OCTOBER 30

SEVERAL PEOPLE MISSED CLASS BECAUSE THEY WERE SICK. PLEASE CONSIDER IT AN EXCUSED ABSENCE THIS TIME!

THERE IS A FIRM DEADLINE FOR EVERYONE, ABSENT OR NOT, FOR NEXT WEEK'S ASSIGNMENT. A LINK TO THE HANDOUT (CALLED "FINAL ASSIGNMENT") IS ON THE LOWER RIGHT OF THIS PAGE UNDER "SYLLABUS, ETC"  

Films:

Street Angel (Borzage 1928) DVD 3109  

excerpts from: 

Touch of Evil (Welles 1959) 

Red and the White (Jansco 1964) DVD 901  1:20 - 4:52

Children of Men (Cuaron 2006) DVD 2517 26:11-30:19

La Ronde (Ophüls 1950) DVD 2982 2:26-7:36

Sunrise (Murnau 1926) DVD 3109 SIDE A 11:05-12:36, 1:09:00-1:20:36

Reading (to be done by November 6):

Sanjek, David. “Street Angel.” (online)

McElhaney, Joe. “Frank Borzage.” (online)

OCTOBER 23

Films:

Un Chien Andalou (Buñuel/Dali 1929) DVD 1905          

Les Vampires, ep. 2: The Ring That Kills (Feuillade 1916) DVD 1645 

The Smiling Madame Beudet (Dulac 1922) reserve DVD 

At Land (Deren 1945) DVD 1620

Ménilmontant (Kirsanoff 1926) DVD 1636 

Fireworks (Anger 1947) DVD 3937

Reading (to be done by October 22):

Luis Buñuel, “Cinema, Instrument of Poetry,”" in course reader.

Germaine Dulac, “The Avant-Garde Cinema,”  in course reader.

OCTOBER 9

Films:

Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein 1925) DVD 984

Enthusiasm (Vertov 1930) DVD 2082

Reading (to be done by October 15):

Sergei Eisenstein, “A Dialectic Approach to Film Form,” in course reader.

Dziga Vertov, “Provisional Instructions to Kino-Eye Groups (1926),” in course reader.

Paper topic (paper due October 16. Graduate students send papers via email to elkrugamigos@earthlink.net; undergraduates send papers also cc to TA Masahiko Fox at gracefulbrute@gmail.com):

Take one short moment – just a shot or two – from one of the films we’ve seen in the last three weeks and compare some aesthetic issue in that moment to a short moment in one of the other films. The films you can thus choose to compare are: Broken Blossoms, The Musketeers of Pig Alley, Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Battleship Potemkin and Enthusiasm. I want you to be very specific in what you choose to write about – don’t try to cover the entirety of a film, or even a scene. Instead, take one particular element you’d like to discuss (say, the use of closeups or editing style or the blocking of actors) and find two good, contrasting scenes in two films to compare.

And a reminder, the drop dead date is two weeks from today, October 23. Tonight’s essay is the fourth you will be assigned, and next week’s essay is the fifth. ALL FIVE MUST BE TURNED IN BY CLASS TIME OCTOBER 23 in order for you to avoid being dropped from the class.

OCTOBER 2

Films:

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Terror (Murnau 1922) DVD 210 

Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Wienes 1920)  DVD 3299 

Reading (to be done by October 8):

Thomas Elsaesser. “No End to Nosferatu,” in course reader.

No paper this week - I expect all readings to be done and all late papers to be turned in this week.