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

Required Texts:
David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction
Stephen Rebello, Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho
Course Reader (Available from...)

This class is designed to provide students with advanced experience in the close analysis of film as an expressive medium. Sessions will be devoted to broad questions of perception, authorship, ideology, and style as well as to specific filmmaking techniques (editing, sound, camerawork, acting style, narrative construction, color) which contribute to our overall experience of film art. This course will be relatively light in reading, though students are expected to closely attend to the information and vocabulary introduced in the reading. We will spend relatively little time discussing the reading per se and students will be expected to master it on their own. Most of our time will be spent in applying concepts from the reading to specific examples, drawn from a range of different national cinemas and periods. One recurring concern of the class will be in better understanding the relationship between Classical Hollywood cinema and its alternatives in both the art cinema and in the post-classical popular cinema.
The key assumptions governing this course are formalist ones, though we will be thinking about the relationship between form and meaning (and between formal conventions and ideology.) This course operates on the belief that formal analysis is a skill which is best developed through application and practice. The writing load for this course will be intense, though I have made an effort to space the papers as well as possible to insure a steady workload throughout the term. You will need to keep up with the deadlines, since to do otherwise will throw you far behind and will not allow you to develop your skills at an appropriate pace. Your written work will be the focus of intense scrutiny by the instructor who will give you as much feedback as humanly possible to guide your mastery of the course skills. You should expect to get it back covered with ink and suggestions of improvement, even if the paper receives an A on the assignment. You are also expected to attend and participate actively in class discussion. We will often focus the class around a step-by-step analysis of a specific sequence, depending upon mutual brainstorming as the primary teaching method. This class will only be as good as your participation allows.
I would also like to encourage you to learn from each other. I will be promoting this in two ways: a)I would like to put all of the student papers on reserve so that they may be shared with the others in the class. b)Our final assignment will be a collectively written examination of the relationship between two films, Wages of Fear and Sorcerer.
Grading is not competitive in this class. I will be focusing on the merits of your individual work and the amount of progress you achieve this term. My hope is that all or most of you will be producing A level work by the end of the semester. If that is the case, this situation will be reflected in the final grades.

Note: Each three-hour class session is divided into two parts. Roughly the first 90 minutes will be devoted to lecture and class discussion. The remaining time will be devoted to the screening of the film which will be the focus of the following session's discussion. This class may and probably will run past the 5 p.m. time. All of the films we will be seeing will be available on video so if you must leave, you should feel free to do so. I would, however, like the flexibility to have a somewhat longer session where appropriate.

TH S 9 Introduction
Screening: Frank Film; Psycho

T S 14 Authorship.
Read: Alfred Hitchcock and the Mode of Production; Bordwell and Thompson, ch.1 Screening: The Player

TH S 16 Film Form
Read: B&T, pp.35-50
Screening:Letter From an Unknown Woman

T S 21 Narration
Read: B&T, 54-69
Screening: Discrete Charm of the Bourgeoisie

TH S 23 Narrative Conventions
Screening: Blue Velvet
SEGMENTATION DUE

T S 28 Genre and Post-classical Cinema
Screening: History and Memory;Thin Blue Line

TH S 30 Non-narrative Cinema
Read: B&T, 89-122; 291-297; 347-352
A Movie; Disney; Tex Avery; Brothers Quay

T O 5 Mise-en-scene
Read: B&T 127-146
Screen: All That Jazz
FIRST PAPER DUE

TH O 7 Color and Costume
Screen:Unfaithfully Yours

T O 14 Performance
Read: Jenkins on Performance and Unfaithfully Yours
Screen: The Best Years of Our Lives

T O 19 The photographic image
Read: B & T, 156-167
Screen:The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
MISE-EN-SCENE PAPER DUE

TH O 21 framing and wide-screen
Read: 167-199
Screen: Femme

T O 26 Feminist accounts of camera work
Read: Mulvey; Williams
Screen: Twilight of the Cockroaches

TH O 28 camerawork and Animation
Read: Branigan
Screen: Streets of Fire

T N 2 editing
Read: B&T, 206-218
Screen: Sunrise
SHOT BREAKDOWN DUE

TH N 4 classical editing
Read: B&T, 218-230
Screen: Sigmund Freud's Dora

T N 9 alternative modes
Read: B&T, 231-239
Screen: The Conversation
CAMERA WORK AND EDITING PAPER DUE

T N 16 sound
Read: B&T, 244-261
Screen: Hangover Square

TH N 18 Music
Read: Gorbman; Branigan
Screen: Citizen Kane

T N 23 Summary
Read: B&T 274-285, 72-83.
Screen: Wages of Fear
SOUND AND MUSIC PAPER DUE

T N 30 Class analysis project
Screen: Sorcerer

TH D 2, T D 7, TH D 9 Discuss Sorcerer Sequence by Sequence

FINAL PAPER DUE: TBA

SEGMENTATION: This first assignment gets you to think about how films are put together, specifically about their narrative organization. The primary tool for narrative analysis is the segmentation. You should select one of the films from the course as the basis for your first exercise. Prepare a segmentation of that film. Your segmentation should be detailed enough to facilitate a close analysis of the film's narrative structure. (See Bordwell and Thompson for various examples of segmentations.) Once you have completed your segmentation, I would like you to write a series of short paragraphs:
1)Briefly describe the basic principles structuring the film. What do you see as significant patterns emerging from your analysis? (Remember, this will be the focus of your next assignment so you do not need to be too detailed here, but you want to suggest what your thesis might be so that I can offer you feedback in advance of writing that paper.)

2)Briefly compare and contrast the film's introduction and conclusion. What issues get posed in the opening sequences? How does it build our expectations about the film as a whole? In what ways does the conclusion respond to the introduction? How important is it to the filmmaker to provide closure to the film?
3)Select one scene from the film (other than the introduction and conclusion). Identify it's function(s) within the film as a whole.
DUE September 23

NARRATIVE ANALYSIS: Taking your segmentation as a starting point, write a short (5-10 pages) analytic paper focusing on the narrative structure of a film from this course. Be sure to cite to specific points on your segmentation when referencing scenes in your analysis. ie. "The shower murder (Segment 1- scene 2b)." Your goal should be to combine generalizations about the film's structure with specific examples drawn from the film. Your essay should both describe the formal structures operating within the film and offer some interpretation of why the film is organized the way that it is. Your explanation might consider issues of aesthetic norms, genre traditions, authorship, or ideology. You should consider the questions which Bordwell and Thompson pose on p.50 in formulating your interpretation of the film. Remember that an analytic essay is making an argument about the film. It therefore requires an over-riding thesis and a series of subpoints which make arguments in support of that thesis. For each subpoint, you need to provide one or more (preferably more) examples which support your basic claims. You should be as precise as possible in discussing these examples. Do not assume that they speak for themselves. Rather, couple your reference to a specific scene with an interpretation of that scene that proves its relevance to your argument. You should not be afraid to go over the recommended page count but your goal should be to combine precision and conciseness. Please include your segmentation when you turn in this paper. You should try to account for as much of the film as possible within your analysis, though you will not, of course, be able to say all there is to say about the film. I will be looking for moments in the film which may contradict, challenge, or complicate your reading. You should anticipate my objections as far as possible and address them in writing your essay. Due October 5

MISE-EN-SCENE: Review the instructions on the last assignment. You are asked to write a short (7-10 page) analytic essay focusing on patterns of mise-en-scene within one of the films from the course. You may choose to build upon your analysis from the last paper and continue to work on the same film, but you are
encouraged to try your hand on a different film, preferably one which is of a different genre and/or period from the one you choose for the initial assignment. You may choose to narrow your discussion to focus only on acting or lighting or set design or costume or color, though these issues are often closely interwoven. You should look for repeated patterns which shed light on the film's overall formal and thematic development. Your task will be to identify consistent patterns, describe them in technically precise language, and then draw on them as the basis for your analysis and interpretation of the film. You should prepare a narrative segmentation to accompany your analysis and cite to it in discussing each scene. If you wish, you may prepare your segmentation in advance and submit it and some notes for feedback before writing the paper. This is not a course requirement and will not be graded. DUE October 19

SHOT BREAKDOWN: Select a 5-7 minute sequence from one of the films we have seen in the course. Prepare a shot-by-shot breakdown of that sequence using the terms which we have learned from Bordwell and Thompson. Your breakdown should include an indication of the duration of each shot, the narrative action represented, the camerawork employed (including a sense of framing, position, and movement). You will be employing this breakdown as a basis for your next analytic essay so you should be as precise as possible. Write a one page abstract of your next analytic essay to accompany the shot- breakdown. Remember, you do not need to write the whole paper at this stage, but you should give some indication of your thesis and basic arguments so that I can give you feedback before writing the essay.
Due November 2

CAMERAWORK AND EDITING: Write a 7-10 page essay exploring camerawork and editing in a brief (5-7 minute) segment from one of the films we have seen in the course. Your analysis should consider some of the issues discussed in Bordwell and Thompson, chapters six and seven. You should consider the segment's function within the film as a whole. How does the camerawork and editing here compare to larger strategies in the film? Is the segment representative of the film as a whole or does it represent a dramatic break stylistically? If the later, explain why the director might have chosen a different style for this segment. If the former, explain why the director chose to uses these techniques for this film. What does the camerawork and editing contribute to the emotional impact of this sequence? To the organization of space? Of Time? Of narrative causality? Of character psychology? Of audience identification? (You will obviously not be able to address all of these questions but you should think about them before preparing your analysis). DUE November 9

FILM SOUND
Bordwell and Thompson, Chapter Eight, and Claudia Gorbman, Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music provide some basic tools for analyzing the film soundtrack. The soundtrack consists of three basic materials -- spoken words, sound effects and music -- which can shape in various ways our emotional response to the narrative action. As with other elements of style, the soundtrack may be self-effacing, another aspect of the "invisibility" of the classical Hollywood cinema, or self-conscious, a source of excess, a vital element in the formal system. Based on these readings, develop a paper which addresses the role of the soundtrack in the cinema. You can confront this problem in several ways: one approach would be a fairly local analysis of a specific sequence from a film, such as you did for your camerawork and editing assignment. You would want to develop a segmentation based on the soundtrack, similar to the one Bordwell and Thompson prepare on pp.267-269. You would want to attend closely to what types of sounds the director employs and what functions they serve. A second approach would be to prepare a reading of an individual film, such as you did on your narrative and mise-en- scene papers. Here, you would look for general stylistic patterns that run across the work. You might for example want to develop an argument about Bernard Herrmann's score for Citizen Kane based on the Gorbman reading or about the impact of radio on Welles' conception of the soundtrack. S third option would be to develop an argument that involves more than one film, though here, your claims should be anchored in specific examples drawn from the films we have seen in this class. Here, one might want to discuss the similarities and differences between Herrmann's scores for Hangover Square and Citizen Kane or to discuss the increased self-consciousness about sound in contemporary films (such as The Conversation, Streets of Fire, The Player, All That Jazz, Blue Velvet) or the relationship between sound and deep focus photography (Best Years of Our Lives, Citizen Kane, etc.) For more examples of what you might write about sound, consult the Belton and Weis anthology, Film Sound, on reserve. Due November 23

FINAL PROJECT: The final several weeks of the course will be spent focusing on a single film, William Friedkin's Sorcerer, which is a vivid example of many aspects of post-classical film style. We will be working as a critical collective to walk through the film sequence by sequence, posing questions about the interplay of film style and ideology. Sorcerer is the remake of a more classically constructed film, Wages of Fear, which we will also see and use as a point of comparison. Our goal will be to make some significant generalization of how contemporary film style operates and how it differs from the classical tradition. As the class discussions draw to a close, we will be dividing our analysis of the film into parts. Each person will be responsible for writing a segment of a larger analysis of the film which is being jointly constructed by the class as a whole. You will be discussing with me and the class the contents you will be responsible for covering. I will then edit together the material and will give all members of the class a copy of the full analysis. DUE: TBA

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.