Hints:
Jennings Auditorium

The Gold Digger

Frank Capra

Rebel

James Deane

Stanley Cooper


To get us started this semester, I'm going to spend the first two classes giving you background lectures about some basic cinematic concepts. Once you are a little more familiar with basic film terminology, we will be ready to look at the history of movies in the United States. You will be expected to attend showings of films on Tuesday evening at 7 o'clock in Jennings Auditorium, that's our lab. Then during our Wednesday seminar, we will discuss in depth the movie you saw the night before. We're not covering silent films in this course. We will begin with the first talking motion picture, The Jazz Singer, released in 1927. The next week we'll be looking at The Gold Digger of 1933, a piece that is very representative of the escapist trend in films released during the Depression. Some of the films we will be watching will probably be new to you, like Frank Capra's Why We Fight. Others you might have already seen on TV, like Rebel Without a Cause starring James Deane, or Stanley Cooper's Doctor's Strange Love. However, I hope you will see even familiar films with new eye. In the last three weeks of the course, we will be watching films from the 1980s, and you will choose one of them as the subject for an extensive written critique. We will talk more about the requirements of the critique later in the semester.
新學(xué)期伊始，我將用前兩節(jié)課的時間為你們做一些關(guān)于電影基本概念的背景講座。當(dāng)你們對電影基礎(chǔ)術(shù)語有一些了解以后，我們才能學(xué)習(xí)美國電影史。你們需要在每周二晚上7點去詹寧斯禮堂，也是我們的研究室，觀看電影。然后，在每個禮拜三的討論課中，我們會深入討論我們前一天晚上所看的電影。這門課不講無聲電影。今天我們將從1927年放映的第一部有聲電影《爵士歌手》開始。下周我們將觀看1933年放映的《掘金人》，一部非常能表現(xiàn)蕭條時期逃避主義的電影。有一些電影對你們來說可能很新奇，像Frank Capra的《為什么我們會打架》。別的你們可能在電視上已經(jīng)看過了，像James Deane主演的《沒有目標(biāo)的反抗》，或Stanley Cooper的《醫(yī)生的怪癖》。但是，我希望你們對即使很熟悉的電影，也采取一種展新的觀點去看。在本課程的最后3周內(nèi)，我們會觀看一些80年代的影片，同時你們需要從中選出一部電影作為撰寫深入評論的對象。我們會在以后的日子里來談?wù)剬懽髟u論的要求。