This course is a survey of several important European film movements and directors of the post W.W. II era, including Italian Neorealism, Sweden’s Ingmar Bergman, the French New Wave, Italian modernist cinema, and the British "Kitchen Sink" movement. We will focus on the films' style and narrative structure, as well as the cultural and historical contexts from which they emerged. We’ll also explore together some questions such as: What is a film movement? Under what conditions does a film movement tend to develop? Do visionary directors create film movements or are there certain cultural and economic conditions necessary for their existence? What is the role of technology in the development of the various new cinemas that emerged in post-war Europe? Finally, can we subsume all of these postwar film movements under a transnational category such as "art cinema" or is important to consider each movement as a product of a particular national context? |
