- Docente: Cristina Bragaglia
- Credits: 9
- SSD: L-ART/06
- Language: Italian
- Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
- Campus: Bologna
- Corso: First cycle degree programme (L) in Foreign Languages and Literature (cod. 0979)
Learning outcomes
The student acquires a basic knowledge of history of cinema from the origins up to the present, in its relationships to other contemporary cultures and with reference to the historical context. Moreover the student obtains the main elements of the language of film, set in its historical and technical evolution. The aim is to reach a critical reading of the movies, setting them in their historical frame.
Course contents
Remarks about the history of the cinema: Asiatic cinema and western film context
Readings/Bibliography
Texts for the students of "Lingue, mercati e culture dell'Asia":
C. Bragaglia-E. Marchese, Alfabeti: il cinema, Bari, Laterza, 1999 (the book is available only in libraries). As other option, the students can study these two texts: Vincent Pinel, Il montaggio (Torino, Lindau, 2004); Anne Marie Guérin, Il racconto cinematografico (Torino, Lindau, 2006).
Fernaldo Di Giammatteo, Milestones, Torino, Utet, 1998.
Sara Cortellazzo - Dario Tomasi, Letteratura e cinema, Bari, Laterza, 1998.
Paolo Brandi, Parole in movimento. L'influenza del cinema sulla letteratura, Fiesole, Cadmo, 2006.
The students who don't attend the course have to watch at least 10 movies from Milestones by Di Giammatteo, including all the asiatic ones. All the students (attending or not attending the course) have to study all the 30 movies from Milestones.
Added texts for those students who don't attend the course:
Stagioni e passioni - Il cinema coreano tra passato e presente (a cura di Pierre Rissient), Edizioni Cineteca, speciale n. 7, aprile 2005 (available at: Cineteca di Bologna, via Riva Reno 72; Cinema Lumière, via Azzo Gardino 65; Libreria Trame, via Goito 3/C).
René Prédal, Cinema: cent'anni di storia, Milano, Baldini & Castoldi, 2001.
Or:
Fernaldo Di Giammatteo, Storia del cinema, Venezia, Marsilio, 2002.
The students who choose Storia del cinema by Di Giammatteo can follow the outline of history of the cinema at the bottom of this page.
Texts for the students of "Lingue e letterature straniere":
C. Bragaglia-E. Marchese, Alfabeti: il cinema, Bari, Laterza, 1999 (the book is available only in libraries). As other option, the students can study these two texts: Vincent Pinel, Il montaggio (Torino, Lindau, 2004); Anne Marie Guérin, Il racconto cinematografico (Torino, Lindau, 2006).
Fernaldo Di Giammatteo, Milestones, Torino, Utet, 1998.
Sara Cortellazzo - Dario Tomasi, Letteratura e cinema, Bari, Laterza, 1998.
Paolo Brandi, Parole in movimento. L'influenza del cinema sulla letteratura, Fiesole, Cadmo, 2006.
The students who don't attend the course have to watch at least 10 movies from Milestones by Di Giammatteo. All the students (attending or not attending the course) have to study all the 30 movies from Milestones.
Added texts for those students who don't attend the course:
Paesaggi (a cura di Luca Pasquale), n. 4, "Film/Letterature" (Gedit, 2008).
René Prédal, Cinema: cent'anni di storia, Milano, Baldini & Castoldi, 2001.
Or:
Fernaldo Di Giammatteo, Storia del cinema, Venezia, Marsilio, 2002.
The students who choose Storia del cinema by Di Giammatteo can follow the outline of history of the cinema at the bottom of this page.
"Storia e critica del cinema I" (3 Cfu):
C. Bragaglia-E. Marchese, Alfabeti: il cinema, Bari, Laterza, 1999 (the book is available only in libraries). As other option, the students can study these two texts: Vincent Pinel, Il montaggio (Torino, Lindau, 2004); Anne Marie Guérin, Il racconto cinematografico (Torino, Lindau, 2006).
Fernaldo Di Giammatteo, Milestones, Torino, Utet, 1998.
The students who don't attend the course have to watch at least 8 movies from Milestones by Di Giammatteo. All the students (attending or not attending the course) have to study all the 30 movies from Milestones.
Added text for those students who don't attend the course:
René Prédal, Cinema: cent'anni di storia, Milano, Baldini & Castoldi, 2001.
Or:
Fernaldo Di Giammatteo, Storia del cinema, Venezia, Marsilio, 2002.
The students who choose Storia del cinema by Di Giammatteo can follow the outline of history of the cinema at the bottom of this page.
"Storia e critica del cinema II" (3 Cfu):
Sara Cortellazzo - Dario Tomasi, Letteratura e cinema, Bari, Laterza, 1998.
Paesaggi (a cura di Luca Pasquale), n. 4, "Film/Letterature" (Gedit, 2008).
Added text for those students who don't attend the course:
Francesca Torchi (a cura di), Narrare Rappresentare. La parola letteraria, lo schermo, la scena, Bologna, Clueb, 2003 (only the first part, related to literature and cinema, without the french essay).
The students who don't attend the course have to watch at least 5 movies among those deeply analysed in the texts.
The students who took the exam of "Cinema e letteratura" in the previous years have to replace the text by Tomasi and Cortellazzo, Letteratura e cinema, with Cinema e letteratura by Giacomo Manzoli (Carocci, 2003).
"Cinema e letteratura" (3 Cfu):
Sara Cortellazzo - Dario Tomasi, Letteratura e cinema, Bari, Laterza, 1998.
Paesaggi (a cura di Luca Pasquale), n. 4, "Film/Letterature" (Gedit, 2008).
Added text for those students who don't attend the course:
Francesca Torchi (a cura di), Narrare Rappresentare. La parola letteraria, lo schermo, la scena, Bologna, Clueb, 2003 (only the first part, related to literature and cinema, without the french essay).
The students who don't attend the course have to watch at least 5 movies among those deeply analysed in the texts.
The students who took the exam of "Storia e critica del cinema 2" in the previous years have to replace the text by Tomasi and Cortellazzo, Letteratura e cinema, with Cinema e letteratura by Giacomo Manzoli (Carocci, 2003).
"Filmologia" (5 e 10 Cfu):
Sara Cortellazzo - Dario Tomasi, Letteratura e cinema, Bari, Laterza, 1998.
Paesaggi (a cura di Luca Pasquale), n. 4, "Film/Letterature" (Gedit, 2008).
Added text for those students who don't attend the course:
Francesca Torchi (a cura di), Narrare Rappresentare. La parola letteraria, lo schermo, la scena, Bologna, Clueb, 2003 (only the first part, related to literature and cinema, without the french essay).
The students who don't attend the course have to watch at least 5 movies among those deeply analysed in the texts.
The students of "Filmologia" (10 Cfu) have to follow the program of "Storia e critica del cinema" (9 Cfu) for the students of "Lingue e letterature straniere".
The history of the cinema: an outline
Lumière-Méliès: how to invent the world.
The birth of the cinematographic language and industry (Porter: The Great Train Robbery).
The birth of the narration (Griffith:The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance).
The golden age of Italian cinema (Caserini: Ma l'amor mio non muore; Pastrone: Cabiria).
German expressionism and Nordic schools (Wiene: Das Kabinett des Dr. Caligari; Murnau: Nosferatu, Eine Symphonie des Grauens; the Kammerspiel).
The birth of Soviet cinema (The Kulešov Effect; Ejzenštejn: BronenosečPotëmkin, Oktiabr'; Vertov: Celovek s kinoapparatum).
European avant-garde and the great Hollywood (Clair; Buñuel; Vigo: L'Atalante; the Hays Code; DeMille; Keaton).
The great classics, the sign of the authors (Chaplin: The Kid, The Gold Rush; von Stroheim: Greed; Vidor; Lang: Metropolis; Dreyer: La passion de Jeanne d'Arc, Vampyr ou l'étrange aventure de David Gray).
From silent to talking cinema (Crosland: The Jazz Singer).
The Studio System, the classical Hollywood (Cukor; Hawks; Fleming: Gone with the Wind; Walt Disney).
“Poetic French Realism” (Duvivier: Pépé le Moko; Carné: Quai des brumes, Le jour se lève, Les enfants du Paradis; Renoir: Partie de campagne, La grande illusion, La règle du jeu; Clouzot: Le corbeau).
The cinema of dictatorships (Blasetti: Sole, 1860, Quattro passi tra le nuvole; Camerini: Gli uomini, che mascalzoni!, Il signor Max; Riefenstahl: Der Triumph des Willens,Olympia; Harlan: Jud Süss; Vasil'ev: Čapaev; Ejzenštejn: Aleksandr Nevskij, Ivan Groznyi).
Documentaries: the illusion of reality (Vertov; Ivens; Flaherty: Nanook from the North; Grierson).
USA: from the New Deal to the new languages (Ford: Stagecoach, The Grapes of Wrath; Chaplin: Modern Times; Capra: It Happened One Night, It's a Wonderful Life; Lang: Fury; von Sternberg: Morocco, Shangahi Express; Lubitsch: The Merry Widow, Angel, Ninotchka; Welles: Citizen Kane; Huston: The Maltese Falcon; Chaplin: The Great Dictator).
Italian Neorealism: success, influence, decline (De Sica: I bambini ci guardano, Sciuscià, Ladri di biciclette, Umberto D.; Rossellini: Roma città aperta, Paisà, Germania, anno zero; Visconti: Ossessione, La terra trema; De Santis: Riso amaro; “neorealismo rosa”: Comencini: Pane, amore e fantasia; Duvivier: Don Camillo).
The fifties in Europe (Bresson: Le journal d'un curé de campagne, Un condamné à mort s'est échappé; Clouzot: Le salaire de la peur, Les diaboliques; Becker: Casque d'or; Autant-Lara: Le diable au corps, La traversée de Paris; Ophüls: Letter from an Unknown Woman, Lola Montès; Melville: Le silence de la mer, Le samouraï; Tati: Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot; Olivier: Henry V, Hamlet; Powell and Pressburger: The Red Shoes; Powell: Peeping Tom; Reed: The Third Man; Lean: Brief Encounter, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia; Mackendrick: The Ladykillers; Wajda: Popiól i diament; Bardem: Calle Mayor; Buñuel: Los olvidados, Nazarin).
Scandinavian cinema (Sjöström: The Wind; Dreyer: Vredens Dag, Ordet; Bergman: Det Sjunde inseglet, Smultronstället, Ansiktet, Tystnaden, Persona, Viskningar och rop).
The cinema of the Rising Sun (Kurosawa: Rashômon, Shichi-nin no Samurai, Dersu Uzala, Kagemusha, Ran; Mizoguchi: Saikaku ichidai onna, Ugetsu Monogatari, Chikamatsu Monogatari; Ozu: Tokio Monogatari; Ichikawa:Biruma no tategoto; Oshima: Gishiki).
Crisis and revival of Hollywood from the fifties (Losey: The Servant, The Accident; Lumet; Peckinpah; Edwards; Wilder: Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Sabrina, Some Like It Hot; Ford: My Darling Clementine, Fort Apache, The Searchers; Kazan: On the Waterfront, The Last Tycoon; Huston: The Asphalt Jungle, The Misfists, The Dead; Hitchcock: Suspicion, Notorius, Rope, North by Northwest, Rear Window, Vertigo, Psycho, The Birds; Kubrick: Paths of Glory, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned ti Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, 2001: A Space Odissey, Barry Lyndon, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining).
French “nouvelle vague” and Italian revival (Chabrol; Truffaut: Les 400 coups, Jules et Jim; Godard: A bout de souffle, Vivre sa vie, La chinoise; Rohmer: i "contes moraux"; Resnais: Hiroshima mon amour, L'année dernière à Marienbad; Malle: Ascenseur pour l'échafaud; Bresson: Au hasard Balthazar, Mouchette; Rossellini: Viaggio in Italia, La prise du pouvoir par Louis XIV; Visconti: Senso, Rocco e i suoi fratelli, Il Gattopardo, Morte a Venezia; Antonioni: L'avventura, La notte, L'eclisse, Il deserto rosso, Blow-up, Professione: reporter; Fellini: I vitelloni, La dolce vita, 8 ½, Amarcord, Il Casanova di Federico Fellini; Germi: Divorzio all'italiana; Monicelli: I soliti ignoti, L'armata Brancaleone; Rosi: Salvatore Giuliano, Le mani sulla città; Risi: Poveri ma belli, Il sorpasso, Una vita difficile; Pasolini: Accattone, Il Vangelo secondo Matteo, Uccellacci e uccellini, Il Decameron, Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma; Taviani: Padre padrone; Ferreri: Una storia moderna: l'ape regina, Dillinger è morto, La grande bouffe; Bellocchio: I pugni in tasca; Bertolucci: Prima della rivoluzione, Il conformista, Ultimo tango a Parigi, The Last Emperor).
The new waves in the world (Free Cinema; Richardson: Look Back in Anger, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Tom Jones; Anderson: This Sporting Life, If...; Reisz: Saturday Night and Sunday Morning; Schlesinger: Billy Liar, Midnight Cowboy, Sunday, Bloody Sunday; Loach: Family Life, Riff Raff; Junger Deutscher Film; Kluge: Artisten in der Zirkuskuppel: ratlos; NováVlna; Forman: Lásky jedné plavovlávsky, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus; Wajda: Czlowiek z marmuru; Polanski: The Fearless Vampire Killers, Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown; Jancsó: Szegénnylegények, Csillagosok, katonák, Czend és Kiáltás; Michalkov: Raba ljubvi; Buñuel: Viridiana, El angel exterminador, Belle de jour, Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie; Cinema nôvo; Rocha: Deus e o Diablo na terra do sol,Antonio das Mortes; New American Cinema; Andy Warhol: Sleep, Empire).
The great mutation of media studies, ideological conflicts and new techniques.
The artifices of the “great tale” (Wenders: Im Lauf der Zeit, Der amerikanische Freund, Der Himmel uber Berlin, Paris, Texas; Anghelopulos: O thiasos; Tarkovskij: Andrej Rublëv, Stalker; Fassbinder: Angst essen Seele auf, Die Ehe der Maria Braun, Berlin Alexanderplatz; Altman: MASH, Nashville, The Player, Short Cuts; Greenaway: The Draughtsman's Contract, Prospero's Books, Drowning by Numbers; Kieslovski: Dekalog; Allen: Manhattan, Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, The Purple Rose of Cairo; Coppola: The Godfather, Apocalypse Now; Cimino: The Deer Hunter; Scorsese: Taxi Driver, New York New York, After Hours, The Age of Innocence; Almodóvar: Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios; Leone: Per un pugno di dollari, C'era una volta il West, Once Upon a Time in America; Moretti: Ecce bombo, Bianca, Caro diario; Kiarostami: Ta'm e guilass; Zhang Yimou: Dahong Denglong gaogao gua; Tarantino: Pulp Fiction; Spielberg: Duel, Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial; Scott: Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise; de Oliveira).
The new millennium: an open epilogue (Wachowski: Matrix; Benvenuti: Gostanza da Libbiano; Panahi: Dayereh; Haneke: Code inconnu – Récit incomplet de divers voyages; Bellocchio: L'ora di religione).
Assessment methods
Oral examination
Teaching tools
DVD and VHS are available at: Videoteca del Dipartimento di Musica e Spettacolo (via Barberia, 4); Biblioteca di Discipline Umanistiche (via Zamboni, 36); Sala Borsa.
At the exam the students have to bring the list of the examined movies.
Office hours
See the website of Cristina Bragaglia