The power of film. Part 2, Trapped.

Format:

Video

Contributor:

Gabbert, Laura, director.

Suber, Howard, 1937- host.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motion pictures--Production and direction.

Motion pictures.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (1 video file (00:45:00)) : sound, color

Place of Publication:

[Place of publication not identified] : Good Docs, 2024.

Language Note:

Closed-captions in English.

Summary:

The Power of Film is a 6-part series about the inner workings of America's most popular and memorable films. It's hosted by legendary UCLA Film School Professor Emeritus Howard Suber, Ph.D., who's insights are interwoven with dramatic clips from an incredible array of powerful and beloved movies from the last century through today. For over fifty years, Professor Suber taught directors, screenwriters, producers, and scholars the defining principles and hidden patterns of great films. The Power of Film distills these teachings into six episodes with clarity, humor, and an understanding of the history of storytelling from Aristotle to Shakespeare to Coppola and beyond. Neither a technical analysis nor a review, this series reveals the psychological underpinnings of why certain films affect viewers so deeply and can impact viewers for generations beyond their release. Using dramatic film scenes, Suber uncovers mysteries, dispels myths, and explains powerful themes that have impacted us for millennia. Though The Power of Film is about movies, it's really about ourselves. By examining the psyche of the audience, Suber ultimately inspires us—as the heroes of our own stories—to realize that we can seize our own destinies, "that we CAN change our world." In this episode, Professor Howard Suber explores how many great film stories portray a central character who is trapped between their fate and their destiny. In fact, nearly all popular and memorable films could aptly be renamed "trapped." One of the reasons we watch movies that show our heroes escaping from traps, according to Suber, is because we all feel trapped (and we want to know how to get out). Comparing such seemingly different movies such as "Moonlight," "Alien," and "The Godfather," Suber shows how heroes pivot from having to accept their situation to seizing control of their destiny. He analyzes similar uprisings in "Network," "Hidden Figures," "Shawshank Redemption" and "It's a Wonderful Life". He also points out the similarity between the endings of "High Noon," "Dirty Harry" and "Apocalypse Now": all with heroes who reluctantly accepted their destinies and then had to leave the communities they saved. So often the endings of memorable films are paradoxical, like "Casablanca" and "The Graduate" and the identical freeze-frame endings of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "Thelma & Louise," where our heroes give up their lives, but because "they chose" their ending, we see it as transcendent.

Participant:

Director, Laura Gabbert ; Host, Professor Howard Suber.

Notes:

Description based on XML content.

ISBN:

9781036248307

OCLC:

1459756189

Publisher Number:

301828