I am preparing a syllabus and gathering my notes, comments, thoughts together for a class I am teaching this fall: FLM 170, Film Appreciation. I am torn with how to organize the class, but I believe I am going to get the lectures out of the way in the first four weeks of class, and leave ten classes open for viewing films and discussion. When I consider teaching a class in appreciating film, I am reminded of the Steve Martin quote, “Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.” It seems the best way to go about this is to develop a framework for critical analysis of the film and put the framework into action by watching and discussing some films.
I will discuss a bit about movies, the production aspects and the what character plays what role on a movie production, i.e. what does a producer actually do?
I toyed around with alternating a class discussion/lecture one week and watching a movie the next, but I believe it is better to have all of the tools available for film analysis THEN watch films for students to totalize their knowledge. If that doesn’t work, I will alternate next time and go at it in that manner. I am looking forward to the class, so that people can get out of their comfort zone and expand how they consider film art and hopefully life, too. A friend just says I am teaching them to be film snobs, and I guess that isn’t too far off of the mark. Is snobbery in art all that bad a thing? I will not physically prevent anyone from seeing The Transformers movies, no matter how ridiculous they are, but that does not mean that I have to watch them, too.
So far, I am considering these films: Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, Polanski’s Chinatown, Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, Speilburg’s Schlindler’s List, Luc Besson’s The Professional, Cohen Brothers’ Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?, and Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth.