ACCR MSIT 310 The Symbolic Language of the Cinema

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1 ACCR MSIT 310 The Symbolic Language of the Cinema Credits: 3 Prerequisites: None Course description In this course the main elements and structures of the cinematic language, and the role of the cinema in our culture will be discussed and analyzed. Students will be introduced to different aspects of the cinematic code (shot, continuity, editing, narrative, direction, film sound, lighting), and to the theories and aesthetics of cinema. Course Objectives We ll analyse the several techniques of direction, from silent era to the present in all its steps (silent, classic, modern and post-modern). Additionally, we will discuss questions of film theory and its various philosophical contexts from silent era to the present, according the leitmotiv making cinema - thinking cinema which drives this course. Topics include the Soviet theory of montage, the Frankfurt School, the advent of structuralis, the cognitive analytical theory and the question of postmodernism. Other questions explored involve digital imagery and new media (for instance, how do digital techniques change cinema? Is the digital image a real image?). The most important objective of this course is to learn to see, because, as Wittgenstein said, seeing is always seeing as. The course is divided into two parts: In the first, students will acquire the vocabulary and the basic syntax of the cinematic language (e.g. frame composition, theories of montage, camera movements, sound, element of direction), analyzing sequences of several movies frame by frame, and the theories relating to it. In the final part of the course, students will use these tools to make a complete analysis of a full-length film, according the paradigm of one or more film theories studied during the first part. The main analytical approach used to achieve the course goals will be a frame by frame dissection of the most important movies, in terms of their cinematic language, followed by debates. Rationale and Impact of Course This is the program's chief course on cinema as an art form, exploring techniques and theories in historical context. As such, it appeals to the consistent number of students interested in film and media. Given Italy's contribution to film, covered in another course, it seems important to have a strong course on the broader development and problematics of the art form. In fact, the course encourages critical awareness of the medium and its international character. Portions of the course may connect with the treatment of aspects of culture in the Political Science courses. As noted below, the course connects egregiously with AI's Set Design department. Primary Learning and Country and Program Connection The course does not involve filmmaking, but each semester a visit is made to an operating set at Cinecittà. It is a course in which the specialized knowledge and professional affirmation of the Set Design come to the fore. The AI staff and their colleagues have developed encounters with specialists in such areas as lighting and, more important, with internationally recognized figures such as the set designer Gianni Quaranta and director Franco Zeffirelli. Future encounters may include meetings with Marco Bellocchio and Bernardo Bertolucci.

2 The course is paralleled by others on cinema in the program, and film and media studies are a focus in the course on Italian politics. Other courses deal with specifically Italian contributions to the art. Since the program is in Rome, center of the Italian film industry, and since Rome and Venice are among the cities that host world cinema festivals, some of which (e.g. at Pordenone) address historical or typological themes, it is appropriate to study cinema on a broader but reflective level. Course Learning Outcomes At the end of the course, students will have a good knowledge of the main questions of aesthetic of the cinema but, above all, they will be able to analyze a movie and to distinguish different styles, questions and poetics. Furthermore, they will acquire basic elements of direction and they will be able to solve some basic questions of direction. Finally, students will acquire the capability to see cinema as a social fact, but also as a way to reflect about the ontological ambiguity of reality. Course Requirements There are mid-term and final exams, and a final paper. The examinations consists of short-answer and essay questions, some involving shots and texts. The test questions are designed to (1) cover basic definitions and (2) evidence the ability to apply basic concepts and theoretical constructs. Occasional quizzes (no more than 3 per semester, including at least 1 reaction paper) test that technical definitions and major elements of theory have been grasped. Brief assignments will include brief responses to selected readings, and analysis of film sequences (identification of elements present, e.g. subjective shot; translation into basic storyboard). The coursework is a means for the student to put analytical approaches into practice and test them. The final paper shoule be the critical analysis of a full-length film mentioned above. The topic must be approved by the instructor, who will provide suggestions. The paper must be 10 pages in length and must observe the standard college format (double-spaced, 12-point font, separate title page, etc.). It must refer to at least 7 sources, including 3 books, and all materials consulted including websites must be adequately cited. This holds for online materials as well. Evaluation Grading follows the 10-point scale (90-100% A, etc.). Unjustified absences will result in a lowering of the final grade. The division of the final grade is as follows: participation 10%; quizzes and assignments 10%; mid-term 25%; final 35%; final paper 20% Textbooks a) Bordwell and Thompson, Film Art: an Introduction, McGrawHill, 2003 b) Robert Stam, Film Theory: an Introduction, Blackwell, 2000 Selections from A.Reeves, Shooting Films Shot by Shot, New York 1989, and J. Mitry, The Aesthetics and Psychology of the Cinema, Indiana University 1999, will be distributed in class. Bibliography; other resources Various additional texts and bibliographical suggestions (for film, filmmakers, film criticism and so forth) will be dispensed during the course. Useful general works include: Timothy Corrigan, A Short Guide to Writing about Film, New York, Longman, 1998; John Hill & Pamela Church Gibson, The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, Oxford, OUP, Good online materials are available at various university department websites (for instance, Film Studies at UC Berkeley). Other useful material in internet include the archives of film reviews of various networks and newspapers (e.g. BBC). Most cinema festivals have informative and stimulating websites: that for the Venice Film Festival has an obvious attraction. In addition, there are various online journals with texts and good links (e.g. Senses of Cinema; The Film Journal; Sight and Sound). Some of these sources are open only to subscribers. Through My.Arcadia provided to all

3 students, there is access a highly important and authoritative collection of pertinent materials written since 1972, at FIAF, the International Federation of Film Archives. The best-stocked video rental store in Rome is conveniently located off nearby Piazza Farnese (via Monserrato). Goldblatt, D. and Lee, D., ed., Aesthetics: A Reader in Philosophy of the Arts, Prentice-Hall, 1996 Branigan, E., Narrative Comprehension and Film, Routledge, 1992 Branigan, E., Projecting a camera: language-games in film theory, Routledge, 2006 Bordwell, D., On the history of film style, Harvard, 1998 Bordwell, D. and Thompson, T., Film art: an introduction with film viewer's guide and tutorial, 7th ed., McGrawHill, 2003 Cooper, D., A Companion to Aesthetics, Oxford and New York: Blackwell, 1995 Corrigan, T., A Short Guide to Writing about Film, New York, Longman, 1998 (in AI library) Hill, John and Church Gibson, Pamela, The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, Oxford, OUP, 1998 (in AI library) Katz, Steven D., Film directing shot by shot: Visualizing from concept to screen, Ann Arbor: Braun- Brumfield, 1991 (in AI library) Landy, M., Italian film (in AI library) Liehm, M., Passion and defiance: film in Italy from 1942 to the present, New York: Library of America, 2006 (in AI library) Lopate, P., ed., American movie critics from the silents until now (in AI library) Malkiewicz, Kris, Cinematography: a guide for film makers and film teachers Marcus, M., Italian Film in the light of Neorealism, Princeton: PUP, 1986 (in AI library) Mitry, J., The aesthetics and psychology of the cinema, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1999 (in AI library) Parkinson, D., History of film, London: Thames & Hudson (in AI library) Reeves, A., Shooting films shot by shot, New York, 1989 (in AI library) Reisz, Karl and Millar, Gavin, The technique of film editing, 2nd ed., Focal Press, Butterworth, London, 1981 Sorlin, Pierre, The Film in History, 1980 Stam, R., Film Theory: an introduction, Blackwell Publishing 2000 (in AI library) Zizke, S., Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan Through Popular Culture, 2003

4 Deleuze, G., Cinema 1: The Movement Image; Cinema 2: The Time Image, Braudy, L. and Cohen, M., ed., Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Reading, New York and Oxford: OUP, 2004 Miller, T. and Stam, R., ed., Film and Theory: An Anthology, Blackwell, 2004 Course Outline N.B. Textbook readings indicated are to be prepared before class meetings. The dates and times of out-of-class screenings will be arranged, as will an excursion to Cinecittà. Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Introduction at the cinema: the act of seeing; the ancestors of the cinema: magic lantern and optical toys; early devices: Dickson, Edison; the fathers of cinema: Lumière, Meliès in France; Porter and Griffith in the U.S.; a first question: documentary and fiction. Film: The Great Train Robbery (1903) by E. Porter Read: lecture notes about the lesson. The silent era; The discovery of the shot as the main syntactic unit of a film; The structure of a silent movie: the early example of decoupage; The definition of montage, and different montage styles of the silent era: Griffith and the parallel montage; the soviet theorists, Cine-Eye; early theories about the essence of cinema: Hugo Munsterberg, Bela Balazs, Ricciotto Canudo. Film: sequences of October (1927) and The Battleship Potemkin (1925) by S. Ejzenstejn; The Birth of a Nation (1915) by D. Griffith; Foolish wives (1922) by E. von Stroheim. Read: Stam, chaps. 1-5; Bordwell, chaps. 2, 3, 12 ; lecture notes. The filmic space: frame, shot, scene, sequence; frame composition, angles; the field/ out of field relation; depth of focus; subjective and objective shots; early camera movements; German Expressionism; birth of the documentary; Russian formalism: Tynianov and Bachtin; the historical avant-gardes: Gance, Dulac, Leger. Film: sequences of Ballet méchanique (1924) by Fernand Léger; Metropolis (1926) by Fritz Lang; La coquille et la clergyman (1926) by Germaine Dulac; Sunrise (1927) by F. Murnau; The passion of Joan of Arc (1928) by T. Dreyer. Read: Stam, chaps. 6, 7 ; Bordwell, chaps 2-5,12 ; lecture notes. The advent of the sound: how decoupage changes; the great season of American cinema: John Ford, Howard Hawks, Joseph von Sternberg and Frank Capra; the American musical; cinema as favourite medium of the mass; the question of the cultural industry: the Frankfurt School and the technical reproducibility of the work of art. Film: sequences of Stagecoach (1939) by John Ford; Scarface (1932) by Howard Hawks; The Blue Angel (1930) by J. von Sternberg. Read: Stam, chaps. 8, 9 ; Bordwell, chaps. 3-5,12 ; lecture notes. The phenomenology of realism: the advent of the cinema of continuity and the birth of modern direction: long-take and camera movements; The Director as auteur: the French critic paradigm: Bazin, Arnheim, Kracauer and Merleau-Ponty; Film: sequences of Citizen Kane (1940) by Orson Welles; Little fox (1941) by William Wyler; Gone with the wind (1939) by King Vidor. Read: Stam, chaps. 10,11,12 ; Bordwell, chaps. 7,10,12 ; lecture notes

5 Week 6 Week 7 Week 8 Final paper topic muts be approved by instructor this week. More on realism: French Realism and Italian Neorealism; Cinema as witness of social contradictions; Poetic Realism; The question of dubbing; Film and theory in the Third World. Film: The rules of the game (1939) by Jean Renoir ; Les enfants du Paradis (1945) by Marcel Carné ; Roma, città aperta (1945) by Roberto Rossellini ; Ladri di biciclette (1946) by Vittorio De Sica. Read: Stam, chaps. 13 ; Bordwell chaps. 11, 12; lecture notes (Bazin, Mitry) Mid-Term Exam. The aesthetics of Nouvelle Vague: the birth of the post-modern cinema; The question of the language; Cinema as writing: Eric Rohmer ; Cinema as discontinuity and open work of art: Jean-Luc Godard; Cinema as Time: Alain Resnais; Structuralism, Semiotics, Ideology and Psychoanalysis: cinema thinks itself; Barthes, Metz, Althusser, Brecht, Burch. Film: sequences of Breathless (1960) by J.L. Godard; Hiroshima mon amour (1959) by A. Resnais. Full-length film: Two or three things I know about her by J.L. Godard Read: Stam, chaps ; Bordwell, chaps. 10,11,12; lecture notes Week 9 Week 10 Week 11 Week 12 Week 13 Week 14 The golden period of 1960s cinema: Fellini, Antonioni, Hitchcock, Bergman, Kubrick and Kurosava; the perfect composition of the shot, the use of the light, shot as tableau-vivant; Post-structuralism: Derrida, Deleuze and the Time-Image; cinema becomes thought; the role of the subjective interpretation. Full-length film: 8 ½ (1963) by Federico Fellini. Read: Stam, chaps ; Bordwell chaps. 9,10,12 ; lecture notes. Recent Asian cinema: the vertical perspective, the cinema of the instant, between cruelty and social alienation. Kim-Ki Duk and Wong Kar-Wai. Full-length film Samaritan (2004) by Kim-Ki Duk.; sequences of 2046 by Wong Kar-Wai. Read: Stam, chaps. 37, 38; Bordwell, chap. 12; lecture notes. Beyond reality, beyond the image; dreams, fears, stream-of-consciousness; reality as an incomplete puzzle; David Lynch as the most important expression of postmodern cinema; the image looks at the viewer; Baudrillard and Zizek. Film: Lost Highway (1996) by David Lynch Read; Stam, chaps. 32,39,40 ; lecture notes Sound and image; the discovery of the digital technology; the development of the long take, rhythm of the shot and rhythm of the film; how the image changes; discontinuous cinema: DOGMA95 and the aesthetic of the hand-held camera. Film: sequences of Russian Ark (2002) by Alexandr Sokurov [the first real one-take movie]. Full-length film: Dogville (2003) by Lars von Trier Read: Stam chaps. 29, 40-42; Bordwell, chaps. 9,10,12; lecture notes. Review of the major themes of the course. Full-length movie: Wild at heart by David Lynch. Final paper due. Final Exam.