J. Curl - Orson Welles's Impact on the Film Industry

"Having endured a rough childhood with his mother dying at a young age, Orson Welles turned to theatre as his release. His breakthrough came at the young age of twenty when he won praise for his all-black production of Macbeth in New York. He then dove into radio, producing famous radio plays, which led him to Hollywood where he struck a two-picture deal with RKO in 1939. Bruce Bawer quotes another author in his biography, saying, "One of his biographers, David Thomson, stated that in Hollywood, "From July 1939 to August 1942, Orson Welles…made…a tactless, eternally incriminating assault on the notion of the proper ways things were done" (210). That is exactly what Welles did and why his impact is so great. He pushed the limits regarding the art of film. His mise-en-scene and use of cinematography were invigorating to viewers. Although not seen at the time, his legacy would prove empowering to directors like Spielberg, Scorsese, Tarantino, etc. Campbell sums up this idea well in regards to a movie he starred in as well as directed, Jane Eyre, by writing, "The most telling mode of Welles's presence in this film, lies in the richness of his literary and cinematic imaginations, in his own interest in—and grasp of—the layers and varieties of narrativity within a story" (The Presence…8)."

K. Rountree - The Public’s Reception of Gone with The Wind

"Gone with the Wind is an epic southern antebellum movie rooted in the American Civil War, or The War between the States, as southerners sometimes call the war, but if one strips away the Civil War background, Gone with the Wind is more about a woman's struggle in man's world. If one adjusts for inflation, Gone with the Wind is the top grossing movie of all time. Gone with the Wind was the, "largest and most expensive production in Hollywood up to that time" (Denby 72). The film's director Victor Fleming shot the Gone with the Wind at the same time he was editing his other popular movie of 1939 The Wizard of Oz. Fleming rewrote the script with producer David O. Selznick during a manic four day period where they, "worked eighteen or twenty hours a day, sustained by Dexedrine, peanuts, and bananas" (Denby 73)."

C. Washington- Alfred Hitchcock The Master of Horror

Alfred Hitchcock

"When you think of influential filmmakers in the 20th century the name Alfred Hitchcock should come to mind. Hitchcock's techniques and work has been impacted by countless filmmakers that have come after him. During the 1930's through the 1950's was considered as The Golden Age of Cinema. Back in those days films were evolving and the transition from silent to sound was about to take place. Additionally, in that era Hitchcock directed some of the greatest films of all time. During those days it was all about imagination and film was considered as a form of art and a way to express oneself. Alfred Hitchcock did just that he express himself in his movies and did it in such a way that it became innovative and that is why he is one of the greatest filmmakers in film history."

C. Washington- Alfred Hitchcock The Master of Horror

"When you think of influential filmmakers in the 20th century the name Alfred Hitchcock should come to mind. Hitchcock's techniques and work has been impacted by countless filmmakers that have come after him. During the 1930's through the 1950's was considered as The Golden Age of Cinema. Back in those days films were evolving and the transition from silent to sound was about to take place. Additionally, in that era Hitchcock directed some of the greatest films of all time. During those days it was all about imagination and film was considered as a form of art and a way to express oneself. Alfred Hitchcock did just that he express himself in his movies and did it in such a way that it became innovative and that is why he is one of the greatest filmmakers in film history."

A. Hall - Luis Buñuel

"Luis has been so influential beyond his time mainly because he was the key player in the entire surrealist category, but also because he has been able to place himself on both sides of the lens. Dali's optical prodigy and Luis's fresh filmmaking talents created the silent short film, Un Chien andalou 1928 and success led to another collaboration, the motion picture L'Age d'or 1930. Surrealist principles concerning beauty and nature were applied on the idea of subversion and the early ethnographic methods of his time; Bunuel molded a new genre of film Surrealism which continues to shine bright within today's films and shows. The main piece of art Luis created that has been studied and will always remain is Un Chien andalou. This work spoke to many different types of people, with the dreamlike editing; Un Chien andalou is a striking and illogical metaphors intended to surprise and even provoke the audience to feel extreme amounts of emotion from the film. These types of things make this film, particularly rememberable because the artistic style of shots behind the mind of Luis. The leading mainstream American director today who has been influenced by the Surrealist is David Lynch, and this is predominantly obvious in his earlier short films such as Eraserhead and Lost Highway and even his television series Twin Peaks. Just as many other Surrealist directors he creates his own reality with its own established set of profound but psychologically rich qualities."

D. Maddox- citizen kane then and now

"Around the 1940s when this movie came out, people did not take to this movie so kindly. The target audience for this film most likely was adults in their late 20s and up. People who watched this movie back in the day did not really understand this movie and did not appreciate all of its contents like we do today. As this film is told by five narrators, the audience must piece together all of the information that is given. At this time, having this type of content in a film is new so the audience of Citizen Kane was left confused and frustrated. This doesn't say a lot about the audience because it was new to them but it does say a lot about Welles. He created something new and changed the way films were made. On top of the audience not liking the film, Welles had a newspaper mogul after him. Randolph Hearst fought for this film not to be shown because he heard that the main character in the movie looks like him. Randolph Hearst pretty much controlled radio and newspaper advertisements throughout the nation, which meant that Orson Welles Citizen Kane got no recognition from Hearst. "

J. Kelly - Hitchcock in Focus

The opening scenes of Hitchcock's film were always memorable because he created them to tell a story through moving images and no dialogues. He used his early years of silent film techniques to incorporated pulsating visuals for his audience. An illustration of this was, "throughout his career he preferred to convey information wordlessly, as in the superb opening of 'Rear Window'. The camera pans from a sleeping Jimmy Stewart to the plaster cast on his leg (whose sardonic inscription reveals his name), to a series of thrilling sports photographs, culminating with a shot of violent car crash with an airborne tire rocketing toward the lens, and finally to a smashed camera. Here we learn that Jimmy Stewart is an action photographer who broke his leg when a car race he was photographing ended in a crash. The entire sequence could easily have been in a silent movie" (461). The moods of his films were felt from its onset as the audience watched. Hitchcock recognized how commanding those moments on the screen were and capitalized on it. To further my point, "he was convinced that what we see is more absorbing than what we hear, and more memorable. He recognized that the essential truth of any social situation is revealed by the gestures, body movements, and unguarded looks of its participants, and not by the words they say, most of which consist of platitudes or white lies" (461). This was a signature trademark in all of Hitchcock's films to create memorable opening scenes. There were intriguing details that were shown in the opening scenes to establish depth for the various narratives directed by him.