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First Essay

1. Describe the opening sequences of one film by Chaplin and one by Keaton or Griffith or Murnau, giving particular attention to principles of composition within each frame, camera position and movement, the rhythm of the editing. How do these technical features of each director's work help to clarify his characteristic subject-matter and attitudes toward experience?

2. Discuss the development of film as a narrative medium by analyzing significant passages from short films by D. W. Griffith available to borrow from the Film Office, 14N-428.

3. The hero in Chaplin and Keaton. Be sure to describe and interpret specific scenes and passages.

4. Heroines in Griffith and/or Chaplin and/or Keaton.

5. Machines and machinery in Chaplin and/or Keaton.

6. The city in Chaplin and/or Murnau.

7. Choose one short film by Chaplin or Keaton and discuss how several of its elements have been absorbed and transformed in a later full-length feature.

8. Narrative structure in The General or Modern Times.

9. The General as mock-epic: compare Keaton's treatment of the historical past, martial glory, heroines with that of Griffith in Birth of a Nation (available from the Film Office).

10. Chaplin's use of sound in Modern Times.

11. The symbolic transformation of ordinary objects in Chaplin.

12. Riming scenes in Modern Times.

13. The role of food in selected scenes from Chaplin.

14. Accident in The General.

15. The ending versus the larger film in The Last Laugh.

16. Social class in The Last Laugh.

17. Murnau's "subjective camera."

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Second Essay Topics

1. Riming scenes in Hitchcock or Ford--describe one or two of them carefully, then analyze their significance.

2. Romantic and sexual entanglements in one or more of the following: Shadow of A Doubt, The Searchers, It Happened One Night, Cabaret.

3. The theme of community in The Searchers.

4. Ford's camera--particularly in its treatment of physical spaces--compared with that of any other director on our syllabus.

5. The ending vs. the larger film in The Last Laugh.

6. Notions of masculinity in one or more of the following: It Happened One Night, Shadow of A Doubt, The Searchers. Or, alternatively: ideas of femininity in one or more of these films.

7. The significance of a secondary character in The Searchers, Cabaret, Shadow of A Doubt or The Last Laugh.

8. Social class in It Happened One Night and/or The Last Laugh.

9. The American family in Hitchcock.

10. Comic elements in Shadow of a Doubt and/or The Searchers.

11. Heroism in Ford.

12. Racial themes in The Searchers.

13. Doubles -- two Charlies, Ethan and Scar -- in Hitchcock or Ford.

14. Perversity and normality in Hitchcock.

15. Discuss the theme of performance in Singin' in the Rain, giving some attention to specific songs and dances, and to the meaning of these performances in the context of the film as a whole.

16. Discuss the role of high and "low" or popular art in Singin' in the Rain.

17. The relationship between the performance sequences in Cabaret or Singin' in the Rain and larger themes.

18. The theme of innocence in Cabaret.

Third Essay Topics

1. Historical or cultural transition in Ford or Altman or Fosse or Renoir or Kurosawa.

2. The city in Fosse or DeSica.

3. Women in Ford and/or Altman.

4. Visual style in Renoir or DeSica or Kurosawa: a close reading of one or two representative sequences.

5. Comic elements in Ford or Altman or Renoir or Kurosawa.

6. The role of a supporting character: for example, the baron in Cabaret, von Rauffenstein in Grand Illusion, the mother in Bicycle Thieves.

7. Notions of heroism in Ford and/or Altman or Renoir.

8.  The Mifune character in Seven Samurai: peasant or Samurai, clown or hero?

9. The theme of innocence in Cabaret, Bicycle Thieves.

10. Social class in Grand Illusion or Seven Samurai.

11. Father and son in Bicycle Thieves.

12. Endings: montage, mise en scene and ambiguity in the final sequences of Grand Illusion, Bicycle Thieves, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Cabaret, or Seven Samurai.

13. Organized religion in Bicycle Thieves.

14. The natural world in Ford or Altman or Kurosawa.

15.  Sound in McCabe and Mrs. Miller.

16.  Country vs. city in Seven Samurai.

17.  The peasants in Seven Samurai: how do they change as the film progresses?

18.  Battle scenes in Seven Samurai: how they're photographed and edited, what they say about war.