Film as Art: Hitchcock and Company / Course # L 356                                    
Spring 2008
Dr. David Sterritt
Tuesdays 4 – 6:45 p.m. / Brown 320
Office hours: by appointment, before and after class
djsterritt@aol.com

Course content:

This course examines issues of authorship, originality, and cinematic style through analysis of films by Alfred Hitchcock, the notion of “Hitchcockian suspense,” and works by other filmmakers who have been explicitly or implicitly influenced by his achievements. Hitchcock films such as Vertigo, Psycho, and Rear Window will be studied in detail, along with works by such Hitchcockian directors as Brian De Palma, Francis Ford Coppola, and Dario Argento.

Assignments for weekly papers
Each paper should be one page long, give or take a few lines, and typed. Papers are due in the first class after the assignment is given.
Don’t forget to keep up with your course journal, 2-3 pages for each week’s work.


Course schedule:

Part 1: Masterplots

January 22 – Introducing Alfred Hitchcock
    Topic: Overview of Hitchcock’s career. Key aspects of the Hitchcock style: suspense and surprise; the MacGuffin; doubles and mirrors, blondes and brunettes; acting, color, and music. Cameos. Hitchcock and modern art. The meaning and influence of “Hitchcockian” suspense.
    Screening: Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock, USA, 1960
    Reading: “Introduction,” in The Films of Alfred Hitchcock, pp. 1-27
                    “Psycho,” in The Films of Alfred Hitchcock, pp. 100-118

January 29 – Hitchcock’s major themes
    Topic: Voyeurism and the gaze. Transference of guilt. Confusion of guilt and innocence. Knowledge and danger. Everyday evil. Living = performing. The controlling mother. The incompetent cops.
    Screening: Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock, USA, 1958.
    Reading: “Vertigo,” in The Films of Alfred Hitchcock, pp. 82-99

Assignments for weekly papers
Each paper should be one page long, give or take a few lines, and typed. Papers are due in the first class after the assignment is given.
Don’t forget to keep up with your course journal, 2-3 pages for each week’s work

Assignment for January 29, due February 5
A key theme in Vertigo is the sensation of vertigo, the panic-inducing dizziness that afflicts the main character when he finds himself in high places. How does Hitchcock use visual style to carry the idea of vertigo into the film as a whole?

Part 2: Visions and revisions

February 5 – Vertigo in China
    Screening: Suzhou River, Ye Lou, Germany/China, 2000

Assignment for February 5, due February 12
    Briefly compare and contrast Suzhou River with Vertigo, stating your opinion as to whether Ye Lou’s film goes beyond Hitchcock’s original or just does a lazy imitation of its story ideas. It’s okay to use material we discussed in class, but you should try to offer your own ideas as well.

February 12 – The sinister stranger
    Topic: Hitchcock and the family. Incestuous overtones. Historical contexts: the 1940s and 1950s.
    Screening: Shadow of a Doubt, Alfred Hitchcock, USA, 1943
    Reading: “Shadow of a Doubt,” in The Films of Alfred Hitchcock, pp. 52-64

February 19 – The supernatural stranger
    Topic: The horror film. The vampire as metaphor. Historical contexts: The hot war and the cold war.
    Screening – The Return of Dracula, Paul Landres, USA, 1958
    Reading: Adam Knee, “Shadows of Shadow of a Doubt,” in After Hitchcock, pp. 48-64

Assignment for February 19, due February 26

    In what ways can The Return of the Vampire, released in 1958, be considered a reworking of Shadow of a Doubt, released in 1943? Focus your attention on one or both of these subjects: (a) sociopolitical themes, such as the cold-war paranoia that flourished in the late 1950s; (b) narrative-aesthetic themes, such as the “doubles” motif that runs through Hitchcock’s film.

Don’t forget to keep up with your course journal, 2-3 pages for each week’s work

February 26 – The murderous gaze
    Screening: Rear Window, Alfred Hitchcock, USA, 1954

March 4 – Paralysis and power
    Screening: Rear Window, Jeff Bleckner, USA, 1998

Assignment for March 4, due March 11

    In the 1998 remake of Rear Window, does the “documentary” aspect of the work – i.e., the presence of Christopher Reeve as a “nonfictional” quadriplegic in an otherwise fictional film – add to the movie’s value in any meaningful way(s) or is it fundamentally irrelevant to the film’s overall worth? Briefly explain your view.

Don’t forget to keep up with your course journal, 2-3 pages for each week’s work

March 11 – Reality, illusion, and the camera
Screening: Blow-Up, Michelangelo Antonioni, UK/Italy/USA, 1966
Reading: Frank P. Tomasulo, “`You’re Tellin’ Me You Didn’t See’: Hitchcock’s Rear Window and Antonioni’s Blow-Up,” in After Hitchcock, pp. 142-172

March 25 – Sound thinking
    Screening: The Conversation, Francis Ford Coppola, USA, 1974
    Reading: R. Barton Palmer, “The Hitchcock Romance and the ‘70s Paranoid Thriller,” in After Hitchcock, pp. 84-108

Part 3: Brian De Palma – the master imitator of the master of suspense

April 1 – Intertextuality
Screening: Blow Out, Brian De Palma, USA, 1981
    Reading: Constantine Verevis, “For Ever Hitchcock: Psycho and Its Remakes,” in After Hitchcock, pp. 14-29

Assignment for April 1, due April 8

    Keeping in mind Brian De Palma’s status as a habitual borrower from the cinematic “vocabularies” of Hitchcock and other important filmmakers, do you consider the intertextual references in Blow Out to be instances of creative borrowing, placing previously used cinematic ideas into fresh and original contexts, or just a lazy form of recycling by a director with few original ideas of his own? Back up your opinion with examples from the film.

Don’t forget to keep up with your course journal, 2-3 pages for each week’s work

April 8 – Authorship and originality
Screening: Obsession, Brian De Palma, USA, 1976
    Reading: “Part VI: Modus Operandi” and Thomas M. Leitch, “How to Steal from Hitchcock,” in After Hitchcock, 249-270

Part 4: The Italian giallo as a Hitchcockian genre

April 15 – Hitchcock, Italian style
Screening: Hatchet for the Honeymoon, Mario Bava, Italy/Spain, 1970
Philippe Met, “`Knowing Too Much’ about Hitchcock: The Genesis of the Italian Giallo,” in After Hitchcock, pp. 195-214
    
April 11 – Deeper into the giallo
Screening: Deep Red, Dario Argento, Italy, 1975

Part 5: Summing up and drawing conclusions

April 29 – Bringing it all back home
    Screening: Dressed to Kill, Brian De Palma, USA, 1980


Required books:
David Boyd and R. Barton Palmer, After Hitchcock: Influence, Imitation, and Intertextuality (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006)
David Sterritt, The Films of Alfred Hitchcock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)
All reading assignments on the syllabus are from these two books. Additional reading assignments may be given out in class.

Course requirements:

   Students must attend all class sessions and screenings, complete all reading assignments in a timely way, and participate actively in class discussions.
   In addition, each student must complete a weekly paper and must keep a journal during the course, to be submitted in class on April 29, the last day of the course. Guidelines for journals are given below.
   Final grades will not be calculated according to a rigid formula, but will take account of all work during the course – your weekly papers, your journal, and class participation.
   All written work must be typed.

Attendance and Participation:
   Attendance will be taken at the beginning of each class. It is your responsibility to get to class on time. Unexcused absences will result in a lower final grade. If you know you will be absent on a future date, let me know in advance. Absences will be excused only if you provide verification (documentation of a legitimate reason: illness, family emergency, etc.) as to why the class was missed. It is your responsibility to catch up with work missed due to absences, excused or otherwise. This includes all films that have been screened in class; if you miss a film, you need to watch it in your own time. (Most films will be available for viewing in the Media Resource Center after they have been screened in class.) You should participate fully in class discussions, since part of your final grade will reflect class participation.
   No late assignments will be accepted unless the lateness has been excused, and this requires verification (documentation of a legitimate reason: illness, family emergency, etc.) as to why the due date was missed.

Journal rules and guidelines:
         Every student must keep a course journal throughout the semester, to be turned in at the final class. It must contain two to three pages on each week’s subject matter, demonstrating knowledge of the pertinent films and filmmakers, material covered in class discussions, and material covered in the reading assignments. You are encouraged to view additional relevant films outside class and include references to them in your journal entries. This is not a diary – it is an academic journal, meant to record what you are learning and thinking with regard to the course on a weekly basis. You are welcome to include material suggested by reading and film viewing outside class, but the material must be relevant to this course.

Academic integrity:
   Academic integrity -- the pursuit of scholarly activity free from fraud and deception -- is an educational objective of this institution. Academic dishonesty includes, but is not limited to, cheating, plagiarism, fabrication of information or citations, facilitating acts of academic dishonesty by others, submitting work of another person or submitting work previously used without informing the instructor, and tampering with the academic work of other students.
   A student charged with academic dishonesty will be given oral or written notice of the charge by the instructor. If students believe they have been falsely accused, they should seek redress through informal discussions with the instructor, department head, dean, or campus executive officer. If the instructor believes the infraction is sufficiently serious to warrant the referral of the case to the Office of Conduct Standards, or if the instructor decides to give a final grade of F in the course because of the infraction, the student and faculty will be afforded formal due-process procedures.

Additional information

PLAGIARISM

Plagiarism is using someone else’s words or ideas without acknowledgment.  Submitting work containing plagiarism is grounds for failure of an assignment or failure of the course.  Repeat offenses will be brought to the attention of the department chair.  To be responsible when summarizing, paraphrasing, or quoting, include a citation like:

*** I read in yesterday’s New York Times that…
*** As Simone de Beauvoir famously asserts: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” (p. 34).
*** My roommate Pete noticed that…
*** If it’s common knowledge and your own idea, you do not need quotations. The yellow of the Lance Armstrong bracelet suggests bravery.

Document your citations in a bibliography or “works cited” page at the end of your paper and follow standard guidelines such as MLA or Chicago manual style.  Familiarize yourself with these guidelines in Diana Hacker’s A Pocket Style Manual, and always check with your instructor before turning in questionable work. You may also check on these and other language-related issues with one of the helpful tutors in the Writing Center, (410) 225-2418. The Writing Center has copies of the Hacker manual as well.


ADA COMPLIANCE: In MICA's efforts to provide the highest possible quality educational experience for every student, MICA maintains compliance with the requirements of the ADA and Section 504.  Any student who has, or suspects he or she may have, a disability and wants to request academic accommodations must contact the Director of the Learning Resource Center immediately.

The Director of the Learning Resource Center, Dr. Kathryn Smith, may be reached at 410 225-2416 or by email at ksmith@mica.edu.


MICA has developed policies and practices to ensure a healthful environment and safe approaches to the use of equipment, materials, and processes.  It is the mutual responsibility of faculty and students to review health and safety standards relevant to each class at the beginning of each semester.  Students should be aware of general fire, health, and safety regulations posted in each area and course specific polices, practices, and cautions.  Students who have concerns related to health and safety should contact the Environmental Health and Safety Coordinator.

The Environmental Health and Safety Coordinator, Quentin Moseley, may be reached at 410 225-0220 or by email at qmosele@mica.edu.