Introduction to Film Studies

RESEARCH ESSAY QUESTIONS

(Spring 2015)

PLEASE NOTE: Do not write about the same film/filmmaker/topic you focused on for your first assignment.

1.    Discuss Laura Mulvey’s claim – that Hitchcock’s films are structured around a voyeuristic, patriarchal organization of vision – via a close analysis of Rear Window and/or Vertigo. Do you think the film confirms and/or challenges this view? (Please note: you must address Mulvey’s article ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ in your essay).

2.    Bertolt Brecht’s writings have influenced a number of filmmakers (for example, Lars von Trier, Jean-Luc Godard). Via an analysis of two films referred to in this course, discuss the impact of Brecht’s ideas in terms of form and spectatorial effects.

3.    Is The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum a feminist film? If so, why?

4.    With reference to Carlos Saura’s Raise Ravens! consider the ways the director employs allegory as a means of evading the constraints governing the national film culture.

5.    Through a detailed analysis of one of the films viewed in this subject, discuss the particular historical and/or political conditions that gave rise to the film and film movement in question.

6.    In his article ‘Images from the Inside’, Jean-Marc Lalanne comments that “time is out of joint” in the films of Wong Kar-Wai. What does he mean by this? Discuss via a detailed analysis of one or more of Wong Kar-Wai’s films.
*Please note: This article is contained in Jean-Marc Lalanne et al., Wong Kar-Wai (Paris: Disvoir, 1997) which is available at UTS library as an e-reading for this subject.