Films represent the world back to us, but they do not do it accurately. There has to be some form of distortion. They need to be only a few hours long, they must have a storyline that will give us some kind of journey, they need to engage us through visual dynamics. Added to these requirements are the demands of the genre. A gangster film must have crimes. But they can also choose to distort the world in order to offer an alternative point of view, to challenge orthodoxies, to unsettle received beliefs. In this course we will look at five American films, considered to be the peak of film artistry, that ask us to examine the stereotypes of our societies.
Two of our studies, Sunrise and Farewell my lovely, will be based on female criminals and unheroic or seemingly amoral men. The first shows us how the strong jazz age woman of the 1920s flushed out male insecurities. The latter, a 'film noir’, relishes its depiction of powerful women, the famous 'femmes fatales’.
We will also study a Western, Johnny Guitar, in which women are the dominant figures. Made during the turbulent McCarthy era, it is a reaction to America's sudden political instability and fear.
Bringing up Baby, a key film, is one of a number of 'screwball comedies’, now considered one of the most important of Hollywood genres, that show male figures remade by the disruptive energies of a woman.
Lastly we will look at Bonnie and Clyde, a product of ‘New Hollywood’, a movement that tried to absorb the changes of the modern world and reflect them in contemporary cinema. All these films are exciting. All use film art subtly and provocatively. All of them reward close scrutiny. Through them we will understand why film art is both a challenge and a joy.
