English 5040

Film Criticism and Theory

Winter 2005, Mon/Wed 11:45am-2:45pm, 326 State Hall
Steven Shaviro (313-577-5475; 5057 Woodward, room 9309; office hours Mon/Wed 3-4pm)

Course Description
This class provides an introduction to major trends in the theory of film, from the 1920s to the present. Topics include theories of silent film, formalism (Eisenstein), realism (Bazin), semiotic and psychoanalytic approaches, auteur theory, genre theory, theory of sound, feminist film theory, and recent approaches that deal with currently evolving digital technologies and the relations of film to new media (video, television, computer games).
There are film screenings on Mondays, and lecture/discussion (of assigned writings, as well as of the films) on Wednesdays.

Assignments
There are two options for assignments. If you are a graduate student, or if you are an undergraduate English major taking this class in order to fulfill Writing Intensive requirements (in which case you must also register for English 5993), then you must choose option 1. If you fit into neither of these categories, you should choose option 2 (though you can switch to option 1 by special request -- talk to me).
OPTION 1: Midterm paper, 5-6 pages, due Mon March 21; Final paper, 10-12 pages, due May 2. You must speak to me in advance about paper topics.
OPTION 2: Short discussion papers (approximately 2 pages each) will be due every Monday, starting with the third week of class (the first one is due January 24, the last one is due April 25). Of the thirteen possible papers, you must do at least eight. If you do more than eight, your grade will be based on the best eight (the lower grades will be removed from your average). Each Monday's paper should be a brief commentary on the readings and concepts discussed in class the previous week. With this option, NO LATE PAPERS WILL BE ACCEPTED; YOU MUST HAND IN PAPERS BY THE END OF CLASS MONDAY.
Whichever option you choose, 75% of your grade will be based on written work, and the other 25% of the grade on class attendance and participation in discussions.

Readings (required texts)

Schedule

January 10 INTRODUCTION
(Screening) Guy Maddin, The Heart of the World, and Buster Keaton, Sherlock Junior
January 12 Siegfried Kracauer, "Basic Concepts" (BC 143-153)
Siegfried Kracauer, "The Establishment of Physical Existence" (BC 303-313)
Bela Balasz, selections from Theory of the Film (BC 314-321)
Rudolph Arnheim, "The Complete Film" (BC 183-186); "Film and Reality" (BC 322-331)
Erwin Panofsky, "Style and Medium in the Motion Pictures" (BC 289-302)
   
January 19 MODERNITY AND THE SILENT FILM
Tom Gunning, "An Aesthetic of Astonishment" (BC 862-876)
Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (BC 791-811)
   
January 24 EISENSTEIN AND MONTAGE THEORY
(Screening) Sergei Eisenstein, Battleship Potemkin
January 26 Sergei Eisenstein, selections from Film Form (BC 13-40)
Vsevolod Pudovkin, "On Editing" (BC 7-12)
Sergei Eisenstein et al., "Statement on Sound" (BC 370-372)
   
January 31 BAZIN AND REALISM
(Screening) Jean Renoir, Rules of the Game
February 2 Andre Bazin, "Ontology" and "Myth" (BC 166-173)
Andre Bazin, "The Evolution of the Language of Cinema" (BC 41-53)
Andre Bazin, "Theater and Cinema" (BC 418-428)
   
February 7 CLASSICAL FILM: NARRATIVE AND SEMIOTICS
(Screening) John Ford, Stagecoach
February 9 David Bordwell, "Classic Hollywood Cinema" (pdf, filed under "Film, Apparatus, Ideology")
Tom Gunning, "Narrative Discourse and the Narrative System" (BC 470-481)
Daniel Dayan, "The Tutor-Code of Classical Cinema" (BC 106-117)
Nick Browne, "The Spectator-in-the-Text" (BC 118-133)
   
February 14 STYLE, AUTHORITY, AND ALTERNATIVES
(Screening) George Romero, Dawn of the Dead
February 16 Roland Barthes, "The Face of Garbo" (BC 589-591)
Roland Barthes, "The Third Meaning" (pdf)
Kristin Thompson, "The Concept of Cinematic Excess" (BC 513-524)
Manny Farber, "White Elephant Art Vs. Termite Art"
Jeffrey Sconce, "Trashing the Academy" (BC 534-553)
   
February 21 SEMIOTIC AND PSYCHOANALYTIC FILM THEORY
(Screening) Alfred Hitchcock, Vertigo
February 23 Christian Metz, from Film Language (BC 65-86)
Stephen Prince, "The Discourse of Pictures" (BC 87-105)
Christian Metz, from The Imaginary Signifier (BC 820-836)
Jean-Louis Baudry, "Ideological Effects" (BC 355-365)
Jean-Louis Baudry, "The Apparatus" (BC 206-223)
Noel Carroll, "Jean-Louis Baudry and 'The Apparatus'" (BC 224-239)
Slavoj Zizek, from Organs Without Bodies (pdf)
   
February 28 FEMINISM AND FILM THEORY (1)
(Screening) Alfred Hitchcock, Rear Window
March 2 Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" (BC 837-848)
Tania Modelski, "The Master's Dollhouse" (BC 849-861)
Miriam Hansen, "Valentino and Female Spectatorship" (BC 634-651)
   
March 7 FEMINISM AND FILM THEORY (2)
(Screening) Michael Powell, Peeping Tom
March 9 Gaylyn Studlar, "Masochism and the Perverse Pleasures of the Cinema" (pdf)
Carol Clover, "Bull's Eye: Peeping Tom" (pdf)
Linda Williams, "Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess" (BC 727-741)
Cynthia A. Freeland, "Feminist Frameworks for Horror Films" (BC 742-763)
Tania Modleski, "The Terror of Pleasure" (BC 764-773)
   
March 21 GENRE THEORY
(Screening) Douglas Sirk, Imitation of Life
March 23 Leo Braudy, "Genre" (BC 663-679)
Rick Altman, "A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre" (BC 680-690)
Thomas Schatz, "Film Genre and the Genre Film" (BC 691-702)
Thomas Elsaesser, "Tales of Sound and Fury" (pdf)
   
March 28 THE AUTEUR THEORY
(Screening) Howard Hawks, Bringing Up Baby
March 30 Andrew Sarris, "Notes on the Auteur Theory" (BC 561-564)
Peter Wollen, "The Auteur Theory" (BC 565-580)
Richard B. Jewell, "How Howard Hawks Brought Baby Up" (BC 581-588)
   
April 4 THEORIES OF FILM SOUND
(Screening) Francis Ford Coppola, The Conversation
April 6 Michel Chion, "Projections of Sound on Image," from Audio-Vision (pdf)
Mary Ann Doane, "The Voice in the Cinema" (BC 373-385)
John Belton, "Technology and the Aesthetics of Film Sound" (BC 386-394)
   
April 11 FILM THEORY AND POSTMODERNISM
(Screening) David Lynch, Mulholland Drive
April 13 Gilles Deleuze, From Cinema 1 & Cinema 2 (BC 240-269)
Bill Wyman, Max Garrone and Andy Klein, "Everything You Were Afraid To Ask About Mulholland Drive"
   
April 18 FILM IN THE DIGITAL AGE
(Screening) David Fincher, Fight Club
April 20 Stephen Prince, "True Lies" (BC 270-282)
John Belton, "Digital Cinema: A False Revolution" (BC 901-913)
Anne Friedberg, "The End of Cinema" (BC 914-926)
   
April 25 NO CLASS

Additional Class Policies