~shows us that Julie’s mom, an Alzheimer  patient, is living through tv

                      *Image of time/Passage of time~the scene of the sugarcube dissolving in  coffee.  Here we have a 30 second piece that actually should have gone on for minutes.  We see the same concept of time and space in Run Lola Run

                      *Courtroom scene~Julie goes to the door and gets turned around by a guard

                3.  Use of blacking out scenes only to return to the same point...

                      *Has the effect of forcing us to watch/think.  These scenes always happen at an emotional moment for Julie.  For example, when Julie finds out about her husbands mistress. 

                      *Something is forcing Julie to remember and the black is her trying to black it out- from the time he husband dies, Julie goes through classic stages of depression

                      *If a scene stops and begins at the same point and music occurs in between, is there a paradox there?  Music requires time-it can only occur in time. We can only imagine it as we move through time.  We hear the music although nothing is really occurring.

                4.  Reason for the reference to Corinthians 1:13...

*The film ends with the possibility of love.  We have a procession of images conveying love and in the last image we see Julie crying.  She is finally able to cry and come to terms with her tragedy.

                5.  Use of music...

                                *Much of the music is heard as it is in the character’s head. Where there is an orchestra, there is sort of in between mixture of diegetic(the characters hear) and nondiegetic(only the audience hears).  The music bridges for us.

                Professor Reimer plays two more scenes from Blue asking us to listen to the music.  He shows us a clip from No End.  This movie tells of a woman very much in love with her husband.  The husband dies and the woman must allegorically deal with this through the film.  The death of her husband fit in with the situation in Poland and the possible death of a political movement.  The mourning the wife goes through parallels the mourning of the Polish people.

                After discussing the questions for Blue, we talked about French films.  French New Wave began in 1959 by a group of directors who said French movies during the time said nothing.  Films avoided social issues and relevancy for a younger audience  Directors started saying they did not need large budgets.  They wanted movies that spoke to the generations.  Professor Reimer then started showing the following clips:

                1.  Breathless-1959-Jean Luc Godard:  no one instrumental in this film was over the age of 30.  The film addresses issues of the morality of young people.  Godard used hand held camera, natural sound, choppy editing.  These give his film a raw quality.  In the clip Godard avoided suspense, action, audience involvement. 

                2.  Last Year at Marienbad-1961-Alain Resnais:  Resnais is trying to capture the Baroque architecture of this particular hotel.  As he is talking about the past, the camera keeps going further and further, setting up the premise of the film which is whether or not a man and woman had an affair at this hotel a year before.

                3.  La Jetee-1961-Chris Marker:  Marker is experimenting with still photos.  He is trying to make a movie with still photos.  He is concerned with the political aspect of the 1960’s.

                4.  Diva-1981:  No longer part of the New French Wave, but shows that the French have gone for big budgets like Hollywood.  The movie deals with the relationship between a singer and a young man.  What is amazing is the young man, who is dealing with his own problems, keeps the singer out of his affairs and she keeps her purity.