Speech Communication 415 Rhetoric of Film and Television Spring 2002 Monday – 209 S Henderson Bldg – 2:30-5:30 p.m. (film showing) Wednesday – 309 Sparks Bldg - 2:30 - 3:45 (discussion)    class e-mail addresses: l-spcom415@lists.psu.edu

Instructor: Jennifer Borda 316 Sparks Building, cubicle 9 University Park, PA 16802 814-863-0127 mailto:jlb27@psu.edu office hours Monday and Wednesday 10-12 --- and by appointment ======================================

 click here to link to the final exam

Alfred Hitchcock and the Critics:

The Rhetoric of the Thriller as Art, Entertainment, and Social Text

DATE	FILM		ASSIGNMENT
(1) Mon 7Jan Wed 9 Jan	Murder! (1930)	Handel Fane in woman's costume Handel Fane in policeman's costume Handel Fane on trapeze	Readings: William Rothman, "Alfred Hitchcock’s Murder!: Theater, Authorship, and the Presence of the Camera"; Jean Douchet, "Hitch and His Public"; Maurice Yacowar, "Hitchcock’s Imagery and Art," in A Hitchcock Reader; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius, 1-137. Recommended Viewing: The Lodger (1926); Blackmail (1929); Juno and the Paycock (1930); Battleship Potemkin (1925); The Public Enemy (1931); M (1931); Little Caesar (1930)
(2) Mon 14 Jan Wed 16 Jan	The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) Blackmail (1929)		Readings: Elisabeth Weis, "Consolidation of a Classical Style: The Man Who Knew Too Much"; Robin Wood, "Retrospective"; Leonard J. Leff, "Hitchcock at Metro"; Lesley W. Brill, "Hitchcock’s The Lodger"; Leland Poague, "Criticism and/as History: Rereading Blackmail," in A Hitchcock Reader; Spoto, Dark Side of Genius, 141-159. Recommended Viewing: The Rules of the Game (1939); Rio Bravo (1959); Bringing Up Baby (1938); Duck Soup (1933); The Awful Truth (1937): The Blue Angel (1930); Les Carabiniers (1963); The Silence (1963); The Informer (1935); Scarface (1932).
(3) Mon 21 Jan Wed 23 Jan	The 39 Steps (1935)		Readings: Charles L. P. Silet, "Through a Woman’s Eyes: Sexuality and Memory in The 39 Steps," in A Hitchcock Reader. Recommended Viewing: It Happened One Night (1934); I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932).
(4) Mon 28 Jan Wed 30 Jan	The Lady Vanishes (1938)		Readings: Patrice Petro, "Rematerializing the Vanishing ‘Lady’: Feminism, Hitchcock, and Interpretation," in A Hitchcock Reader; Spoto, Dark Side of Genius, 163-189. Recommended Viewing: Secret Agent (1936); Sabotage (1936); Shanghai Express (1932); Snow White and the Seven Drawfs (1937); Modern Times (1936); Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936); Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939).
(5) Mon 4 Feb Wed 6 Feb	Shadow of a Doubt (1943)	sequence 1 from Shadow of a Doubt   sequence 2 from Shadow of a Doubt	Readings: James McLaughlin, "All in the Family: Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt," in A Hitchcock Reader; Jonathan Freedman and Richard Millington, "Introduction"; Debra Fried, "Love, American Style: Hitchcock’s Hollywood," in Hitchcock’s America; Spoto, Dark Side of Genius, 207-279. Recommended Viewing: Jamaica Inn (1939); Rebecca (1940); Foreign Correspondent (1940); Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941); Suspicion (1941); Saboteur (1942); The Maltese Falcon (1941); Citizen Kane (1941); Dumbo (1941); High Sierra (1941); Casablanca (1943); The Ox Bow Incident (1943) Paper 1. Due on Friday 8 February. Write a close analysis of a scene or sequence from any Hitchcock film made before 1943. Choose what seems to you a scene that is of some interest for its dramatic contribution to the story and of some interest visually. In your paper, describe and analyze the scene in detail, including attention to dialogue, camerawork, editing, and sound. Consider how the scene shapes a viewer's response both to the scene under consideration and to the film as a whole. You may include captured frames or sketches to support your analysis. 5-8 pages.
(6) Mon 11 Feb Wed 13 Feb	Notorious (1946)		Readings: Richard Abel, "Notorious: Perversion par Excellence"; Thomas Hyde, "The Moral Universe of Hitchcock’s Spellbound," in A Hitchcock Reader; Spoto, Dark Side of Genius, 283-316. Recommended Viewing: Lifeboat (1944); Spellbound (1945); Open City (1945); The Best Years of Our Lives (1946); Hail the Conquering Hero (1944); Meet Me in St. Louis (1944); The Killers (1946).
(7) Mon 18 Feb Wed 20 Feb	Rope (1948)		Readings: Amy Lawrence, "American Shame: Rope, James Stewart, and the Postwar Crisis in American Masculinity," in Hitchcock’s America. Recommended Viewing: The Paradine Case (1947); The Naked City (1948); All the King's Men (1949); The Snake Pit (1948); Gentleman's Agreement (1947); Paisan (1946); Crossfire (1947); It's a Wonderful Life (1947); Call Northside 777 (1948); State of the Union (1948); The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948).
(8) Mon 25 Feb Wed 27 March	Strangers on a Train (1951)		Readings: Robin Wood, "Strangers on a Train," in A Hitchcock Reader; Robert J. Corber, "Hitchcock’s Washington: Spectatorship, Ideology, and the ‘Homosexual Menace’ in Strangers on a Train," in Hitchcock’s America; Spoto, Dark Side of Genius, 319-356. Recommended Viewing: Under Capricorn (1949); Stage Fright (1950); The Lavender Hill Mob (1951); The Men (1950); The Bicycle Thief (1949); Home of the Brave (1949); Panic in the Streets (1950); Twelve O'Clock High (1950); The African Queen (1951); A Streetcar Named Desire (1951).
Mar 4 – 8	SPRING BREAK
(9) Mon 11 March Wed 13 March	Rear Window (1954)		Readings: Dana Brand, "Rear-View Mirror: Hitchcock, Poe, and the Flaneur in America," in Hitchcock’s America; Robert Stam and Roberta Pearson, "Hitchcock’s Rear Window: Reflexivity and the Critique of Voyeurism," in A Hitchcock Reader. Recommended Viewing: I Confess (1953); Dial "M" for Murder (1954); Seven Samurai (1954); Pather Panchali (1955); Aparajito (1956); The World of Apu (1958); High Noon (1952); The Quiet Man (1952); Singin' in the Rain (1952); From Here to Eternity (1953); On the Waterfront (1954).
(10) Mon 18 March Wed 20 March	The Wrong Man (1956)		Readings: Marshall Deutelbaum, "Finding the Right Man in The Wrong Man," in A Hitchcock Reader; Spoto, Dark Side of Genius, 359-427. Recommended Viewing: To Catch a Thief (1955); The Trouble with Harry (1955); Grapes of Wrath (1940); Young Mr. Lincoln (1939); My Darling Clementine (1946); Twelve Angry Men (1957); Rebel Without a Cause (1955); Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956). Paper 2. Due on Friday 22 March. A 5-8 page paper on any Hitchcock film released before 1956. As an appendix to your paper, include a list of scenes from your chosen film (for an example of how to do this, see a list of scenes from Taxi Driver). In your paper, include an analysis of the narrative structure of the film, attending to such dimensions as story line, point of view, repetition, sequence, suspense, and surprise. But you may go beyond the rhetoric of narrative structure in any direction your analysis takes you so long as it illuminates the rhetoric of the film.
(11) Mon 25 March Wed 27 March	The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)		Readings: Elsie B. Michie, "Unveiling Maternal Desires: Hitchcock and American Domesticity," in Hitchcock’s America. Recommended Viewing: Viva Zapata! (1952); The Robe (1953); The Country Girl (1954); Bridge on the River Kwai (1957);
(12) Mon 1 April Wed 3 April	Vertigo (1958)		Readings: Robin Wood, "Male Desire, Male Anxiety: The Essential Hitchcock"; Marian E. Keane, "A Closer Look at Scopophilia: Mulvey, Hitchcock, and Vertigo," in A Hitchcock Reader; Paula Marantz Cohen, "Hitchcock’s Revised American Vision: The Wrong Man and Vertigo"; Jonathan Freedman, "From Spellbound to Vertigo: Alfred Hitchcock and Therapeutic Culture in America," in Hitchcock’s America"; Auiler, Hitchcock's Notebooks, 319-325. Recommended Viewing: Touch of Evil (1958); Paths of Glory (1957); Some Like It Hot (1959).
(13) Mon 8 April Wed 10 April	North by Northwest (1959)		Readings: Richard H. Millington, "Hitchcock and American Character: The Comedy of Self-Construction in North by Northwest," in Hitchcock’s America; Stanley Cavell, North by Northwest, in A Hitchcock Reader. Recommended reading: Alain Silver, "Fragments of the Mirror: Hitchcock's Noir Landscape," Film Noir: A Reader 2, ed. Alain Silver and James Ursini (New York: Limelight, 1999), 106-127. Recommended Viewing: On the Waterfront (1954); Anatomy of a Murder (1959); Ben Hur (1959); Breathless (1959); The 400 Blows (1959); Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959); Pickpocket (1959).
(14) Mon 15 April Wed 17 April	Psycho (1960)		Readings: Raymond Bellour, "Psychosis, Neurosis, Perversion"; Barbara Klinger, "Psycho: The Institutionalization of Female Sexuality"; Leland Poague, "Links in a Chain: Psycho and Film Classicism," in A Hitchcock Reader; Spoto, Dark Side of Genius, 443-479. Recommended Viewing: The Entertainer (1960); L'Avventura (1960); La Dolce Vita (1960); La Notte (1960); Shoot the Piano Player (1960); Jules and Jim (1961).
(15) Mon 22 April Wed 24 April	The Birds (1963)		Readings: Camille Paglia, The Birds (1998); Ian Cameron and Richard Jeffery, "The Universal Hitchcock," and Margaret M. Horwitz, "The Birds: A Mother's Love," in A Hitchcock Reader; Spoto, Dark Side of Genius, 483-555. Recommended Viewing: Marnie (1964); Torn Curtain (1966); Topaz (1969); Frenzy (1972); Family Plot (1976); The Hustler (1961); Lawrence of Arabia (1962); 8 1/2 (1963); The Conformist (1970); M*A*S*H (1970); The Godfather (1972); Le Boucher (1970); Le Chien andalou (1928); Philadelphia Story (1940); Bonjour Tristesse (1958); The Time Machine (1960); Barbarella (1968); Suddenly Last Summer (1959); On the Beach (1959) Paper 3. Due on April 24 during our class meeting. Write a paper in which you (1) Consider some aspect of the rhetoric of Hitchcock's filmmaking in 3 of his films. You might, for example, concentrate on a formal issue (such as camerawork; point of view, suspense, mise en scene, editing, sound) or on a thematic element (such as gender, guilt, voyeurism, or some other theme that has come up in our readings or discussions); or (2) compare a Hitchcock film with its remake (such as Psycho; The 39 Steps; Sabotage (1936) [remade as The Secret Agent (1996)]; Dial M for Murder [remade as A Perfect Murder, 1998]); or (3) write about a "Hitchcock " film made by another director, in which you analyze the Hitchockian appropriations, through close analysis of your chosen film and explicit comparison with Hitchcock's work. Remember that in the case of any of these assignments, you should try to engage in detailed description and close analysis of the film as a structure inviting an audience response. 5-8 pages. Please leave the paper before 5 pm in Professor Benson's mailbox in room 232 Sparks Building.
30 April - 4 May	FINAL EXAMS	The final exam for SpCom 415 is currently scheduled for Tuesday, April 30, 4:40-6:30 p.m.	click here to link to the final exam

 

Required Textbooks

(note: local bookstores have been provided with this booklist; you may also want to shop at online bookstores to compare prices).

Deutelbaum, Marshall, and Leland Poague, eds. A Hitchcock Reader. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1986.

Freedman, Jonathan, and Richard Millington, eds. Hitchcock’s America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Kapsis, Robert. Hitchcock: The Making of a Reputation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. [this text is not assigned for a particular date, but you should read it before the end of the semester].

Paglia, Camille. The Birds. London: British Film Institute, 1998.

Spoto, Donald. The Dark Side of Genius. New York: Da Capo Press, 1999.

A number of articles relating to Hitchcock's films and to film criticism more generally have been placed on electronic reserve. For a list, and for access, see the section of the syllabus on Electronic Reserves.

 

Internet Resources

For a guide to Internet sources on Hitchcock, try the Alfred Hitchcock Scholars MacGuffin page.

The Museum of Modern Art web site on Alfred Hitchcock

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts - exhibit on Hitchcock and Art: Fatal Coincidences

Recommended Viewing

 Each week, we have recommended several films that you might wish to view in connection with that week's required reading and viewing. Viewing a selection of these films will allow you to see more of Hitchcock's work, and to see films that are mentioned in the week's readings, or that were made at about the same time as the Hitchcock film featured in the week's viewing and discussion. Most of these films are available for viewing in the music and media library, which is part of the Arts and Humanities library in Pattee Library, 2nd floor, West Wing.

Electronic Reserves

Some of the assigned course readings are available at the Electronic Reserves site in Pattee Library. You can access these files from any Internet connection, using your Penn State ID and password. Once you have signed on to the electronic reserve site, look for the listings for Speech Communication, then for our course. Please have the assigned readings prepared and bring a printout to class to help support group discussion. For a complete listing of articles that are on electronic reserve, click here A graduate seminar on Hitchcock sometimes runs concurrently with this undergraduate class; to see the graduate syllabus, which has a more extensive list of required readings, and which keys many of the articles on the reserve reading list to weekly film discussions, click here You may wish to consider the graduate syllabus a set of suggested readings that go beyond the readings required for this undergraduate course.

Regular Reserves

Because many students will be needing access to the library's collection of books about Alfred Hitchcock, we have placed a number of these books on reserve in Pattee Library, some about Hitchcock and some about film more generally. For a list of the books that are on reserve, click here

Digital Music Files

To help provide a sense of the context of the popular arts at the time each of the Hitchcock films was released, we have arranged for digital music files to be placed on electronic reserve at Pattee Library. Anyone with a Penn State account may listen to these files, which are located on the web site for the music library. To listen to this music, you will need to be connected to the campus network either from a dialup connection or from an on-campus network connection.

Academic Integrity

All work submitted for the course is assumed to be your own unless otherwise indicated. Violations of this standard will result in failure of the assignment and possibly in failure of the course or sanctions by University discipliinary authorities. You may of course discuss your work with other students, but all work that is quoted or paraphrased should be clearly identified. Do not submit for this course work that you have also submitted or plan to submit for other courses. Please consult me if you are in doubt about how to handle these issues. See also the parallel discussion of plagiarism in student writing maintained on the English department web site.

Grades

 Grades will be based on

• assigned papers 20% each (60%)
• final examination 20%
• participation in class discussion and listserv 20%

Papers

 You are assigned three critical papers of five to eight pages. Each paper should engage in close reading of one or more films (see the more detailed assignments in the weekly schedule). In preparing each paper, you should do some library research--in each, you should cite at least three printed sources supporting your research. These might be academic articles about Hitchcock, rhetoric, or film criticism, or they might be contemporary newspaper reviews of the film you are writing about. Citations should be in the format described by the MLA Handbook. For citation help see also the online reference shelf section at the Penn State University Libraries.

Note: although you may of course refer to any of Hitchcock's films in any of your papers, please do not make the same Hitchcock film the main subject of more than one of your papers.

Your paper should have a title page, the text of the paper, and a list of works cited. The first paper also requires an appendix--a list of scenes from the film about which you are writing. You may also include a list of scenes with your other papers to support your analysis, and you may include frames copied from a videotape to your computer. Please turn your paper in on the date it is due; on the same day, please send an electronic copy of the paper to me as an e-mail attachment.

Please turn in papers by 5:00 p.m. on the due date in my mailbox in 232 Sparks Building.

Attendance

 Attendance is expected. Readings are due on the date indicated in the syllabus, and students are expected to be ready to discuss them. Please bring to class the assigned readings for the day. Failure to attend will affect final grades. This class is based on a model of cooperation, participation, and active learning. Your work is to learn more about film and film criticism, and also to teach others about these subjects through your participation in discussion of course readings and film viewings.

Listserv

In order to extend class discussion beyond the Wednesday meeting and to provide an opportunity for each student to participate fully in the discussion, each student is assigned to contribute to an on-line class discussion at least once each week. These contributions will be counted as part of the class participation grade. At a minimum, each student should send a well considered contribution to the class by Thursday evening, commenting on the film we have watched that week or on the week's readings. Of course, additional comments are welcome, and you are invited to respond to the notes of other students in a spirit of cooperative inquiry. Send your notes to l-spcom415@lists.psu.edu

Access

 "The Pennsylvania State University is committed to the policy that all persons shall have equal access to programs, facilities, admissions, and employment without regard to personal characteristics not related to ability, performance, or qualifications as determined by University policy or by state or federal authorities. The Pennsylvania State University does not discriminate against any person because of age, ancestry, color, disability or handicap, national origin, race, religious creed, sex, sexual orientation, or veteran status." Penn State University Affirmative Action Office.

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to course announcement for Speech Communication 415, Spring 2001