METROPOLIS AND FRITZ LANG

6. "Metropolis" (1927) by German director Fritz Lang was cited as the most influential science fiction film of all time. Describe the film. 

Fritz Lang

Written by Lang and his wife Thea Von Harbou, Metropolis is a very famous film that born in the period of German Expressionism. The movie was filmed in 1925, at a cost of approximately five million Reichsmarks. 

The set is a futuristic urban dystopia, and follows the attempts of Freder, the wealthy son of the city's ruler, and Maria to overcome the vast gulf separating the classist nature of their city as this film is categorized in science fiction genre.

The film message exhibits the influence of historical events occurring during its time frame of the Industrial Revolution, including a time of economic misery and the rise of fascism in a pre-Hitler Weimar Republic Germany following the war, the rise of the American labor movement and unions during the 1920s due to oppressive working conditions, muckraking journalists, the contrast of poverty with the upper-crust classes of the Roaring 20s, the rise of immigration into the US and exploitation of workers, labor strife (Capital or management vs. Labor), and the 1917 communist uprising in the Soviet Union. It also reflects the on-going struggle between light and dark, good and evil, and the dark ages versus modern science.

AMERICAN FILM V. FRENCH & BRITISH FILM

5. By 1914, American films, which had trailed after French and British films, establish their dominance of the world's screens. What factors contributed to the American film dominance? 

 

One of the factor is the market size. American film domination gets support from its local large market size compared to French and British films where their homeland sizing is smaller than America.

Since the 1920s, the American film industry has grossed more money every year than that of any other country. America geographical area and demographical size contributes American film dominance.  The Demographics element has increase the European problem. In most European countries like French and British, individuals older than 35 no longer go to movies in significant numbers, preferring instead to watch television. Moviegoing is the province of the young. Most European countries suffer twice here. First, they have older populations than does the United States. Second, the traditional "art house" styles of European film are better suited to old audiences than to young ones. This makes them especially hard to export. The advent of the cinematic multiplex, which tends to attract the young to movies more than the old, has worsened these problems.

When The Jazz Singer, the first film with synchronized voices, was successfully released as a Vitaphone talkie in 1927, Hollywood film companies would respond to Warner Bros. and begins to use Vitaphone sound.  The birth of sounds helps to further dominate the industry.  Although American studios found that their sound productions were rejected in foreign-language markets and even among speakers of other dialects of English. The synchronization technology was still too primitive for dubbing. One of the solutions was creating parallel foreign-language versions of Hollywood films.  As example in 1930, the American companies opened a studio in Joinville-le-Pont, France, where the same sets and wardrobe and even mass scenes were used for different time-sharing crews.  This is one example how American film managed to penetrate foreign market and maintain its dominance across the globe.

 

The birth of distributor of film in America also plays an important role in assisting American film dominance.  In this case, Miramax Films, founded in 1979, was an American entertainment company known for distributing independent and foreign films.  It serves more as a gatekeeper to the foreign films rather than distributing the foreign films inside American soil.  The market for foreign films has contracted in the US over the past thirty years, due to the rise of American independent film, the decline in independent theatres, and the restored vertical integration of the US film industry.  Due to the birth of distributor of film in America, more and more American films being showed largely in the home ground as well as international market.  The distributor plays important roles in controlling Americans exposure of films.  From YaleGlobal Online news, it is said that only 1% of international films being showed inside American soil and has become more structural rather than cultural.  This makes American to only be able to view their locally made movie and hardly to visual other international films that were probably as good as what being produced by the American filmmakers.  

EDWIN S. PORTER : THE WORLD FIRST NARRATIVE FILM INVENTOR

2. What Were Edward Stanton Porter Contributions To The Invention of Motion Pictures?

Edward S. Porter is considered the American early film pioneer. Porter began to produce trick and comedy films for Edison. That experience sparked his name in the industry as one of the most influential filmmaker in the United States.

His contribution to the film industry is the invention of the dissolve technique, gradual transitions from one image to another. The technique helps his audiences to follow complex outdoor movement.

Porter also  uses cross cutting technique to show simultaneous actions in different places. In the film titled The Great Train Robbery, the film move from a place to other place as there are the scene of robbery in the train and the robber were chased by the people by riding the horses.

Throughout his carrier with Edison’s company (1899-1909), Porter portrayed side lighting, close-ups, and changed shots within a scene technique in his movie called The Seven Ages (1905).  Porter had developed the modern concept of continuity editing, and is often credited with discovering that the basic unit of structure in film was the shot rather than the scene which is labeled by many as the basic unit on the stage.

The Great Train Robbery also considered as the first real narrative film.