电影史Syllabus

第一学期：
Class 1
A brief history of “screen practice.” The first films. Film as theater, spectacle, and history. Athanasius Kircher. The “chronophotography” of Eadweard Muybridge and Etienne-Jules Marey. Thomas Edison’s The kinetograph and the kinetoscope. The films of the Lumière Brothers and Georges Méliès.
Films:
Thomas Edison: Anabelle Serpentine Dances (1895) and The Kiss (1896)
Louis and Auguste Lumière: Workers Leaving the Factory, Baby’s Tea-Time,Congress of Photographers, L’Arroseur Arrosé, The Card Game (all 1895) and The Arrival of a Train (1896)
Georges Méliès: Tchin-Chao the Chinese Conjuror (1904) and A Trip to the Moon(1902)
Read one issue of Moving Picture World. You do not have to read every word of it, but skim it, get a sense of what the journal covered and how it covered what it covered. Notice the ads. Notice lists of new releases, etc. Remember the date of the issue you read.
http://lantern.mediahist.org/catalog/MPW01-1907-03_0001
 
Class 2
The development of narrative. Continuity, sequencing, complexity of story.
Films: Rescued by Rover, (Lewin Fitzhamon and Cecil Hepworth, 1905), Life of an American Fireman (Edwin S. Porter, 1903), The Great Train Robbery (Edwin S. Porter, 1903), Menilmontant (Dmitri Kirsanoff, 1924)
Class 3
D.W. Griffith and the mode of melodrama; innocence and suffering; the technique and meaning of cross-cutting. Can a hateful film also be great cinema?
Short: The Girl and Her Trust (D.W. Griffith, 1912).
Feature: The Birth of a Nation (1915)
Class 3
American Silent Comedy: What was funny; what is funny. Sennett and Roach, Laurel and Hardy. Ernst Lubitsch
Shorts: Mack Sennett: Barney Oldfield’s Race for Life (1913), One Too Many(1916);
Hal Roach: Big Business (1928, with Laurel and Hardy), Mighty Like a Moose(1926, with Charley Chase); Harold Lloyd: Ask Father (1919)
Feature: Ernst Lubitsch, So This Is Paris (1926, 68 minutes)
Class 4
The career of Charles Chaplin
Short: The Immigrant (Charles Chaplin, 1917)
Feature: The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin, 1924)
Class 5
The career of Buster Keaton
Feature: Steamboat Bill, Jr. (Charles Reisner, 1928, 70 minutes)
Short: Sherlock, Jr (Buster Keaton, 1924, 45 minutes)
Class 6
The Germans and the Soviets: two approaches to cinema
German Expressionism: The moving camera, acting, the inner world of human beings
Feature: The Last Laugh (F.W. Murnau, 1924, 77 minutes)
Soviet montage: Fast cutting, ideology and the aesthetics of film
Clips: Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925) and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920)
 
Class 7
German Expressionism and American cinema. The first gangster feature film, a touch of Universal Pictures horror films, Carl Laemmle, a nod to Guillermo del Toro, and, at long last, a film made by a then-famous, now forgotten woman director.
Clip: Dracula (Tod Browning, 1931, cinematographer: Karl Freund)
Features: Underworld (Joseph von Sternberg, 1928, 80 minutes) and The Blot (Lois Weber, 1919, 80 minutes)
Reading: Koszarski, Chapter 8 and the section on Charles Rosher from The Parade’s Gone By
 
Class 8
Films by painters in Paris. The most beautiful film of the silent period?
Shorts from the French avant-garde: Rhythmus 21 (Hans Richter, 1921), Ballet mecanique (Fernand Léger, 1924), L’etoile de Mer (Man Ray, 1929)
Feature: Sunrise (F.W. Murnau, 1927)
Class 9
The transition to sound. Singin’ in the Rain is not how it happened. Blackface. Ethnic assimilation in America.
Shorts: The Happy Hottentots (Bryan Foy, 1930, 11 minutes) and St. Louis Blues(Dudley Murphy, 1929, 16 minutes)
Feature: The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland, 1927, 115 minutes)
Reading: The Hollywood Production Code of 1930
(Go to: <http://www.und.edu/instruct/cjacobs/ProductionCode.htm>)
Class 10
The Hollywood Production Code; “pre-Code films,” crime, sex, politics in American movies.
Clips: Baby Face (Alfred E. Green, 1933) and Heroes for Sale (William A. Wellman, 1933)
Feature: I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (Mervyn LeRoy, 1932, 92 minutes)
 
Class 11
Jean Renoir and French “poetic realism”
Clip: l’Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934)
Feature: Boudu Saved From Drowning (Jean Renoir, 1932)
Class 12
The American studio system. What were the studios? How did they work? Production by genre. Style, elegance and The Great Depression. The musical.
Feature: Swing Time (George Stevens, 1936)
Class 13
American screwball comedy. Women characters of the 1930s. Howard Hawks (hard) and Frank Capra (soft).
Clip: It Happened One Night (Frank Capra, 1934)
Feature: Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1936)
Class 14
A taste of Japan. Mizoguchi.
Feature: Sisters of the Gion (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1936)
 
Class 15
Feature: Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed (1926) （期末结束后老师推荐两部让我们二选一，大家选了听起来比较轻松的这部动画）
 
Readings:
Main text: Richard Koszarski, An Evening’s Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Feature Picture, 1915- 1928
Kevin Brownlow, from The Parade’s Gone By
Linda Williams, excerpt from Playing the Race Card
第二学期：
Class 1
Introduction to the course: Films of the past. Taste and understanding. The film that changed the rules of the game.
Feature: Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
Clip: The Wire, Season 1, Episode 4. (Producer and writer: David Simon, Director: Clark Johnson, 2002)
 
Class 2:
Melodrama, the fundamental mode of American film, and its influence. The intersection of suffering, innocence and moralizing, which defines melodrama. A hint of “the new German cinema.” Also: What is Stan Brakhage talking about?
Feature: All That Heaven Allows (Douglas Sirk, 1955)
Clips: Ali, Fear Eats the Soul /Angst essen Seele auf (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974) and Far From Heaven (Todd Haynes, 2002)
 
Class 3:
Not melodrama: The poetic and humane eye of Jean Renoir, and the lead-up to World War II.
Feature: La Grande Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937)
Class 4:
World War II, in fiction and documentary
Feature: Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942)
Short: Listen to Britain (Humphrey Jennings and Stewart McAllister, 1942)
Clip: Went the Day Well? (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1942)
Class 5:
The war, and after the war. Film Noir. Scared men, scary women, PTSD. The Hollywood Blacklist.
Feature: Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947)
Clips: The Day the Earth Stood Still (Robert Wise, 1950) and The Day the Earth Stood Still (Scott Derrickson, 2008)
Also, I will post two excerpts from hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Affairs. Please read them and take a few minutes to look at three bits on YouTube:
Adolphe Menjou: www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwu5zYaL6Fs
John Howard Lawson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7W3XbDZqO4
Dalton Trumbo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFR4RIyekis
 
Class 6:
Post war neorealisms: The French New Wave: Young people take over, betrayal by parents -- in film and in life.
Clip: The Bicycle Thief (Vittorio da Sica, 1948)
Feature: The Four Hundred Blows (Francois Truffaut, 1960)
Class 7:
Other new waves and neorealisms: Iran, and a little bit of China.
Clip: The Road Home (Zhang Yimou, 1999)
Feature: A Separation (Asghar Farhadi, 2010)
 
Class 8:
American film genres: The Western. The land, the country, race, the idea of the “West.”
Clips: Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939), The Naked Spur (Anthony Mann, 1953) and Forty Guns (Samuel Fuller, 1957)
Feature: The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)
 
Class 9:
The question of representation. Filming the “other,” and how the “others” film themselves. Indigenous film. Who is the “normal” viewer? Who is “us?”
Short: From the Ikpeng Children (Kumaré Karané and Natuyu Yuwipo Txicão, 2002)
Feature: Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1977/2007)
Class 10:
The career of Werner Herzog. The New German Cinema. Is there any such thing as truth?
Feature: Aguirre the Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, 1972)
Clips: Encounters at the End of the World (2007), Grizzly Man (2005)
Short: Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (Les Blank, 1980)
Class 11:
America’s “Silver Age:” 1967 to 1975
Clip: Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975)
Feature: Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967)
  
Class 12:
Women filmmakers: The career of Agnes Varda, “grandmother of the New Wave.” The relation between fiction and actuality.
Feature: Cleo from 5 to 7 (Agnes Varda, 1962)
Clips: The Gleaners and I (Agnes Varda, 2000), The Beaches of Agnes (Agnes Varda, 2009)
Class 13:
Japan, one of the great national cinemas. Yasujiro Ozu, a transcendental master.
Clip: Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa, 1952)
Feature: Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)
Class 14:
Alfred Hitchcock: Suspense, sex and danger, the fears of everyday life, original sin -- or something like it. How men, and male filmmakers, look at women. Why is Hitchcock the one “old” filmmaker that no one considers old?
Clip: Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock, 1946)
Feature: Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
 
Class 15:
Ingmar Bergman: Questions of god, men filming women. A cinema of high seriousness. Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris. Serious film culture in America.
Feature: Persona (1966)
Class 16:
American Independents. Does the term "independent film" mean anything at all?
Feature: Alambrista (Robert M. Young, 1978)
Texts:
Steven Bach, Final Cut: Art, Money and Ego in the Making of Heaven’s Gate, the Film That Sank United Artists
John Berger, Ways of Seeing
David Bordwell, The Way Hollywood Tells It
Readings available electronically:
Selection from Linda Williams, Playing the Race Card