Course Description
The development of the international cinema and film practice from 1895 to 1945, with emphasis on cinema as a narrative, artistic, technological, and industrial medium.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students:
Longer written assignments plus presentations on methodology.
Athena Title
History of Cinema I
Prerequisite
FILM 2120
Semester Course Offered
Offered fall and spring
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
This course examines the history of motion picture development from its beginning in the 1890s to World War II. The class concentrates on major films, directors, movements, and technological changes in American and international cinema. Much of the course concerns silent cinema, foreign national cinemas, and the growth of the studios. A weekly film screening is required.
Topical Outline
I. Early Experiments in Moving Images II. Edison's Kinetoscope vs Lumiere's Cinematographe III. Early Narrative Cinema: Edwin S. Porter and Georges Melies IV. D.W. Griffith and American Cinema of the 1910s V. European Cinema in the 1910s VI. The American Studio System VII. French Cinema of the 1910s-20s VIII. German Expressionist Cinema IX. Soviet Montage Cinema and Sound-era Cinema X. Classical Hollywood Cinema of the 1920s XI. The Advent of Sound and Color in Cinema XII. American Sound Genres: The Musical and Gangster Film XIII. Shift from Silent to Sound Cinema in Japan, Latin America, and China XIV. France and Sound: Poetic Realism and Jean Renoir XV. American Film Noir and World War II
Syllabus