Multiple Choice Quiz

1		The term genre is useful to critical analysis of films because
			A)	it refers to a group of films categorized by subject matter and not rhetorical intentions or formal elements.
			B)	most films seem to fit one generic profile rather neatly.
			C)	it allows viewers to raise questions about the stylistic and narrative affinities that films share.
			D)	the formulae for certain genres are essentially immutable, and not subject to experimentation or revision.
2		Of all of the generic categories, this form has probably received the most scholarly attention, emerging in the cinema’s earliest days and produced on a regular basis by the 1910s:
			A)	the film noir.
			B)	the western.
			C)	the domestic melodrama.
			D)	the musical.
3		The narrative structure, scene compositions, cinematography, and editing of Mildred Pierce contain elements of these two genres, one ostensibly the mirror image of the other:
			A)	film noir and romantic comedy.
			B)	film noir and domestic melodrama.
			C)	domestic melodrama and costume epic.
			D)	romantic comedy and domestic melodrama.
4		The western genre often focuses on a central dichotomy between
			A)	good and evil, with shadows and expressive lighting created by chiaroscuro effects and sharp contrasts.
			B)	male and female, with the conquest of the frontier implying a patriarchal rape of depriviliged “other.”
			C)	civilization and wilderness, typically manifested in a contrast between male protagonists.
			D)	progressivism and populism, as implied by the film’s treatment of indigenous populations.
5		The “disguised westerns” of the 1970s and 1980s
			A)	featured protagonists who shared characteristics with the classical western hero but operated in contemporary milieu.
			B)	took archetypal characters typically featured in other genres and transported them to western settings.
			C)	operated on a cause and effect logic that withheld the causes of certain events from the central protagonist.
			D)	reordered the plot patterns of the traditional western by abbreviating and resorting events into an achronological order.
6		Although the style and subject matter of Schindler’s List may be far afield from the classical western, the film shares one key trait with the classical western:
			A)	it articulates a pattern of opposition between civilization and wilderness, with each main protagonist representing one of the two opposed constructs.
			B)	its central protagonist resembles the classical western archetype: the self-reliant loner who reluctantly shifts from selfish isolation to social responsibility.
			C)	it sets its protagonist on his quest in a setting in which the natural landscape is dominant, bleak, and intimidating.
			D)	it requires its protagonist eventually to succumb to the dictates of the community in power.
7		Moviemakers generally adhere to underlying design patterns with roots in classical drama and literature, the central driving force of which is
			A)	violence.
			B)	conflict.
			C)	stasis.
			D)	denouement.
8		The central concern or focus around which a film is structured is its
			A)	motif.
			B)	theme.
			C)	conflict.
			D)	denouement.
9		The interrogatory pattern of movies like Casablanca and Citizen Kane often hinges on what director Alfred Hitchcock called the device that sets the events of the plot in motion:
			A)	the motif.
			B)	the intention.
			C)	the MacGuffin.
			D)	the Rosebud.
10		While most films operate on an underlying structure of cause-and-effect logic, detective films like Chinatown
			A)	present events that are not revealed to be part of a pattern of logical cause and effect.
			B)	withhold the causes of events from the viewers and the detective both, who must determine the causes as the investigation proceeds.
			C)	offer protagonists who know the cause of plot events before the viewers do.
			D)	usually operate in a world in which there exists little causal logic underlying the events of the plot.
11		One survey of movies from 1930 to 1980 suggests that theme in the Hollywood film often turns on the incompatible values and beliefs associated with two opposed constructs:
			A)	men and women.
			B)	good and evil.
			C)	civilization and the frontier.
			D)	the individual and the community.
12		To sort out the way that events are confused in an unconventionally structured film like Pulp Fiction, it can be useful to distinguish between these two concepts, adapted by the early-20th century Russian formalists to discern between the way events occur in the story’s diegesis and are ordered in the film’s presentation:
			A)	cause and effect.
			B)	plot and story.
			C)	conflict and resolution.
			D)	intention and opposition.