A study of selected major film traditions from a literary perspective. By examining themes, structures, montage, and other literary and filmic elements, students will become familiar with important concepts in film analysis. Individual offerings of the course may focus on filmmakers, movements, periods, or themes. The goal will be to appreciate the aesthetic and social significance of film as a twentieth-century medium and to explore various intersections of film and literature.
Summer 2011: Gemünden (3A)
Continental Strangers: European Exiles & Emigres in Hollywood, 1933-50 (Identical to Film and Media Studies 42)
During the 1930s and 1940s, hundreds of German-speaking film professionals lived and worked in Hollywood, among them Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang, Peter Lorre, and Marlene Dietrich. In this course we study how the exiles' sense of identity in the United States was shaped by the experience of displacement and the fight against fascism. We will also investigate how exile cinema intervenes in public debates, and how it reframes political issues in terms of narrative and images. (ART/CI)
