I started teaching the Film class in the fall of '91 when the school needed an elective class for seniors. It was not truly elective since the seniors were dumped into it to fill out their schedule. This was in the old days when all students had a full schedule.
For whatever reason, the idea of only teaching film seemed somehow not kosher to me, so I taught a combination of film, poetry, literature and media stuff all dumped into general humanities course. The students were pretty tolerant of the whole affair, but there were one or two sour pusses I had to deal with. After all, their friends at New Dorp were going home at 11 and they were explicating Eliot's The Waste Land at 1:15, or reading Kafka's The Trial later that night. In year two, i decided to kick the other stuff to the curb and stick to film, but the films were going to have a historical component. Thus, All Quiet on the Western Front corresponded to the earlist period covered in American history part two, which we taugtht at the same time. In other words, I was teaching WW1 in my Am. His class and All Quiet in Film, to the same group of students.
It Happened One Night reveals some of the ideas and attitudes of the Great Depression, so I showed that. A unit on the Cold War included Dr. Strangelove, Atomic Cafe. Later on, I'd show Apocalypse Now as a Vietnam War movie, though it is really not about that in any meaningful way.
Over the years, though, the history imperative fell away, and I dropped the poetry, and just concentrated on great films, with great themes and showed them and analyzed them. I became interested in Existentialism around this time, probably because I had to teach it in a meaningful way in an AP European History class I was teaching. So, I started seeing existential themes in the films that I was already showing. I sometimes wonder if we can see whatever we want in a film, should our minds me leaning in that direction. Anyway, the idea of alienation, and finding meaning in a disordered universe started to jump out at me more and more from teh films I showed, and the ones that I saw and liked outside the class.
Here's the film list from the last time i taught the course. We may see most of these again, depending.
All Quiet
Citizen Kane
Midnight Cowboy
Runaway Train
Top Hat
The Seventh Seal
Unforgiven
Asphalt Jungle
Dark City
Memento
A Siimple Plan
Signs
Dr. Strangelove
Atomic Cafe
Other films that I've shown over the years:
Ed Wood
Apocalypse Now
Hearts of Darkness
It Happened one Night
Something Wicked This Way Comes
The Truman Show
A Clockwork Orange
Full M etal Jacket
Battleship Potemkin
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ReplyDeleteI was just wondering if you ever saw Stanley Kubrick's The Killing? It uses narration which I know you don't care for but I thought it was a good film-noir. Even Kubrick said he hated the narration and the only reason it was included was because the movie studio found the movie to be too confusing, and they didn't think audiences could figure it out for themselves. It's nice to see they think of us so highly. Anyway I'm not suggesting we watch it in class because it isn't his best film in my opinion, I just wanted to know if you ever saw it and what you thought of it.
ReplyDelete(I posted this already but made a mistake so I deleted it. That's why it says I removed a comment)
I have indeed seen The Killing, and I recommend it to the gang here. I've seen it several times, in fact, but one fewer time than I would have wished. You see, I went to see it in college as part of a Kubrick double feature along with Paths of GLory. I dragged a buddy of mine from Sound Beach, where we lived over to our college at Stony Brook to see it. He was annoyed becuase he had just seen Paths of Glory on TV a few days earlier. I told him to suffer through it and that he would be amply rewarded by THe Killing. Well, no sooner had Paths of Glory ended than the projectionist yelled out that the show was over as the print of THe Killing had not arrived. I yelled up at him that if he didn't roll the film right then there was going to be a "killing" right there in the theatre, and he was going to be play the lead role. He poked his head out of the hole and told me that I could kill him if I wanted but the movie simply wasn't there. We drove home in silence.
ReplyDeleteI don't recall that the film was heavily narrated, but I take your word for it that it was. But, since narration is really one of the elements of Film Noir, we have to forgive it in that case. The best example might be Mark Hellinger's narration of "The Naked City" which I recommend very highly, not only for a great story, but also for the terrific street scenes of New York City in the summer of 1947. It adopts a semi-documentary style that became popular in TV crime shows like Dragnet and The FBI, among others.
If you want to see it that one more time I have the DVD. I would gladly lend it to the class. And as far as the narration goes, it isn't the type where somebody talks through entire scenes. It's more like the omnipotent voice that says things like "Meanwhile, at some other location".
ReplyDeleteAs a note we tech students are vastly afraid of New Dorp students (generally afraid of outsiders in general). Having read Kafka with the surfeit of free periods we have, how can anyone not be dearly afraid of being put on trial mysteriously for no other reason but for simply living?
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