Seminar of VISUAL CULTURE AND DIRECTED STUDIES

Academic Year 2009/2010 | Term: Spring 2010

Instructor: Prof. Adriano DAloia

Intensified Cinema
Empathy and the Film Experience

DESCRIPTION
The aim of this double seminar is to provide a general overview of the history of film
theory with a focus on emotions and in particular on empathy, conceived as a pivotal
notion for understanding the film experience as both an aesthetic and social practice.
The interest in the concept of empathy as a model to describe spectators
involvement links up the very beginning of film theory with its most recent
developments, from the first psycho-physiological experiments on spectator
response to the neuroscientific findings on mirror neurons and their implications for
aesthetic response. The theoretical frameworks of the course will be accompanied
with case studies based on contemporary mainstream narrative film clips that
illuminate the intensified and empathetic nature of the film experience.

SYLLABUS

Part 1 | Apr. 14, 2010

10s: PSYCHOLOGIES

Hugo Mnsterberg, Emotions, in The Photoplay: A Psychological Study, New York-

London: D. Appleton & Co., 1916, pp. 48-56.

Victor O. Freeburg, The Psychology of the Cinema Audience, in The Art of Photoplay
Making, New York: MacMillan, 1918, pp. 7-25.

Part 2 | Apr. 16, 2010

20s-30s: AESTHETICS

Jean Epstein, Bonjour Cinema and Other Writings (1921), Afterimage, 10, 1981, pp. 8-38.

Bla Balzs, Atmosphere, Movement, The Chase, in Bla Balzs, Bla Balzs Early
Film Theory: Visible Man And The Spirit Of Film (1924), Berghahn Books: New York,
2010.

Sergej M. Ejzentejn, Organicness and Pathos, in Nonindifferent Nature: Film and the
Structure of Things, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1987 [1964].
CASE STUDY | Apr. 22, 2010
A precarious balance: the acrobat

Screenings: clips from Trapeze (Carlo Reed, USA 1956), Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock,
USA 1958), Batman Forever (Joel Schumacher, USA 1995), Mission Impossible III (J.J.
Abrams, USA 2006), Spider-Man 2 (Sam Raimi, USA 2004), The Matrix (Amduy &
Larry Wachowski, USA 1999).

Part 3 | Apr. 24, 2010

40s-50s : FILMOLOGY

Albert Michotte van der Berck, The Emotional Involvement of the Spectator in the
Action represented in a Film: toward a Theory (1953), in G. Thins, A. Costall & G.
Butterworth (eds.), Michottes Experimental Phenomenology of Perception, Hillsdale:
Lawrence Erlbaum, 1991, pp. 209-217.

Rudolf Arnheim, Movement, in Art and Visual Perception: a Psychology of the Creative
Eye, Berkeley-Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1954, pp. 360-398.

Edgar Morin, The soul of cinema, in The cinema, or, The imaginary man (1956),
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005.

CASE STUDY | Apr. 28, 2010

The spectator-astronaut: movement in zero-gravity environment

Screenings: clips from 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, USA/UK 1968), 007:
You only live twice (Lewis Gilbert, UK 1967), Marooned (John Sturges, USA 1969), 007:
Moonraker (Lewis Gilbert, UK/FRA1979), Star Trek (Robert Wise, USA 1979), Outland
(Peter Hyams, USA 1981), 2010 (Peter Hyams, USA 1984), Apollo 13 (Ron Howard,
USA 1995), Armageddon (Michael Bay, USA 1998), Space Cowboys (Clint Eastwood,
USA 2000), Red Planet (Anthony Hoffman, USA/AUS 2000), Mission to Mars (Brian
De Palma, USA 2000).

Part 4 | Apr. 30, 2010

60s-70s: PSYCHOANALYSIS

Cesare Musatti, Psicologia degli spettatori al cinema, in Quaderni di Ikon, No. 7,

1969.

Jean Mitry, Participation and identification, in Estetique et Psychologie du cinma, vol.

1, Les structures, Paris: itions du Cerf, 2001.

Roland Barthes, Leaving the movie theater (1975), in The Rustle of Language, Oxford:
Blackwell, 1986, pp. 345-349.

Christian Metz, On the Impression of Reality in the Cinema (1977), in Film

Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema, New York: Oxford University Press, 1974, pp. 3-
15.

Adriano DAloia SEMINAR OF VISUAL CULTURE AND DIRECTED STUDIES | 2

CASE STUDY |May 5, 2010
Film in depth: immersion and drowning

Screenings: clips from Jaws (Steven Spielberg, USA 1975), Cape Fear (Martin Scorsese,
USA 1991), The Piano (Jane Campion, Australia/New Zealand/France 1993),
Waterworld (Kevin Reynolds, USA 1995), Titanic (James Cameron, USA 1997), Sphere
(Barry Levinson, USA 1998), Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg, USA 1998), The
Truman Show (Peter Weir, USA 1998), What Lies Beneath (Robert Zemeckis, USA
2000), Cast Away (Robert Zemeckis, USA 2000), A. I. Artificial Intelligence (Steven
Spielberg, USA 2001), Minority Report (Steven Spielberg, USA 2002), Big Fish (Tim
Burton, USA 2003), Master & Commander (Peter Weir, USA 2003), The Hours (Stephen
Daldry, USA 2004), Ray (Taylor Hackford, USA 2004), Alex Proyas I, Robot. USA
2004), Syriana. (Stephen Gaghan, USA 2005), The New World (Terrence Malik, USA
2005), The Prestige. (Christopher Nolan, USA 2006), Lady in the Water (M. Night
Shyamalan, USA 2006).

Part 5 | May 7, 2010

90s: PHENOMENOLOGY

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Film and the New Psychology, in Sense and Non-
Sense, Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press, 1964, pp. 48-59.

Annette Michelson, Bodies in Space. Film as Carnal Knowledge, in Art Forum 7,

No. 6, 1969, pp. 53-64.

Linda Williams, Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess, in Film Quarterly, No. 4,
1991, pp. 2-13.

Vivian Sobchack, What My Fingers Knew. The Cinesthetic Subject, or Vision in the
Flesh, in Carnal Thoughts. Embodiment and Moving Image Culture, Berkeley-Los
Angeles-London: University of California Press, 2004, pp. 53-84.

CASE STUDY | May 12, 2010

Upside-downing: bodily disorientation

Screenings: clips from 2001: A Space Odissey (Stanley Kubrick, USA/UK 1968), Royal
Wedding (Stanley Donen USA 1951), The Great Dictator (Charlie Chaplin, USA 1940),
(A Fish called Wanda, Charles Crichton, USA/UK 1988), Cape Fear (Martin Scorsese,
USA 1991), The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, USA 2008), The Expendables
(Sylvester Stallone, USA 2010).

Part 6 | May 14, 2010

90s: COGNITIVISM

Nol Carroll, Character-Identification?, in The Philosophy of Horror, or Paradoxes of

the Heart, New York: Routledge, 1990, pp. 88-96.

Murray Smith, The Structure of Sympathy, in Engaging Characters. Fiction, Emotion,

and the Cinema, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995, pp. 95-102.

Adriano DAloia SEMINAR OF VISUAL CULTURE AND DIRECTED STUDIES | 3

Ed Tan, Character Structures, Empathy, and Interest, in Emotion and the Structure of
Narrative Film: Film as an Emotion Machine, Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1996, pp.
171-190.

Torben Grodal, Cognitive Identification and Empathy, in Moving Pictures. A New

Theory of Film Genres, Feelings, and Cognition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997, pp. 81-
105.

Carl Plantinga, The Scene of Empathy and the Human Face in Film, in Carl
Plantinga, Murray Smith (eds.), Passionate Views. Thinking about Film and Emotion,
Baltimore-London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998, pp. 239-255.

Alex Neill, Empathy and (Film) Fiction, in David Bordwell, Nol Carroll (eds.),
Post-Theory. Reconstructing Film Studies, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
1996, pp. 175-194.

Amy Coplan, Empathic Engagement with Narrative Fictions, in The Journal of

Aesthetics and Art Criticism, No. 2 (62), 2004, pp. 141-152.

CASE STUDY | May 19, 2010

Philematology if the moving-image: the cinematic kiss

Screenings: clips from The May-Irwin Kiss (Thomas Edison, USA 1896), Flesh and the
Devil (Clarence Brown, USA 1926/1927), Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock, USA 1946),
Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, USA 1954), Splendor in the Grass (Elia Kazan, 1961),
Cinema Paradiso (Giuseppe Tornatore, Italy 1988), Mulholland drive (David Lynch,
USA 2001), Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, Canada/USA 2005), Atonement (Joe Wright,
UK/France 2007), The Reader (Stephen Daldry, Germany/USA 2008), Twilight:
Eclipse (David Slade, USA 2010).

Part 7 | May 21, 2010

2000s: NEUROAESTHETICS

Torben Grodal, The PECMA Flow: A General Model of Visual Aesthetics, in Film
Studies, No. 8, 2006, pp. 1-11.

Robin Curtis, Expanded Empathy: Movement, Mirror Neurons and Einfhlung, in

Joseph D. Anderson , Barbara Fischer-Anderson (eds.), Narration and Spectatorship in
Moving Images, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007, pp. 49-60.

CASE STUDY | May 26, 2010

On Icarus wings: falling bodies

Screenings: clips from 110901 September 11 (Alejandro Gonzlez Irritu, Canada

2002), American Gigolo (Paul Schrader, USA 1980), City of Angels (Brad Silberling,
Germany/USA 1998), A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, UK 1971), The Departed
(Martin Scorsese, USA 2006), The Fifth Element (Luc Besson, France 1997), The
Happening (M. Night Shyamalan, USA/India/France 2008), Harry Potter and the
Deathly Hallows Part 2 (David Yates, UK/USA 2011), The Hours (Stephen Daldry,
USA 2002), The Hudsucker Proxy (Joel & Ethan Coen, USA/Germany/UK 1994),

Adriano DAloia SEMINAR OF VISUAL CULTURE AND DIRECTED STUDIES | 4

Jumper (Doug Liman, USA/Canada 2008), Lethal Weapon (Richard Donner, USA
1987), The Matrix (Andy & Larry Wachowski, USA 1999), The Million Dollar Hotel
(Wim Wenders, Germany/UK/USA 2000), Spider-Man (Sam Raimi, USA 2002),
Spider-Man 2 (Sam Raimi, USA 2004), Star Trek (J. J. Abrams, USA 2009), Stealth (Rob
Cohen, USA 2005), Strange Days (Kathryn Bigelow, USA 1995), The Untouchables
(Brian De Palma, USA 1987), Vanilla Sky (Cameron Crowe, USA 2001), Vertical Limit
(Martin Campbell, USA/Germany 2000).

COURSE ASSESSMENT
This course will be assessed on the basis of a 3,500 word critical examined essay
focused on required readings and due on May 20, 2010.

COURSE ORGANISATION
Adriano DAloia, e-mail: adriano.daloia@unicatt.it / Tel. 02 7234 2831
Time: Wednesday, 3.30pm-6.30pm | Friday 2.30pm-5.30pm
Venue: Sede di via Carducci, Milan

Adriano DAloia SEMINAR OF VISUAL CULTURE AND DIRECTED STUDIES | 5