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Introduction
to Theory and Criticism |
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Schedule of
Classes,
Readings, and Screenings: Weeks
1-3:
Cinema and Modernity
Week 1:
Modernism/Modernity Reading: Siegfried
Kracauer, “Basic
Concepts” (FTC, 147); Walter
Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (FTC, 665); Frank S. Nugent, review of Modern
Times, http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/30/reviews/chaplin-modern.html. R (09/30): Thinking
theoretically
about film: how, why, when, where; in-class screening of Modern Times (Charlie
Chaplin, 1936). Week
2: The Social
Construction of Modernity
Reading: Vsevolod
Pudovkin, [On
Editing] (FTC, 7); Sergei Eisenstein,
“Beyond the Shot [The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram],”
“The
Dramaturgy of Film Form [The Dialectical Approach to Film Form],” and
“Dickens,
Griffith, and Ourselves” (FTC; 13,
24, 363); Dziga Vertov, selections from Kino-Eye
(OR). Screening: The Man with a Movie
Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929; 68 min.) T (10/05): The flash of
modernity R (10/07): Modernity’s
utopias and
dystopias. Week
3: High and
Low Modernism
Reading: Miriam Hansen,
“The Mass
Production of the Senses: Classical Cinema as Vernacular Modernism” (OR) and “Fallen Women, Rising Stars, New
Horizons: Shanghai Cinema as Vernacular Modernism” (OR).
David Bordwell, “The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice” (FTC,
649); Gilles Deleuze, “Preface to
the English Edition,” “The Origin of the Crisis: Italian Neo-realism
and the
French New Wave,” and “Beyond the Movement-Image” (FTC;
216, 218, 227). Screening: L’Avventura (Michelangelo
Antonioni, 1960; 143 min.) T (10/12): Cinema’s global
vernacular; in-class screening of Goddess
(Shen Nu; Wu Yonggang, 1934) R (10/14): Modernism
and art cinema Response Paper #1
Due on
Thursday in class. Weeks 4-6: Cinema
and
Reality Week 4: Realist
Film Theory Reading: Rudolf Arnheim,
“The
Complete Film” and “Film and Reality” (FTC;
167, 282); André Bazin, “The
Evolution of the Language of Cinema,” “The Ontology of the Photographic
Image,”
and “The Myth of Total Cinema”(FTC;
41, 159, 163); Daniel Morgan, “Rethinking Bazin: Ontology and Realist
Aesthetics” (OR). Screening: Bicycle Thieves
(Ladri di
biciclette; Vittorio De Sica, 1948; 93 min.) T (10/19): The ontology of
the
photographic image R (10/21): Italian
neorealism and the
reality of Italy. Week
5: The
Illusion of Reality/The Reality of Illusion
Reading: Pier Paolo
Pasolini,
“Observations on the Long Take” (OR);
Stanley Cavell, “Photograph and Screen,” “Audience, Actor, and Star,”
“Types:
Cycles as Genres,” and “Ideas of Origin” (FTC;
304, 305, 307, 312). Screening: The Battle of Algiers
(La
battaglia di Algeri; Gillo
Pontecorvo, 1965; 121 min.) T (10/26): Challenges to
Bazin’s
realism R (10/28): The documentary
aesthetic. Week 6: The
Spectator, the
Cinema, and the World Screening: Safe (Todd Haynes, 1997; 119
min.; no streaming) T (11/02): First
Midterm R (11/04): The limits of
realism Response Paper #2
Due on
Thursday in class. Weeks 7-8:
Spectators,
Audiences, Genres Week
7: The
Spectator and the Gaze
Reading: Laura Mulvey,
“Visual
Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (FTC,
711);
Linda Williams, “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre,
and Excess” (FTC, 602); Tania
Modleski, “The Terror of Pleasure: The Contemporary Horror Film and
Postmodern
Theory” (FTC 617). Screening: Peeping Tom
(Michael Powell, 1960) T (11/09): Watching
ourselves
watching R (11/11): NO
CLASS: UNIVERSITY HOLIDAY Note: Films for next
week are
not available online. Please see them over the holiday break. Week 8:
Ideologies of
Spectatorship Reading: Tania Modleski,
“The
Master’s Dollhouse: Rear Window” (FTC,
617); Jean-Louis
Baudry,
“The Apparatus: Metapsychological Approaches to the Impression of
Reality in Cinema” (FTC, 355); Tom
Gunning, “An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the
(In)Credulous
Spectator” (FTC, 736); Jacqueline
Stewart, “Negroes Laughing
at
Themselves? Black Spectatorship and the Performance of Urban Modernity”
(OR); Daniel Dayan, “The
Tutor-Code of
Classical Cinema” (FTC, 106). Screenings: Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954;
112 min.; no streaming); Strange Days (Kathryn Bigelow, 1995; 145
min.; no streaming) T (11/16): Ideology and
classical
Hollywood cinema R (11/18): Interpretive
communities
and other spectators. Week 9: Authors,
Studios,
Stars Reading: Andrew Sarris,
“Notes on
the Auteur Theory in 1962” (FTC, 451);
Peter Wollen, “The Auteur Theory” (FTC,
455); Richard Dyer, from Stars (FTC,
480); Leo Braudy, “Acting: Stage
vs. Screen” (FTC, 356); Lisa Cohen, “The
Horizontal Walk: Marilyn Monroe, CinemaScope and Sexuality” (OR);
Thomas Schatz, “The Whole Equation
of Pictures” (FTC, 652). Additional Reading: For information
on the
life and afterlife of Marilyn Monroe, please see http://www.marilynmonroe.com/ Screening: Gentlemen
Prefer Blondes (Howard Hawks, 1953; 91 min.)
T (11/23): Auteur theory
and star
studies R (11/25): NO
CLASS: HAPPY THANKSGIVING NOTE: Over the
Thanksgiving break,
please see Touch of Evil (Orson
Welles, 1958; running time varies, but try to see version lasting 111
or 112
minutes; no streaming). Weeks
10-11:
New Directions in Film and Media Theory
Reading: Lev Manovich,
“Synthetic
Realism and its Discontents,” “The Synthetic Image and its Subject,”
and
“Digital Cinema and the History of a Moving Image” (FTC;
785, 790, 794); Anne Friedberg, “The End of Cinema: Multimedia
and Technological Change” (FTC, 802);
Michael Allen, “The Impact of Digital Technologies on Film Aesthetics” (FTC, 824); Jay David Bolter and Richard
Grusin, “Introduction: The Double Logic of Remediation” and “Immediacy,
Hypermediacy, and Remediation” (OR). Screening: The Gleaners and I
(Les
glaneurs et la glaneuse; Agnès Varda, 2000; 82 min.) T (11/30): Authorship
(continued);
authorship in a digital age R (12/02): The digital
revolution? Response Paper #3
Due on
Thursday in class. Week
11: Screen
Studies
Screening: Caché [Hidden]
(Michael Haneke, 2000; 117 min.; no streaming) T
(12/07): Thinking
theoretically
about film: here and now
R (12/09): SECOND
MIDTERM. |
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Last Updated: |
Contact the instructor at: jtweedie@u.washington.edu
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