111-236 Film and History; Silent Beginnings to Cinematic Spectacle

Note

Available as 111-336 at 3rd-year level.

Availability

Credit Points

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Subject Description

This course will focus on key film historical developments from the early cinema era up until the 1960s. Areas to be explored may include: the pre-cinematic tradition and its impact on early cinema; the early cinema as illusion/realism models; the cinema of attractions; the development of the Hollywood narrative film language and alternative models such as the cinemas of the avant-garde, national 'art' cinemas such as German Expressionism, and political cinema. The course will also include an exploration of alternative forms of film form dominating Hollywood film history between the 1930s - 1960s. These may include: the coming of sound and colour; the star system; B-films and serial forms; the widescreen spectacle and 3-D phenomenon of the 1950s; the restructuring of the Hollywood studio system; animation; the coming of television, the cinema's impact on it, and its impact on the cinema.

Assessment

Written work totalling not more than 5000 words

Prescribed Texts

• Belton, John, Widescreen Cinema. Harvard University Press, Harvard & London, 1992.
• Elsaesser, Thomas & Adam Barker, Early Cinema: Space, Narrative, Frame. London 1990.
• Balio, Tine (ed), Hollywood in the Age of Television. Unwin & Hyman, Boston 1990.