FI101 Autumn Term
DISCOVERING CINEMA
Day Module
Module Tutor:
Louis Bayman (Rm A0.15 Millburn House)
AIMS OF THE MODULE
1. This module aims to introduce you to the close analysis of film texts.
2. It will also ask you to consider a number of key developments in film history
and some of the different examples of film internationally.
3. You will explore some of the main critical debates that have shaped Film
Studies as an academic discipline.
4. It aims to progress from examining the formal properties of film to
considering its cultural importance and artistic relevance. It will introduce
questions regarding the political and social functions of cinema and the
intellectual frameworks that have been used to explain it.
Weeks 1-5
Film Form: Basic procedures and language of film analysis
Week 1
Screening
Lecture
Reading
Introduction and Mise-en-scène
Changing Lanes (Roger Michell, USA 2002)
Introductory remarks and understanding mise-en-scène
**Film Art (10th Ed) Chap 4 (“The Shot: Mise en Scene”)
A Taste of Honey (Dir: Tony Richardson; UK, 1961)
WEEK 2
Screening
Lecture
Reading
Editing
Onibaba/The Hole (Kaneto Shindo, Japan, 1964)
Editing and continuity: the relation of shot to shot
Film Art (10th Ed) Chap 6 (“The Relation of Shot to Shot: Editing”)
WEEK 3
Screening
The camera
La Grande illusion (Jean Renoir, France, 1937)
Lecture
Reading
Composition, camera movement and lighting
Film Art (10th Ed) Chap 5 (“The Shot: Cinematography”)
WEEK 4
Screening
Lecture
Reading
Sound
Calvary (John Michael McDonagh, Ireland/UK 2014)
Sound: Music, voice and soundscape
Film Art (10th Ed.) Chap 7 (“Sound in the Cinema”)
WEEK 5
Style and tone in film
Screening
Ostre sledované vlaky/Closely Observed Trains (Dir: Jirí Menzel;
Czechoslovakia 1966)
Lecture
Review of work so far: Making the invisible visible.
Reading
**Douglas Pye “Movies and Tone” in Close Up No. 2 (2007) pp. 5-31
Film Art (10th Ed.) Chap 8 (“Summary: Style and Film Form”)
**Peter Hames ‘Jirí Menzel’ in The Czechoslovak New Wave 2nd
edition Wallflower, London 2005 151-59
Weeks 7-10
The relation of "Narrative" to "Spectacle"
WEEK 7
Screening
Lecture
Reading:
Classical Hollywood cinema
The Shop around the Corner (Ernst Lubitsch, USA 1940)
The conventions of Classical Hollywood
**Richard Maltby Hollywood Cinema Chapter 15
WEEK 8
Screening
Lecture
Reading
Entertainment and the musical film
Orfeu negro/Black Orpheus (Marcel Camus; Brazil/France/Italy 1959)
Music in cinema: Spectacle and performance
**Robert Stam, ‘The Favela: From Rio 40 Graus to Black Orpheus,
1954-1959’ in Tropical Multiculturalism Durham, Duke University
Press, 1997, 166-177
WEEK 9 A special case: New Iranian cinema
Screening
Roozi ke zan shodam/The Day I Became a Woman (Marzieh Meshkini;
Iran, 2000)
Lecture
International art cinema, censorship and the case of Iranian cinema
Reading
**Michelle Langford ‘Allegory and the Aesthetics of BecomingWoman in Marziyeh Meshkini’s The Day I Became a Woman’ in
Camera Obscura (2007), 22 (1 64): 1-41
WEEK 10 Blockbusters and contemporary Hollywood style
Screening
Gravity (Alfonso Cuaròn, USA, 2013)
Lecture
Blockbusters, attractions and intensified continuity
Reading
**Jose Arroyo Action Spectacle (p. vii-xv)
**David Bordwell “Intensified Continuity : Visual Style in
Contemporary American Film” in Film Quarterly Vol 55 No. 3 Spring
2002 pp. 16-28