Griffin Library Catalog Online Databases Citing Sources Writing Center

Study Guide for Exam 1

Note: This is intended as a guide, but it may not cover everything. Material not listed here might appear on the exam. The notes you took in class should be your best guide.

I. Format.

Exam 1 will include some multiple choice questions, identification questions, and an essay. It is designed to take 75 minutes, but you're welcome to take more time if you wish.

II.Terms and concepts
* Film terms
* Melodrama
* Cinema of attractions
* Gangster, golddigger, and fallen woman films
* Production code, "pre-code"
* the Busby Berkeley musical
* social issues (racism in education, Indian boarding schools, immigrant narratives)

III. Films covered

You should have an idea of the era of these films and of the principal features that we discussed in class. You can find the directors and years on the syllabus. You should be aware of films from which we saw excerpts but do not need to know them in the same kind of detail. The excerpted films or short films are in parentheses.
*Early films: A Trip to the Moon, The Great Train Robbery, A Deal in Wheat
* Within Our Gates (Broken Blossoms, The Birth of a Nation
* Redskin (Ramona,White Fawn's Devotion)
* Scarface (Little Caesar, The Public Enemy)
* Baby Face (Female)
* Golddiggers of 1933 (42nd Street, Footlight Parade, Broadway Melody, Stormy Weather)

IV. Possible topics for essays

* Compare two characters (for example, Tony Camonte and Lily Powers).
* What perspective on (education, the position of women, the position of those disadvantaged by poverty or race, etc.) is shown in X film?
* How does the use of sound (or color, or music, or lighting) affect the viewer's experience in X film?
* In what ways does X film qualify as a "Pre-Code" film, and what is conveyed by its use of transgressive or forbidden elements?

V. Presentations. These contain only the outlines, not the lectures themselves.

Social Issues of the Progressive Era (PowerPoint)
Silent Melodrama (PowerPoint)
The Production Code
The Gangster Film and the Fallen Woman Cycle
Musicals as Social Documents