Fall 2006

History Department

 

HS: 390: 01

Film and History

MW 1.45-2.50 in FSC 321 + Tue 7-9pm in BH 203

 

Dr. David Imhoof 

Office: Steele Hall 307

imhoof@susqu.edu

Phone 372-4191    

Office Hours: M 3-4pm, W 9-10am, Th 2-4pm, or by appointment

 

The Pitch

 

Richard Wagner didn’t like to call his compositions “operas.”  He preferred the bombastic term Gesamtkunstwerk or “total work of art,” believing that opera, certainly his operas, incorporated all aspects of artistic experience – visual, aural, intellectual, spiritual.  Movies have in many ways become the “total works of art” for the modern age.  Even Wagner’s music has now achieved the vaunted but not exactly “total” status of movie soundtrack (e.g., Apocalypse Now).  The framed moving image, including its television and Internet offspring, shapes the ways most people in the modern world view and even think about life.  Such a total and totalizing power window onto the world would seem to hold great possibility for understanding the century it framed and shaped.

 

This not a course on the history of film, nor is a course about how film treats history.  If you’re looking for an active connection between the two parts of its title, you might say that this is a course of history through film.  At heart it’s a 20th-century European history class, but one that uses film as primary sources and main method of studying that crazy century.  That means, of course, that we’ll have to spend some time thinking about what this particular kind of primary source tells us about the past, compared to, say, a political speech, a philosopher’s essay, or a young girl’s diary.  So while our chief aim may be to learn more about 20th-century Europe, using a medium for doing so that has in fact directly shaped that century requires a little more self-reflection.  Movies, like books or newspapers or laundry lists or chairs, give us the stuff that allows us to understand and write history.  However, unlike most printed or material sources, films are new.  Their very creation and development are as much a part of the 20th century as they are documents witnessing that era’s development.

 

This course will weave together these twin goals of understanding the past and the use of film to learn about the past.  It therefore has four basic objectives:

1.       To help you understand 20th-century European history better

2.       To introduce you to the use of film as historical document

3.       To enhance your ability to read and analyze visual images

4.       To improve your writing and communication skills.

 

Production

 

15%        Paper on Benjamin’s unique perspective on film and “reproducible” modern culture

·         750 word limit

·         Analyze the implications of Benjamin’s concept of modern culture for historical analysis

25%        Brief journal entries (300-600 words) that analyze at least 8 of the 10 films we’ll be viewing, emailed to me by noon the day after the film screening that do four things:

1.       Give a few details of film: basic description, characters, etc., but that’s not the main focus here.

2.       Use the assigned reading for that week about the movie to comment on its historical significance, and then…

3.       Analyze one specific scene in detail in order to say something broader about what the film tells us about the era in which it was made.

4.       Offer two discussion questions for class

15%        Final Presentation

·         In pairs, ca. 20 minutes, multi-media

·         Analyze one issue in film over the course of the 20th century

·         Use to highlight an historical development of 20th century

·         Must use at least one film not viewed for class

25%        Take-Home Cumulative Final Exam

·         5-7pp double-spaced, 12-point font, and all that

·         Larger question, cite films and texts from class

20%        Class participation

 

Film Stock

 

Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century (New York: Vintage, 2000).

 

Reserve (electronic and print) readings at the Library.

(For e-reserves, go to the library Web site: http://www.susqu.edu/library/)

 

Establishing Shots

 

Attendance and Participation: I expect you to attend class each day and hold you responsible for anything you miss. The 20% of your grade based on class participation means that failure to attend class and take part in discussions will prevent you from doing well in this course. If talking in class concerns you, please see me immediately.

 

Scholastic (Dis)Honesty Policy: I have a very simple and very harsh policy: if you plagiarize, as broadly defined in the Student Handbook, I will fail you for the class. If you’ve been caught before, your penalty will be worse.

 

Contacting Me: Outside office hours, you may email me, but do not expect an answer in less than 24 hours, nor over the weekend. Email correspondence should be used primarily for short queries; longer questions and discussions should be addressed in person

 

Special Accommodation: If you require an accommodation based on disability, please see me as soon as possible to work out arrangements.

 

Story Board

 

Scene 1 – Opening Credits

 

Mon.Aug.28          Introduction

 

Tue.Aug.29           Pioneers of the French Cinema: Lumière and Méliès short films (France, 1895-1903)

Cache [Hidden] (Michael Haneke, France, 2005)

 

Wed.Aug.30          Reading Film, Reading History

·         Corrigan, A Short Guide to Writing about Film (20-92)

·         Gennetti, “Mis-en-scène” (37-78)

 

Scene 2 – Film as Reproducible Art

 

Mon.Sep.4            Walter Benjamin and Mass Culture

Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (217-252)

 

Tue.Sep.5             NO CLASS

(Drop/add period ends)

 

Wed.Sep.6            BENJAMIN ESSAY DUE

 

Scene 3 – Horror Film after Trench Warfare

 

Mon.Sep.11          Expressionism after the Great War

·         Mazower, chpts. 1 and 2

·         Kracauer, “Caligari” (61-76)

 

Tue.Sep.12          Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari [Cabinet of Dr. Caligari] (Robert Wiene,  Germany, 1919)

 

Wed.Sep.13          The Origins and Meaning of Horror Film

 

Sep.18-20             NO CLASS

 

Scene 4 – The revolution will be filmed

 

Mon.Sep.25          The USSR and Political Cinema

·         Mazower, chpt. 4

·         “Eisenstein – Potemkin” collection, ed. by Stanley Solomon (65-88)

 

Tue.Sep.26          Bronenosets Potemkin [Battleship Potemkin] (Sergi Eisenstein, USSR, 1925)

 

Wed.Sep.27          Propaganda, Perspective, and Pace

 

Scene 5 – Interwar German Cinema

 

Mon.Oct.2             From Weimar Republic to Third Reich

·         Mazower, chpt. 3

·         Koch, “Between two worlds: von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel (1930)” (60-72)

 

Tue.Oct.3             Der Blaue Engel [The Blue Angel] (Josef von Sternberg, Germany, 1930)

 

Wed.Oct.4             The Sexy Threat of Popular Culture

 

Scene 6 – Total War in Agfacolor

 

Mon.Oct.9             Fantasy and “Totalitarianism”

·         Mazower, chpt. 5

·         Münchhausen reading TBA

 

Tue.Oct.10           Münchuasen (Josef von Báky, Germany, 1943)

 

Wed.Oct.11          War, Propaganda, and Film

 

Oct.16-17              NO CLASS (Fall Break)

 

Wed.Oct.18          Intermission

 

Scene 7 – Post War vs. Cold War in the West

 

Mon.Oct.23          Post-War and Cold War Amidst the Rubble

·         Mazower, chpts. 6 and 7

·         Ferro, “Conflict within The Third Man” (125-131)

 

Tue.Oct.24           The Third Man (Carol Reed, Great Britain, 1949)

 

Wed.Oct.25          Film as Indirect Propaganda

 

Scene 8 – Post War vs. Cold War in the East

 

Mon.Oct.30          East Europe After WWII

·         Mazower, chpt. 8

·         Liehm & Liehm, “Film Polski: Poland, 1945-1956” and “The Polish School: Poland, 1956, 1963” (112-122 and 174-198)

 

Tue.Oct.31           Popiol i Diament [Ashes and Diamonds] (Andrzej Wajda, Poland, 1958)

 

Wed.Nov.1            Divided Memory

NB: 7.30pm, Degenstein Theater – Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow Lecture

 

Scene 9 – I Want it All (and more)                  

 

Mon.Nov.6            Neo-Realism + Excess

·         Mazower, chpt. 9

·         Solomon, “Antonioni – The Red Desert” (273-294).

 

Tue.Nov.7             Il Deserto Rosso [The Red Desert] (Michelangelo Antonioni, Italy, 1964)

 

Wed.Nov.8            Colorful yet Bleak

 

Scene 10 – Film as Means of Coming to Terms with the Past

 

Mon.Nov.13          The Emerging Punk Culture

·         Mazower, chpt. 10

·         “The Oberhausen Manifesto”

·         Franklin, “Introduction: The New West German Cinema from Oberhausen to Hamburg” (21-35 + 179-180)

 

Tue.Nov.14           Himmel über Berlin [Wings of Desire] (Wim Wenders, Federal Republic of Germany, 1987)

 

Wed.Nov.15          Remembering Alexanderplatz

 

Mon.Nov.20          Group work on presentations

 

Nov.21-22             NO CLASS (Thanksgiving Break)

 

Scene 11 – The Cold War is Dead, Long Live the Cold War

 

Mon.Nov.27          Xenophobia after the Cold War

·         Mazower, chpt. 11 and Epilogue

·         Braun, “The Incomplete Revolutions: The Rise of Extremism in East-Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union” (138-160)

 

Tue.Nov.28           Luna Park (Pavel Lungin, USSR/France/Russia, 1991)

 

Wed.Nov.29          Take the skinheads bowling

 

Scene 12 – Doing History and Film

 

Mon.Dec.4            Presentations

Tue.Dec.5            Presentations

Wed.Dec.6            Presentations

                                * Take-Home Final Handed Out

 

Wed.Dec.12         TAKE-HOME FINAL DUE BY NOON IN MY OFFICE