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- Film and New York City, Writing About Movies, Primary and Secondary Sources
Prompt
Locate, report, and summarize four research sources about the film you selected in the Select a Film and NYC Film for the Film Research and Analysis Assignment assignment.
- two primary sources
- two secondary sources
- use OneSearch to find articles or books about your movie
- enter the film title in quotes, followed by either the director’s surname or the year of the film’s release
- “Warriors” 1979
- “On the Town” 1949
- “Taxi Driver” scorsese
- “Taking of Pelham” 1974
- “West Side Story” 1961
Example
Here is the example I did using the film The Crowd (1928):
- Primary Source
- Hall, Mordaunt (February 20, 1928) “The Screen: Don Juans of the Deep” The New York Times
This reviewer sees the main character, John Sims, as one in a crowd, calling him "one of the host of human adding machines.” Hall seems unsympathetic to John in the marriage, noting that his wife, “Mary, however, is brave, and keeps the home together while John succumbs to sloth.”
- The Crowd, full film review in Variety, February 15, 1928, New York, N.Y. Internet Archive, San Francisco, California; retrieved October 24, 2017
This reviewer is less praiseful. He calls the film, “A drab actionless story of ungodly length and apparently telling nothing.” He also agrees with Hall about John’s character, noting that "the hubdand is a plodder and a dreamer, achieving nothing, however, but two children and an $8 raise of salary in five years.”
- Secondary Sources
- Miriam Hansen, “Ambivalences of the ‘Mass Ornament’: King Vidor’s The Crowd.” Qui Parle 5, no. 2 (1992): 102–19
Hansen uses Kracauer’s study of the “mass ornament” to understand the plot of The Crowd. She uses references from “The Mass Ornament” to analyze passages from the film. Hansen notes that “historical and ideological problematic of what Siegfried Kracauer, in an essay contemporaneous with The Crowd, has called the ‘mass ornament’”. She understands the film’s representation of John Sims as a failed man.
- Gerstner, David A. “American Modern: King Vidor’s The Crowd.” The Wiley-Blackwell History of American Film, edited by Cynthia Lucia, et al., vol. 1: Origins to 1928, Wiley-Blackwell, 2012, pp. [332]–348. Gale eBooks, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3700900027/GVRL?u=cuny_centraloff&sid=bookmark-GVRL&xid=12d961ee.
King Vidor’s 1928 film The Crowd explores the strain of modernity on the individual and family, using the tenement and beach as symbolic settings. The tenement represents the dehumanizing effects of industrial progress, while the beach, though a place of escapism, offers no real solution. Vidor critiques the American dream, highlighting the disconnect between idealized notions of happiness and the harsh realities of capitalist society.
Report Your Sources
Submit the sources you found using the Cite feature—formatted in MLA or Chicago—followed by the Permalink or URL for the source. See the examples above for guidance on how to enter your sources.
Links and Resources from Presentation
- Mordaunt Hall, “Review: Life’s Struggles,” New York Times
- New York Times Film Review database
- Variety film review of The Crowd
- Miriam Hansen, “Ambivalences of the ‘Mass Ornament’: King Vidor’s The Crowd.” Qui Parle 5, no. 2 (1992): 102–19.
- Jordan R. Young, King Vidor’s The Crowd: The Making of a Silent Classic available at Amazon
- Durgnat, Raymond. “The Crowd (1928).” Film Comment 9, no. 4 (1973): 15–17. https://rpa.laguardia.edu/login?url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/43450625
- Gerstner, David A. “American Modern: King Vidor’s The Crowd.” The Wiley-Blackwell History of American Film, edited by Cynthia Lucia, et al., vol. 1: Origins to 1928, Wiley-Blackwell, 2012, pp. [332]–348.
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