What's in a code?

As we all know, film has received some of the harshest treatment of censorship due to the fact it can show both audio and video that can be offensive. No doubt a spike in violent/sex films would have occurred much earlier had the code never been written, and who knows, may have even surpassed our levels of violence currently. The code is very interesting as how it tries to protect the viewers. The list of what is taboo now is much different, and nearly required the offensive subject in question to be grossly exaggerated. However, right before this code was put into effect, a few movies slipped by to live in the world of a released film even if it was but a brief period of time.

What is funny, is these films still somewhat censor content, although their reason could be debatable. When they turn the camera away from a gunshot, did they really do that to avoid the sight of a death, or was it because honestly, it was cheaper?

Because of this time before special effects and animated elephants being blown into nearly a thousand pieces in detail, the violence part of this code kind of gave directors an excuse to hide what was going on in the story. When asked about plot holes or questions on what exactly happened can be easily dodged by placing the blame on the code. While the code did put a greater emphasis on good story telling and using film as art, it took away realism, as anything that censors life, can not imitate life.

The Art of Saving Money

On Wednesday we watched the movie "Redskin," a full length black/white/techni-color film focusing on the Native Americans and the Indian Boarding Schools. This film was very shocking to me because it seemed very well developed for the time period it was from. Based on the other films from the time I have seen, this one seemed way ahead of its time.

This was a silent film, and it had a score of a piano to accompany the film, but there was no voices none-the-less. Surprisingly there was a lot of dialogue. The characters would often have a whole screen full of text, but it was done in a way that wasn't as annoying as it would sound. The background for the text was very styled and really matched the tone of the movie. At no point was I ever confused about who was saying what to who.

Another very interesting thing was this movie was both in black and white and techni-color. The black and white parts of the film were when they were in the boarding school or in the city, and the techni-color (which is a pseudo color, mostly focusing on the color red) was shown in the Native American village. While the movie was switching between these two the entire film, it was not a big shock and it flowed between the two very naturally. It never felt like watching two different movies edited together.

Overall, this was the best black/white/silent film I have seen. The story had its points and it also had points that were evident of its time.

Film: Within Our Gates

On Wednesday, we watched the black and white film Within Our Gates This movie was a silent film and all the dialog had to be written in a blank frame. This movie was hard to follow as nothing except instrumental music was played. However, despite a low amount of speaking, it was a full film.

Something about the film that is interesting is that the black characters that were portrayed more as the hero or the main characters were a lot lighter skinned. In a couple scenes, the lighting was different, making them appear much darker. This made a differentiation between the blacks within the movie, which the film has received criticism about.

While the white people are the ones shown with all the money and power, one kind old white lady decides to donate to the school for African American students, and further more decides to donate $50,000 instead of $5,000. This movie shows truths of the time, and has some sense of closure and help towards the end.