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V45.0883

Cinema and Literature, V30-0504, Summer, 2008
Professor: William Wolf

This course examines the relationship between film and literature with a view toward broadening viewer and reader response and enabling understanding of properties shared by both art forms. Rather than focusing exclusively on film adaptations of texts, the course treats the problems of film, novels and theater as a literary phenomenon. While French film plays a key part in the structure of the course, the films to be shown and the reading assigned reflect a wider international spectrum. There will be emphasis on the connection between different cultures in different time frames, and stress will also be placed on works that have a special relationship with the concerns of humanity.

The course is interdisciplinary and uses critical methods pertinent to the media involved. Its juxtaposition of one of the most important art forms of the 20^th century against literature serves the needs of a contemporary liberal education and aims to lead the student to question assumptions about both cinema and literature.

 Films to be shown:

   Fritz Lang's Metropolis, an exploration of a silent masterpiece and its visual effects in relationship to literature concerning oppression under industrialization and society's social structure.

   Alain Resnais's Hiroshima mon amour, among the influential New Wave films and closely related artistically to the characteristics of the New Novel, as well as a film that entwines personal relationships with moral questions.

    Richard Boleslawski's Les Miserables, the classic 1935 film based on Victor Hugo's masterpiece of 19^th century French literature that has also been adapted for musical theater.

    Euzhan Palcy's Sugar Cane Alley (Rue case Negres), a powerful drama set in 1931 and revealing the family life and struggle of black plantation workers in Martinique during the 1930s. Based on a novel by Joseph Zobel.

    Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice, the great Italian director's adaptation of Thomas Mann's internationally acclaimed work and a study of the challenge for film to capture literary metaphor.

    François Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451, a dramatic expression of humankind's quest for the preservation of intellectual freedom in the face of repression. An important film selected from the works of France's distinguished and influential New Wave director.