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This course will trace the trajectory of the Academy Awards: from 1930s screwball comedies and backstage musicals to celebrated wartime classics; from 1950s Minnelli musicals to 1980s post-Vietnam war films. It will provide a concentrated, thumbnail history of American Cinema, which challenges students to consider and question the formal criteria (cinematography, acting, sound, editing) upon which critical judgement is based. It will introduce students to the canonical classics of American Cinema, inviting them to explore diverse film genres and even the occasional Academy extravaganza.
12 Best Pictures over 12 Decades in 12 Weeks! On May 16, 1929 the first Academy Awards were presented at a banquet held in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Did they get it right? A film classic or a clinker? You be the judge! Join us each week as we re-view those films awarded Best Picture by the Academy. Our ushers-tutors will assist you in your evaluation of the criteria upon which critical judgement of the Academy is purportedly based. We will first look at the origins of the Academy and examine its early role in shaping American film and popular culture. We will examine Best Pictures from the Depression-era, considering the impact of new sound technologies on the Hollywood studio style and the subsequent enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code, a set of moral guidelines that were enforced from the mid-1930s to the 1960s. In our next section, we will move on to wartime cinema and the consolidation of star culture and the Classical Hollywood Style, considering the way in which celebrated Best Pictures such as Casablanca reflected underlying tensions in cultural and national identity. Turning to the 1950s, we will address McCarthyism, blacklisting, and the advent of television as the perfect storm that effectively swept grand dramatic spectacle and ramped-up Minnelli art-house musicals into their place of prominence in the Academy Awards ceremonies. In the third section, we will examine the cultural revolution of the 1960s and the return of socially conscious cinema with the Academy’s acknowledgement of those films that focused on social and racial tensions. We will then move to the New Hollywood of the 1970s and the heyday of the American film school auteur. The final section will be devoted to subsequent decades and those genre films dedicated to social concerns, such as the anti-war war movie Hurt Locker (BP 2009), the first and only film directed by a woman to have been awarded an Oscar for Best Picture. Finally, we come full circle, closing with the romantic comedy The Artist (BP 2011), a film whose black-and-white silent style pays tribute to early Hollywood cinema—which is where we began.
Knowledge and Skills:Basic knowledge of critical and technical vocabulary of disciplineBasic knowledge of a range of film history, ranging from early cinema to the presentBasic knowledge of the various issues associated with the production, distribution, and exhibition of filmsRecognition that different film forms impact on the meaning and effects of film textsBasic knowledge of the major theoretical debates and discourses in film studiesBasic knowledge of the relationships between selected films and their social, cultural and historical context Basic ability to conduct close analysis of scenes and images from films
Mary Wiles
The Academy Awards: The Complete Unofficial History. 2nd edition. Jim Piazza and Gail Kinn. New York: Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers, 2014.Readings to be provided on LEARN(Image: Oscar Academy Awards 3D" by Emilio Gallo, licensed under CC BY-NC 3.0.)
Film List:Week One: Best of 1927-1928: War FilmWings (Wellman, 1927)Week Two: Best of 1934: Screwball ComedyIt Happened One Night (Capra, 1934)Week Three: Best of 1943: Classical HollywoodCasablanca (Curtiz, 1941)Week Four: Best of 1951: MusicalAn American in Paris (Minnelli, 1951)Week Five: Best of 1967: Race and Social UnrestIn the Heat of the Night (Jewison, 1967)Week Six: Best of 1969: Western ReinventedMidnight Cowboy (Schlesinger, 1969)Week Seven: Best of 1971: ThrillerThe French Connection (Friedkin, 1971)Week Eight: Best of 1983: MelodramaTerms of Endearment (Brooks, 1983)Week Nine: Best of 1986: Anti-War War FilmPlatoon (Stone, 1986)Week Ten: HorrorSilence of the Lambs (Demme, 1991)Week Eleven: Best of 2001: BiopicA Beautiful Mind (Howard, 2001)Week Twelve: Best of 2011: Retro-RecommencementThe Artist (Hazanavicius, 2011)
Domestic fee $732.00
International fee $2,975.00
* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.
This course will not be offered if fewer than 40 people apply to enrol.
For further information see Humanities .