In a message dated 7/27/01 12:01:00 PM, Robert Keser <[log in to unmask]>
writes:
>Subject: Re: Need some help please
>
>A friend of mine was teaching a college class in Film Melodrama last year
>and kept getting questions from students (mostly first-year) who were
confused
>about the plot ("the characters didn't sleep together but then they talked
>like they had"). He realized that (some) students were not understanding
>that when the love scene began and the camera moved to the flames in the
>fireplace, then discreetly faded out, that MEANT that the characters were
>making love. Apparently some students could not follow the plot because
>they were unaware that the Code and the mores of the time made it impossible
>to actually show the acts
>(unlike today!). It's hard to fathom, but my friend had to keep reminding
>them of this convention throughout the term..
Yup, I have versions of the same incident in my basic film history class,
which is why we now read the Production Code, which the students find
engrossingly bizarre, but always come around somehow partially to endorsing
its spirit, if not its letter. I'm not sure why this is, but it seems more a
product of a drfit toward the right than enthusiasm for the code-era powers
of sexy suggestion. maybe both?
anyhow, some additions to the list re carolyn coulter's query
(after mike already nipped the obvious in the bud--thanks for the focus on
helping carolyn)
Bertolucci: Conformist
Wertmuller: Seven Beauties
Wenders: Wings of Desire
Also I find I always need to explain the pro-USSR films made in America
during WWII, but not Cold War sci-fi.
Trish
|