G45.1066French Cinema from the Revolution of
Sound (cross-listed
with the Department of Cinema Studies - Tisch). Mondays 2-4 ; 13-19 University Place Professor
Ludovic CORTADE The seminar is open to all graduate students : no knowledge of Cinema Studies or French required ; the
discussions, readings and assignments are in English; all the
films are subtitled. This seminar casts a light on one of the richest
periods of French cinema from the perspective of style, litterature, politics,
class, gender and film theory. While the films will be contextualized in French
culture and history, the seminar also provides students with the analytical and
theoritical tools of film analysis. Our perspective is both chronological and thematic;
the topics that we will discuss include: -
The Revolution of Sound ; how
did the sound era challenge the French Avant-Garde of the 1920s, including
Surrealism, and dramatically set the base for a more literary conception of
cinema? - Poetic Realism, Class and “Mise-en-Scène”; did the social backdrop
of French society in the 1930s shape “Poetic Realism” at the expense of the
“auteur”? - Cinema, Politics and Propaganda: did the collaboration of the Vichy
regime shape French filmmaking during the war or can it be said that there was
a “cinematographic Resistance”? - The Cinema of Reconstruction, the
“Tradition of Quality” and its
relationship to literature. -
The Triumph of “Auteurism” in the
pre-“New Wave” era ; why are the writings of André Bazin and of the young
film critics of les Cahiers du Cinéma considered as a major breakthrough
in film theory and film criticism? We will be discussing the films by: - Luis Bunuel - René Clair - Marcel Pagnol - Jean Vigo - Marcel Carné - Jean Renoir - Henri-Georges Clouzot - Georges Rouquier - Max Ophüls - Robert Bresson - Jacques Tati. |
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