4.00 Credits
A broad introduction to the history and aesthetics of film from a chronological perspective. Part I, "Cinema's Origin to the End of the SilentEra," begins with the early films of Lumière,Méliès, Porter, Sennett, and Feuillade, thenexplores the rapid evolution of the medium as seen in the works of D. W. Griffith and Erich von Stroheim; American silent comedians Chaplin and Keaton; Soviet filmmakers Kuleshov, Eisenstein, Dovzhenko, and Vertov; German expressionists Murnau, Lang, and Pabst; major Japanese figures Kinugasa and Ozu; practitioners of the French avant-garde (Kirsanov, Dulac, Man Ray, Léger, Duchamp, and Clair); and innovative documentarians Ruttmann and Flaherty. Part II begins with crucial films in the transition to the technology and aesthetic of the sound film (Lang, Sternberg, Bu?uel, Vertov, and Vigo), followed by a study of the evolution of the longtake, deep-focus aesthetic in the films of Renoir, Welles, and Mizoguchi; of Hollywood genres in the films of Ford,Hitchcock, Hawks, and Sturges; the rise of neorealism in Rossellini, De Sica, and Visconti; the contribution of the American avant-garde; the French New Wave; the northern tradition in Dreyer and Bergman; Asian cinematic practice in films of Satyajit Ray, Kurosawa, and Ozu; and further European innovations in Antonioni, Varda, the Taviani brothers, and Pasolini.