Deck 7: A Hollywood Renaissance, 1968-1980

Question 1

Name the Polish auteur hired by Robert Evans to direct Chinatown.

A) Milos Forman
B) Andrzej Wajda
C) Roman Polanski
D) Krzysztof Kieslowski

Answer 1

Roman Polanski

Question 2

Which form of montage does Coppola deploy at strategic moments to draw out thematic parallels in both The Godfather and The Godfather Part II?

A) superimpositions
B) split screens
C) crosscutting
D) hard cuts

Answer 2

crosscutting

Question 3

Easy Rider was independently produced by BBS Productions, a company established out of the success of which 1960s television program?

A) Batman
B) The Monkees
C) The Andy Griffith Show
D) Green Acres

Answer 3

The Monkees

Question 4

Which of the following were reasons Paramount ultimately approached Francis Ford Coppola to direct The Godfather?

A) A-list talent turned down the film.
B) Coppola's screenplay for Patton had won an Academy Award.
C) Coppola was Italian and the studio was concerned about angering the Italian American community with a mobster movie.
D) all of the above

Question 5

The "porn-chic" phenomenon was fueled by which of the following factors?

A) the sexual revolution
B) liberal U.S.Supreme Court rulings
C) Hollywood diversifying its fare
D) Cinemascope

Question 6

Name the 1972 film whose box office and critical success became the flashpoint for studios to court young directors and embrace the auteur theory.

A) Easy Rider
B) Fiddler on the Roof
C) The Godfather
D) Airport

Question 7

The Godfather expands upon which gangster film theme?

A) The gangster will always fall at the hands of a morally pure law enforcement figure.
B) The gangster mythos is explicitly tied to the American dream, social mobility, and material reward.
C) The gangster is the embodiment of absolute and unambiguous evil.
D) American sociopolitical structures implement "blind justice."

Question 8

This American film was at the center of the Jenkins v.Georgia Supreme Court case that led to the overturning of a state ban on MPAA-rated fare.

A) Easy Rider
B) Last Tango in Paris
C) Midnight Cowboy
D) Carnal Knowledge

Question 9

Name the 1969 film directed by Haskell Wexler and financed by Paramount that mixed documentary footage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention protests with a dramatic narrative about a television journalist trying to cover Chicago news.

A) The Parallax View
B) All the President's Men
C) The Post
D) Medium Cool

Question 10

Which of the following best describe Coppola's auteurist tendencies?

A) a fondness for theatrical setups, scale, and scope
B) a fondness for documentary techniques such as handheld cameras and casual compositions
C) a fondness for expressionistic mise-en-scene
D) a fondness for intellectual montage akin to Sergei Eisenstein

Question 11

Which of the following themes marks a significant deviation from The Godfather to The Godfather Part II?

A) The family's Italian heritage has been subsumed to multicultural America.
B) American sociopolitical structures implement "blind justice."
C) The gangster mythos is explicitly tied to the American dream, social mobility, and material reward.
D) The gangster will always fall at the hands of a morally pure law enforcement figure.

Question 12

All of the following were categories of the 1968 MPAA voluntary rating system EXCEPT

A) G.
B) M.
C) PG-13.
D) X.

Question 13

The downbeat ending of Chinatown holds some parallels with which 1970s American event?

A) the Vietnam War
B) the death of Elvis Presley
C) the Watergate scandal
D) the gas crisis

Question 14

Which studio gave Francis Ford Coppola's production company, American Zoetrope, a first-look deal but ultimately passed on four of the most important films of the 1970s?

A) Paramount
B) Universal
C) Warner Bros.
D) MGM

Question 15

Name the 1969 film that features a male prostitute and his alcoholic pimp, the first film with an X rating to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.

A) Sweet Charity
B) I Am Curious (Yellow)
C) Midnight Cowboy
D) Easy Rider

Question 16

Name the American auteur who attended New York University and established his reputation with the gangster film Mean Streets.

A) Francis Ford Coppola
B) George Lucas
C) Spike Lee
D) Martin Scorsese

Question 17

Which MPAA rating label became embraced by pornographers as a marketing tool?

A) G
B) M
C) X
D) R

Question 18

Name the pornographic film that had wide crossover appeal, ranking as high as tenth in box office revenues.

A) The Devil in Miss Jones
B) Last Tango in Paris
C) The Godfather
D) Deep Throat

Question 19

Which of the following themes or styles were incorporated by Easy Rider, contributing to its unique success?

A) the teen biker picture
B) the French New Wave
C) documentary style
D) all of the above

Question 20

Alan Pakula's films The Parallax View and All the President's Men best capture which sentiment?

A) that the American republic is doomed
B) that the general populace has enormous political power and the cinema can be used to harness it
C) that authoritarian regimes will reign supreme
D) the United States government always functions according to the will of the people

Question 21

Name the auteur who broke through with his adaptation of Jaws, a prototypical horror film that plays with the familiar theme of progress vs.nature.

A) Stanley Kubrick
B) George Lucas
C) Michael Bay
D) Steven Spielberg

Question 22

Name the Robert Altman film noir that reimagined Philip Marlowe as an out-of-touch sap whose moral code is no longer relevant in the 1970s.

A) Thieves Like Us
B) The Big Sleep
C) The Player
D) The Long Goodbye

Question 23

Name the auteur who broke through with his "day in the life" portrait of American teens in the 1950s before becoming one of the kings of the blockbuster.

A) Steven Spielberg
B) George Lucas
C) Christopher Nolan
D) Michael Bay

Question 24

Name the auteur who began his career as a film reviewer and critic and made his first splash with a melancholy portrait of a Texas town with The Last Picture Show.

A) William Friedkin
B) Francis Ford Coppola
C) Terrence Malick
D) Peter Bogdanovich

Question 25

Which description best matches Stanley Kubrick's directorial style?

A) a technical perfectionist interested in pervasive misanthropy and instinctual violence
B) a dadaist impulse in which everything lacks a deeper meaning
C) a surrealist whose works are best interpreted according to theories of psychoanalysis
D) a cinematic realist whose aesthetic and thematic concerns differed radically from film to film

Question 26

Name the William Friedkin film that features Gene Hackman as an antihero police officer and extensive direct-cinema camerawork in its action sequences.

A) Sorcerer
B) The Exorcist
C) To Live and Die in L.A.
D) The French Connection

Question 27

Name the Stanley Kubrick film that utilizes Richard Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra" to add a dark edge to a chronicle of human evolution.

A) Dr.Strangelove
B) A Clockwork Orange
C) 2001: A Space Odyssey
D) Eyes Wide Shut

Question 28

What best describes Robert Altman's signature style?

A) superimpositions, expressionistic mise-en-scene, and nonsync sound
B) deep focus, expressionistic mise-en-scene, and overlapping sounds
C) naturalistic lighting, mise-en-scene, and overlapping sounds
D) montage-heavy editing, over-the-top performances, and non-diegetic music

Question 29

Martin Scorsese's signature style owes much to this famous New York independent filmmaker.

A) Spike Lee
B) John Cassavetes
C) Sidney Lumet
D) Orson Welles

Question 30

Name the auteur who reinvented the Hollywood western by bringing it into the world of ultraviolence with The Wild Bunch.

A) John Ford
B) Martin Scorsese
C) Sam Peckinpah
D) Clint Eastwood

Question 31

The use of tracking shots in the Kubrick film Paths of Glory accomplishes which of the following?

A) It provides a strong sense of cinematic geography.
B) It provides an immersive sense of both space and claustrophobia.
C) It provides a sense of weightlessness.
D) It deemphasizes the plight of man in a war-torn environment.

Question 32

Which two films essentially ended the Hollywood Renaissance due to notable production problems that showcased the dangers of unchecked auteurism?

A) Easy Rider and Heaven's Gate
B) The Godfather Part II and Heaven's Gate
C) Apocalypse Now and Heaven's Gate
D) Easy Rider and Apocalypse Now

Question 33

Name the auteur who began his career as a philosophy professor before directing two of the most acclaimed films of the 1970s, Badlands and Days of Heaven, both of which favored metaphysical questions over those of plot and character.

A) Terrence Malick
B) Peter Bogdanovich
C) Martin Scorsese
D) Stanley Kubrick

Question 34

MASH utilizes which conflict as a backdrop to highlight the absurdity and senselessness of war?

A) the Vietnam War
B) World War I
C) World War II
D) the Korean War

Question 35

Name the director who began his career in industrial films and television before finding success with MASH.

A) Martin Scorsese
B) Francis Ford Coppola
C) Roman Polanski
D) Robert Altman

Question 36

What term describes "films based on ideas that could be expressed in twenty-five words or less" or could be "held in one's hand"?

A) B movies
B) high-concept films
C) Indiewood films
D) independent films

Question 37

Which of the following descriptions best matches Martin Scorsese's brand of auteurism?

A) moving camera, rock and roll music, and spirituality
B) long takes, naturalism, and a minimalist approach to music
C) deep focus, baroque mise-en-scene, and a heavy emphasis on classical music compositions
D) quick cutting and documentary-style staging

Question 38

Which Robert Altman film featured low-light interior scenes, sound recording at a distance, and a notable soundtrack by Leonard Cohen?

A) MASH
B) Nashville
C) McCabe & Mrs.Miller
D) The Player

Question 39

This auteur bridged the gap between studio filmmaking and the Hollywood Renaissance with films like Dr.Strangelove and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

A) Martin Scorsese
B) George Lucas
C) Roman Polanski
D) Stanley Kubrick

Question 40

Name the Martin Scorsese film that utilized slow motion, stop-action, and black and white in order to highlight the brutality of violence.

A) Goodfellas
B) Taxi Driver
C) Raging Bull
D) The Wolf of Wall Street

Question 41

Name the 1970s genre that capitalized on a previously untapped audience with low-budget genre pictures such as Coffy and Shaft.

A) horror
B) film noir
C) pornography
D) blaxploitation

Question 42

John Carpenter's Halloween features which cinematic device extensively in its opening scene in order to elicit tension?

A) an objective moving-camera shot
B) a subjective first-person moving-camera shot
C) a split screen
D) a slow motion superimposition

Question 43

Name the female producer behind such notable 1970s films as The Sting, Taxi Driver, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

A) Maya Deren
B) Kathryn Bigelow
C) Julia Phillips
D) Jodie Foster

Question 44

What do you believe the themes of The Godfather are? Explain how the film differs in its approach from classical Hollywood gangster films.

Question 45

Name the auteur who brought his unique comedic sensibilities to homages to Federico Fellini and Ingmar Bergman with films like Annie Hall and Manhattan.

A) Mel Brooks
B) Woody Allen
C) Steve Martin
D) Dick Van Dyke

Question 46

Discuss the factors that led to the Hollywood Renaissance.

Question 47

Name the auteur who hybridized sex and horror violence within imitations of Alfred Hitchcock films such as Dressed to Kill and Body Double.

A) Roman Polanski
B) John Carpenter
C) Martin Scorsese
D) Brian De Palma

Question 48

Name the comedy auteur who made his reputation with genre spoofs such as Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, and Spaceballs.

A) Woody Allen
B) Martin Short
C) Mel Brooks
D) Jim Carrey

Question 49

Choose one director from the following list and describe how they would adapt your life story: Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Altman, and Stanley Kubrick.