| The readings in this section
reflect on the various ways in which the experience of emotions
is central to our experience of film. Casablanca
is required viewing for the essay by Gregory Currie, and Baz
Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet (1996), an interesting
remake of the Shakespeare play would be a good film to use
to discuss the conflict Currie describes between narrative
and character desires. |
Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) |
City Lights ( Charles Chaplin, 1931) |
The Man Who Knew Too Much
(the 1956 version) is necessary to understand an important
part of the Murray Smith essay. Time permitting, it might
be fun for students to compare the earlier 1934 version of
the Man Who Knew Too Much with the later 1956 remake
to see if the films differ in their representation of the
characters and the mode of engaging with them. Carl Plantinga's
paper examines the issue of how films can elicit an emotional
response in order to manipulate the audience into accepting
a distorted ideology.
|
D. W. Griffith's Birth of
A Nation engages the emotions of the audience in the
service of an anti-integration ideology. This is an excellent
film to use to illustrate the way in which a film can manipulate
one's emotions in order to promote a distorted social viewpoint
(but it contains racial stereotypes and may for this reason
upset some students, especially students of color). Films
that Plantinga discusses that would be especially useful to
use are City Lights and El Norte.
|
The Man Who Knew Too Much (Alfred Hitchcock, 1956) |
An American Werewolf in London (John Landis, 1981)
|
Students may have seen Back
To The Future, a film that Noël Carroll has discussed
in connection with the topic of film and ideology. You could
ask them if this film evokes the audience's emotions in the
service of a particular ideology, and get students to think
about the way in which a popular film like this may engage
the audience's emotions to support an implicit social viewpoint.
Classic horror movies such as Frankenstein or The
Wolf Man would be good to use to illustrate Noël
Carroll's essay, as well as more contemporary horror films
such as An American Werewolf in London. |
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