Max Ophuls has variously been discussed as a master of the long take and mise-en-scene, of theatrical adaptation and self-conscious narration; as director of the "woman's film," of melodramatic pathos and irony; and as artist and analyst of erotic -- and cinematic -- obsession. Following the trajectory of his life and work from Germany through France, Italy, Hollywood, and back to Europe, we will consider Ophuls' films in terms of cinematic style, and genre; the question of his gynocentric aesthetic and the feminist debate surrounding it; authorship and industrial production; and the challenge diasporic film practice poses to paradigms of national cinema and national film history.
MEETINGS:Tu, Th 10:30-11:50 (Cobb 310)
SCREENINGS: Su 1-4, W 7-10 (Cobb 307)
READINGS:Susan M. White, The Cinema of Max Ophuls (used copies)
Virginia Wexman, ed., Letter from an Unknown Woman (Sem. Coop)
Books on reserve at Regenstein Library (res.)
* = optional for undergrads; required for graduate students
**= recommended
REQUIREMENTS:
Readings, screenings, and class attendance are essential components of the course. Active participation in seminar discussion will count toward your final grade (20%). Writing requirements include a take-home midterm (4-5pp.), due April 27 (30%); a final paper (8-10pp. for undergraduates, 12-15pp. for graduate students), due June 9 (50%), outline due May 28. Keeping a viewing journal is optional but highly recommended.
Mar. 31/Apr.2WHY OPHULS? LOVE, CLASS & THEATER; CINEMATIC MOBILITY & AFFECT
April 1Liebelei(Germany 1932/33; 88m, 35mm)
Karen Hollinger, “Max Ophuls: A Biographical Sketch” (Wexman 15-21)
Andrew Sarris, “Max Ophuls” (Wexman 217-19)
Robin Wood, “Ewig hin der Liebe Glück” (Wexman 220-26)
Paul Willemen, “The Ophuls Text: A Thesis” (Wexman 237-43)
May 5/7“DEN SCHÖNEN, GUTEN WAREN”: HOLLYWOOD EXILE & CRITIQUE OF COMMODITY CULTURE
Caught (US 1948/49; 88m)
G. Gemünden & A. Kaes, intro., Film and Exile, New German Critique 89 (2003)
Doane, “The Economy of Desire: The Commodity Form in/of the Cinema”
Diane Waldman, “‘At last I can tell it to someone!’: Feminine Point of View and Subjectivity in the Gothic Romance Film of the 1940s,” CJ 23.3 (1983):29-40
White 241-57
Doane, “Female Spectatorship and Machines of Projection”
David Bordwell, “Camera Movement and Cinematic Space” (rep.)
**Lutz Bacher, Max Ophuls in the Hollywood Studios (res.), chaps. 3, 1, 4 & intro.
May 12/14REWRITING FAMILY MELODRAMA; GENDER & RACE; TEMPORALITY & TEARS
The Reckless Moment(US 1949; 82m)
Pam Cook, “Melodrama and the Woman’s Picture”
Robert Lang, "Lucia Harper's Crime: Family Melodrama and film noir in The Reckless Moment"
Doane, “The Moving Image: Pathos and the Maternal”
White 100-106
*Christine Gledhill et al., “Melodrama,” The Cinema Book, 2nd ed., 157-66
**Elizabeth Cowie, Representing the Woman, chap. 4, esp. 152-65
**Robin Wood, “Plunging off The Deep End into The Reckless Moment”
**Bacher, chap. 5
May 19/21RETURNING TO ‘VIENNA’: LOVE & DEATH IN POSTWAR EUROPE
La Ronde(France 1950; 97m)
Le Plaisir(France 1951/52; 99m)
Williams, “The Circles of Desire: Narration and Representation in La Ronde”
Williams, “Keeping the Circle Turning: Ophuls’ La Ronde (1950)”
Douglas Pye, “Falling Women and Fallible Narrators,” White, chap. 6, 225-241
*Schnitzler, Reigen/ La Ronde (res.)
*Guy de Maupassant, “Le Masque”; “La Maison Tellier”; “Le Modèle” (res.)
May 24No screening (Memorial Day weekend)
May 28OUTLINE FOR FINAL PAPER DUE
May 26/28THE POWER OF LOVE & THINGS: CHARACTER, AGENCY & LOGICS OF EXCHANGE; CRYSTAL IMAGE & DE-FORMATION
May 27/31Madame de ... (France 1953; 99m)
Williams, Max Ophuls and the Cinema of Desire, chap. 5 (105-35)
Andrew Britton, “Metaphor and Mimesis: Madame de…”
White 51-96
Tag Gallagher, “Max Ophuls: A New Art – But Who Notices?” *Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time Image,chap. 4 (rep.)
June 2REVIEW; OPHULS TODAY
June 3Lola Montès (France, Germany 1955; 110m) OR Liebelei
因Kristine Harris的“Shanghai Film Mediascape”课,重温侯孝贤《海上花》。对朱天文的剧作并不甚满意,流于琐屑表面。不过将韩邦庆叙述线索繁多的长篇巨著,削足适履进120分钟电影,确也并不容易。 迷恋于对其形式的探究。所读两篇文章,一为Gary Xu的英文论文,题为“Visualizing Ellipses and (Colonial) Absence”。
Paola请来沈少民,放映他的纪录片《我是中国人》。黑龙江某县宏疆村一些俄罗斯移民后裔的挣扎与痛苦。大量脸部特写镜头,视觉的迫近感。大段屠宰动物的镜头,从小的杀到大的,从鹅到牛——这段直白的残忍展示,在英国放映,颇受争议。沈少民说当地人的生活即如此,八个月无事可作,杀动物吃肉,酗酒。而他拍完这段,彻底地戒了肉。类似屠宰动物的场景,在Franju的电影Blood of Beast(兽之血)中,最为触目惊心。爱森斯坦的Strike中,将屠牛与屠杀工人交叉剪接。
上战场。同panel的,一位是西班牙男生Xavier,另一位是纽约大学的Lei,张旭东的学生。涉及城市空间与废墟。我的论文,关于王兵纪录片《铁西区》中工业废墟的temporality and materiality。工业废墟与重建城市而产生的都市废墟,密切相关(工业化与去工业化,城市建设),却有本质不同。
讲起他那85磅重的毛茸茸的大狗,他总是精神焕发。说带狗狗去散步,天贼冷。那狗儿投给他一个可怜巴巴的眼神,他就心领神会,过去握着他的爪子。Junko分析说,可能是撒的盐让狗狗的爪子疼了,未必是冷的。又说某公园,曾是毒贩子集散地,总堆着大堆盐,Jim说,嗯,hurt those drug dealers’ paws.
El Sol del membrillo (The sun of quince tree, Victor Erice, 1992)。很喜欢此导演另一部电影The Spirit of Beehive. Les Amants réguliers (Regular Lovers, Philippe Garrel. 2004) Coeurs (Public Fears in Private Places, Alain Resnais/阿伦·雷乃, 2006)
Coined by Ricciotto Canudo in 1911, the term “the 7th art” (1911) was part of a legitimizing discourse on the film medium as art, but it was also a way of situating the film form’s radical synthesis of temporal and spatial media within a lineage of classic aesthetic thought. In this seminar, we will explore the film’s challenge to classically conceived medial divisions, and examine how the moving photographic image has contributed to aesthetic thought over the course of the 20th century especially in terms of the representation of motion and its perception.
Texts for purchase at the Seminary Coop:
-Lessing, Gotthold, Laocoön (Johns Hopkins)
-Riegl, Alios, The Historical Grammar of Visual Arts (Zone)
-Michaux, Philippe Allain, Aby Warburg and the Image in Motion (Zone)
-Arheim, Rudolf, Art and Visual Perception (*suggested; University of California); Film as Art (University of California).
-Panofsky, Erwin, Perspective as Symbolic Form (Zone)
-Malraux, André, Voices of Silence (Princeton)
Requirements:
-seminar discussion leadership
-seminar paper (15-20 pages)
Week 1)
M Jan 5 La Belle Noiseuse (Jacques Rivette, 1991, 240 min)
ThuJan 8: Canudo “Birth of a Sixth Art;” “Reflections on the Seventh Art”
Ranciere, “Preface,” Film Fables
Week 2)
M Jan 12 ATTENTION:This week only, to accommodate a 35mm print, the screening will take place at 7:30, Cobb 307.El Sol del membrillo (The Sun of the Quince Tree, Victor Enrice, 1992).
Thu Jan 15Lessing
Week 3)
M Jan 19Martin Luther King Day, no screening.
Thu Jan 22: Reigl
Toute la Mémoire du Monde (Resnais, 1956, 21 min)
Guernica (Resnais, 1959, 13 min; DVD001222)
Week 4)
M Jan 26 Histoires du cinema (1A, 1B, about 90 min; DVD0001955)
Thu Jan 29 Michaux, Aby Warburg and the Image in Motion
Week 5)
M Feb 2
The Pawnshop (Chaplin, 1916, 32 min)
The Rink (Chaplin, 1916, 24 min)
Sunnyside (Chaplin, 1919, 34 min)
Ballet Mécanique (Léger/Murphy, 1924, 14 min)
Thu Feb 5 Warburg con’t
Faure, “The Art of Charlie Chaplin” (Chalk)
Faure, “The Art of Cineplastics” (Chalk)
Lindsay, Vachel, “Sculpture in Motion;” “Painting in Motion;” “Furniture, Trappings, and Inventions in Motion;” “Architecture in Motion” (Chalk)
*Supplementary texts in French by Faure are in the Faure folder on Chalk.
Week 6)
M Feb 9 The General Line (S. Eisenstein, 1929, 76 min, print 0058)
Thu Feb 12 Arnheim, Film as Art [1932]
Recommended: Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye
Week 7)
M Feb 16 The Navigator (Buster Keaton, 1924, 60 min, DVD000386);Anémic Cinéma (Marcel Duchamp, 1926).
Thu Feb 19 Panofsky, “Style and Medium in the Motion Pictures” (Chalk)
Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form [1927]
Week 8)
M Feb 23 The Russian Ark (Sukorov, 2002, 90 min)
Thu Feb 26 Malraux, “Sketch for a Psychology of the Moving Pictures” (Chalk)
Malraux, The Voices of Silence
Week 9)
M Mar 2: I will be gone on Mar 5. Hence, I would like to run the seminar on Monday during the screening time.
Malraux continued.
Danto, Arthur C.Moving Pictures. Quarterly Review of Film Studies 4.1 (Winter 1979): 1–21. (Chalk)
Suzanne Langer, “A Note on the Film” from Feeling and Form (Chalk)
Souriau, Etienne, “Time in the Plastic Arts” (Chalk)
Thu Mar 5 No seminar
Week 10)
M Mar 9Spectres of the Spectrum (Craig Baldwin, 2003, 90 min)
Tue Mar 10 synthesis
Seminar papers due by end of week 11, March 18
Selected Bibliography:
Agamben, Giorgio, “Aby Warburg and the Nameless Science”, in Potentialities, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999).
Arnheim, Rudolf. Art and Visual Perception (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974).
Visual Thinking (Berkeley, CA, 1969)
The Power of the Center: A Study of Composition in the Visual Arts (Berkeley, CA, 1982)
The Split and the Structure: Twenty-Eight Essays. Berkeley, 1996.
Toward a Psychology of Art: Collected Essays. Berkeley, 1966
Danto, Arthur Coleman. Narration and Knowledge. New York: 1985.
The End of Art. In The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art. New York, 1986.
After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History. Princeton, N.J., 1997.
Dillon, Brian, “Collected Works. Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne Atlas”, in Frieze Issue 80 (January-February 2004). http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/collected_works/
Faure, Elie. Histoire de l'art (Paris, G. Crès & Cie, 1911-21).
Histoire de l'art, l'esprit des formes (Paris, G. Crès, 1927).
Fonction du cinéma : de la cinéplastique à son destin social introd. de Yves Lévy (Paris : Gonthier, 1964, c1953).
Focillion, Henri The Life of Forms in Art (New Haven: Yale University Press; London, H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1942).
Gombrich, Ernst Hans. Aby Warburg. An Intellectual Biography (Warburg Institute : London 1970).
Gubser, Mike. Time's Visible Surface: Alois Riegl And the Discourse on History And Temporality in Fin-de-siecle Vienna (Detroit, Mich: Kritik).
Ingarden, Roman. In Ontology of the Work of Art: The Musical Work, the Picture, the Architectual Work, the Film, translated by Raymond Meyer and John T.[1962] (Goldthwait. Athens, Ohio, 1989)
Kracauer, Siegfried. Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality. New York and Oxford, 1960.
Kubler, George. The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things. New Haven, 1962.
Langer, Susanne Knauth. Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite and Art (Cambridge, MA, 1942, 3/1978)
Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art Developed from ‘Philosophy in a New Key’ (New York and London, 1953)
Problems of Art: Ten Philosophic Lectures (New York and London, 1957)
Philosophical Sketches (Baltimore and London, 1962)
Mind: An Essay in Human Feeling, 3 vols (Baltimore, 1967–82; abridged by G. van den Heuvel, Baltimore and London, 1988)
Malraux, André. La Psychologie de l’art, i: Le Musée imaginaire (Geneva, 1947; Eng. trans. as Museum without Walls, New York, 1949), ii: La Création artistique (Geneva, 1948; Eng. trans. as The Creative Act, London, 1949/R New York, 1950), iii: La Monnaie de l’absolu (Geneva, 1950; Eng. trans. as The Twilight of the Absolute, New York, 1951); rev. as Les Voix de silence, 4 vols (Paris, 1951; Eng. trans., New York, 1953)
Michaud, Philippe-Alain. “Passage des frontières. Mnemosyne entre histoire de l'art et cinema,” in Trafic. Revue du Cinéma 45 (2003) 87-96.
Panofsky, Erwin. Studies in Iconology: Humanist Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (New York, 1939/R 1962)
Warburg, Aby. Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, ed. Martin Warnke and Claudia Brink, (Akademie Verlag, Berlin, 2000).
Images from the region of the Pueblo Indians of North America Translated with an interpretive essay by Michael P. Steinberg.(Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 1995).
REQUIREMENTS:Students must come prepared to discuss the readings, and must participate in discussions.Everyone will also be responsible for brief weekly response papers and leading class discussion on one or more occasions.Everyone will write a substantial paper at the end of the quarter.
Week 1
Reading:Munsterberg, The Photoplay
Screening:The Cheat (DeMille, US, 1915) Alias Jimmy Valentine(Tourneur, US, 1915)
Week 2
Reading:Arnheim, The Film as Art
Lindsay, The Art of the Photoplay (Ch)
Screening:Broken Blossoms (Griffith, US, 1919)
Week 3
Reading:Abel, (Ch)
Benjamin (Ch)
Kracauer (Ch)
Balazs (Ch)
Screening:Le Brasier Ardent (Mosjoukine, France, 1923)
下午四点,姚晨同学开始会客。相邀图书馆门口,去他住处取了他自国内帮我带回的大包DVD与CD,去53街一家日本餐馆吃sushi。他昨日归来,颠三倒四地倒时差,我很晚才进午饭,食欲亦不佳,便闲谈,国内境况,寒假见闻。他又有曲子被音乐节接受,被很好的乐团演出。提及他1998年写的曲子,仍在中央音乐学院被演出。创作者的生命力,以作品来延续。 推荐他里维特4小时电影“La Belle Noiseuse” (The Beautiful Troublemaker,盗版中文DVD译作《不羁的美女》,意境差很远)。于片中画家Frenhofer来说,绘画/创作意味着在画布上追寻truth,而这truth,可能很残忍;因此创作的过程,可能很痛苦,很具伤害性,与世隔绝的创作境界与日常性的矛盾,常常一触即发,摧毁或reveal脆弱的内心。这里,在考验人的willpower,是否足够strong。艾曼纽·贝阿扮演的玛丽安,自被动的model而involved,成为共同的创作者——尽管这过程意味着她惊恐地重新发现自己,无论她是否愿意接受;也终于绝望地意识到,她与Nicholas关系的“fleeting nature”。 编剧称此影片anti-narrative或counter-narrative,如纪录片详尽描述一位真正画家的绘画细节,而人物的一切行为举止言语交流完全没有现场发挥的可能,全部在剧本中安排就绪。The tension between fiction film and documentary。The intensity/weight of real time/present。看似静态抽象的绘画的叙述性。一幅画的看似即时性及背后的漫长创作过程。
灵感来自巴尔扎克小说The Unknown Masterpiece,及Henry James一短篇小说关于a portrait of a liar。