Even though silent cinema is seen today as a homogenous period in film history, we have seen how several different film styles emerged in different periods and different countries throughout the first three decades of cinema history. In your paper, you will compare and contrast two silent film styles of your choice (i.e. early cinema and Soviet montage; or Classical Hollywood and deep staging; etc.).
You will organize your paper as follows:
In your introduction, you will introduce the styles that you are going to analyze, and will briefly explain what they have in common and in what they differ. Why are those two styles particularly interesting to compare? (i.e. they emerged at the same time in different parts of the world; they display different ideas of cinema; they are influenced by different art forms; they are the product of different industrial models; they emerged in different periods and different countries, but are similar in their approach; etc.)
In the first part of your paper, you will discuss each style separately, providing an example for each from one of the films that we have seen for class. In this part of your paper, you should also provide a brief stylistic analysis for one sequence from each film: this will help you explain the main characteristics of the styles you are discussing. You are welcome to use sequences that we have discussed in lectures, or you can pick different sequences of your choice.
In the second part of your paper, you will compare the two styles by comparing the sequences that you previously analyzed. How do they reflect the similarities and the differences between the styles they belong to?
