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.
新学期伊始，我将用前两节课的时间为你们做一些关于电影基本概念的背景讲座。当你们对电影基础术语有一些了解以后，我们才能学习美国电影史。你们需要在每周二晚上7点去詹宁斯礼堂，也是我们的研究室，观看电影。然后，在每个礼拜三的讨论课中，我们会深入讨论我们前一天晚上所看的电影。这门课不讲无声电影。今天我们将从1927年放映的第一部有声电影《爵士歌手》开始。下周我们将观看1933年放映的《掘金人》，一部非常能表现萧条时期逃避主义的电影。有一些电影对你们来说可能很新奇，像Frank Capra的《为什么我们会打架》。别的你们可能在电视上已经看过了，像James Deane主演的《没有目标的反抗》，或Stanley Cooper的《医生的怪癖》。但是，我希望你们对即使很熟悉的电影，也采取一种展新的观点去看。在本课程的最后3周内，我们会观看一些80年代的影片，同时你们需要从中选出一部电影作为撰写深入评论的对象。我们会在以后的日子里来谈谈对写作评论的要求。