CHAPTER 7 – EUROPEAN CINEMA IN THE 1930s
Multiple Choice
1. Who did not flee Germany with the rise of Adolf Hitler?
a. Billy Wilder
b. Fritz Lang
c. Leni Riefenstahl
d. Fred Zinnemann
2. Fritz Lang’s first talkie in German was
a. The Blue Angel
b. M
c. Liebelei
d. Triumph of the Will
3. The Blue Angel is characterized by which of the following:
a. woman as devourer
b. man as avenger
c. love as redemption
d. all of the above
4. Britain’s cinema was stunted for many years by which of the following:
a. country’s lack of a strong economy
b. dreary conservatism
c. snobbish, theater-oriented tradition
d. all of the above
5. Charles Laughton, the actor, perhaps gave his fines performance in the movie
a. The Private Life of Henry VIII
b. Spartacus
c. The Hunchback of Norte Dame
d. Night of the Hunter
6. Who of the following often built movies around an “innocent man on the run” theme?
a. Michael Powell
b. Alexander Korda
c. John Grierson
d. Alfred Hitchcock
7. Alexander Korda’s problem with making his movies — those he produced and directed — was
that a. he was not a very creative director
b. he moved from country to country too often
c. he let too many different people direct his movies
d. he had tastes which were much too rarefied
8. Hitchcock in part achieved his films’ effect and success through the influence and use of
a. editing based on the theory of Kuleshov and Pudovkin
b. German Expressionism
c. innovations in sound
d. all of the above
9. What film did Alfred Hitchcock make in Britain which proved the precursor of later films like
North by Northwest?
a. Vertigo
b. The 39 Steps
c. Lifeboat
d. Number 17
10. The French admired and paid homage in their surrealist films to
a. American slapstick comedy as seen in Buster Keaton and Laurel and Hardy
b. Russian masters Pudovkin and Eisenstein
c. Alfred Hitchcock and Alexander Korda
d. all of the above
11. Jean Cocteau made which of the following magical tales?
a. Beauty and the Beast
b. The Blood of the Poet
c. both a and b
d. neither a and b
12. If French civilization were destroyed today, what film, according to Richard Roud, could be
used to reconstruct that civilization?
a. Rules of the Game
b. Beauty and the Beast
c. Children of Paradise
d. none of the above
13. The New Wave film movement of France most admired which French film director?
a. Jean Cocteau
b. Jean Renoir
c. Marcel Carné
d. Jacques Prévert
14. Who financed his early movies himself using art works?
a. Marcel Carné
b. Jean Renoir
c. Jean Cocteau
d. Carl Theodore Dreyer
15. What French film director called for movies which “dealt with life as it was lived in the
streets of Paris”?
a. Francois Truffaut
b. Danielle Darrieux
c. Jacques Prévert
d. Marcel Carné
16. In Grand Illusion, Jean Renoir made good use of the talents of
a. Charlie Chaplin
b. G. W. Pabst
c. Erich von Stroheim
d. Alfred Hitchcock
17. William Faulkner wrote the script for which of these films which Renoir made in America?
a. The Southerner
b. The Sound and the Fury
c. Absalom, Absalom
d. Light in August
True/False
(Place a T or an F in the line following the sentence.)
1. Hitler targeted two areas to condemn and promote his policies: Americans and movies.
2. Marcel Ophüls often examined what he considered the transitory nature of love in movies like
La Ronde.
3. British drama was not hampered at all departures of artists like Charlie Chaplin.
4. Alfred Hitchcock regretted that sound entered movies as is clear in Blackmail.
5. Hitchcock’s movies tended to follow a “structure of the Sennett chase, accelerating rush
towards a climactic resolution.”
6. Jean Cocteau was pedestrian in his invention of imagery and humor.
7. A film like Leo McCarey’s Wrong Again is an example of a film much adored by French
surrealists.
8. Marcel Carné prefigures film noir.
9. Jean Renoir was interested in preserving and extending his famous father’s reputation as an
Impressionistic painter.
10. Silence was better suited to Renoir’s films than sound because of the films’ contemplative
and realistic perspectives.
Matching
1) M ___
2) Marlene Dietrich ___
3) Rules of the Game ___
4) Jean Cocteau ___
5) Children of Paradise ___
6) Leni Riefenstahl ___
7) Rembrandt ___
8) Alfred Hitchcock ___
9) Jean Gabin ___
10) Max Ophüls ___
a. Jean Renoir classic of study of French classes
b. angels wore black leather Orpheus
c. German actress turned director
d. star of Port of Shadows
e. The Blue Angel star
f. Liebelei
g. Fritz Lang’s first talkie
h. Marcel Carné masterpiece
i. The Lady Vanishes\
j. Alexander Korda
ANS:
Short Answer
1. What sense of fate did Max Ophüls achieve in his use of circular narratives?
2. What film movement brought Great Britain its first distinctive form of filmmaking and what
was its goal?
3. What quality do Alfred Hitchcock’s American films possess that is lacking in his earlier
British films?
4. What view of life and love do Marcel Carné ’s films like Children of Paradise have? What do
his film anticipate?
Essay Questions
1. Is Leni Riefenstahl’s The Triumph of the Will a documentary or a work of fiction?
2. How is Marlene Dietrich’s Lola in Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel prototypically a
femme fatale?
3. Was the fabulist/surrealist French film director Jean Cocteau simply ahead of his time in his
technique and story development?
4. Did Marcel Carné make “film noir” movies?