English 85 Patricia White
Fall 1996 office hours M 3-5
M 7-10, PAC Cinema PAC 208
W 1:15-4, x8148, pwhite1

American Narrative Cinema

The narrative film has dominated the hundred-year history of cinema, and the American film industry--Hollywood--has dominated global consumption of films. This course will look at narrative form, film style, and the historical production and reception contexts of Hollywood films of the studio era (through the 1950s). The "continuity style" that characterized this mode of production continues to shape today's media culture, even as multinational corporations, cineplexes, television, VCRs and new technologies have transformed the way we see movies. The course will introduce methodological and theoretical issues in film history and cultural analysis, various models of film interpretation--close analysis, feminist, psychoanalytic, genre and ideological criticism--and focus on the construction of gender, race, class, ethnicity and national identity in this mass cultural form. Several independently produced American films will be screened to show how Hollywood narrative forms have been appropriated and transformed.

Attendance at evening screenings is mandatory, and you are expected to take notes and stay for a brief discussion. Screenings begin at 7:30, longer films and double-features at 7:00. Whenever possible, films will be presented on 16mm film or laserdisc; videotape is a consumer format that greatly diminishes the impact of the medium. I recommended that you watch the films again on your own after class discussions. They are available on video or laserdisc in McCabe library, and recommended films are also on reserve. Please watch Citizen Kane (Welles), Singin' in the Rain (Donen and Kelly), and Rear Window (Hitchcock) sometime during the semester. Besides McCabe's large collection of classical Hollywood films, cable channels such as American Movie Classics and TNT are rich resources; you are encouraged to write about other films in your journal. I recommend picking up a copy of Leonard Maltin's Movie and Video Guide or a similar reference.

Requirements:

Regular attendance, including at all screenings, and class participation

(more than three absences will affect your grade)

Journals and short writing assignments (ungraded)

Film analysis exercise

Take-home midterm exam

Oral presentation

Final paper

Class multimedia project (ungraded)

Texts:

John Belton, American Cinema/American Culture.

Gerald Mast, Marshall Cohen and Leo Braudy, eds. Film Theory and Criticism, 4th edition.

Salman Rushdie, The Wizard of Oz

Manthia Diawara, ed. Black American Cinema.

John Belton, ed. Movies and Mass Culture (recommended)

Bill Nichols, ed. Movies and Methods, vol. 2 (recommended)

Additional readings:

All course readings will be on reserve at the McCabe library circulation desk; required readings marked (X) are in binders. Supplementary readings may be found in a separate binder, and a number of useful background and more specialized texts are on reserve.

English 85 Fall 1996

American Narrative Cinema

UNIT 1: APPROACHES TO CLASSICAL CINEMA

WEEK 1 Introduction; Hollywood Style: "An Excessively Obvious Cinema"

9/2 The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946, 114 min.)

9/4 Uncle Josh at the Motion Picture Show (Edwin S. Porter, 1901) and selected early films

clips: Shadow of a Doubt (Hitchcock), His Girl Friday (Hawks)

Read: Pam Cook, "Classical Narrative" (X)

Umberto Eco, "Casablanca, or the Cliches are Having a Ball" (X)

Tom Gunning, "The Cinema of Attractions" (X)

___________________________________________________________________________

WEEK 2 Hollywood Realism

9/9 The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946, 172 min.)

9/11 clips: Citizen Kane (Welles), The Magnificent Ambersons (Welles)

Read: Belton 21-60

Andre Bazin, "The Evolution of Film Language" (Mast and Cohen)

Raymond Bellour, "The Obvious and the Code" (X)

Robert Stam, "Cinematic Realism," "The Classic Realist Text" (X)

Supplementary: Colin MacCabe: "Theory and Film: Principles of Realism and Pleasure"

(Mast and Cohen)

Raymond Bellour, "The Unattainable Text" (X)

JOURNAL ENTRY DUE, FILM ANALYSIS EXERCISE ASSIGNED

__________________________________________________________________________

WEEK 3 Movie Myths and the Studio System

9/16 Duck Amuck (Chuck Jones, 1953),The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939, 101 min.)

9/18 clip from Singin' in the Rain

Read: Belton 61-82

Rushdie 9-57

Richard Dyer, "Entertainment and Utopia" (Nichols)

Ed Buscombe, "Sound and Color" (Nichols)

Thomas Schatz, from Hollywood Genres (X)

Graeme Turner, "Film Narrative" (X)

Supplementary: Richard Dyer, chapter on Judy Garland from Heavenly Bodies (reserve)

Turner from Film as Social Practice (reserve)

JOURNAL ENTRY DUE

WEEK 4 Ideology, Genre, Auteur

9/23 The Searchers (John Ford, 1956, 119 min.)

9/25 clips: Stagecoach (Ford), Star Wars (Lucas)

Read: Jean-Luc Comolli and Jean Narboni, "Cinema/Criticism/Ideology" (Mast and Cohen)

Brian Henderson, "The Searchers: An American Dilemma" (Nichols)

Robert Stam, "From Stereotype to Discourse" (X)

Belton 206-230

Andrew Sarris, "Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962" (Mast and Cohen)

Peter Wollen, "The Auteur Theory" (Mast and Cohen)

Supplementary: Robin Wood, "Ideology, Genre, Autuer" (Mast and Cohen)

FILM ANALYSIS EXERCISE DUE

WEEK 5 Feminist Film Theory: Authorship, Image, Spectatorship

9/30 Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958, 120 min.)

10/2 clips: Dance Girl Dance (Arzner), Shanghai Express (von Sternberg)

Rear Window (Hitchcock)

Read: Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" (Nichols/Mast and Cohen)

Claire Johnston, "Notes on Women's Cinema" (X)

Tania Modleski, "Femininity by Design: Vertigo" (X)

J-L. Baudry, "Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus" (Nichols)

Supplementary: Christian Metz from The Imaginary Signifier (Mast and Cohen)

J.-L. Baudry, "The Apparatus" (Mast and Cohen)

Teresa de Lauretis, "Desire in Narrative" (X)

Raymond Bellour, "Hitchcock, The Enunciator" (X)

Katie Trumpener, "Fragments of the Mirror" in Hitchcock's Rereleased Films (reserve)

WEEK 6 Telling Different Stories, Telling Stories Differently

10/7 Daughters of the Dust (Julie Dash, 1991, 113 min.)

10/9 Illusions (Julie Dash, 1985, 35 min.); Devil in a Blue Dress

Read: Cook, "Alternative Narrative Systems"

Manthia Diawara, "Black American Cinema: The New Realism" (Diawara)

Toni Cade Bambara, "Reading the Sings, Empowering the Eye" (Diawara)

Jacqueline Bobo from Black Women as Cultural Readers

Supplementary: Teresa de Lauretis, "Rethinking Women's Cinema" (X)

bell hooks, "The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators" (Diawara)

JOURNALS DUE

___________________________________________________________________ OCTOBER BREAK

UNIT 2: HISTORIES OF CINEMA

WEEK 7 Origin Stories: Griffith, Micheaux, Racism, Resistance

10/21 The Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1915, 185 min.)

10/23Within Our Gates (Oscar Micheaux, 1919, 70 min.)

Read: Belton 117-134

Dossier on Birth of a Nation (X)

Lary May, "D.W. Griffith and the Aesthetics of Reform" (X)

Manthia Diawara, "Black Spectatorship: Problems of Identification and Resistance"

Jane Gaines, "Fire and Desire: Race, Melodrama, and Oscar Micheaux" (Diawara)

Thomas Cripps from Slow Fade to Black (X)

Supplementary: Michael Rogin, "The Sword Became a Flashing Vision" (X)

Janet Staiger, "The Birth of a Nation: Reconsidering its Reception" (X)

Excerpt from Main Street Amusements

MIDTERM DISTRIBUTED; ; PRESENTATION GROUPS FORMED

WEEK 8 The 1920s: Ethnicity, Modernity and Mass Culture

10/28 The Crowd (King Vidor, 1928, 104 min.)

10/30 clips: 42nd Street (Bacon), The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland, 1927, 89 min.)

Read: Belton, 3-19; 115-134

Michael Rogin, "Blackface, White Noise: The Jewish Jazz Singer Finds His Voice"

Ella Shohat, "Ethnicities-in-Relation" (X)

Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"

(Mast and Cohen)

John Belton, "Technology and Aesthetics of Film Sound" (Mast and Cohen)

Supplementary: Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, "The Culture Industry" (X)

Douglas Gomery, "Warner Brothers and Sound" (Nichols)

J. Hoberman, 42nd Street (reserve)

CD-ROM, "Who Built America?" browse popular culture documents (reserve)

MIDTERM DUE

__________________________________________________________________________

WEEK 9 The 1930s: Race, Sex, Stars, Censorship

11/4 Blonde Venus (Joseph von Sternberg, 1932, 97 min.)

11/6 clips: King Kong, The Bitter Tea of General Yen

Read: The Motion Picture Production Code (X)

Lea Jacobs, "Something Other than a Sob Story" (X)

(cont.) Richard Dyer, Stars (Mast and Cohen)

Skim: Belton 83-114

Gaylyn Studlar, "Masochism and the Perverse Pleasures of the Cinema" (Mast and Cohen)

Supplementary: Christian Viviani, "Who is Without Sin?" in Gledhill (reserve)

James Snead, "Capture and the Guilty Look in King Kong"

PRESENTATIONS

___________________________________________________________________________

WEEK 10 The 1940s: World War II, The Woman's Picture and Film Noir

11/11 Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945, 109 min.)

11/13 clips: Double Indemnity , Stella Dallas

Read: Belton 184-205

Linda Williams, "Mildred Pierce and the Second World War"

Janey Place and L. S. Peterson, "Some Visual Motifs in Film Noir"

Claudia Gorbman, "Classical Hollywood Practice: Max Steiner"

Mary Ann Doane, "Film and the Masquerade" (Mast and Cohen)

Handout from Leo Handel, Hollywood Looks at its Audience

excerpt from James M. Cain, Mildred Pierce

Lea Jacobs, "The B Film and Problem of Cultural Distinction" (X)

Supplementary: Jane Gaines, "Costume and Narrative: How Dress Tells the Woman's Story"

Mary Ann Doane, "The Woman's Film: Possession and Address"

Pam Cook, "Duplicity and Mildred Pierce"

CLASS COMPUTER PROJECT ORGANIZATION

PRESENTATIONS

WEEK 11 The 1950s: The Blacklist, the Cold War, Independent Production

11/18 Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel, 1956, 80 min.)

Salt of the Earth (Herbert Biberman, 1953, 94 min.)

11/20 clip: Kiss Me Deadly

Read: Belton 231-254

Dossier on House Un-American Activities Committee (X)

Peter Biskind, "The Mind Managers" (X)

Paul Jarrico and Herbert Biberman and Peter Morris on Salt of the Earth (X)

Salt of the Earth CD-ROM (reserve)

Supplementary: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (reserve)

PRESENTATIONS

WEEK 12 The 1950s: Melodrama, Irony, Camp, TV; The End of the Studio Era

11/25 Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk, 1959, 120 min.)

Glen or Glenda? (Edward D. Wood, 1953, 61 min.)

11/27

Read: Belton 257-274

Thomas Elsaesser, "Tales of Sound and Fury"(Nichols/Mast and Cohen)

Barbara Klinger from Melodrama and Meaning (X)

Marina Heung, "What's the Matter with Sara Jane?" (X)

Jon Halliday, from Sirk on Sirk (X)

J. Hoberman, "Bad Movies" (X)

PRESENTATIONS

FINAL PAPER THESIS AND PRELIMINARY BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE

THANKSGIVING BREAK

WEEK 13 Post-Hollywood; Conclusion

12/2 Poison (Todd Haynes, 1991, 85 min.)

12/4 clips: Juraissic Park (Spielberg), Dawn of the Dead (Romero)

Read: Belton 275-345 (skim)

Thomas Schatz, "The New Hollywood"( X)

Ann Friedberg, "Cinema and the Postmodern" (X)

Judith Williamson, "Every Virus Tells a Story" (X)

Reviews of Poison (X)

PRESENTATIONS

COMPUTER PROJECT WRAP-UP MEETING TBA

FINAL PAPERS AND JOURNALS DUE DATE TBA