Homework answers / question archive / Assignment 8, Glaspell, “Trifles” Due end of week 8 for the section running the first half of the semester and the end of week 16 for the section running the second half

Assignment 8, Glaspell, “Trifles” Due end of week 8 for the section running the first half of the semester and the end of week 16 for the section running the second half

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Assignment 8, Glaspell, “Trifles” Due end of week 8 for the section running the first half of the semester and the end of week 16 for the section running the second half. Calendar due dates are in the List of Due Dates in the Course Documents folder. As always, be sure to read these instructions in their entirety before you do anything else. The details of the actual paper begin on page 4 but read the other details of the assignment before you begin. In Week 8 (or Week 16 for the second half section), we read “Trifles.” I used to assign “A Streetcar Named Desire,” but this play is similarly topical and effective for this assignment. Before you get started, I want you to think of a large idea or social question that is currently relevant and connects to the play: Domestic violence. In the production of a play, there is often a dramaturge who helps a director; this person thinks through topical issues that work together with the text and the history of the play’s performance. The goal is to understand the large issues that surround a play and to find ways “to make it new.” That is, a dramaturge tries to help understand a play so the director and others can find fresh and engaging ways to stage it. Let me give you an example. There is a famous speech in the play “Julius Caesar” by William Shakespeare in which Marc Anthony eulogizes the murdered Caesar and turns the crowd against his assassins. On its own, it’s wonderful. Check it out in a traditional rendering with Marlon Brando from the 1953 MGM film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X9C55TkUP8 The play is one of Shakespeare’s histories, and as such it has meaning as an idealized account of the end of the Roman republic. Art, however, can be used to connect with current events, even when it isn’t seemingly obvious. That is, the end of the Roman republic can be used as a point of comparison to contemporary events if you approach it creatively. What if you update the entire play to consider a large social issue, such as the armed strife in modern Africa? A few years ago, some folks did just that. Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q7apiYunEU From The Guardian’s review of that production: This, of all Shakespeare's plays, badly needs a shot in the arm – and it receives a powerful one in this production by Gregory Doran, the RSC's artistic director designate, who has transposed the action to modern Africa. To see it played by an all-black British cast is also to be reminded of the wealth of classical acting talent available in this country. Africa has no monopoly on dictators but the play acquires fresh urgency in its new setting. This, after all, is a work about the encroachment of autocracy on a republic; and, although the evening begins with a street fiesta celebrating the return of a military hero, the looming bronze statue of Caesar shows the dictatorial threat. But the African setting doesn't simply give new edge to the ethical debate about political murder. It also reminds us that this is a play filled with prophecies, portents, dreams and, 1 incidentally, leonine images. Even if Africa is not alone in its belief in the power of spirits, the soothsayer here becomes a magical force who acts as a ubiquitous shaman. These connections between art and the world we live in now are what drive people who produce and direct plays. A serious production has a director and stage manager, but if they also have a dramaturge, someone whose job it is to bring in historical and other materials about a play to help craft an adaptation to take advantage of the contemporary world and its conflicts to gain insight and energy for the production, that person will research ways to update or adapt the play. With that in mind, for this week we’ll take an interesting American play about the condition of women and their place in the social and political worlds of 1916. Remember that women could not vote and their ability to own property and manage money could be severely limited. For example, well into the 1970s women younger than thirty were often required to find a man with whom they would co-apply for a bank account. Think about that for a minute. You could not get a bank account unless someone else signed, and had control of that account, with you. Okay. Here are the step by step instructions: 1. Read “Trifles,” by Susan Glanspell. I think it is on page 753 in the book. 2. Work through some key questions. We had some general ideas in mind while reading “Antigone.” With this play, let’s focus on the material reality of production. That is, what are the limits and possibilities that come from staging a production of a play? . 3. What are important aspects of the audience’s reaction? Whatever is happening on stage has a direct impact on the audience, so imagine the characters moving and interacting. You can’t change the dialogue, but you can ignore or modify the author’s stage directions. For example, the play opens with a long description of the kitchen that you could change, but you can’t have the first words be anything but “This feels good.” Anything that isn’t said is up for grabs. Remember, though, that the action of the performance in relation to the dialogue should always be first in your thoughts. You might not have the County Attorney at stove rubbing his hands, but his spoken line makes a lot more sense if he is. The activity on stage should bear a relationship to the dialogue to create a reaction that supports your reading of the play. Facial expressions, gestures, body language, etc., are all important. To make up a ridiculous example, if a character is supposed to say “Put down that gun!” and the other character on stage is holding a chicken, the audience is going to have questions. 4. What are the main conflicts? How are they resolved? As you saw in “Antigone,” drama is built around characters adapting to changing conditions of life. In this play, we have the same thing. John Wright is dead. Maybe it was an accident, and maybe it wasn’t. Who is at odds with whom? When do characters change their minds? When do they make mistakes? 5. What occurs offstage and why is that significant? Remember the difference between the way the action is presented and the overall story. In “Antigone” there was an extensive backstory that shaped the action. The same thing is true here. Mr. Wright is dead. The interrogations are about the past. For example, on page 756 the County Attorney interrogates Mrs. Hale about the 2 Wright’s household, and she seems to be hiding something. What do the characters know about what happens offstage, either before or during the play? 6. What will happen after the action of the play? This play is set at a time of social transformation a few years before women acquired the vote in the United States. What does the outcome of the play suggest about the future? How does that inform our view of the past? Are characters hopeful, pessimistic, or what? You’ve read the play trying to visualize or imagine it unfolding. For the written part of the assignment make dramaturgical choices about the play and imagine the details of an actual production. That is, update the play by casting the key roles with celebrities or actors that you think bring something meaningful to it; adapt the setting to be relevant to the current time (you can leave it alone or not); and then identify two key scenes that you think support your decisions. You don’t need to rewrite it word for word; instead, imagine you are giving a memo to the director and stage director (the people who will work with the actors and build the set, provide props, create costumes and props, etc.). First, remember the Interpretation Checklist from the first assignment. • Get the facts straight. • Notice how the dramatic elements are formed. • Connect the work with yourself. • Don’t forget that this is just the text and that the play would be performed. • Develop hypotheses as you read. • Write as you read. • Once you’ve finished, reread the text. • Analyze the play. There is always a tension between reading a play and an actual performance. The text is flexible in our minds; the reality of a performance puts tight restrictions on us and may force choices. How will a character read lines? What will that do? Where are they standing? How do they move from one moment to the next? As a performance unfolds, inflexibility creeps into it. If Mrs. Hale is fearful one moment, can she be brave and daring the next? Does that help find meaning or just seem improbable? Again, and this is reiterating stuff we considered with “Antigone,” but some ideas help keep things clear: Plot—the sequence of events set up by the play. This is a lot like “getting the facts straight.” 3 Story—the complete arc of the events in chronological order, taking into consideration backstory and recounted events (e.g. the Wrights were deeply unhappy for a long time, but the details of this come to us as the play unfolds). This is a broader sense of getting the facts straight. The story of “Trifles” begins long before Wright’s death. The plot begins much later. Plot is what the play shows us. Story is everything before and after. Action—Stuff actors do as they carry out the performance of the play (e.g. notice all the movement around the kitchen by Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale on pages 756 and 757). This is different from the text and is not necessarily determined by it. It would be strange, however, if Mrs. Hale said “Mrs. Peters, look at this one” without picking up a block. But what if a character said something like “Don’t hit me!”? As a director or producer, you’d probably have the character do something, like shield her face. Or not. Maybe it makes sense to have a character do one thing and say another to show sarcasm or hypocrisy. That’s a choice. Action is the unique challenge of performance. How do you choose to make the action reflect the text? For example, here’s a fairly standard Lady Macbeth, mad with power. She is plotting to kill her husband’s rival. You can stop once Macbeth shows up. https://youtu.be/ft2Lthl9q5Y There’s another performance by Jane Lapotaire that did this version even better; she falls back on the bed and fondles herself so that when Macbeth walks in and yells “Lady Macbeth!” it’s like he’s caught her being naughty. It seems to have been taken off the youtube, but the idea that her desire to be a killer verges into sexual excess seems interesting. These cold-blooded Lady Macbeths run into trouble later in the play when she goes insane with regret. Would someone who calls upon “murdering ministers” to “take my milk for gall” (turn her breast milk to poison) regret killing a political rival? Maybe, but sometimes the same scene can be performed in completely different ways to tremendous effect. Here’s Judi Dench’s Lady Macbeth as a fearful person. I think this version is quite effective because this character is definitely going to regret this. https://youtu.be/2xHlngY6Bgk?t=50s Now, start to consider how you would produce “Trifles” today. These are the specific elements that can help flesh this out. 1. Length. What does the extended action do to the play? Are there advantages to making the play “take its time” or do you hurry it along? 2. Audience. How do contemporary audiences see these issues and characters? It’s set on a farm. Does that tie into issues around domestic abuse? Perhaps you move the play somewhere else. 3. Plot, story, and action. How does the action unfold? Is there something about the women’s past that comes up you could use? How? 4 4. Consider key dialogue and speeches. How do the characters exchange information? Where are they when they do it? What does a kitchen provide that might be meaningful? 5. What action is shown? What hidden and only described? 6. How is the play divided? What are the essential moments? Does it have parts? Now, armed with all that, put together a production plan for your own adaptation of “Trifles” as a statement on an issue you choose, or if you can’t think of one then on domestic violence. These are the three things for the actual paper 1. Develop a cast list from actors or public figures of your choosing and explain how each one would bring something special to the character in the play. Use the details of the plot, action, and story to explain your choice. This is a fun way to consider the characters in the play. For example, you might not be able to cast a certain actor or public figure (say, perhaps, an athlete) but you could use that to help the director work up a performance. 2. Describe the details of the setting, costume, and other physical elements you want to include. Why? If you update from the 1916 to a contemporary setting, what is it? How is it connected to the details of the play? If you keep it in the 1916, what did you notice? What elements might be distinctive? What would seem antique? 3. For the major characters—Mrs. Hale, Mrs. Peele, and the County Attorney—find the central transformative moment. How does that define them? How does it relate to the events leading up to that moment and the key moments of the play? What instruction would you give to the actor in delivering key lines in that moment? It should be roughly three to four pages, double-spaced, Times New Roman, 12 pt font. Go to the Discussion Board Assignment 8 forum and create a thread and post the file. If possible, come back later and read some of the other papers and offer positive comments. Since this is at the end of the class I won’t require cross posts. 5 !"#$%&'()(*+$(,$'"#$-"('(*./0"12$34/*# 56'"(.789:$5&;.#$6*"$?./+ @(6.2#:$A1)4$B6/.'#.)+C$D()E$FGC$H(E$I$7@644#.C$FJKL9C$00E$IMJ -6N)18"#;$N+:$O&1P#.81'+$(,$Q/)1,(.&1/$-.#88 @'/N)#$ORS:$http://www.jstor.org/stable/1210183 522#88#;:$FTULVUWLLJ$FX:LI Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucal. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Film Quarterly. http://www.jstor.org 4 ANDRE BAZIN The Ontology of the Photographic Image TRANSLATED BY HUGH GRAY Before his untimely death in 1958 Andre Bazin began to review and select for publication his post-World War II writings on the cinema. Of the planned four volumes, one was published in 1958, and a second in 1959; the remainder await some competent selective hand. The first volume centers on the theme of the ontological basis of cinema or, as Bazin also puts it, "in less terms: cinema as the art of reality." The second the philosophical relations between the cinema and those arts with which discusses the it has things in common-the theater, the novel, and painting. A third volume was to have discussed the relations of cinema and society; the fourth would have dealt with neorealism. What follows is a translation of the first chapter of volume one. To those not yet familiar with the writings of a man who might be described with justice as the Sainte-Beuve of film criticism, it should serve to reveal the informed clarity and perceptiveness of his mind, shining through the inevitable awkwardnesses and compressions of writing under pressure as a jouranlist. It is difficult to estimate fully, as yet, the loss to the cinema of a man who was counsellor as well as critic. If the plastic arts were put under psychoanalysis, the practice of embalming the dead might turn out to be a fundamental factor in their creation. The process might reveal that at the origin of painting and sculpture there lies a mummy complex. The religion of ancient Egypt, aimed against death, saw survival as depending on the continued existence of the corporeal body. Thus, by providing a defense against the passage of time it satisfied a basic psychological need in man, for death is but the victory of time. To preserve, artificially, his bodily appearance is to snatch it from the flow of time, to stow it away neatly, so to speak, in ANDREBAZIN the hold of life. It was natural, therefore, to keep up appearances in the face of the reality of death by preserving flesh and bone. The first Egyptian statue, then, was a mummy, tanned and petrified in sodium. But pyramids and Other forms of insurance were therefore sought. So, near the sarcophagus, alongside the corn that was to feed the dead, the Egyptians placed terra cotta statuettes, as substitute mummies which might replace the bodies if these were destroyed. It is this religous use, then, that lays bare the primordial function of 6 the same kind of thing is the arrow-pierced clay bear to be found in prehistoric caves, a magic identity-substitute for the living animal, that will ensure a successful hunt. The evolution, side by side, of art and civilization has relieved the plastic arts of their magic role. Louis XIV did not have himself embalmed. He was content to survive in his portrait by Lebrun. Civilization cannot, however, entirely cast out the bogy of time. It can only sublimate our concern with it to the level of rational thinking. No one believes any longer in the ontological identity of model and image, but all are agreed that the image helps us to remember the subject and to preserve him from a second spiritual death. Today the making of images no longer shares an anthropocentric, utilitarian purpose. It is no longer a question of survival after death, but of a larger concept, the creation of an ideal world in the likeness of the real, with its own temporal destiny. "How vain a thing is painting" if underneath our fond admiration for its works we do not discern man's primitive need to have the last word in the argument with death by means of the form that endures. If the history of the plastic arts is less a matter of their aesthetic than of their psychology then it will be seen to be essentially the story of resemblance, or, if you will, of realism. Seen in this sociological perspective photography and cinema would provide a natural explanation for the great spiritual and technical crisis that overtook modern painting around the middle of the last century. Andre Malraux has described the cinema as the furthermost evolution to date of plastic realism, the beginnings of which were first manifest at the Renaissance and which found a limited expression in baroque painting. It is true that painting, the world over, has struck a varied balance between the symbolic and realism. However, in the fifteenth century Western painting began to turn from its ageold concern with spiritual realities expressed in the form proper to it, towards an effort to combine this spiritual expression with as complete an imitation as possible of the outside world. The decisive moment undoubtedly came with the discovery of the first scientific and already, in a sense, mechanical system of reproduction, namely, perspective: the camera obscura of Da Vinci foreshadowed the camera of Niepce. The artist was now in a position to create the illusion of three-dimensional space within which things appeared to exist as our eyes in reality see them. Thenceforth painting was torn between two ambitions: one, primarily aesthetic, namely the expression of spiritual reality wherein the symbol transcended its model; the other, purely psychological, namely to duplicate the world outside. The satisfaction of this appetite for illusion merely served to increase it till, bit by bit, it consumed the plastic arts. However, since perspective had only solved the problem of form and not of movement, realism was forced to continue the search for some way of giving dramatic expression to the moment, a kind of psychic fourth dimension that could suggest life in the tortured immobility of baroque art.* The great artists, of course, have always been able to combine the two tendencies. They have alloted to each its proper place in the hierarchy of things, holding reality at their command and molding it at will into the fabric of their art. Nevertheless, the fact remains that we are faced with two essentially different phenomena and these any objective critic must view separately if he is to understand the evolution of the pictorial. The need for illusion has not ceased to trouble the heart of painting since the sixteenth century. It is a purely mental need, of itself nonaesthetic, the origins of which must be sought in the proclivity of the mind towards magic. However, it is a need the pull of which has been strong enough to have seriously upset the equilibrium of the plastic arts. * It would be interesting, from this point of view, to study in the illustrated magazines of 1890-1910, the rivalry between photographic reporting and the use of drawings. The latter, in particular,satisfied the baroque need for the dramatic. A feeling for the photographicdocument developed only gradually. 7 The quarrel over realism in art stems from a misunderstanding, from a confusion between the aesthetic and the psychological; between true realism, the need that is to give significant expression to the world both concretely and in its essence, and the pseudorealism of a deception aimed at fooling the eye (or for that matter the mind); a pseudorealism content in other words with illusory appearances.* That is why medieval art never passed through this crisis; simultaneously vividly realistic and highly spiritual, it knew nothing of the drama that came to light as a consequence of technical developments. Perspective was the original sin of Western painting. It was redeemed from sin by Niepce and Lumiere. In achieving the aims of baroque art, photography has freed the plastic arts from their obsession with likeness. Painting was forced, as it turned out, to offer us illusion and this illusion was reckoned sufficient unto art. Photography and the cinema on the other hand are discoveries that satisfy, once and for all and in its very essence, our obsession with realism. No matter how skillful the painter, his work was always in fee to an inescapable subjectivity. The fact that a human hand intervened cast a shadow of doubt over the image. Again, the essential factor in the transition from the baroque to photography is not the perfecting of a physical process (photography will long remain the inferior of painting in the reproduction of color); rather does it lie in a psychological fact, to wit, in completely satisfying our appetite for illusion by a mechanical reproduction in the making of which man plays no part. The solution is not to be found in the result achieved but in the way of achieving it.tf This is why the conflict between style and likeness is a relatively modern phenomenon of * which there is no trace before the invention of the sensitized plate. Clearly the fascinating objectivity of Chardin is in no sense that of the photographer. The nineteenth century saw the real beginnings of the crisis of realism of which Picasso is now the mythical central figure and which put to the test at one and the same time the conditions determining the formal existence of the plastic arts and their sociological roots. Freed from the "resemblance complex," the modern painter abandons it to the masses who, henceforth, identify resemblance on the one hand with photography and on the other with the kind of painting which is related to photography. Originality in photography as distinct from originality in painting lies in the essentially objective character of photography. [Bazin here makes a point of the fact that the lens, the basis of photography, is in French called the "objectif," a nuance that is lost in English.-TR.] For the first time, between the originating object and its reproduction there intervenes only the instrumentality of a nonliving agent. For the first time an image of the world is formed automatically, without the creative intervention of man. The personality of the photographer enters into the proceedings only in his selection of the object to be photographed and by way of the purpose he has in mind. Although the final result may reflect something of his personality, this does not play the same role as is played by that of the painter. All the arts are based on the presence of man, only photography derives an advantage from his absence. Photography affects us like a phenomenon in nature, like a flower or a snowflake whose vegetable or earthly origins are an inseparable part of their beauty. This production by automatic means has radically affected our psychology of the image. The objeetive nature of photography confers on it a Perhaps the Communists, before they attach too much importance to expressionist realism, should stop talking about it in a way more suitable to the eighteenth century, before there were such things as photography or cinema. Maybe it does not really matter if Russian painting is second-rate provided she gives us first-rate cinema. Eisenstein is her Tintoretto. f There is room, nevertheless, for a study of the psychology of the lesser plastic arts, the molding of death masks, for example, which likewise involves a certain automatic process. One might consider photography, in this sense as a molding, the taking of an impression, by the manipulation of light. 8 quality of credibility absent from all other picture-making. In spite of any objections our critical spirit may offer, we are forced to accept as real the existence of the object reproduced, actually re-presented, set before us, that is to say, in time and space. Photography enjoys a certain advantage in virtue of this transference of reality from the thing to its reproduction.* A very faithful drawing may actually tell us more about the model but despite the promptings of our critical intelligence it will never have the irrational power of the photograph to bear away our faith. Besides, painting is, after all, an inferior way of making likenesses, an ersatz of the processes of reproduction. Only a photographic lens can give us the kind of image of the object that is capable of satisfying the deep need man has to substitute for it something more than a mere approximation, a kind of decal or transfer. The photographic image is the object itself, the object freed from the conditions of time and space that govern it. No matter how fuzzy, distorted, or discolored, no matter how lacking, in documentary value the image may be, it shares, by virtue of the very process of its becoming, the being of the model of which it is the reproduction; it is the model. Hence the charm of family albums. Those grey or sepia shadows, phantomlike and almost undecipherable, are no longer traditional family portraits but rather the disturbing presence of lives halted at a set moment in their duration, freed from their destiny; not, however, by the prestige of art but by the power of an impassive mechanical process: for photography does not create eternity, as art does, it embalms time, rescuing it simply from its proper corruption. Viewed in this perspective, the cinema is objectivity in time. The film is no longer content to preserve the object, enshrouded as it were in an instant, as the bodies of insects are preserved intact, out of the distant past, in amber. The film delivers baroque art from its convulsive catalepsy. Now, for the first time, the image of things is likewise the image of their duration, change mummified as it were. Those categories of resemblance which determine the species photographic image likewise, then, determine the character of its aesthetic as distinct from that of painting.t The aesthetic qualities of photography are to be sought in its power to lay bare the realities. It is not for me to separate off, in the complex fabric of the objective world, here a reflexion on a damp sidewalk, there the gesture of a child. Only the impassive lens, stripping its object of all those ways of seeing it, those piledup preconceptions, that spiritual dust and grime with which my eyes have covered it, are able to present it in all its virginal purity to my attention and consequently to my love. By the power of photography, the natural image of a world that we neither know nor can know, nature at last does more than imitate art: she imitates the artist. Photography can even surpass art in creative power. The aesthetic world of the painter is of a different kind from that of the world about him. Its boundaries enclose a substantially and essentially different microcosm. The photograph as such and the object in itself share a common being, after the fashion of a fingerprint. Wherefore, photography actually contributes something to the order of natural creation instead of providing a substitute for it. The surrealists had an inkling of this when they looked to the photographic plate to provide them with their monstrosities and for this reason. The surrealist does not consider his aesthetic purpose and the * Here one should really examine the psychology of relics and souvenirs which likewise enjoy the advantages of a transferof reality stemming from the "mummy-complex."Let us merely note in passing that the Holy Shroud of Turin combines the features alike of relic and photograph. f I use the term category here in the sense attached to it by M. Gouhier in his book on the theater in which he distinguishes between the dramatic and the aesthetic categories. Just as dramatic tension has no artistic value, the perfection of a reproduction is not to be identified with beauty. It constitutes rather the prime matter, so to speak, on which the artistic fact is recorded. 9 mechanical effect of the image on our imaginations as things apart. For him, the logical distinction between what is imaginary and what is real tends to disappear. Every image is to be seen as an object and every object as an image. Hence photography ranks high in the order of surrealist creativity because it produces an image that is a reality of nature, namely, an hallucination that is also a fact. The fact that surrealist painting combines tricks of visual deception with meticulous attention to detail substantiates this. So, photography is clearly the most important event in the history of the plastic arts. Simultaneously a liberation and an accomplishment, it has freed Western painting, once and for all, from its obsession with realism and allowed it to recover its aesthetic autonomy. Impressionist realism, offering science as an alibi, is at the opposite extreme from eye-deceiving trickery. Only when form ceases to have any imitative value can it be swallowed up in color. So, when form, in the person of C6zanne, once more regains possession of the canvas there is no longer any question of the illusions of the geometry of perspective. The painting, being confronted in the mechanically produced image with a competitor able to reach out beyond baroque resemblance to the very identity of the model, was compelled into the category of object. Henceforth Pascal's condemnation of painting is itself rendered vain since the photograph allows us on the one hand to admire in reproduction something that our eyes alone could not have taught us to love, and on the other, to admire the painting as a thing in itself whose relation to something in nature has ceased to be the justification for its existence. On the other hand, of course, cinema is also a language. 1. New Periodicals Definition:QuarterlyJournalof Film Criticism. 33 Electric Avenue, London S.W.9, England. 2s. 6d. A new journal edited by former students and staff members of the London School of Film Technique, aiming at a more responsible "new criticism" of films. The editors note that since Lindsay Anderson's famous article, "Stand Up! Stand Up!" in Sight & Sound three years ago, "the cry has been repeated, the thesis elaborated and the case restated with increasing showmanship; so that those who began as isolated prophets can now find reward in the satisfactions of preaching to the converted. But criticism has not noticeably changed." The first issue contains "Towards a Theory," by Dai Vaughan, who points out that "any criticism assumes an aesthetic, even though this aesthetic may not be made conscious or explicit," and suggests certain basic lines for a committed aesthetic theory. Stuart Hall compares Look Back in Anger and Room at the Top in what is probably the best piece yet done on these films. Mr. Vaughan also contributes "Complacent Rebel" on Robert Flaherty, and the issue includes as well an interview with Franqois Truffaut by Fernando Lopes, pieces on film schools by David Naden and Boleslaw Sulik, a curious pair of notes for and on films by John Irvin, and "Two Lost Generations?" by Arnold Wesker. We hope that Definition survives the economic perils of a new independent magazine. For Film is the publication of the rejuvenated American Federation of Film Societies, Box 2607, Grand Central Station, New York 17, N.Y. Founded in 1955, the AFFS is a nonprofit organization with the basic aim of assisting existing film societies and encouraging the formation of new ones. The first issue of For Film, which is the successor to the AFFS Newsletter, contains an editorial by Gideon Bachmann, new AFFS President, notes on films newly available for film societies, several book reviews, an interview with Rod Steiger, and news notes of various kinds. To be published approximately four times a year; $1.00 a year. Introduction to Literature Assignment 8 The Formal Essay and Film In the folder with the assignment details is a .pdf file of Andre Bazin’s essay, The Ontology of the Photographic Image. This assignment asks you to read the essay and then, taking Bazin’s observations about the power photography to capture reality, watch a film and use the essay to describe how the film takes advantage of those properties. Summarize Bazin’s arguments and use short (two to three word) quotations where necessary to cinch your argument together. You do not need to explain the entire film. Instead, look for two or three defining moments where film’s ability to capture and preserve reality are exploited to distinct advantage or effect. The film is Rome Open City (1945 Rossellini). While not the most “real” of his films, it is one that set Italian Neorealism into full motion. Some background. Leading up to and during World War II, filmmakers in France (notably Marcel Pagnol) and some of the younger intellectual filmmakers in Italy moved away from melodramas and focused on “everyday problems,” casting non-actors and featuring regional dialect. The idea was to move away from grandiose escapism and, instead, immerse viewers in authentic experience. While Rome Open City features some professional actors, such as Aldo Fabrizi as Don Pietro Pellegrini, it also has many children and other non-actors. It does have some melodramatic elements, but also a shift in focus and an anti-climatic ending. As World War II ends, the Nazis have occupied Rome, and the partisan resistance and everyday citizens struggle to survive. The Nazis authorities have an uneasy relationship with the Italian authorities; to the south Allied forces have begun the campaign that will eventually liberate the peninsula and drive the Germans back over the alps. Rather than depict false heroism, the film displays the simple courage and the complexities of betrayal. It isn’t all depicted as a “real” story, as you might see in a documentary, but it has moments of shock and intensity. A film like this can’t fully realize the power Bazin describes, but it can exploit it tactically. The film’s narrative focus is also set to take advantage of the power of film to capture reality. It takes time with characters, and scenes reveal attitudes and relationships that are full of depth, sometimes in small things (the visual gag with Don Pietro with the sculptures in the antiquities shop, for example). For me, the crowd scene outside the apartment and the final moment, with the boys walking down the road, back into the city, really set the film apart, and they may for you, too, but be honest about your impressions of the film. Here are steps to follow: 1. Read Bazin’s essay. 2. Watch Rome Open City. 3. Summarize what you think is Bazin’s primary argument about the nature of photography and how that would enhance the experience of cinema. 4. Explain how you think Rossellini takes advantage of the nature of photography as Bazin describes. Where does it have positive impact? Where do you see the film necessarily “cheating” and using cinematic tricks? That’s it. I’ve put the due date as 3/21. If that’s going to cause you problems, let me know and we can discuss. FORUM DESCRIPTION If you want to write about Bazin's essay and the film 'Rome Open City," the first two files are what you should read. If you want to work on the play "Trifles,' read the third file. Put two threads in the final discussion board and ou can post your work in the one designated for your assignment. Film Assignment with Bazin.docx Bazin.pdf Assignment 8 Trifles.docx