The series has received extraordinary praise over the years, the epitome of which may be Roger Ebert's comment that it is "an inspired, almost noble use, of the film medium." Ebert rates it in his top ten films of all time.
Jim Jarmusch: I really love your first documentary, ITALIAN-AMERICAN. How did that project come about? Martin Scorsese: The film was made as part of a series on different ethnic groups in New York as part of the Bicentennial celebrations in 1976. I was assigned to do a film on the Italian-American experience, but I told the producers that I did not want to make the standard historical film, using film clips and narration. So, I just decided to have dinner with my mother and father in their tenement apartment in Little Italy. The film was shot over two weekends, and was really just a response to a series of questions that I posed to my parents. Their on-screen bickering was not planned, but was certainly realistic. I think the film showed off my parents deep love for each other, in spite of all the arguing. Jarmusch: How did your experience on this documentary effect your later narrative work? Scorsese: Well, it was very free form and just concentrated on the faces, speech and movement of the two main characters, my parents. This informed my later films RAGING BULL and GOODFELLAS, where so much is expressed in the way characters look and talk at one another. I also realized while making ITALIAN AMERICAN my deep interest in the films of Elia Kazan, particularly EAST OF EDEN and ON THE WATERFRONT, which are stories of the inability of family members to communicate their true feelings to one another. This theme has come up many times in almost all of my films.
NOTES:
Scorsese about ITALIANAMERICAN: “the best film I ever made; it really freed me in style”
Occasional actress, legendary cook, and the mother of distinguished filmmaker Martin Scorsese, Catherine Scorsese was a first generation Italian-American and grew up in New York's Little Italy. After marrying and having two boys, Catherine went to work in the garment district. Scorsese gave his mother tiny roles in his films such as Mean Streets, Goodfellas, and Casino. When not appearing before the camera, Scorsese was cooking enormous meals for the cast and crew. Later, her son used her and her husband, Charles, as the subjects of his documentary Italianamerican. Catherine Scorsese has also appeared in a couple of other films, including Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, Pt. 3. Shortly before her death, she published The Scorsese Family Cookbook. Mrs. Scorsese died of complications from Alzheimer's disease at the age of 81. - Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
One of France’s most important documentary filmmakers, Georges Franju established an international reputation with this poetic portrait of the slaughterhouse of La Vilette in Paris. The work of the abattoir is depicted with painful directness, in stark contrast to the calm domesticity of the surrounding Parisian suburb. In attempting "to restore to documentary reality its appearance of artifice," he created a classic postwar document whose forcefulness and poetry remain undiminished today. - Harvard Film Archive VIDEO:
Entire film (Extremely graphic)
REVIEWS, INTERVIEWS, CREDITS: Blood of the Beasts Review from film4: It's hard to believe that this gruelling short was made in 1949, given that some of the imagery and subject matter it portrays would be hard to stomach even by today's standards. With its documentary-esque feel, the film compares and contrasts life in idyllic, post-war Parisian suburbs with that of the average worker in one of the nearby slaughterhouses; director Franju is unstinting when it comes to details of both the human and animal suffering. As an early example of ultra-realism in cinema, this is hard to beat, although even more difficult to sit through; you'll want to take a very long shower afterwards. NOTES:
AV: If you had to choose the most difficult of the things you've done, which would it be? Pulling the boat over a mountain for Fitzcarraldo, painting thousands of white rats gray for Nosferatu, or eating your shoe? WH: Oh, eating your shoe is nothing. Any idiot can do that. Cook it, and it's fine. AV: But you have to cook it first. WH: You have to cook it first, and don't cook it in fat. I cooked it in duck fat, which made it shrink and become even tougher, so don't do that. Dyeing 11,000 rats from white into gray, that's not easy. You have to be very methodical. You have to arrange some sort of assembly line of certain events, like dipping and blow-drying. They suffer from pneumonia very quickly. That's okay. I think anyone who is not afraid of rats can do that. Pulling a ship over a mountain, I think even a child could do it. A pulley system, and give the child a rope which is 10 miles long, and the child has to move with the rope 10 miles and move the boat one inch.
ELIVS: THATS THE WAY IT IS offers a candid look at Elvis Presley at a point when he decided to permanently abandon movie roles and return triumphantly to concert gigs. It shows him strutting around Vegas with his entourage, Elvis painstakingly preparing for his stage show, Elvis relaxing backstage and trading jokes with his vocal accompanists, and, of course, Elvis before a live, loud audience. VIDEO:
The opening credits sequence contains footage of Elvis' show at Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix on September 9, 1970. This was the first show of Elvis' first tour in 13 years
Cinematographer Lucien Ballard also shot 'The Wild Bunch'
Despite having well over a decade of film experience, Elvis had never appeared as himself on the big screen prior to ELIVS: THATS THE WAY IT IS
COURSE REQUIREMENTS:
Obtain by any means, watch, and research little known, overlooked, and classic documentary films. In addition you will be required to post your findings here should you find the film of merit.
IMPORTANT: Projects are due AT THE START of the class.
