JANUARY 30

Film:
Fort Apache (Ford 1948) Blu-Ray 182

Reading (to be done by February 5):

Jim Kitses, “Authorship and Genre: Notes on the Western,” in course reader.

Assignment for the week. Graduates, please email essay to me at elkrugamigos@earthlink.net; undergraduates, please bring a printed copy to class:

The ending of this film is notoriously tricky. Depending upon how one approaches it, it can mean a number of different things. I want you to consider the ending very carefully, in light of the rest of the film. Are we intended to read Wayne’s final speech as bitter irony, or as a statement of fact? Is it both? How can a five minute scene reshape or overturn the two hours and five minutes that preceded it? There is no necessarily right or wrong answer here – this ending is controversial for the very good reason that it is expansive, offering up a number of possibilities. All too often, the fact that it is a Western leads people to take it at face value, assuming that it could mean nothing more than what it directly says. You might agree with that after careful consideration. But I want you to think hard about it and write about what you feel the ending really says.

JANUARY 23

Film:
Bicycle Thieves (DeSica 1948) DVD 4300

excerpts:
Open City (Rossellini 1945) DVD 2658 – 46:40 to 57:00
The Postman Always Rings Twice (Garnett 1946) DVD 4235 – 1:19 to 5:54
Ossesione (Visconti 1943) DVD 527 – 1:29 to 8:20
Umberto D (DeSica 1952) DVD 2661 – 30:40 to 35:36

Reading (to be done by January 29):

Cesare Zavattini - "Some Ideas on the Cinema"
Amédée Ayfe, “Neo-Realism and Phenomonology,” both in course reader.

Assignment for the week. Graduates, please email essay to me at elkrugamigos@earthlink.net; undergraduates, please bring a printed copy to class:

Imagine one of your favorite narrative films as a neo-realist film. How does it change the look and the story, the texture and the editing of the film? Be specific, and root your discussion in just one short scene, which you describe in detail.

JANUARY 16

Film:
The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo 1965) BluRay 030, DVD 1300


Reading (to be done by January 22):

Edward Said - "The Dictatorship of Truth: An Interview with Gillo Pontecorvo" and Irene Bignardi, "The Making of The Battle of Algiers," both in course reader.

Assignment for the week. Graduates, please email essay to me at elkrugamigos@earthlink.net; undergraduates, please bring a printed copy to class:

Listen carefully to the music played during the aftermath of the first French bombing of the Casbah. The music reappears roughly ten minutes later, in the aftermath of the bombings in the cafe, discotheque and Air France. Discuss the impact of reiterating that specific piece of music in that place in the film, particularly in terms of audience empathy and our emotional response to the scene.

Winter break