Movies

Hist 100-B02 Western Civilization

Directions

You will view two movies outside of class from the list below and submit one to two pages of analysis on each one.
Your analysis of the two films will contribute to 5% of your overall grade for the course. In other words, each film is worth 2.5% of your final grade for the course.
Some movies can serve as primary sources. (See the source analysis page for information on what primary sources are.) Even if films are not documentaries, but purely fictional accounts, they can reveal something about the times in which they were made. Your job is to try to put yourself in the shoes of both the filmmaker and the original audience. What can you learn from the film? What concerns and assumptions from the time does it reveal?
There are no specific due dates for these movies. Just get both of them done before the end of the semester. (I strongly suggest that you get at least one done before the fourth week of class is over.)
Many of the movies can be viewed in the media library in the Johnson Center. You can also obtain them through a service such as Netflix.

Movie Choices

"The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks" [Neobychainye priklyucheniya mistera Vesta v strane bolshevikov], directed by Lev Kuleshov (USSR 1924) — Silent slapstick comedy about an American businessman's prejudices towards Communist Russia. Note the Soviet stereotypes of who was productive and who was parasitic.
"The Joyless Street" (aka "Street of Sorrows") [Die freudelose Gasse], directed by G. W. Pabst (Germany 1925) — Silent melodrama that contrasts the lives of rich and poor in a destitute street in postwar Vienna. Inflation and hunger make prostitution the only option for some, while the local butcher lords it over people waiting in line all night for a chance to buy meat from him, and the very rich manipulate the stock market and visit the local bordello. Stars Greta Garbo.
"Berlin: Symphony of a Great City" [Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt], directed by Walther Ruttmann (Germany 1927) — Documentary that condenses a day's worth of footage into an hour. A visual feast of modernity that tells you a lot about the city's work and social life in 1927.
"The Blue Angel" [Der blaue Engel] (Germany 1930), directed by Josef von Sternberg, starring Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings. — It is based on a novel set before the Great War, but the lead role might be seen in terms of the "new woman" that emerged in the 1920s.

"Mädchen in Uniform" [Girls in Uniform] (Germany 1931), directed by Leontine Sagen. A recently orphaned girl is sent to a boarding school, where she develops a crush on one of her teachers, a woman. The movie is set in Prussia before the First World War, but it is very much a Weimar film

The quality of the subtitles in this film are poor. The film is lucky to have survived at all, however, for the Nazis, who came to power in 1933, despised this kind of thing.
The entire film is available online: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=78713AA25785723C

"Liberty for Us" [À nous la liberté], directed by René Clair (France 1931) — Delightful, thoughtful Depression-era comedy that treats the problem of liberty in the face of modern bureaucracy and industrialization.
"Circus" [Tsirk], directed by Grigory Alexandrov (USSR 1936) — Fun musical comedy. Soviet propaganda under Stalin that uses racism to contrast the communist worker's paradise with the racist and fascist West. Begins in the southern U.S. and the bad guy is a German. Keep in mind that many millions died under Stalin. Nonetheless, the hard political and economic times probably made the laughs in this film that much more welcome.

"Eye of Vichy" [L'oeil de Vichy], directed by Claude Chabrol (France 1993). — When France surrendered in 1940, Germany only occupied the northern half of the country and France set up a fascist regime in the south under General Pétain. The capital of unoccupied France gave this fascist regime its name: Vichy. This film uses news footage and other propaganda from the time to tell this history. The movie is interesting not only for its depiction of France in these times, but also as an illustration of how a society can move from democracy to fascism to anti-Semitism and active collaboration with the Nazi Holocaust. Historian Robert Paxton was one of the writers.
"Rome, Open City" [Roma, città aperta], directed by Roberto Rossellini (Italy 1945) — Explores the problems of resistance and collaboration near the end of the war. Rossellini began work on the film before the war was even over.
"Mrs. Miniver," directed by William Wyler (Great Britain 1942) — Academy Award winning British film designed to persuade Americans to enter the war. Note the use of class and gender in this film about the homefront.
"Murderers are among us" [Die Mörder sind unter uns], directed by Wolfgang Staudte (Germany 1946) — Set in a Berlin filled with rubble and wrecked lives. The main female character returns from a concentration camp and finds a doctor who is constantly drunk and tormented by the memory of an atrocity on the Eastern Front. Later he meets the man who ordered this slaughter.

"The Bicycle Thief" [Ladri di biciclette], directed by Vittorio de Sica (Italy 1948) — Shot soon after the Second World War, this film deals with the material and moral dilemmas that a man faces in a city racked by unemployment. Beautiful and heartbreaking. You might relate this film to the development of the welfare state.

"Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb," directed by Stanley Kubrick, USA 1964 - There are plenty of good Cold War movies out there, but this outrageously funny and dark film is among my all-time favorites. The trailer is also worth watching.

"The Little Soldier" [Le petit soldat], directed by Jean-Luc Godard (France 1960) — French New Wave film about the Algerian War, but it takes place in Europe, mainly Switzerland. Portrays a mix of alienation, espionage, counter-espionage, terrorism, and torture.

"The Battle of Algiers" [La Battaglia di Algeri], directed by Gillo Pontecorvo (Italy 1966) — French and Arabic with English subtitles. Dramatization of the first year of the Algerian War. It includes urban guerilla warfare, women combatants, civilian casualties, and torture.

"Masculin, feminin," directed by Jean-Luc Godard (France 1966) — Difficult New Wave film that examines gender relations in Paris in the age of radical Marxist politics, the Vietnam War, Coca Cola, and birth control.
"The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum" [Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum], directed by Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta (West Germany 1975) — Police and a rumour-mongering press drive a woman to desperation during the wave of terrorism by the Red Army Faction in 1970s West Germany. Based on a novel by Heinrich Böll, The Lost Honor of Katherina Blum: Or How Violence Develops and Where It Can Lead.

"Man of Iron" [Czlowiek z zelaza], directed by Andrej Wajda (Poland 1981) — Deals with the Solidarity trade union movement in Communist Poland, on the one hand, and the moral compromises one made if one worked in the exclusively state-run media industry.