European Cinema at the Crossroads

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 7
• Convenor: Dr Dorota Ostrowska
• Assessment: an essay of 5000 words (100%)

From the end of the World War II until the early 1990s, Europe was gripped by the Cold War and divided by the Iron Curtain. While Western Europe was aligned with the United States, Eastern Europe found itself under the influence of the Soviet Union and its alternative model of cultural production inspired by the communist ideology. Although national cinemas on both sides of the Wall followed their own rhythms and were cut to the measure of their diverse political, social and economic circumstances, they remained in a dialogue with each other and followed surprisingly similar aesthetic trajectories. Almost immediately after the war, Italy's neo-realism attracted worldwide attention and inspired experiments in new forms of 'realism' in France, Russia and Poland. These realisms became vehicles for coming to terms with recent history, before they gave way to the modernist experiments which flourished in Italy, France and Germany.

Each week we will place several key films in their social, historical and critical contexts to gain an overview of post-war European cinema's strengths and weaknesses. We will draw on a range of audiovisual critical material such as film essays, TV and cinema documentaries in order to understand and critically assess the advantages and limitations of audiovisual criticism and knowledge in presenting and conveying the history of cinema. The audiovisual material enables and encourages us to place the post-war history of European cinema in the wider context of Hollywood and world cinema.

Indicative syllabus

• The end of WWII realism? A cinema of liberation: Italian neo-realism
• Screening: Bicycle Thieves (De Sica, 1948)
• Socialist realism: after Stalin: 'thaw' in the USSR
• Screening: The Childhood of Ivan (Tarkovsky, 1962)
• Politics of historical memory: Polish School
• Screening: Ashes and Diamonds (Wajda, 1958)
•  Reconstructing the past: France’s coming to terms with the Occupation
• Screening: Hiroshima, mon amour (Resnais, 1959)
• Documenting the present: new realisms around Europe: Sweden, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia
• Screening: The Switchboard Operator (Makavejev, 1967)
• Cinema of reconstruction: Italy and the discontents of modernity
• Screening: L’Avventura (Antonioni, 1960)
• Rewriting the Hollywood script according to European realisms: Cahiers version of cinema
• Screening: A bout de souffle (Godard, 1960)
• Return of the repressed: the German New Wave
• Screening: Alice in the Cities (Wenders, 1974)
• Dogma 95
• Screening: Festen (Vintenberg, 1998)
• History made present: Romania New Wave
• Screening: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Mungiu, 2007)

By the end of this module, you will:

• have extensive knowledge of the history of European cinema presented in the comparative perspective between the European western and eastern artistic traditions
• have advanced skills to analyse complex filmic texts and engage in close critical readings
• be able to critically assess the importance, value and relevance of a variety of theoretical and conceptual approaches to the study of European cinema coming from both Western and Eastern European intellectual contexts
• be able to engage with critical, historical and theoretical writings on the history of European cinema
• understand the main processes of modernity which shaped formal and aesthetics aspects of European cinema as well as its changing modes of representation.