ENG 261 - Introduction to Film

Film Noir
This course will focus on film noir in American cinema in the 1940s and 1950s, examining its plotlines and narrative methods as well as its distinctive visual style. Students will be introduced to the language of film analysis and trace the genre’s sources in “hard-boiled” detective fiction, German expressionism, and the cultural climate of the United States in the decades in which the films were produced. Questions about visual framing, narrative structure, and genre will inform readings and discussions, as will the films’ representations of tensions in postwar social roles. The course will conclude with a consideration of one or two more recent examples of “neo-noir.” Required readings on film and narrative theory; directors will include Billy Wilder, Orson Welles, Jacques Tourneur, Fritz Lang, Howard Hawks, and Michael Curtiz.

The Western
Film studies scholar Robert Ray once wrote that “many of Classic Hollywood’s genre movies, like many of the most important American novels, were thinly camouflaged westerns.” This course seeks to investigate that claim by examining film form, genre, and history through the lens of the cinematic Western, with all of the idealism and ugliness the subject entails. While the beginning of the course will focus primarily on the Western as imagined in classical Hollywood, our analysis will eventually track the genre’s development into the modern day. We will watch and analyze films by directors including John Ford, John Huston, George Stevens, Sergio Leone, Richard Altman, Katherine Bigelow, Mario van Peebles, Ang Lee, and Quentin Tarantino. In addition to illuminating the concept of genre study and the history of U.S. film, this course will view the Western as a barometer of both American social anxieties and ideologies as the genre (and the nation) continually reinvents itself over time.

Women Directors of the 21st Century
This course is an overview of some of the women directors working in contemporary cinema. The course takes a global approach, and we will examine filmmakers who make Hollywood blockbusters as well as independent productions. Each of these directors have made films examining vital subjects such as poverty, racism, sexism, and discrimination. They have used various means and forms to do so, utilizing superheroes and cowboys, men and women, genre films and character studies, narrative, and documentary forms. They have filmed the landscapes as well as the interior struggles of their characters. This is all to say, there is no defining feature of their work. Their varied characters reflect their diverse backgrounds. In this course we will examine how autobiographical, political, social, industrial, and historical forces helped shape their films, as well as both the communal and individual achievements of some of the major artists of the era. This class also serves as a way to buid on the accepted film canon, highlighting the work done by women directors over the last thirty years. It is a celebration of their body of work, as well as an academic examination of their films. Some of the directors include Chantal Akerman, Kelly Reichardt, Ava DuVernay, Agnes Varda, Claire Denis, Chloe Zhao, Greta Gerwig, Karyn Kusama, Jane Campion, Andrea Arnold, Mati Diop, and Marjane Satrapi.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
Instructional Method: Conference-screening
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Repeatable for Credit: May be taken up to 4 times for credit if different topics.
Notes:

Not all topics offered every year.
Review schedule of classes for availability.
Review descriptions for specific applicability to department requirements.
Genre: Film & Media

Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).