Course Introduction
Film Criticism
Textbook Exam Questions
Film Criticism explores the theories, methodologies, and practices involved in analyzing and evaluating films. The course examines critical approaches including formalist, auteurist, genre, feminist, and psychoanalytic perspectives, enabling students to interpret cinematic techniques, narrative structure, themes, and cultural significance. Through the study of influential critics and historical contexts, students learn to articulate informed opinions, craft well-supported analyses, and engage in thoughtful discussion about film as an art form and cultural text.
Recommended Textbook
Flashback A Brief Film History 6th Edition by Louis Giannetti
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21 Chapters
928 Verified Questions
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Page 2
Chapter 1: Beginnings
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Q1) What qualities do Charles Chaplin's Little Tramp movies possess that make them successful as stories and films?
Answer: Charles Chaplin's Little Tramp movies possess several qualities that make them successful as stories and films. Firstly, they have a universal appeal that transcends language and culture, making them accessible to audiences around the world. The character of the Little Tramp is relatable and endearing, allowing viewers to empathize with his struggles and triumphs.
Additionally, the films often feature a blend of comedy, drama, and social commentary, creating a rich and multi-layered storytelling experience. Chaplin's expert use of physical comedy and pantomime adds to the timeless and universal nature of the stories, allowing them to resonate with audiences across generations.
Furthermore, the Little Tramp movies often address themes of resilience, hope, and the human spirit, offering a message of optimism and perseverance that continues to be relevant today. The combination of heartfelt storytelling, compelling characters, and masterful filmmaking techniques makes these movies enduring classics that continue to captivate and inspire audiences.
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Page 3
Chapter 2: Griffith and His Contemporaries: 19081920
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Q1) Thomas Ince,rather than Griffith,is the uncredited originator of what has come to be known as the Hollywood studio system.___
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q2) Max Sennett ___
A)Griffith one-reeler containing 68 scenes
B)Our Lady of Constant Sorrows to a generation of filmgoers
C)hailed as the director who made the breakthrough with mise en scene
D)purposely photographed action and characters at a faster-than-life speed
E)after Lillian Gish,Griffith's most expressive actor
F)film technique altering frame size used in Orphans of the Storm
G)Griffith used this device for ironic contrast between hungry workers and a bountiful banquet
H)Griffith's artistically first-rate films,but a political/sociological embarrassment
I)powerbroker/kingmaker
J)four stories linked by titles,a symbolic mother image,and cross cutting
Answer: D
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Page 4
Chapter 3: American Cinema in the 1920s
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Sample Questions
Q1) The female actor whose own career paralleled the development of movies themselves was
A)Mary Pickford.
B)Mabel Normand.
C)Greta Garbo.
D)Lilian Gish.
Answer: A
Q2) The film that opened Hollywood to sound in movies is
A)The Blue Angel.
B)Tabu.
C)The Jazz Singer.
D)Wings.
Answer: C
Q3) Most female film directors flourished when the "talkie" era began.___
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
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Chapter 4: European Cinema in the 1920s
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Q1) What is/ are the difference(s)between expressionism and naturalism?
Q2) Potemkin's Odessa steps sequence is a powerful recreation of what it's like to be caught in an explosion of random violence.___
A)True
B)False
Q3) Explain Abel Gance's "Polyvision" as an example of his extravagant filmmaking.
Q4) Lev Kuleshov ___
A)The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari
B)Le Million
C)The Last Laugh
D)editing is the essence of cinema
E)L'Age d'Or
F)The Lodger
G)Lulu in Hollywood
H)Storm over Asia
I)Spies
J)Napoleon
Q5) In what ways did filmmakers react to the disillusioning bloodiness of World War I? What film movement/ style was the ultimate reaction to "the war to end all wars"?
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Chapter 5: The Hollywood Studio System: 1925-1955
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Q1) Under the Hollywood film-studio factory system,the key to getting a movie made was the A)director.
B)producer.
C)cinematographer. D)star.
Q2) Which of the following traits was not true of B-movies?
A)style,boldness,and originality
B)lurid and infantile titles
C)inclusion of a great deal of stock footage
D)testing ground of raw talent
Q3) Major studios often viewed their stars as valuable investments,"properties." ___
A)True
B)False
Q4) The temper of each major studio was determined in part by the personality of the person who ran each studio.___
A)True
B)False
Q5) What happened to new actors/actresses ("neophytes")who entered the star system?
Q6) To what is classical cinema oriented and to whom?
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Chapter 6: American Cinema in the 1930s
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Q1) John Ford's films are full of compositions which are painterly,in-depth,and in deep focus,but whose narrative is often rambling.___
A)True
B)False
Q2) John Ford's movies are characterized by which of the following?
A)visual economy
B)independent women
C)loosely structured plots
D)none of the above
Q3) All of these movies featured guns,cars,and sex except:
A)Wild Boys of the Road
B)Public Enemy
C)Scarface
D)Little Caesar
Q4) Who worked as a successful independently produced director?
A)Howard Hawks
B)George Cukor
C)Sam Wood
D)Mervyn LeRoy
96
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Chapter 7: European Cinema in the 1930s
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Q1) What French film director called for movies which "dealt with life as it was lived in the streets of Paris"?
A)Francois Truffaut
B)Danielle Darrieux
C)Jacques Prévert
D)Marcel Carné
Q2) William Faulkner wrote the script for which of these films which Renoir made in America?
A)The Southerner
B)The Sound and the Fury
C)Absalom,Absalom
D)Light in August
Q3) Hitler targeted two areas to condemn and promote his policies: Americans and movies.___
A)True
B)False
Q4) What view of life and love do Marcel Carné 's films like Children of Paradise have? What do his film anticipate?
Q5) What sense of fate did Max Ophüls achieve in his use of circular narratives?
Q6) Did Marcel Carné make "film noir" movies?
Page 9
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Chapter 8: American Cinema in the 1940s
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Q1) proud and combative ___
A)Orson Welles' film
B)Katharine Hepburn
C)Disney classic animated feature
D)Humphrey Bogart
E)Double Indemnity showed his expressionistic leanings
F)like neorealism in technique
G)The Asphalt Jungle,a world of shadows
H)The Palm Beach Story
I)Sturges' film badly recut by Howard Hughes
J)William Wyler WWII documentary
Q2) All of the following are true about Orson Welles' Citizen Kane except
A)it combines a number of films techniques for the first time.
B)it uses flashbacks for its narrative.
C)it was budgeted for $650,000.
D)it was shot in flat focus.
Q3) In a Disney film up through the 40s,the overriding sensibility is basically the star,usually Mickey Mouse.___
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 9: European Cinema in the 1940s
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Q1) Germany's postwar "rubble" films were not characterized by which of the following?
A)didactic
B)corrected lies
C)period pieces
D)political
Q2) The favorite American movies of Josef Stalin were gangster movies.___
A)True
B)False
Q3) What idea did Denmark's Carl Dreyer like to explore in his films
A)how a person's soul can rise above the constraints of the physical world
B)how foreign occupation creates tyranny in a country
C)how a controlled national economy affects the working class adversely
D)all of the above
Q4) The children referred to in Marcel Carné 's Children of Paradise are
A)naively hopeful characters
B)low-class theater patrons
C)neither of the above
D)both of the above
Q5) Why did neorealism emerge in Italy after World War II?
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Chapter 10: American Cinema in the 1950s
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Q1) To combat TV's growing influence,the movie studios did all of the following except A)used color film
B)used European actors
C)used stereo sound
D)used a wider screen
Q2) What were some of the short comings of Cinerama?
Q3) Elia Kazan,and not Fred Zinneman,introduced the most famous method actors like Julie Harris and Marlon Brando.___
A)True
B)False
Q4) What are some of the characteristics of American social realism as seen in movies like Stanley Kramer's The Defiant Ones?
Q5) Since the 1950s,stylized acting which emphasizes externals has been the dominant form of acting in American films.___
A)True
B)False
Q6) What were some of the things that method acting helped actors achieve in their performance?
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Chapter 11: International Cinema in the 1950s
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Q1) Rashomon ___
A)Kenji Mizoguchi film about the middle class
B)Robert Bresson movie set almost entirely in a jail
C)Bergman's only successful comedy
D)creates a hauntingly diaphanous dream world
E)Yasujiro Ozu film of a widower's sacrifice
F)basis for The Magnificent Seven
G)Fellini movie about decadence of the privileged
H)means "song of the road," won Cannes Jury Prize
I)Ingmar Bergman's allegory set in medieval times
J)established Toshiro Mifune as a star
Q2) Until the New Wave movement at the end of the 50s,the French film industry was
A)mediocre.
B)innovative.
C)nonexistent.
D)derivative.
Q3) Was Federico Fellini a realist or formalist/ fabulist in his movies of the 50s?
Q4) What condition do Robert Bresson's characters find themselves in;and how or when are they able to change,if not improve their condition?
Q5) What theme did Ingmar Bergman return to again and again in his films in the 50s?
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Chapter 12: American Cinema in the 1960s
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Q1) Which of the following tended to be true of Vietnam era movies?
A)big-budget films ruled
B)the protagonist(s)often died
C)westerns disappeared
D)non-political positions were taken in the movies
Q2) The Pawnbroker ___
A)George Roy Hill western
B)music and lyrics by Rogers and Hammerstein
C)Lumet NY City drama using radical editing
D)Mike Nichols film of sterile,middle-class materialism
E)won Best Picture Oscar with an x rating
F)more than a biker film by Dennis Hopper
G)John Cassevetes,urban horror movie
H)in the final shootout,virtually a whole Mexican village is destroyed
I)English film financed with American money
J)John Frankenheimer imprisonment movie
Q3) Because they came from a different background,new directors had no sense of movie-making style.___
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 13: International Cinema in the 1960s
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Q1) One of the techniques that New Wave directors liked to use was
A)improvised scenes
B)use of movie studios
C)large film crews
D)symphonic scores
Q2) Agnes Varda ___
A)Hiroshima,Mon Amour
B)Le Voleur (The Thief)
C)The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
D)Shoot the Piano Player
E)A Hard Day's Night
F)Cleo from 5 to 7
G)Ashes and Diamonds
H)L'Avventura
I)Breathless
J)If
Q3) Unlike most American directors,where did most French New Wave film directors begin their careers?
Q4) What qualities made the "spaghetti westerns" of Sergio Leone of Italy more than Bmovies?
Page 15
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Chapter 14: American Cinema in the 1970s
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Q1) What was the character of the newly invented "blockbuster" movie as championed by Steven Spielberg?
Q2) How does the revisionist label apply to genre films of the 70s,especially the early 70s?
Q3) Mazursky's movie of loving relationship ___
A)Nashville
B)The Heartbreak Kid
C)Blume in Love
D)Raging Bull
E)Apocalypse Now
F)Manhattan
G)Sugarland Express
H)Rocky
I)The French Connection
J)One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Q4) Robert DeNiro starred in all of the following Martin Scorsese films except A)Raging Bull
B)Mean Streets
C)Gangs of New York
D)The King of Comedy
Page 16
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Chapter 15: International Cinema in the 1970s
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Sample Questions
Q1) Australian directors invariably moved on to make movies in America where they
A)continued telling Australian-oriented stories.
B)met with mixed results.
C)had no success.
D)broke new ground because of better resources.
Q2) Which of the following was Rainer Werner Fassbinder's favorite kind of movie to make?
A)film noir
B)women's pictures
C)science fiction
D)all of the above
Q3) To what extent does a focus on sex rule European films of the 70s?
Q4) German cinema of the 1970s was obsessed with all things German.___
A)True
B)False
Q5) Third World cinema made its appeal to the audience's sense of A)balance.
B)justice.
C)economics.
D)adventure.
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Chapter 16: American Cinema in the 1980s
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Q1) The movie that became one of the hallmarks of feminist cinema in the 80s was
A)Body Heat
B)Tootsie
C)Annie Hall
D)Romancing the Stone
Q2) Disney's Touchstone studio is an example of the re-emergence of the studio system (though this new system lacked the power of the old system)in Hollywood.___
A)True
B)False
Q3) How would you describe the vision of the maverick directors of the 80s?
Q4) Terry Gilliam began animating short films on television with A)Second City
B)Saturday Night Live
C)HeeHaw
D)Monty Python
Q5) Which of the following is true about the resurgence of studios in the 1980s?
A)practiced vertical integration
B)established a genre of story
C)refused to make movies with older directors
D)all of the above
18
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Chapter 17: International Cinema in the 1980s
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Q1) What was the character of the British film renaissance of the 80s?
Q2) What is the character of the work of Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar ?
Q3) All of the following are characteristics of Spain's Pedro Almodóvar except?
A)is a gifted storyteller
B)loves to shock the bourgeoisie
C)mocks the stereotypes of Spanish machismo
D)employs a matter-of-fact surrealism
Q4) Paul Verhoeven has restricted his films to issues concerning life in the Netherlands (i.e.Holland).___
A)True
B)False
Q5) Which of the following foreign directors has also found great success in American cinema?
A)Claude Berri
B)Percy Adlon
C)Paul Verhoeven
D)István Szabó
Q6) Why did the movies of Poland and Hungary become intense examinations of various kinds of morality?
Page 19
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Chapter 18: American Cinema in the 1990s
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Q1) Part of the appeal of movies has always been movement for movement's sake,the principal domain of action films.___
A)True
B)False
Q2) The director who has remained independent is
A)Kevin Smith
B)Victor Nunez
C)Terrence Malick
D)Steven Soderbergh
Q3) Steven Spielberg said at the time of Schindler's List that until that film he had always been truthful in his films.___
A)True
B)False
Q4) Arguably the most important development for artistic significance in 90s movie making was the establishment of independent films.___
A)True
B)False
Q5) What happened to the quality of script writing in the 90s?
Q6) Did independent filmmakers of the 90s usually stay independent? Explain briefly.
Page 20
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Chapter 19: International Cinema in the 1990s
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Q1) Danny Boyle ___
A)Babe
B)Il Postino
C)The Butcher Boy
D)In the Name of the Father
E)Eat Drink Man Woman
F)Jerusalem
G)Strictly Ballroom
H)The Wings of the Dove
I)Some Mother's Son
J)Shallow Grave
Q2) Polish director Krzysztof Zanussi complained that control of Polish cinema in the 90s shifted away from the Russians to the A)Poles.
B)Spanish.
C)French.
D)Americans.
Q3) How did America come to dominate the European film landscape in the 90s?
Q4) What led the Communist Chinese government to relax its grip somewhat on Chinese filmmakers?
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Chapter 20: American Cinema Since 2000
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Q1) What has helped independent films find an audience?
Q2) What medium and in what ways do movies often seem to ape in the 2000s?
Q3) Latin American films of late continue to be slanted to the left,but are also now often funny,sexy,nuanced,and less self-consciously intellectual.___
A)True
B)False
Q4) Ang Lee's movies stand out because of his attention to A)setting details
B)narrative details
C)psychological details
D)period details
Q5) The transition to digital imaging and editing will probably mean the death of film. A)True
B)False
Q6) Movie making in Iran shares many similarities with classic neo-realism in Italy.___ A)True
B)False
Q7) Are the directors of the 2000s realists,classicists,or formalists generally?
Page 22
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Chapter 21: International Cinema Since 2000
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Q1) Guillermo del Toro is known to divide his energies between A)art and commerce
B)Mexico and the U.S.
C)Hollywood and personal movies
D)all of the above
Q2) Paradise Now ___
A)won the Golden Globe as Best Foreign film
B)a pregnant teen decides to become a drug mule
C)action as dance
D)two friends from childhood become suicide bombers
E)Helen Mirren won the Academy Award for her performance
F)portrayal of "the devastated,hopeless,soul of a nation"
G)political black comedy from Bosnia
H)raising the American flag is but a dot in the distance
I)political thriller about "big brother" surveillance
J)in a childless dystopian world,a single female miraculously becomes pregnant
Q3) To what tradition is Guillermo del Toro's Pan Labyrinth indebted?
Q4) Iranian filmmakers have become among the most admired in the world.____
A)True
B)False
Page 23
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