History of Hollywood Cinema.

Catalog description

Semester course; 3 lecture hours. 3 credits. This course is an introduction to the history of Hollywood narrative cinema that surveys the major developments, movements and critical approaches from the birth of cinema in the late 19th-century to its current state in the digital age. Representative films from different periods and genres will be viewed and studied as historical and aesthetic noteworthy artifacts that reflect the times in which they were made and the people who made them. Students will study the major industrial, technological, aesthetic and cultural developments in American motion picture history; and by learning the techniques of close, analytical viewing, students will also develop a basic understanding of a film’s narrative and visual structure within different theoretical and critical paradigms.