SEQUENCE - Aula de Cine Cineteca Laboral

This is the smallest narrative unit with a complete "approach-development-climax-anti-climax” structure. It can tell the entire story in short footage films or form part of longer structures. A sequence can involve one or more scenes. The history of the story in cinema, from the brevity of the early years to feature films lasting for several hours from 1910 onwards, can be explained from the growth in the number of sequences ranging from single-sequence films to the multi-sequence structures of long films in three or more acts.

The history of the story in the cinema can be explained from the growth in the number of sequences which go from the films of a single sequence to the multi-sequential structures of long films with three or more acts

Some of the most memorable audio-visual sequences are the soldiers gunning down the people on the steps in Battleship Potemkin (Potemkin Bronenosets, 1925) by Sergei Eisenstein, the death of the vampire in Nosferatu (1922) by Friedrich W. Murnau, the murder of the girl in M (M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder, 1931) by Fritz Lang, the happy dance of the male lead in Singing In The Rain (1952) by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, the chariot race in Ben-Hur (1959) by William Wyler, the murder in the shower in Psycho (1961) by Alfred Hitchcock and the car chase in Bullitt (1967) by Peter Yates.

Sequences of opening credits produced in the spirit of the film have been gaining in importance since the fifties, such as that in Vertigo (1958) by Saul Bass in the film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, that in Goldfinger (1964) by Robert Brownjohn in the film directed by Guy Hamilton, and that in Seven (1995) by Kyle Cooper in the film directed by David Fincher.

M (M - Einen stadt sucht einen mörder)

M / M le maudit | Fritz Lang, 1931, Germany

Berlin in the thirties. A serial killer is terrorising the public. His main targets are girls, eight in total to date. Paranoia and despair increase even more in the frightened population that knows that all attempts made by the authorities to arrest the criminal have so far been unsuccessful, from the tracking of recently discharged psychiatric patients to indiscriminate raids on the underworld. Overwhelmed by the constant police harassment and its unprofitable consequences, the main criminal organisations in the city decide to join forces to catch the murderer on their own with the sole intention of subjecting him to a summary trial and, when the time comes, executing him.

The Producers are interested in profit, they want to know how many people have gone to see the film. But that is not my objective. I am interested in knowing how many of these people my ideas have reached

Fritz Lang

(1890-1976)

Undisputed genius of the Seventh Art, Fritz Lang is considered as one of the greatest masters of both interwar German cinema and North American film noir. Of Jewish and Catholic origin like his father, his architectural training and pictorial talent contributed to him forming part of the expressionist movement from 1919. He was one of its most important contributors in the cinematographic world along with directors of the stature of Murnau, Wegener and Wiene. This era saw masterpieces such as Destiny (Der müde Tod, 1921), Dr. Mabuse (1922), the Wagnerian epic Nibelung (1923-1924), his monumental Metropolis (1926), and in the recently inaugurated era of sound, the pitiless M (M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder, 1931) or the no less committed The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse, 1933), the bold anti-Nazi parable that ultimately forced him into exile, going first to Paris and later to America to escape the unstoppable Hitler regime. Hollywood opened its doors to him in 1936 and he stayed there almost until his death after making, under the iron grip of the studio system, no fewer than 22 films in which he touched on all sorts of genres, from war or the western to detective stories and the still incipient film “noir” to which he made so many important contributions with titles such as Fury (1936), Man Hunt (1941), The Woman in the Window (1945), Scarlet Street (1945), Secret Beyond the Door (1948), Blue Gardenia (1953), The Big Heat (1953) and While the City Sleeps (1956). The influence of his work has been decisive for such important and diverse film-makers as Hitchcock, Welles, Buñuel and Godard.