Welcome
From the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, a series of brilliant Italian auteurs defined much of international, art-house cinema. A partial list of names would surely include Fellini, Pasolini, Visconti, Antonioni, and Bertolucci, but this semester we will focus on three: Fellini, Antonioni and Visconti. Each of these directors has a look, a style, even a series of repeated images (obsessions) that defines him. A surreal blend of fantasy and reality set in a circus? Probably Fellini. A bored, rich young woman playing silent tennis with mimes for 45 minutes, and no soundtrack? Antonioni. An opulent world of artificial decadence? Could be Visconti (but possibly not; he is perhaps the least auteurist of our auteurs, and we will want to know why).
We have a substantial volume of film criticism to read on each of these three figures, as well as a collection of theoretical essays on auteur theory. In other words, while we will be discussing the films individually and the directors more generally, the course is ultimately aimed at exploring the question of film authorship. How do the films of a given director acquire a “style” or a “look”? How do we identify a Fellini film as a Fellini film? Does a Visconti film have a “Visconti look” in the same way that a Fellini film has a “Fellini look”? Or is this, as some have claimed, merely the “author function”—because we organize books, music, films and other cultural artifacts around an author, we tend to ascribe a stylistic and intellectual coherence and similarity to the works of an author that may not actually be there.
Undergraduates will write three short response papers (approximately 3-4 pp.), one for each director, and a longer final paper (10-12 pp.) on one director whose works they are particularly interested in. Final grades are based on the papers (15% total for the response papers; 55% for the final paper) and attendance and participation (30%). Graduate students will give one oral presentation and write a standard seminar paper.
Readings will be available at the bookstore and in a coursepack from Notes & Quotes.