Allison Avery

Minutes for Monday Feb. 23, 2004

            At the beginning of class Mr. Reimer handed out a study guide (sample test) for the midterm on Wednesday. He stated that we should focus on the bold words in Giannetti and that the definitions on the exam are very clear. Make sure that you are familiar with Giannetti when answering the questions on the test so that you sound like you have been reading. Also make sure that you study the minutes as well as your own notes, not forgetting to read.

            After going over the study guide we began focusing on the French New Wave. French directors wrote essays in Cahiers de cinema (notebooks of the cinema) explicating films, complaining about the state of the film industry, and making suggestions on what film should be.  The two biggest problems that they saw were that the movies that were being made at this time were too slick in other words too focused on high production values, but they had no content. They stated that they were empty and didn’t say anything. The directors were young and they felt films were not focusing on issues that were going on in France and of interest to them. Rahter films they complained focused on were issues that were not in any depth and were not about any important issues in the past. The French wanted films that engaged (activated) them. This would consist of films focusing on politics, history, contemporary issues, or love.

            French wanted better movies and they said that they could be done without spending a lot of money. Critics started to look at this and saw what was happening. They felt that this issue was really important. The French were pioneering when it came to cinema.

            Arthouse Cinema- for the educated, separates you from the “crowd”.

            We then began watching two films by Alain Resnais. Resnais was the most literary of directors and the oldest. He was not concerned with contemporary issues as much, but how memory impacted this generation. He focused on the Holocaust by shooting a documentary on a concentration camp.

            The first film we watched was Hiroshima mon Amour (my love) 1959 which was a fictional film about making a documentary of the bomb dropping on Hiroshima. The film asks about how we remember, what we remember. This film begins with a woman who is in her mid-thirties having an affair with a Japanese man, while arguing that she knows what it was like to be there when the bomb dropped on Hiroshima because she had visited the museum dedicated to this tragedy.  This argument forced her to recall back to her old affair during the war with a German soldier. After seeing him get killed, she remembers the villagers capturing her, skinning her head, and throwing her in a cellar. At this point we see a sense of how she felt during that time and now. Can we relate personal suffering to universal suffering? The Japanese man argues that she was not there when the bomb dropped and has no idea what she is talking about. The camera in this film was always moving; panning down the sides, the corners and everywhere. The movie goes back and forth, and is not much of a story. Come to find out, the Japanese man was not in Hiroshima when the bomb dropped, but his parents were. The movie drifts off and so does their affair.

            The next film we watched was a follow-up of Hiroshima mon Amour, called Last Year at Marianbad (Spa) also directed by Resnais. This film was written two years later in 1961. Critics did not like this film very much. The camera was used as a metaphor that goes through our mind to bring out something that affects us. This movie did win the Golden Lion in Venice and other awards. Very difficult movie as opposed to the other movie we watched in class today. This film contains numerous repetitions, getting more elaborate as the film wears on. The palace in the movie was of Baroque style which repeats its patterns in more elaborate ways. Here you can see that the words and visuals tie together.

            This is all that we covered in class today. Remember to study for the mid-term, and that our first drafts are due next Wednesday. Good luck on the mid-term.