Assessment for the unit is divided 50/50 between an essay of 2,500 words and a two-hour exam held in the exam period, beginning on May 27. The essay deadline is 11.0am, Monday May 20, 2002.

Note: A List of film material on video that is available in the ESML Video Library will be provided in the second week.. The ESML Video Library is at IWN. 3.25. Videos can normally be borrowed for 48 hours. Please note that it is essential that videos are returned on time: the resource also serves the MA in European Film. The Library is open every day, usually for three hours: please see a notice on the door for the precise hours. Other video material may be available from me, and there is also some material in the Library.

Generally, the empirical examples in this unit will be American, British and Irish, although I will also deal with some aspects of European and world cinema, as they relate to issues of political cinema, cultural imperialism and national identity.

The seminars will begin in week 4 and run most weeks, depending slightly on overall numbers. At times I plan to use the Thursday afternoon shot (4.15-6.15, 1W.2.7) for film showings, provide lecture material on my web site or as a handout, and give lecture summaries during the seminar sessions. The seminar times are Tuesdays, 3.15, 4.W.3.1F; Tuesdays, 4.15, 3E.2.9; and Wednesdays, 9.15, 1WN. 3.11.

Among provisional topics and films are the following. Students will be encouraged to rethink the debates in the literature in relation to their own reading of the moving image materials supplied.

1. Documentary/Drama Documentary (Materials will include the classic British documentary tradition, and more recent examples of the form).

2. Film and National Identity: does film reflect but also construct national identities? Materials will in particular represent British wartime features, debates about class and the British New Wave, cinema, race and Thatcherism, etc.

3. Propaganda: from the Soviet tradition, to debates about Leni Reifenstahl's Triumph of the Will, to wartime cases. Have 'cinematic' devices been used in contemporary political advertising, and with what effect?

4. Film & History: Images of the Fifties, including McCarthysim. See Emile de Antonio's 'documentary' ('Point of Order') on the Army-McCarthy hearings (1954).

Political films: do they reflect, distort or construct history (or do all three), and in what ways: e.g. Oliver Stone's JFK, and Nixon; Spike Lee's Malcolm X, and Do the Right Thing. Is On the Waterfront (1954) both a defense of the informer and a progressive film? (On this see my ancient piece in Davies/Neve, and the piece in Rollins).Is there such a thing as right wing film drama, and if so, what does it look like?

5. Political film: Battle of Algiers, Z, Cathy Come Home, Mission to Moscow, Land and Freedom, Michael Collins etc.

6. Debates about film effects; violence, 'dumbing down', the significance of historical accuracy.

8. Film auteurs: Ken Loach, Mike Leigh, John Sayles. etc

9. Representations in film: gender & race. (see BN).

10. The Blacklist in America: did it affect what showed up on the screen, or was (is?) American mainstream film apolitical?

11. Some key cases of censorship. A Streetcar Named Desire (1950); the British New Wave; Ken Loach's 1980s 'documentaries'; does the market censor?

For historical cases relating to the themes of the unit see in particular the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. The monthly BFI periodical Sight and Sound includes a number of useful pieces on social issues relating to film.

WEEK 2: February14: Theory and Practice: Documentary

WEEK 3: February 21: Theory and Practice: Propaganda

WEEK 4: February 28: Theory and Practice: History, Politics & Feature Films

WEEK 5: March 8: Cases: American Film and the Blacklist.

WEEK 6: March 14: Cases: British Film & Society

WEEK 7: March 21: Cases: Political Film

Easter.

WEEK 8: April 25: Cases: Film against the grain: John Sayles and Ken Loach.

WEEK 9: May 2: Irish Film

WEEK 10: May 9: Cases: Global culture, national identity and Film.

WEEK 11: May 16: Conclusions.

T. Andrae, 'Adorno on film and mass culture'. (Paper from BN)

T. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 1991.

N. Abercrombie, 'Popular Culture and ideological effects', in N. Ambercrombie, S. Hill and B.S. Turner, eds., Dominant Ideologies, 1990.

T. Barta, Screening the Past: Film and the Representation of History, 1998.

W. Benjamin, 'The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction', in H. Arendt, ed., Illuminations, 1973; (also in L. Braudy, M. Cohen, eds.,Film Theory and Criticism, 1999).

C. Brookeman, American Culture and Society since the 1930s, 1984.

1. Gramsci, Selections From the Prison Notebooks, 1971.

S. Hall, 'Encoding/Decoding', in S. Hall et al., eds., Culture, Media, Language, 1980.

S. Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of German Film, 1947. (see esp. the Introduction).

P. Monaco, 'Movies and National Conciousness: Germany and France in the 1920s'', in K. R. M. Short, ed., Feature Films as History, 1981.

R. Rosenstone, Visions of the Past, 1995.

R. Rosenstone, Revisioning History, 1995.

D. Strinati, An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture, 1995.

1. Tudor, Theories of Film, 1973.

M. Barker and J. Petley, Ill-Effects, the Media/Violence Debate, 1997.

P. Davies and B. Neve, Cinema, Politics and Society in America, 1981, (chapters by C. Frayling, R. Reiner).

D. Ellwood, ed., The Movies as History: Visions of the Twentieth Century, 2000.

M. Ferro, ‘Film as Agent, Product and Source of History’, Journal of Contemporary History, 1983.

L. Furhammar and F. Isaksson, Politics and Film, 1971.

M. Hjort, S. Mackenzie, eds., Cinema & Nation, 2000.

9. Jarvie, Movies and Society, 1970.

I.C. Jarvie, ‘Seeing through Movies’, Philosophy of Social Sciences, 8, 4, 1978.

I.C. Jarvie, Movies as Social Criticism: Aspects of their Social Psychology, 1978.

S. Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of German Film, 1947

M. K. MacMurraugh-Kavanagh, "‘The BBC and the Wednesday Play, 1962-66: institutional containment versus ‘agitational contemporaneity’", Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 17, 3, 1997.

M. Medved, Hollywood Vs America, 1992.

10. Richards, Visions of Yesterday, 1973.

P. Rollins, ed, Hollywood as Historian, both editions (revised ed., 1998).

P. Stead, Film and the Working Class, 1989.

J. Street, Politics and Popular Culture, 1997.

D. Williams, ‘Concealment and Disclosure: From "Birth of a Nation" to the Vietnam War Film’, International Political Science Review, 12, 1, 1991.

M. Wood, America in the Movies, 1975.

W. Wright, Sixguns and Society: A Structural Study of the Western, 1975.

3/4. Documentary/Censorship/Propaganda

I.Aitken, Film and Reform: John Grierson and the British Documentary Film Movement, 1990.

I.Aitken, The Documentary Film Movement: An Anthology, 1998.

S. Bruzzi, New Documentary: A Critical Introduction, 2000.

1. Calder, The People’s War: Britain 1939-1945, 1969.

F.Hardy, John Grierson: A Documentary Biography, 1979

A. Higson, "’Britain’s Outstanding Contribution to the Film’: The documentary-realist tradition", in C. Barr, ed., All Our Yesterdays: 90 Years of British Cinema, 1986.

J. Petley, ‘Fact plus fiction equals friction’, Media, Culture & Society, 1996.

1. Aldgate, Censorship and the Permissive Society, 1995.

I.Jarvie, 'Suppressing controversial films: from Objective Burma to Monty Python's Life of Brian', in B.A. Austin, ed., Current Research in Film, Audiences, Economics and Law, Vol 1, 1985.

G.S.Jowett, ‘Moral Responsibility and Commercial Entertainment: social control in the United States film industry, 1907-1968’, Historical Journal of film, Radio and Television, 10, 1, 1990.

A. Kuhn, Cinema, Censorship and Sexuality, 1909-1925, 1988 (especially chapter 1).

F. Miller, Hollywood Censored, 1994.

J. C. Robertson, The Hidden Cinema: Film Censorship in Action, 1913-1975, 1989.

1. Propaganda:

T.W.Bohn, A Historical and Descriptive Analysis of the 'Why We Fight' series, 1977.

D.B.Hinton, The Films of Leni Riefenstahl, 2000.

R. Jackall, ed., Propaganda, 1995.

N. Reeves, The Power of Film Propaganda: Myth or Reality, 1999.

N. Reeves, ‘Cinema, Spectatorship and Propaganda: Battle of the Somme (1916) and its contemporary audience’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 17, 1, 1997.

D.J. Leab, ‘How Red was my Valley: Hollywood, the Cold War Film, and I Married a Communist’, Journal of Contemporary History, 19, 1984.

D.J. Leab, ‘The Iron Curtain (1948): Hollywood’s first Cold War Movie’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 8, 2, 1988.

R. Taylor, Film Propaganda, 1979.

T. Balio ed., The American Film Industry, 1985.

L. Ceplair and S. Englund, The Inquistion in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930-1960, 1983.

M. Ciment, ed., Kazan on Kazan, 1973.

G. Jowett, Film: the Democratic Art: A Social History of American Film, 1976.

J. H. Lawson, Film in the Battle of Ideas, 1953.

R. Maltby, ‘The political economy of Hollywood: the studio system’, in P. Davies and B. Neve, Cinema, Politics and Society in America, 1981.

L. May, ‘Movie Star Politics: The Screen Actor’s Guild, Cultural Conversion and the Hollywood Red Scare’, in L. May, ed., Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of Cold War, 1989.

L. May, The Big Tomorrow, Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way, 2000.

P. Roffman and J. Purdy, The Hollywood Social Problem Film: Madness, Despaire and Politics From the Depression to the Fifties, 1981.

V. Navasky, Naming Names, 1980.

B.Neve, Film and Politics in America: A Social Tradition, 1992.

R. Sklar, Movie-Made America, A Cultural History of American Movies, 1978.

T. Andersen, ‘Red Hollywood’, in S. Ferguson and B. Groseclose, eds, Literature and the Visual Arts in Contemporary Society, 1985.

P. Buhle, ‘The Hollywood Left: aesthetics and politics’, New Left Review, 212, 1995.

L. Ceplair and S. Englund, The Inquistion in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930-1960, 1983.

J. Cogley, Report on Blacklisting, 1956.

L. Hellman, Scoundrel Time, 1976.

E. Kazan, A Life, 1988.

J. H. Lawson, Film in the Battle of Ideas, 1953.

R. Maltby, ‘Made for each other: the melodrama of Hollywood and the House Committee on Un-American Activities, 1947’, in P. Davies and B. Neve, Cinema, Politics and Society in America, 1981.

P. McGilligan and P. Buhle, Tender Comrades, A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist, 1997.

V. Navasky, Naming Names, 1980.

B. Neve, Film and Politics in America: A Social Tradition, 1992.

B.Neve, ‘Red Hollywood’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 19, 1, 1999.

W. O’Neill, A Better World, Stalinism and American Intellectuals, 1990.

B. Zheutlin and D. Talbot, eds., Creative Differences, Profiles of Hollywood Dissidents, 1978. (See in particular on the blacklisted writer-director Abraham Polonsky).

A. Aldgate and J. Richards, Britain Can Take It: the British Cinema of the Second World War, 1994.

1. Anderson, Imagined Communities, Revised edition, 1991.

A. Calder, The People's War: Britain 1939-1945, 1969.

L. Friedman, ed., British Cinema and Thatcherism, 1993.

9. Furhammar and F. Isaksson, Politics and Film, 1971.

J. Hacker and D. Price, Take Ten: Contemporary British Film Directors, 1991. (See in particular the interview with Ken Loach).

A.Higson, "’Britain’s Outstanding Contribution to the Film’: The documentary-realist tradition", in C. Barr, ed., All Our Yesterdays: 90 Years of British Cinema, 1986.

A. Higson, Waving the Flag: Constructing a National Cinema in Britain, 1997, esp. chapter 5.

J.Hill, Sex, Class and Realism: British Cinema, 1956-1963, 1986.

J.Hill, 'Government Policy and the British Film industry, 1979-90', European Journal of Communications, 8, 1993.

J.Hill, 'Contemporary British Cinema: Industry, Policy, Identity', and other articles in Cineaste, CCVI, 4, September 2001, Supplement on 'Contemporary British Cinema'.

A. Marwick, "Room at the Top, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and the ‘Cultural Revolution’ in Britain", Journal of Contemporary History, 19, 1, 1984.

J. Richards and D. Sheridan, Mass Observation at the Movies, 1987.

J. Richards, ‘Rethinking British cinema’, in J. Ashby and A. Higson, eds., British Cinema, P ast and Present, 2000.

J. Richards, Films and British National Identity: From Dickens to Dad's Army, 1997.

10. Rockett, L. Gibbons and J. Hill, eds, Cinema and Ireland, 1988.

S. Street, British Cinema in Documents, 2000.

8. Political Film

I.Bignardi, 'The Making of The Battle of Algiers', Cineaste, XXV, 2, 2000, pp. 14-22.

T. Christensen, Reel Politics: American Political Movies from Birth of a Nation to Platoon, 1987.

G. Fuller, ed., Loach on Loach, 1998.

C. Glass, ‘Pontecorvo’s long silence and the demise of political film-making’, Times Literary Supplement, June 26, 1998.

J. Hill, ‘Hidden Agenda: politics and the thriller’, Circa, May/June 1991 (from BN).

M.McLoone, Irish Film: the Emergence of a Contemporary Cinema, 2000.

G. McKnight, ed., Agent of Challenge and Defiance: the Films of Ken Loach, 1997.

S.Prince, Visions of Empire, Political Imagery in Contemporary American Film, 1992.

D.S.Rosenfelt, ed., Salt of the Earth, 1978.

M.Ryan and D. Kellner, Camera Politica: the Politics and Ideology of Contemporary Hollywood Film, 1990.

Z.Sklar and O. Stone, JFK: the book of the Film: the Documented Screenplay, 1992.

 

9. Contemporary Debates

11. Barker and J. Petley, Ill-Effects, the Media/Violence Debate, 1997.

J. Hill, M. McLoone and P. Hainsworth, eds, Border Crossing: Film in Ireland, Britain and Europe, 1994.

A. Moran, ed., Film Policy, 1994.

G. Nowell-Smith and S. Ricci, eds., Hollywood and Europe: Economics, Culture, National Identity: 1945-95, 1998.

L. Quart and W. Kornblum, ‘Film and the Inner City’, Dissent, Spring 2000. (From BN).

T. Schatz, ‘The New Hollywood’, in J. Collins, H. Radner and A. P. Collins, eds., Film Theory Goes to the Movies, 1993.

(Some of the above seminar topics can easily be adapted into such questions, but please check the proposed question with me first. You are also advised to see me briefly about reading and video resources).

1. To what extent can a ‘documentary’ film reflect either national identity or the political preferences of its producers/makers.
2. Can films be classified as ‘propaganda’ without examination of their historical and social context?
3. What are the social functions of film propaganda?
4. Can film reflect or construct notions of national identity?
5. Explore the political significance of either the British New Wave or the films of the Thatcher era, or American Independent films of the 1990s. (In each case two or three examples can be taken as representative; see BN for support on this).
6. Can film express a political vision or ideology?
7. Assess the political significance of a key film, or of the work of a key director. (See BN for more material on directors or films that might usefully be examined in historical or social context. Possible directors include Humphrey Jennings, Ken Loach, Oliver Stone, Elia Kazan, John Sayles, Spike Lee etc). (Films might include On the Waterfront, JFK, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Battle of Algiers, Mission to Moscow etc).
8. What social function is served by film censorship. (Answer by reference to one or two periods or examples; see BN for help on this).
9. What is the significance today of the Hollywood blacklist.
10. In what sense is On the Waterfront (1954) a defense of informing in the context of the ‘naming names’ era of the early fifties?
11. Can feature films illuminate aspects of either American politics, or of the politics of ‘the troubles’ in Northern Ireland.
12. Should the state now support indigenous British or French film, or should feature films be 'freely' traded internationally.

See the separate sheet. Note that this is illustrative. A complete list of material available, and suggestions in terms of particular topics, will be with the final version, which should be with you, and on my web page, next week.

Brian Neve

IWN.4.24

February 7, 2002.