This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
The course will introduce students to the study of post-War European cinema and will contribute to student's historical, aesthetic and conceptual understanding of this cinema. The course will examine a number of the principal production and aesthetic trends of cinema in Europe from 1945 to the late 1970s. The main aim is to introduce students to the work and contexts of production of important European filmmakers from a range of national cinemas. Thus the module will look at Italian Neo-Realism, British Ealing comedy, Swedish cinema, French New Wave, New German cinema, and New Spanish Cinema. Among the topics of the course are: the notion of European 'art' cinema; the notion of the 'auteur'; European realism; the relationship between European cinema and Hollywood. Students will also become familiar with basic film terminology as well as with basic tools for cultural analysis.
2 hours per week
50% coursework 50% exam
Indicative Reading List
Timothy Corrigan, A Short Guide to Writing About Film (New York: Harper Collins, latest edition)
David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction (London: McGraw Hill, latest edition)
Bruce F. Kawin, How Movies Work (Berkeley: University of California Pres, 1992)
Ginette Vincendeau, Encyclopaedia of European Cinema (London: BFI, 1995)
Pierre Sorlin, European Cinemas, European Societies (London: Routledge, 1991)
Catherine Fowler (ed.) The European Cinema Reader (London: Routledge, 2002)
Ian Aitken, European Film Theory and Cinema: a critical introduction (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001)
Roy Armes, Patterns of Realism: A Study of Italian Neo-Realism (South Brunswick, N.J.: Barnes, 1971)
Bergman on Bergman: interviews with Ingmar Bergman (Secker and Warburg, 1973)
James Monaco, The New Wave (New York: Doubleday, 1976)
Richard Neupert, A History of the French New Wave (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002)
Charles Barr, Ealing Studios (London: Studio Vista, 1993)
Sarah Street, British National Cinema (London: Routledge, 1997)
Thomas Corrigan, New German Cinema (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983)
Thomas Elsaesser, New German Cinema: A History (Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1989)
John Hopewell, Out of the Past: Spanish Cinema After Franco (London: BFI, 1986)
Rob Stone, Spanish Cinema (London: Harlow, 2002)
Indicative Viewing List
Ladri di biciclette / Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio de Sica, 1948)
The Man in the White Suit (Alexander Mackendrick, 1951)
À bout the souffle / Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
Darling (John Schlesinger, 1965)
Die Blechtrommel / The Tin Drum (Volker Schlöndorff, 1979)
Cría cuervos / Raise Ravens (Carlos Saura, 1975)
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
Students who successfully complete the module will
1. have acquired an understanding of key critical debates in European cinema studies, as well as the political and cultural forces underpinning these debates;
2. have developed an understanding of cinema as the product of particular historical period that provides social commentary;
3. have developed a broad awareness of the principal aesthetic trends which European cinema has developed since 1945;
4. have acquired an understanding of narrative processes and modes of representation at work in film;
5. have improved their ability to compare and contrast different films, and, by extension, their skills in the field of comparative study;
6. have developed their ability to communicate effectively;
7. have improved their ability to plan and write an essay and to organise it in terms of a coherent argument.
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