Fantasy Film and Realms of Enchantment

Prof. Russell Merritt Spring 2016 [email protected] Thursdays 1-3 Freight & Salvage Coffee House

Week 1 [Mar 31]: 1) Introduction: Film on the Other Side of the Mirror

Screenings Jean Cocteau, La Belle et la bete (Andre Paulve, 1946 90 mins Hulu Plus Michael Powell & Ludwig Berger, The Thief of Bagdad (London, 1940) 90 mins Hulu Plus

Reading: Warner [Cinema], Beaumont, Bettelheim, Warner [Beauty/ Beast]. “Magic Horse,” “Fisherman/ Genie,” Wollen.

Week 2 [Apr 7]: Expressionist Fantasy and New Expressionist Scares and Lulls Screenings

Robert Weine, Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (Decla-Bioscop, 1920) 72 mins YouTube Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro, The City of Lost Children (Ossard Prod, 1995) 2 hrs. Hulu Plus

Reading: Hoffmann, Freud, Kracauer. MFB credits; Chang

Week 3 [Apr 14]: French Fantasy and the Coming of Sound Screenings Jean Vigo, Zero de conduite (Argui Films, 1933) 44 mins; Hulu Plus Rene Clair, Le Million (Tobis, 1931) 80 mins Hulu Plus

Readings: Williams, Fischer, Thiher, Benjamin

Week 4 [Apr 21]: The Disney Revolution Screenings Vimeo Password for all: ollioop “Babes in the Woods” (Disney, 1932) https://vimeo.com/153502211 “Lullaby Land” (Disney, 1933) https://vimeo.com/153523803 “Flying Mouse;” (Disney, 1934); https://vimeo.com/153520195 “Who Killed Cock Robin?” (Disney, 1935) https://vimeo.com/153368330 “Music Land” (Disney, 1935) https://vimeo.com/153530626 “The Band Concert” (Disney, 1935) https://vimeo.com/155198138 “Page Miss Glory” (WB, 1936) https://vimeo.com/153861398

1 Hamilton Luske and Ben Sharpsteen, Pinocchio (Disney, 1940) Vimeo https://vimeo.com/153337751 Password: ollioop

Readings: Nursery rhymes; Sklar; Eisenstein; Gould; Merritt; Collodi

Week 5 [Apr 28]: A Japanese Fairy Tale and Western One

Screenings Kenji Mizoguchi, Ugetsu (Daiei, 1953) 97 mins Hulu Plus

Gavin Millar, Dreamchild (Pennies from Heaven/ Thorn EMI, 1985) 94 mins. Vimeo https://vimeo.com/154822522 Password: ollioop

Readings: Ueda; Wood. Carroll; Thomson; Sinker; Potter, Interview https://vimeo.com/26503584 [no password required]

Week 6 [May 5]: Exchanging Enchantment with the Ordinary World Screenings Win Wenders Wings of Desire (Argos/ Road/ WDR, 1987) 2 hrs. Hulu Plus

Nina Paley, Sita Sings the Blues (Nina Paley, 2008) 87 mins. YouTube

Readings: Wenders; Paneth; Rilke. Ebert; Paley interview: http://vimeo.com/3719965 [no password required]

You are urged to see the films assigned each week before the Thursday lecture. Readings are best done after seeing the relevant films and before attending the relevant lecture.

Designated films are available on Vimeo, requiring password [see entries above] All other films may be streamed on Hulu Plus http://www.hulu.com/ and/ or YouTube https://www.youtube.com/

All films, except Dreamchild, are available as DVDs from: Netflix http://www.netflix.com/WiHome

Other streaming sites: Google Play https://play.google.com Amazon http://www.amazon.com/ Vudu http://www.vudu.com/

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RECOMMENDED TEXTS: Humphrey Carpenter & Mari Prichard, The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature. Oxford U Press, 1984 Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories. Penguin, 1979. Especially “The Courtship of Mr. Lyon,” “The Tiger’s Bride,” and “The Erl-King.” J.B. Kaufman, Pinocchio: The Making of the Disney Epic. Weldon Owen, 2015 Roger Sale, Fairy Tales and After: From Snow White to E.B. White. Harvard U Press, 1978 Ellen Handler Spitz, Inside Picture Books. New Haven: Yale U. Press, 1999 Marina Warner, From the Beast to the Blonde. NY: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1994 Marina Warner, Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights. Harvard U Press, 2011 Recommended: Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1973

THE COURSE READER [available at Copy Central, 48 Shattuck Square]

For Introduction Marina Warner, "Introduction," From the Beast to the Blonde (NY: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1994), xv-xxv

For Beauty and the Beast Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, "Beauty and the Beast," in The Classic Fairy Tales, ed. Iona & Peter Opie (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), 179- 195

Bruno Bettelheim, "Beauty and the Beast," The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (NY: Vintage, 1975), 303-310

Marina Warner, "Reluctant Brides: Beauty and the Beast I," From the Beast, op. cit., 273-297

Marina Warner, "Go! Be a Beast: Beauty and the Beast II," From the Beast, ibid. 298-318.

For Thief of Bagdad "The Story of the Magic Horse," Arabian Nights, retold by Laurence Housman (NY: Weathervane, 1985), 66-74

“The Fisherman and the Genie," Arabian Nights, op. cit. 1-16

Peter Wollen, "Fashion/Orientalism/The Body,” New Formations (Spring, 1987), 5-33

For The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari E.T.A. Hoffmann, "The Sandman," The Golden Pot and Other Tales,, trans. Ritchie Robertson (London: Oxford University Press, 1982), 85-118

Sigmund Freud, "The 'Uncanny,'" Papers on the Psychology of Art Literature Love Religion, trans. Joan Riviere (NY: Harper Torchbook, 1958), 122-161

3 Siegfried Kracauer, "Caligari," From Caligari to Hitler (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1947), 61-76; rprt. Robert Wiene, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Simon & Schuster, 1972), 5-26

For City of Lost Children "The City of Lost Children," Monthly Film Bulletin [credits & synopsis] (n.d.)

Chris Chang, "Let Us Play: Review of City of Lost Children" Film Comment, (Nov/Dec 1995), 6-7

For Rene Clair and Jean Vigo Alan Williams, The Republic of Images (Oxford University Press, 1992) 213-220

Lucy Fischer, "René Clair, Le Million, and the Coming of Sound," Cinema Journal XVI (Spring 1977), 34-50

Allen Thiher, “Vigo’s Zero de conduite, surrealism, and the myth of childhood in The Cinematic Muse 78-89 (U of Mo Press, 1979)

Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," trans. Harry Zohn, from Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung V/1 (1936), 37-55.

For Silly Symphonies and Pinocchio Anon. “My Dear Do You Know?” [“Babes in the Woods”]. Broadside ballad, 16th century Anon. “Who Killed Cock Robin,” from Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book. 1744

Robert Sklar, “The Making of Cultural Myths: Walt Disney,” Movie-Made America (Random House, 1975), 58-65

Sergei M. Eisenstein, Eisenstein on Disney, ed. Jay Leyda, trans. Alan Upchurch. London: Methuen, 1988. 1-12, 22-40

Stephen Jay Gould, “Mickey Mouse Meets Konrad Lorenz,” Natural History (May, 1979) 30-36

Russell Merritt, ““Lost on Pleasure Islands: Storytelling in Disney’s Silly Symphonies,” Film Quarterly 59/ 1 (Fall 2005), 4-17

C. Collodi, The Adventures of Pinocchio. Trans. Carol Della Chiesa; illus. Attilio Mussino (Macmillan 1925), 61-84

For Ugetsu Akinari Ueda, “The House Amid the Thickets” and “The Lust of the White Serpent,” from Ugetsu: Kenji Mizoguchi Director, ed. Keiko McDonald (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1993), 79-100

Robin Wood, “Mizoguchi: The Ghost Princess and the Seaweed Gatherer,” Ugetsu: Kenji Mizoguchi Director, ibid. 145-156

For Dreamchild

4 Lewis Carroll, "Jabberwocky," Through the Looking-Glass (New York: Random House, 1946), 18-19

David Thomson, “Dennis Potter,” The New Biographical Dictionary of Film (Knopf, 1974, rev. 2004), 690-693

Dennis Potter: The Last Interview (with Melvyn Bragg), BBC, 5 Apr 1994 https://vimeo.com/26503584 [on-line only]

Mark Sinker, “Go Ask Alice,” and “Alice Through the Lens,” Sight and Sound (Apr, 2010). This essay is also available on line, with color illustrations and film clip from a 1903Alice fragment: http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/issue/201004

For Wings of Desire Ira Paneth, “Wim and His Wings,” Film Quarterly XLII (1) (Fall, 1988) 2-8

Rainer Maria Rilke, “The Fourth Elegy,” Duino Elegies [1922] transl. J.B. Leishman and Stephen Spender (Norton, 1939) 40-45

Wim Wenders, “An attempted description of an indescribable film,” The Logic of Images. Trans. Michael Hofmann. (London: Faber & Faber, 1991), 73-83

For Sita Sings the Blues Roger Ebert, “Having a Wonderful Time, Wish You Could Hear” Roger Ebert’s Journal, December 2008. Also available on the Roger Ebert Journal website: http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/having-a-wonderful-time-wish-you-could-hear

Nina Paley, The Reel 13 Interview [ca. 2009] http://vimeo.com/3719965 [on-line only]

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