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Week 6: The French New Wave, Godard, and Auteur Theory

Feel free to share any thoughts about Breathless as a comment below. For those who would like to learn more about Godard’s first film, in addition to the two required readings, I’d recommend essays by the New York Times film critic A.O. Scott, which attests to the historical impact and enduring legacy of Breathless, and scholar Dudley Andrew.

For further viewing, you may also want to check out some of the titles included in the “French New Wave Collection” on Kanopy. In particular, I’d recommend starting with The 400 Blows (Francois Truffaut, 1959), Cléo from 5 to 7 (Agnès Varda, 1962), and Weekend (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967).

Finally, anyone intrigued by auteur theory might also be interested in two additional sources: Andrew Sarris’s “Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962,” a piece which served to popularize the ideas Truffaut advanced in “La Politique des Auteurs” in the U.S.; and New Yorker critic Pauline Kael’s scathing rebuttal, “Circles and Squares”. As you’ll see, auteur theory ignited a highly contentious debate, which in many ways continues to this day! (Finally, here’s a recent piece by another New Yorker critic, Richard Brody, which reflects on the historical importance of “la politique des auteurs” in affirming the artistic achievements of none other than Nicholas Ray!)

Agnès Varda

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Hollywood Fights Back

A two-part archival recording of Hollywood actors protesting HUAC as part of a broadcast called, “Hollywood Fights Back” (1947). It features, among many others, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Lauren Bacall, John Huston, and two of the stars of the films screened this week—William Holden (Part I, 9:45) and Humphrey Bogart (Part II, 9:02) (see the latter’s quoted remarks, below):

“This is Humphrey Bogart. We sat in the committee room and heard it happen. We saw it—and said to ourselves, “It can happen here.’ We saw American citizens denied the right to speak by elected representatives of the people! We saw police take citizens from the stand like criminals, after they’d been refused the right to defend themselves.  We saw the gavel of the Committee Chairman cutting off the words of free Americans.  The sound of that gavel, Mr Thomas, rings across America, because every time your gavel struck it his the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.”

 

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To-Do List for Sept 23-Oct 6

Greetings! I hope you all are enjoying the beautiful fall weather. As promised, I am writing with a summary of what I’m asking you to do before our next class meeting on October 6th:

  1. Read the required chapters from Sklar and the excerpt from Dana Polan’s book, In a Lonely Place, and watch Billy Wilder’s film, Sunset Boulevard.
  2. For your one-pagers, you might choose to respond to one or both of the screenings. Either way, I’d like you to cite at least one of the assigned readings, and to document your citation using MLA style; see the resources on the right-hand side of the blog if you need a refresher. (Note: you should not produce two separate response papers.)
  3. Watch the two clips I’ve posted below from two celebrated Hollywood musicals of the postwar period: Singin’ in the Rain (1952) and The Band Wagon (1953). Post a comment in response to the clips, using the prompts I’ve included in the post as points of departure for your own thinking.
  4. Send me a 1-2 paragraph email ([email protected]) by October 1 in which you describe your goals for the remainder of the semester. What would you most like to get out of the course? What skills do you feel you’d most like to develop? How do you see the work we’re doing in this course in relation to your own professional and/or academic goals?
  5. I’ve posted an Office Hours Schedule (see the link in the menu above). If you’d like to schedule a meeting, click on the link; you’ll be taken to a Google Doc where you can enter your name next to the time slot that works for you. If none of the available times work, let me know and we can find one that does.

If you have any questions about the above assignments, post a question below, and I (or someone else in the class) can respond!

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Hollywood Musicals and Self-Reflexivity

Below are clips from two postwar Hollywood musicals, Singin’ in the Rain (Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, 1952) and The Band Wagon (Vincente Minelli, 1953), both of which portray and comment on events in American film history—in particular, the advent of sound in cinema, and the consolidation of Hollywood genres (like film noir). Watch them, and in the comments field below,  reflect on the movies’ treatment of film history, using the following questions as prompts:  a) How would you characterize the films’ attitudes towards  Hollywood? (Nostalgic? Critical? Celebratory?) b) How does the treatment of Hollywood on display in these two musicals differ (or overlap with) the one that emerges in the two noir films you screened?

  • Two scenes from Singin’ in the Rain (1952): in the first, silent film stars Don Lockwood and Lina Lamont attend the premiere of their new “talkie,” The Dueling Cavalier; in the second, near the the film, Lina performs for a crowd while being dubbed by an uncredited ingenue, played by Debbie Reynolds:

  •  Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse playing with noir conventions in the “Girl Hunt Ballet” sequence from The Band Wagon (1953):

P.S. For fun, you might also be interested in  comparing these two clips from Singin’ in the Rain and the Coen Brothers’ 2016 film, Hail, Caesar!, both of which portray stars’ trying to acclimate to new modes of production…(Hail, Caesar! is actually a great revisionist riff on Hollywood in the 50s, so I’d recommend watching if you’d like an additional, present-day perspective on the period!)

 

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Week 4: Updates and Reminders

First, a quick note about the readings on Rashomon for tomorrow (both available on the “Readings” page). As I mentioned in class, I’ve asked you to read the excerpt from Kurosawa’s autobiography in place of the Stephen Prince essay. You’re also reading an excerpt from film historian Donald Richie’s book on Kurosawa; however, I just realized that the PDF I initially posted was missing the first 10 pages of the chapter! The whole chapter is there now,  but I’ll understand if some of you only had time to read p. 13-21.  So you know: The first half of the chapter focuses on Richie’s interpretation of the film and its themes (and makes a fascinating argument about which of the many accounts is in fact the most reliable and why), while the the second concentrates on the film’s aesthetics, production, and reception.

Second, a reminder that we will not meet on September 22 or 29, as a result of the upcoming holidays. I’ll talk more in class tomorrow about what I’ll ask you to do over that break, but for your own planning, remember that you’ll need to screen Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950) and do reading from the Robert Sklar book, Movie-Made America. So, if you haven’t ordered it yet, now’s the time!

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Rashomon: Reactions and Reflections

Please use the comments field below to share any thoughts or questions about Rashomon, or to reflect on your experience as a viewer. These do not have to be fully formed thoughts!  The goal is just to provide us with some additional space for discussion that we can use to supplement our in-class meetings. Feel free to post whatever occurs to you, and to check in during the week as additional ideas occur to you…

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“To Be or Not to Be”: Additional Resources

For those who are curious, I wanted to share the full text of Lubitsch’s response to some of the film’s critics (published in The New York Times on March 29, 1942, not long after the film’s premiere). You might also be interested in this recent essay, also from the NYT, on “How to Make Fun of Nazis”, in which the author advocates for the use of humor as a protest tactic. Finally, for those interested in Lombard’s career and tragic death shortly after the film’s completion, here’s a link to the episode from the film history podcast, You Must Remember This, which I mentioned in my earlier email.