Week 1 – Introduction: Issues in remaking cinema

 

Introduction to cinema terminology and writing about film 

Films

Questions on the films for Week 1 seminar 

La Totale! (Claude Zidi, 1991)

True Lies (James Cameron, 1994)

Required Reading

Please note, where possible the required reading for this module is available in digital form on the module's Course Extracts page (for copyright reasons, this is unfortunately not possible for all texts).

Lucy Mazdon, Encore Hollywood: Remaking French Cinema (London: BFI, 2000), pp. 1-29, 125-47.

Raphaëlle Moine, Remakes: Les films français à Hollywod (Paris: CNRS Editions, 2007), pp. 167-73.

José Arroyo, ‘Cameron and the Comic’, in Action/Spectacle Cinema: A Sight and Sound Reader (London: BFI, 2000), pp. 39-44.

Wider reading

Constantine Verevis, Film Remakes (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006).

Yvonne Tasker, Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 73-131.

Steve Neale, ‘Masculinity as Spectacle: Reflections on Men and Mainstream Cinema’, Screen, 24, 6 (1983), pp. 2-16.

Susan Jeffords, Hard Bodies: Hollywood Masculinity in the Reagan Era (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press), pp. 140-77.

Richard Dyer, Stars (London: BFI, 1979).

Recommended further viewing

Ripou contre ripou (Claude Zidi, 1989)

Gazon maudit (Josiane Balasko, 1995)

The Terminator (James Cameron, 1984)

Terminator 2 – Judgment Day (James Cameron, 1991)

Twins (Ivan Reitman, 1988)

 

Weeks 2-3 – French social cinema and film noir

Films

Questions on the films for Week 2 seminar 

Questions for sequence analysis (week 3 seminar) 

La Chienne (Jean Renoir, 1931)

Scarlet Street (Fritz Lang, 1945)

Required Reading

Questions on required reading (week 3 seminar) 

Tom Gunning, The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity (London: BFI, 2000), pp. 307-39.

Tricia Welsch, ‘Sound Strategies: Lang’s Rearticulation of Renoir’, in Jennifer Forrest and Leonard R. Koos (eds.), Dead Ringers: The Remake in Theory and Practice (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), pp. 127-49.

Adrian Martin, ‘Guess Work: Scarlet Street (1945)’, Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism, 3 (2012), http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/film/movie/contents/scarlet_st._final.2.pdf

Lucy Mazdon, Encore Hollywood: Remaking French Cinema (London: BFI, 2000), pp. 30-50.

Colin Davis, Scenes of Love and Murder: Renoir, Film and Philosophy (London: Wallflower, 2009), pp. 26-46.

Wider reading

Edward Benson, ‘Décor and Decorum: From La Chienne to Scarlet Street: Franco-US Trade in Film during the Thirties’, Film & History 12:3 (1982), pp. 57-65.

Matthew Bernstein, ‘A Tale of Three Cities: The Banning of Scarlet Street’, Cinema Journal 35:1 (1995), pp. 27-52.

Tom Conley, ‘The Law of the Letter: Scarlet Street’, in Film Hieroglyphs (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), pp. 20-45.

Kelley Conway, ‘Popular Songs in Renoir’s Films of the 1930s’ in Alastair Phillips and Ginette Vincendeau (eds), A Companion to Jean Renoir (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), pp. 199-218.

Elizabeth Cowie, ‘Film noir and women’, in Joan Copjec (ed.), Shades of Noir: A Reader (London: Verso, 1993), pp. 121-66.

Colin Crisp, The Classic French Cinema, 1930-1960 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), pp. 1-42.

Florence Jacobowitz, ‘The Man’s Melodrama: The Woman in the Window and Scarlet Street’, in Ian Cameron (ed.), The Movie Book of Film Noir (London: Studio Vista, 1992), pp. 152-64.

Stephen Jenkins (ed.), Fritz Lang: The Image and the Look (London: BFI, 1981).

E. Ann Kaplan, ‘Ideology and Cinematic Practice in Lang’s Scarlet Street and Renoir’s La Chienne’, Wide Angle, 5, 3 (1983), pp. 32-43.

Peter Lehman, ‘Another Nothing Man: Edward G. Robinson and Scarlet Street’, in Running Scared: Masculinity and the Representation of the Male Body (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), pp. 85-105.

Michel Marie, ‘The Invention of Talking Cinema: Language in Renoir’s Early Sound Films’, in Alastair Phillips and Ginette Vincendeau (eds), A Companion to Jean Renoir (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), pp. 53-71.

Lucy Mazdon, ‘Remaking Renoir in Hollywood’, in Alastair Phillips and Ginette Vincendeau (eds), A Companion to Jean Renoir (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), pp. 555-571.

Pascal Mérigeau, Jean Renoir (Paris: Flammarion, 2012), pp. 141-59.

Martin O’Shaughnessy, Jean Renoir (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), pp. 62-93.

Mark Osteen, ‘Framed: Forging Identities in Film Noir’, Journal of Film and Video 62:3 (2010), pp. 17-35.

Robert B. Pippin, ‘Sexual Agency in Fritz Lang’s Scarlet Street’, in Fatalism in American Film Noir: Some Cinematic Philosophy (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012).

Jennifer Porst, 'The Influence of Sound on Visual Style in Renoir's Tire au flanc and La Chienne', Studies in French CInema 11.3 (2011), pp. 195-206.

Recommended further viewing

Boudu sauvé des eaux (Jean Renoir, 1932)

The Woman in the Window (Fritz Lang, 1944)

Weeks 4-5: Remaking comedy

Films

Questions on the films for Week 4 seminar 

Questions for sequence analysis (Week 5 seminar) 

Trois hommes et un couffin (Coline Serreau, 1985)

Three Men and a Baby (Leonard Nimoy, 1987)

Required Reading

Questions on required reading for week 5 seminar 

Carolyn Durham, ‘Three Takes on Motherhood, Masculinity and Marriage: Serreau’s Original, Nimoy’s Remake, and Ardolino’s Sequel’, in Double Takes: Culture and Gender in French Films and their American Remakes (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1998), pp. 70-90.

Lucy Mazdon, Encore Hollywood: Remaking French Cinema (London: BFI, 2000), pp. 51-66.

Phil Powrie, ‘Trois hommes et un couffin: Hysterical Homoeroticism’, in French Cinema in the 1980s: Nostalgia and the Crisis of Masculinity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 147-58.

Lucy Fischer, ‘Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child: Comedy and Matricide’, in A. S. Horton (ed.), Comedy/Cinema/Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 60-78.

Tania Modleski, ‘Three Men and Baby M’, Camera Obscura, 17 (1988), pp. 69-81.

Wider reading

Ginette Vincendeau, ‘Family Plots: The Fathers and Daughters of French Cinema’, Sight & Sound, 1, 11 (1992), pp. 15-17.

Brigitte Rollet, Coline Serreau (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998).

Pam Cook, ‘Masculinity in Crisis?’, Screen, 23, 3-4 (1982), pp. 39-46.

Recommended further viewing

Three Men and a Little Lady (Emile Ardolino, 1990)

18 ans après (Coline Serreau, 2003)

Romuald et Juliette (Coline Serreau, 1989)

Look Who’s Talking (Amy Heckerling, 1989)

Mon père ce héros (Gérard Lauzier, 1991)

Weeks 7-8: Remaking science fiction

Films

Questions on the films for Week 7 seminar 

Questions for sequence analysis (Week 8 seminar) 

La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1962)

12 Monkeys (Terry Gilliam, 1995)

Required reading

Questions on required reading for Week 8 seminar 

Patrick Ffrench, ‘The Memory of the Image in Chris Marker’s La Jetée’, French Studies, 49, 1 (2005), pp. 31-7.

Sarah Cooper, Chris Marker (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), pp. 45-56.

Peter Marks, Terry Gilliam (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), pp. 131-73.

Gerry Canavan, '"You Can't Change Anything": Freedom and Control in Twelve Monkeys', in Jeff Birkenstein, Anna Froula and Karen Randell (eds), The Cinema of Terry Gilliam: It's a Mad World (London: Wallflower, 2013), pp. 92-103.

Wider reading

David Lashmet, '"The Future is History": 12 Monkeys and the Origin of AIDS', Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 33: 4 (2000), pp. 55-72.

Elena del Rio, 'The Remaking of La Jetée's Time-Travel Narrative: Twelve Monkeys and the Rhetoric of Absolute Visibility', Science Fiction Studies 28 (2001), pp. 383-398.

Julie McQuinn, 'Strange Recognitions and Endless Loops: Music, Media, and Memory in Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys', in David Neumeyer (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Film Music Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 445-467.

Jenny Chamarette, ‘A Short Film about Time: Dynamism and Stillness in Chris Marker’s La Jetée’, in Elizabeth Lindley and Laura McMahon (eds), Rhythms: Essays in French Literature, Thought and Culture (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2008), pp. 217-31.

Janet Harbord, Chris Marker, La Jetée (London: Afterall Books, 2009).

Alain J.-J. Cohen, ‘12 Monkeys, Vertigo and La Jetée: Postmodern Mythologies and Cult Films’, New Review of Film and Television Studies, 1, 1 (2003), pp. 149-64.

Paul Coates, 'Chris Marker and the Cinema as Time Machine', Science Fiction Studies, 14.3 (1987), pp. 307-315.

Bruce Kawin, 'Time and Stasis in La Jetée', Film Quarterly 36.1 (1982), pp. 15-20.

Paul Sandro, 'Singled Out by History: La Jetée and the Aesthetics of Memory', French Cultural Studies 10 (1999), pp. 107-127.

Elisa Pezzotta, ‘Personal Time in Alternative and Time Travel Narrative: The Cases of Groundhog Day, Twelve Monkeys and 2001: A Space Odyssey’, Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, 2 (2012), http://www.alphavillejournal.com/Issue%202/HTML/ArticlePezzotta.html

Nora M. Alter, Chris Marker (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006).

Catherine Lupton, Chris Marker: Memories of the Future (London: Reaktion, 2005).

Ian Christie (ed.), Gilliam on Gilliam (London: Faber & Faber, 1999), pp. 216-41.

Constance Penley, ‘Time Travel, Primal Scene and the Critical Dystopia’, in Sean Redmond (ed.), Liquid Metal: The Science Fiction Film Reader (London: Wallflower, 2004), pp. 126-35.

Geoff King and Tanya Krzywinska, Science Fiction Cinema: From Outerspace to Cyberspace (London: Wallflower, 2000).

Recommended further viewing

Sans soleil (Chris Marker, 1983)

Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985)

Time Bandits (Terry Gilliam, 1981)

Weeks 9-10: A remake in reverse

Films

Questions on the films for week 9 seminar 

Questions on the sequence analysis (week 10 seminar) 

Fingers (James Toback, 1978)

De battre mon coeur s’est arrêté (Jacques Audiard, 2005)

Required reading

Questions on required reading for week 10 seminar 

Adrian Martin, ‘Grim Fascination: Fingers, James Toback, and 1970s American Cinema’, in Thomas Elsaesser, Alexander Horwath and Noel King (eds), The Last Great American Picture Show: New Hollywood Cinema in the 1970s (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2004), pp. 309-32.

Julia Dobson, ‘Jacques Audiard and the Filial Challenge’, Studies in French Cinema, 7, 3 (2007), pp. 179-89.

Wider reading

Julia Dobson, ‘Jacques Audiard: Contesting Filiations’, in Kate Ince (ed.), Five Directors: Auteurism from Assayas to Ozon (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), pp. 38-58.

Peter Krämer, The New Hollywood: From Bonnie and Clyde to Star Wars (London: Wallflower, 2005).

Thomas Elsaesser, ‘The Pathos of Failure: American Films in the 1970s: Notes on the Unmotivated Hero’, in Thomas Elsaesser, Alexander Horwath and Noel King (eds), The Last Great American Picture Show: New Hollywood Cinema in the 1970s (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2004), pp. 279-92.

Peter Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex’n’Drugs’n’Rock’n’Roll Generation Saved Hollywood (London: Bloomsbury, 1998).

Recommended further viewing

Un héros très discret (Jacques Audiard, 1996)

Sur mes lèvres (Jacques Audiard, 2001)

Un prophète (Jacques Audiard, 2009)

Mean Streets (Martin Scorsese, 1973)