English
5950: American Cinema of the 1930s and 1940s
Spring
2016
Grady
First
Essay Assignment
This
assignment is designed to help you practice writing about the film image
itself: about mise-en-scène,
which can include the composition of the frame, the role of blocking, color,
lighting, camera angles, shot scale, etc. To that end, you may choose either to
write about one particular frame or shot or sequence, or to compare and
contrast two related shots or sequences, in an essay of about 2000 words. Your
goal will be to demonstrate how the images you analyze contribute to some
effect in the movie from which they are drawn: how the placement of characters
or things helps to establish the relationship between them, or how a repeated
visual motif reinforces a theme, or how a particular color or lighting scheme
evokes a particular mood or emotional state—how, in other words, space is used
expressively. There is considerable freedom in this assignment—the thematic or
dramatic or structural emphasis is yours to choose—but a successful essay will
succeed in part by paying close attention to the image, and to describing it
accurately and thoroughly. (It would be most useful to me if you include an
image or two with your essay, either integrated into the prose or in an
appendix.)
Essays
should be submitted via email by 10PM on the requested due dates; extensions
will not be granted unless they are requested at least 36 hours in advance.
Below
are some possible topics to get you started thinking about potential scenes:
· Jonas
Wilkerson’s first and last appearances in Gone
with the Wind
· The
use of staircases as settings in GWTW
· The
use of offscreen space in GWTW (e.g., the amputation
scene)
· The
role of the famous crane-shot of the wounded in GWTW (particularly its place in
a sequence, i.e., what comes before and after it)
· Various
color & lighting schemes in GWTW
· Frames
within frames in GWTW (e.g., characters looking through windows or at framed
pictures)
· Light
and shadow in particular scenes in The
Grapes of Wrath
· Long
shots in The Grapes of Wrath
I’ll put on MyGateway
a couple of chapters from Timothy Corrigan’s A Short Guide to Writing About Film, which
offers some useful tips for getting started on writing about the cinematic
image.