When Learning Cinema History: Forwards or Backwards?

[cine]

This is inspired by PTA's quote about learning cinema history from the present and then backwards, to see where it was the respective film derived from. Personally I would rather see the beginning of the cinema and then watch it progress. I feel this way because if we were to watch films that way, we can learn about the best of the cinema, the movements, etc. and then progress into the 70's, 80's, 90's to see how cinema has went downhill since its golden ages and what have you. What do you think the best teaching method would be? Explain..

[Cecil]

i just move back and forth, with different mouvements and directors, depending on what im interested in at the time

[RegularKarate]

because anyone learning film history has already seen modern films, it's been ruined for them... if they had never seen a film, you could start at the begining and work forward, but once they've seen a modern film, it's too late.

Answer to the question is neither.

I don't think PT meant to literally go backward... I think you just didn't understand.

[cine]

I think it was pretty clear that PTA thought the film class shouldn't start with Potemkin and they should start with something modern and then go backwards to show its influences. And so on. Yes?

[Find Your Magali]

I guess my answer would be an amalgam of the above answers.

First, a student of the cinema doesn't exist in a vacuum. I think you must have a love for movies in order to be someone who wants to be taught above movie history. Almost certainly, this love for cinema came while watching popular modern films during your youth.

In other words, a great many people from my generation (I'm 32) probably fell in love movies while watching the films of Spielberg and Lucas.

So that's your starting point. Then (and PTA has mentioned this) you develop an interest in the movies that inspired Spielberg and Lucas. This would, in the case of Lucas, lead you back to Kurosawa.

As far as actual classroom teaching of film history. I agree with the above poster who said that you should bounce back and forth through the eras, in order to touch on different themes, genres, styles, etc. ... A strictly linear progression wouldn't necessarily be the best way to go.

In the one film class I took in college, we bounced around in that exact fashion. ... We saw "Top Gun" very early in the semester, so that we could refresh ourselves with that blockbuster and have a frame of reference for diving backward into film history. Then we bounced all around. From "Citizen Kane" to "Kiss Me Deadly" to "Battleship Potemkin" to "Stroszek" to "The Great Train Robbery" to "Annie Hall."

So, that's my two cents. It's a good topic for discussion.

[cine]

Thanks. I thought it would get people thinking and its a bit refreshing to me to discuss. I think jumping around themes, movements, etc. is the best formula of teaching but thats why I didn't include that in the discussion since forwards or backwards is more debatable.

[Find Your Magali]

And even with the subset of themes, you could debate how to structure the syllabus. For example you could argue that either of these two orders would work:

Plan A
Unforgiven
Stagecoach
High Noon
The Searchers
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Plan B
Stagecoach
High Noon
The Searchers
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Unforgiven

[Ghostboy]

I think you could still go back to the beginning and get a fresh perspective of progression, as long as you don't mind seeing certain movies over again, and are aware that some things will feel inherently dated by what followed them. I also really like the idea of working my way backwards -- except that it's too late already. I think most big film buffs (like us) are so anxious to devour films that we jump around in an almost free associative style. Time collapses in the wake of our voracious cinematic appetite!

But for a class, it's a great idea.

[ProgWRX]

im taking a History of Cinema class right now and I really dig the way the Prof. is handling it. We of course started the theory part from the beginnings of Edison and the Lumiere's and when we started watching film examples to match what he was teaching, he would start showing us the classic films then a modern example. Ex: we watched the great train robbery so we could see examples of simultaneous action, then we watched a clip of Chicago (the beginning) to see how what Porter was pioneering is still being used to date...

so yeah were switching back and forth i guess

[©brad]

probably the best way to do it. what films do u watch in the class?

[Alexandro]

Wow, it's cool to hear PTA thinks that way cause I've had that theory for years...The way I see it, you start with the movies you like and generally thos emovies are the current movies. I mean I started loving my cintemporary films like E.T. back then, the Spielberg films, Roger Rabbit...then JFK, Silence of the lambs...and so on...Only after getting to know the cinema of the present I was able to digest the different narratives, cinematography and styles of the past. Not necesarily like, backwards or like saying, today we watch Scream and tomorrow we atch Halloween, but just to adjust yourself to the possibilites of it. You start with somethign easy, something you can connect more easily, so you can't start with Eisenstein cause it's totallty alien if you're not prepared....

I have that same theory for books. I mean they want 12 year old kids reading Shakespeare...first give them Tolkien, and then they will start to like reading enough to try other things, the classics an so on...

[ProgWRX]

We've watched a DVD compilation of several of the Lumiere's first films like :

Employees Leaving the Lumiere Factory
The Sprayer Sprayed
Feeding the Baby
Card Game

Weve also watched Voyage to the Moon by Melies, and Porter's The Great Train Robbery.

Among the modern day examples we've watched clips from Chicago, The Silence of the Lambs, Bram Stoker's Dracula and a David Fincher's video for a Madonna's song. (dont remember the title, but it features Christopher Walken in it)


Tonight were watching the greater part of a film called "Birth of a Nation"

[jasper_window]

It's funny because I don't know that I would've been as obsessed with films if I saw older films first.  When I was really young all I wanted to do was watch movies and that was due to animated disney films and then stuff like raiders, star wars, rocky, karate kid, alot of good films but mostly fun, popcorn films. As I grew up I'd watch anything, and when I got into middle school, and high school, I started getting into films from the 40's-70's.  I probably like learning backwards because I did, and still am and I don't know if I would've had the same fascination with films if I saw a film from the 40's when I was five.  Instead I saw raiders and I fell in love with movies.

[ProgWRX]

of course ! i mean im sure 99.9% of the film makers and film lovers of today realized their love of  film BECAUSE of a film of their time that influenced them..

[***beady***]

I personally would start of with the very first films, how it all began, when art and technology met. I would probably then hop to the five national cinema types, which are british, soviet, indian, german, and american. How they have evolved etc...
And then do the different genres in the ages.