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Introduction to Film Studies 1: Hollywood Cinema

Introduction to Film Studies 1: Hollywood Cinema. Lecture Three: Authorship. Critical Discourses: Art vs. Commerce. Commerce = Hollywood, production line, mass audience Art cinema = Europe, individualism, select audience (subsidy) Rudolph Arnheim: Film as Art

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Introduction to Film Studies 1: Hollywood Cinema

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  1. Introduction to Film Studies 1:Hollywood Cinema Lecture Three: Authorship

  2. Critical Discourses:Art vs. Commerce Commerce = Hollywood, production line, mass audience Art cinema = Europe, individualism, select audience (subsidy) Rudolph Arnheim: Film as Art What is an artist? Personal vision, creativity, mastery of form, a message for the world Critiques of the romantic notion of the artist

  3. The Auteur Theory • Germany 1913: The autorenfilm • Auteur = Author • Les Politique des Auteurs: Cahiers du Cinema, 1950s • French ‘quality’ cinema: ‘cinema du papa’ • Establishing cinema as an art form • Why the director • ‘Camera-stylo’ • The ‘Metteur-en-Scene’ • From theory to practice: Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol • The Hollywood film artist: Welles, Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, John Ford

  4. Widening the Theory • America: Andrew Sarris at Village Voice • UK: Robin Wood at Movie, writing on Hitchcock and Hawks • Contemporary film criticism: Sight and Sound, broadsheet newspapers

  5. Applying the Theory • Consistency of style • Consistency of story content • Thematic concerns • Underlying purpose

  6. Critiques of the Theory • A collaborative medium • Why only directors? • How do we decide if a director is an auteur or not? • Historical context • Audiences • Structuralism (Roland Barthes): meaning is coded in the text – how do we know what the director intended? • Marxist-Feminist perspective: dominant ideology is the key factor • Postmodernism: multiple meanings

  7. Restating the Theory • The Structuralist Auteur: Robin Wood – shaping the codes • Subverting dominant ideology: Peter Wollen, Signs and Meaning in the Cinema • Postmodernism: audiences use the auteur as they wish

  8. Hitchcock • Content: an ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances, the ice-cold blonde, a persecuted hero on the run, the ‘McGuffin’ • Style: slow tracking shots, odd angles, expressionist lighting and colour, shock cuts, black humour • Themes: psychological breakdown, ‘transference of guilt’, order vs. disorder, fear of women – misogyny • Intention? ‘To put the audience through it’.

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