1 - University of Arizona



MIDTERM STUDY GUIDE

Here are some questions to prepare you for the midterm. Please make sure you have good recall of the films, have studied terminology, and know the dates and directors of films. Look at the sample midterm for an idea about the format of the exam. You should also have a look at the Paper I essay questions for more ideas about the kinds of questions we’ll ask on the midterm.

1. What are some of the major industrial changes that influenced or produced the New Hollywood Cinema of the 1960s and 1970s? (See your lecture notes, on-line handouts, and The Last Great American Picture Show readings.)

2. What are the aesthetic and stylistic features of New Hollywood cinema? What are some of the specific techniques that characterize it? How do these films differ from the “Classical Hollywood Cinema”? (See Film Art [85-92] and the handout on “Industrial and Social Changes Influencing the American New Wave” on the website.) Take examples from at least three of the films we’ve seen.

3. Describe the process whereby the Production Code was replaced by the Ratings System. What were the implications of this process for the New Hollywood (for example, with respect to the representation of violence, criminality, and sexuality)? Why is it significant that an X-rated film won the Best Picture Academy Award in 1969?

4. Who are some of the directors and actors who come from a “film school” tradition? What European film directors and American independent filmmakers influenced them?

5. How did the low-budget B-film (such as the work of Roger Corman) affect the New Hollywood Cinema?

6. How are the “Old West” and “New West” contrasted visually and in the plot of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? Discuss specific scenes that include images and discussions of these phenomena.

7. How do the “road movies” we’ve seen this semester present a utopian and dystopian vision of America? What kind of symbolic American geography does each film present?

8. Compare and contrast the bus sequences in The Graduate and Midnight Cowboy with reference to the road movie.

9. Discuss the role of costume in Midnight Cowboy. How does costume convey character and the changing circumstances of characters?

10. How are “films within the film” and other evidence of reflexivity in narrative evident in Midnight Cowboy and other films we’ve seen? Think of MC’s opening on a drive-in screen, the marquee showing that The Alamo is still playing, the scene where the TV remote is changed repeatedly. What about the sepia photos and sequences in BCSK? The “We’re in the Money” scene, Grapes of Wrath and Depression-era photojournalism references in B&C? What of the references to the Western in all of these films (such as Easy Rider’s allusions to My Darlin’ Clementine)? Why are these filmmakers referencing film and photography? How are these films “commenting” on the history of American cinema?

11. Discuss the way that some of the films we’ve seen function as “buddy movies.” Relate this to the representation of women, of the “anti-hero,” love and friendship in the films. Why do you think that this depiction of men and masculinity was so prominent in the late 1960s?

12. How do these films work to to comment on the way these characters are seeking their own identities? Think specifically of the mirror scenes, drug-trip scenes, scenes of confrontation with other characters, flashbacks, etc.

13. How does Midnight Cowboy balance its treatment of homophobia and homosexuality with the “love story” between the two protagonists?

14. Taking what you have learned about the use of flashbacks and other devices in these films, analyze the representation of “post-traumatic stress”

in Midnight Cowboy and the other films we’ve seen. How does the

cinematography  function to convey past trauma in relation to the present? Why is this idea of the “past” so important in films that purport to be breaking new ground in cinema history?

15. Examine the shifting of stereotypical gender roles in Midnight Cowboy and/or The Graduate.  What do you think the film is saying about gender in American

culture?

16. How does it seem to you, from this limited sample, that cinema changed between 1967 and 1969?

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