Introductory description

This module introduces students to a vitally important period in film history, from the mid-1890s to the late 1920s, in which the technology to create and present photographic moving pictures was first created, industrial modes of production, distribution and exhibition facilitated its transformation into a mass entertainment medium, and a narrative grammar of film language was gradually developed, refined and frequently challenged.

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Week 1: The cinema of attractions
Week 2: Early forms of narrative integration
Week 3: D.W. Griffith and the 'transitional era' of early cinema
Week 4: Film serials of the 1910s
Week 5: The emergence of the feature film format
Week 7: Slapstick comedy in the silent era
Week 8: The prominence of female film directors in the silent era
Week 9: Soviet montage cinema
Week 10: German expressionism

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Students will significantly increase their range of knowledge of film history.
• Students will become familiar with a range of methodologies necessary to analyse a set of film texts with very specific codes of representation, thus refining their analytical skills, and gain knowledge of important scholarly debates in this area of film history.
• Students will understand the social, technological and cultural conditions that underpinned the rise of the pre-eminent entertainment form of the first half of the 20th century.
• Students will further refine their written and oral presentational skills.

Indicative reading list

Abel, Richard, The Cine Goes to Town, French Cinema 1896-1914, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Abel, Richard, French Cinema, The First Wave, 1915-1929, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. Brewster, Ben and Jacobs, Lea , Theatre to Cinema: Stage Pictorialism and the Early Feature Film, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Browser, Eileen, The Transformation of Cinema 1907-1915: History of the American Cinema, Vol 2, New York: Scribner's, 1980. Bruno, Giuliana, Street walking On a Ruined Map: Cultural Theory and the City Films gfElvira Notari, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. Burch, Noel, Life to those Shadows, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Charney, Leo and Schwartz, Vanessa (eds), Cinema and the Invention of Modern L!fe, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Elsaesser, Thomas (ed), Early Cinema, Space, Frame, Narrative, London: BFI, 1990. Fell, John, Film before Griffith, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Hansen, Miriam, Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film, Cambridge: Mass: Harvard University Press, 1991. Koszarski, Richard, An Evening's Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Picture 1915-1928, History of the American Cinema, Vol 3, New York: Scribner's, 1991. Musser, Charles, Before the Nickelodeon: Edwin S. Porter and the Edison Manufacturing Company, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Musser, Charles, The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907, History of the American Cinema, Vol I, New York: Scribner's, 1990.

Subject specific skills

This module develops skills of audio-visual literacy, through close textual and/or contextual analysis in relation to the moving image and sound. It also develops skills required to interpret historical documents pertaining to the film industry and understandings of historical, theoretical and conceptual frameworks relevant to screen arts and cultures.

Transferable skills

critical and analytical thinking
independent research skills
team work
clarity and effectiveness of communication, oral and written
accurate, concise and persuasive writing
audio-visual literacy