Outline

Overview

Examining cinema as a manifestation of modernity, this unit of study contextualizes early film as art, commodity, industry, institution and mass production of the senses. It introduces students to the study of the history and aesthetics of silent cinema, including major genres such as melodrama and slapstick, and the impacts of the transition to sound.

Unit details and rules

Academic unit	Film Studies
Credit points	6
Prerequisites ?	12 credit points at 1000 level in Film Studies or 12 credit points at 1000 level in Art History or 12 credit points at 1000 level in Visual Arts
Corequisites ?	None
Prohibitions ?	ARHT2052 or ARHT2652
Assumed knowledge ?	None
Available to study abroad and exchange students	Yes

Teaching staff

Coordinator	Wyatt Moss-Wellington, wyatt.moss-wellington@sydney.edu.au

Type	Description	Weight	Due	Length
Assignment	Video essay A video essay and a 500-word critical reflection.	50%	- Due date: 04 Jun 2023 at 23:59	5-7 mins plus 500wd [2500wd equivalent]
Outcomes assessed:
Assignment	Video portfolio Video exercises 1-3 and 500-word critical reflection.	30%	Week 07 Due date: 09 Apr 2023 at 23:59	3 x 1 minute plus 500wd [1000wd equiv]
Outcomes assessed:
Assignment	Video essay plan A written plan for the final video essay assignment.	20%	Week 11 Due date: 14 May 2023 at 23:59	1000 words
Outcomes assessed:
= hurdle task ?

Assessment summary

See the further information in Canvas.

Assessment criteria

The University awards common result grades, set out in the Coursework Policy 2014 (Schedule 1).

As a general guide, a High distinction indicates work of an exceptional standard, a Distinction a very high standard, a credit a good standard, and a pass an acceptable standard.

Result name	Mark range	Description
High distinction	85 - 100
Distinction	75 - 84
Credit	65 - 74
Pass	50 - 64
Fail	0 - 49	When you don’t meet the learning outcomes of the unit to a satisfactory standard.

For more information see guide to grades.

Late submission

In accordance with University policy, these penalties apply when written work is submitted after 11:59pm on the due date:

Deduction of 5% of the maximum mark for each calendar day after the due date.
After ten calendar days late, a mark of zero will be awarded.

Academic integrity

The Current Student website provides information on academic integrity and the resources available to all students. The University expects students and staff to act ethically and honestly and will treat all allegations of academic integrity breaches seriously.

We use similarity detection software to detect potential instances of plagiarism or other forms of academic integrity breach. If such matches indicate evidence of plagiarism or other forms of academic integrity breaches, your teacher is required to report your work for further investigation.

Use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and automated writing tools

You may only use generative AI and automated writing tools in assessment tasks if you are permitted to by your unit coordinator. If you do use these tools, you must acknowledge this in your work, either in a footnote or an acknowledgement section. The assessment instructions or unit outline will give guidance of the types of tools that are permitted and how the tools should be used.

Your final submitted work must be your own, original work. You must acknowledge any use of generative AI tools that have been used in the assessment, and any material that forms part of your submission must be appropriately referenced. For guidance on how to acknowledge the use of AI, please refer to the AI in Education Canvas site.

The unapproved use of these tools or unacknowledged use will be considered a breach of the Academic Integrity Policy and penalties may apply.

Studiosity is permitted unless otherwise indicated by the unit coordinator. The use of this service must be acknowledged in your submission as detailed on the Learning Hub’s Canvas page.

Outside assessment tasks, generative AI tools may be used to support your learning. The AI in Education Canvas site contains a number of productive ways that students are using AI to improve their learning.

Learning support

Simple extensions

If you encounter a problem submitting your work on time, you may be able to apply for an extension of five calendar days through a simple extension.  The application process will be different depending on the type of assessment and extensions cannot be granted for some assessment types like exams.

Special consideration

If exceptional circumstances mean you can’t complete an assessment, you need consideration for a longer period of time, or if you have essential commitments which impact your performance in an assessment, you may be eligible for special consideration or special arrangements.

Special consideration applications will not be affected by a simple extension application.

Using AI responsibly

Co-created with students, AI in Education includes lots of helpful examples of how students use generative AI tools to support their learning. It explains how generative AI works, the different tools available and how to use them responsibly and productively.

Weekly schedule

WK	Topic	Learning activity
Week 01	Introduction: the video essay—curated video essay program	Lecture (1 hr)
Week 02	What is a video essay?	Tutorial (2 hr)
Week 02	The cinema of attractions—curated early film program	Lecture (1 hr)
Week 03	New forms of attraction (video exercise 1)	Tutorial (2 hr)
Week 03	Early narrative—curated program including The Lonedale Operator (D. W. Griffith, US, 1911) and Suspense (Lois Weber and Phillips Smalley, US, 1913)	Lecture (1 hr)
Week 04	Narrative crossroads	Tutorial (2 hr)
Week 04	Screening slapstick—Chaplin shorts plus The Circus (1928)	Lecture (1 hr)
Week 05	Screening Slapstick (video exercise 2)	Tutorial (2 hr)
Week 05	Serial adventures and crime capers—Hazards of Helen ep. 26 “The Wild Engine” plus Filibus (Mario Roncoroni, Italy, 1915)	Lecture (1 hr)
Week 06	Serial adventures	Tutorial (2 hr)
Week 06	Expressionism: modern life—Nosferatu (F. W. Murnau, Germany, 1922)	Lecture (1 hr)
Week 07	Expressionism (video exercise 3)	Tutorial (2 hr)
Week 07	Uplift—Body and Soul (Oscar Micheaux, US, 1920)	Lecture (1 hr)
Week 08	Planning your video essay	Tutorial (2 hr)
Week 08	Montage: revolutionary cinema—Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, USSR, 1925)	Lecture (1 hr)
Week 09	Montage—asynchronous learning week	Tutorial (2 hr)
Week 09	Syncing sound—À Nous La Liberté (René Clair, France, 1931)	Lecture (1 hr)
Week 10	Syncing Sound	Tutorial (2 hr)
Week 10	Mute monsters—Frankenstein (James Whale, US, 1931)	Lecture (1 hr)
Week 11	Horror	Tutorial (2 hr)
Week 11	Sound across borders—The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg, Germany, 1930)	Lecture (1 hr)
Week 12	Voiceover	Tutorial (2 hr)
Week 12	The sound of silence—The Goddess [神女] (Wu Yonggang [吳永剛], China, 1934)	Lecture (1 hr)
Week 13	Video essay workshop	Tutorial (2 hr)
Week 13	It's a wrap	Lecture (1 hr)

Attendance and class requirements

Attendance: According to Faculty Board Resolutions, students in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences are expected to attend 90% of their classes. If you attend less than 50% of classes, regardless of the reasons, you may be referred to the Examiner’s Board. The Examiner’s Board will decide whether you should pass or fail the unit of study if your attendance falls below this threshold.
Preparation: Students should commit to spend approximately three hours’ preparation time (reading, studying, homework, essays, etc.) for every hour of scheduled instruction.

Study commitment

Typically, there is a minimum expectation of 1.5-2 hours of student effort per week per credit point for units of study offered over a full semester. For a 6 credit point unit, this equates to roughly 120-150 hours of student effort in total.

Required readings

SCHEDULE OF READINGS & FILMS

Note: films and readings are indicative and may be revised. See Canvas for more information.

1 Introduction: the video essay—curated video essay program

Álvarez López, Cristina and Adrian Martin. “The One and the Many: Making Sense of the Audiovisual Essay.” https://reframe.sussex.ac.uk/audiovisualessay/frankfurt-papers/cristina-alvarez-lopez-adrian-martin/

Grant, Catherine. “How Long is a Piece of String? On the Practice, Scope and Value of Videographic Film Studies and Criticism.” https://reframe.sussex.ac.uk/audiovisualessay/frankfurt-papers/catherine-grant/

2 The cinema of attractions—curated early film program

Tom Gunning, "An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)Credulous Spectator" Art and Text 34 (Spring 1989): 31-45.

RECOMMENDED

Balides, Constance. “Scenarios of Exposure in the Practice of Everyday Life: Women in the Cinema of Attractions.” In Screen Histories: A Screen Reader, edited by Annette Kuhn and Jackie Stacey, 63–80. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998.

3 Early narrative—curated program including The Lonedale Operator (D. W. Griffith, US, 1911) and Suspense (Lois Weber and Phillips Smalley, US, 1913)

Gunning, Tom. “Systematizing the Electric Message: Narrative Form, Gender and Modernity in The Lonedale Operator.” In American Cinema’s Transitional Era: Audiences, Institutions, Practices, edited by Charlie Keil and Shelley Stamp, 15–50. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.

RECOMMENDED

Singer, Ben. "Modernity, Hyperstimulus, and the Rise of Popular Sensationalism." In Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life, edited by Leo Charney and Vanessa R. Schwartz. 72-99. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

4 Screening slapstick—Chaplin shorts plus The Circus (1928)

Crafton, Donald. "Pie and Chase: Gag, Spectacle and Narrative in Slapstick Comedy." In Classical Hollywood Comedy, edited by Kristine Brunovska Karnick and Henry Jenkins. 106-119. New York: Routledge, 1995.

Gunning, Tom. "Response to ‘Pie and Chase’.” In Classical Hollywood Comedy, edited by Kristine Brunovska Karnick and Henry Jenkins. 120-122. New York: Routledge, 1995.

RECOMMENDED

Hennefeld, Maggie. “Women’s Hats and Silent Film Spectatorship: Between Ostrich Plume and Moving Image.” Film History 28, no. 3 (2016): 24–53.

The Great Dictator (1940)

5 Serial adventures and crime capers—Hazards of Helen ep. 26 “The Wild Engine” plus Filibus (Mario Roncoroni, Italy, 1915)

Dall’Asta, Monica. “Italian Serial Films and ‘International Popular Culture.’” Film History 12, no. 3 (2000): 300–307.

RECOMMENDED

Bean, Jennifer M. “Technologies of Early Stardom and the Extraordinary Body.” In A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema, edited by Jennifer M. Bean and Diane Negra, 404–43. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2002.

6 Expressionism: modern life—Nosferatu (F. W. Murnau, Germany, 1922)

Kaes, Anton. “Chapter 3: The Return of the Undead.” In Shell Shock Cinema: Weimar Cinema and the Wounds of War, 87–130. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.

RECOMMENDED

Elsaesser, Thomas. "Nosferatu, Tartuffe and Faust: Secret Affinities in Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau." In Weimar Cinema and After: Germany's Historical Imaginary, 223-258. (London: Routledge, 2000.)

The Last Laugh (dir. F. W. Murnau, Germany, 1924)

7 Uplift—Body and Soul (Oscar Micheaux, US, 1920)

Bowser, Pearl, and Louise Spence. “Oscar Micheaux’s Body and Soul and the Burden of Representation.” Cinema Journal 39, no. 3 (2000): 3–29.

RECOMMENDED

Hartman, Saidiya. “Mistah Beauty, the Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Woman, Select Scenes from a Film Never Cast by Oscar Micheaux, Harlem, 19202.” In Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals (New York: Norton, 2019), 193-202.

Stewart, Jacqueline Najuma. “‘We Were Never Immigrants’: Oscar Micheaux and the Reconstruction of Black American Identity.” In Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005

Borderline (Kenneth McPherson, UK, 1930)

8 Montage: revolutionary cinema—Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, USSR, 1925)

Mayne, Judith. “Soviet Film Montage and the Woman Question.” Camera Obscura 7, no. 1 19 (1989): 24–53.

RECOMMENDED

Sergei Eisenstein, “Beyond the Shot [The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram],” Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 27-34.

October: Ten Days that Shook the World (Sergei Eisenstein, USSR, 1927)

Strike (Sergei Eisenstein, USSR, 1925)

MID-SEMESTER BREAK

9 Syncing sound—À Nous La Liberté (René Clair, France, 1931)

Fischer, Lucy. “René Clair, ‘Le Million,’ and the Coming of Sound.” Cinema Journal 16, no. 2 (1977): 34–50.

RECOMMENDED

Michel Chion, “Projections of Sound on Image,” Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen,  trans. Claudia Gorbman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 3-24.

Le Million (René Clair, 1930)

10 Mute monsters—Frankenstein (James Whale, US, 1931)

Robert Spadoni, Chapter 5 “Frankenstein and the Vats of Hollywood,” 93-120. In Uncanny Bodies: The Coming of Sound Film and the Origins of the Horror Genre (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).

RECOMMENDED

Crafton, Donald. “Chapter 1 Introduction: The Uncertainty of Sound”, 1-18. In The Talkies: American Cinema’s Transition to Sound, 1926-1931. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

Dracula (Tod Browning, US, 1931)

11 Sound across borders—The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg, Germany, 1930)

Petro, Patrice. “National Cinemas/International Film Culture: The Blue Angel (1930) in Multiple Language Versions.” In Weimar Cinema: An Essential Guide to Classic Films of the Era, edited by Noah Isenberg, 255–70. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.

RECOMMENDED

Baxter, John. “Berlin Year Zero: The Making of the Blue Angel.” Framework 51, no. 1 (2010): 164–89.

Pandora’s Box (G. W. Pabst, Germany, 1929)

12 The sound of silence—The Goddess [神女] (Wu Yonggang [吳永剛], China, 1934)

Hjort, Mette. “Ruan Lingyu: Reflections on an Individual Performance Style.” In Chinese Film Stars, edited by Mary Farquhar and Yingjin Zhang, 32–49. London, UNITED KINGDOM: Taylor & Francis Group, 2010.

RECOMMENDED

Dyer, Richard, “Introduction.” In Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society, 2nd ed., 1–16. London: Routledge, 2004

Center Stage (Stanley Kwan, Hong Kong, 1991)

New Women 新女性(Cai Chushung 蔡楚生, China, 1935)

13 It’s a wrap!

Workshopping video essays.

Learning outcomes

Learning outcomes are what students know, understand and are able to do on completion of a unit of study. They are aligned with the University's graduate qualities and are assessed as part of the curriculum.

Outcomes
Graduate qualities

At the completion of this unit, you should be able to:

LO1. By the end of this unit of study, students should be able to: identify and analyse the formal, aesthetic and narrative elements of early films and their difference from later cinematic modes and genres;
LO2. demonstrate an understanding of the social, cultural and economic contexts in which cinema develops across the twentieth century;
LO3. articulate the different meanings and critical implications of the key terms around which the unit is organised;
LO4. draw on the concepts and issues explored in the unit, as well as further independent research, to construct arguments and perspectives on the history of cinema via specific case studie

Graduate qualities

The graduate qualities are the qualities and skills that all University of Sydney graduates must demonstrate on successful completion of an award course. As a future Sydney graduate, the set of qualities have been designed to equip you for the contemporary world.

GQ1	Depth of disciplinary expertise Deep disciplinary expertise is the ability to integrate and rigorously apply knowledge, understanding and skills of a recognised discipline defined by scholarly activity, as well as familiarity with evolving practice of the discipline.
GQ2	Critical thinking and problem solving Critical thinking and problem solving are the questioning of ideas, evidence and assumptions in order to propose and evaluate hypotheses or alternative arguments before formulating a conclusion or a solution to an identified problem.
GQ3	Oral and written communication Effective communication, in both oral and written form, is the clear exchange of meaning in a manner that is appropriate to audience and context.
GQ4	Information and digital literacy Information and digital literacy is the ability to locate, interpret, evaluate, manage, adapt, integrate, create and convey information using appropriate resources, tools and strategies.
GQ5	Inventiveness Generating novel ideas and solutions.
GQ6	Cultural competence Cultural Competence is the ability to actively, ethically, respectfully, and successfully engage across and between cultures. In the Australian context, this includes and celebrates Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, knowledge systems, and a mature understanding of contemporary issues.
GQ7	Interdisciplinary effectiveness Interdisciplinary effectiveness is the integration and synthesis of multiple viewpoints and practices, working effectively across disciplinary boundaries.
GQ8	Integrated professional, ethical, and personal identity An integrated professional, ethical and personal identity is understanding the interaction between one’s personal and professional selves in an ethical context.
GQ9	Influence Engaging others in a process, idea or vision.

Outcome map

Learning outcomes	Graduate qualities
Learning outcomes

Responding to student feedback

This section outlines changes made to this unit following staff and student reviews.

Minor changes have been made to the unit in response to student feedback as well as refreshing the unit.

Disclaimer

The University reserves the right to amend units of study or no longer offer certain units, including where there are low enrolment numbers.

To help you understand common terms that we use at the University, we offer an online glossary.

Current students

FILM2000: From Silent to Sound Cinema

Semester 1, 2023 [Normal day] - Camperdown/Darlington, Sydney

Overview

Overview

Unit details and rules

Teaching staff

Assessment

Assessment

Assessment summary

Assessment criteria

Late submission

Academic integrity

Learning support

Learning support

Simple extensions

Special consideration

Using AI responsibly

Weekly schedule

Weekly schedule

Attendance and class requirements

Study commitment

Required readings

SCHEDULE OF READINGS & FILMS

1 Introduction: the video essay—curated video essay program

2 The cinema of attractions—curated early film program

3 Early narrative—curated program including The Lonedale Operator (D. W. Griffith, US, 1911) and Suspense (Lois Weber and Phillips Smalley, US, 1913)

4 Screening slapstick—Chaplin shorts plus The Circus (1928)

5 Serial adventures and crime capers—Hazards of Helen ep. 26 “The Wild Engine” plus Filibus (Mario Roncoroni, Italy, 1915)

6 Expressionism: modern life—Nosferatu (F. W. Murnau, Germany, 1922)

7 Uplift—Body and Soul (Oscar Micheaux, US, 1920)

8 Montage: revolutionary cinema—Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, USSR, 1925)

MID-SEMESTER BREAK

9 Syncing sound—À Nous La Liberté (René Clair, France, 1931)

10 Mute monsters—Frankenstein (James Whale, US, 1931)

11 Sound across borders—The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg, Germany, 1930)

12 The sound of silence—The Goddess [神女] (Wu Yonggang [吳永剛], China, 1934)

13 It’s a wrap!

Learning outcomes

Learning outcomes

Graduate qualities

Outcome map

Responding to student feedback

Responding to student feedback

Disclaimer

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