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Janey Place Women in Film Noir Essay Analysis Digital Image Technologies Discussion

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Part 1: Short Answers, Answer FOUR out of FIVE questions

3.1. Janey Place in her essay “Women in Film Noir” describes two “types” of female representations that in her eyes are typical of the genre. What are they? How can they be used to describe the female representations in Double Indemnity? What characters in the film embody these two types best?

3.2. Discuss the impact digital image technologies had on filmmaking in the last decades and describe two contradictory tendencies in digital cinema. How is digital technology challenging traditional assumptions about the cinema and realism? What two films from our course exemplify these two tendencies?

3.3. According to Laura Mulvey, there are two ways in which “patriarchal” cinema deals with the threat of castration posed by the image of woman. Describe these two coping strategies and refer to examples from Hitchcock’s Vertigo.

3.4. Many critics like Peter Wollen have noted the influence of exiled German playwright Bertolt Brecht (and Brechtian aesthetics) on Jean-Luc Godard. How and where does Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend adopt a Brechtian aesthetic? Discuss (at least) four of Wollen’s cardinal “sins”/”virtues” when answering the question and give examples from Weekend.

3.5. Briefly discuss four central principles/goals of Italian Neo-Realism according to critic André Bazin. Provide examples from Vittoria de Sica’s Bicycle Thieves.

(answer these questions in one or two short paragraphs)

Part 2: Clip interpretation – Black Girl (Ousmane Sembène)

Look at the following 3:48 min clip from Ousmane Sembene’s Black Girl. (The clip can be found as a download and stream here https://vimeo.com/540303292 [PW: finalexam]. Please describe the narrative, stylistic and symbolic aspects of the scene which you find important and interpret the scene in the context of the film’s overall meaning and the connections between cinema and decolonization discussed in class. Where it seems appropriate and helpful, you might want to refer to ideas by Robert Stam and Louise Spence in “Colonialism, Racism, and Representation.” (Answer this question in two longer paragraphs)

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