English 161A - Spring, 2011

Film History I: Origins to 1945

Class Information

Instructor: Simmon, Scott
CRN: 53194
Time: MW 2:10-5:00
Location: 1309 Surge III

Description

This course is the first half of a two-quarter overview of the cultural and aesthetic history of filmmaking. (English 161B, “Film History II: 1945 to the Present,” will be offered in 2011-12.) Our loosely chronological survey will begin in the 1890s with the invention of cinema and end this quarter with the film response to World War II. We will look into the ways that the less regulated early silent film experimented with narrative methods and social subjects later forbidden. Hollywood’s evolving dramatic rules and comic styles will be contrasted with alternatives arising in the 1920s from German expressionism, French surrealism, and Soviet montage theory and, after the development of sound film, from political debates over the Depression of the 1930s, especially within the Japanese and French film industries. Along the way, we’ll also explore the invention of gender roles on-screen and the early cinematic representations of nationality, ethnicity, and race, as influenced by Hollywood’s Production Codes and other censorship practices. During the six class hours each week, we will see at least one full-length film and a number of excerpted sequences.


Grading

Two quizzes (15% each), viewing notes (20%), essay (25%), final (25%).

Texts

Film History: An Introduction, 3rd ed. (McGraw-Hill, 2003),, Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell.