DOCSLIB.ORG

View Films of Alfred Hitchcock. Syllabus

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
View Films of Alfred Hitchcock. Syllabus RTF 370 Film Analysis and Criticism Topic: The Films of Alfred Hitchcock (Spring 2021) Professor: Thomas Schatz (CMA 6.120; [email protected]) Office hours: Monday and Wednesday, 3:30 - 5:00 pm, and by appointment. Teaching Assistant: Alex Brannan ([email protected]) Office hours: Tuesday, 12:00 - 1:30pm and by appointment The general plan for the class in the time of COVID: This is a “hybrid” course that initially is being conducted online (via Zoom) and in a “synchronous” mode – that is, with our class meetings held at the scheduled time (TTH, 9:30 - 10:45). We may convert to in-person class meetings later in the term, should the COVID situation improve and permit that much-desired adjustment. During this online phase, I expect you to attend (with your cameras on, please) and to participate. I will record our sessions for back-up purposes, but please plan to approach this as you would a regular on-campus UT class in terms of attendance and participation. All of the weekly screenings – both the required and recommended screenings – are available to you online. I also will be posting clips that I plan to use in class, which I will encourage you to screen before our class sessions. I’m also expecting you to conduct research for your final paper online, recognizing the obvious constraints due to the coronavirus. We will discuss research strategies throughout the semester, and especially during the latter half of the term. Course description: This course examines the career of Alfred Hitchcock, focusing on the films that he directed as well as the social, cultural and industrial conditions under which those films were produced. While the general approach of the course is historical (dealing with Hitchcock’s films in chronological order), the main thrust is critical and analytical, combining various approaches – principally auteur and genre analysis; narrative, textual, and stylistic analysis; industry history; and theories of gender and sexuality – to assess Hitchcock’s films and his distinctive filmmaking style. In the process, we will trace Hitchcock’s development through nearly a half-century of filmmaking in England and the U.S., his changing status within the British and American film industries, and his changing stature within the critical and scholarly communities. This is a writing-intensive (Writing Flag) course, and the majority of your work will involve critical and analytical writing. This includes two 4-5 page critiques, a 10-page term paper, and a final take-home essay exam. All of your writing, including the final essay exam, will be graded for both substance and style. (See note on the last page about the UT and Moody College writing centers.) There are also regular reading assignments (roughly 30-40 pages per class meeting), along with the required weekly screening. The recommended screenings include films that I will be covering in lectures and discussion, and I encourage you view these if possible. You are expected to keep up with the reading and to demonstrate your command of that material (as well as the screenings and previous lectures) in class discussions and in your writing assignments. You are also encouraged to supplement the required screenings with additional movie viewing on your own – particularly the Hitchcock films not screened for class that are referenced in lectures and readings, as well as the countless films and filmmakers heavily influenced by Hitchcock’s work. (See the list of recommended Hitchcock films at the end of the syllabus.) Requirements: • attendance and class participation [25% of grade] • two 4-5 page critiques [25% of grade] – assignment on separate handout o due dates: February 11 and March 11 • term paper (10 pages) [25% of grade] – assignment on separate handout o abstract due April 6; paper due May 6 (last class day) • Final take-home essay exam [25% of grade] Readings: • Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock (rev. ed., Simon & Schuster, 1985) • Robin Wood, Hitchcock’s Films Revisited (Columbia Univ. Press, 2002) • Marshall Deutelbaum and Leland Poague, eds. A Hitchcock Reader. 2nd ed. (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009) • Jonathan Freedman, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Hitchcock (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2015) Additional assigned readings will be posted on Canvas (as indicated below). Highly recommended readings: • Tania Modleski, The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock and Feminist Theory • William Rothman, Hitchcock – The Murderous Gaze • Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Schedule of class meetings, reading assignments, and screenings: [Please note: The assigned readings from the Alfred Hitchcock Reader are designated AHR; and those from the Cambridge Companion to Hitchcock CCH.] Tues 1/19 Intro course Thurs 1/21 Intro Hitchcock readings: Francois Truffaut, “Introduction” to Hitchcock [Canvas] Andrew Sarris, “Alfred Hitchcock” [Canvas] ---------- 2 Screening(s) for week two: required: Blackmail (1929) recommended: The Lodger (1927) Tues 1/26 The Lodger, Blackmail and the emergence of an auteur director readings: Truffaut, Chapters 1–3 Thurs 1/28 Blackmail as proto-“Hitchcock film” readings: Poague, “Criticism and/as History: Rereading Blackmail” [AHR] Wood, ch 12, “Symmetry, Closure, Disruption: the Ambiguity of Blackmail” ---------- Screening(s) for week three: required: The 39 Steps (1935) recommended: The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) Tues 2/2 Into the 1930s: Hitchcock’s mature British period readings: Truffaut, Chapters 4-5 Weis, “Consolidation of a Classical Style: The Man Who Knew Too Much” [AHR] Thurs 2/4 Melding the espionage thriller and screwball comedy: The 39 Steps readings: Yacowar, “”Hitchcock’s Imagery and Art” [AHR] Silet, “Through a Woman’s Eyes: Sexuality and Memory in The 39 Steps” [AHR] ---------- Screening(s) for week four: required: The Lady Vanishes (1938) recommended: Sabotage (1936) Tues 2/9 Identity and performance in The Lady Vanishes readings: Petro, “Rematerializing the Vanishing ‘Lady’: Feminism, Hitchcock, and Interpretation” [AHR] Schatz, “Hitchcock and the Studio System” [CCH] 3 Thurs 2/11 From Britain to Hollywood ***first critique due*** Freedman, “Introduction” [CCH] Staiger, “Creating the Brand: The Hitchcock Touch” [CCH] Schatz, “Authorship, Film Style, and the Rise of the Producer-Director” (skim) [Canvas] ---------- Screening(s) for week five: required: Rebecca (1940) recommended: Suspicion (1941) Tues 2/16 Hitchcock, the “woman’s picture,” and feminist theory readings: Truffaut, Chapter 6 Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” [Canvas] Modleski, “Introduction” [Canvas] Thurs 2/18 Rebecca, film noir and the Hitchcock’s “female gothic” cycle readings: Modleski, “Women and the Labyrinth: Rebecca” [Canvas] Schatz, “Case Study: Film Noir” ---------- Screening(s) for week six: required: Shadow of a Doubt (1943) recommended: Lifeboat (1944) Tues 2/23 Shadow of a Doubt – Hitchcock's American debut readings: Truffaut, Chapter 7 Wood, ch 14, “Ideology, Genre, Auteur: Shadow of a Doubt” Thurs 2/25 Shadow of a Doubt – Hitchcock’s American gothic readings: Freedman, “American Civilization and Its Discontents: The Persistence of Evil in Shadow of a Doubt” [CCH] McLaughlin, “All in the Family: Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt” [AHR] ---------- 4 Screening(s) for week seven: required: Notorious (1946) recommended: Spellbound (1945) Tues 3/2 Hitchcock and the Hollywood star system readings: Truffaut, Chapter 8 Wood, ch 15, “Star and Auteur: Hitchcock’s Films with Bergman” Thurs 3/4 Spellbound and Notorious: recasting the female gothic readings: Hyde, “The Moral Universe of Hitchcock’s Spellbound” [AHR] Abel, “Notorious: Perversion par Excellence” [AHR] ---------- Screening(s) for week eight: required: Strangers on a Train (1951) recommended: Rope (1948) Tues 3/9 Doubling and male coupling in Rope and Strangers on a Train readings: Truffaut, Chapter 9 Wood, ch 16, “The Murderous Gays: Hitchcock’s Homophobia” Thurs 3/11 Return to form: Hitchcock in the 1950s ***second critique due*** readings: Truffaut, Chapter 10 Wood, ch 2, “Strangers on a Train” [HFR] ---------- March 15-20 Spring Break ---------- Screening(s) for week nine: required: Rear Window (1954) recommended: Dial M for Murder (1954) 5 Tues 3/23 Seeing, spying, and the logic of desire in Rear Window readings: Truffaut, Chapter 11 Modleski, “The Master’s Dollhouse: Rear Window” [Canvas] Curtis, “The Making of Rear Window” – skim [Canvas] Thurs 3/25 Gender and spectatorship in Hitchcock’s later work readings: Wood, ch 3, “Rear Window” Kehr, “Hitch’s Riddle” [Canvas] Stam and Pearson, “Hitchcock’s Rear Window: Reflexivity and the Critique of Voyeurism” [AHR] ---------- Screening(s) for week ten: required: The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) recommended: The Wrong Man (1956) Tues 3/30 Dark comedy and male anxiety in ’50s Hitchcock readings: Kapsis, “The Making of a Thriller Director” (read pages 16-42) [Canvas] Thurs 4/1 Remaking The Man Who Knew Too Much readings: Pomerance, “Looking Up: Class, England, and America in The Man Who Knew Too Much” [CCH] Wood, ch 17, “The Men Who Knew Too Much (and the women who knew better)” ---------- Screening(s) for week eleven: Alfred Hitchcock Presents [misc. episodes] Tues 4/6 Another side of Hitchcock: Alfred Hitchcock Presents ***term paper abstracts due*** readings: Naremore, “Hitchcock and Humor” [Canvas] Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius, excerpt of Chapter Twelve (pages 359-380) [Canvas] Thurs 4/8 Hitchcock as auteur, trademark, and Hollywood institution
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Silent Films of Alfred Hitchcock
    The Hitchcock 9 Silent Films of Alfred Hitchcock Justin Mckinney Presented at the National Gallery of Art The Lodger (British Film Institute) and the American Film Institute Silver Theatre Alfred Hitchcock’s work in the British film industry during the silent film era has generally been overshadowed by his numerous Hollywood triumphs including Psycho (1960), Vertigo (1958), and Rebecca (1940). Part of the reason for the critical and public neglect of Hitchcock’s earliest works has been the generally poor quality of the surviving materials for these early films, ranging from Hitchcock’s directorial debut, The Pleasure Garden (1925), to his final silent film, Blackmail (1929). Due in part to the passage of over eighty years, and to the deterioration and frequent copying and duplication of prints, much of the surviving footage for these films has become damaged and offers only a dismal representation of what 1920s filmgoers would have experienced. In 2010, the British Film Institute (BFI) and the National Film Archive launched a unique restoration campaign called “Rescue the Hitchcock 9” that aimed to preserve and restore Hitchcock’s nine surviving silent films — The Pleasure Garden (1925), The Lodger (1926), Downhill (1927), Easy Virtue (1927), The Ring (1927), Champagne (1928), The Farmer’s Wife (1928), The Manxman (1929), and Blackmail (1929) — to their former glory (sadly The Mountain Eagle of 1926 remains lost). The BFI called on the general public to donate money to fund the restoration project, which, at a projected cost of £2 million, would be the largest restoration project ever conducted by the organization. Thanks to public support and a $275,000 dona- tion from Martin Scorsese’s The Film Foundation in conjunction with The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the project was completed in 2012 to coincide with the London Olympics and Cultural Olympiad.
    [Show full text]
  • A Cinema of Confrontation
    A CINEMA OF CONFRONTATION: USING A MATERIAL-SEMIOTIC APPROACH TO BETTER ACCOUNT FOR THE HISTORY AND THEORIZATION OF 1970S INDEPENDENT AMERICAN HORROR _______________________________________ A Thesis presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of Missouri-Columbia _______________________________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts _____________________________________________________ by COURT MONTGOMERY Dr. Nancy West, Thesis Supervisor DECEMBER 2015 The undersigned, appointed by the dean of the Graduate School, have examined the thesis entitled A CINEMA OF CONFRONTATION: USING A MATERIAL-SEMIOTIC APPROACH TO BETTER ACCOUNT FOR THE HISTORY AND THEORIZATION OF 1970S INDEPENDENT AMERICAN HORROR presented by Court Montgomery, a candidate for the degree of master of English, and hereby certify that, in their opinion, it is worthy of acceptance. _________________________________ Professor Nancy West _________________________________ Professor Joanna Hearne _________________________________ Professor Roger F. Cook ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deepest appreciation to my committee chair, Dr. Nancy West, for her endless enthusiasm, continued encouragement, and excellent feedback throughout the drafting process and beyond. The final version of this thesis and my defense of it were made possible by Dr. West’s critique. I would like to thank my committee members, Dr. Joanna Hearne and Dr. Roger F. Cook, for their insights and thought-provoking questions and comments during my thesis defense. That experience renewed my appreciation for the ongoing conversations between scholars and how such conversations can lead to novel insights and new directions in research. In addition, I would like to thank Victoria Thorp, the Graduate Studies Secretary for the Department of English, for her invaluable assistance with navigating the administrative process of my thesis writing and defense, as well as Dr.
    [Show full text]
  • La Politique Des Auteurs in British Film Studies: Traditional Versus Structural Approaches
    RADAR Research Archive and Digital Asset Repository Buckland, W La Politique des Auteurs in British Film Studies: Traditional versus Structural Approaches Buckland, W (2016) La Politique des Auteurs in British Film Studies: Traditional versus Structural Approaches. Mise au Point, 8 This version is available: https://radar.brookes.ac.uk/radar/items/13d7a3f4-8a93-4187-850b-9960f3817c04/1/ Available on RADAR: July 2016 Copyright © and Moral Rights are retained by the author(s) and/ or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This item cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder(s). The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. This document is the post print version of the journal article. Some differences between the published version and this version may remain and you are advised to consult the published version if you wish to cite from it. WWW.BROOKES.AC.UK/GO/RADAR La Politique des Auteurs in British Film Studies: Traditional versus Structural Approaches Warren Buckland Abstract: This essay charts the emergence of auteur structuralism in Britain from 1967-76 and the polemical debates that erupted between its adherents (Jim Kitses, Peter Wollen, Alan Lovell) on the one hand, and Robin Wood, a defender of traditional auteur theory, on the other. The essay considers the epistemological values behind the debate, and ends by outlining the incompatible types of knowledge and evidence each side in the debate held.
    [Show full text]
  • Notions of the Gothic in the Films of Alfred Hitchcock. CLARK, Dawn Karen
    Notions of the Gothic in the films of Alfred Hitchcock. CLARK, Dawn Karen. Available from Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive (SHURA) at: http://shura.shu.ac.uk/19471/ This document is the author deposited version. You are advised to consult the publisher's version if you wish to cite from it. Published version CLARK, Dawn Karen. (2004). Notions of the Gothic in the films of Alfred Hitchcock. Masters, Sheffield Hallam University (United Kingdom).. Copyright and re-use policy See http://shura.shu.ac.uk/information.html Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive http://shura.shu.ac.uk Sheffield Hallam University Learning and IT Services Adsetts Centre City Campus Sheffield S1 1WB Return to Learning Centre of issue Fines are charged at 50p per hour REFERENCE ProQuest Number: 10694352 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10694352 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 Notions of the Gothic in the Films of Alfred Hitchcock Dawn Karen Clark A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Sheffield Hallam University for the degree of Master of Philosophy July 2004 Abstract The films of Alfred Hitchcock were made within the confines of the commercial film industries in Britain and the USA and related to popular cultural traditions such as the thriller and the spy story.
    [Show full text]
  • Postmodernism, the Contemporary Horror Film and the "Problem" of the Femlwine
    Natio~aiLibrary Bibliotheque nationale cf Canada du Canada Acquisiiions and Directicn des acquisiiions e! Bibiiographic Services Branch des services bibiiograpniques 395 Weiltngion Street Oflawa. Ontario KiAON4 NOTICE The qurljty of this microform is La squatit6 de cette microforme heavily dependent upon the depend grandement de la qualit6 quafity of the original thesis de la th&se sournise au srrbwritted for microfilming. microfilmage. Nous avow tout Every effort has been made to fait pour assurer une qualit4 ensure the highest quality of supbrieure de reproduction. reproduction possible. If pages are missing, contact the S'il manque des pages, veuillez university which granted the csmmuniquer avec I'universite degree. qui a confere le grade. Some pages may have indistinct La qualit6 d'impression de print especially if the original certaines pages peut laisser 5 pages were typed with a poor dbsirer, surtout si les pages typewriter ribbon or if the originales ont 6te university sent us an inferior dactylographiees a I'aide d'un photocopy. ruban us6 ou si I'universite nous a fait parvenir une photocopie de qualite infbrieure. Reproduction in full or in part of La reprodcction, m6me partielle, this microform is governed by de cetfe microforme est soumise the Canadian Copyright Act, a la Lsi canadienne sur le droit. R.S.C. 1970, c. un -A and d'aerteur, SRC 5970, c. 2-30, ei subsequent amendments. ses amendements subsequenta. THE LIMITS OF DISSATTSFACTION: POSTMODEm?SM, THE CONTEMPORARY HORROR FILM AND3 THE "PROBLEM" OF %HE FEMININE Liame McLarty MA., Carleton University, 1984 THESE SUBNLIrnB IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGFEE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPflY in the Department of Communication @ Lianne McLarty 1993 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY October 1993 Ail rights reserved.
    [Show full text]
  • Film Itself As the Story: Reflexive Constructions in Alfred Hitchcock and Jean-Luc Godard
    Bard College Bard Digital Commons Senior Projects Spring 2017 Bard Undergraduate Senior Projects Spring 2017 Film No Longer Telling a Story; Film Itself as the Story: Reflexive Constructions in Alfred Hitchcock and Jean-Luc Godard Amy Ertie Chabassier Bard College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2017 Part of the Film Production Commons, Other Film and Media Studies Commons, Philosophy of Language Commons, Theory and Criticism Commons, and the Visual Studies Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Chabassier, Amy Ertie, "Film No Longer Telling a Story; Film Itself as the Story: Reflexive Constructions in Alfred Hitchcock and Jean-Luc Godard" (2017). Senior Projects Spring 2017. 219. https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2017/219 This Open Access work is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been provided to you by Bard College's Stevenson Library with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this work in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights- holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Film no Longer Telling a Story; Film itself as the Story: Reflexive Constructions in Alfred Hitchcock and Jean-Luc Godard Senior Project Submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College by Amy Chabassier Annandale-on-Hudson, New York May 2017 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to singularly thank one of many from the film department, Peter Hutton, for his introducing me to the Bolex, for his landscapes, and for his recurring inspiration.
    [Show full text]
  • Screams on Screens: Paradigms of Horror
    Screams on Screens: Paradigms of Horror Barry Keith Grant Brock University [email protected] Abstract This paper offers a broad historical overview of the ideology and cultural roots of horror films. The genre of horror has been an important part of film history from the beginning and has never fallen from public popularity. It has also been a staple category of multiple national cinemas, and benefits from a most extensive network of extra-cinematic institutions. Horror movies aim to rudely move us out of our complacency in the quotidian world, by way of negative emotions such as horror, fear, suspense, terror, and disgust. To do so, horror addresses fears that are both universally taboo and that also respond to historically and culturally specific anxieties. The ideology of horror has shifted historically according to contemporaneous cultural anxieties, including the fear of repressed animal desires, sexual difference, nuclear warfare and mass annihilation, lurking madness and violence hiding underneath the quotidian, and bodily decay. But whatever the particular fears exploited by particular horror films, they provide viewers with vicarious but controlled thrills, and thus offer a release, a catharsis, of our collective and individual fears. Author Keywords Genre; taboo; ideology; mythology. Introduction Insofar as both film and videogames are visual forms that unfold in time, there is no question that the latter take their primary inspiration from the former. In what follows, I will focus on horror films rather than games, with the aim of introducing video game scholars and gamers to the rich history of the genre in the cinema. I will touch on several issues central to horror and, I hope, will suggest some connections to videogames as well as hints for further reflection on some of their points of convergence.
    [Show full text]
  • Chapter Five—Notorious (Hitchcock 1946)
    Chapter Five—Notorious (Hitchcock 1946) Fig. 1 “I love you!” Here She Comes! Split POV Relax, hard-boiled, and listen Devlin’s Angle The Sleeping Beauty Global Image Stylized Drinks The Freudian scenario The Stairs Fatale Here She Comes! The film begins with a self-referential close-up of a newspaper photographer’s camera and flash attachment. The film’s camera begins to pull back as it simultaneously pans right and slowly tilts up revealing several cameras held by men in suits and hats with the camera ending on a close-up of the “United States District Court Southern District of Florida” sign above the door. A cut to a man peering through the courtroom door is replaced by his pov shot of the inside of the courtroom with Mr. John Huberman (Fred Nurney) internally framed and flanked by his attorneys as he threatens the United States and is then sentenced to twenty years. The peering man then announces, “Here she comes,” rather than the expected “here he comes,” and the reporters and photographers prepare to snap several shots of Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) as she exits the courtroom, interrogated by reporters who hound her with questions regarding her father’s treason. With her face cast in a femme fatale shadow by her fashionably large hat, the over-exposing light of the flashbulbs and the pestering questions soon startle her. Alicia tells Devlin during their first meeting: “I’m a marked woman you know.” It is not until the next morning when Devlin (Cary Grant) reveals a secret recording of her patriotic denouncing of her father (“We’ve had your bungalow wired for six months”) that we learn she is not the untrustworthy femme fatale traitor we are encouraged to suspect at the beginning of the film.
    [Show full text]
  • Hitchcock's Films</Article-Title>
    62 BOOKS HITCHCOCK'S FILMS ingful—his unique sense of humor. Like it or By Robin Wood. (New York: Barnes, 1965) not, Hitchcock's pitilessly cynical attitude to- ward modern man has exercised such force of direction in his work that to disregard it in It does not take a reader long to confirm a any study of his films is quite unreasonable. suspicion that the author of Hitchcock's Films, And it is strangely out of character for an British critic Robin Wood, wishes himself iden- exponent of the auteur theory. This sin of omis- tified with the politique des auteurs as pursued sion seems to have been perpetrated through by Cahiers du Cinema in France and by Movie the author's interest in defending Hitchcock's and Motion in his native England. In his films as serious moral statements. Thus, in thirty-six page introduction, Wood staunchly Strangers on a Train, Bruno Anthony's mother establishes his solidarity with the hitchcocko- represents "an extension of the chaos world," hawksiens by defending Hawks's Rio Bravo, no longer to be simply enjoyed as the pottering digresses into a defensive attack on "the charac- old flibbertigibbet she obviously was meant to teristic 'Establishment' line" (as followed by be. The peculiar assortment of oddballs, nin- Penelope Houston and Sight and Sound), and nies, and gargoyles Hitchcock assembled to tells us finally that he will concern his study attract Jeffries's voyeuristic interest in Rear with the five most recent Hitchock films, as Window are here reduced to "variations on the they represent "an unbroken chain of master- man-woman relationship." And Mrs.
    [Show full text]
  • Music As Spiritual Metaphor in the Cinema of Ingmar Bergman
    Music as Spiritual Metaphor in the Cinema of Ingmar Bergman By Michael Bird Spring 1996 Issue of KINEMA SECRET ARITHMETIC OF THE SOUL: MUSIC AS SPIRITUAL METAPHOR IN THE CINEMA OF INGMAR BERGMAN Prelude: General Reflections on Music and the Sacred: It frequently happens that in listening to a piece of music we at first do not hear the deep, fundamental tone, the sure stride of the melody, on which everything else is built... It is only after we have accustomed our ear that we find law and order, and as with one magical stroke, a single unified world emerges from the confused welter of sounds. And when this happens, we suddenly realize with delight and amazement that the fundamental tone was also resounding before, that all along the melody had been giving order and unity... - Rudolf Bultmann(1) I said to myself, it is as if the eternal harmony were conversing within itself, as it may have done in the bosom of God just before the Creation of the world. So likewise did it move in my inmost soul. - Goethe(2) One Sunday in December, I was listening to Bach’s Christmas Oratorio in Hedvig Eleonora Church... The chorale moved confidentially through the darkening church: Bach’s piety heals the torment of our faithlessness... - Ingmar Bergman(3) Ingmar Bergman has frequently indicated the immense significance of musical experience for his own personal and artistic development, just as he has also suggested that human existence at large has need for music. His words suggest that of all arts, music may be the most spiritually meaningful of all.
    [Show full text]
  • Hitchcock. Stairs Act As a Path Between Two States of Mind -- Blissful Ignorance Into Knowledge, Much Like Adam and Eve Taking a Bite of the Apple
    One of Alfred Hitchcock’s nicknames was the Master of Suspense. He knew how to make an audience jump. Rather than resorting to gore and horror, he played tricks with the mind and the viewer’s expectations. Born in England in 1899, his films reflect a combination of Victorian propriety at odds with Modern implications. He directed some 62 films over the span of his 54-year career. Most, though not all the films survive and there are still a few that are difficult to find. But in film after film, stairs play an important role for Hitchcock. Stairs act as a path between two states of mind -- blissful ignorance into knowledge, much like Adam and Eve taking a bite of the apple. But it is not the extremes of good and evil. It is something greyer, more ambiguous. This dichotomy is best represented of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. “The Innocence poems were the products of a mind in a state of innocence and an imagination unspoiled by stains of worldliness. Public events and private emotions soon converted Innocence into Experience, producing Blake’s preoccupation with the problem of good and evil.”1 For Blake, there are advantages to being on each end of the spectrum, but they are equal. Being innocent allows for a childlike view, full of wonder, of the world. But it also allows for irony to be present. An innocent view of a terrible thing points out just how awful it is. Perkins writes, “The state of innocence does not represent Blake’s final conception of Man’s highest joy.
    [Show full text]
  • Children in the Films of Alfred Hitchcock Debbie Olson
    South Dakota State University Open PRAIRIE: Open Public Research Access Institutional Repository and Information Exchange English Faculty Books Department of English 2014 Children in the Films of Alfred Hitchcock Debbie Olson Jason McEntee South Dakota State University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://openprairie.sdstate.edu/english_book Part of the American Film Studies Commons, and the Film and Media Studies Commons Recommended Citation Olson, Debbie and McEntee, Jason, "Children in the Films of Alfred Hitchcock" (2014). English Faculty Books. Book 10. http://openprairie.sdstate.edu/english_book/10 This Book Contribution is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at Open PRAIRIE: Open Public Research Access Institutional Repository and Information Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Faculty Books by an authorized administrator of Open PRAIRIE: Open Public Research Access Institutional Repository and Information Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 1 “The Future’s Not Ours to See”: How Children and Young Adults Reflect the Anxiety of Lost Innocence in Alfred Hitchcock’s American Movies Jason T. McEntee South Dakota State University Introduction In The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), the Ambassador, while plotting to kill the Prime Minister, orders the kidnapped American child Hank McKenna killed, telling his would-be gunman, Edward Drayton: “Don’t you realize that Americans dislike having their children stolen?” Earlier in the movie, Jo McKenna entertains her son and husband by singing “Que Sera Sera,” and its playfulness becomes darkly ironic when she sings “the future’s not ours to see” on the eve of her son’s kidnapping.
    [Show full text]