Minutes for February 11, 2002

Today we talked about dance in films. Next class we will be watching Carmen, an 80’s Spanish dance film. Professor Reimer says this is one of the top ten dance films of all times. Questions were given out on the film to be turned in Monday, February 18. Also, questions were given out on No End/ Blue. Professor Reimer told us about some movies we could watch for extra credit—Brotherhood of the Wolf, playing at Concord Mills, is a French/European film. Also, he thinks Amelie is also playing at Concord Mills. You must write something about the film to be given extra credit.

            Next, we moved on to examples of dance in films. They were a mixture of Hollywood and European films.

-American films:

·The Gay Divorcee- 1934 starring Fred Astaire. Plot was about a divorce that took place and an affair that may compromise woman’s marriage. The scene started off with the woman reluctant to dance/be with Astaire. They start dancing beautifully in a place that’s obviously set up to be a dance floor. The camera angles made it seem as though the audience was outside watching these two when they probably shouldn’t be. A comment was made how the camera seems to only focus on the dancing aspect of the scene.

·Flashdance- 1982 directed by Adrienne Lyne. A British-Hollywood film. The plot was about a beautiful, talented steel welder from Pittsburgh who gets accepted into the school of dance. The film focuses less on dancing and more on the story. All dancing scenes with main character, wasn’t really her dancing, but a double. They were able to do this through no close-ups on dancer, with strategic camera angles, lighting, a focus on other things while dancing was taking place, and through editing. In the scene, the swan dive was totally impossible and very unrealistic.

-European Films:

·Umbrellas of Cherbourg-1964 film by Jacques Demy. Set in France.  Intended to correct problems of musicals and Hollywood. Basically took an opera or an operetta and recomposed entire piece. A romantic-comedy that ends on a down note. Plot is about a woman and a man that fall in love and the man has to go to war. The woman is pregnant and marries some other man. The man comes back from war and finds out she’s married, and becomes a drunk. Turns his life around and marries someone else. The scene we watched was when the woman sneaks out to go to an opera and dancing with the man right before he leaves for war. They walk into a bar/dance club and start dancing because there’s nothing else to do. While they’re dancing they are having a singing conversation. It’s natural because they go to a dance club, but totally unrealistic because they’re singing the whole time.

·Tango Lesson- a fictionalized documentation. The scene takes place on the riverside. The main characters break out in a dance. But it’s not the traditional tango; it’s more of an Argentine tango, which has only five choreographed steps. They don’t seem to be concerned with the right steps. The light from the boat may be interpreted as lights from a stage or lights from above. The scene has a few edits in it that make it look like a perfectly choreographed dance set. With the camera angles, it seems as though we are right there dancing and twirling with them. Moved to another scene in a café where they having a philosophical conversation about life and what it means to them. Then they start crying. The movie is based on relationships and how they work out issues of identity. Throughout the movie they jump back and forth between French and English.

·Me and Him- German film by Doerrie. Doerrie was invited to Hollywood to make the film. The humor is completely German, that’s why the movie made so much more money in Germany than it did in America. Plot is about the hero and his talking penis. The hero had reconciled with penis that had gone on strike. The scene we watched was when the guy walked into a building and a dance scene breaks out. Women in work attire are the ones dancing. Doerrie often put a random dance scene between last scene and credits to make people laugh and to open up the movie. 

After we finished discussing dance in films, we shifted back to music in films. We watched a clip from Cabaret; first in English, then dubbed in German. The scene is when a German Hitler youth  breaks out into a German song “Tomorrow belongs to us.” An old man was inserted into scene because obviously tomorrow does not belong to him. The German dubbing was horrible; the words didn’t go along with the movements at all. That concluded the class.