I. Panoramic Views and Bright Lights

4/4 - 4/9 Introduction: The Skyscraper

Screen:


Manhatta (USA, Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler, 1921) 9m
Liberty (USA, Laurel and Hardy, 1929) 20m
Excerpts (King Kong, War of the Worlds, Dirty Harry, Independence Day)
Skyscraper (USA, Shirley Clarke, 1959) 20m

Read:


Rem Koolhaas, "Double Life of Utopia: The Skyscraper" (Delirious New York)
Sharpe and Wallock, "From 'Great Town' to 'Nonplace Urban Realm': Reading the Modern City" (course reader)
David Clarke, "Introduction: Previewing the Cinematic City" (Cinematic City)
Henri Lefebvre, "The Specificity of the City" (course reader)




4/9 - 4/11 The Camera Explores the City

Screen: Paris Qui Dort (France, René Clair, 1924) 40m; A Propos de Nice (France, Jean Vigo, 1930); Films by Ernie Gehr (USA: Shift; 1972-74, 9m; Side/Walk/Shuttle 1991, 40m)

Read:


Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey (Chapters 3, 4, 11, 12, 13, "The Space of Glass Architecture)
Annette Michelson, "Dr. Crase and Mr. Clair" (course reader)
Giuliana Bruno, "City Views: The Voyage of Film Images" (Cinematic City)


Evening Screening Tuesday 4/10

Man with a Movie Camera (USSR, Dziga Vertov, 1928-9) 80m
Berlin, Symphony of a Great City (Germany, Walter Ruttmann, 1928) 52m, excerpt
Run, Lola Run (Germany, Tom Tykwer, 1998) 80m


FIRST ESSAY ASSIGNED 4/11: 3pp visual analysis (comparison of two films)


 

4/16-4/18 The Bright City: Coney Island as Urban "Other"


Screen:


Early actualities, Sunrise, The Crowd, Damsel in Distress

Read:
         4/16

Georg Simmel, "The Metropolis and Mental Life" (course reader)
Rem Koolhaas, "Coney Island: The Technology of the Fantastic;" (Delirious New York)
Anthony Vidler, "The Explosion of Space: Architecture and the Filmic Imaginary" (course reader)
Walter Benjamin, "Paris: Capital of the Nineteenth Century" (course reader)
Charles Baudelaire, "The Painter of Modern Life" (course reader)

Recommended: Steven Millhauser, Martin Dressler



FIRST ESSAY DUE 4/17


Evening Screening T 4/17

         Sunrise (USA, FW Murnau, 1928) 97m
         Blade Runner director's cut (USA, Ridley Scott, 1982/92)117m

II: The Modernist City

4/23 The Utopia of the Modernist City I

Read:
Lynne Kirby, Parallel Tracks (Introduction, Chapter 1 and Chapter 3)
Also: Colin McArthur, "Chinese Boxes and Russian Dolls: Tracking the Elusive Cinematic City" (Cinematic City)


Evening Screening Tuesday 4/24

Things to Come (Gt. Britain, William Cameron Menzies, 1936) 108m
The City (USA, Ralph Steiner and Willard Van Dyke, text by Lewis Mumford, 1939) 43m.


4/25 The Utopia of the Modernist City II

Read:


Lewis Gilbert, "First City: Form and Fantasy" (course reader)
Le Corbusier, "New York is Not a Completed City" (course reader)
Le Corbusier, "The Contemporary City" (City reader)
Frank Lloyd Wright, "Broadacre City: A New Community Plan" (City Reader)
Gold and Ward, "Of Plans and Planners" (Cinematic City)

 

4/30 The Dystopia of the Modernist City: Metropolis and Warner Bros. Cities of the 1930s

Screen:


Excerpts Metropolis and Marked Woman, Big Sleep, Public Enemy, Scarface, 42 St.

Read:


Vivian Sobchack, "Cities on the Edge of Time: The Urban Science Fiction Film" (course reader)
Friedrich Engels, "The Great Towns" (City reader)
Dolores Hayden, "What Would a Non-Sexist City Be Like?" (City reader)

Evening Screening Tuesday 5/1


Metropolis (Germany, Fritz Lang, 1926) 93m.
Marked Woman (USA, Llyod Bacon, 1937) 96m


 

5/2 The (Post?)modern City

Read:


Bukatman, Blade Runner
M. Christine Boyer, "Imaging the City in the Age of Electronic Communication" (course reader)


Evening Screening Tuesday 5/8

Point Blank (USA, John Boorman, 1967) 92m.
Breathless (France, Jean-Luc Godard, 1959) 90m.


5/7-5/9 The Exhaustion of the Modernist City: Alphaville/Point Blank

Read:


Lewis Mumford, "The Disappearing City" and "Yesterday's City of Tomorrow" (course reader)
Reyner Banham, "The Transportation Palimpsest" (course reader)
Clay McShane, "The Motorboys Rebuild Cities" (course reader)
Antony Easthope, "Cinécities in the Sixties (Cinematic City)
Recommended: J. G. Ballard, Crash 


SECOND ESSAY ASSIGNED 5/9




A Musical Interlude

5/14 The Syncopated City

        Screen: Musical sequences set in New York City, 1929-1961
        Read:
                Koolhaas, "How Perfect Perfection Can Be" (Delirious New York)
                Bukatman, "Syncopated City" (course reader)
                Siegfried Kracauer, "Cult of Distraction" (course reader)
                David Nye, "The great White Way" (course reader)
                Rosalind Williams, "The Dream World of Mass Consumption" (course reader)
                
                FINAL PROPOSAL DUE (grad students doing a final paper) 5/14

Evening Screening Tuesday 5/15

Playtime (France, Jacques Tati, 1967) 152m.


5/16 The Totality of the Modernist City

Read:


Richard Sennett, "The Urban Whole as a Myth of Purity" (course reader)
Louis Wirth, "Urbanism as a Way of Life" (City Reader)
Venturi and Scott Brown, Learning from Las Vegas (excerpt - course reader)
William Gibson, "The Gernsback Continuum" (course reader)

III: Dark Cities

5/21 Control and Surveillance

Screen:


Traffic in Souls (USA, George Loane Tucker, 1913) 40m
Excerpt: M (Germany, Fritz Lang, 1931) 99m

Read:

Michel Foucault, "Panopticism" from Discipline and Punish (on reserve)
Tom Gunning on Traffic in Souls (course reader)
Edgar Allan Poe, "The Man of the Crowd" (course reader)
Fredric Jameson, "On Chandler" (course reader)


SECOND ESSAY DUE 5/21

Evening Screening 5/22

High and Low (Japan, Akira Kurosawa, 1963) 142m
/OR Sweet Smell of Success (USA, Alexander MacKendrick, 1957) 96m


5/23 The Bright Dark City

Screen:


Noir excerpts (On Dangerous Ground, T-Men, Cat People)
excerpts (Pandora's Box, Sweet Smell of Success, Breathless, The Naked City, The Wrong Man)


Read:


Frank Krutnick, "Something More Than Night: Tales of the Noir City" (Cinematic City)
Will Straw, "Urban Confidential: The Lurid City of the 1950s" (Cinematic City)
William R. Taylor, "Broadway: The Place that Words Built" (course reader)

IV: Public and Private Cities

Evening screening Tuesday 5/29

The Clock (USA, Vincente Minnelli, 1945) 90m
Osaka Elegy (Japan, Kenji Mizoguchi, 1936) 71m


5/30 Working Women, Fallen Women, Watched Women

Screen:


Excerpts, The Clock, Rear Window (USA, Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)

Read:


Jane Jacobs, "The Uses of Sidewalks" (Metropolis)
Recommended: Elizabeth Wilson, The Sphinx in the City


FINAL ESSAY ASSIGNED 5/30

EXTRA Evening screening TH 5/31 - Retour a Paris:

         While the Cat's Away (France, Cédric Klapisch, 1996) 96m
         La Haine (France, Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995) 93m

6/4 History and Erasure

Read:


Mike Davis, "Fortress Los Angeles" (City Reader)
Norman M. Klein, "LA Noir and Forgetting" (course reader)
City Reader, Section 8

Evening screening Tuesday 6/5

Signal: Germany on the Air (USA, Ernie Gehr, 1982/85) 35m
Wings of Desire (Germany, Wim Wenders, 1988) 130m

6/6 The City of Collective Memory

Screen:


Hiroshima Mon Amour (France-Japan, Alain Resnais/Marguerite Duras, 1959 - excerpt)
Eureka (USA, Ernie Gehr, 1974) 30m

Read:


M. Christine Boyer, "The Place of History and Memory in the Contemporary City" (course reader)
Recommended: Brian Ladd, The Ghosts of Berlin

END OF CLASS OPTIONAL SCREENING!!

Babe: Pig in the City (USA, George Miller. 1998) 97m
The Warriors (USA, Walter Hill, 1979) 93m

FINAL ESSAY DUE (Undergraduate AND grads 6/13 by noon!)