Week 9 + Response

As we know America is known for stealing and capitalizing of others work. So it only makes since that this is the way they treated foreign films. Last week we talked about the "star system" and the origins of stardom and I mentioned that if we did not focus so much of the actors what would it be like. What would it be like if we did not idealize coming from nothing and landing on top as with Charles Chaplin. I was reminded of that when reading about the way Russian films did not have happy endings. I think that might an example of being more realistic. Not everything ends with a happy ending. “Some people—and I am one of them—hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche stopping in its tracks a few feet above the cowering village behaves not only unnaturally but unethically” -Vladimir Nabokov

This term has been very hectic and crazy but this class has probably been one of my favorites at Lawrence. A lot of my ideas and expectations of Early and Silent films were complete dismantled week after week. I learned about the the origins of so many things that we see daily in film and TV. I learned that the progress of film was faster than I ever thought. It was interesting to learn about the popular and most influential types of cinema and how they have impacted modern film. It was amazing to really learn the origins of cinema and how it travelled to the US and how it really took off.