Episode #72 - David Bordwell (Daisy Kenyon)

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"How much can we squeeze out if we treat films very simple? Sometimes going simple, even with complicated filmmakers, yields things that are often taken for granted."

Truffaut remarked there was cinema before Godard and cinema after Godard. The academic discipline of Film Studies could be said to have its own Godard in David Bordwell, the author of some of the most influential books in understanding the history of film style. In this sprawling conversation, David discusses his upbringing that led him to movies and his first steps in helping spearhead the neo-formalist movement of film criticism. He looks back at the formation of poetics, his role in thinking about the conventions that tell us a film story, the role of auteurism as problem-solvers, and how popular film criticism has influenced in his more recent work. They swing through conversations on art history, Jean-Luc Godard, new media, Hong Kong filmmaking, and Robin Wood. Finally, David and Peter discuss Daisy Kenyon, a 1947 Joan Crawford-Dana Andrews-Henry Fonda melodrama from Otto Preminger with so many radical choices in its delivery of narrative one might mistake it for being a subversive text, even if it's all convention.

0:00-2:40 Opening

3:27-10:22  Establishing Shots - Texture and Claire Denis
11:07-1:27:05 Deep Focus - David Bordwell

1:28:10-1:30:37 Mubi Sponsorship
1:32:20-1:52:00 Double Exposure - Daisy Kenyon (Otto Preminger)

1:52:02-1:56:23 Close

Read David Bordwell at Observations on Film Art alongside Kristin Thompson.
David's books include: Film Art: An Introduction, The Classical Hollywood Cinema, Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema, Planet Hong Kong, Figures Traced in Light, On The History of Film Style, Post Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies, Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema, Narration in the Fiction Film, Poetics of Cinema, 

Episode #71 - Kristin Thompson (How Green Was My Valley)

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"You always start with saying, 'What is this film trying to do?'"

If you've taken a film studies course in the last couple decades, you likely came across Film Art on the required book purchases. Chances are you first learned how to investigate the structure of a film (narrative, editing, mise-en-scene, sound, etc) before learning how to recognize ideology, or apply psychoanalytic theories. Wherever one's interest lie in looking at cinema, the work by film scholar Kristin Thompson over the last four decades has provided intensive groundwork into looking at Hollywood cinema's most intuitive principles and beyond. Kristin sits down to traces her entrance into academic film studies and developing a method for understanding form as adapted from Russian theories, the history of classical structure as developed by Hollywood and its legacy both abroad in the silent era and continuing into even today's so-called "VFX-driven" movies, and her work on The Lord of the Rings franchise and its game-changing success in the new century. Finally, the two sit down to look at John Ford's How Green Was My Valley, which employs unique methods of narrative strategy and compositional staging to create a poetic "three-hankie picture" (and well deserving of its 1941 Oscar).

0:00-3:03 Opening

4:21-11:36  Establishing Shots - Manhunter
12:21-58:18 Deep Focus - Kristin Thompson

59:27-1:02:07 Mubi Sponsorship
1:03:49-1:22:27 Double Exposure - How Green Was My Valley (John Ford)

1:22:31-1:24:09 Close

Read Kristin Thompson at Observations on Film Art alongside David Bordwell.
Kristin's books include: Film Art: An Introduction, The Classical Hollywood Cinema, Breaking the Glass Armor,  Storytelling in New Hollywood, The Frodo Franchise, Eisenstein's Ivan The Terrible, Exporting Entertainment, and Herr Lubistch Goes to Hollywood.

Episode #64 - Brandon Colvin (Hail Mary)

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"I always think about filmmaking as trying to get it down to the most 

essential thing that has to be there."

What exactly is acting, and how can we pull apart its elements for our analysis? Madison-based cinephile Brandon Colvin has been trying to figure that out, whether through his academic studies, his programming, and most importantly, his own filmmaking. Colvin is the filmmaker behind two of the smallest but most unique films this side of American independent cinema, Frames and Sabbatical, and in this interview with Peter, discusses how he merged his own filmmaking interests with his academic interests, creating and exploring the relationship between directors and performers in the current landscape of today's films. Later, they dive into one of Jean-Luc Godard's most spiritual features, the aptly named Hail Mary, and talk through why this may be the most emotional film the French legend ever made.

0:00-2:20 Opening

3:10-7:54  Establishing Shots - Hill of Freedom
8:38-58:48 Deep Focus - Brandon Colvin

59:55-1:02:32 Mubi Sponsorship
1:03:41-1:21:42 Double Exposure - Hail Mary (Jean-Luc Godard)

1:21:48-1:24:37 Close 

Watch Sabbatical and Frames on Vimeo.
Check out the site for Brandon's production company, Moss Garden Films.
Follow Brandon on Twitter.
Hail Mary is available on Google Play, iTunes, and Blu-Ray. 

Episode #63 - Lea Jacobs (Only Angels Have Wings)

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"These delicate tolerances, which are what produce a good pace for a film, are something that all film creators live with."

So often we spend our time thinking about what we see in movies, that it can be easy to forget that cinema is experienced through time, and that experience depends on a tempo. Professor Lea Jacobs at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, has been curious about how rhythm creates film, and her new book, Film Rhythm After Sound, attempts to answer what it meant for movies to not just take on sound in the 1930s, but work through new types of interactions between shots, gestures, edits, sounds, speeds, and more. Jacobs also discusses her work on theatrical stage acting in the 1910s, understanding the Production Code as an industry as opposed to just a censor board, and the importance of historical research as part of Madison's legendary film department. Finally, the two dive into Howard Hawks's masterpiece, Only Angels Have Wings, and  theorize a relationship between the film's rhythmic patterns and its unique relationship to sentiment. 

0:00-2:19 Opening

2:58-8:31  Establishing Shots - Bojack Horseman, Season 2
9:16-1:02:36 Deep Focus - Lea Jacobs

1:03:16-1:05:31 Mubi Sponsorship
1:06:45-1:20:14 Double Exposure - Only Angels Have Wings (Howard Hawks)

1:20:19-1:21:57 Close 

Lea Jacob's homepage for UW Madison.
Read her books: The Wages of Sin: Censorship and the Fallen Woman Film, Theatre to Cinema: Stage Pictorialism and the Early Feature Film, The Decline of Sentiment: American Film in the 1920s, and Film Rhythm After Sound: Technology, Music,and Performance.