NOVEMBER 6

Films:

L'Atalante (Vigo 1933) Blu-Ray 039 

Las Hurdes (Buñuel 1933) DVD 4149 

excerpts from: 

Gold Diggers of 1933  (Le Roy 1933) Cal Arts 16mm / DVD 2459 - opening through 5:03

Singin’ in the Rain (Donen/Kelly 1952) DVD 015 - 51:22 through 59:36

Love Me Tonight (Mamoulian 1932) DVD 1286 - 1:43 through 7:29, then 11:14 through 18:52

Une Femme est une femme (Godard 1960) DVD 1106 - opening through 6:00

Reading (to be done by November 12):

Farber, Manny. "White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art," in course reader.

Paper topic (paper due October 13. Graduate students send papers via email to elkrugamigos@earthlink.net; undergraduates send papers also cc to TA Masahiko Fox at gracefulbrute@gmail.com):

The exercises thus far have been about identifying and discussing formal issues in the films. That’s because I believe that if you talk about a film without being very specific in discussing how it achieves its effects, you’re not really talking about the film – you’re usually just recounting plot and treating the movie as thought it were a short story or a play rather than cinema.

But now that you’ve had a half semester of practice, it’s time to use these tools. I’d like you to talk about L’Atalante, Las Hurdes or last week’s film, Street Angel. Talk about anything you like about the film, with two considerations: as always, “I liked it” or “I hated it” is not sufficient and you will have to rewrite your paper if that’s all you do. Second, you must root whatever you discuss in formal analysis – if, for example, you want to talk about L’Atalante as a love story, find a scene that exemplifies this and talk about it in cinematic terms – how does Vigo approach the scene as cinema to convey his meanings?

What you talk about is less important than the approach you take – think of this as practice for the final paper, where I will expect your arguments to be developed with respect to how the work is shot, edited, performed, etc etc, NEVER just what happens in the story.

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. 

SEPTEMBER 25

Films:

Musketeers of Pig Alley (Griffith 1912) DVD 536

Broken Blossoms (Griffith 1919) DVD 244

Reading (to be done by October 1):

Tom Gunning, "D.W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film," in course reader.

Vsevold Pudovkin, "On Editing," in course reader.

Paper topic (paper due October 2. Graduate students send papers via email to elkrugamigos@earthlink.net; undergraduates send papers also cc to TA Masahiko Fox at gracefulbrute@gmail.com):

Write again about the scene you explored last week, this time focusing on the editing. Instead of describing the content of each shot, talk about how the shots work together. The crucial questions are: how long is each shot, and why? And why do you think the filmmakers change from one camera position to the next in the course of the scene – what does the audience get from these shifts in perspective? Finally, how noticeable are these cuts as you watch the film?

SEPTEMBER 18

Films:

Workers Leaving the Factory; Train Arriving at a Station; The Sprinkler Sprinkled; Snowball Fight (Lumières 1895-1897) DVD 467

Four Troublesome Heads; The Astronomer's Dream; The Skipping Cheese; Eclipse: or, the Courtship of the Sun and Moon (Méliès 1898, 1898, 1907, 1907) DVD 3303, disks 1 and 4

The Dancing Pig (Pathé company 1907) DVD 2743

The Golden Beetle (Zecca 1907) DVD 467

The Great Train Robbery (Porter 1903) DVD 467

Making an American Citizen (Guy 1912) DVD 467

A Corner in Wheat (Griffith 1909) DVD 1180

Heart of the World (Maddin 2000) DVD 2025

Premonition Following an Evil Deed aka Lumière (Lynch 2000) DVD 810

Fire and Rain (Benning 2009) 

Reading (to be done by September 24):

Roberta Pearson, "Early Cinema," in course reader.

Paper topic (paper due September 25. Graduate students send papers via email to elkrugamigos@earthlink.net; undergraduates send papers also cc to TA Masahiko Fox at gracefulbrute@gmail.com):

Discuss the use of composition in a single scene from one of your favorite movies, focusing in particular on whether the framing is open or closed (most films use a combination of both styles), what these choices say about the world surrounding the story, and why the scene is composed in such a way. Keep it very simple: no more than two or three consecutive shots.