Gold Diggers of 1933 presents us with a unique cinematic experience, especially with respect to style. What type of film is this, documentary, fiction, or avant-garde? Or is it a mixture of one or more of these types? Why? What filmmaking style best

Question

describes this film: realist, formalist, or classical? Why?

Recognize the distinctions among the three principal styles of film and the three types of movies, and evaluate how the style affects the presentation of the story.

Answer 1

? The choreographies of Busby Berkeley are triumphs of artifice, far removed from the real world. Depression-weary audiences flocked to movies like this precisely to get away from everyday reality. They wanted magic and enchantment, not reminders of their real-life problems.
? Berkeley’s style was the most formalized of all choreographers.
? He liberated the camera from the narrow confines of the proscenium arch, soaring overhead, even swirling among the dancers, and juxtaposing shots from a variety of vantage points throughout the musical numbers.
? He often photographed his dancers from unusual angles.
? Sometimes he didn’t even bother using dancers at all, preferring a uniform contingent of good-looking young women who are used primarily as semiabstract visual units, like bits of glass in a shifting kaleidoscope of formal patterns.