Cinema Curriculum
The key to understanding the 20th century and the cultural power of the American empire lies in interpreting film, and the infrastructure behind it.
Because the art of cinema naturally lends itself to sensuality, this curriculum is intended for secondary students and undergraduates at a level of maturity where they will not be disturbed by depictions of violence or infatuated with depictions of sexuality.
What was that old saying of the wise? Viewer discretion is advised.
Remember: moving pictures are an illusion of life. Just because it's animated does not mean it has a living spirit. God requires that we do not worship images. We must not love them; we must taste test them instead. Marvelously, imagination mingles with reality. Our enjoyment should be in appreciating how films help us bring reality into focus more clearly. If they fail in that, there is nothing left to do but disparage them.
As such we need to hone our critical faculties; we need to deepen our awareness of historical context and our intertextual hermeneutics to begin to understand what the images we're seeing might ultimately mean and how they are trying to manipulate us emotionally. What makes for a good, meaningful life? Who is beautiful and who is ugly? What is heroic and what is dishonorable? Is providence at work?
Sadly, the vast majority of people today have formed their basic assumptions and moral values and self-conception on what they have seen in film and television. Many of these frames of mind are very bad and should be torn apart in the fear of God.
Because it is so psychological, filmmaking and film criticism is ultimately an act of spiritual warfare. A priestly task. We must test all these symbols and stories we use to make sense of who we are in the universe and how we relate to one another.
With that in mind, welcome to a survey of earth's Primitive Cinematic Neanderthrashings.
Invention & Early Days
Intro
General Readings - Melies, Lumiere, Edison
Films to Review: Earliest Films Guide
1890s:
- Arrival of A Train
- Workers Leaving The Factory
- La Lune A Un Metre
- Le Cauchemar
- The Kiss
- Boxing Cats
- The Cabbage Patch Fairy
- Serpentine Dance
1900s:
- A Trip to the Moon
- Joan of Arc
- The Great Train Robbery
- The Infernal Cauldron
- La Fée Carabosse ou le poignard fatal
- The Consequences of Feminism
- The Kingdom of Fairies
- The Big Swallow
- The Man with the Rubber Head
- A Corner in Wheat
- The Dancing Pig
- Life of An American Fireman
- Alice in Wonderland
- La Sirene
The Beginning of Hollywood
General Readings - D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Alice Guy-Blanche, Douglas Fairbanks, Maurice Tourneur, Harold Lloyd, Lois Weber
Films to Review: Hollywood's Beginnings
- Intolerance
- A Dog's Life
- The Blue Bird
- The Immigrant
- True Heart Susie
- Shoulder Arms
- Easy Street
- Blind Husbands
- Suspense
- The Cure
- One AM
- The Pawnshop
- The Adventurer
- The Unchanging Sea
- The Avenging Conscience
- The Musketeers of Pig Alley
- The Vagabond
- Behind the Screen
- The Mystery of the Leaping Fish
- The Good Bad-Man
- Regeneration
- Straight Shooting
- Male and Female
- Victory
- When the Clouds Roll By
Foreign Film Industries
German
General Readings - German Expressionism, Murnau, Fritz Lang
Films to Review:
- Metropolis
- Faust
- Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
- Die Nibelung: Siegfried's Death & Kriemhild's Revenge
- Dr. Mabuse
- The Last Laugh
- Nosferatu
- Diary of a Lost Woman (Tagebuch einer Verlorenen)
- Pandora's Box
- Spies
- Berlin: Symphony of a Great City
- Der Golem
- Hand of Orlac
- Ghosts before Breakfast
French
General Readings - French Impressionism, Abel Gance
Films to Review:
- The Passion of Joan of Arc
- J'Accuse
- Napoleon
- The Wheel
- The Fall of the House of Usher
- Ménilmontant
- The Faithful Heart
- Finis Terrae
- Un Chien Andalou
- Les Vampires
- L'Inhumaine
- Entr'acte
- Ballet Mecanique
- Emak Bakia
- The Seashell and the Clergyman
Soviet
General Readings - Soviet Montage, Propaganda & Film Theory; Eisenstein
Films to Review:
- Man with a Movie Camera
- Battleship Potemkin
- Strike
- October
- The General Line
- By The Law
- The House on Trubnaya
- Kino Eye
The Golden Age of Hollywood
General Readings - Synchronous Sound, Talkies, Fall of the Silent Stars; Buster Keaton, Jazz Singer
Films to Review:
Buster Keaton:
- The General
- Sherlock Jr.
- The Camera Man
- One Week
- Steamboat Bill Jr.
- The Navigator
- Seven Chances
Charlie Chaplin:
- City Lights
- Modern Times
- The Gold Rush
- The Kid
Other Classic Silent Film:
- Safety Last!
- Greed
- He Who Gets Slapped
- The Man Who Laughs
- The Phantom of the Opera
- Nanook of the North
Synchronized Sound:
- Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
- The Jazz Singer
- Melodie der Welt
- The Wind
Talkies of The 30s
Films to Review:
- I Am A Fugitive from a Chain Gang
- It Happened One Night
- Freaks
- Duck Soup
- Fury
- Bringing Up Baby
- Stagecoach
- Mr Deeds Goes to Town
- The Scarlet Empress
Monsters:
- Frankenstein
- King Kong
The 40s
Ernst Lubitsch, American World War II Propaganda, National Socialist Propaganda, TechniColor, Wizard of Oz, Snow White;
Genre Studies:
Swashbucklers, Westerns, Epics, Noir, Drama, Early Experimental, Musical & Dance, General Readings
Films to Review:
Post-War Japanese Cinema
jidaigeki - period drama
gendaigeki - contemporary drama
1937 - Humanity and Paper Balloons
Sadao Yamanaka
Gosho
Shimazu
Naruse
Ozu vs. Mizoguchi - slow vs. fast
Kurosawa
Kaiju
GOJIRA!
General Readings
Films to Review:
The Arthouse
Italian Neorealism
General Readings
Films to Review:
Society of the Spectacle
Widescreen
Epic Adventure, Sword & Sandal Films
50s Masculinity (Theme)
Sci Fi and Cold War Paranoia
50s Musicals
Hitchcock & Auteur Theory
Ingmar Bergman
General Readings
Films to Review:
French New Wave
Cahiers du Cinema
Godard
La Jetee
Tati
Auteur Theory
General Readings
Films to Review:
Documentary & Cinéma vérité
General Readings - City Symphonies
Films to Review:
Hollywood Decay, Blockbusters & New Hollywood Cinema: 60s and 70s
lost theatre chains and also had to compete with television; crazy riots and cultural revolution; ticket sales falling;
Exploitation films
Harryhausen
James Bond
Spaghetti Westerns
Youth Adrift (Theme)
American Disillusionment & Vietnam (Theme)
Decay of Cities
White Ethnic American Identity & Masculinity (Theme): Saturday Night Fever
George Lucas: THX 1138, American Graffiti, Star Wars
Mike Nichols
General Readings
Films to Review:
Spielberg: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws
Kubrick: 2001 A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lnyndon, The Shining
Francis Ford Coppola: The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, The Conversation
Altman
Mike Nichols: The Graduate
Rocky
Network
Paper Moon
Gates of Heaven
Jeremiah Johnson
Patton
Asian Cinema
Hong Kong Kung Fu vs. Mainland Communist censorship
Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Wong Kar Wai
Indian Film and Bollywood
Decline of Japanese Film Industry, Rise of Anime
General Readings
Films to Review:
The 80s
Dominance of the Blockbuster and the Bankable Star
Home Video
The Multinational Corporation
Advances in Sci Fi
One Liners
General Readings
Films to Review:
Epic Fantasy: Willow, Neverending Story
Spielberg: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Back to the Future, Goonies
Terry Gilliam: Time Bandits, Baron Munchausen
Babette's Feast
Chariots of Fire
The Right Stuff
The Mission
Batman Miyazaki: Nausicaa, Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service
True Stories
My Dinner with Andre
The 90s
Indie film
3D special effects
Star led pictures
Coen Brothers: Barton Fink, Hudsucker Proxy
Tarantino
Jim Jarmusch
Wes Anderson: Bottle Rocket
Illusory Life (Theme): Truman Show, Matrix, Dark City
Sad Office (Theme)
Rom-Com Golden Age
The Phantom Menace
General Readings
Films to Review:
Misery
The Fugitive
Gattaca
Miyazaki: Mononoke, Porco Rosso
Babe
The Remains of the Day
Whit Stillman: Metropolitan, Barcelona, Last Days of Disco
The 00s
The 00s. Looking back, what a vulgar and depressing era for Hollywood. Some good films were made, but mostly dumb fun with very little iconic or psychological power, and year by year shows a decline in visual quality and overall intelligence.
Remakes & Sequelitis
Decline of Star Power
Rotten Tomatoes and the Rise of Online Reviews
Pre-woke Vulgarity Competitions
The Grimdarkening
The Rise of Netflix
Zombies
Superheroes
General Readings
Films to Review:
Christopher Nolan: The Dark Knight
Wes Anderson: The Royal Tenenbaums, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Darjeeling Limited, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Paul Thomas Anderson: There Will Be Blood
Coen Brothers: No Country for Old Men, Burn After Reading, A Serious Man
American Psycho
Pixar: Monster's Inc, Finding Nemo, Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, Wall-E, Up
The Harry Potter Films
The Notebook
Sam Raimi Spider Man Films
Napoleon Dynamite
In Bruges
Children of Men
The Road
Singh's The Fall
Shymalan: Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs
Primer