1. How has the meaning of the term “modern” changed over the years?
2. What are the three main ways in which cinema became ‘modern’ in the 1920s?
3. What are some of the characteristics of ‘French impressionism”? Why does Kovacs argue that French Impressionism was “the most synthetic phenomenon of early modern cinema” (19)?
4. What is Peter Wollen’s theory of “the two avant-gardes”?
5. What were the major stages in the institutionalization of art cinema?
6. Discuss the influence of music, dance, painting and literature on the European 1920s and 1930s experimental films you saw the first week of classes. Give specific examples from these films.
7. How does the evolutionists’ approach to the classical-modern distinction differ from the style analysts’ approach?
8. How does Deleuze understand the classical-modern distinction?
9. What are the major characteristics of classical Hollywood cinema? Identify and explain at least five of these. How does North by Northwest exemplify these characteristics?
10. What are the three modes of narration Bordwell discusses in his book Narration in the Fiction Film? Why is he reluctant to call the non-classical mode of narration modernist? What does that have to do with his project of a ‘historical poetics’ of cinema and with the distinction between ‘narrative techniques’ and ‘historical modes of narration’?
11. What does David Bordwell mean when he argues that classical narration tends to be omniscient, highly communicative, and only moderately self-conscious?
12. What does Roland Barthes mean when he argues that “The most immediate criterion of an art work’s modernity is that it is not ‘psychological’ in the traditional sense” (Barthes qtd. in Kovacs 65)?
13. Who is the individual in modern art cinema?
14. What is the difference between the linear, circular and spiral type of narrative?
15. How did neorealism influence the development of modern cinema in Italy, France, Britain, the Soviet Union and Poland? How do we account for the different role it played in the modernization of cinema in these different countries?
16. Why is it important to make a distinction between the ‘stylistic’ and the ‘moral’ meaning of neorealism?
17. How did Jean Rouch’s ethnographic documentary influence modern art cinema in France?
18. How does Godard’s film Breathless exemplify the Romantic period of modern art cinema?
19. Identify and briefly explain at least 3 characteristics of the Soviet cinema of the thaw.
20. How did the film Ballad of a Soldier manage to negotiate between the demands of socialist ideology and neorealist style?
21. What is the difference between social realism and socialist realism? Is Ballad of a Soldier an example of the former or of the latter, and why?
22. According to Kovacs, what is the most important thematic difference between modern cinema in Eastern and Western Europe?
23. What were the most important innovations (in terms of genre, narration, form, sound) during the Romantic period of modern art cinema?
24. Identify and briefly explain at least 2 popular misconceptions in the West about cinema under communism.
25. In her article on Ballad of a Soldier Vida Johnson praises the film for transcending the Cold War rhetoric of 1960s. How does the film do that?