Program and content : The objective of this course is to understand how a film makes sense – what conventions
of interpretation and narrative mechanisms this understanding is based on.
Usually, in a university, this subject is approached using rare, difficult-to-access films,
based on the undercurrents of Modernity, for which the teacher gives a sort of “user’s
guide”. This is not the case here. Since the students in this course are “non-specialists”,
the corpus will consist of quite the opposite, what you can see on television.
These films apparently do not need explanations since they seem to work on the basis
of the obvious: we can nonetheless discuss their way of creating meaning. The approach
here consists of lifting off the layers of meaning, to show that there are several levels of
interpretation for the major works of Western narrative cinema from the 1950’s to the
1970’s, by giving students analytical tools that they can use again on their own. This analysis
will be strictly “internal”, i.e. an approach that does not lean on the authors’ “political
views” (contrary to what is done in French cinephile revues): there are no prerequisites in
cinematographic subjects.
PROGRAM : 1. Boulevard du crépuscule B. Wilder 1950
2. Boulevard du crépuscule, suite
3. Une place au soleil G. Stevens 1950
4. Une place au soleil, suite
5. Comme un torrent V. Minnelli 1958
6. Comme un torrent suite
7. Les parapluies de Cherbourg J. Demy 1964
8. Les parapluies de Cherbourg suite
9. Laura O. Preminger 1944
10. Picnic J. Logan 1958 Students will be asked to produce a written report (about 10 pages) dealing with one of the subjects of the course. |