How are new technologies portrayed in films? Consider scenes in Modern Times to compare to others you have watched. On a narrative and technical level, what does the new technology/innovation allow the director to do?

This first essay aims to help you to generate a focused, coherent essay. The final discussion needs to be between three (3) to five (5) double-spaced pages, with one-inch margins. Be sure to describe and analyze specific scenes or images to support your responses to one of the following questions. Please use at least one critical article found in the Germanna databases to support your views. The resource should be about literary or film criticism, and speak about Modern Times, “The Searchers,” “His Girl Friday,” “Rear Window,” “The Great Train Robbery” or film history to include silent cinema from 1895 – 1928. Include a Works Cited page that does not count as part of the 3-5 pages. Give yourself time to run the final paper through Grammarly or take it to the Writing Center to check for clarity and analysis to one main point.

1. How are new technologies portrayed in films? Consider scenes in Modern Times to compare to others you have watched. On a narrative and technical level, what does the new technology/innovation allow the director to do? What is the director’s attitude towards technological advances, and how does he express them? When, how, where, and why does the new technology appear? Are there particular characters associated with the technology, and is there significance to that association?

2. How do movies like “The Searchers,” “His Girl Friday,” Modern Times or other films you have watched depict social ills and what is the director’s attitude toward these problems? Keep in mind that many early moviegoers lived in urban areas and were immigrants.

3. How does the progression of gender roles in silent era films embody and/ or contradict the Fred Ott principle (The Fred Ott Principle is the process that illustrates how film goes from. novelty to social form)? How do the silent directors incorporate or confront the social roles and limitations of the times? You can use any of D.W. Griffith shorts, Keaton’s films, and Chaplin’s Modern Times, acknowledging that this film produced in the sound era can be considered a culminating text of the silent cinema.

4. Using Tom Gunning’s theory of a “cinema of attractions” from his article “An Aesthetic of Astonishment” in relation to two or three early films. Does his claim work perfectly, or is there something yo would add, modify, complicate, or disagree with? http://www.columbia.edu/itc/film/gaines/historiography/Gunning.pdf (Links to an external site.)

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