Film Studies Daily Log

Thursday, September 8

Dr. P reviewed with students the unit objective of studying Hamlet as literature, theater, and film, and spoke briefly of the different resources each medium has to work with, from printed words to cinematic images and sound.

We began at the cinematic end, by watching the first few minutes of a film of the play without words, or at least without words that anyone in the class, teacher included, could understand. The film was the famous 1965 Russian Hamlet with a musical score by Dmitri Shostakovich. After watching the beginning (which is not actually the beginning of the play as written) students discussed what they had gleaned about what has happened before the play opens, what is happening at the moment, and how the mood of the film's opening might best be described.

HW due Friday:
Email Dr. P your FEW assignment (which was turned in Tuesday).