JANUARY  29

Film:

Sansho the Bailiff (Mizoguchi 1954) Blu-Ray 273

        

Reading (to be done by February 4):

Robin Wood. “The Ghost Princess and the Seaweed Gatherer: Ugetsu Monogatari and Sansho Dayu.” (in course reader)

Alexander Jacoby. “Kenji Mizoguchi.”

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

There is no written assignment this week. You are to use the week to catch on all the assigned readings in the class thus far. There will be assignments requiring reference to the readings coming soon.

JANUARY 22

Film:

Umberto D (DeSica 1952) Blu-Ray 180

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

What is neorealism? from kogonada on Vimeo.

Reading (to be done by January 28):

Cesare Zavattini - "Some Ideas on the Cinema"

Amédée Ayfe, “Neo-Realism and Phenomonology,” both in course reader.

Please note that the Zavattini piece was unable to be included in the digital version of the reader. This includes the free material sent as you wait for the hard copy of the reader to arrive. If your hard copy of the reader has not yet arrived, you can find this essay - one of the most important we will read this semester - at: http://tinyurl.com/qh3xnlq

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  15

Films:

Happy Together (Wong 1997) DVD 047/ Blu-Ray 288        

excerpt from:

Days of Being Wild (Wong Kar Wai 1990) DVD 1160

Reading (to be done by January 21):

Elizabeth Wright. “Wong Kar-Wai.” Senses of Cinema.

Joe McElhaney. “Happy Together.” Senses of Cinema.

Robin Wood. “Big Game: Confessions of an Unreconstructed Humanist.” (in course reader)

Paper topic (paper due January 22. All papers, graduate and undergraduate, to be sent via email to elkrugamigos@earthlink.net, attached as a .doc, .docx, .rtf or .odt file):

This is a film that makes extraordinarily bold formal choices at every turn. Wong tries everything here, and part of the thrill of the movie is seeing how he lurches from hyper saturated color to black and white and back, the way the camera flies past the lighthouse in a series of dizzying cuts near the end, the slow motion dinner or that stunning aerial view of a waterfall set to Astor Piazolla. Your assignment this week is to pick one formal element of your choosing – the use of color, camera movement, music, anything at all that fascinates you – and discuss how it functions in one scene. I want you to speak specifically, not generally – if, for instance, you are intrigued by the depth of color, then you should pick two or three shots to discuss at length, keeping in mind how they work in the context of the film. I don't want two pages of “he moves from black and white to color a lot.”  The idea is to write about a specific instance where he does in great detail and to talk about the impact when he does so.

Needless to say, to do this right you may need to review the film. There are two copies on reserve in the film library, and last time I checked, it was also available, though with Spanish subtitles only, on YouTube.

                              WINTER BREAK