Reading Test: Tips and Sample Questions

Tips:

• Bring a pencil to class on test days.
• There will be no questions about specific dates.
• There will be no questions from the lectures.
• Questions about the films screened in class will not be included. (They will be part of the midterm and final exams.)
• Each question is about a topic, person, film that the textbook emphasizes. Things/people mentioned once or in passing are not included in the test.
• How does the textbook emphasize topics, persons, films?
  • Spending several paragraphs discussing them.
  • Boldfaced section headings.
  • Photographs and captions.

Sample Questions

• Which Edison Company director made the influential Life of an American Fireman in late 1902 and The Great Train Robbery in 1903? (a) D.W. Griffith, (b) Alfred Hitchcock, (c) Edwin S. Porter, (d) James Cruze, (e) Franz Kafka.
• The Assassination of the Duc de Guise (1908) and Queen Elizabeth (1912) brought prestigious theatrical actors such as Sarah Bernhardt to the cinema. They were produced by a French company called Société (a) du Cinéma, (b) Film d’Art, (c) Bereday, (d) du Surrealismo, (e) Supremo.
• In the years before World War I (1914), while nickelodeons were changing the way that movies were exhibited, __________ (led by Thomas Edison) attempted to create a monopoly or “trust” to control the young film industry. (a) The Motion Picture Patents Company, (b) Biograph, (c) The Production Code, (d) Nickelodeon, (e) MGM.
• __________ began his filmmaking career with American Mutoscope and Biograph Company. Two of the ground-breaking short films he did for Biograph were A Corner in Wheat and Pippa Passes. (a) Mack Sennett, (b) Jean Renoir, (c) Edwin S. Porter, (d) D. W. Griffith, (e) Thomas Edison.