The film in the English speaking countries: genres and conventions

The aim of the course is a historical overview of film in two English speaking countries: the USA and Great Britain. The emphasis centres on the development of filmic technology, emergence of new genres and conventions that influence modern culture. In class discussions we will look at the following issues:

American cinema

The silent era (1900-1928): film industry/studio industry, major filmmakers (Georges Méliès, Edwin S. Porter, D.W. Griffith, Erich von Stroheim, F.W. Murnau, etc.), stars (Mary Pickford, Rudolf Valentino), early comedy, ‘golden age’ of comedy (Chaplin, Keaton, Laurel and Hardy)

The talkies (1927-1945): introduction of sound and colour; the studio system; censorship; Hollywood genres (gangster film, melodrama, horror films, musical, comedy, romantic comedy); Gone with the Wind, Citizen Kane; WWII in Hollywood; genres (the woman’s picture, comedies, early film noir); Casablanca.

Post-war America (1945-67): politicization of Hollywood; genre: film noir, the western; teen movies; sci-fi; horrors; films crossing genres (Orson Welles, Billy Wilder, Elia Kazan, Alfred Hitchcock); stars (Marilyn Monroe, Doris Day, John Wayne); films vs television; movie censorship; Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate.

New (New) Hollywood (1968-2006): auteur cinema (Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick, Roman Polański, Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone, David Lynch, etc.); independent auteurs, (the Cohen brothers, Steven Sonderbergh); American genre cinema (violent Western, horror, comedy, sci-fi, action-adventure film, comic-book adaptations, etc.); Corporate Hollywood; new technologies and new formats; film industry.

British cinema

British cinema: nature of British cinema; national cinema; British sense of humour; realism.

British cinema 1900-1970s: silent cinema, the onset of the talkies, British studio system; war industry; melodrama; Ealing comedy; realism in British cinema; Angry Young Men movement; historical costume drama; spiv films, war films, film noir; science fiction and horror; social problem films, kitchen sink drama, Free Cinema; New Wave; crime, thriller; heritage cinema.

Modern British cinema: British Avant-Garde; the gangster movie; romantic comedy; Post-Thatcherite cinema; auteur cinema; British films in Europe and USA; ‘Brit-grit’; Northern Ireland on screen.