Film History (1895-1945

This screening-intensive course examines the broad trends in the narrative cinema from its beginnings to the present. Throughout, we will explore key questions in its development:

Formal history: How did cinematic storytelling emerge and change over time?
Industrial history: How have the economics of production, distribution, and exhibition shaped what gets made?
Reception and social history: What has film’s cultural status been, and how have audiences understood its dual nature of entertainment and art?
National cinema: How does film capture national identity, and how do national films circulate in an international market?
Technological history: How does film style adapt to emerging technologies?
Legal and regulatory history: How is film’s legal status distinct from other art and cultural forms? How has censorship impacted the medium?

The course will survey major movements and national cinemas, yet also consider the “typical” as a problem in film historiography. The course therefore seeks to introduce major approaches to film historical scholarship, with an eye to best explaining how the cinema changed as art, as industry, and as social phenomenon.

While we will consider the impact of avant-garde or documentary practice on the fiction film, the course purview generally includes only the narrative feature. Especial importance will be paid to the (historically dominant) American classical/postclassical cinema and European art cinema, with some attention to third world and global alternatives. In other words, the scope will be international, but we will not be surveying all national cinemas equally or thoroughly.

PREREQUISITE

This course assumes and requires a previous introduction to film studies, FMA1172/155 or equivalent.

REQUIRED TEXTS

Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell, Film History, second edition (FH)

All other readings on Blackboard

OBJECTIVES

After the end of the course students should be able to point to

A greater and deeper knowledge of cinema's past, including familiarity with major movements, auteurs, and national cinemas
A sensitivity to cinema's relationship to its cultural, political, legal, and economic contexts
An awareness of history as an active process in understanding and interpreting the past

In addition, History of Narrative Film is a writing-intensive course, meaning that we will emphasize expository writing and student scholarship as much as the films. Unlike a composition course, however, an advanced writing-intensive course seeks to understand writing through the practice of a scholarly discipline, in this case film studies. To that end, the course will ask students to do the following:

Solidify basic skills in developing a thesis, organizing a paper, and writing with clear, powerful grammar and style
Understand the ways scholars use other published sources, and to grasp the fundamental distinction between primary and secondary sources
Develop as original thinkers informed by past scholarship
Improve research skills and learn how to integrate research seamlessly into an original argument
Gain awareness of method and methodology

The paper assignments and workshops will specifically address some of these objectives. Also, each day’s reading will contain both primary and secondary sources; each should serve as models in our conversation about what film historical scholarship does.

The grading will measure how well the above objectives are met. Median grades for the class will be in the C range. This represents average work that fulfills assignments as specified and shows knowledge of the material. B and A grades will be rewarded for work that goes beyond basic requirements, shows mastery of the course’s concepts, and demonstrates student originality of thought. Similarly, below average work, or work that fails to address the assignment’s specifications will receive a D or failing grade, as appropriate. Incompletes will be given only in the most extreme extenuating circumstances. Here is the breakdown of how grades are calculated:

Attendance/participation 25% Paper #4 10%

Paper #1 5% Paper #5 20%

Paper #2 10% Final exam 10%

Paper #3 10% Research assignments 10%

ATTENDANCE AND PARTICIPATION

This course is a screening-intensive survey, so regular attendance is required for its success. Students are allowed two absences in the session; each additional absence (or instance of significant tardiness) will deduct 5 points from the final average. Attendance means full, attentive presence for the entire classtime. More generally, this class is not only a survey but also an exploration of film history and what it means to study it. Conversation is key to this exploration. Students are expected to take an active role in the class and in guiding its inquiries and discoveries.

LATE ASSIGNMENTS

Papers and other assignments must be completed on time. Late work turned in within a day of due date is penalized 5 points; work within three days of due date, 15 points. Work that is later fails automatically. Final papers will not be accepted more than two days late.

ACADEMIC HONESTY AND PLAGIARISM
Students will be expected to adhere to the spirit and letter of academic honesty. At minimum, all writing, phrasing and ideas put forth by someone else should be duly noted through proper academic citation – MLA and Chicago style are both standards acceptable for this class. Also, a student’s name on any assignment turned in will be treated as an explicit statement that the work is that of the student and of the student alone. Any violation will result in a failing grade. This course requires submission of electronic copies of written assignments to Turnitin.com, a plagiarism-checking website. For reference, see http://www.temple.edu/ih/Help/Plagiarism/

READING

For most class meetings, primary and secondary readings will supplement textbook chapters. Some are marked optional; students, however, are expected to read at least a couple of the optional readings throughout the term. The instructor will prioritize readings, but students should feel free to ask for clarification.

OUTSIDE VIEWING

We will be screening most everything in class. However, students are required to watch two films on their own time: Now Voyager (Irving Rapping, 1971) and Italian for Beginners (Lone Scherfig, 2000).
COURSE SCHEDULE

EMERGENCE OF CINEMA (1895-1919) AND THE SILENT ERA (1919-1929)

WEEK 1

M. Early and Transitional Cinema

August and Louis Lumière shorts (France, 1895):

Workers Leaving a Factory; Baby’s Meal; Demolition of a Wall; Arroseur Arrosé/Waterer Watered aka Watering the Garden

Voyage dans la lune/A Trip to the Moon (George Melies, France, 1902, 12m)

Thomas Edison shorts (W.K.L. Dickson or Billy Bitzer, cameraman, US):

A Sneeze (1894); Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1895); Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (1895); McKinley Parade (1896); Electrocuting an elephant (1 min., 30 sec.); Life of an American Fireman (1903, 6m) Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Edwin S. Porter, 1903, US, 10m)

That Fatal Sneeze (Lewin Fitzhamon, 1907, Great Britain, 6m)

La Course des Sergents de Ville/Policeman’s Little Run (Ferdinand Zecca, 1907, France, 6m)

The Thieving Hand (anon [Vitagraph], 1908, US, 5m)

Le Medicin du chateau/Physician of the Castle (anon [Pathé], 1908, France, 6m)

The Lonely Villa (D.W. Griffith, 1909, US, 8m)

Max Reprends sa Liberté/Troubles of a Grass Widower (Max Linder, 1908, France, 10m)

Musketeers of Pig Alley (D.W. Griffith, 1912, US, 17m)

Making an American Citizen (Alice Guy-Blaché, 1912, US, 16m)

Les Vampires, episode one (Louis Feuillade, 1915, France, 30m)

FH, Introduction: Film History and How It’s Done

T. Narrative Development and the Formation of Film Industries

Cabiria (Giovanni Pastrone, 1914, Italy, excerpt)

The Immigrant (Charles Chaplin, 1917, US, 20m)

The Outlaw and His Wife (Victor Sjöstrom, 1919, Sweden, 73m)

FH, Chapter 1: The Invention and Early Years of the Cinema, 1880s-1904

FH, Chapter 2: The International Expansion of the Cinema, 1905-1912

Barry Salt, “The Physician of the Castle”

Richard de Cordova, “Emergence of the Star System”

Primary text reading: Norma Talmidge, “Close Ups” (Saturday Evening Post, 1929)

“Film: A Democratic Art?” (The Nation, 1913)

W. Classical Narrative, the American Film Industry and Cinema's Social Dimensions

Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1915, US, excerpt)

Blood and Sand (Fred Niblo, 1922, US, excerpt)

Lady Windemere’s Fan (Ernst Lubitsch, 1925, US, 89m [excerpt])

Speedy! (Ted Wilde, 1928, US, 86m)

FH, Chapter 3: National Cinema, Hollywood Classicism, and World War I, 1905-1919, pp. 68-76

FH, Chapter 7: The Late Silent Era in Hollywood, 1920-1928

Robert Sklar, from Movie Made America

Optional primary text reading: Mutual Film Corp. v. Industrial Commission of Ohio (1915)

Th. NO CLASS - COMMENCEMENT

M. NO CLASS – MEMORIAL DAY

WEEK 2

T. The Emergence of National Cinemas

Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari/ Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, Germany, 1920, 58/71m)

Die Nibelungen: Siegfried ["Second Canto"] (Fritz Lang, 1924, Germany, 143m [excerpt])

Konets Sankt-Peterburga/End of St. Petersburg (Vsevolod Pudovkin, 1927, 80m)

FH, Chapter 3: National Cinema, Hollywood Classicism, and World War I, 1905-1919, pp. 57-67

FH, Chapter 5: Germany in the 1920s

Optional secondary reading: Siegfried Kracauer, from From Caligari to Hitler

Primary text reading: Louis Delluc, "Cinema: The Outlaw and His Wife" (1919)

W. The Avant-Garde/Seventh Art

La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc/The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl-Theodor Dreyer, 1928, 82m)

La Glace à trois faces/Three-Way Mirror (Jean Epstein, 1927, France, 30m)

FH, Chapter 4: France in the 1920s

FH, Chapter 6: Soviet Cinema in the 1920s

FH, Chapter 8: International Trends of the 1920s, pp. 170-173

Steve Neale, "Art Cinema as Institution," esp. pp. 16-24

Primary text reading: Richard Watts, Jr., “A Dying Art Offers a Masterpiece” (New York Herald)

1930s MoMA Film programs

Jean Epstein, “On Certain Characteristics of Photogénie” and "For a New Avant-Garde" (1924/5)

Germaine Dulac, "Aesthetics, Obstacles, Integral Cinégraphie" (1926)

Th. The Arrival of Sound

Sunrise (F. W. Murnau, 1927, excerpt)

Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland, 1927, US, excerpt)

Applause (Rouben Mamoulien, 1929, US, 79m)

FH, Chapter 9: The Introduction of Sound

Donald Crafton, from The Talkies

Optional secondary reading: Douglas Gomery, “Writing the History of the American Film Industry: Warner Brothers and Sound”

Primary text reading: Variety returns, August 1927

WEEK 3

THE GOLDEN AGE(S) (1930-1945)

M. A Mature Industry: Oligopoly, Double Features, and Censorship

Dames (Ray Enright, 1934, US, excerpt)

Mystery Ranch (David Howard, 1932, 55m)

The Guilty Generation (Rowland V. Lee, 1931, US, 82m)

Chapter 10: The Hollywood Studio System, 1930-1945, pp. 213-235

Richard Maltby, “Baby Face: How Joe Breen Made Barbara Stanwyck Atone for… the Wall Street Crash”

Primary text reading: The MPPDA Production Code (1930)

Optional contemporary source: Robert Chambers, “The Double Feature as a Sales Problem” (Harvard Business Review, 1938)

T. Classical French Cinema

Le Crime de Monsieur Lange/The Crime of M. Lange (Jean Renoir, 1935, France, 78m)

La Maternelle (Marie Epstein and Jean Benôit-Levy, France, 1933, 83m)

Quai des Brumes/Port of Shadows (Marcel Carne, 1938, France, excerpt)

FH, Chapter 13: France: Poetic Realism, the Popular Front and the Occupation, 1930-1945

Colin Crisp, from The Classic French Cinema

Primary text reading: Jean Renoir, “How I Give Life to My Characters”

Marcel Carné, “When Will the Cinema Go Down Into the Street?”

W. The Golden Age: the “Genius of the System” and Hollywood Mannerism

OUTSIDE VIEWING Now, Voyager (Irving Rapper. 1942, US, 119m)

The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles, 1942, US, 88m)

Daisy Kenyon (Otto Preminger, 1947, US, excerpt)

Jeanne Allen, "Now, Voyager as Women's Film: Coming of Age Hollywood Style"

Optional secondary reading: Richard B. Jewell, “How Howard Hawks Brought Baby Up: An Apologia for the Studio System”

Primary text reading: Warner Brothers memos (1941)

Th. Classical Hollywood in Transition: Realism and Noir

On the Town (Stanley Donen, 1949, US, 98m)

The Narrow Margin (Richard Fleischer, 1952, US, 71m)

Gentleman’s Agreement (Elia Kazan, 1947, US, excerpt)

FH, Chapter 15: American Cinema in the Post War Era, 1946-1960, pp. 324-327, 336-351

Paul Kerr, “Out of What Past? Notes on the B film noir”

Optional secondary reading: Chris Cagle, "Two Modes of Prestige Film"

Primary text reading; The United States v. Paramount Pictures (1948)

Hugh Fordin, “On the Town”

WEEK 4

M. Classical Japanese Cinema

The Story of Late Chrysanthemums (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1939, Japan, 143m)

FH, Chapter 11: Other Studio Systems

Optional secondary reading: Noël Burch, from To a Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema

THE WANING OF CLASSICAL NARRATIVE (1945-1959)

T. Neorealism in Europe and Abroad

Ladri di Biciclette/Bicycle Thieves (Vittoria di Sica, 1948, Italy, 96m)

Paisan, “Partisans” segment (Roberto Rossellini, 1946, Italy, 20m)

Borom Sarret (Ousmane Sembene, 1966, Senegal, 20m)

FH, Chapter 16: Postwar European Cinema: Neorealism and its Context: 1945-1959

Rachel Gabara, "'A Poetics of Refusals': Neorealism from Italy to Africa"

Primary text reading: Cesare Zavattini on neorealism

American ads for neorealist films

W. The Transatlantic Film Market: Art Cinemas, Generic Mimicry, and the British Prestige Film

The Man in the White Suit (Alexander McKendrick, 1951, Great Britain, 85m)

Hell is a City (Val Guest, 1960, Great Britain, 98m [excerpt])

The Red Shoes (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1947, Great Britain, excerpt)

Down to Earth (Alexander Hall, 1947, US, excerpt)

A Double Life (George Cukor, 1947, US, excerpt)

Barbara Wilinsky, "The Discourse of the Art (House) Cinema"

Andrew Spicer, “Emergence of the British Tough Guy”

FH, Chapter 17: Postwar European Cinema: France, Scandinavia, and Britain, 1945-1959, esp. pp.

Primary text reading: Bosley Crowther, “Best Films” articles (1946-50)

Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson (1952)

Th. An Industry Adjusts: Melodrama, Spectacle, and Seriousness

Picnic (Joshua Logan, 1955, US, 113m)

The Defiant Ones (Stanley Kramer, 1958, US, excerpt)

Ben Hur (William Wyler, 1956, US, excerpt)

FH, Chapter 15: American Cinema in the Post War Era, 1946-1960, pp. 328-336

Jerold Simmons, "The Production Code Under New Management"

Douglas Gomery, “The Movies and TV: a Revisionist History”

Optional secondary reading: Thomas Schatz, “The Family Melodrama”

Optional secondary reading: John Belton, “CinemaScope and Historical Methodology”

Optional contemporary source: Dallas Smythe, et al. “Portrait of a First Run Audience” (Quar of Film, Radio, TV, 1955)

WEEK 5

NEW WAVES (1959-1975)

M. The French New Wave (… and British and Japanese)

Cléo de 5 à 7/Cleo from 5 to 7 (Agnes Varda, 1961, France, 89m)

Masculin-Feminin (Jean-Luc Godard, 1966, France, excerpt)

Billy Liar (John Schlesinger, 1963, UK, excerpt)

This Sporting Life (Lindsay Anderson, UK, excerpt)

Shinjû: Ten no amijima / Double Suicide (Masahiro Shinoda, 1969, Japan, excerpt)

FH, Chapter 19: Art Cinema and the Idea of Authorship

FH, Chapter 20: New Waves and Young Cinema, 1958-1967

Richard Neupert, introduction, A History of The French New Wave

Optional primary text reading: François Truffaut, “A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema”

T. The Modernist Art Film

L'Eclisse/Eclipse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1961, Italy, 125m)

Muriel (Alain Resnais, 1963, France, excerpt)

Mark Betz, "The Name Above the (Sub)Title: Internationalism, Coproduction and Polyglot European Art Cinema"

Optional secondary reading: Andrew Tudor, "The Rise and Fall of the Art (House) Movie"

Primary text reading: Franco-Italian Film Agreements, 1949, 1966

W. Writing Workshop

Csillagosok, Katonák/Red and the White (Miklós Jancsó, Hungary, 1968, excerpt)

Th. Political Modernism: Counter-Cinema, Third Cinema and Eastern European "thaws"

Tout Va Bien (Jean-Luc Godard, 1971, France, 95m)

De Cierta Manera/One Way or Another (Sara Gomez, 1978, Cuba, 78m)

Terra em Transe/Land in Anguish (Glauber Rocha, 1970, Brazil, excerpt)

Chapter 23: Critical Political Cinema of the 1960s and 1970s

Primary text reading: Peter Wollen, “Counter-cinema and Le Vent d’Est”

Fernando Solanas/Octavio Getino, “Towards a Third Cinema”

WEEK 6

M. The Hollywood Renaissance

Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975, US, 159m)

FH, Chapter 22: Hollywood's Fall and Rise, 1960-1980, pp. 511-529

Primary text reading: popular press reviews

CONTEMPORARY CINEMA (1975-2008)

T. The Age of the Blockbuster and High Concept

Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975, US, excerpt)

Ghostbusters (Ivan Reitman, 1984, US, 105m)

Diva (Jean-Jacques Beineix, France, 1981, excerpt)

FH, Chapter 27: American Cinema and the Entertainment Economy, pp. 679-694, 701-703

FH, Chapter 25: “France: Cinema du Look,” pp. 620-21

Justin Wyatt, from High Concept

Ken Feil, “From Disaster Parody to Parodic Disaster”

Primary text reading: Sample movie advertisements

W. Cultural Mode of Production: New German Cinema

Ali, Fear Eats the Soul (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974, West Germany, 92m)

Deutschland im Herbst/Germany in Autumn, “Antigone” and “Funeral” segments (Volker Schlöndorff, Heinrich Böll, Alexander Kluge, 1978, West Germany, excerpt)

FH, Chapter 20: New Waves and Young Cinema, 1958-1967, pp. 456-457

FH, Chapter 23: Critical Political Cinema of the 1960s and 1970s, pp. 572-576

Thomas Elsaesser, from New German Cinema

Sheila Johnston, "Making of an International Star: Fassbinder and The New German Cinema"

Primary text reading: Oberhausen Manifesto

Th. American Independent Cinema

Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1977, US, 83m)

Mystery Train (Jim Jarmusch, 1989, US, 110m [excerpt])

FH, Chapter 22: Hollywood's Fall and Rise, 1960-1980, pp. 530-532

FH, Chapter 27: American Cinema and the Entertainment Economy: The 1980s and After, pp. 694-701

Youris Tzioumakis, from American Independent Cinema

Christina Lane, “Just Another Girl Outside the Neo-Indie”

WEEK 7

M. Post-Classicism and Contemporary Art Film Style

La Ciénega/The Swamp (Lucrecia Martel, 2001, Argentina, 103m)

Husbands and Wives (Woody Allen, 1992, US, excerpt)

LA Confidential (Curtis Hanson, 1997, US, excerpt)

Inside Man (Spike Lee, 2004, US, excerpt)

David Bordwell, “Intensified Continuity: Visual Style in Contemporary American Film”

FH, Chapter 25: New Cinemas and New Developments: Europe and the USSR since the 1970s

FH, Chapter 26: New Cinema in Latin America, Asia, the Pacific Rim, and Africa since the 1970s

T. National Cinema in the Age of Coproduction and Globalization: the case of Dogme, “Europudding,” and Diasporic Cinema

OUTSIDE VIEWING: Italian for Beginners (Lone Scherfig, 2000, Denmark/Sweden, 118m)

L’Auberge Espagnol (Cedric Klapish, 2002, France, excerpt)

In Bruges (Martin McDonagh, 2008, Great Britain/Belgium, excerpt)

Homecoming (Gil Portes, 2003, Philippines, excerpt)

Chunguang Zhaxie/Happy Together (Wong Kar-Wai, 1999, Hong Kong, 97m)

Stephen Crofts, “Reconceptualising National Cinema(s)”

FH, Chapter 28: Toward a Global Film Culture

Primary text reading: Dogme 96 manifesto