Spring

The aim of this course is to examine the kind of work that film actors do. We will trace the evolution of film acting from early silent pictures until now, and along the way I hope to deal with a variety of questions: How is the style of film acting affected by motion-picture genres? How is it affected by technology? What’s the difference, if any, between professional and non-professional acting? Do supporting players behave differently from lead actors? To what degree do film actors improvise, and how can we recognize it when they do? To what extent do actors behave “naturally” (whatever that means) and to what extent do they employ techniques of stylized imitation and the related arts of mime or impersonation? Our chief method of answering these and other questions will be to analyze the evidence we find on the screen in a series of widely different films. In addition to participation in discussion of the films and assigned readings, students will write an essay exam and a short analytic essay.

Jean Renoir has often been dubbed – by both filmmakers and critics – as the greatest auteur. The richness and range of his production – variously described as “classic” and “modern,” quintessentially “French” and “universal” – are indeed remarkable. His experimental and narrative forays in the late-silent era, his bold appropriation of literary sources and of pictorial and theatrical models during the highs and lows of 1930s France, the continuities and breaks of his American work in the 1940s, and his subsequent return to French and international co-productions – all these form a complex creative biography, that embraces major shifts in film history while maintaining Renoir’s unique touch, his mastery of form, his conception of the social and the communal so often articulated through depth-of-field compositions and camera work. We shall explore Renoir’s exemplary works, attending to his interlacing of melodramatic, comedic, even farcical, as well as realist inspirations in their historical, political, and cultural contexts. Close viewing and analysis of the films will be accompanied by readings from the filmmakers’ own writings and interviews, criticism both contemporary to the films’ production as well as recent perspectives, and historical backgrounds.
All principal readings in English.

This seminar will look at the history of editing from early attempts at multi-shot sequencing to self-conscious experiments in "intellectual montage;" at editing techniques ranging from cross-cutting to CGI sequences; and at the variety of montage theories from Eisenstein and Pudovkin to Bazin. We will test Eisenstein's hypothesis about biological foundations of temporality in art; connect dynamic patterns of film editing to Daniel Stern's study The Present Moment;link temporal contours of cutting to theories of gendered narratology.

In this seminar we explore the idea of an international “ludic cinema” in the first half of the twentieth century. Our goal is two-fold: on the one hand, we will identify the trajectory of a ludic modernism in film history by rereading canons and introducing underexposed films; on the other hand, we will examine the interdisciplinary writings on the notion of play, ranging from anthropology and psychology to education and literary studies, through the prism of cinematic modernity. Readings include seminal texts by Walter Benjamin, Johan Huizinga, Roger Caillois, D. W. Winnicott, and Gregory Bateson, as well as more recent scholarly works by Miriam Hansen, Bill Brown, David Bordwell and Kristine Thompson. Films include early short and experimental films, city symphonies, American slapstick comedies, and films by Ernst Lubitsch, Jean Renoir, Frank Capra, Fei Mu, Yasujiro Ozu, and Jacques Tati.

For most of the great Soviet filmmakers of the 1920s the next decade was a time of exciting experiments, including the introduction of sound in Soviet cinema. But it was also one of the major turning points in Soviet history: the beginning of Stalinism. Some filmmakers became outcasts, while others tried to adapt themselves to the new demands. Those who stayed in the industry had to ‘smuggle’ their aesthetics and their beliefs through the official ideology. Often, a film that is nominally a typical piece of Stalinist propaganda turns out to be a much more complex, individual or even rebellious work; this may become apparent in editing techniques, visual style, even in casting. But sooner or later most of these artists lost this battle, whether physically or morally. The fate of avant-garde filmmakers in the Stalin’s era is one of the most tragic – and thrilling – pages of film history. In comparing the state art of the 30s-40s with the classic avant-garde of the 20s, we will focus on the works of major directors, such as Sergei Eisenstein, Aleksandr Dovzhenko, Fridrikh Ermler, Mark Donskoi and Mikhail Chiaureli. We will also consider the adjacent arts and discuss the fortunes of Vsevolod Meyerhold’s pupils and the evolution of Dmitri Shostakovich’s film music.

Advanced Documentary Workshop: This course is designed to provide guidance to students already engaged in producing a documentary. The class will concentrate on strategies of editorial storytelling, layering and texturing soundtracks, and finishing practices such as audio sweetening and color correction. Pre-requisites include Documentary Video I, Documentary Video II, or the consent of the instructor.

Cinema is often taken as the privileged medium of modernity. But can cinema be against modernity? This course addresses this question by focusing on the pre-eminent “anti modern” genre of Japanese cinema: yakuza film, or films about gangsters and outlaws. Historically, the critique of modernity in Japan stimulated all manner of philosophical, artistic, and political activity under the banner of “overcoming the modern.” In terms of culture, perhaps nowhere was this expression more widespread and fraught than in yakuza film. We will explore yakuza film from its roots in the mass culture of the 20s and 30s through to its recent art-house successes. Issues of film aesthetics (realism, affect, auteurism, genre, semiotics, representation) will be discussed in relation to thematic and historical issues (utopia and fascism, violence and law, nostalgia and revolution). We will watch films by Suzuki Seijun, Kato Tai, Fukasaku Kinji, Kitano Takeshi, and Miike Takashi, among others. Additionally, connections between yakuza films and other genres of cinema (melodrama, film noir, westerns) as well as other media such as comics and video games will be another point of interest.

Current dichotomies of size in moving image media, with IMAX on one side and iPods on the other, provide the occasion for thinking about the aesthetics and history of scale in both image production and narrative form. Far from a specifically contemporary phenomenon, this “schizophrenia of scale,” has taken many forms throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This course will examine texts, films, and artworks that occupy the extreme edges of our perception in relation to size and scale.
This course seeks to understand how these vast differences in size and scale influence the meaning, construction, and reception of the objects in question. How does our reception of contemporary forms of extreme scale differ or derive from this long tradition? How might the consideration of the size of artworks and cultural objects open up alternative modes or spaces for experience, both aesthetic and political? Does size matter when artworks intersect with politics, economics, and Culture? Does the classic division between the beautiful and the sublime still make sense? How do psychoanalytic terms like schizophrenia and the uncanny illuminate these issues? How does the hierarchy of size persist even into the realm of video games?
The ambitious scope of this course will lead us to consider thinkers and critics such as Kant, Freud, Benjamin, Fried, Agamben, Adorno, Hansen, Krauss, Bachelard, and Kracauer; artists, authors, and filmmakers such as Jonathan Swift, Disney, Raoul Walsh, Hollis Frampton, Frank Tashlin, Jean Painleve, Jorge Luis Borges; and cultural forms including painting, cinema, literature, television, toys, and the built environment.

This course introduces basic concepts of film analysis, which are discussed through examples from different national cinemas, genres, and directorial oeuvres. Along with questions of film technique and style, we consider the notion of the cinema as an institution that comprises an industrial system of production, social and aesthetic norms and codes, and particular modes of reception. Films discussed include works by Hitchcock, Porter, Griffith, Eisenstein, Lang, Renoir, Sternberg, and Welles.
Course: MW 1:30-2:50, LC 201
Screening: T 7:00-10:00, C 307

This course introduces basic concepts of film analysis, which are discussed through examples from different national cinemas, genres, and directorial oeuvres. Along with questions of film technique and style, we consider the notion of the cinema as an institution that comprises an industrial system of production, social and aesthetic norms and codes, and particular modes of reception. Films discussed include works by Hitchcock, Porter, Griffith, Eisenstein, Lang, Renoir, Sternberg, and Welles.
Course: TR 10:30-11:50, C 307
Screening: T 7:00-10:00, C 307