Tuesday, April 13

We watched Act I of the first Dracula film, F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu.

Students received a second handout on German Expressionism; the handout is part of what will be covered by Friday's quiz.

Monday, April 12

We took up where we left off in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, skipping certain parts, but watching much of the film. At the end of class we discussed very briefly the style of the film.

Friday, April 2

Students received a three-page handout on German Expressionism. They were asked to read it over the break, and to read, reread, or review all handouts on Soviet film. Mr. P announced a quiz over Soviet Montage and German Expressionism on Friday, April 16.

We then watched the beginning of The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari.

Thursday, Aptril 1

We re-viewed the ending of Man With a Movie Camera, this time with Yuri Tsivian's voiceover commentary, which concludes with his insistence on the impossibility of adequately deciphering the complex textures of the film without multiple viewings.

We then developed our own commentary about the most important motifs of the film (eyes and the camera eye, class and class, man and machine, people as subjects and people as audience, the whirling circles of the camera and other means of production, etc.), and we re-viewed and analyzed one sequence of whirling circles.

At the end of class we turned our attention to German Expressionist film, beginning by reading Eisenstein's description of that film movement in "Dickens, Griffith, and the Film Today."