Introduction to Film History

This course provides you with an overview of film history from its beginnings to the present. Perhaps I should better say that we will investigate the histories of film, since film history is made up of multiple lineages that emerge from many different geographical locations. Yet, while we will discuss a fair range of international cinemas in addition to a number of moments in the history of American cinema, this course can neither cover all national cinemas nor address each and every important moment in any given national cinema. Inevitably, there will be omissions—gaps that only you can begin to fill by taking the initiative to research cinemas with which you are only cursorily, if at all, familiar. Nevertheless, by the end of the semester, you will have gained a somewhat more comprehensive sense of how the history of cinema has evolved—of how various national contexts, artistic movements, and technological developments have shaped our conception of what cinema is. If nothing else, by the end of the semester you may be less likely to agree with so many occasional movie-goers’ assumption that Hollywood is synonymous with “cinema,” or, for that matter, that movies are “just entertainment.”

Readings:

• Corrigan, Timothy. A Short Guide to Writing about Film 5th ed. New York: Longman, 2003.
• Cousins, Mark. The Story of Film. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2004.

Film Screenings (fall 2005):

• The Girl in the Arm Chair
• Japanese Idyl
• Film Firsts
• Battleship Potemkin
• Metropolis
• A Nous La Liberte
• It Happened One Night
• Fantasia
• Wuthering Heights
• The Third Man
• Citizen Kane
• Orpheus
• Gilda
• The Trouble with Angels
• The Gospel According to St. Matthew
• The Day I Became a Woman