LFU:online

To familiarize students with landmarks of American cinema; to analyze and discuss the applicability of film theories to concrete examples; to be able to give possible reasons for a particular work’s prominence within the American literary and cultural environment.

What are the ingredients of a great movie, and how exactly should a filmmaker combine them to be able to come up with a cinematic masterpiece that will go down in history? The definite answer to this question remains, of course, a mystery, but that has not stopped film scholars, screenwriters, and writers of screenwriting manuals from trying to solve it.

In this course we will look at a selection of works, from Sergei Eisenstein’s "The Cinematic Principle and the Ideogram" to Robert McKee’s Story and beyond, that – whether descriptively or prescriptively – attempt to determine what it is that makes a film great. We will then see in how far we can apply the ideas presented in these texts to specific works of American film history. In striving to discover the advantages and limits of the various theories, we will consider fully canonized films like The French Connection as well as contemporary blockbusters à la Transformers, whose artistic reputation does not always match their commercial success.

Lecture inputs, presentations, group discussions

Active class participation, student presentations, reading and viewing assignments, term paper

As far as possible, course materials and selected secondary sources will be posted on OLAT.

Prerequisite for the Bachelor's Programme (612): positive completion of compulsory module 19, for the Teacher Training Programme (Lehramtsstudium: 344): VO2: Introduction to American Literary Studies

For the Teacher Training Programme (Lehramtsstudium: 344): PS2: American Culture.

Due to substantial differences in the allocation of ECTS-Credits in various curricula (teacher training program - BA/MA English and American Studies), the requirements for this course vary. Information will be provided by the instructor at the beginning of the course.