Emily Zants (zants@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.edu), Dept. of European Language and Literature, University of Hawaii, Manoa, Honolulu, HI 96822.
TEXT
Zants, Emily. Creative Encounters with French Films. Mellen Research University Press, 1993.
GRADING
The grade will be based on:
1. In-class activities
2. 6 projects, due before 1:45 p.m.
3. Midterms & Final (20 points each)
4. Major project (class eval.)
The 6 projects are evaluated as follows:
1) Creative exploration +2
2) Fullfills the project description +2
3) Computer generated +2
4) On time +4
LATE WORK WILL BE AN AUTOMATIC 60% OR LESS.
ATTENDANCE IS REQUIRED.
CLASS SCHEDULE
08/24 - Introduction. Buñuel: L'Age d'Or (1930) - 62 min.
08/26 - Bring magazine cutouts. Surrealist Event.
08/31 - Renoir: Grand Illusion (1937) - 113 min.
09/02 - Panel #1: Social class stereotyping.
09/07 - Project #1 due. Carné: Children of Paradise (1944) - 195 min.
09/09 - Panel #2: Reciprocity of art and life; group assignments
09/14 - Principles of Comedy; Tati: Mr. Hulot's Holiday (1953) - 90 min
09/16 - Panel #3: comedy; group meetings
09/21 - Project #2 due. The New Novel and Film; Resnais/Duras: Hiroshima mon amour (1959) - 91 min.
09/23 - Panel #4: Solitude and alienation; group meetings
09/28 - Truffaut: Les 400 Coups (1959) - 97 min. Review.
09/30 - EXAM #1
10/05 - Bresson: Mouchette
10/07 - Exams returned; Panel #5: Depicting the spiritual; group meetings
10/12 - Project #3 due. Chabrol: The Butcher (1969)
10/14 - Panel #6: Individual vs. society; group meetings
10/19 - Rohmer: Claire's Knee (1971) - 106 min.
10/21 - Panel #7: The effect of dialogue; group meetings
10/26 - Project #4 due. Tavernier: The Clockmaker (1973)
10/28 - Panel #8: Generation Gap; group meetings
11/02 - Varda: Vagabond (1985) - 105 min.
11/04 - Panel #9: Documenting an event; group meetings
11/09 - Project #5 due. Guest Lecturer
11/11 - Veteran's Holiday
11/16 - Malle: Goodbye, Children (1989) - 103 min.
11/18 - Panel #10: Children vs. Adult world; group meetings; Review.
11/23 - EXAM #2.
11/25 - Thanksgiving Holiday
11/30 - Project #6 due. Lelouch: A Man and a Woman (1966) - 103 min.
12/02 - Panel #11: The World's Greatest Lovers; group meetings.
12/07 - Lelouch: A Man and a Woman 20 Years Later (1986) - 112 min.
12/09 - Film Party
12/16 - 12:00 - Final Exam due in Prof. Zants' mailbox, MH 470.
Take Home Final Exam: Find a parallel between something in your own personal life and each of the films viewed in class from Bresson on. The parallel cannot be between something in the film and a friend's experience.
PANELS
Panels try to find ways to get the class to participate, using techniques of the film shown that week. The other students grade the panel.
INDIVIDUAL PROJECT ASSIGNMENTS
Approximately two-to-four page, computer-generated, double-spaced reports. Films viewed in class may NOT be used for project requirements.
All films referred to must be French Films. State the Project No. and Brief Description at the head of the report. No one topic may be used more than once. If you have your own idea for a project, please obtain the professor's approval before substituting it for any of the following:
Section I.
1. Discuss role-playing of a character in a French film not seen in class. State what technique the director used to communicate the role. Analyze the characteristics of a similar ole you yourself play the most often. This is Not a synopsis of a film.
2. Using a still camera, take a roll of photographs on one subject or person that you find interesting, impressive, or significant. Choose at least 4 that demonstrate this and arrange them in a sequence that you hope to make meaningful to the observer. Then discuss them as to distance, angle, point of view, size, arrangement of objects, or other techniques used to communicate this feeling.
3. Using a still camera and/or collecting existing photographs or pictures, create a pictorial essay of a social institution that you are familiar with--your version of school reality, church, home, club, party, dance, etc. Decide on a definite point of view: serious, artistic, satiric, sarcastic, humorous, tragic, sentimental, spoofing, realistic, ironic. Arrange the pictures in some kind of order, and as in the above assignments, comment on their effectiveness, beauty, significance, and the method you have used to communicate this.
4. View any French film not scheduled for class. On a different topic of your choice, imitate the dialogue, narration, technique or form. In a brief summary statement, compare what you have written to what was in the film you saw and in what way the technique of communication was similar.
5. Write a filmscript based on a scene from an original French short story incorporating techniques used by the French films viewed as appropriate. Include a page summarizing what these techniques are, and from what films.
6. Using characters from your favorite comic strip, satirize a portion of one of the French films seen in class. Summarize the technique that constitutes satire.
7. Using advertisements, compose your own surrealist juxtapositions and discuss the effect and nature of the technique.
Section II. Choose no more than two of the following to satisfy the project assignments:
1. Viewing three films by one director, analyze the elements they have in common that denote the director's style.
2. Read the story or script first, then view the film and compare and contrast. What are the additions, deletions, changes, improvements in representation of the main characters, plot structure, symbols, handling of time sequences, emotional and intellectual impact.
3. Research and prepare a written lecture on a French movie style, movement, genre, actor, or technique.
4. Compare and contrast the treatment of the theme of beauty and the beast in the film of Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame, Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast, Walt Disney's Beauty and the Beast, and in King Kong.
5. Research and analyze a type of French hero or heroine seen in French films. Explain why he or she is particularly "French" as a type, rather than American.
6. Illustrate, by clipping ads and pictures from magazines, the following photographic techniques: angle shot from below the subject; shot with effective use of contrast; angle shot from above the subject; large aperture, shallow depth of field (blurring of material in front of or behind a sharply defined subject); effective use of soft, diffused light; high shutter speed (time exposure; use of tripod, probably). Comment on the effect communicated by each kind of technique.
7. Compare two film versions of the same French literary work: Liaisons dangereuses, Nana, or Madame Bovary.
GROUP/SEMESTER PROJECTS
These are but suggestions; you may come up with your own idea. The group should be prepared to comment on the techniques used and their film sources after presentation to the class.
1. Select some subject about which you will make a documentary. Research it, develop the script for a film treatment. Film it, using video or slides, with sound.
2. Photographs (original or from other sources) illustrating a work of French prose or poetry. Analyze.
3. Write at least 3 commercials using techniques studied in the films seen in class. Use video, slides, or live performance.
4. Make a film that parodies film cliches such as a slow motion shot of two lovers running toward each other in a meadow, etc. Invent or use appropriate and entertaining literary titles before each series.
5. Make a film of film techniques. For example, use a series of montage shots to create a visual symbol; film a scene using flashbacks or flashforwards, etc. with titles before each technique.
6. Make a documentary, using various techniques, of UH administrative nightmares.