English 281: The Films of Marlon Brando

Transcription

1 English 281: The Films of Marlon Brando TTH: 13:00 N.4 Fall 2006 Dr. Glen Wickens Morris House 8 Office Hours: MWF 9:00-11:00 a.m. Telephone: ext gwickens@ubishops.ca This course examines the cinematic career of the actor generally considered to be the greatest in the history of American film. Attention will be given to the Stanislavski tradition and Method school of acting, to the political choices Brando made from film to film, to his changing star text, and to the creative influence of the actor as auteur. Texts: 1. Budd Schulberg, On the Waterfront: The Final Shooting Script (Samuel French) 2. John Steinbeck, Zapata (Penguin) 3. Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire (Signet) Copies of the screenplays for One-Eyed Jacks, The Godfather, Last Tango in Paris, The Missouri Breaks, and A Dry White Season are on reserve in the Library and available on one-day loan. All the movies (VHS and/or DVD) on the course are also available on one-day loan in the Library. Screenings of the films will be in N.4 on Friday afternoons beginning at 2:00 p.m. Schedule of Lectures, Screenings, and Assignments: September 7 Introduction to the course; Brando, Stanislavski, and the Method 8 Screening of a Streetcar Named Desire (1951) 12 A Streetcar Named Desire 14 A Streetcar Named Desire 15 Screening of Viva Zapata! (1952) 19 A Streetcar Named Desire 21 Viva Zapata! 22 Screening of On the Waterfront (1954) 26 Viva Zapata! 28 On the Waterfront 29 Screening of Sayonara (1957) October 3 On the Waterfront 5 Documentary on Brando s film career 17 On the Waterfront 19 Sayonara 20 Screening of One-Eyed Jacks (1961)

2 24 Sayonara 26 One-Eyed Jacks; First essay due 27 Screening of Burn! (1969) 31 One-Eyed Jacks November 2 Burn! 3 Screening of The Godfather (1972) 7 Burn! 9 The Godfather 10 Screening of Last Tango in Paris (1973) 14 The Godfather 16 The Godfather 17 Screening of The Missouri Breaks (1976) 21 Last Tango in Paris 23 Last Tango in Paris 24 Screening of A Dry White Season (1989) 28 Class Discussion of The Missouri Breaks 30 Class Discussion of A Dry White Season December 4 Second essay due Further Information for Students Weight of Marks Term lst essay 30% 2nd essay 30% Final Examination 30% Class attendance and Participation 10% l. Scale of Marks: Class Letter Grade Percentage First A 80 - l00 Second B Third C F (Failure) A student who does not do all the year's work (the examination and essays) places himself in jeopardy; he may be failed, regardless of how high his marks on submitted work. 3. Whatever the quality of the content, essays may be failed for stylistic or grammatical incompetence.

3 4. Students will be expected to have read works and seen films before the days assigned for discussion of them. 5. Regular attendance and class participation are both expected. The final examination will directly reflect the material and ideas discussed in class. 6. There is no supplemental examination for this course. 7. Essays must be handed in either to the professor or to the English Department secretary no later than 4:00 p.m. on the day on which they are due. 8. An essay that is handed in after the deadline will be penalized 5% per working day late. 9. The third edition of the MLA Handbook defines plagiarism as "the act of using another person's ideas or expressions in your writing without acknowledging the source" (l.6). For details, examples of plagiarism, and instructions for avoiding it, please read the entire article on plagiarism carefully (pp ). Also read the Department handout on Quotations, Citations, and List of Works Cited and the section about plagiarism and academic dishonesty on p. 21 of the Bishop's University Academic Calendar for If you are guilty of plagiarism, you will receive a mark of zero for the essay concerned; the members of the English Department and the Dean of the Division of Humanities will be informed. If you are guilty of a second offense, you will receive a mark of zero for the course; again, the members of the department and the Dean will be informed. 10. Students should see each film on the course at least twice, once during the public screening in N.4 and once in a private viewing at home or in the Morris House Multi- Purpose room or Conference room. To watch a film in one of these rooms ask the English Department secretary, Cheryl Porter, for access to the DVD or VHS player. 11. When quoting dialogue or voice over in a film make sure you consult the screenplay, if available, for accuracy. 12. The English Department now has available plagiarism detection services (PDS). 13. Please put your box number on your essay. English 281

4 First Essay Topics Due: October 26, 2006 Length: approx words Dr. Glen Wickens Choose one of the following: 1. Does Kazan succeed in turning the audience s sympathies towards Blanche with Brando playing Kowalski? 2. How does Marlon Brando use his body and physical objects to create the hedonistic, sensual Stanley Kowalski? 3. To the extent that he leaves the rape undramatized, Tennessee Williams was a master of audience psychology. Compare the treatment of the rape scene in Williams text and Kazan s film. 4. Commenting on Alex North s score for A Streetcar Named Desire, film composer Jerry Goldsmith remarks that film music was changed. It would never be the same. Discuss the way North uses jazz, dissonance, and sophisticated themes to comment upon character and milieu. 5. Tennessee Williams believed that sometimes a living quality is caught better by expressionism than what is supposed to be realistic treatment. Examine the mingling of expressionism and realism in Kazan s film version of A Streetcar Named Desire. 6. Is Blanche a tragic heroine or a pathological victim in Kazan s film version of A Streetcar Named Desire? 7. How do Lucinda Ballard s costumes enhance Kazan s conception of A Streetcar Named Desire as a conflict of social realities? 8. To what extent can Kazan s A Streetcar Named Desire be called a tragedy of misunderstandings, a tragedy of subjectivity? 9. What is at stake in the battle between Stanley and Blanche for Stella in Kazan s film version of A Streetcar Named Desire? 10. Is Brando s Kowalski so appealing that he becomes the prototype for a hero, the inarticulate hero of popular culture? 11. How do the lesser characters mirror the major conflicts in Kazan s A Streetcar Named Desire?

5 12. How do Richard Day s sets reinforce the dramatic tensions of A Streetcar Named Desire? 13. Discuss the relation between death and desire in Kazan s A Streetcar Named Desire. 14. What effect does black and white photography have on Williams colourful play? 15. Discuss the problem of censorship in Kazan s film version of A Streetcar Named Desire. 16. Do you agree that all the conflicts are outside Zapata? 17. To what extent is Viva Zapata! symbolic of the Cold War? 18. Is Viva Zapata a reactionary or revolutionary film? 19. Is Viva Zapata! a sustained anti-communist polemic? 20. How do sound and score emphasize the significance of basically visual events in Viva Zapata! 21. Discuss the role of Fernando in Viva Zapata! 22. Examine the relation between the individual and the collective in Viva Zapata!. 23. Do you agree that Viva Zapata! is concerned less with the Mexican Revolution than it is with the struggles of a single man? 24. The visual realization of Zapata s life... may well be the most enduringly revolutionary element of Viva Zapata! Examine the visual style of Viva Zapata! and the way Kazan tries to make the whole film pictorially eloquent. 25. Do you agree that The best scenes tend to be wordless ones in Viva Zapata!? 26. Discuss the links between the drama of revolution and the iconography of the Western genre in Viva Zapata! 27. Analyze the way Kazan tries to investigate scenes on two levels, the realistic and poetic, in Viva Zapata! 28. How does Brando try to make his Zapata a Mexican character? 29. Compare the two brothers as played by Marlon Brando and Anthony Quinn in Viva Zapata! 30. Analyze the motif of the Presidential Palace in Viva Zapata! 31. What makes the cab scene in On the Waterfront one of the most moving and superbly acted scenes in the history of movies?

6 32. Is the last sequence of On the Waterfront implicitly (if unconsciously) Fascist? 33. Examine Gene Milford s classic mix of close-ups and long-shots in the editing of On the Waterfront. 34. Is Brando s acting in On the Waterfront his most Method-inspired performance? 35. Does On the Waterfront have the same qualities as a Western? 36. How do Richard Day s carefully selected sites for location shooting reinforce the general theme of corruption and degradation in On the Waterfront? 37. How does Budd Schulberg s comment that Film is an art of high points apply to either On the Waterfront or Viva Zapata! 38. Examine the way the rhythmic flourishes and haunting melodic passages of Leonard Bernstein s score weave dramatic complexity into the visual and verbal images of On the Waterfront. 39. Discuss the way objects express emotions in some scenes from On the Waterfront. 40. Elia Kazan wanted his actors to be as real as the Hoboken locations. Discuss the casting, including the bit players, in On the Waterfront. 41. It s important, said Elia Kazan, that the central figures in a drama never be totally clear. How does Kazan make the viewer try to read the characters in On the Waterfront? 42. Compare the shooting script of either On the Waterfront or Viva Zapata! to the finished film. 43. Discuss either the screenplay of Viva Zapata! or On the Waterfront in terms of Elia Kazan s remark that A film script is more architecture than literature. 44. How do Brando s efforts in On the Waterfront to signify his inner feelings through speech, facial expression, and his body indicate a new direction in expressing masculinity? 45. How does Boris Kaufman s wintry and misty photography that bathes everything in poetic ugliness contribute to the story of crime and redemption in On the Waterfront? 46. Analyse the contribution of Franz Waxman s delicate and subtle score to Sayonara. 47. Discuss the function of the Japanese theatrical scenes in Sayonara. 48. How does Brando use the opportunity to develop and change a characterization while in

7 the course of playing it in Sayonara? 49. Discuss the theme of gender as performance in Sayonara. 50. Was Brando right in playing Major Gruver as a Southerner and insisting that the ending of James Michener s novel be changed? 51. How do cinematography and art direction conspire to create a new and appealing feminine Japan in Sayonara?

8 English 281: The Films of Marlon Brando Second Essay Topics DUE: December 4, 2006 LENGTH: app words Dr. Glen Wickens Choose ONE of the following: 1. How does Brando rethink the Western hero in One Eyed Jacks? 2. Why does Brando set most of his Western on the California coast, with shots of the beach and Big Sur? 3. To what extent can One-Eyed Jacks be viewed as Brando s Hamlet? 4. Discuss the contrasting visual styles in One-Eyed Jacks. 5. How does Hugo Friedhofer s score for One-Eyed Jacks help invisibly mend a film that had to be cut in half for theatrical release? 6. Discuss the psychological conflicts that help make One-Eyed Jacks a Method Western. 7. Discuss Brando s directing of the action sequences in One-Eyed Jacks. 8. Discuss the relationship between historical determinism and individual action in Burn! 9. To what extent can Burn! be called an ideological adventure story? 10. Discuss the mixture of Christian and African motifs in Ennio Morricone s score for Burn! 11. Analyse the function of the visual motif of black and white in Burn! 12. Discuss the treatment of violence in Burn! 13. Discuss the significance of the Walker/Dolores relationship in Burn! 14. Does the presence of Brando s star face partially destroy the sense of cinéma verité which is Pontecorvo s main strength? 15. How does Pontecorvo create visually the different zones of the revolutionary conflict on his fictional island? 16. Discuss the relation between fathers and sons in The Godfather. 17. Discuss the role of women in The Godfather.

9 18. Is Brando s performance in The Godfather merely technical acting? 19. Analyze the function of religious motifs in The Godfather. 20. Discuss the operatic quality of The Godfather. 21. Do you agree with Walter Murch that music in The Godfather is a collector and channeler of previously created emotion, rather than the device that creates emotion? 22. Analyze the significance of the wedding or the baptismal sequence in The Godfather. 23. Discuss the significance of the Sicilan interlude in The Godfather. 24. How does Gordon Willis s cinematography help shape our response to the world of crime in The Godfather? 25. To what extent does the business of family serve as a paradigm for American capitalism in The Godfather? 26. Discuss the conversion and transformation of Michael Corleone in The Godfather. 27. Discuss the representation of violence in The Godfather. 28. How does The Godfather recapitulate the generic tradition of the Hollywood crime genre? 29. Discuss the function of what Walter Murch calls metaphorical sound in The Godfather. 30. Discuss The Godfather as an intertext for The Sopranos. 31. How does the representation of the Mafia change from The Godfather to The Sopranos? 32. Discuss the significance of costuming in The Godfather. 33. Is Last Tango in Paris a pornographic film? 34. Discuss the relationship between the sexual and emotional aspects of the Paul/Jeanne relationship in Last Tango in Paris. 35. Examine the relation between Gato Barbieri s music and decisive moments in Last Tango in Paris. 36. Discuss the sexual politics of Last Tango in Paris. 37. Do you agree with Bertolucci that the masturbation scene in Last Tango in Paris is the core scene of the film?

10 38. How does Brando s performance in Last Tango in Paris recall his own screen career? 39. Discuss the differences between the screenplay and film of Last Tango in Paris. 40. Is Jeanne just a submissive, foolish young woman in Last Tango in Paris? 41. How does Last Tango in Paris mix film genres and challenge film conventions? 42. Is Last Tango in Paris an usually open text? 43. Discuss the relation between sex and death in Last Tango in Paris. 44. What is the main theme of Last Tango in Paris? 45. Discuss the function of doubling in Last Tango in Paris. 46. Analyse the use of split screens in Last Tango in Paris. 47. Discuss the function of parody in the Jeanne/Tom subplot of Last Tango in Paris. 48. Discuss the relation between Francis Bacon s paintings in the main title sequence and the rest of Last Tango in Paris. 49. Examine the function of camera movement in Last Tango in Paris. 50. Discuss the significance of the apartment in Last Tango in Paris. 51. Why is Bertolucci s film called Last Tango in Paris? 52. Does the final scene make an appropriate ending to Last Tango in Paris? 53. Does an antiwomanism permeate Last Tango in Paris? 54. Do you agree that The Missouri Breaks may play weirdly as a Western, but it makes perfect sense as a horror picture? 55. Discuss the significance of Brando s many accents and costumes in The Missouri Breaks. 56. Discuss The Missouri Breaks as a metaphor for the modern world. 57. Discuss the function of shifts of tone in The Missouri Breaks. 58. Is the ending of The Missouri Breaks hopeful or dark? 59. Examine the relation between editing and violence in The Missouri Breaks.

11 60. Do you agree that There s no depth to Clayton, and that s the pity of The Missouri Breaks? 61. What do the different acting styles of Brando and Nicholson contribute to the contest between their characters? 62. To what extent can The Missouri Breaks be called both an elaborate Western and a feminist film? 63. Discuss the relation between history and education in A Dry White Season. 64. Discuss the function of narrative pairings (eg. father/son, teacher/student, oppressor/oppressed, black/white) in A Dry White Season. 65. Was Euzhan Palcy wrong in foregrounding her white protagonist in A Dry White Season? 66. How does the fictional story of Benjamin Dutoit become embedded in a carefully observed historical context in A Dry White Season? 67. What does Brando s performance contribute to the representation of apartheid in A Dry White Season? 68. Is the killing of Stoltz the real climax of A Dry White Season or an easy way out? 69. How do camera work and editing techniques help to create multiple conflicting perspectives in A Dry White Season?