APPROACHES TO FILM _

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Humanities 140, Approaches to Film, is an elective course designed to count for Humanities credit in the Arts and Sciences Core of the University Studies Program.  The program is designed to provide a broad base of skills and knowledge to equip students for informed, responsible citizenship in a changing world.  The purpose of the Humanities requirement in the University Studies program is to provide a framework for understanding the nature and scope of human experience.  Humanities courses explore the search for meaning and value in human life by examining its expression in cultural forms and texts, literature and the arts. 

The goal of the course is to help you become a skilled and sophisticated interpreter of film art — someone who can both enjoy the aesthetic, visceral appeals of narrative film and interpret its themes. Over the next four months, we’ll study a variety of films from different directors, eras, origins, and sources. What they have in common are not only provocative cinematic techniques, but also challenging thematic meanings. Throughout the course, you can expect to develop a knowledge of theoretical approaches to understanding film; to consider technical issues in producing and viewing film; to study the various sources of film narrative (fiction, fables, fairy tales, factual events, etc.); and to become acquainted with some important Hollywood, foreign, and independent visions. As a course fulfilling the objectives for the Humanities requirement in the Arts and Science core, then, Humanities 140, Approaches to Film, includes requirements and learning activities that promote students' abilities to …

•           identify and understand specific elements and assumptions of a particular Humanities discipline—through study of the formal and structural elements and complexities of narrative film.

•           understand how historical context, cultural values, and gender influence perceptions and interpretations—through discussion and evaluation of the roles history, culture, gender, and analysis play in interpreting film.

•           understand the role of critical analysis in interpreting and evaluating expressions of human experience—through the study and practice of interpreting and evaluating narrative film.

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USP Course Objective (a). Students will identify and understand specific elements and assumptions of a particular Humanities discipline.

Like courses in literature, art, music, and other interpretive fields, Humanities 140, Approaches to Film, both provides a working vocabulary for the art form and scrutinizes the assumptions underlying its study.  Students read textbook chapters, novels, nonfiction books, and criticism, and they study a variety of films illustrating the specific elements of cinema studies.  Far more challenging than a simple course in “the movies,” Approaches to Film provides students with a detailed introduction to the discipline.  The course films—a variety, from different directors, historical eras, national origins, and narrative sources—are chosen for their provocative cinematic techniques as well as their challenging thematic meanings.  Students are not only expected to be able to identify the elements of cinema in classroom discourse, quizzes, essays, exams, and other short assignments; they are further required to use the lexicon of film studies in their writing and other projects for the course.  These elements of the discipline include, first, the components of narrative (including thematic unity and fictional/dramatic elements); second, the functions of cinematic expression (including mise en scene, design, editing, sound, acting); third,  approaches to interpretation (including auteur, psychoanalytical, ideological, genre, formalist/structural, and historical/biographical approaches); and last, sources of cinematic narrative (including literary fiction, fables, factual events, original screenplays).  Please see the attached syllabus for a list of the key elements of the course. 

Students are also expected to learn and discuss the specific assumptions of film analysis.  In particular, they study films as representatives of (and revisions of) specific genres of cinematic narrative; as dependent upon (and contributing to) technological innovations; as artifacts of (and arguments about) specific social and historical contexts; and as interpretations (and rewritings) of communal or mythical stories.  The underlying assumptions vary from approach to approach, of course, but undergirding the assumptions of all of the work of the course is this: that over the course of the 20th century, the narrative film has become one of the most prominent art forms, one which has seen contributions from the century’s most innovative, experimental, and gifted storytellers, and one which engages millions of viewers in its expression.  

USP Course Objective (b). Students will understand how historical context, cultural values, and gender influence perceptions and interpretations.

In order to understand how historical context affects both the production and the reception of film, students view works from across the 20th century—from some of the earliest surviving works of cinema (Georges Méliès, the Lumière Brothers, and D.W. Griffith) to the early experiments with tinting and scoring; to more paradigmatic developments in synchronized sound, full color, and the studio system; to the developing international cinema of the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s; to the contemporary Hollywood and independent cinemas in America.  Individual films are presented as carefully contextualized “case studies” in cinema, with lecture and resource material designed to provide a thoughtfully historicized introduction to each work in its social context.  For instance, students study such films as M (the spread of the Nazi regime and its paranoia in prewar Germany), Modern Times (economic/cultural depression and the dehumanizing effects of the industrial revolution), The Seventh Seal (20th-century existentialist philosophy and the threat of nuclear armageddon), Do the Right Thing (strained race relations, the contemporary black cinema, and the politics of the movie marketplace), and Boys Don’t Cry (sexual confusion in an era of cultural intolerance)—all as expressions of (and reactions to) cultural values.  Finally, students also study the genderedness of the cinema, considering such topics as the feminist approach to interpreting film, popular constructions of the female in the cinema, pioneering female auteurs, and the politics of sex and gender in selected films (e.g., Rear Window, Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, The Piano).  The results of their study are articulated in online and classroom discussions, exam items and essays, and collaborative projects.

USP Course Objective (c). Students will understand the role of critical analysis (e.g. aesthetic, historical, literary, philosophical, rhetorical) in interpreting and evaluating expressions of human experience.

The goal of the course is to help students become skilled and sophisticated interpreters of film art — ones who can both enjoy the aesthetic, visceral appeals of narrative film and interpret its themes.  But interpreting and evaluating expressions of human experience demands knowledge of narrative, of history, of media, and of examples of the art form itself.  So throughout the course, students develop a knowledge of technical issues in producing and viewing film; of the various sources of film narrative (especially literary fiction, but also fables, fairy tales, factual events, etc.); and of some important Hollywood, foreign, and independent visions. Their study of theoretical approaches to understanding film, then, is informed by their knowledge of cinematic technique, literary narrative, and specific visions.  For a final exam question, for instance, students might be asked to make us of a particular type of critical analysis to articulate and support a statement of thematic meaning about one or more of the films on the course syllabus.  For instance, a student might use a feminist approach to critique the portrayal of love triangles in Letter from an Unknown Woman and The Piano, while another student might use a Jungian approach to articulate the archetypal meanings of Cocteau’s rendition of Beauty and the Beast, and a third might use auteur theory to evaluate Do the Right Thing, M, or The Seventh Seal.  From this work, students learn to understand, interpret, and articulate the meanings of images they see on screens.  And they learn the value of critical analysis in interpreting such expression: carefully informed aesthetic, ideological, historical, and rhetorical analysis not only rewards practitioners with a deeper, more profound understanding of the work and the medium themselves; it also constitutes that most human of abilities—to articulate meaning.