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OCR Film Studies Paper 1
Section A: Film History
Silent Era to 1990
These examination tasks require that you study three American films with particular reference to responding to questions in the key areas:
- Film language
- Film meaning
- Film context
And with specific reference to ideas of:
- Meaning and response
The task will require you compare three films, one from each Component Group:
- The Silent Era
- Hollywood 1930-1960
- Hollywood 1961-1990
Group 1: Silent Era
- The Birth of a Nation (Griffith, 1915)
- The Gold Rush (Chaplin, 1925)
- The Mark of Zorro (Niblo and Reed, 1920)
- The General (Bruckman and Keaton, 1926)
- Sunrise (Murnau, 1927)
- The Wind (Sjostrom, 1928)
Group 2: 1930–1960
- Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
- Singin’ in the Rain (Kelly and Donen, 1952)
- Stagecoach (Ford, 1939)
- Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
- Double Indemnity (Wilder, 1944)
- All that Heaven Allows (Douglas, 1955)
Group 3: 1961–1990
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)
- Raging Bull (Scorsese, 1980)
- E.T. the Extra Terrestrial (Spielberg, 1982)
- Do the Right Thing! (Lee, 1989)
- The Conversation (Coppola, 1974)
- West Side Story (Robbins and Wise, 1961)
Rationale
Section A of Paper 1 focuses upon the micro-elements of film form and the construction of meaning and response by both filmmaker and spectator, with a particular focus on US films from the Silent Era to 1990.
Knowledge and understanding of film form and its key terms will be developed through:
- studying the micro-elements of film form
- identifying how these elements construct meanings and contribute to the aesthetics of film
- an appreciation of film poetics: film as a constructed artefact, resulting from...
