Fall 2004

AMS 370 • Movies and Modern America-W

Course Description

This seminar focus on the changes in American filmmaking against the background of the upheavals in American culture, politics, and society from the during the 1960s and 1970s. We will examine the breakdown of the traditional Hollywood studio system, the rise of a new generation of American directors heavily influenced by their counterparts in Europe, their efforts to deal in cinematic terms with the social and psychological schisms in American society, and the impact of their films on audiences abroad as well as at home. Most of all, we will seek to explain why the movies made in the late 1960s and 1970s were at once so controversial and so memorable, why they seemed to reflect so accurately the personal and social problems of movie-goers, why people felt after seeing them that they needed to change their lives, and how this renaissance in American film-making has influenced the movies of the past 15 years.

Texts

The movies to be shown and discussed include Robert Rossen's The Hustler, Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker, Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde, Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, Alan Pakula's All the President's Men, and Woody Allen's Annie Hall.

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