This module introduces students to the study of the history of film. By focussing on a number of topics relating to early cinema, and classic films from the silent period, students are encouraged to understand films in terms of the social and technological context in which they were produced. Through this module students should learn to approach examples of early film as documents that show us how visual culture developed and changed in the course of the early 20^th century accompanied by theoretical discussions about how we perceive time and space through cinema, whether and how film can be a medium for artistic expression, and whether the introduction of sound would destroy or enhance cinema.

The module aims to provide a framework for the advanced study of the history of film including

• Interpretive strategies

   

• Periodization

   

• Technological Change

   

The module content focuses on the invention of the moving image, on its early incorporation into existing entertainment arenas such as the fair and the theatre, on the establishment of cinema as a storytelling medium, as an art form, and as a vehicle for popular comedy and popular horror.

Week 1 What is Film History?

In this seminar we will begin by thinking about what happened when in film history, how to refer to different periods, and what kinds of questions about film relate to different periods.

Week 2 Film Before Film

In this seminar we will consider what is meant by ‘the moving image’, explore the ways in which images can be made to move, thinking about how it is we perceive images as moving in space and time.

Week 3 The Invention of the Moving Image.

In this seminar we will learn about Edison, the Skladanovsky brothers and the Lumiere brothers.

Week 4 The Cinema of Attractions

In this seminar we will discuss an essay on early cinema and the avant-garde by Tom Gunning in which he introduces the term the ‘cinema of attractions’ which has had a great influence on the contemporary understanding of early cinema.

Week 5 Editing and the development of storytelling

In this seminar we will look at an example of early film history in which editing techniques were developed to manipulate the perception of time and space.

Week 6 Early Film Genres: the City Film, the Silent Comedy, the Western, The Melodrama, the Horror Film, the Sci-fi film

Week 7 Early Film Classics: Comedy and Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Holmes Junior (1924)

Week 8 Early Film Classics: Theatre and Friedrich Murnau’s The Last Laugh (1924)

Week 9 Early Film Classics: The Political Film and Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925)

Week 10 Early Film Classics: Horror and Carl Theodor Dryer’s Vampyr (1932)

Lectures

Student-led presentations and discussion

Guided Reading

Screenings

Bela Balacz, (first published 1954) Theory of the Film: Character and Growth of a New Art, [published online]

Mark Cousins, (2004) The Story of Film, London : Pavillion

Kristin Thompson, David Bordwell, (1994) Film History: An Introduction (second edition),  New York : McGraw-Hill

Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, (1996) The Oxford History of World Cinema, Oxford : OUP