33830 - History of Cinema Theories

Learning outcomes

Learning outcomes

By the end of this class students will:

- know the basic notions of the theory of cinema, with special attention to the concepts developed in the classical period (1915-1945), with a few significant openings on the following period;

- acquire a theoretical competence allowing them to fully understand the language of film;

- master the specific language of cinema studies;

- know how to connect the theoretical debate on cinema with the history of the arts in the 20^th century.

Course contents

Part 1. Classical Film Theories

Theories of montage

• Lev Kuleshov: making meaning with montage
• Sergej Ejzenštejn: montage as dialectics
• Dziga Vertov and the "theory of intervals"
• Esfir Shub and "factographic" editing

Theories of Photogénie

• The beauty of cinema according to Louis Delluc
• Jean Epstein and the photogénie of the imponderable
• Photogénie and "estrangement" (Victor Sklovsky)

Theories of Reproducibility

• Walter Benjamin: film and the end of the aura of the artwork
• André Bazin: from the aura of the image to the aura of the event

Part 2: From the Archive Film to Videographic Film Criticism

• Esfir Shub and the history of compilation film according to Jay Leyda
• Dziga Vertov and "database cinema" (Lev Manovich)
• Nicole Vedrès, Myriam, and the secret genealogy of the archive film
• From collage-film to lettrist cinema (Isidore Isou and Maurice Lemaître)
• Theory and practice of détournement (Guy Debord)
• Jean-Luc Godard, historien du cinéma
• Theories of found footage cinema (Nicole Brenez, Catherine Russell, William Wees)
• Blob, Grifi & co.: techniques to subvert the Spectacle
• What is videographic film criticism? 

Readings/Bibliography

Readings and screenings are listed below in four different groups. 

1) Lecture notes provided by the teacher:

Che cos'è la teoria del cinema?

Ricciotto Canudo: il cinema come settima arte

La fotogenia secondo Louis Delluc

La fotogenia secondo Jean Epstein

L'avanguardia russa al tornante della Rivoluzione d'Ottobre

Lev Kulešov, maestro del cinema sovietico

Sergej Ejzenštejn: dal montaggio delle attrazioni al montaggio intellettuale

Dziga Vertov, il kinokismo e la fabbrica dei fatti

 

2) Books and book chapters:

Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility (1936)

André Bazin, What Is Cinema? Vol. 1.

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3) Essays on crime fiction and film noir:

Students are expected to also read at least five essays chosen from the following list. These texts will form the base for the Wikipedia workshop described above. All the readings will be made available on the portal of DETECt Horizon 2020 project.

• G. K. Chesterton, A Defence of Detective Stories (1901)
• Siegfried Kracauer, Il romanzo poliziesco (1922-23)
• Viktor Sklovskij, Il romanzo dei misteri (1925)
• S. S. Van Dine, Venti regole per scrivere romanzi polizieschi (1928)
• Walter Benjamin, Romanzi polizieschi (1930)
• Sergej Ejzenštejn, The Psychology of Composition (1946-48)
• André Bazin, Le film policier: Grandeur et décadence du gangster (1951)
• Raymond Borde, Chaumeton, Panorama du film noir américain (1955)
• Claude Chabrol, Evolution du film policier : Le thriller (1955)
• Tzvetan Todorov, Tipologia del romanzo poliziesco (1966)
• Raymond Durgnat, Paint It Black: The Family Tree of the Film Noir (1970)
• Paul Schrader, Note sul film noir (1972)
• John Cawelti, The Formula of the Classical Detective Novel (1976)
• Carlo Ginzburg, Il paradigma indiziario (1986)
• Richard Dyer, Queers and Women in Film Noir (1998)
• Franco Moretti, The Slaughterhouse of Literature (2000)
• Yvonne Tasker, Women in Film Noir (2013)

4) L’esame richiede inoltre la conoscenza di almeno dieci titoli tra quelli sotto elencati. Sarà richiesta la visione di almeno un film alla settimana, da registrare su calendario online.

Cinque titoli tra i seguenti:

• The Cheat (Cecil B. DeMille, 1915)
• Le silence (Louis Delluc, 1920)
• Nanuk l'eschimese (Robert Flaherty, 1922)
• Le avventure di Mr West nel paese dei bolscevichi (Lev Kulešov, 1924)
• Sciopero (Sergeji Ejzenštejn, 1925)
• La sesta parte del mondo (Dziga Vertov, 1926)
• La corazzata Potemkin (Sergej M. Ejzenštejn, 1926)
• Miss Mend (Boris Barnet, Fyodor Otsep, 1926)
• Six et demi, onze (Jean Epstein, 1927)
• Ottobre (Sergej M. Ejzenštejn, 1928)
• L'uomo con la macchina da presa (Dziga Vertov, 1928)
• Le crime de Monsieur Lange (Jean Renoir, 1935)
• La regola del gioco (Jean Renoir, 1939)
  
• Quarto potere (Orson Welles, 1941)
• Nodo alla gola (Alfred Hitchcock, 1948)
  
• Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)
• L'infernale Quinlan (Orson Welles, 1958)

Più cinque titoli tra i seguenti:

• Fantômas (Louis Feuillade, 1913-14)
• Il dottor Mabuse (Fritz Lang, 1922)
• Scarface (Howard Hawks, 1932)
• Alba tragica (Marcel Carné, Jacques Prevert, 1939)
• Il falcone maltese (John Huston, 1941)
• Ossessione (Luchino Visconti, 1943)
• La fiamma del peccato (Billy Wilder, 1944)
• Il grande sonno (Howard Hawks, 1946)
• La città nuda (Jules Dassin, 1948)
• Vertigine (Otto Preminger, 1950)
• La donna che visse due volte (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
• Fino all'ultimo respiro (Jean-Luc Godard, 1959)
• La banda Casaroli (Florestano Vancini, 1962)
  
• Il bandito delle 11 (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)
• Trans-Europ-Express (Alain Robbe-Grillet, 1966)
• La mia droga si chiama Julie (François Truffaut, 1967)
• Frank Costello faccia d'angelo (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)
• Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto (Elio Petri, 1970)
  
• I senza nome (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1970)
  
• Sterminate "Gruppo Zero" (Claude Chabrol, 1974)
• Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
• La conversazione (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
• Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
  
• L'amico americano (Wim Wenders, 1977)
  
• Série noire (Alain Corneau, 1979)
• Vestito per uccidere (Brian De Palma, 1980)
• L'elemento del crimine (Lars von Trier, 1984)
• Pusher (Refn, 1996)
• Strade perdute (David Lynch, 1997)
• Tutti i battiti del mio cuore (Jacques Audiart, 2005)
• L'uomo di Londra (Bela Tarr, 2007)
• In Bruges (McDonaugh, 2008)
• Uomini che odiano le donne (Niels Arden Oplev, 2009)
• Victoria (Sebastian Schipper, 2015)

Teaching methods

Assessment methods

The final examination will take place in the form of an interview in Italian. Students will be asked to answer a few questions about the program, so as to verify whether they have achieved the following learning outcomes:

Ability to historically contextualize the main periods in the development of film theory, especially with regard to the classical period, as well as to understand the continuity and discontinuities lines along the elaborations of the different authors in the syllabus

Ability to use the theoretical tools acquired to analyze the films in the syllabus

Mastery of the specific vocabulary of cinema studies

Ability to link the theoretical debate on cinema to the history of the 20th century

Students demonstrating a full knowledge and critical understanding of the subject matter will be assessed with the highest marks. Students demonstrating a purely notional exposition of the subject matter will be assessed with good/medium marks. Students with a limited knowledge of the subject, an uncertain or inappropriate vocabulary will be assessed as barely sufficient. Students with major learning gaps in both critical- theoretical-critical and historiographic terms will be assessed as insufficient.

Teaching tools

Video projector, Internet connection. An E-learning course is available at  https://iol.unibo.it/course/view.php?id=16684

Links to further information

http://detect-project.eu

Office hours

See the website of Monica Dall'Asta