This
course is an introduction to the diversity of approaches to film, one of the
most influential of art forms in the 20th and 21st centuries. Using a variety
of films and film clips from Hollywood, independent, and foreign cinemas to
illustrate, the course will cover film’s aesthetic and cultural dimensions, its
major narrative forms and genres. We will survey cinema’s technical elements
and the various ways it can narrate or “tell” a story; and we will
also review one or two popular genres–such as the western, the gangster film,
the musical, family melodrama, romantic comedy, film noir, horror–and their
variations over periods of American history and culture as they reflect the
values and myths of those periods. By the end of the course, students will have
developed a visual literacy and an awareness of film’s impact on us and our
culture in its construction of paradigms by which we live or test our
environment.
Assignments: two
papers (4-6 pages); quizzes; and a final examination. Attendance required.
Text: Corrigan & White, The Film Experience: An Introduction, 3rd Edition,
Bedford/St. Martin’s, and two or three handout articles.
Films to Study (A
Tentative List)
Citizen Kane, Grand Illusion, Vertigo, Battleship Potemkin, Bonnie and Clyde, The Bicycle Thief, Run Lola
Run, Singin’ in the Rain, The
Graduate, Working Girl, The Piano, It Happened One Night, Annie Hall, Days of Heaven, The Edge of Heaven, Double Indemnity, Chinatown