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Many now believe American cinema of the seventies was indeed the golden age of US film. Looking at some of the key directors of the period – as well as the social questions their work addresses and the stylistic approaches utilised – we will look at what makes this era so fascinating. Through clips and discussion we will try and tease out why films like Taxi Driver, Manhattan and McCabe and Mrs Miller remain such key works.
No prior knowledge required.
1. Martin Scorsese: The Rage Within.
One critic believed Martin Scorsese’s regular actor Robert de Niro brought something new and dangerous to American cinema. We will explore how director and actor venture into the underbelly of American life in Taxi Driver and other key films.
2. Robert Altman: Attending to the Periphery.
No filmmaker before Robert Altman gave so much attention to the details. From McCabe and Mrs Miller to Nashville, Altman was the great American director of the peripheral elements that create atmosphere without being forced to serve the plot.
3. Alan J. Pakula: Architecture and Paranoia.
In Klute, The Parallax View and All the President’s Men, Pakula gave visual form to private fears. We will explore how the director captured an America where power seemed to be everywhere and nowhere.
4. Hal Ashby: The Contempory Malaise.
Whether dealing with a ’68 election campaign in Shampoo in his mid-seventies, Shampoo, or concentrating on a returning paraplegic Viet Vet and his affair with the wife of an army officer in Coming Home, Ashby proved a great director of the emotional minutiae of the period.
5. Arthur Penn: Reinventing Genre.
Penn had such a hit with Bonnie and Clyde that he became a director who could pick and choose. Yet he often worked in genre - in Little Big Man, Night Moves and The Missouri Breaks - but, as we’ll show, in a way that respected the characters and the situations more than genre conventions.
6. Terrence Malick: The Lyrical Mode.
A great director of visual space, Malick’s films moved slowly even in a decade where so many films eschewed narrative purpose. We will look a the visual precision of his two seventies films, Badlands and Days of Heaven.
7. Milos Forman: The Insider’s Outsider.
Forman was one of a number of émigré filmmakers who came to the States and managed to combine a foreign mindset with a counter cultural sensibility. Paying especial attention to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, we’ll show how seventies American cinema seemed able to absorb an outsider’s perspective whilst still allowing Forman to make a very American film.
8. Steven Spielberg: Recuperating at the Box-Office.
Like George Lucas, Spielberg was a filmmaker who was always more likely than most to adjust to changing times. Less a product of seventies America and all its attendant problems, Spielberg was director with one eye on the audience, and adjusted better than most to the eighties as the cultural expectations shifted.
9. Francis Ford Coppola: The Hyperbolic Auteur.
Few filmmakers were more ambitious than Coppola. In the two Godfather films and Apocalypse Now Coppola made the studio a fortune initially, and then looked like he might cost them a fortune when his Vietnam epic went way over-budget. Here we’ll explore perhaps the grandest of seventies auteurs.
10. Woody Allen: Comedy on the Couch.
Pyschoanalysis was hardly new to cinema when Woody came along, but no filmmaker managed to incorporate it into the everyday lives of his characters, and to gain so much humour out of such unavoidably neurotic characters and situations.
11. Unseen assessment.
Lecture based with film excerpts and class discussion.
By the end of this course, students should be able to:
Recognise and explain the different styles of each director;
Analyse the cultural and ideological factors influencing the creation process;
Identify and recognize key figures in New Hollywood beyond the director. Namely the actors, cameramen and writers behind many of the key films of the decade.
Essential:
Kolker, R. P. (1988) A Cinema of Loneliness, Oxford University Press, New York.
Recommended:
Monaco, J. (1979) American Film Now, Zoetrope, New York
Gilbey, Ryan (2003) It Don’t Worry Me, London, Faber and Faber
Kael, P. (1975) Deeper Into Movies, London. Calder and Boyars
Kael, P. (1977) Reeling, Marion Boyars, London
Kael, P. (1980) When the Lights Go Down, New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston
Thomson D. (1994) Biographical Dictionary , London, Andre Deutsch
Kaufman, S. (1980) Before My Eyes, New Yor,k Da Capo Press
Select Filmography:
Taxi Driver (1976) Martin Scorsese, US.
McCabe and Mrs Miller (1971) Robert Altman, US.
Klute (1971), Alan J. Pakula, US.
The Last Detail (1974), Hal Ashby, US.
Night Moves (1976) Arthur Penn US.
Badlands (1973) US.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s News (1976) US.
Jaws (1975) US.
The Godfather (1972) US.
Manhattan (1979) US.
Handouts will be provided.
10 credit courses have one assessment. Normally, the assessment is a 2000 word essay, worth 100% of the total mark, submitted by week 12. To pass, students must achieve a minimum of 40%. There are a small number of exceptions to this model which are identified in the Studying for Credit Guide.
If you choose to study for credit you will need to allocate significant time outwith classes for coursework and assessment preparation. Credit points gained from this course can count towards the Certificate of Higher Education.
If you have questions regarding the course or enrolment, please contact COL Reception at Paterson's Land by email COL@ed.ac.uk or by phone 0131 650 4400.
If you have a disability, learning difficulty or health condition which may affect your studies, please let us know by ticking the 'specific support needs' box on your course application form. This will allow us to make appropriate adjustments in advance and in accordance with your rights under the Equality Act 2010. For more information please visit the Student Support section of our website.