Hollywood, international
Readings, textbook
Chapters:
5, Mise en Scène
11, Hollywood, international
12 stars
13, genre
14 auteur
Ch. 12
James Dean
A star’s pay
Star vehicle
Hollywood studio era stars
Tom Cruise and South Park
S. Abraham Ravid, stars and box office
Little Tramp, Chaplin
Chaplin in Gold Rush
Keaton, Great Stoneface
Star persona
Market promotion
Heather Addison and Clara Bow
Gay audiences and Judy Garland
Al Pacino in Scarface
James Dean
Star culture and Hollywood success
Stars and overhead costs
Lengthy studio contracts versus independent films
Ch. 13
Subgenres
Alien
Western
Civilization, wilderness
The “final girl”
Film noir and World War II
Technology and humanity
Paranoid conspiracy films
Myth of Faust
Musicals
Integrated musicals
Musicals and creative and economic peak
Hybrid genres
Hollywood and genres
Revisionist films
Genre and auteurist approach combined
Martin Scorses’s New York. New York
Richard Combs
Self-destructive masculinity
Avatar
Conventions
Horror genre
Young adult protagonist
Samurai films and Westerns
Hard-boiled detectives
Chap. 14
Auteur theory
Evolution of auteur
Hollywood studio system
Andrew Sarris
Pauline Kael
Andre Bazin
Alfred Hitchcock
Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil
George Lucas
Akira Kurosawa, Rashomom
Early auteur critics and Hollywood
Francois Truffaut, Hollywood films
French films and literary masterpieces
French films of 1950s and Hollywood
Commercial appeal
Corporate entertainment in 1980s and 1990s
Orson Welles’s career
Kael and Welles
Citizen Kane
Wes Anderson, artistic signature
Possible essay questions (we will pick one or two for exam) (these questions are mostly based on Chapters 12 & 13 I believe, maybe one from 14, and then from films viewed in class. I will give you 3 or 4 on exam and you must answer one, maybe 2):
1) Explain how one of these figures demonstrates the way the star persona collapses the boundary between performance and biography: Jodie Foster, Mickey Rourke, or Jennifer Anniston
2) Describe how the “monsters” of the horror genre changed during the 1960s .
3) Using Al Pacino’s performance in Scarface or Judy Garland as examples, explain how some stars might appeal to a subculture, which responds to the star differently than the way mainstream audiences do.
4) Identify two characteristics of the Western narrative.
5) By the 1920s, slenderness became the key physical standard of beauty, thus filmmakers began casting slim actors and actresses in lead roles. Actresses in particular were bound by clauses in their studio contracts, which required them to maintain a particular weight and size. What was the cultural impetus for this change of attitude and appearance?
6) Explain how Bette Davis’s career demonstrates how the star phenomenon depends on collapsing an actor’s private life into her performances.
7) In a sentence, explain why most film critics didn’t value genre films until the 1960s.
Answer: Critics associated genre films with studio mass-production practices–they connoted mindless, homogeneous entertainment.
8) Why did American audiences embrace the film noir, with its dark moodiness that marked a dramatic departure from the lavish spectacle and optimism characteristic of Hollywood films in the 1930s?
9) In 1-2 sentences, briefly describe how an “average” director differs from an auteur director, according to François Truffaut’s 1954 essay, “A Certain Tendency in French Cinema.”
10) What two directors have had a profound influence on Kathryn Bigelow’s work, including her film The Hurt Locker?.
11) We watched two films by the up and coming director, Terry Gilliam. Did you like his films or not and why?
12) What was your favorite film viewed in class this semester and why?
Films viewed in class:
Brothers Grimm (USA: Terry Gilliam, 2005)
City Lights (USA: Chaplin, 1931)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (USA: Terry Gilliam, 1998)
Intolerance (USA: Griffith, 1916)
La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast), (France: Jean Cocteau’s, 1946)
La Nuit Américaine (Day for Night) (France: Truffaut, 1973)
Shane (USA: George Stevens, 1953)
The Godfather (USA: Coppola, 1972)
The Godfather II (USA: Coppola, 1974)
Steamboat Bill (USA: Buster Keaton, 1928)
Run Lola Run (Germany: Tykwer, 1999)
