History of Film: Beginnings to 1940

Catalog description

This course will survey major developments in cinema from the advent of the medium near the end of the nineteenth century, through the emergence of a syntax for narrative film during the silent era, to the arrival and entrenchment of the sound film in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The nature of the course is such that our concerns will be manifold, but they will surely include attention to the following: the work of several pioneers of the medium-the Lumiere brothers, Thomas Edison (and his major collaborator William Kennedy Laurie Dickinson), George Melies, and Edwin S. Porter; D. W. Griffith's central role in the creation of a "language" for moving images and and his equally significant role in turning film into a popular medium; some of the formal experiments that took place in Germany in the 20s-German expressionism, in particular, as well as the Kammerspielfilm; Sobiet montage; French impressionism and surrealism; the great Hollywood comics of the 20s; the development of sound technology and its impact on film form; the importance of genre in the development of the film industry; and French poetic realism. Without scanting attention to such historical matters, we will also, however, want to engage particular film texts: thus much of our time in class will be spent discussing individual films.