Film/Literature Encounters

Core Module: MA in Film and Literature

Autumn 2015

Tutor: Dr Erica Sheen

Seminar: Fridays at 9.00 in BS008
Screenings: Monday/Tuesday at 11.00 in BS005

Our starting point in this module is the idea of the encounter between film and literature, and the
various ways and means in which that encounter takes place: film and literature as media; the social
and institutional structures that facilitate or impede the transfer between the two; the intellectual
systems through which the questions of meaning and value raised by this process are addressed.

We will also be concerned with our own encounters with this material through the medium of this
module. You will be encouraged to identify the particular perspective you wish to develop, to
explore your own ideas, and to respond to the approaches taken by other members of our group.
Our classes will combine close reading sessions with small and large group discussions; you will
also be asked to work together outside classes to prepare short presentations for our seminars.

All the reading involved in this module will be made directly available to you: in the University
Library and Key Text collection; as pdfs that you can download from the module VLE site; and via
electronic databases which you can use via the University website. To balance the work you will be
doing in your other modules, the workload is designed to be manageable within the time between
one seminar and the next. There are two long(ish) literary texts which you may need to start
reading in advance: Shakespeares Hamlet for week 7, and Philip K Dicks Do Androids Dream of
Electric Sheep? for week 9.

The following books will be in our Key Texts collection in the Library. This means that they are
available for 2-hour loans only (to make sure everyone gets the chance to use them). It includes the
introductory reading list I provided in your welcome letter, with additions. You will be
encouraged to use of all these books throughout the module:

Andr Bazin, What is Cinema? Vols 1/2 (California 2004)

Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, eds., Film Theory and Criticism. (OUP 2009).
Thomas Cartelli and Katherine Rowe New Wave Shakespeare on Screen (Polity 2007)
Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed (Harvard 1980)
John Caughie, Theories of Authorship: A Reader (BFI 1981).
Timothy Corrigan, Film and Literature: An Introduction and Reader (Routledge 2011)
Philip K Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (Gollancz 2010)
Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation (Routledge 2006)
Russell Jackson. Shakespeare Films in the Making: Vision, Production and Reception. (CUP
2007).
Jan Kott. Shakespeare Our Contemporary (Norton)
Bill Nichols, Movies and Methods : An Anthology (California1 1976/1985)
Julie Sanders, Adaptation and Appropriation (London: Routledge, 2006)
Robert Stam and Alessandra Raengo, eds., Companion to Literature and Film (Blackwell
2004)
 Weekly programme

Week 2: Medium Specificity

Screenings:
Monday: Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov 1929)
Tuesday: Hamlet (Kozintsev 1964) (also for week 7)

Reading:
Rudolf Arnheim, A New Laocon: Artistic Composites and the Talking Film (1938) in Film as
Art(California 1957), 199-230 pdf
Clement Greenberg, Towards a Newer Laocoon in Partisan Review, 7 (1940), 296-310 pdf
Andr Bazin, In Defence of Mixed Cinema and Theater and Cinema in What is Cinema Vol 1
(California 1968), 53-75 and 76-124.
James Goodwin , Film study in a literature programme? in College Literature 5.3 (1978), 174-182
pdf
Stanley Cavell, The medium and media of film in The World Viewed (Harvard 1979) , 68-73
Jacques Rancire, An interviewon medium specificity in Journal of Art 8.1. (2007), 99-101 pdf
Diarmuid Costello, On the very idea of a specific medium in Critical Inquiry 34 (2008) 274-
312 pdf
Jacques Rancire, What medium can mean in Parrhesia 11 (2011), 25-43 pdf

Week 3: Adaptation and the derivative work

Screenings:
Monday: Rear Window (Hitchcock 1954)
Tuesday: Diary of a Country Priest (Bresson 1951) (for Week 4)

Reading:
Cornell Woolrich, It Had to be Murder (1950) pdf
Screening: Rear Window (Hitchcock 1954)
The Rear Window Case pdf
Rhonda Baker, Media Law: A Users Guide (Chapman and Hall 1995) pdf
http://www.hartfordstage.org/rear-window
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/kevin-bacon-star-stage-version-817207

On JSTOR:
Kim Bridgford, Rear Window: What Lisa Knew in The North American Review, 294. 2
(2009), 3
John Belton, 'The Space of Rear Window' in MLN, 103. 5, (1988), 1121-1138
Robert J. Corber, 'Resisting History: Rear Window and the Limits of the Postwar Settlement'
in boundary 2, 19. 1 (1992),121-148
Lawrence Howe, Through the Looking Glass: Reflexivity, Reciprocality, and Defenestration
In Hitchcock's Rear Window in College Literature, 35. 1 (2008), 16-37
Daniel A. Saunders, 'Copyright Law's Broken Rear Window: An Appraisal of Damage and
Estimate of Repair' in California Law Review, 80.1 (1992), 179-245
In Braudy and Cohen:
Robert Stam and Louise Spence, 'Colonialism, Racism, and Representation: An Introduction'
Manthia Diawara, 'Black Spectatorship: Problems of Identification and Resistance' in Braudy and
Cohen.
Tania Modleski, The Masters Dollhouse: Rear Window in Braudy and Cohen
Joan Riviere, Womanliness as Masquerade (pdf)
John Berger, Opening a Gate in Why Look at Animals? (pdf)

Week 4: The diary film/ diary in film

Bresson screened in Week 3

guest talk in seminar on Mekas from Dr James Boaden (History of Art)

Screenings:
Monday: Dear Diary (Moretti 1993)
Tuesday: Walden (Jonas Mekas, 1964-68)

Reading:
Robert Bresson, Notes on the Cinematographer ed. Griffin (Integer 1997)
John Caughie, Theories of Authorship: A Reader (London: Routledge, 1981), 9-16, 199-213
Alexandre Astruc, The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: the Camera-Stylo in Peter Graham,
ed., The New Wave; Critical Landmarks (BFI 1968) pdf
Andr Bazin, Le Journal dun cur de campagne and the stylistics of Robert Bresson in What is
Cinema? Vol 2 (California 1968), 125-143
Franois Truffaut, A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema in Bill Nichols, ed.,
Movies and Methods Vol. 1, (California 1976) 224-227
P. Adams Sitney, Mekas and the Diary Film in Eyes Upside Down : Visionary Filmmakers
and the Heritage of Emerson (OUP 2008)
Erica Sheen, Far from literature: writing as bare act in Robert Bressons Journal dun
cure de campagne in J. Buchanan, The Writer on Film: Screening Literary
Authorship (Palgrave 2013), 206-217; and
Anti-anti-fidelity: Truffaut, Roch and Shakespeare in Adaptation 6.3 (2013)
(doi:10.1093/adaptation/apt001) (includes discussion of A Certain Tendency)

In Project Muse:
David Scott Diffrient, Autobiography, Corporeality, Seriality: Nanni Moretti's Dear Diary as
Narrative Archipelago in Journal of Film and Video, 61. 4 (2009), 17-30
Joshua Mabe, Walden (review) in The Moving Image 6.2. (2006), 48-50
Efren Cuefas, The Immigrant Experience in Jonas Mekas's Diary Films: A Chronotopic
Analysis of Lost, Lost, Lost in Biography, 29.1( 2006), 54-72

Week 5: Comedy: writing, production, performance

Screenings:
Monday: Bringing Up Baby (Hawks 1938)
Tuesday: Some Like It Hot (Wilder 1959)

Reading:
Hagar Wilde, Bringing up Baby, from Colliers Weekly, April 1937 pdf
Hagar Wilde, archival material from the Schlesinger Library, Harvard pdfs
Gerald Mast, Bringing up Baby: Rutgers Films in Print (1988).
This volume includes the movie script, the script for deleted scenes,
production notes, an interview with director Howard Hawks, reviews as well
as critical discussions including Cavell (below).
Some Like It Hot, original movie script pdf

From Braudy and Cohen:

Richard B. Jewell, How Howard Hawks Brought Baby Up: An Apologia for the Studio
System, p. 581

Jacques Rivette, The Genius of Howard Hawks, from Cahiers du cinma 23 (May 1953),
16-23, in Jim Hillier ed., Cahiers du cinma: The 1950s, (Harvard, 1985).
Stanley Cavell on Bringing up Baby in The Pursuit of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy
of Remarriage (Harvard 1981)
Paul Kerr, A Small, Effective Organization: the Mirisch Company, the Package-Unit
System, and the Production of Some Like It Hot in Karen McNally, ed., Billy
Wilder, Movie-maker: Critical Essays on the Films (McFarland 2011)

In Project Muse:
Bert Cardullo, Farce, Dreams, and Desire: Some Like It Hot Re-viewed in The Cambridge
Quarterly, 39. 2 (2010), 142-151

Joan Riviere, Womanliness as Masquerade pdf

John Berger, Opening a Gate in Why Look at Animals? pdf

WEEK 6 READING WEEK: NO CLASSES

Devils Backbone at City Screen in York on Monday at 19.15

Supervision meetings; writing and submission of procedural essay

Week 7: Hamlet

Kozintsev screened in Week 2

Update on the Hartford Stage Rear Window opening

Screenings:
Monday EVENING: NT Live encore, City Screen: the Benedict Cumberbatch Hamlet
Tuesday: The Tragedy of Hamlet (Brook 2002)

Reading:
Andr Bazin, In Defence of Mixed Cinema and Theater and Cinema in What is Cinema Vol 1
(California 1968), 53-75 and 76-124
Gary R. Bortolotti and Linda Hutcheon, 'On the Origin of Adaptations: Rethinking Fidelity
Discourse and "Success" Biologically' in New Literary History 38 (2007): 443-458.
Thomas Cartelli and Katherine Rowe, 'Adaptation as a Cultural Process' in New Wave
Shakespeare on Screen (London: Polity, 2007), 25-44.
Jan Kott. Shakespeare Our Contemporary (Norton), 171-190.
Russell Jackson. Shakespeare Films in the Making: Vision, Production and Reception. (CUP
2007).
In Project Muse:
Jonathan Crewe: Psychoanalysis on Trial in South Africa in Poetics Today 22.2 (2001), 413-
433

Week 8: Literacy

Screenings:
The Devils Backbone (del Toro 2001)
Blackboards (Samira Makhmalbaf 2000)

Reading:
On JSTOR:
James Collins, Literacy and Literacies in Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 24 (1995),
75-93
William Kist, Beginning to Create the New Literacy Classroom: What Does the New
Literacy Look
Like? in Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 43. 8 (2000), 710-718
Benjamin M. Compaine, The New Literacy in Daedalus 112. 1 (1983), 129-142

Rachel Falconer, The New Polymath (Re-Mixing Knowledge) in The Routledge Companion
to Remix Studies (2015), 397-408 pdf

Week 9: Film and philosophy

Screening:
Monday or Tuesday: Blade Runner : The Final Cut (Ridley Scott 1982/2007)

Philip K Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968)

Excerpts from the graphic novel edition circulated/ photocopy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyWHJ5o60L0
Documentary on the Making of BR

AHRC Research Workshop on Cognitive and Aesthetic Value: Blade Runner session:

https://sites.google.com/a/york.ac.uk/cognitive-and-aesthetic-values/final-
report#culturalvalue

Stephen Mulhall, Picturing the Human (Body and Soul): A Reading of Blade Runner in
Film and Philosophy 1:87-104 (2007) pdf
Donna Haraway, The Cyborg Manifesto; The Companion Animal Manifesto pdfs

Week 10: Adapting the Animal

Introductory presentation by Erica Sheen: reading to follow

Screenings: Monday: One Hundred and One Dalmatians (Disney 1961)

Tuesday: 101 Dalmatians (Herek 1996)