THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF PARIS Department of Global Communications NEW YORK UNIVERSITY Department of Media, Culture, and Communication Course Title: Propaganda and Persuasion in International Cinema Course No.: CM 591 (AUP)/E.58.2170 (NYU) Professors: John Downing (AUP) and Terence P. Moran (NYU) Credits: 4 Credits (AUP) 4 Credits (NYU) Class Schedule: Tuesday 31 May to Friday 17 June 2011 COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course examines selected film classics of propaganda with particular emphasis on American and French culture and history. Background readings, class lectures, and models for analyzing the intersections of communication, film, myth, and propaganda, and visits to the Musee de l’Armee, Napoleon’s Tomb, the Dome Church, Cinemateque Francaise, and the Arc de Triomphe will be used to structure a learning environment in which the class will analyze specific films for their aesthetic, cultural, informative, mythic, and persuasive communication. In our analyses and discussions, we will examine the relationships between communication and propaganda, art and propaganda, information and propaganda, and myth and propaganda, with the goal of gaining some understanding of the roles played by moving image media (film, video, digital) in national and global persuasion. Our goal is to provide students with some critical thinking models and techniques that will allow them to conduct their own analyses of contemporary efforts to use moving image media to convey both political and sociological propaganda. The course will be structured as a seminar in which all of us will share our own critical thinking analyses with each other. At the end of the course, we should all have a richer knowledge and understanding of the history of film as propaganda and of how to analyze films for their mythic and propagandistic structures and impacts. Three papers will compare three sets of two propaganda films: American and French History as Propaganda, Propaganda and War, and The Colonial and AntiColonial Cinema. REQUIREMENTS: I. Absence Policy/Participation Active participation by all students is required for this course, which will meet for three weeks. It is designed to be an intensive class experience. Students are expected to complete the assigned readings for each class session and to come to class with specific responses to and questions about the readings for our class discussions. You should plan to give at least two hours of study for each class, plus time for screenings of the films to be studied. If you miss a class, please ask a 2 classmate for his/her notes. Any absence will affect your work/grade, and four absences will result in your administrative withdrawal from the course. For each of the films, you will write a two-page response that answers the following questions: 1. What is the central myth and who is the hero in the film? 2. What are the central propaganda messages in the film? 3. What film techniques and technology are used to carry and/or reinforce the mythic and propaganda messages? 4. What is your own response to the film, its messages, and its form? Value = 25% II. Essay Assignments You write three six (6) page scholarly papers comparing three sets of assigned films, using your own critical analyses and proper use/citation of the readings assigned for the films. 1. The Silent Cinema: The Birth of a Nation (USA 1914) and Napoleon (France 1927) Due Monday 6 June Value = 25% 2. Propaganda and War: Paths of Glory (USA 1957) and La Grande Illusion (France 1937). Due Tuesday 14 June Value = 25% 3. The Colonial and Anti-Colonial Cinema : Casablanca (USA 1943) and The Battle of Algiers (Algeria - Italy 1965). Due Monday 20 June Value = 25% Each essay should be organized to respond to the following protocols in the order given by answering four clustered questions in separate paragraphs for each cluster. Use the assigned readings, the films, and your own critical thinking. 1. Identify and compare the context for each film. What was the historical environment within which each film was made? Who were the central people involved? What was the cultural, economic, political, etc. structure of the film’s production? What were the techniques and technologies of filmmaking available to the filmmakers? Was the film an example of what Jacques Ellul calls agitative/political or integrative/sociological propaganda? 2. Identify and compare the central myth and hero in each film. How are they similar and how are they different? Be specific and concrete. 3. Identify and compare the central propaganda messages carried by the hero and the myth in each film. How are they similar and how are they different? Be specific and concrete. 4. What is your own response to each film? What aspects (filmic, mythic, propagandistic) did you respond to most strongly (positively or negatively)? 3 Why do you think you responded as you did? What did you learn from the comparison? NOTE: All written work (responses and comparisons) must be submitted on the dates due, must conform to an identified style guide, must be typed and double-spaced using standard typeface, must be paginated, and must be fastened with a single staple or paper clip. Proper scholarly style and source referencing are expected to be the norm for graduate coursework. 4 SCHEDULE OF CLASS MEETINGS AND FILMS WEEK ONE Mon. 30 May HOLIDAY – NO CLASS Tues. 31 May 9-12 Introduction and Orientation : Film, Myth, and Propaganda 1-4 Silent Film: The Birth of a Nation (USA 1915) Wed. 1 June 9-11 Silent Film: Napoleon (France 1927) 12-3 Silent Film: Napolean (France 1927) Thurs. 2 June Fri. 3 June HOLIDAY - NO CLASS 9-12 Comparison of The Birth of a Nation and Napoleon as Film, Myth, and Propaganda. Visit to Hotel des Invalides – Napoleon’s Tomb WEEK TWO Mon. 6 June 9-11 Propaganda and War Tues. 7 June 9-12 World War I Film: Paths of Glory (USA 1957) Weds. 8 June 9-11 World War I Film: La Grande Illusion (France 1937) Thurs. 9 June 9-11 World War I: Comparison of Paths of Glory and La Grande Illusion as Film, Myth, and Propaganda. Fri. 9-12 Visit to Hotel des Invalides – Musee de l’Armee (World War I) 10 June WEEK THREE Mon. 13 June HOLIDAY – NO CLASS Tues. 14 June 9-12 Colonial and Anti-Colonial Cinema 1-3 Colonial Film: Casablanca (USA 1943) Wed. 15 June 9-11 Anti-Colonial Film : The Battle of Algiers (Algeria – Italy 1966) 5 Thurs. 16 June 9-11 Comparison of Casablanca and The Battle of Algiers as Film, Myth, and Propaganda Fri. 17 June 9-12 Final Class: All Questions Answered; All Answers Questioned. Visit to the Arc de Triomphe 6 SCHEDULE OF REQUIRED READINGS WEEK ONE Mon. 30 May HOLIDAY – NO CLASS Tues. 31 May Film (Monoco 3-45, 121-191); Myth (Campbell 1-37, 329-337); Propaganda (Ellul v-xviii, 6-87); The Birth of a Nation (Schickel 212250) and (Silva i-viii, 1-15) Wed. Napoleon (Brownlow 9-11, 31-45, 150-160, 257-286) 1 June Thurs. 2 June HOLIDAY – NO CLASS Fri. 3 June None Sat. 4 June None WEEK TWO Mon. 6 June Introduction to War Films ( AMC filmsite, War Films); (Secunda/Moran 1-10) Tues. 7 June Paths of Glory (Dirks) Wed. 8 June La Grande Illusion (Cowie) Thurs. 9 June None Fri. None 10 June WEEK THREE Mon. 13 June HOLIDAY – NO CLASS Tues. 14 June Casablanca (Secunda/ Moran 47-74); (Koppes and Black 287- 290) Wed. 15 June The Battle of Algiers (Horne 183-207) and (Solinas, ix-xviii, 161202) Thurs. 16 June None Fri. None 17 June 7 RECOMMENDED TEXTS WEEK ONE: Film, Myth, and Propaganda James Monaco, How to Read a Film: The Art, Technology, Language, History, and Theory of Film and Media, revised edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981). Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Princeton University Press, 1949). Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965). The Birth of a Nation Richard Schickel, D.W. Griffith (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984). Fred Silva, ed. Focus on “Birth of a Nation” (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1971). Napoleon Kevin Brownlow, Napoleon (London: Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1983). WEEK TWO: Tim Dirks, AMCfilmsite, War Films (www.filmsite.org/warfilms). Eugene Secunda and Terence P. Moran, Selling War to America: From the Spanish American War to the Global War on Terror (Westport CT: Praeger Security International, 2007), Introduction. La Grande Illusion Jean Renoir, My Life and My Films, 3rd edition (Da Capo Paperback, 2000). Jean Renoir et al. The Complete Films (Taschen, 2007). Paths of Glory 8 Anthony Clayton, Paths to Glory: The French Army 1914-1918 (Cassell Military Paperbacks, 2007). Humphrey Cobb et al. Paths of Glory (Penguin Classic, 2010) Rodney Hill and Gene D. Phillips, The Encyclopedia of Stanley Kubrick (Library of Great Filmmakers (Checkmark Books, 2002). Lawrence H. Suid, Guts and Glory: The Making of the American Military Image in Film (Louisville: University of Kentucky Press, 2002). WEEK THREE: Casablanca Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Goes to War (New York: The Free Press, 1987). Secunda and Moran, Chapter 3: The Good War – World War II. The Battle of Algiers Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (New York: The Viking Press, 1978). Piernico Solinas, ed., Gillo Pontecorvo’s “The Battle of Algiers” (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1978).