Special subject: the rise of film noir

Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 1.5 hours / session

This course will run twice a week. Outside of class, students are to watch the assigned films. There will be a showing once a week of a new film.

This class will explore Hollywood Film Noir as it developed during the 1930s-50s. The focus will be on important émigré directors who moved to Hollywood when the Nazis rose to power, including Fritz Lang, Otto Preminger, Robert Siodmak, Edgar Ulmer, Billy Wilder, and Fred Zinnemann. Also to be considered are contributions by cinematographers, set designers, and composers. Class activities include a field trip to the Sackler Museum at Harvard to look at émigré artworks from this period, a forum and concert by the Boston Chamber Music Society in Kresge during session 3, and a concurrent series of six great examples of film noir from the 1940s. (See separate IAP listings for the film series and concert.) Assignments will include short response papers about three of the films in the series, and reports by students on examples of "neo-noir" films from recent decades.

Trip to the Harvard Sackler Art Museum

Response paper 1 due

More student group presentations

Third response paper due

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