Writing Homework Help

Follow the links to watch the following movies: The Godfather and La Jetée

Clicking on this link for The Godfather should take you directly to the movie which is part of the Swank Movies available on the FSW library site. https://digitalcampus-swankmp-net.db07.linccweb.org/fsw273050#/digitalCampus/browse

Clicking on this link should take you La Jetée in the Kanopy movie database. https://fsw.kanopy.com/video/la-jetee

If, for some reason, the link does not take you directly to the movie, go to www.fsw.edu/library have your student banner ID and password (last four digits of your social security number) ready so that you can sign into the library site when asked to do so. On the library home page, click on the “Articles in Database” tab in the Center of the page. Once it opens, click on the Streaming Video tab at the bottom of the page and choose Swank Movies for The Godfather and Kanopy for La Jetée. Search for the film and then click on the movie logo.

The Godfather

Often hailed as the greatest movie ever made, ‘The Godfather’ is a technical masterpiece in terms of filmmaking. Read the passage in the textbook analyzing its many notable features and then watch the film in its entirety. You may wish to go back and re-watch key scenes, such as the famous baptism/assassination crosscut episode toward the film’s end.

La Jetée

A beloved example of French New Wave cinema, Chris Marker’s 1962 film, La Jetée, is experimental despite being highly accessible. Shot in black and white, the story explores a post-apocalyptic world where people live underground. They pin their collective hopes on a project to send a man back in time to prevent the nuclear war that claimed the earth’s surface. With its short runtime (28 minutes), adventurous structure, and poetic visual beauty, the film rewards repeated viewing. Watch it and try to grasp not only its plotline, but also its distinctive approach to cinematic storytelling.

Commentary

After viewing The Godfather and La Jetée, post a short commentary (100 words) in which you briefly explain how each movie achieves its artistic goals and how it affected you. Then post a short response (50 words or less) to one of your fellow student’s commentaries. 

this is the commentary student:

The Godfather is centered around the lives of mafia members, painting them as sympathetic characters in a world of crime. The film achieves its artistic goal by using expressive tones of each scene, soundtrack, and use of transitions. The film has continuous action following an order of events. The style of the movie is dark, while certain scenes are bright to reflect the emotional content. The setting of Woltz finding the severed head of his racehorse begins serene and quiet. The build of music reaches to a gruesome focused scene, and Woltz screams that return to an exterior shot of a calm morning accompanied by the sound of crickets. The repetition of contrasts and transitions engages the audience and sets the mood for each scene.

La Jetee is a movie comprised of black and white still photos that focuses on solid storytelling to convey the unsettling scenery and emotion of the post-apocalyptic period. I felt that the film achieved its artistic goal around time travel due to the illusion of time and movement in zooming, sounds, and transitions. The film has sounds such as talking or footsteps in different scenes, which add to the illusion of movement. The movie is comprised in such a way that it is almost like watching a book. Long pauses between the french narrator’s dialogue and deep tone of reading provide an eerie and unsettling atmosphere.