History of Art 24, Section 1
Looking at Classic Movies (P/NP)
Professor David Wright
Wednesday 2:00-6:00, 425 Doe Library, CCN: 05554This seminar will devote twelve Wednesday afternoons to looking thoughtfully at classic movies, treating them as visual art, analyzing particularly the camera work and editing, also the staging and lighting, always seeking to understand how these aspects contribute to the total expressive effect of the movie. Each week one movie will be analyzed closely and students will write a one-page report on a specific aspect of it; then another movie or shorts will be shown to expand students' knowledge of the medium. The movies analyzed will range from The Last Man (Germany 1924) to Bicycle Thieves (Italy 1949), all of them general release movies widely seen in their time. The movies will normally be shown on DVD, allowing us easily to go back to specific episodes for detailed analysis. No reading is required; there will be no other written work. This seminar is for ordinary moviegoers, not for advanced theorists of "Film." This seminar will meet the first twelve weeks of the semester.
David H. Wright has been a dedicated photographer since childhood; his scholarly research and teaching on art in Rome and Late Antiquity still depend on his photography. He remembers fondly the movies he saw in the 1940s, including what were already recognized as classics, and feels that the era before television deserves special attention.
