This course material copyright © 1994 Henry Jenkins. It may be reproduced for non-profit, educational uses, but publication in any profit-making form or in any book or magazine form must first be cleared with the author.

Henry Jenkins (henry3@athena.mit.edu), Literature Section, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02138.

THE FILM EXPERIENCE
Henry Jenkins and Susan Emanuel

Henry Jenkins, 14N-437, 253-3068, HENRY3@athena.mit.edu

The Film Experience offers a historical survey of the international cinema. We will look at the political, social, economic, technological and aesthetic factors which determined the shape and character of different national cinemas. Among the topics to be explored are: the origins of classical Hollywood cinema; Soviet montage; German expressionism; the transition to sound; the impact of WWII on the international cinema; Italian neorealism; the French New Wave; New German cinema; contemporary film movements in Africa and Asia; the emergence of a new Post-classical Hollywood cinema and the efforts of minority filmmakers to gain access to the filmmaking process. Students will learn to critically analyze film style within aesthetic and ideological terms. A secondary interest will be on the process of historical investigation. Students will learn to look critically at how historians approach their craft and to perform some basic historical research of their own.

TEXTS: (Available at the Coop)
David Cook, A History of Narrative Film
Robert Allen and Douglas Gommery, Film History: Theory and Practice
Course Pack (MIT Graphic Arts)

ASSIGNMENTS:
1) Biweekly two to three page analytic essays. These short essays should focus on one or two key aspects of the film for analysis. We may ask you to talk about the use of camerawork or editing within a particular scene or sequence, for example. We do not want responses which are primarily evaluative nor do we want plot description. We want you to pose questions about the film's techniques and about its historical background. You should pick up on issues in the readings or lectures, where appropriate. Remember that these short papers will be our primary means of evaluating your appreciation and understanding of the films shown. You should take the time to write a concise but reflective response.
You will be expected to work closely with the specified scene(s) using a vcr and your essay should reflect a fine-grained understanding of how style works in particular periods, genres, and films. (40%)

2) Short historiographic essay: Select one of the essays on the reserved reading list and write a short (2-3 page) paper analyzing the historiographical assumptions which underlie the writer's approach to film history. Your essay should draw upon the criteria proposed by Allen and Gommery, pp.48-51 as a basis for your evaluation of the historian's work. (10%)

3) Film Exhibition Report: Research film exhibition in your home town or in one of the communities in the Greater Boston area. You should select a ten year period. Identify what theatres are in the area at the beginning of that period and what theatres are there at the end of the period. What has changed over that time? What factors might account for these shifts? MIT reference librarians will be talking with us about potential on-campus sources for information about theatre locations in the Greater Boston area closer to the time the report is due. You should consult the relevant chapter(s) of Douglas Gommery's Shared Pleasures (on Reserve) to provide some background on the history of film exhibition during your period. You might, for example, investigate under what circumstances the earliest films were exhibited in your town or the impact of suburbanization on the location of movie theatres or the process by which individual theatres were turned into twins and multiplexes or the factors which might have led to a decrease in the number of theatres in the community during the early sound period or the history of segregated film exhibition (separate theatres for black and white patrons). Use your imagination. Do any of the theatres from your period still survive? If so, what functions are they serving? Please attach xeroxes of relevant materials you collect in your research. (25%)

4) Film Reception Report: Select one film which premiered before 1980. Locate at least three reviews and one advertisement for the film published at the time it initially appeared. Summarize these materials and offer a 3-4 page profile of contemporary response to the film. What issues surface in the reviews? What criteria do they employ to evaluate the film? What other films do they use as points of comparison? What aspects of the film get highlighted as particularly innovative or significant? See Janet Staiger, "With the Compliments of the Auteur" in course pack for an example. (10%)

Take-Home Final Exam (15%): You will be held accountable here for factual material derived from David Cook and from course lectures about film history. Test will be open book and open note. Students should anticipate having solid notes on the lectures and discussions as a resource in responding to the exam questions. One part of the exam will require you to write a short analytic essay which builds on the skills at interpretation and analysis you have developed throughout the term.


All papers will be due on the specified date unless previous arrangements are made with the instructor. All papers which are AWOL will be graded down one letter grade for each day they are late.


NOTE: IT IS EXPECTED THAT ALL WORK SUBMITTED FOR A GRADE IN THIS COURSE REFLECTS THE WORK OF THE INDIVIDUAL STUDENT ALONE. STUDENTS MAY EXCHANGE DRAFTS OF PAPERS TO BE READ FOR COMMENTS FROM OTHER STUDENTS BUT ONLY AFTER BOTH STUDENTS INVOLVED HAVE COMPLETED AN ORIGINAL DRAFT OF THE PAPER. STUDENTS SHOULD CITE ANY WORKS WHICH ARE REFERENCED IN WRITING THE PAPER. PLAGIARISM OR ANY OTHER FORM OF ACADEMIC DISHONESTY SHALL BE BROUGHT TO THE ATTENTION OF THE COMMITTEE ON DISCIPLINE FOR THEIR STRICT ENFORCEMENT. ANY STUDENT WHO DOES NOT FULLY UNDERSTAND THE STANDARDS OF ACADEMIC HONESTY SHOULD SPEAK TO THE INSTRUCTOR IN ADVANCE OF SUBMITTING COURSEWORK.


Feb.2-Feb.4
Early Cinema
Cook, pp.14-32, 33-48,61-77, 207-211
Allen and Gommery, 43-64
Screening:The Musketeers of Pig Alley, Easy Street, The Crowd

Feb.8-Feb.11
German Cinema
Guest Lectures:
a.m. Jane Shattuc, Emerson College
p.m. Marty Marks, MIT
Cook, pp.110-138
Allen and Gommery, p.67-105
Screening: Metropolis

Feb. 18
Soviet Cinema
NOTE: We will follow the normal Tuesday schedule on Thursday, including a Thursday evening screening.
Cook, pp.139-204
Excerpt from Alexei N. Tolstoy, Aelita (New York: MacMillan, 1981).
Ian Christie, "Down to Earth: Aelita Relocated." From Richard Taylor and Ian Christie (Eds.), Inside the Film Factory: New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema (London: Routledge, 1991).
Screening: Aelita
Due: Paper One


Feb.23-25
The Coming of Sound: France and the United States
Cook, pp.377-392
Allen and Gommery, 109-130
Tom Schatz, "Universal: Renaissance and Retrenchment," The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era (New York: Pantheon, 1988).
Screening: Zero de Conduite; All Quiet on the Western Front

March 2-4
The Studio System
Cook 296-319
Allen and Gommery, 131-152, 172-186
Claire Johnson, "Dorothy Arzner: Critical Strategies" and Pam Cook, "Approaching the Work of Dorothy Arzner" in Constance Penley (Ed.), Feminism and Film Theory (New York: Routledge, 1988).
Screening: Dance Girl Dance
Due: Paper 2

March 9-11
Occupied French Cinema
Cook, pp.392-406
Allen and Gommery, 153-172
Ed Turk, "The Design of Children of Paradise"
Screening: Children of Paradise

March 16-18
British Cinema
Antonia Lant, "Projecting National Identity," Blackout: Reinventing Women for Wartime British Cinema (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).
Charles Barr, "The Man in the White Suit," Ealing Studios (Woodstock: Overlook Press, 1980).
Screening: Listen to Britain; Man in the White Suit
Due: Paper 3

SPRING BREAK

March 30 - April 1
Italian Neorealism
Cook, pp.437-456
Andre Bazin, "An Aesthetic of Reality"
Screening: The Bicycle Thief

April 6-8
French New Wave
Cook, 538-588
Kristin Thompson, "Sawing Through the Bough: Tout Va Bien as a Brechtian Film," Breaking the Glass Armor: Neoformalist Film Analysis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).
Screening: Tout Va Bien
Due: Exhibition Report

April 13-15
Postclassical Hollywood
Robin Woods, "The Incoherent Text: Narrative in the 70s,"Hollywood From Vietnam to Reagan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986).
Thomas Schatz, "The New Hollywood," In Jim Collins, Hilary Radner and Ava Preacher Collins (Eds.), Film Theory Goes to the Movies (New York: Routledge, 1993).
Screening: Taxi Driver Recommended Screening: The Searchers (Mon. April 12)
Due: Historiography Report

April 20-22
New German Cinema
Cook, pp.850-874
Kathe Geist, "Wenders in the Cities" in Klaus Phillips (Ed.), New German Filmmakers: From Oberhausen through the 1970s (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1984).
Screening: State of Things
Due: Paper four

April 27-29
Asian Cinema
Cook, pp.778-821
Screening: Black Rain
Due: Reception Study

May 4-6
Third World Cinema
Cook, pp.822-850
Haile Gerima, "Triangular Cinema, Breaking Toys, and Dinknesh vs. Lucy," in Jim Pines and Paul Wilemen (Ed.),Questions of Third Cinema (London: BFI, 1991).
Screening: Camera D'Afrique, Xala
Due: Paper Five

May 11
Marginal Cinema
Screening: History and Memory; Daughters of the Dust

Reserved Room Readings for Historiography Assignment
Belton, John. "Cinemascope: The Economics of Technology." The Velvet Light Trap, 21, Summer 1985, pp.35-43.
Crafton, Donald. "The Last Night in the Nursery: Walt Disney's Peter Pan." The Velvet Light Trap, Fall 1989. pp.33-52.
Carbine, Mary. "The Finest Outside the Loop: Motion Picture Exhibition in Chicago's Black Metropolis, 1905-1928." Camera Obscura, 23. pp.9-42.
deCordova, Richard. "Ethnography and Exhibitors: The Child Audience, the Hays Office and Saturday Matinees." Camera Obscura, 23. pp.91-108.
Dyer, Richard. "Monroe and Sexuality." in Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society (New York: St. Martins Press, 1986),pp.19-66.
Hirano, Kyoko. "The Japanese Tragedy: Film Censorship and the American Occupation." Radical History Review, April 1988. pp.67-92.
Meehan, Eileen R. "Holy Commodity Fetish, Batman!: The Political Economy of a Commercial Intertext." in Roberta E. Pearson and William Uricchio (Eds.), The Many Lives of the Batman (New York: Routledge, 1991), pp.47-65.
Musser, Charles. "Work, Ideology and Chaplin's Tramp." Radical History Review, April 1988. pp.37-66.
Rabinovitz, Lauren. "Temptations of Pleasure: Nickelodeons, Amusement Parks and the Sights of Female Sexuality." Camera Obscura, 23. pp.71-90.
Thompson, Kristin. "Dr. Caligari at the Folies-Bergere, or the Successes of an Early Avant-Garde Film," in Mike Budd (Ed.), The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Texts, Contexts, Histories (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990), pp.121-169.