3 hours. 2 hours lecture and 2 hours lab per week.
History of Cinema II (1945-1990)
Critical Thinking
Course Description
The historical study of international cinema and film practice
from the World War II era to 1990, with emphasis on cinema's
global narrative, artistic, technological, and industrial
developments in the post-WWII and pre-digital era.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students: Longer written assignments and presentations on methodology.
Athena Title
History of Cinema II
Prerequisite
FILM 2120
Semester Course Offered
Offered fall and spring
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, students should be able to identify and describe major filmmaking movements and trends from 1945 to the present, citing the key narrative themes, stylistic choices, and aesthetic goals that characterize them.
By the end of the class, students should be able to explain how cinematic movements and trends have been shaped by political and social.
factors and by the economic conditions of international film industries and markets
By the end of the class, students should be able to perform close readings of film texts (verbal and written) that make use of precise vocabulary and make a persuasive argument about why certain aesthetic choices are meaningful within a scene, a film, a director’s body of work, and in relation to political or theoretical questions.
By the end of the class, students should be able to interpret historical documents relating to cinema, summarizing and evaluating the aesthetic goals and/or ideals explicitly and implicitly expressed in these texts.
By the end of the class, students should be able to develop a critical perspective on film reviews that beyond agreement or disagreement by identifying the authors’ expectations and values and the frameworks they use to evaluate films; by extension, go beyond value judgments (opinions) in our own reactions to movies in order to more fully consider their social and historical impact.
Topical Outline
Week 1: WWII-era Cinema Beyond Hollywood: Propaganda Film and the Avant-Garde
Week 2 - Film Noir from Wartime to the Cold War
Week 3 – Hollywood in the 1950s: From the Small Screen to Widescreen
Week 4 – Italian Neorealism and Postwar European Industries
Week 5 – Japanese Cinema and its International Reception
Week 6 – Mexico: A Popular Industry—and Art Cinema?
Week 7 – The French Nouvelle Vague
Week 8 - New German Cinema
Week 9 – Cinema and Liberation in the Arab World
Week 10 - India: From Popular to “Parallel” Cinema
Week 11 – Anti-Colonial Filmmaking in Africa
Week 12 – Radical Cinema in Latin America
Week 13 – Direct Cinema and Cinéma Vérité
Week 14 – An American New Wave? The “New Hollywood”
Week 15 - The Rise of the Blockbuster and “High-Concept” Filmmaking
Institutional Competencies
Critical Thinking
The ability to pursue and comprehensively evaluate information before accepting or establishing a conclusion, decision, or action.
