Component 2c: Silent Cinema
Component 2c is all about the silent cinema that came about in the early days of filmmaking. Particularly those that came about after the end of WW1 in the early 1920’s, before synchronised sound began to become the standard.
This section of the course involves a 30 minute answer which is worth 20 marks, and 7% of the overall A-Level.
The four films that we will focus on are One Week (Buster Keaton, 1920), The Scarecrow (Buster Keaton, 1920), The High Sign (Buster Keaton, 1921), and Cops (Buster Keaton, 1922). A lot of Buster Keaton.
As with the other components, we will need to be able to answer a question about the core study areas, but there are additional ones too. The ‘specialist study areas’ for this component are contexts (focusing largely on the early days of Hollywood, German expressionism, and Soviet montage), and ‘critical debates’.