78

Chapter 3
Film Studies: A Critical Scrutiny

Film studies today exists worldwide as a discipline with specific colleges and

universities dedicated to it. The aspects of film studies have grown to encompass

numerous methods for teaching history, culture and society. Many universities and

colleges run courses specifically geared toward the analysis of film, exemplifying the

increased diversity of film studies. Many undergraduate programmes conjoin film

studies with media and television studies, taking knowledge from all parts of visual

production in the approach. With the growing technologies such as 3D film and

YouTube, films are now concretely used to teach a reflection of culture and art around

the world as a primary medium. Due to the ever growing dynamics of film studies, a

wide variety of curricula have emerged for analysis of critical approaches used in

film. Although each institution has the power to form the study material, students are

usually expected to grasp a knowledge of conceptual shifts in film, a vocabulary for

the analysis of film form and style, a sense of ideological dimensions of film, and an

awareness of extra textual domains and possible direction of film in future (Rebecca

Murray, 2010).

In this chapter of the thesis, two courses from the undergraduate programmes

in English of Kannur University and of the University of Calicut titled ‗Film Studies‘

(Course Code 6B15FNG and Course Code EN5D01 respectively) are being discussed.

Both are from the undergraduate programme of B.A Functional English. The

curriculum of college level film studies programmes often include but are not limited

to the introduction to film Studies, modes of film studies, close analysis of film,

history of film/media, analysis with emphasis, attention to time period, attention to

 79

regional creation, attention to genre ,attention to creators and methods of film

production.

Primarily, the undergraduate programme in film studies must be designed to

encourage a broadly interdisciplinary and critical assessment of the roles that film and

the visual media play in our lives, to introduce students to the development of filmic

traditions, to provide them with the critical tools necessary to make informed

judgments about the visual representations they encounter, to offer a practical

introduction to the construction of filmic works, and to broaden thinking about film

and media studies beyond the context provided by the Hollywood model.

Secondarily, to teach the methods of analysis and thinking specific to the

discipline of Film Studies, to generate a broad understanding of the historical

development of film as both a specific medium and as part of a constantly evolving

media landscape, to develop an understanding of the questions and issues pertinent to

an Australian production context, to develop an understanding of the aesthetic and

ethical dimensions of film form, to acquire an understanding of a range of national

and international contexts for filmmaking, to promote skills in both practical and

theoretical analysis of film texts and film culture and to develop in students an ability

to link creative production with theoretical and critical knowledge.

Film studies as an academic discipline deals with various theoretical,

historical, and critical approaches to films. It is sometimes subsumed within media

studies and is often compared to television studies. Film studies is less concerned with

advancing proficiency in film production than it is with exploring the narrative,

artistic, cultural, economic, and political implications of the cinema. In searching for

these social-ideological values, film studies takes a series of critical approaches for

the analysis of production, theoretical framework, context, and creation. In this sense
 80

the film studies discipline exists as one in which the teacher does not always assume

the primary educator role; the featured film itself serves that function. Also, in

studying film, possible careers include critic or production. Film theory often includes

the study of conflicts between the aesthetics of visual Hollywood and the textual

analysis of screenplay. Overall the study of film continues to grow, as does the

industry on which it focuses. Academic journals publishing film studies work include

Screen, Cinema Journal, and the Journal of Film and Video (Shawn Dwyer, 2010).

The learning outcomes for the Film Studies Student should develop a broadly

interdisciplinary approach to an understanding of film and its role in society. The

Student should be conversant with the history of international cinema and be able to

use that history to provide context for other works they encounter. They should be

competent in employing theoretical and disciplinary tools in the analysis and

assessment of film and filmic image. Students should have basic competence in some

format associated with visual media—digital video, digital music, screenwriting,

photography, or animation. And finally, they should be competent in developing

critical responses to cinematic work based upon aesthetic or cultural values other than

the entertainment model that dominates the mainstream like the Hollywood, French

Cinema and Italian cinema and so on (Ken Nolly,2012).

The scope of film studies have increased over the last few decades. The 21st

century has evolved a number of advantageous changes in the field of cinema, most of

which were unimaginable some decades before. This is due to the advancement of

technologies with which everything is today possible in cinema. Hollywood Studio is

the one that stands atop when technology in cinema is concerned. The arrival of

‗Jurassic Park’ (1993: directed by Steven Spielberg with Sam Neil and Jeff

Goldblum) and the ‘Lost World’ (1997: Spielberg with Jeff Goldblum and Julianne
 81

Moore) created an awe inspiring temper in the minds of spectators across the world.

Similarly, French Cinema, Italian Cinema and Indian Cinema too have attained big

changing growth in the recent past. As far as film studies as a discipline is concerned,

the progress in this field has paved way for thousands of people to find a career of

their own.

Film Studies gives students a disciplinary knowledge of film as an art form; its

history, aesthetics, craft, genres, and great directors and it situates film in its global

context with studies of cinemas all over the world. Students especially interested in

digital filmmaking can study screenwriting and film production, and undertake off-

campus film projects and internships in any film producing company. Why pursue a

Film Studies degree? Because we live in an image-dominated culture, we need to

acquire the ―visual literacy‖ required to understand, critique, and use moving images

intelligently and creatively. Knowledge and competency are the first goals of a

university education. Career opportunities for filmmakers are increasing

dramatically. Talented young filmmakers can pursue careers in narrative and

documentary filmmaking, media journalism, and television and internet marketing;

produce films for businesses, education, government, and non-profit organizations;

and combine film with other media and technologies in ways now

unimagined. Students of film can pursue careers in teaching at secondary school and

college levels, writing about movies, entertainment law, film producing, film industry

executive leadership, film and digital technology, and the wide range of businesses

that focus on moving-picture media and the entertainment industry.

Films are cultural artifacts created by specific cultures, which reflect those

cultures, and, in turn, affect them. Film is considered to be an important art form, a

source of popular entertainment and a powerful method for educating or

 82

indoctrinating citizens. The visual elements of cinema give motion pictures a

universal power of communication. Some films have become popular worldwide

attractions by using dubbing or subtitles that translate the dialogue. Films are made up

of a series of individual images called frames. When these images are shown rapidly

in succession, a viewer has the illusion that motion is occurring. The viewer cannot

see the flickering between frames due to an effect known as persistence of vision,

whereby the eye retains a visual image for a fraction of a second after the source has

been removed. Viewers perceive motion due to a psychological effect called beta

movement (Laurie Boeder, 2011).

The origin of the name ‗film‘ comes from the fact that photographic film, also

called film stock, has historically been the primary medium for recording and

displaying motion pictures. Many other terms exist for an individual motion picture,

including picture, picture show, moving picture, photo-play and flick. A common

name for film in the United States is movie, while in Europe the term cinema is

preferred. In India, people use the common expression cinema despite all religion,

caste, region and culture differences. Going to cinema was even a part of the life style

of the Indians, especially those who worked on daily wages, finding relaxation.

Additional terms for the field in general include the big screen, the silver screen, the

cinema and the movies. Here is the course structure of Film Studies of Kannur

University:

The course structure of Film Studies of Kannur University is given below:

Course Structure of Film Studies: Kannur University

(Course Code:6B15FNG)
Aims and Objectives
 To enable students to understand and analyze cinema as an art form and
powerful cultural practice, with an emphasis on the divergent socio-
cultural contexts in which films have evolved as a means of cultural
communication.
Module I
 83

World Cinema: History and Evolution

The birth of film-the silent film to the talkies-production and distribution houses-
the great masters and their contributions-mainstream cinema vs. art cinema (New
Wave)-the digital revolution
Module II
Film as an Art
The nature of art-ways of looking at art (theories of art)-film, recording and other
arts-film photography and painting-film and its relation to novel, theatre and
music.
Film and Technology: image and sound technologies-production process-the
soundtrack-post production process(editing, mixing, effects, the lab)
The Language of Cinema: Perceptions-denotation and connotation-Codes in a
film-mise-en-scene-image and shot-sound and montage-movies, films and
cinema-differences in terms of economics, politics and aesthetics.
Film Theory: Perceptive and Descriptive approaches-Vachel Lindsay‘s ‗The Art
of the Moving Picture‘-realism and Expressionism-Formalism (Bazin and
Godard)-contemporary theories.
Indian Cinema: Brief History-the great masters and their works-Bollywood vs.
Parallel Cinema.
Films Recommended:
1) Bicycle Thieves
2) Battleship Potemkin OR The Steps
3) Dreams (Akira Kurazova)
4) Modern Times OR Gold Rush
5) Agraharathile Kazhutha OR Amma Ariyan
6) Vidheyan /Kanchanaseetha OR Chithambaram
7) The Social Genocide (Docu-fiction)
8) America America
9) The Slumdog Millionaire
10) The Colour of Paradise
11) Getting Home
12) 9/11
Essays Recommended
1. Sergie Eisenstein : The Montage of Film Aesthetics
2. Jean Louis Baudry : Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic
Apparatus
3. Andre Bazin : The Evolution of the Language of Cinema
4. Laura Mulvey : Visual pleasure and Narrative Cinema
5. Satyajit Ray : Our Films; Their Films
Books Recommended
1. History of Cinema for Beginners (Orient Blackswan)
2. Hayward Susan : Basic Concepts in Cinema Studies (CUP)
3. Monaco James : How to Read a Film (OUP)
4. Ray Satyajit : Our Films: Their films
5. Villarejo Amy : Film Studies, The Basics (Routledge)
6. Andre Bazin : What is Cinema (Berkeley 1971)
7. Peter Lehman : Defining Cinema
8. Robert Lapsley and Michael Westlake : Film Theory-An Introduction
(OUP)
 84

A close analysis of the course structure of Film Studies of the B.A. Functional

English Programme of Kannur University will bring the attention of a movie-lover to

a variety of facts. First of all, the structure of the course does not show any significant

sign that it is a course entirely and exclusively designed for films. Some desiccated

facts on films have been given for discussion without careful planning that a student

should benefit to find a career in the field of film. It is very much clear from the

objective of the course; it only asks the students to understand and analyse cinema as

an art form and as a cultural practice. Nothing is mentioned how someone can find a

career of if. Well, if the objective of the course is just to ask the students to watch

films than how to read films, the purpose is achieved.

The first module of the course highlights the history and evolution of the

world cinema. How the art called film was born and the development of the silent film

to the talkies; the production and distribution houses etc. The contribution of the great

masters for the development of the art form is mentioned here, but not even one

person is identified in the syllabus as the great master. There is something told about

the differences between the mainstream cinema and the New Wave Cinema,

otherwise called as the art cinema and about the digital revolution in the art of film as

well.

Here, when the attempt is made to talk about the history of the world‘s most

celebrated art form, all the relevant historical aspects should be touched upon; like the

origin and development of the very art form; the role and place of Italian Cinema and

French Cinema in the world movie scenario and the like. The eminence of Russian

Cinema too deserves much attention. Coming to Indian cinema, the rise of various

regional language films deserve great attention. Vernacular movies in Malayalam,

Bengali, Tamil, Hindi need to be studied with due respect.

 85

As the new art form of the twentieth century, film immediately and

continuously invited theoretical attempts to define its nature and function. Mostly as a

result of film's own inferiority complex as the youngest of the arts, the impetus for

much of early film theory was to gain a degree of respectability. Preceding film by

thousands of years, plays and dances had elements common to film: scripts, sets,

costumes, production, direction, actors, audiences, storyboards, and scores. Much

terminology later used in film theory and criticism applied, such as mise en scene,

roughly, the entire visual picture at any one time. Moving visual and aural images

were not recorded for replaying as in film. The Camera Obscura was pioneered by

Abu Ali al-Hasan Ibn al-Hatyam (965-1039), an Arab scientist, born in Cairo, who

made significant contributions to the principles of optics as well as anatomy,

astronomy, engineering etc) in his ‗Book of Optics‘ in 1021, and later near the year

1600, it was perfected by Giambattista della Porta (1535-1615), an Italian scholar who

lived in Naples at the time of Reformation. The camera obscura, Latin for 'dark

room'; literally, 'darkened chamber', is an optical device that projects an image of its

surroundings on a screen. It is used in drawing and for entertainment, and was one of

the inventions that led to photography. The device consists of a box or room with a

hole in one side. Light from an external scene passes through the hole and strikes a

surface inside where it is reproduced, upside-down, but with color and perspective

preserved. The image can be projected onto paper, and can then be traced to produce a

highly accurate representation. In the 1860s, mechanisms for producing two-

dimensional drawings in motion were demonstrated with devices such as the zoetrope,

mutoscope and praxinoscope. These machines were outgrowths of simple optical

devices, such as magic lanterns and would display sequences of still pictures at

sufficient speed for the images on the pictures to appear to be moving, a phenomenon
 86

called persistence of vision. Naturally the images needed to be carefully designed to

achieve the desired effect, and the underlying principle became the basis for the

development of film animation.

With the development of celluloid film for still photography, it became

possible to directly capture objects in motion in real time. An 1878 experiment by

Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) in the United States using 24 cameras produced a

series of stereoscopic images of a galloping horse, arguably the first "motion picture,"

though it was not called by this name. Muybridge was an English photographer,

known primarily for his important pioneering work, with use of multiple cameras to

capture motion, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that

pre-dated the celluloid film strip that is still used today. This technology required a

person to look into a viewing machine to see the pictures which were separate paper

prints attached to a drum turned by a hand crank. The pictures were shown at a

variable speed of about five to ten pictures per second, depending on how rapidly the

crank was turned.

In the United States, to make a comparison, around 144 different colleges and

universities offer courses in film studies and this number continues to grow each year

with new interest in the film studies discipline. Colleges offering film degrees as part

of their arts or communications curriculum differ from colleges with a dedicated film

programme. The curriculum is in no way limited to films made in the United States; a

wide variety of films can be analyzed. With the United States' film industry second

worldwide only to India, the attraction for film studies is high. To obtain a degree in

the United States, a person is likely to pursue careers in the production of film,

especially directing and producing films. The people who choose to study film desire

the capacity to analyze the numerous films released in the United States every year in
 87

a more academic setting. Films can reflect the culture of the period not only in the

United States but around the world (Sikov, 2008).

Certain academic disciplines are deeply aware of their own genealogy. By

contrast, Film Studies hasn‘t had a particularly self-reflexive bent when it comes to

examining its institutionalization. While there have been numerous accounts of the

history and development of film theory as a relatively autonomous set of ideas and

precepts regarding cinema, the more concrete aspects of the discipline, including its

own establishment within the academy, have received relatively scant attention. The

book titled Inventing Film Studies presents essays which examine the entire history

of Film Studies, as well as the discipline‘s nascent prehistory, in order to chart key

moments of institutional foundation, paths not taken, and other spectres that continue

to haunt our methodologies to this day, many without our ever having understood

their true provenance. Inasmuch as there is a common understanding of the history of

Film Studies, it generally coalesces around the 1960s and ‘70s with the application of

French structuralist textual analysis on individual works of cinema, close reading at

the shot-by-shot micro level. This importation of literary manoeuvres definitively

shifted Film Studies into the humanities, since cinema‘s closed textual system seemed

to obviate the continued relevance of sociological / Communications Studies models

(Michael Sicinski, 2008).

Inventing Film Studies (2008) offers original and provocative insights into the

institutional and intellectual foundations of cinema studies. Many scholars have

linked the origins of the discipline to late-1960s developments in the academy such as

structuralist theory and student protest. Yet this collection reveals the broader material

and institutional forces-both inside and outside of the university-that have long shaped

the field. Beginning with the first investigations of cinema in the early twentieth
 88

century, this volume provides detailed examinations of the varied social, political, and

intellectual milieus in which knowledge of cinema has been generated. The

contributors explain how multiple instantiations of film study have had a tremendous

influence on the methodologies, curricula, modes of publication, and professional

organizations that now constitute the university-based discipline. Extending the

historical insights into the present, contributors also consider the directions film study

might take in changing technological and cultural environments. Inventing Film

Studies shows how the study of cinema has developed in relation to a constellation of

institutions, technologies, practices, individuals, films, books, government agencies,

pedagogies, and theories. Contributors illuminate the connections between early

cinema and the social sciences, between film programs and nation-building efforts,

and between universities and U.S. avant-garde filmmakers. They analyze the

evolution of film studies in relation to the Museum of Modern Art, the American Film

Council movement of the 1940s and 1950s, the British Film Institute, influential

journals, cinephilia, and technological innovations past and present. Taken together,

the essays in this collection reveal the rich history and contemporary vitality of film

studies.

By the 1880s the development of the motion picture camera allowed the

individual component images to be captured and stored on a single reel, and led

quickly to the development of a motion picture projector to shine light through the

processed and printed film and magnify these "moving picture shows" onto a screen

for an entire audience. These reels, so exhibited, came to be known as "motion

pictures". Early motion pictures were static shots that showed an event or action with

no editing or other cinematic techniques. The motion picture camera or the movie

camera is a type of photographic camera which takes a rapid sequence of

 89

photographs on strips of film. In contrast to a still camera, which captures a single

snapshot at a time, the movie camera takes a series of images; each called a "frame".

The frames are later played back in a movie projector at a specific speed, called the

‗frame rate‘ that is the number of frames per second. These innovative silent films

had gained a hold on the public imagination. Around the turn of the twentieth century,

films began developing a narrative structure by stringing scenes together to tell

stories. The scenes were later broken up into multiple shots of varying sizes and

angles. Other techniques such as camera movement were realized as effective ways to

portray a story on film. Rather than leave the audience in silence, theater owners

would hire a pianist or an organist or a full orchestra to play music fitting the mood of

the film at any given moment. By the early 1920s, most films came with a prepared

list of sheet music for this purpose, with complete film scores being composed for

major productions.

The outbreak of World War I (1914-1918) interrupted the rise of European

cinema when the film industry in United States flourished with the rise of Hollywood,

(a district in Los Angeles, California, United States, situated west-northwest of

Downtown Los Angeles. Due to its fame and cultural identity as the historical center

of movie studios and movie stars, the word ‗Hollywood‘ is often used as a metonymy

of American cinema) typified most prominently by the great innovative‘ work of

David Llewellyn Wark Griffith (1875-1948), a premier pioneering Academy Award-

winning American film director) in The Birth of a Nation, (premiered with the title

The Clansman, a 1915 silent film, set during and after the American Civil War, the

film was based on Thomas Dixon's The Clansman, a novel and play. The Birth of a

Nation is noted for its innovative camera techniques and narrative achievements, and

its status as the first Hollywood blockbuster. It has provoked great controversy for
 90

promoting white supremacy and its positive portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan) and

Intolerance: Love's Struggle Through the Ages, a silent film in 1916, is considered

one of the great masterpieces of the Silent Era. Professor Theodore Huff, one of the

leading film critics of the first half of the twentieth century, stated that it was the only

motion picture worthy of taking its place alongside Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, and

the masterpieces of Michelangelo. However in the 1920s, European filmmaker Sergei

Mikhailovich Eisenstein (1898-1948), a revolutionary Soviet Russian film director

and film theorist noted in particular for his silent films Strike, Battleship Potemkin and

October, as well as historical epics Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible. His work

vastly influenced early filmmakers owing to his innovative use of and writings about

montage). Other notable experts like Friedrich Wilhem Murnau (1888-1931), one of

the most influential German film directors of the silent era and a figure in the

expressionist movement in German cinema during the 1920s. Some of his films have

been lost, but most still survive) and Fritz Lang (1890-1976), an Austrian-German-

American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the

best known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the

"Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute), inspired by the meteoric war-time

progress of film through Griffith, along with the contributions of Charles Chaplin,

Buster Keaton and others, quickly caught up with American film-making and

continued to further advance the medium. In the 1920s, new technology allowed

filmmakers to attach to each film a soundtrack of speech, music and sound effects

synchronized with the action on the screen. These sound films were initially

distinguished by calling them ‗talking pictures’, or talkies.

Film studies as an academic discipline is a new concept in the twentieth

century. The critic of film in an academic setting has not existed through the entire
 91

history of film. Not to be confused with the technical aspects of film creation, film

studies exists only with the creation of film theory which approaches film critically as

an art. Because the modern film became an invention and industry only in the late

nineteenth century, a generation of simply created films by self investigative

producers and directors existed significantly before the academic analysis that

followed in later generations.

Early film schools focused on the production and subjective critique of film

rather than on the critical approaches, history and theory used to study academically.

Since the time film was created, the concept of film studies as a whole grew to

analyze the formal aspects of film as they were created. Established in 1919 the

Moscow Film School was the first school in the world to focus on film. In the United

States the USC School of Cinematic Arts was the first cinematic based school, which

was created in agreement with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

They were also the first to offer a major in film in 1932 but without the distinctions

that are assumed in film studies. Universities began to implement different forms of

cinema related curriculum without, however, the division between the abstract and

practical approaches.

Another major step in the development of cinema was the introduction of

natural colour. While the addition of sound quickly eclipsed silent film and theater

musicians, colour was adopted more gradually as methods evolved making it more

practical and cost effective to produce natural colour films. The public was relatively

indifferent to colour photography as opposed to black and white, but as colour

processes improved and became as affordable as black and white film, more and more

movies were filmed in colour after the end of World War II (1939-1945), as the

industry in America came to view colour as essential to attracting audiences in its

 92

competition with television, which remained a black and white medium until the mid

1960s. By the end of the 1960s, colour had become the norm for film makers.

With the decline of the studio system in the 1960s, the succeeding decades

saw changes in the production and style of film. Various New Wave movements,

including the French New Wave, Indian New Wave, Japanese New Wave and New

Hollywood, the rise of film schools and the advent of educated independent

filmmakers were all part of the changes the medium experienced in the latter half of

the 20th century. Digital technology has been the driving force in change throughout

the 1990s and into the 21st century.

Module I of the course structure (B.A. Functional English of Kannur

University) seeks the differences between the mainstream cinema and the art cinema

or the New Wave. The inclusion of the topic in the course structure will definitely

facilitate the students on the differences between these two contrastive genres.

Normally, every boy and girl at the beginning of his/her becoming an adult will be

forming an inclination towards the commercial cinema which is full of events. But the

students should also be brought to the fact that there is something more than the world

of fantasy. They must be able to read a film rather than watching a film. It is roughly

said that the second half of the 21st century witnessed the rise of the New Wave

Cinema, with the French, Indian, Japanese, Italian and Iranian movies coming to the

limelight.

The New Wave cinema was a movement that started in France during the

1950s but the celebrated filmmakers like Claude Chabrol, Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc

Godard, Louis Malle, Eric Rohmer, Alain Resnais, and others. The Auteur Theory too

was a co-product of the New Wave, calling for films to express the director‘s personal

vision. Their films were characterized by a brilliance of technique that sometimes

 93

overshadowed the subject matter. Among the most important New Wave films were

Godard's Breathless (1959), Truffaut's The 400 Blows (1959), and Resnais's

Hiroshima mon Amour (1959). The Auteur Theory is which holds that a film's

director is its ―author‖ (French, auteur). It originated in France in the 1950s and was

promoted by Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard and the journal Cahiers du

Cinéma. The director oversees and ―writes‖ the film's audio and visual scenario and

therefore is considered more responsible for its content than the screenwriter.

Supporters maintain that the most successful films bear the distinctive imprint of their

director.

Module II of the syllabus looks forward to the theories associated with the art

of filmmaking and other technical aspects like recording, image and sound

technologies, production process, the soundtrack, post production process like editing,

mixing and effects etc. but all these portions will require highly advanced laboratory

and studio facilities. Unfortunately not many colleges in Kannur University have

these facilities. This is a total practical aspect and therefore cannot be simply said

about in the class. The students and teachers should go out of the lecture hall and

actually make a film that will require a lot of money and effort.

For the technical aspects in filmmaking, there are wonderful courses run in

the MET Film School of London that makes films, teaches people to make films, and

offers post-production services to filmmakers and students. In many of the courses,

students write, produce, direct and edit their own short films and are supported by

their tutors and a professional editor. Students benefit from hands-on experience via

numerous shooting and directing exercises, tailored coaching through one-to-one

sessions with tutors, access to state-of-the-art HD technology and the use of the

college‘s own stage. The B.A Honours in Cinematography (2 Years) run by the MET
 94

Film School of London is an unrivalled programme for those who want to take a lead

in the rapidly evolving world of cinematography. It is designed to develop creative

storytelling techniques and provide practical skills by training students in the use of

professional digital cameras. The students will work across a range of formats

including film, tape, digital, HD and tapeless. Creative, theoretical and practical

abilities are developed as students learn how to tell visual stories including drama,

comedy and documentary. The course is designed to develop a solid grounding in the

post-production workflow from shoot to online and grade. Equipped with the broadest

possible knowledge of digital cinematography, the students can graduate with a show

reel that demonstrates both their technical and creative skills.

Year one of the core modules, the institution provides digital video production

that is the foundation in filmmaking designed to provide with a working knowledge of

film grammar, established industry conventions, the basic concepts and fundamental

disciplines necessary in production, pre-production, team-building, digital

cinematography, lighting, sound, Final Cut Pro and non-linear editing techniques.

Media Studies is an introduction to the key issues and debates that surround mass

communication and the media. The students will study film, television, advertising,

the press and other forms with an understanding of the role of the media in

contemporary society. Writing for the screen explores the screenwriting process

enabling students to gain a thorough understanding of narrative and its building

blocks. They will write research and develop their own original screenplay and learn

how to access their creativity and improve their craft. Applied Digital Technologies is

a portion to a key set of digital manipulation and creation tools to allow the students

to get an overview of the impact these technologies have upon the art and technique

of filmmaking. They will develop a core set of software skills that will serve as a
 95

foundation for their development. They are given opportunities to make their own

documentary films and to master the theories and practice in the documentary

tradition.

Year two is concentrated on the professional experience the students need in

the art of filmmaking that is analyzing film, broadcast and new media, professional

industry practice including basic organizational, political and economic structures

necessary for the production of moving images. Planning production and project

management is planning for the creation of the moving images. The Institute also

provides several graduate programmes such as B.A Film and Television, B.A Visual

Effects and Animation, Acting for Film etc.

Film Studies is a growing academic discipline in Oxford with a large

number of film collections. At present the Oxford University Library owns a well-

established collection of books and journals on Anglo-American film, European

World Cinema, Egyptian Cinema, Indian Cinema and Japanese Cinema. The

university has links with British Film Institute and British Universities Film and

Video Council and European Cinema Online Database that will provide plenty of

information for those who are interested in movies. The University of Cambridge

does not offer any graduate course in Film Studies but it runs an M.Phil in Screen

Media and Culture.

At the end of the last module features the Indian Cinema; a brief history, the

great masters of Indian cinema and Bollywood versus the parallel cinema. Of course,

it deserves much importance because the Cinema of India is the second largest film

industry in the world. By size and strength Hollywood may overcome Indian cinema

but when the variety of Indian films is looked at there is no other industry that can

stand along with Indian cinema. Almost all vernacular movie industries of India are
 96

very rich in content and structure; Bengali cinema is robust from its very long

tradition. The Hindi and Tamil Cinema have got a substantial number of global

audiences; Malayalam Cinema is always bounteous in its content and meaning. The

importance of Indian Cinema is very much authorized from the fact that the Oxford

University owns a rich collection of the Indian Cinema with more than 1500 DVDs.

The Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) was established by the

Government of India by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in 1960 on the

recommendation of the Film Enquiry Committee for imparting training in the art and

techniques of film making. The syllabus and the courses of studies were drawn up, in

the original instance, upon the advice of Remy Tessonneau, Director of the Paris

Institute des Hautes Etudes Cinematographiques (IDHEC) who paid a visit to Pune in

March 1961 and prepared a draft outline for teaching in five courses, viz. Screen-play,

Writing-cum-Direction, Motion Picture Photography, Sound Recording and Editing.

The Institute used to run the acting course too but was stopped in 1978 since the

National School of Drama was running a parallel in New Delhi. Many of the present

luminaries like Subhash Ghai, Shatrughan Sinha, Jaya Bacchan are products of this

acting school.

Regular courses at the FTII started in 1961. The Television Training Wing

which started functioning in 1971 in New Delhi moved to Pune in October 1974. The

FTII became a society in October under the Registration of Societies Act of 1860,

fully aided by the Government of India, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

The Film Wing of the Institute is intended to provide technical training in the

production films and to undertake research in different fields connected with films.

The main functions of the Institute are to: (a) Impart training in all aspects of film

production and other allied subjects (b) Grant diplomas and certificates to successful
 97

trainees who have completed the prescribed course and (c) Co-ordinate the activities

for training of film technicians in India. Intensive training, both theoretical and

practical is imparted to students of various courses. The Institute is equipped with

sophisticated sound recording equipments, editing machines and modern movie

cameras. The Institute has two studios and three projection theatres. There is also a

modern film processing laboratory for processing 35mm and 16mm black and white

film.

The Institute Library has a good collection of books on various subjects

connected with film-making and subscribes to periodicals, both Indian and Foreign.

There is also a Film Library containing films both Indian and foreign, apart from

films made by the students. The Film Library has also a good collection of Indian and

Western Music discs. The FTII is the one of the five prestigious film schools left

around the world that teaches a proper film course funded by the Government. The

other four are in Australia, Cuba (which is on the verge of closing), Germany, and,

Moscow. The Institute is also the member of the famous CILECT (Centre

International de Liaison des Ecoles de Cinéma et de Télévision) organisation at

Cannes, France. The Institute is more famous for serious practioners of cinema and it

is always judged by the quality of its products. Personalities who occupy position of

eminence and success in the film industry speak in laudatory terms of the students

who have worked with them after taking their diplomas from the Institute. In

particular, the excellence of the technical training, given in the course of Motion

Picture Photography, Sound Recording and Sound Engineering and Editing has been

largely extolled. Almost all diploma holders in these subjects have secured

employment in Government Departments or in such areas of private enterprise where

the skills are needed. Every year as much as 80 per cent of the awards at the National
 98

Film Festivals are swept by the past or present products of the Institute. Some of the

outstanding names who have passed out from the Institute are: Mani Kaul, Kumar

Shahani, and Feroz Chinoi who have won distinction as directors of feature films and

K.K. Mahajan, S.K. Nag and S.M. Dubey as motion picture cameramen. B.S. Biswas

and Narendra Singh won fame in sound recording whereas Subhash Ghai, Rehana

Sultan, Navin Nischal, Anil Dhawan and Rakesh Pandey have distinguished

themselves in motion picture acting. In the field of documentaries and short films,

Chandrasekhar Nair, Yashpal Chaudhuri, Gautaman and Adur Gopalakrishnan have

distinguished themselves. The Trade Shows held by the Institute have kept the

Industry informed about the kind of work which the students are capable of achieving

and the measure of their talents and skill.

The three year graduate courses in film and television at the FTII are provided

in the areas of Direction, Cinematography, Audiography, Editing, Acting, Art

Direction, Animation and Computer Graphics and Feature Film Screenplay Writing

and all of them are highly promising and even foreigners come there to get a degree.

Courses offered in television alone are One Year Certificate courses in Direction,

Electronic Cinematography, Videography and Audiography and TV Engineering.

The Government of India established the famous Satyajit Ray Film &

Television Institute in 1995 as an autonomous academic institution under the Ministry

of Information and Broadcasting. The Institute was subsequently registered under the

West Bengal Societies Registration Act, 1961. Located at Kolkata and named after the

legendary film maestro Satyajit Ray, the Institute, the second of its kind in the

country, is a National Centre offering Post-Graduate Diploma Courses in Film and

Television. Besides offering regular full time courses, the Institute has plans to

undertake project development, funding and production of fiction and non-fiction

 99

films. In addition, research work on film and television related issues are also in the

offing.

The Department of Direction & Screenplay Writing coordinates the 1-year

Integrated Module (which is the first year for all students of the 3-year PG Diploma

programme) as well as conducting the 2-year specialisation module (i.e. 2nd and 3rd

years for those who opt for `direction & screenplay writing). The Integrated Module is

designed to give students a clear understanding of the basic functions of each

specialisation department (Direction, Camera, Editing and Sound) and the inter-

dependent nature of filmmaking as well as a chronological perspective on the

development of this art form. Specialisation starts with a series of theory classes and

practical sessions geared towards students' comprehensive understanding of

directorial process. Exercises are designed to develop narrative skills and ability to

construct mise-en-scene (an expression used in theatre and film to describe the design

aspects of a production). Reputed professionals are invited regularly to conduct

workshops on various aspects of directorial skills and strategies. The department has a

viewing room, a computer lab and a basic post-production set-up. Apart from the

regular faculty members, recent contributors to lectures, panels, workshops and

assessment include dignitaries like Kumar Sahani, Syeed Mirza, Adoor

Gopalkrishnan, K Hariharan, Rina Mohon, Jiri Menzel, Vikas Desai, Kamal Swarup,

Paul Cox, Shaji Karun and Arturo Riepstein.

In the Department of Sound Recording, facilities include a dubbing studio,

music/song recording studio with permanent and temporary booths, a mixing studio, a

background and Foley recording studio, two dedicated digital workstations, three

Digital Audio Workstations (DAW) and a digital workstation with surround mixing

facility. All the studios are equipped with the most modern and sophisticated
 100

equipment. The elegance of analogue recording, which is the traditional method of

audio postproduction, is blended with the most advanced digital recording

technologies for flexibility or freedom of an artist. The allied technologies like

acoustics and electronics are also part of the syllabus to make a complete sound

recordist in the true sense. Many specialisations are offered at the institute in

Direction and Screenplay, Cinematography, Audiography and Editing.

The CILECT (Centre International de Liaison des Ecoles de Cinéma et de

Télévision, in English, International Association of Film and Television Schools) is

the association of the world's major film and television schools. Its goals are to

provide a means for the exchange of ideas among member schools, and to help them

understand the future of education for creative personnel in film, television, and

related media. It is dedicated to the creation, development and maintenance of

regional and international co-operation among its member schools, and to the

encouragement of film and television training in the developing world. CILECT has a

wider role as well to assist in the spreading of audio-visual literacy, to be a key

contributor to cultural and communication development. The first article of its statutes

pledges the membership to give help and advice to all who have need of audio-visual

media in their professional work, as a tool of education, information, documentation

and research. The CILECT was founded in Cannes in 1955 with the intention of

stimulating a dialogue among film schools in the deeply divided world of those times.

Its membership was drawn from eight countries: Britain, Czechoslovakia, France,

Italy, Poland, Spain, the Soviet Union and the United States. By the year

2009, CILECT had grown to include 143 institutions from 58 countries from the five

continents. A significant number of the world's leading film and television makers are

graduates of member schools. The CILECT is deeply committed to raising and

 101

maintaining the standards of teaching and learning in its member schools, and to

exploring the potentials of new technologies for education, information and

entertainment. Cinema and television have continuously adapted and evolved to

artistic, economic, social, and technological change so too has CILECT. Over the

years, it has continuously reviewed its activities and adapted its programmes to

contemporary needs. With the relaxation of international tensions among the great

powers, the diminishing of national frontiers and the emergence of new technologies

the CILECT moves on to a new level of international cooperation.

The Cinema of India consists of films produced across India, including the

cinematic culture of Mumbai along with the cinematic traditions of provinces such as

Bengal, Assam, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Punjab, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh.

Indian films came to be followed throughout Southeast Asia and the Middle East,

where modest dressing and subdued sexuality of these films was found to be

acceptable to the sensibilities of the audience belonging to these regions. As cinema

as a medium, gained popularity in the country as many as 1,000 films in various

languages of India were produced annually. Expatriates in countries such as the

United Kingdom and the United States continued to give rise to international

audiences for Hindi-language films, some of which, according to the Encyclopedia

Britannica (2009) entry on Bollywood, continued to carry formulaic story lines,

expertly choreographed fight scenes, spectacular song-and-dance routines, emotion-

charged melodrama, and larger-than-life heroes. This is contrasted by the 'Parallel

Cinema' movement, prominent in Bengali Cinema and other regional industries,

known for its serious content, realism and naturalism.

About 700 of the total films produced in India a year, 300 each are in Telugu

and Hindi, while the rest are in other languages. However, Hindi films account for
 102

about half of the total revenue generated by cinema in India. The provision of 100%

foreign direct investment has made the Indian film market attractive for foreign

enterprises such as 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures, and Warner Bros. Prominent

Indian enterprises such as Zee and UTV also participated in producing and

distributing films. Tax incentives to multiplexes have aided the multiplex boom in

India. By 2003 as many as 30 film production companies had been listed in the

National Stock Exchange of India, making the commercial presence of the medium

felt. In the 21st century, Indian cinema, along with the American and Chinese film

industries, became a global enterprise. Enhanced technology paved the way for

upgradation from established cinematic norms of delivering product, radically altering

the manner in which content reached the target audience. Indian cinema found

markets in over 90 countries where films from India are screened. The country also

participated in international film festivals. Indian filmmakers such as Shekhar Kapur,

Mira Nair, Deepa Mehta etc. found success overseas. The Indian government

extended film delegations to foreign countries such as the United States of America

and Japan while the country's Film Producers Guild sent similar missions throughout

Europe.

In India film remains the most popular as well as the cheapest form of mass

entertainment. Yet, film studies as a discipline has not really caught the imagination

of curriculum developers and education planners in Indian academic institutions.

When I got a fellowship in 2004 to study films in any academic institution of my

choice worldwide, I realized that there was only one university in India offering a

Master's course in film studies.

It should be noted that film studies has little to do with film production, for

which we do have a few reputed institutions in India. The Film and Television
 103

Institute of India (FTII), Pune, and Mass Communication Research Centre (MCRC),

New Delhi, are only two examples. Film studies is a broad-based interdisciplinary

programme that examines films as both high art and popular culture, as aesthetic

experience and as cultural industry, as art forms and as an innovative and developing

technology with cultural, social and political significance. Film studies , in short, is all

about developing a critical understanding of cinema and an awareness of the cultural,

historical and social character of a film.

Film studies as a discipline began in the 1960s, with the increased availability

of films on the 16mm format. The more portable format of 16mm made films

available for scholarly analysis in the same way that printed texts had made the study

of 'literature' possible. Still, 16mm projection limited the mode of engagement with

film texts, which were typically screened once, and then only subsequently discussed.

By contrast, literary texts could be subjected to repeated reading and close

analysis, given that they were in print form. The academic study of film and other

visual media expanded considerably in the 1980s, when video was introduced. VHS

tapes made films not only readily available for classroom screening, but also for

relatively effortless reviewing and close analysis, given the ease with which one could

pause, rewind and fast-forward. The effect of video technology on the discipline of

film studies cannot be underestimated, and in the last two decades the number of film

studies departments and programmes in universities and colleges has increased

dramatically, and the discipline has become firmly established within academia.

New digital video and computer technologies, specifically DVD, have further

increased the modes of engagement, and offer new possibilities for film and media

teaching and research. Digital projectors have provided teachers and researchers with

more opportunities to subject such material to critical analysis, and offer more
 104

pedagogical possibilities, allowing for creative engagement with high quality images

presented on classroom screens. With computers, it has become relatively easy to shift

digital material from one format to another, to make copies, clips and excerpts from

original sources for the purpose of study, analysis and critique, and for representation

in classrooms and other teaching and scholarly contexts.

Digital technology also made it easier to archive and store films digitally.

Most of the films of Satyajit Ray, for example, have been digitally archived and are

now readily available in Western classrooms. Institutions like the Yale Centre for

Media and Instructional Innovation (yalecmi2) and Stanford Centre for Innovation in

Learning (SCIL) continue to work on integrating and appropriating emerging

technologies to make the pedagogy and research within film studies more effective in

classrooms and outside them (Nadim Asrar, 2010).

Indian cinema, as a medium, gained popularity across India's population and

its many economic sections during the early twentieth century. Tickets were made

affordable to the common man at a low price and for the financially capable

additional comforts meant additional admission ticket price. Audiences thronged to

cinema halls as this affordable medium of entertainment was available for as low as

an anna in Bombay. The content of Indian commercial cinema was increasingly

tailored to appeal to these masses. The young Indian producers began to incorporate

elements of India's social life and culture into cinema and brought with them ideas

from across the world. This was also the time when global audiences and markets

became aware of India's film industry. Ardeshir Irani released Alam Ara, the first

Indian talking film, on March 14, 1931. Following the inception of 'talkies' in India

some film stars were highly sought after and earned comfortable incomes through

acting. As sound technology advanced the 1930s saw the rise of music in Indian
 105

cinema with musicals such as Indra Sabha and Devi Devyani marking the beginning

of song-and-dance in India's films.

The period from the late 1940s to the 1960s is regarded by film historians as

the 'Golden Age' of Indian cinema. Some of the most critically acclaimed Indian films

of all time were produced during this period. In commercial Hindi Cinema, examples

of famous films at the time include the Guru Dutt films Pyaasa (1957) and Kaagaz Ke

Phool (1959) and the Raj Kapoor films Awaara (1951) and Shree 420 (1955). These

films expressed social themes mainly dealing with working-class urban life in India;

Awaara presented the city as both a nightmare and a dream, while Pyaasa critiqued

the unreality of city life. Some of the most famous epic films of Hindi cinema were

also produced at the time, including Mehboob Khan's Mother India (1957), which

was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and K.

Asif's Mughal-e-Azam (1960). V. Shantaram's Do Aankhen Barah Haath (1957) is

believed to have inspired the Hollywood film The Dirty Dozen (1967). Madhumati

(1958), directed by Bimal Roy and written by Ritwik Ghatak, popularized the theme

of reincarnation in Western popular culture. Other mainstream Hindi filmmakers at

the time included Kamal Amrohi and Vijay Bhatt.

The period also saw the emergence of a new Parallel Cinema movement,

mainly led by Bengali cinema. Early examples of films in this movement include

Chetan Anand's Neecha Nagar (1946), Ritwik Ghatak's Nagarik (1952), and Bimal

Roy's Two Acres of Land (1953), laying the foundations for Indian neorealism and the

"Indian New Wave". Pather Panchali (1955), the first part of the The Apu Trilogy

(1955-1959) by Satyajit Ray, marked his entry in Indian cinema. The Apu Trilogy

won major prizes at all the major international film festivals and led to the 'Parallel

Cinema' movement being firmly established in Indian cinema. Its influence on world
 106

cinema can also be felt in the "youthful coming-of-age dramas that have flooded art

houses since the mid-fifties" which "owe a tremendous debt to the Apu trilogy".

Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak went on to direct many more critically-acclaimed 'art

films', and they were followed by other acclaimed Indian independent filmmakers

such as Mrinal Sen, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Mani Kaul and Buddhadeb Dasgupta.

During the 1960s, Indira Gandhi's intervention during her reign as the Information

and Broadcasting Minister of India further led to production of off-beat cinematic

expression being supported by the official Film Finance Corporation.

Some of the Indian films from ‗the Golden Age of Indian Cinema‘ are often

included among the greatest films of all time in various critics' and directors' polls. A

number of Satyajit Ray films appeared in the Sight & Sound Critics' Poll, including

The Apu Trilogy (ranked 4 in 1992), The Music Room (ranked 27 in 1992), Charulata

(ranked 41 in 1992) and Days and Nights in the Forest (ranked 81 in 1982). The 2002

Sight & Sound critics' and directors' poll also included the Guru Dutt films Pyaasa

and Kaagaz Ke Phool (at 160), the Ritwik Ghatak films Meghe Dhaka Tara (ranked

231) and Komal Gandhar (ranked 346), and Raj Kapoor's Awaara, Vijay Bhatt's

Baiju Bawra, Mehboob Khan's Mother India and K. Asif's Mughal-e-Azam all tied at

346. In 1998, the critics' poll conducted by the Asian film magazine Cinemaya

included The Apu Trilogy (ranked 1), Ray's Charulata and The Music Room (both at

11), and Ghatak's Subarnarekha (at 11). In 1999, The Village Voice top 250 "Best

Film of the Century" critics' poll also included The Apu Trilogy (ranked 5). In 2005,

The Apu Trilogy and Pyaasa were also featured in Time magazine's "All-TIME" 100

best movies list.

Unlike Hollywood and any other world cinema, Indian Cinema has got a

spectacular variety. Indian cinema is not confined to a single language; it is very rich
 107

in a quite large number of highly developed regional and vernacular languages like

Malayalam, Hindi, Oriya, Bengali, Guajarati, Kannada, and Thelugu etc. some of the

regional cinema is confined to the state where that language is spoken but some of

them have national and international acceptance. The Hindi film ‘Lagaan’ by Aamir

Khan has won Oscar nomination but failed in winning it. ‘The Slumdog Millionaire’

directed by the British filmmaker Danny Boyle had won seven Oscar awards in 2008.

Some of the Hindi movies and Bengali movies had entry in various film festivals

across the world. Indian music also gained much global access; latest of them are

A.R. Rahman‘s and Gulzar‘s achievement in the 2008 Academy Awards.

It would be a good idea to look at some of the films recommended in the

syllabus for the students to watch. Movies like ‗Bicycle Thieves‘, ‗Battleship

Potemkin‘ and ‗The Colour of Paradise‘ are must watch films for their artistic merits

and international recognition. This will undoubtedly give the students an outlook on

good movies. Some of the Malayalam movies listed are of certain qualities. A lot

many films should have been included in the list form various languages and

countries so that the students will get a better idea about global cinema on the whole.

An investigation into the movies given in the list is a necessity here, before an

argument is made on the movies that deserve inclusion.

The listed film ‗Bicycle Thieves’, originally Italian ‗Ladri di biciclette’, also

known as The Bicycle Thief, is a 1948 Italian neorealist film directed by Vittorio De

Sica, tells the story of a poor man searching the streets of Rome for his stolen bicycle,

that he needs for work. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Luigi

Bartolini and was adapted for the screen by Cesare Zavattini. It stars Lamberto

Maggiorani as the poor man Antonio Ricci, searching for his lost bicycle and Enzo

Staiola as his son Bruno Ricci. The film is frequently in the lists of the best films ever
 108

made. It was given an Academy Honorary Award in 1950, and, just four years after its

release, was deemed the greatest film of all time by the magazine Sight & Sound's poll

of filmmakers and critics in 1952. The film has been placed sixth as the greatest ever

made in Sight & Sound's latest directors' poll, conducted in 2002, and tops the BFI list

of the fifty films people should see by the age of fourteen.

The film highlights the pathetic condition of unemployment in the depressed

post-World War II economy of Italy. With no money and a wife and two children to

support, Antonio Ricci is desperate for work. He is delighted at last to get a good job

of hanging up posters, but on the sole condition that he has a bicycle for work. His

wife Maria sells their bedsheets in order to get money for a bicycle from the

pawnbroker. They get one, but it is stolen by a young thief who snatches it when he is

hanging up a poster. At the end of the film, in one of the most resonant scenes,

Antonio is sitting on the curb outside the packed football stadium. He looks at the

bicycles parked outside the stadium and as he cradles his head in despair, a fleet of

bicycles mockingly speeds past him. After some time, struggling with the thought,

whether to steal one for himself, he decides to snatch one that he spots outside an

apartment. Unluckily, he is seen taking the bike and caught by a crowd who slap and

humiliate him in front of his son. He is taken to the police station but after seeing

how upset Bruno Ricci is, the owner of the bicycle declines to press charges. The film

ends with the pair dolorously trudging uphill, with Antonio clutching Bruno's hand

and those both reduced to tears of frustration and shame. Antonio and his family now

face a bleak future only further compounded by Antonio's realization that he is no

longer any better than a thief. This will certainly leave something indelible in the

minds of the viewers. By watching this film the students will come to know the

pathetic condition of unemployment prevailed in Europe after the World War II.
 109

‘The Battleship Potemkin’ (1925) is a Russian silent film directed by Sergei

Eisenstein that presents a dramatised version of the mutiny occurred in 1905 when the

crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin rebelled against their oppressive officers of

the Tsarist Regime. The Battleship Potemkin has been called one of the most

influential propaganda films of all time, and was named the greatest film of all time at

the World's Fair at Brussels, Belgium, in 1958. Eisenstein wrote the film as a

revolutionary propaganda one, but also used it to test his theories of "montage". The

revolutionary Soviet filmmakers of the Kuleshov School of Filmmaking were

experimenting with the effect of film editing on audiences, and Eisenstein attempted

to edit the film in such a way as to produce the greatest emotional response, so that

the viewer would feel sympathy for the rebellious sailors of the Battleship Potemkin

and hatred for their cruel overlords. In the manner of most propaganda, the

characterization is simple, so that the audience could clearly see with whom they

should sympathize. The film is composed of five sequences; (1) Men and Maggots in

which the sailors protest at having to eat rotten meat; (2) Drama at the Harbour in

which the sailors mutiny and their leader, Vakulynchuk, is killed; (3) A Dead Man

Calls for Justice in which Vakulinchuk's body is mourned over by the people of

Odessa; (4) The Odessa Staircase in which Tsarist soldiers massacre the Odessans;

and (5)The Rendezvous with a Squadron in which the squadron ends up joining the

sailors' side. It would tremendously persuade the students opting film studies by

studying the films and the biography of Eisenstein. This film will take the students to

the era of Tsars in Russia.

Eisenstein's experiment was a mixed success; he was disappointed when

Potemkin failed to attract masses of viewers, but the film was also released in a

number of international venues where audiences responded more positively. In both

 110

the Soviet Union and overseas, the film shocked audiences, but not so much for its

political statements as for its use of violence, which was considered graphic by the

standards of the time. The film's potential to influence political thought through

emotional response was noted by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, who

called Potemkin a marvellous film without equal in the cinema and anyone who had

no firm political conviction could become a Bolshevik after seeing the film.

The Color of Paradise by Majid Majidi (1959- ) is a simple and sometimes

poignant tale; the story is completely overwhelmed by the picture's lush visuals. The

narrative involves a poor father, Hossein Mahjoub, who feels unable to cope with his

bright, brave blind boy, so he takes the boy to his paternal grandmother to live. The

boy's sisters already live with her. In a mountain meadow bursting with colorful

wildflowers, Mohammad (Mohsen Ramezani), a 5-year-old blind boy, has come to

find his granny (Salime Feizi). His two, sisters (Elham Sharifi and Farahnaz Safari)

form his advance party. Dressed in colorful, native Iranian costumes, they find his

granny and lead her to the tree behind which he is hiding. The movie consists of small

vignettes. A typical one concerns a baby bird, which Mohammad hears crying in the

grass. Digging slowly, he locates the bird under some leaves. Using his acute sense of

hearing, he climbs a tree until he discovers the mother bird wailing away in her nest.

After uniting mother and son, Mohammad slowly retreats to the relative safety of the

ground. Most scenes celebrate the joys of the Iranian countryside, where the film is

set. Clouds float by, woodpeckers peck and rain pours. The problem with all of this

pastoral beauty is that, with the absence of much dialog, the picture is frequently

sleep-inducing. The gripping ending makes the film much more intense than its PG

rating would imply. The film is in Persian with English subtitles.

 111

After the Islamic Revolution in 1978, his interest in cinema brought him to

act in various films, notably Boycott (1985) from Mohsen Makhmalbaf. His debut as a

director and screenwriter is marked by Baduk (1992), his first feature film that was

presented at the Directors Fortnight in Cannes. Children of Heaven (1997) won the

"Best Picture" at Montreal International Film Festival and was nominated for Best

Foreign Film Academy Award. The Color of Paradise (1999) has also won the "Best

Picture" award at Montreal International Film Festival. This film has been selected as

one of the best 10 films of year 2000 by Time Magazine and the Critics Picks of the

New-York Times. "Baran" has won several major awards worldwide, notably the

"Best Picture" award at the 25th Montreal World Film Festival and nominated for the

European Film Academy Award. In 2001, during the Afghanistan war, he produced

―Barefoot to Herat”, an emotional documentary on Afghanistan's refugee camps

which won the Fipresci Award at Thessaloniki Festival. In 2005, he directed "The

Willow Tree" that won four awards at the 2005 Fajr Festival in Tehran.

The documentary film suggested ‘9/11’ (2002 )is about the September 11,

2001 attacks in New York City, in which two planes crashed into the buildings of the

World Trade Center. The film was directed by Jules and Gedeon Naudet, and NY

firefighter James Hanlon. The inclusion of this class of documentary film will

certainly influence the students to impart knowledge among the viewers while

enjoying the artistic merits.

The inclusion of ‘Dreams’ by Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) will certainly get

the students know about the Japanese culture and mythology. It is a 1990 magical

realism film based on actual dreams of the director, Akira Kurosawa, at different

stages of his life and it is based more on imagery than on dialogue. The dreams are

eight separate segments in the following order: Sunshine through the Rain, The Peach
 112

Orchard, The Blizzard, The Tunnel, Crows, Mount Fuji in Red, Village of the

Watermills and The Weeping Demon.

Slumdog Millionaire, of course, cannot but be listed especially on the context

of having bagged eight Oscars in all. This 2008 British film directed by Danny Boyle,

written by Simon Beaufoy, and co-directed in India by Loveleen Tandan, is an

adaptation of the novel Q & A (2005) by Indian author and diplomat Vikas Swarup.

Set and filmed in India, the film tells the story of a young man from the slums of

Mumbai who appears on the Indian version of ‗Who Wants to be a Millionaire?‘

(Kaun Banega Crorepati in the Hindi version) and exceeds people's expectations,

thereby arousing the suspicions of the game show host and of law enforcement

officials.

After its world premiere at Telluride Film Festival and subsequent screenings

at the Toronto International Film Festival and the London Film Festival, Slumdog

Millionaire initially had a limited North American release on 12 November 2008, to

critical acclaim. It later had a nationwide grand release in the United Kingdom on

9 January 2009 and in the United States on 23 January 2009. It was premiered in

Mumbai on 22 January 2009. Slumdog Millionaire was nominated for ten Academy

Awards in 2009 and won eight, the most for any film of 2008, including Best Picture,

Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. It also won seven BAFTA Awards

(including Best Film), five Critics' Choice Awards, and four Golden Globes. Slumdog

Millionaire has stirred controversy concerning language use, its portrayals of Indians

and Hinduism, and the welfare of its child actors.

Slumdog Millionaire is highly acclaimed, named in the top ten lists of various

newspapers. The film also won seven of the eleven BAFTA Awards for which it was

nominated, including Best Film; all four of the Golden Globe Awards for which it
 113

was nominated, including Best Drama Film; and five of the six Critics' Choice

Awards for which it was nominated. The much acclaimed title sequence has been

honoured by a nomination at the prestigious 2009 Rushes Soho Shorts Festival in the

'Broadcast Design Award' category in competition with the likes of the Match of the

Day Euro 2008 titles by Aardman and two projects by Agenda Collective.

Vidheyan, a 1993 film directed and written by Adoor Gopalakrishnan is a

cinematic adaptation of the novel Bhaskara Pattelarum Ente Jeevithavum by

Malayalam writer Paul Zacharia. The film explores the master-slave dialectic in a

South Karnataka setting.Thommy, a Christian migrant labour from Kerala is an

obedient slave of his aggressive, tyrannical landlord Bhaskara Pattelar. Thommy

obeys all the orders of his master, whether it is to make his own wife sexually

available to his master or in killing Pattelar's kindly wife, Saroja. When Pattelar

escapes to a jungle, due to his own deeds, Thommy escorts him like a pet. But when

Pattelar gets killed Thommy exults in freedom.Vidheyan won the State Film awards

for best film and best director for Adoor Gopalakrishnan. Mammooty won the

National Film award for Best Actor for this film in 1993. It also won the Netpac

Award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, along with the Interfilm Award -

Honorable Mention at the Mannheim-Heidelberg International Film Festival.

‘Amma Ariyan’ is a 1986 Malayalam movie directed by John Abraham(1937-

1987), a Malayali filmmaker and screenwriter. The story revolves around the

incidents following the death of a young naxalite, upon whose death his friends travel

to the village where his mother lives to inform her of the death of her only son. The

film is made in a documentary style. As a part of the technique of intertwining fact

and fiction, the film maker shot many actual leftist political strikes that took place in

Kerala during that time. Amma Ariyan is considered to be a complex movie. Since its
 114

release in 1986, critics have read several layers of meaning into its obvious simple

layer of story. The incidents that led to the production of Amma Ariyan are as striking

and deceptively simple as the story of the movie itself.

This is not a very authoritative analysis of the course structure of Film Studies

of Kannur University, but there is a feeling that some justice has been done. Quite a

lot more of the world‘s best movies from all genres could have been included as must

watch movies but there is certain limitation. A suggested list of the best movies is

given at the end of this chapter after the analysis of the syllabus of the Film Studies of

Kannur and Calicut universities. As the next step of the proposed research work, the

course structure of Film Studies of the University of Calicut is being analysed in the

following section. What is found in common with the two course structures is that

many of the movies suggested for the students to watch are common in name and

genre.

When compared to the syllabus of Film Studies of Kannur University,

thematerial construction of the University of Calicut of Film Studies lack in a few

areas like the inclusion of the world‘s best films for the students to watch. Module I of

the Film Studies of University introduces the terminology used in the art of

filmmaking like mise en scene, long takes, deep focus, close/medium/long shots etc.

This will help the students to know how a film is shot using different camera

techniques rather than sitting in front of the television set or in a theatre to enjoy a

movie. By showing certain selected scenes from movies to illustrate these shots and

other film techniques, an interest could be enkindled in the minds of the students with

an attitude to filmmaking. Here is the course structure of Film Studies of the

University of Calicut implemented from 2009-2010 onwards.

Course Structure of Film Studies: University of Calicut

(Course Code: EN5D01)
 115

Aims and objectives of the course

 To introduce students to films studies as a discipline and to develop in
them analytical and critical skills so that they can appreciate cinema as an
independent art form.
 To arrive at an appreciation of film as an art form and its aesthetics.
 To see film as a gateway subject and to foster through film an
understanding of visual aesthetics, forms and technological innovation.
 To understand how film connects with history, politics, technology,
psychology and performance.
 To critically appraise the nature of representation on screen and how
class, race ethnicity and sexuality are represented.
 To probe the impact of practices and regulations such as censorship,
cultural policy, industry awards and international distribution in film
reception.
 To develop analytical skills so that the student can produce informed and
thorough close readings of films.
Course Outline: Module I
Introduction to the basic terminology of film making
Mise en scene, long takes, deep focus
Shots (close up, medium shot, long shot)
Editing: chronological editing, cross cutting, montage, continuity editing.
Continuity cuts, jump cuts, match cuts, 30 degree rule, 180 degree rule.
Sound in movies, colour in movies
The production, distribution and reception of films, censorship
Module II
Introduction to film genres
The Major Genres: Narrative, avant-garde, documentary
Other genres: Thriller, melodrama, musical, horror, western, fantasy, animation
film, noir expressionist, historical, mythological, road movies
Module III
Introduction to major movements and theories
The silent era: Classic Hollywood Cinema, Neo-Realism, French New Wave,
Indian Cinema
Introduction to the film theories of Sergie Eisenstein, Andre Bazin, Auteur
Theory, Christian Metz and Laura Mulvey
Module IV
Selected Film Texts
1. Andre Bazin: The Evolution of the Language of Cinema (from ‗What is
Cinema?’
2. Satyajit Ray: What is wrong with Indian Films? (from Our Films: Their
Films)
3. Ronald Abramson ‘Structure and Meaning in Cinema in Movies and
Methods’ Ed. Bill Nichols.
4. C.S. Venkiteswaran, Swayamvaram: Classic Prophesies in Film and
Philosophy Ed. K. Gopinath.
Case studies of Classic Cinema: Module V
1. Battleship Potemkin-Silent Cinema, Montage
2. Bicycle Thieves-Neo Realism
3. The Godfather-Hollywood Classic
 116

4. Charulatha-Indian Classic
5. Rashomon-Asian Classic-Japanese Cinema
6. Chemmeen-Malayalam Classic
Reading List
1. Amy Villarejo. Film Studies: The Basics. London & New York
Routledge. 2007
2. Warren Buckland. Teach Yourself Film Studies, London, Hadden.
3. Virginia Wright Wexman A History of Film Delhi, Pearson
4. Susan Hayward. Key Concepts in Cinema Studies London Routledge.
5. J. Dudley Andrews The Major Film Theories: An Introduction New
Delhi Oxford
6. Michael Silverman (eds) ‘Elements of Literature’ The Elements of Film.
New Delhi, OUP Pages 1451-1491

The editing part of module I explains the various methods of editing and

montage; these are needed as for a student to have some basic information on editing

that is the internal work of movie. But to teach the students the different types of cuts

and rules the college should have well-facilitated studios or at least the students must

be taken to an outside studio where these amenities are provided. But it all seems

impossible in the context of the colleges here in Kerala and the government is not

willing to provide any of these facilities.

Module II discusses the various film genres like the narrative, avant-garde,

documentary, thriller, horror, fantasy, historical and animation movies. But the

strange thing is that not many movies have been suggested that belong to these

genres. Module III introduces the major movements in the history of film like the

silent era, classic Hollywood cinema, Neo-Realism and French New Wave; the

inclusion of the film theories by celebrated filmmakers like Sergei Eisenstein, Andre

Bazin, and Laura Mulvey will give the course an international prospect, though very

limited.

One of the major genres of films suggested in the course structure is of

horror; Horror Films are unsettling films designed to frighten and panic, cause dread

and alarm, and to invoke our hidden worst fears, often in a terrifying, shocking finale,
 117

while captivating and entertaining us at the same time in a cathartic experience.

Horror films effectively center on the dark side of life, the forbidden, and strange and

alarming events. They deal with our most primal nature and its fears: our nightmares,

our vulnerability, our alienation, our revulsions, our terror of the unknown, our fear of

death and dismemberment, loss of identity, or fear of sexuality. Whatever dark,

primitive, and revolting traits that simultaneously attract and repel us are featured in

the horror genre. Horror films are often combined with science fiction when the

menace or monster is related to a corruption of technology, or when Earth is

threatened by aliens. The fantasy and supernatural film genres are not synonymous

with the horror genre, although thriller films may have some relation when they focus

on the revolting and horrible acts of the killer/madman. Horror films are also known

as chillers, scary movies and the macabre. Some old movies just are not scary

anymore-times, techniques and audiences have moved on. Yet there are some classic

films that can still provide a genuine jolt, and are well worth the ride. Across the

genres of suspense, horror, science fiction or the supernatural, here are some of the

best chillers from the 1960s and 70s. Be warned - these are not for the kids. The

Exorcist (1973) still scares the willies out of people every time they see it. A very

nasty demon possesses an innocent young girl, and the Catholic Church tries to cast it

out. Be warned that the restored director's cut of The Exorcist has even more deeply

disturbing and graphic scenes than the original.

The world‘s first horror movie was about only two minutes long, titled Le

Manoir Du Diable (1896) translated The Devil’s Castle and was directed by the

French filmmaker Georges Meiles; it was the predecessor of the later vampire films.

Another more memorable and influential; of the early films was Germany‘s silent

expressionistic landmark classic, Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari (1919) translated
 118

The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari from the director Robert Wiene, about a ghost-like

hypnotist-therapist in a carnival named Dr. Caligari (Werner Kraus) who calls pale-

skinned, lanky, black leotard-wearing Cesare (Conrad Veidt, later known for his

portrayal as Major Strasser in Casablanca (1942), his performing somnambulist (and

haunted murderer), from a state of sleep. The shadowy, disturbing, distorted, and

dream-nightmarish quality of the macabre and stylistic 'Caligari,' with twisted

alleyways, lopsided doors, cramped rooms, overhanging buildings, and skewed

cityscapes, was shot in a studio. It was brought to Hollywood in the 1920s, and later

influenced the classic period of horror films in the 1930s - introducing many standard

horror film conventions. As with many classic films (i.e., Invasion of the Body

Snatchers (1956), the original story was altered (due to its insinuation that "authority"

was questionable and insane), and a flashback framing device (composed of an

epilogue and prologue) was added to soften its message. This made the film appear to

be a delusional nightmare in a psychotic mental patient's (Francis) dream, thereby

diluting the subversive nature of the original.

Silent Films are those films of the early 19th century that were without

synchronized sound, from the earliest film (around 1891), until 1927, when the first

'talkie', The Jazz Singer (1927) was produced, although there were a few other 'silents'

later on, such as City Lights (1931). Calling them silent films is something of a

misnomer - movie theatres and other dream palaces provided pianists, wurlitzers, and

other sound machines, and some films were produced with complete musical scores.

Most early silents were accompanied with a full-fledged orchestra, organist or pianist

to provide musical background and to underscore the narrative on the screen. Some

even had live actors or narrators. Unfortunately, many of the early classics have been

lost to decomposing nitrate film bases and outright destruction. Many early silent
 119

films were dramas, epics, romances, or comedies (often slapstick). One-reelers (10-12

minutes) soon gave way to four-reel feature-length films. Early masters of cinema

during the silent years included Cecil B. De Mille, known for his epics such as The

Ten Commandments (1923), Erich Von Stroheim's dramatic tale of the degenerative

effects of avarice in Greed (1924), King Vidor's war drama The Big Parade (1925)

and his simple yet dramatic story The Crowd (1928) of a young couple in the city

experiencing the plight of Everyman. In addition, F. W. Murnau is most famous for

his silent melodramatic masterpiece Sunrise (1927). The early pioneering director D.

W. Griffith was often identified with epics including: the Civil War saga The Birth of

a Nation (1915) and the spectacular saga Intolerance (1916).

Classic Films are often distinguished as unique works of cinema that have

transcended time and trends, with indefinable quality. Classic films are often

universal favorites that hold up after repeated rescreenings. Classics are renowned

films of first rank, reference points in film mythology, or films that have become a

part of American cultural folklore. Given here are some examples of real classic

movies: Citizen Kane (1941) Gone with the Wind (1939) Casablanca (1942) Grand

Hotel (1932) Psycho (1960) and Bonnie and Clyde (1967).

The non-fictional, factual representations called documentary films (cinema

verite) are on some actual events, personality, and place etc. Today, documentaries

have branched out and took many forms since their early beginnings and some of

them have been termed propagandistic or non-objective. Documentary films have

comprised a very broad and diverse category of films. Examples of documentary

forms include the following: 'biographical' films about a living or dead person

(Madonna, John Lennon, Muhammad Ali - When We Were Kings (1996), Robert

Crumb, Stephen Hawking in A Brief History of Time (1992), or Glenn Gould) and the
 120

recent release of An Inconvenient Truth on global warming presented by the ex-Vice

President of United States and Nobel Laureate, Mr. Al Gore.

Among the six movies given for case studies, two are also suggested in Film

Studies of Kannur University namely ‘Battleship Potemkin’ and ‘Bicycle Thieves’. It

becomes a justice hereto examine the four remaining movies. The Godfather , also

known as Mario Puzo's The Godfather is a 1972 American drama film based on the

1969 novel of the same name by Mario Puzo and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. It

stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, and Diane Keaton. The story spans ten

years from 1945 to 1955 and chronicles the fictional Italian-American Corleone crime

family. Two sequels followed: The Godfather Part II, in 1974, and The Godfather

Part III in 1990. The Godfather received Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best

Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay, and has been selected for preservation in the

United States National Film Registry. In addition, it is ranked as the second greatest

film in American cinematic history, behind Citizen Kane, on the AFI's 100

Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) list by the American Film Institute.

The Bengali film Charulata, released in the English-speaking world as The

Lonely Wife, is a 1964 film by Satyajit Ray, based upon the novella Nastanirh (The

Broken Nest) by Rabindranath Tagore. It features Soumitra Chatterjee, Madhabi

Mukherjee and Sailen Mukherjee. It tells the story of a lonely housewife, known as

Charu (Madhabi Mukherjee), who lives a wealthy, secluded and idle life in 1870's

Calcutta. Her husband, Bhupati (Sailen Mukherjee), runs a newspaper, The Sentinel,

and spends more time at work than with his wife. However, he notices that Charu is

lonely, and asks his cousin, Amal (Soumitra Chatterjee), to keep her company. Amal

is a writer and is asked to help Charu with her own writing. However, after some

time, Charu and Amal's feelings for each other move beyond those of a mentoring
 121

relationship. Charulata won Satyajit Ray his second Silver Bear for Best Director at

the Berlin International Film Festival in 1964. He had won the same award in the

previous year with Mahanagar. Charulata also won the Golden Lotus Award for Best

Film at the National Film Awards in 1965.

Akira Kurasova’s Rashomon (1950 Japanese movie) is based on two stories

by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (Rashomon provides the setting, while In a Grove provides

the characters and plot). Rashomon can be said to have introduced Kurosawa and

Japanese cinema to Western audiences, and is considered one of his masterpieces. The

film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and also received an Academy

Honorary Award at the 24th Academy Awards. The film depicts the rape of a woman

and the apparent murder of her husband through the widely differing accounts of four

witnesses, including the rapist and, through a medium, the dead man. The stories are

mutually contradictory, leaving the viewer to determine which, if any, the truth is.

Chemmeen (1965) stayed in the minds of every Malayali right from its

release. Widely successful, it was translated into languages such as English, Russian,

German, Italian and French apart from several Indian languages. When it was adapted

into a film it had won critical acclaim and commercial success. The Malayalam

version of Chemmeen was directed by Ramu Kariat and it had won the Indian

President's Gold Medal for the Best Film of 1965. The inclusion of Chemmeen will

certainly help the students to have an idea of the history and development of

Malayalam movie industry.

Laurie Boeder, a film analyst on classic movies on About.com, had suggested

me over e-mail some of the worlds best classic movies; some of them belong to the

genre of horror or scary movies but they do have a touch of elegance. The movies that

she told me are The Exorcist (1973), The Night of the Living Dead (1968), Village of
 122

the Damned (1960), The Haunting (1963) and The Omen (1976). Another film analyst

named Rebecca Murray had suggested some were of the opinion that those horror

movies are indeed real classic films because they have stood the test of time.

The curriculum construction of Film Studies should not be biased in the sense

that students should not be made to believe that only old movies are good movies and

no new movies could be included in the genre called classics. Of course, classics bare

that name because the theme were very strong and those directors had taken so much

pains fighting with adverse circumstances and they finally brought them out to the

public to watch. The research work proposed also considers and recommends some of

the modern movies to be included in the syllabus of the Film Studies; students will

certainly enjoy them. The first of them is The Pianist, a 2002 film directed by Roman

Polanski, starring Adrien Brody. Władysław Szpilman (Brody), a famous Polish

Jewish pianist working for Warsaw Radio, sees his whole world collapse with the

outbreak of World War II and the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. After the

radio station is rocked by explosions from German bombing, Szpilman goes home

and learns that Great Britain and France have declared war on Nazi Germany. The

movie is full of captivating scenes about the Nazi atrocities over the Jews.

Another of the choice is Ben-Hur (1959), a film directed by William Wyler

and acted by Charlton Heston that had won eleven Academy awards before Titanic

(1997, by James Cameron) did the same. Gladiator (2000) directed by Ridley Scott

and cast by Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix, is definitely a must watch movie!

Saving Private Ryan, a 1998 movie directed by Steven Spielberg depicts the horrific

war scenes during the invasion of Normandy in World War II. Many of the battling

scenes give the spectators what real taste of war is.

 123

Naalu Pennungal (2007) by Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Ore Kadal (2007) by

Shyamaprasad, and Thaniye (2007) by Babu Thiruvalla are some of the movies

students of Film Studies will need to watch from Malayalam. The Tamil movie

Subramaniapuram (2008) directed by Sashi Kumar and cast by Jai, Sashi Kumar and

Swati is a film that should be included in the best movies list of south India. K. Sasi‘s

Poo (2008) is a rare good film, with a girl protagonist, quite uncommon in south film

industry.

While these days it seems studios will make movies out of just about anything,

film producers of Hollywood have always found inspiration for great films from

novels. Whether classic literature from the 19th century or pulp novels featuring hard-

boiled private eyes, some great films have been made from novels. Here are some

classic book-to-film adaptations as suggested to me by Shawn Dwyer, who has

written widely about movies from all eras for over 10 years and works as the senior

biographies writer for Baseline, a division of the New York Times.

Wuthering Heights (1939) Directed by William Wyler, is the adaptation of

Emily Brontë‘s classic literary work, featuring the great Laurence Olivier playing a

former orphan taken into a wealthy family, who later grows up to love and be spurned

by his foster sister, Catherine (Merle Oberon). Made in the greatest year of

Hollywood‘s history, Wuthering Heights was a grand and sweeping romantic drama

that mainly stuck to the source material, sans the ending where Heathcliff and

Catherine walk off together hand-in-hand – the exact opposite of Brontë‘s original

intentions. Still, Wuthering Heights remains an exemplary book-to-film translation

that earned eight nominations at the Academy Awards and won the Oscar for Best

Picture (Shawn Dwyer, 2011).

 124

Great Expectations (1946) is widely hailed as one of the finest literary

adaptations ever made directed by David Lean. The movie naturally deviated from its

source material. Numerous characters from Dickens‘ sprawling work; the death of

Pip‘s sister occurs early than in the novel and comes from illness; Miss Havisham

passes away during Pip‘s illness; and the ending occurs 11 years after the events in

the film. Still, Lean‘s adaptation was a stunning achievement that earned Oscar

nominations for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.

After a decade of struggling to become a professional writer, Mario Puzo

became a bestseller on the strength of his 1969 crime novel, The Godfather (1972),

which brought audiences inside the mafia world for the first time. With famed

producer and studio head Robert Evans at the helm, Paramount Pictures snatched up

the rights to the novel and hired a young, relatively inexperienced director named

Francis Ford Coppola to direct the epic crime drama starring Al Pacino, James Caan,

Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire, John Cazale and Marlon Brando as Don

Vito Corleone. The iconic film was a triumph for all, winning Oscars for Coppola and

Paramount, while rejuvenating the career of the difficult Brando and becoming one of

the greatest films ever made.

Some of the Hitchcock movies are listed here according to the suggestion by

Rebecca Murray (a member of the San Diego Film Critics Society, a member of

Alliance of Women Film Journalists, an Approved Tomatometer Critic, and belongs

to the Society of Professional Journalists. In addition, Rebecca is a member of the

Broadcast Film Critics Association, a group of professional movie critics whose votes

decide the winners of the annual Critics' Choice Awards).

Made during his early career in Britain, The 39 Steps (1935) is stamped with

Hitchcock movie hallmarks - an innocent man on the run, unwillingly accompanied

 125

by an icy blonde who's not sure she can trust him. It's a spy mystery that jaunts across

the streets of London to the Scottish countryside, with a tight plot and clever dialogue.

The 39 Steps is an early Hitchcock suspense film made in Britain, with a number of

Hitchcockian themes that would be seen again in his American work, most notably

North by Northwest. Here, a charming hero wrongly accused of murder sets out on his

own to save jolly old England from a master spy, while literally handcuffed to a

pretty, icy blonde who can‘t stand him. Hitchcock had already made 18 films, but The

39 Steps brought him international fame and the attention of Hollywood (Rebecca

Murray, 2011).

Many film critics see Vertigo (1958), a brooding exploration of obsession,

failed nerve and lost love as Hitchcock's masterpiece movie. It's filmed in a dreamlike

haze on the oddly empty streets of San Francisco, as Jimmy Stewart pursues Kim

Novak, another elegant Hitchcock blonde, who seems to slip in and out of her dead

great-grandmother's persona. Here again is the central Hitchcock motif of a pair of

lovers who are made for each other, but can't quite come to a place of trust, and for

good reason. The plot's a little iffy, but that's not the point in this almost surreal tale.

You'll find yourself thinking back on its slow, dreamy scenes for days after you see it.

Received with mixed reviews when it came out in 1958, Vertigo is now viewed as one

of Hitchcock‘s masterpieces, a dreamlike tale of obsession and the hopeless search for

lost love. Among its requisite Hitchcockian elements: voyeurism, taut suspense, and a

gorgeous, ice-cool blonde. Filmed in locations around San Francisco that seem oddly

empty of life, Vertigo used camera angles and techniques innovative for its time, and

much copied in later years. The murder-mystery plot backbone would be hard to buy

from any other filmmaker, but with this Hitchcock film noir, the plot is beside the

point.
 126

Psycho (1960) is not Hitchcock's best film, but perhaps his most famous.

Shocking in its day, it seems tame by modern horror movie standards, but countless

horror movies owe a great deal to this classic Hitchcock film. Janet Leigh is a comely

criminal who rips off her boss and makes a very bad decision to spend a night at the

Bates Motel. There she meets Norman Bates, mild-mannered momma's boy and

serious psycho. He likes to spy on motel guests and gets a little agitated, which leads

to the infamous shower scene.

Notorious (1946) is a tense espionage thriller with Hitchcock's favourite actor,

Cary Grant, as an upright American agent and Ingrid Bergman as the daughter of a

German spy. Bergman - at heart an American patriot - is a notorious party girl and a

drinker. Grant recruits her as an agent to infiltrate a Nazi plot in Rio, and of course

falls in love with her. Cary lets her go off to serve her country in the arms of the chief

local Nazi, Claude Rains. Terrific sexual tension and nail-biting suspense, along with

great examples of Hitchcockian that serve both as plot devices and symbols.

As recommended by Laurie Boeder (A former Associated Press journalist and

TV news reporter, Laurie has worked for more than 20 years in Washington, DC as a

writer. During her career, she has written scripts and speeches for Hollywood stars

and celebrities from the worlds of movies, television, politics and science), a list that

might be useful to the undergraduate students taken film studies as an optional course.

Casablanca (1941) has Nazis, pickpockets, spies, Jewish refugees, a Russian

bartender, a Bulgarian beauty and a blue parrot. Most of all, Casablanca has a great

love story. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman are lovers torn apart by duty in

Paris, and reunited by desperation in Casablanca as World War II begins. "Round up

the usual suspects" and watch it for the first time or the 50th.
 127

Dr. Strangelove (1964) is a black comedy that deftly disembowels the idea

that nuclear war is winnable; Dr. Strangelove is a Cold War film that transcends its

time. Bleak, suspenseful, quirky and hugely funny, it's a reminder that not so long

ago, we all stood at the brink of global destruction and that it wouldn't take much to

bring us right back.

Frankenstein (1931) is not the first Frankenstein film, but the first full-on

Hollywood treatment of Mary Shelley's classic book. Brilliantly directed by James

Whale, Frankenstein is in fact the name of the mad scientist and monster-maker. Then

unknown, Boris Karloff plays the nameless monster, who manages to evoke sympathy

from the audience despite his grotesque form, hideous face and shocking violence.

Dracula (1931) was a hit back in the day, but it really drags compared to many

of the terrific Dracula films that were to come. Nevertheless, it launched Bela Lugosi

as the first American movie version of the hypnotic, undead count and his blood-

drinking ways, and established the character in movie mythology. Lugosi is fun in the

role, and the film has some lovely cinematography, but he's just not as sexy as many

of the screen Draculas who came later.

The Invisible Man (1933) is another entry in the mad scientist run amok genre,

the special effects in The Invisible Man hold up pretty well - a tribute to James

Whale's expert direction. A very young Claude Rains stars as the hero who is in fact

unseen for most of the film, causing mayhem among the villagers, laughing insanely

and plotting world domination. It's got Whale's touches of dark humour throughout,

but a cackling performance by Una O'Connor as a terrorized innkeeper gets awfully

old. One of the classic old horror/sci-fi movies from Universal Studios, The Invisible

Man is among the original mad scientist films. It features special effects that still hold
 128

up surprisingly well in the story of a young genius brought to insanity by his own

dangerous experiments.

The instructional objectives of the course titled Film Studies must be

beneficial for the students who learn it. It should not allow them to just watch films as

it is made explicit in an earlier paragraph, it must be an opening to finding a career for

the students who have aspiration to become a film crew or actor. Most of the study

materials are inadequate in their description; many movies have been listed, but none

of them bears details of director, country, language etc. The books and essays

suggested too, do not cite the names of publishers, edition and year of publication and

so on. Perhaps the designers must have left it to the teachers and students. Today,

Malayalam movie industry is witnessing a lot more innovation that it is moving away

from the old-trodden path, which means introducing a lot of good directors and actors

who do not come from the so-called stardom. Examples for these are the movies titled

Salt and Pepper, Rithu, Asuravithu, Manushyamrugam, Traffic and all. A lot of daring

directors too come up with their own ideas who presented them impressively.

For those who opt film studies as a course for which they have a penchant to

achieve the maximum, the syllabus must be made very expansive. With the

mushrooming of too many channels the doors are open for them to find a career of

their choice. Though film studies is only one of the many courses the undergraduate

students have to study, there is no mistake in giving them the maximum information

and experience they would love to benefit from. That is why the syllabi of film studies

of both Kannur and Calicut Universities indeed have a lot to be included in them to

achieve the aims and objectives they wish their students must achieve.