1 - University of Arizona
English 300 Final Exam Study Sheet
Final Exam Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2006
2-4 p.m. ILC140
Below you will find a 3-part study guide. Each presents a slightly different way of looking at the material and thinking about it. You will have a lot of choice on questions on the final. The important thing is to have seen the films, read the novels and other materials, and to have thought about the issues raised in class.
Go over class notes, terminology, documents on the “handouts” page of the website
Be sure to review the assigned chapters from The Last Great American Picture Show. The paper topics for Paper II can also serve to guide your study for the final. The format will be the same as the midterm. We will only cover the films and novels from the second half of the semester, but terminology and an overview of the New Hollywood Cinema are cumulative.
I. Susan White’s Study Questions
1. In thinking about the changes (stylistic, economic, etc.) in American cinema from 1967-1977, consider the role or influence of
▪ Low box-office receipts in the late 50s and early 60s
▪ Social changes in the US (women’s and civil rights movements, etc.)
▪ European art cinema
▪ exploitation cinema
▪ film school
▪ changes in film censorship
▪ porn film
▪ the “auteur” system
▪ the “Blockbuster” hits of The Godfather, Jaws and Star Wars
2. What do you find interesting or innovative in the sound design and musical scores of The Last Picture Show, Shaft (Isaac Hayes and J. [theme song], J.J. Johnson ), Dirty Harry (Lalo Schifrin, composer), Chinatown (Jerry Goldsmith, composer), The Conversation (David Shire, composer; Walter Murch, editing and sound design), The Godfather (Carmine Coppola and Nino Rota), Jaws (John Williams, composer) and Taxi Driver (Bernard Herrmann, score)? Look at the Sound Terminology on the Web site’s Handouts page for hints about how to discuss sound in these films. (If we ask this question on the final you will have a choice about which films to discuss.)
3. Discuss acting styles in several of the films we have seen. How might you describe the techniques being used by “Method” actors like Brando, Pacino, DeNiro, etc.? Compare and contrast Gene Hackman’s acting style in The Conversation and The French Connection. (not to mention Bonnie and Clyde). What other acting styles struck you as interesting in these films?
4. Choose two of the films seen since the midterm and discuss in detail their cinematography. Use to look up the names of cinematographers. What visual effects struck you as important or innovative—or simply very effective?—in these films?
5. Following on earlier questions, be prepared to describe the stylistic devices (visual, sound, narrative) that are associated with the New Hollywood Cinema.
6. Discuss the use of violence in two or three of the films seen this semester. What realities or fears are being addressed by these violent representations? Why do you think that cinema became so much more violent during this period than it had ever been before?
7. The New Hollywood generation of film directors was strongly influenced by film culture. Some of them went to film school; others worked in the exploitation genre. (See the Handouts page for information on the directors or look on .) What allusions to earlier films and film genres do we find in each of these films? Do you perceive nostalgia for earlier styles and genres? Discuss, for example, how Chinatown relates to the genre of film noir and to the hard-boiled detective novel as described in Cawelti, “Chinatown and Generic Transformation” (Elec. Reserves). Robert Towne’s opening comments for his script for Chinatown also reveals a lot about his thinking on films of the past. What are the many cinematic allusions in The Last Picture Show?
8. Compare and contrast the representation of the detective/police detective in the opening scenes of Shaft and Dirty Harry. What is the difference between being a black man on the city streets (however “macho”) and being a white man, as these depicted in these films? How else are men struggles for power and control represented in the films viewed since the midterm?
9. What were the major changes made in adapting the novels The Last Picture Show, Jaws, and The Godfather to the screen? Think about this question in terms of both style and content.
10. How do these films convey “conservative” or “liberal” political attitudes towards issues like crime, race and gender issues? In what ways are the films ambiguous or ambivalent on these issues?
11. Another way of thinking about the political issues in the films comes from Robert Towne’s introduction to the Chinatown script. Explain what Towne might be referring to in the films he cites:
“. . . even when our society changed dramatically in the ‘60s and ‘70s, many films—The Godfather, Taxi Driver, and Chinatown among them—found receptive audiences. The did so by dramatizing the disparity between the Establishment’s view of the country and what many Americans were beginning to take to be the awful truth: Vietnam , Watergate, perceptions of hideous racial inequality” (p. xii).
12. Excerpt from the screenplays for Chinatown and Taxi Driver are on electronic reserves (password: cinema). What changes were made, if any, in adapting these portions of the screenplays to the screen? Do the changes seem meaningful?
13. What are some of the “uncanny” elements of Dirty Harry, The Conversation, Chinatown, Jaws? For example, in the latter two films, the element of unconscious repetition might be experienced as uncanny—despite their best efforts both Harry Caul and Jake Gittes repeat the same mistake they made in the past. Harry’s relentless pursuit of his antagonists has an uncanny feel, as does the shark’s inhabitation of off-screen space and his relentless drive to kill. See the reading on “the uncanny” and your lecture notes for more ideas.
14. Silverman reads The Conversation’s use of sound as being strongly affected by Harry’s attempts to control the world around him and as revelatory of his attitudes towards women. What is her evidence for this? (See the Lecture Notes on The Conversation on the Handouts page.)
15. What are the changes brought about by the New American Film decade whose effects we can still see in media and film today?
II. Arianne Burford’s Study Questions
Terms:
Chiaroscuro
Panning
Auteur
Hard boiled detective film
Telephoto
The Last Picture Show (novel and film)
How are age and gender being represented in relation to female sexuality?
What effect/purpose is the choice to film this in black and white?
IDs—football team, blue quilt, wallpaper, pool hall
The French Connection
What does the film seem to be saying about the reality of racism and police brutality against black people?
What is it saying about the law and drugs and wealth and violence?
How do children function in this film?
IDS
Baby strollers, a baguette, Santa Claus, picking your feet in Poughkeepsie
The Conversation
This film, like The French Connection, ends without a clear resolution. What do you make of the endings of each of these films? The narrative ambiguity?
What might this film be saying about surveillance and privacy ?
What is this film saying about masculinity, work, and obsession with a job well done?
How does this film compare with The Godfather? In what ways do you see Coppola as “auteur” in both films?
How does sound function in The Conversation? What is its importance to the plot, meaning, and the way we form our interpretation?
IDS
“He’ll kill you if he gets the chance”
plastic statue of the Virgin Mary
saxaphone
shower curtain
Chinatown
What is this film saying about politics, wealth, and corruption in California?
What are the historical events that inspired the film? (See the Handouts page on the Web site)
What is this film, and others we’ve seen this semester, saying about male control and investigation? How do the “ocular devices” represented in the film relate to this theme?
How is power depicted in the film? (Think about the name of the company Noah Cross once owned: “Water and Power”)
Why is it important that Noah Cross is an incestuous father (and perhaps grandfather)?
IDS
“La is dying of thirst”
Albacore club
A broken watch
JAWS
How do you interpret what the shark represents in this film and why?
What is the significance of the fact that the affair is so central in the novel and it is erased in the film?
What is the significance of the fact that politics, and the role of the mayor (who kills Brody’s cat) play a much larger role in the novel? Why do you think that the film minimizes this and the class tensions that are shown in the film and what is the effect?
Taxi Driver
Travis’ heroism and America’s role in the world—what is the film saying about politics and war?
How is Travis’s “mindscape” (the landscape of his mind) represented through visuals and sound?
What are the cultural events that seem to resonate in this film? (E.g., assassinations, women’s liberation, the deterioration of the inner city?)
III. Michael Parker’s Study Questions
1.How do these films represent urban life? How do they represent small-town life?
2.How do they represent crime? How does vice or narcotics cop, Popeye Doyle, differ from the homicide detective? How does Frog 1 differ from Scorpio? Where does Sheriff Brody fit within this?
3. How does money operate in these films? How does it conflict with Don Corleone’s system of patronage? How do characters use money to distance themselves from others, Harry Caul, Jake Gittes, or to stick it to communities that have marginalized them, Quint?
4. What role does the disposable working-class white male play in these films: Harry Callahan, Quint, Popeye Doyle etc. What might this have to do with the shift in progressive politics of the 1930’s to that of the 1960’s and today, a shift that departed from the economic focus of 1930’s to one more concerned with issues of race, gender and sexuality.
5. How is spectatorship treated as both a form of mastery and of victimization; recall Harry’ Caul’s response to the bloodstained window in The Conversation. Does this constitute a form of metacriticism, a way in which film talks about itself?
6. Regardless of their political leaning, do these films share certain attitudes toward institutional authority?
7. What is the significance of the investigator with an impoverished imagination in these films? Why do so many of them get “caught with their pants down”?
8. In what ways does the film Jaws mark the end to the New Hollywood ethos? Is the novel more New Hollywood than the film?
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