BA HONS FILM AND TELEVISION YEAR 2/LEVEL 5 THEORY AND CRITICISM

BA HONS FILM AND TELEVISION YEAR 2/LEVEL 5 THEORY AND CRITICISM Module: 2FTP514 STORY, STRUCTURE & STYLE Semester 1: September 2013 to January 2014 Credits: 15 Module Leader: Phil Yeats Lecturers: Phil Yeats & Ian Green E-mails: P.Yeats@westminster.ac.uk; greeni@westminster.ac.uk Room and Times: Mondays, Kodak Lecture Theatre (KLT), 2.00pm to 5.00pm ASSIGNMENT DEADLINES: The module requires 2 pieces of coursework. Essay 1: 1500 words Due Wednesday, November 6 th, 2013, worth 40% Essay 2: 2000 to 2500 words Due Thursday, January 9 th, 2014, worth 60% See end of this Outline for essay questions and details of submission. INTRODUCTION: Not all films try to create a believable, fictional world, but often narrative is taken as the main function of cinema. The stories which films tell are often difficult to distinguish from the films themselves. Theorists and practitioners have worked hard to do this and to define the structures and rules of narrative. This module will explore in some detail the principal features of film narrative and the relationship between various approaches to narrative and the Twentieth Century theories and methodologies on which they draw. We will look at the strategies and devices films use to organise and develop their stories and examine the debates around how and in what ways the spectator becomes caught up in the film text. In your essays and class discussions, you will be expected to engage critically with the concepts covered and to assess their usefulness in interpreting the films screened on the module. READING: The following books/articles provide useful material for this module. Many of them are repeated as specific reading under the relevant weeks. Remember the library holds only limited copies, but a number of these main texts are available in the Key Texts Room for use in the Library. Check on the library catalogue. Some of the key articles and individual chapters are also available on the module's Blackboard site under e-readings. These are indicated with a letter (B) on the Outline under individual weeks. Only a limited amount of material can be reproduced on Blackboard - so while it is hoped this will be helpful and reduce pressure on some key reading, it does not replace your own library research. Where books or articles are available as e-books or e-journals this is indicated with an (E) and can be accessed on-line through the library s website. General Books on Film Theory and Film Studies David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction, 8th edition (McGraw Hill, 2008) especially Chapter 3, Narrative as a Formal System. Similar material appears in the earlier editions. David Bordwell & Noel Carroll (eds) Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (University of Wisconsin Press, 1996) Several relevant articles on spectatorship, identification and film music in Part II: Film Theory and Aesthetics. Richard Maltby, Hollywood Cinema (Blackwell, 2003) Robert Burgoyne, Film Narratology, Part III of the book by Robert Stam, Robert Burgoyne and Sandy Flitterman Lewis, New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics (RKP, 1992) especially pp 69-122, though other sections are also useful. 1

Pam Cook (ed) The Cinema Book (BFI, 2007) especially Annette Kuhn Classic Hollywood Narrative pp 45-47 and Part 7: Developments in Theory. Earlier editions have the material differently organized. Richard Dyer, Stars (BFI, 1990 & 1998) John Hill & Pamela Church Gibson (eds) The Oxford Guide to Film Studies (OUP, 1998) Steve Neale & Murray Smith (eds) Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (Routledge, 1998) Part III: Aesthetics and Technology and Part IV: Audience, Address and Ideology are particularly useful. Bill Nichols (ed), Movies and Methods, Vol I (Univ. of California Press, 1976) Part 3: Theory, and Movies and Methods, Vol. II (Univ. of California Press, 1985) Part 4: Structuralist Semiotics Narrative Theory and Aesthetics Roland Barthes, S/Z (Hill & Wang, 1974) pp 3-30, and Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives in his Image, Music, Text (Flamingo, 1977) David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film (Methuen, 1985) David Bordwell, The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies (Univ. of California Press, 2006) Alan Casty, The Dramatic Art of the Film (Harper and Row, 1971) This book is out of print and there are only a few copies in the library Seymour Chatman, Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (Cornell, 1978) Seymour Chatman, Coming to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film (Cornell University Press, 1990) Jakob Lothe, Narrative in Fiction and Film: An Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2000) Christian Metz, Film Language (OUP, 1974), especially chapters 4-7, and Language and Cinema (Mouton & Co., 1974), especially chapters 4-6 and 10 Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale (Univ. of Texas Press, 1968) Murray Smith, Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema (Oxford University, Press, 1995) Kristin Thompson, Storytelling in the New Hollywood: Understanding Classical Narrative Technique (Harvard University Press, 1999). Her Storytelling in Film and Television (Harvard Univ. Press, 2003) explores the differences and similarities in storytelling in these two media through close analysis of texts. Tzvetan Todorov, The Poetics of Prose (Blackwell, 1977) Screenwriting Handbooks Ken Dancygar & Jeff Rush, Alternative Scriptwriting: Successfully Breaking the Rules, Third Edition (Focal Press, 2002) The second edition, 1995, is also useful Syd Field, The Screenwriter s Workbook, (Dell, 1984) & Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting (Dell, 1994) particularly the chapters dealing with characters, The Definitive Guide to Screen Writing (Ebury Press, 2003). These all basically say the same thing. 2

Cherry Potter, Screen Language: From Film Writing to Film-making (Methuen, 2001) Narrative theories draw on the concepts of formalism, structuralism, post-structuralism and postmodernism. These concepts are relevant to traditions other than film. In this country they have been most fully elaborated in discussions of literature and, on the continent, in connection with philosophy, anthropology and sociology. Therefore it may be necessary to think about these ideas beyond their use in film studies. Listed below are some useful introductory books that explore these ideas. John Hill & Pamela Church Gibson (eds) The Oxford Guide to Film Studies contains a number of useful readings, particularly in the section The Film Text: Theoretical Frameworks Richard Harland, Superstructuralism: The Philosophy of Structuralism and Post-Structuralism (RKP, 1987) Terence Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics (RKP, 1977) Tony Bennett, Formalism and Marxism, esp. Chapter 2, Russian Formalism (Methuen, 1979) Richard Kearney, Modern Movements in European Philosophy, sections on phenomenology and structuralism (Manchester University Press, 2nd edition, 1994) Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction, Chapters 2, 3 & 4 (Basil Blackwood Ltd., 1983) Anthony Easthope, British Post Structuralism Since 1968, esp. chapter 3 on Film Theory (RKP, 1988) and his Classic Film Theory and Semiotics in The Oxford Guide to Film Studies Jonathan Bignell, Media Semiotics: An Introduction (MUP, 2002) WEEK 1, SEPTEMBER 23: Introduction to the module Paradigms of narrative The idea of the classical Screening: Extracts TBA Richard Maltby, A Classical Cinema?, and Theories of Narration in his Hollywood Cinema, (Blackwell, 2003) pp 14-19 & 458-461 Syd Field, The Screenwriter s Workbook or Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting Ken Dancyger & Jeff Rush, Alternative Scriptwriting, Chapter 1, Beyond the Rules (B) David Bordwell, Classical Narration: The Hollywood Example, Chapter 9 in his Narration in the Fiction Film. pp 156-204, (Routledge, 1985) Other descriptions of the classical Hollywood narrative can be found in Bordwell and Thompson s Film Art; (E) Bordwell, Thompson and Staiger, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: film style and mode of production to 1960 (Routledge, 1985) and Cook, The Cinema Book, (2007) pp 45-47 Pam Cook & Mieke Bernink (eds) The Cinema Book (BFI, 1999) The Classic Narrative System pp 39-42; Part 7: Theoretical Frameworks pp 319-341. 3

WEEK 2, SEPTEMBER 30: Questioning The Classical Hollywood Narrative Happy endings and censorship Screening: Extracts From I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (USA, M. LeRoy, 1932) Little Caesar (USA, Mervyn LeRoy, 1930) Scarface (USA, Howard Hawks, 1932) The Public Enemy (USA, William A Wellman, 1931) (B) Elizabeth Cowie, Storytelling: classical Hollywood cinema and classical narrative in Steve Neale and Murray Smith, Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (Routledge, 1998) Richard Maltby (2003) The Public Enemy & More Sinned Against Than Sinning on web site: Senses of Cinema, http://sensesofcinema.com/2003/cteq/public_enemy/ & http://sensesofcinema.com/2003/feature-articles/pre_code_cinema/ Leonard J. Leff and Jerold L. Simmons, The Dame in the Kimono: Hollywood, Censorship and the Production Code from the 1920s to the 1960s (Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1990) pp. 17-32. WEEK 3, OCTOBER 7: Characters and spectatorship The female star persona Screening: Extracts including: Baby Face (USA, Alfred E Green, 1933) Red-headed Woman (USA, Jack Conway, 1932) Shanghai Express (USA, Josef Von Sternberg, 1932) Dishonoured, (USA, Josef Von Sternberg, 1931) Blonde Venus (USA, Josef Von Sternberg, 1932) Morocco, (USA, Josef Von Sternberg, 1930) The Devil is a Woman (USA, Josef Von Sternberg, 1935) (B) Murray Smith, Engaging Characters, Chapters 1-3 - Chapter 3 on Blackboard (B) Laura Mulvey, 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' in Patricia Ehrens (ed) Issues in Feminist Film Criticism (Indiana Univ. Press, 1990) The article is also reprinted in a number of compilations of seminal articles on film as well as a chapter in Mulvey's own book called Visual and other pleasures (Macmillan, 1989) Richard Maltby, Baby Face or How Joe Breen Made Barbara Stanwyck Atone for Causing the Wall Street Crash in Screen, Vol. 7, no. 2(1986) (B) Richard Dyer, Stars and Characters, Chapter 7 in 1998 edition Richard Maltby, chapter 12, Performance 1 pp 372-389 in his Hollywood Cinema (Blackwell, 2003) Further Gaylyn Studlar, Masochism And The Perverse Pleasures of The Cinema, in Bill Nichols (ed.) Movies and Methods Volume 2 (University of California Press, 1976) pp. 602-621 4

Anne Kaplan, Fetishism and the Repression of Motherhood in VonSternberg s Blonde Venus (1932) in her Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera (Routledge, 1996) Jonathan Bignell, Media Semiotics: an Introduction (M.U.P., 2002) Chapter 8 'Cinema' WEEK 4, OCTOBER 14: Screening: Extract From Syntagmatic Narrative Analysis 1 Propp, Formalism and the Folktale Model Causality and Function The Opening and Development of Narratives Seeker Heroes and Victim Heroes The Searchers (USA, 1956, John Ford) Films to think about openings in Proppian terms: North By Northwest (USA, 1959, Alfred Hitchcock) Apocalypto (USA, 2006, Mel Gibson) The Godfather (USA, 1972, Francis Ford Coppola) (B) Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale only Chapter III is available on Blackboard. But Ch II, ChVI and above all: An Example of Analysis of a Tale, pp 97-99, and Appendix IV: List of Abbreviations, pp149-155 are all short and very well worth reading. Spend as much time on this reading as you can. Further (B) Roland Barthes, Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives, in his Image, Music Text pp 70-124, also reprinted in his The Semiotic Challenge, (University of California Press, 1994) and (ed) Susan Sontag, A Roland Barthes Reader (Vintage, 1982) (B) Peter Wollen, North By Northwest: A Morphological Analysis, Film Form, No. 1 (1976); reprinted in his Readings and Writings (Verso, 1988) (B) Lesley Brill, North by Northwest and Hitchcockian Romance Film Criticism, Vol. 6, no.3 (1982) pp 1-17, also in his book, the Hitchcock Romance: Love and Irony in Hitchcock s Films (Princeton University Press, 1988) John L. Fell, Vladimir Propp in Hollywood, Film Quarterly, Vol.30 No.3 (1977) WEEK 5, OCTOBER 21: Syntagmatic Narrative Analysis 2 - More on the Functions of Openings Description and Narration (when are events narrativised?) Bubble Openings (the Preparatory Section is its own Story) Symbolic Openings (The Opening acts as a signifier of the entire narrative, destiny) Enigma Openings (everything signifies a mystery to be solved) 5

Screening: Extracts From 2001: A Space Odyssey (USA/UK, 1968, Stanley Kubrick) Red River (USA, 1948, Howard Hawks) Young Mr Lincoln (USA, 1939, John Ford) Close Encounters of The Third Kind (USA, 1977, Steven Spielberg) Essential Christian Metz, Notes Towards a Phenomenology of the Narrative, Chapter 2 of Film Language. A Semiotics of the Cinema (Oxford University Press, 1974). Further Ian Christie, Formalism and Neo-Formalism in Hill and Gibson, Oxford Guide to Film Studies, pp 58-63 WEEK 6, OCTOBER 28: Screening: Extracts From Paradigmatic Narrative Analysis Levi-Strauss, Structuralism and the Myth Model Oppositions and Binary oppositions Spectacle and Narrative Structuralism and Genre: The Musical, The Fantastic, etc. South Pacific (USA, 1958, Joshua Logan) My Fair Lady (USA, 1964, George Cukor) Mary Poppins (USA, 1964, George Stevenson) The Sixth Sense (USA, 1999, M Night Shyamalan) Essential Claude Levi-Strauss,. The Structural Study of Myth in Structural Anthropology (Vol. 1) (Penguin,1972); reprinted in part in Caughie, John (ed.) Theories of Authorship (RKP, 1981). Todorov s Analysis of The Fantastic (in literature): Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic. A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre (Cornell, 1975), especially pp 24-44. Select from the Following on The Musical as a genre operating through oppositions and/or dualfocus narratives Rick Altman, The American Film Musical (Indiana University Press/BFI, 1987), Chs II and III. Rick Altman, The American Film Musical: Paradigmatic Structure and Mediatory Function, in (ed) Rick Altman, Genre: The Musical (RKP, 1981) Rick Altman, The American Film Musical as Dual-Focus Narrative, in (ed) Steven Cohan, Hollywood Musicals, The Film Reader (Routledge, 2002) Jane Feuer, The Self-reflective Musical and the Myth of Entertainment in Rick Altman, Genre: The Musical (RKP, 1981); also in, (ed) Steven Cohan, Hollywood Musicals, The Film Reader (Routledge, 2002) Jane Feuer, Ch 1, Mass Art as Folk Art from her The Hollywood Musical (Macmillan/BFI, 1981) 6

Richard Dyer, Entertainment and Utopia, in (ed) Steven Cohan, Hollywood Musicals, The Film Reader (Routledge, 2002); also in, Rick Altman, Genre: The Musical (RKP, 1981) Further Jim Kitses, Authorship and Genre: Notes on the Western, in Horizons West (Thames and Hudson/BFI, 1970). A number of contemporary Hollywood filmmakers and scriptwriters have come to Propp and Levi Strauss through the work of Joseph Campbell on myth. If you are interested in pursuing this you can look at Campbell s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, first published in 1949 and available in Fontana paperback (1993) also Christopher Vogler s A Writer s Journey [see Essay One Titles] WEEK 7, NOVEMBER 4: Lecture: Mise-en-scène: The organisation of cinematic space Extracts including some of the following: The Big Heat (1953, Fritz Lang), The Lady from Shanghai (1948, Orson Welles), Caught (1948, Max Ophuls), Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock), The Searchers (1956, John Ford), Tokyo Story (1953, Yasujiro Ozu), Black Narcissus (1947, Powell & Pressburger), The Third Man (1949, Carol Reed), The Conformist (1969, Bernardo Bertollucci), Mirror (1975, Andrei Tarkovsky), Rebel Without a Cause (1955, Nicholas Ray), Yellow Earth (1984, Chen Kaige) V.F. Perkins, Film as Film, Chapters 5 and 6 Richard Maltby, Hollywood Cinema: An Introduction (Blackwell, 2003) Space 1 pp 311-331 Fereydoun Hoveyda, Sunspots, Cahiers du Cinema, no.110 (August 1960); reprinted in Jim Hillier (ed) Cahiers du Cinema, vol. 2 (BFI/RKP, 1986), pp 135-145 David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Chapter 4, The Shot: Mise-en-scène, Chapter 5 The Shot: Cinematography, and Chapter 7 on Sound, in their Film Art: An Introduction, 2010 or 2008 edition. WEEK 8, NOVEMBER 11: Mise-en-scène presentations. Groups will introduce extracts to be discussed in terms of mise-en-scène as a function of narration; a stylistic strategy which creates meaning. 7

WEEK 9, NOVEMBER 18: Film Language and Realism Screening: Extracts From Citizen Kane (1940, USA, Orson Welles) The Little Foxes (William Wyler, 1941) The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946) Time Code (2000, USA, Mike Figgis) André Bazin, William Wyler, or the Jansenist of Directing,& The Technique of Citizen Kane, in Bert Cardullo (ed), Bazin at Work Major Essays and Reviews from the Forties and Fifties, Routledge, 1987, pp 1-22 & 231-239. John Belton, Bazin is Dead! Long Live Bazin!, Wide Angle, 9/4, 1987, pp 74-81 (B) Christian Metz, Chapter 4 of his Language and Cinema, Plurality of Cinematic Codes Further Christian Metz, Some Points in the Semiotics of the Cinema, Problems of Denotation in the Fiction Film, Chapters 4 & 5 of his book Film Language pp 92-182; reprinted in Braudy and Cohen (eds) Film Theory and Criticism, 6th edition pp 68-89. also in earlier editions, with different page numbers Pier Paolo Pasolini, The Cinema of Poetry (pp 542-558) and Umberto Eco, Articulations of the Cinematic Code (pp 590-607) both articles reprinted in Nichols (ed), Movies and Methods, Vol. I Dudley Andrew, The Major Film Theories (OUP, 1976) Chapter 8, Christian Metz and the Semiology of the Cinema John Thompson Structuralism and its Aftermaths in Pam Cook (ed) The Cinema Book (2007 edition) on Saussure and Metz, pp 510-515 Robert Stam, et al, New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics, Part II, Cine-Semiology WEEK 10, NOVEMBER 25: Problems of Realism Screening: Extracts From Tout Va Bien (France, Gorin & Godard, 1972) Klute (USA, Pakula, 1971) (B) Colin MacCabe: Realism in the Cinema: Notes on Some Brechtian Theses reprinted in his book, Theoretical Essays (Manchester Univ. Press, 1985); originally in Screen, Vol. 15, no. 2 (1974); extracts in Christopher Williams (ed) Realism in the Cinema (RKP, 1980) Further (B) Christopher Williams, After the Classic, the Classical and Ideology: The Differences of 8

Realism in Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams (eds) Reinventing Film Studies (Arnold, 2000) Anthony Easthope, Classic Film Theory and Semiotics in Hill & Gibson, The Oxford Guide to Film Studies John Thompson, Structuralism and its Aftermath sections on Narrative and audience, the classic realist text, criticism of classic realism, Psychoanalysis and film pp 519-525 in Pam Cooks The Cinema Book Richard Maltby, Theories of Narration in his Hollywood Cinema, pp 458-461 (B) Peter Wollen, Godard and Counter-Cinema: Vent d Est in his Readings and Writings (Verso, 1988) pp 79-91, reprinted in Braudy & Cohen (eds), Film Theory and Criticism (5th & 6 th Editions) WEEK 11, DECEMBER 2: No Session WEEK 12, DECEMBER 9: Postmodern Cinema and Contemporary Narrativity Screening: Extracts including: The Royal Tenenbaums (USA, Wes Anderson, 2001) Election (USA, Alexander Payne, 1999) Magnolia (USA, Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999) (B) Jeffrey Sconce, Irony, nihilism and the new American Smart Film, Screen, Vol. 43 no. 4 (winter 2002) Pat Brereton, Smart Cinema, DVD Add-Ons and New Audience Pleasures, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) (E) Robin Wood, Hollywood From Vietnam to Reagan, Chapter 4, The Incoherent Text: Narrative in the 70 s, pp 46-69 Noel King, The New Hollywood in The Cinema Book pp 60-67 Further Geoff King, New Hollywood Cinema: An Introduction (Columbia Univ. Press, 2002) Mark Browning, Wes Anderson: Why His Movies Matter (ABC-CLIO, LCC, 2011) R.Burgoyne, S. Flitterman-Lewis, & R.Stam, New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics: Structuralism, Post-Structuralism and Beyond (Routledge, 1992), Part III: Film-narratology, pp 70-124. Thomas Schatz, The New Hollywood in Jim Collins, et al (eds) Film Theory Goes to the Movies (Routledge, 1993) Thomas Schatz, The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era (Faber 1998), pp. 15-47, 482-492. Other editions also available 9

Jim Collins, Genericity in the Nineties: Eclectic Irony and the New Sincerity in his Film Theory goes to the Movies Kristin Thompson, Storytelling in the New Hollywood: Understanding Classical Narrative Technique, Chapter 1: Modern Classicism (Harvard University Press, 1999) (E) David Bordwell, The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies (Univ. of Calif. Press, 2006) 1

ESSAY ONE: Write approximately 1500 words in answer to ONE of the following questions. AN ELECTRONIC COPY in a Word program should be submitted via Turnitin on Blackboard on or before 6pm on Wednesday November 6th, 2013. There is a student manual for this at: https://turnitin.com/static/resources/documentation/turnitin/training/blackboard_integration_student _Manual.pdf Essential: Make sure you have put your name, ID number, email address, module title and code and full and correct essay title clearly on the first/front page. Number Pages of Essay. Include word count. Spacing: 1.5 or 2. 1) How can Vladimir Propp s analysis of fairytale or folktale narratives help in understanding how film stories work? 2) Make a clear, concise and economic Proppian analysis of the opening of one narrative film, discussing Propp s functions of the Initial Situation, Preparatory Section, Villainy or Lack up until the functions of the Donor. Discuss any problems or ambiguities. 3) Taking no more than three examples analyse and discuss how some films or sequences from films operate or unfold in terms of oppositions or binary oppositions. Concentrate on a detailed analysis. 4) Taking a few examples discuss whether Todorov s notion of The Fantastic as a distinct genre allows you to distinguish between certain films often designated as Horror, Thriller or Mystery films. ESSAY ASSESSMENT: The essay represents 40% of the mark for the module, 15 credits. It must show evidence of reading relevant to your chosen question, knowledge of the concepts contained in that reading, and engagement with and critical evaluation of ideas, properly referenced according to accepted conventions, together with the ability to relate the ideas to aspects of specific films or film extracts screened on the module. Your ability to answer the question coherently and in depth and to develop an argument by means of an appropriate structure, with clarity of expression and good spelling, grammar and layout is an important part of the assessment criteria. For further details on assessment and the marking system, please refer to the Course Handbook. LATENESS: Please note the University s lateness regulations, set out below. Coursework must be submitted on the date indicated above. If students submit coursework late but within 24 hours or one working day of the specified deadline without a valid claim of mitigating circumstances, the maximum mark that may be awarded for that piece of work will be the pass mark (40%)... If students submit coursework more than 24 hours or one working day after the specified deadline without a valid claim of mitigating circumstances they will be given a mark of zero for the work in question. Make sure that if you do have valid mitigating circumstances that you submit the appropriate forms and supporting evidence to the Registry by the date indicated in your Course Handbook. The Course Handbook contains further details on lateness and mitigating circumstances. Remember, lecturers cannot extend coursework deadlines. ESSAY TWO: Please write 2000 to 2500 words on ONE of the following questions. This essay is worth 60% of the mark for module. Assessment criteria and lateness as stated above. Essays are due in via Turnitin by Thursday, January 9, 2014. Please follow presentation guidelines above. 1

1) How did the stories which were told in Hollywood films change as a result of the Production Code in the 1930s? Make close reference to at least one film from the period. 2) Referring to a Hollywood film from before the 1970 s, consider how well the film conforms to Bordwell s model of a classical Hollywood narrative film. Are there any problems or limitations in Bordwell s approach to Hollywood cinema? 3) Drawing on the work of Christian Metz and/or Roland Barthes, explore aspects of the narrative structure and codes in ONE film from the module. How does such an analysis help us to understand how the film produces meaning? 4) Do the distancing devices employed by Jean-Luc Godard necessarily prevent identification with his characters? Discuss making close reference to at least two of Godard s films. 5) Is David Bordwell s analysis of art cinema as a mode of film practice a useful way to approach specific films? Analyse one example in detail. 6) Draw on Sconce s analysis of the smart film to discuss how some film-makers since the eighties have found new approaches to storytelling and style. Use one or two films fitting Sconce s criteria for detailed discussion. (If you aren t using Sconce s examples, check with us.) 7) Movie narration (is) a process of continual displacement between represented space the area that exists in front of the camera and is recorded by it and expressive space space which is endowed with meaning beyond the literal, and which signifies a particular feeling or experience. (.. ) It is through mise-en-scène that represented space becomes maximally meaningful. (Richard Maltby Hollywood Cinema, Second edition, pages 339-340.) Discuss what you understand from Maltby s analysis using examples from one or more narrative films discussed on the module. Phil Yeats Ian Green 1