English 4950: American Film in the 1930s

Spring 2012

Grady

Second Essay Assignment

A five-to-six page essay (1500-2000 words) on one of the topics below is due, via email submission, on Friday, April 13 (yes, Friday the 13^th); extensions must be requested by 5PM Thursday, April 12. Essays should be typed and double-spaced in a 12-point font, and of course they should have a strong, identifiable thesis that is carefully supported with evidence drawn from relevant films. Don't make mistakes with the evidence--that is, don't reconstruct from memory what you think happened in a particular scene; review the films as necessary. Do not mistake “its” and “it’s.”

1. Design your own topic related to the films that we've seen and the topics we've discussed. Please provide me with a detailed paragraph describing your topic by Monday, April 9. One option here would be to pursue a discussion board topic you find interesting.

2. Did women characters in the films of 1939 particularly need to be disciplined? Consider the lessons learned by such characters as Ninotchka, Judith Traherne, Dorothy Gale, Scarlett O'Hara, and Bonnie Lee. Is there a pattern to the education they receive in their stories? Do they end up in similar places at the end? Write an essay about the romantic and domestic plots or subplots of at least three films we've seen this term, and what those plots assume about the proper role for women.

2a. Is the need to discipline women a phenomenon associated with a crisis in masculinity in the 1930s—the kind of depression-generated paternal failure described by Levine and Rauchway?

3. A more theoretically oriented approach to the previous topic would be to measure Laura Mulvey’s claims about women as objects of “the gaze” and men as “bearers of the look” against at least three of the films we’ve seen this term.

4. Do endings matter?

5. Film critic William Paul writes of Ninotchka, "That the film finally sides with no ideology is not so much a mark of cynicism as a clearsighted understanding of the paradoxical nature of all beliefs" (Ernst Lubitsch's American Comedy [Columbia University Press, 1983], p. 216). But of course there's another way to explain the film's generally evenhanded treatment of communism and capitalism that has to do with what Maltby and Craven call Hollywood's "commercial aesthetic," the industry's tendency to produce films that subordinate complex ideological conflicts to much more simple romantic (or violent or spectacular) events that satisfy the demands of the medium rather than more abstract philosophical considerations. Write an essay about the way the “clash of cultures” is dealt with in Ninotchka (or in another studio-era film of your choice).

6. The "watch still more movies" option: Stars, like genres, are in a sense "pre-sold" to their audiences, who know what to expect from a movie star because of the persona that star develops over a series of films. Do a bit of historical reconstruction and produce an account of the kind of persona certain stars would have been known for in 1939: at this point in the semester your candidates would be Errol Flynn, Greta Garbo, and Bette Davis. See at least three of your star's movies before trying to characterize the persona: for Flynn, you could add Captain Blood (1935) The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) or The Sea Hawk (1940) to Dodge City; for Garbo, you could supplement Ninotchka with Grand Hotel (1932), Queen Christina (1933) or Camille(1937); for Davis, add Jezebel (1938), Of Human Bondage(1934), or Dangerous (1935) to Dark Victory. (Note: this topic will recur later in the term, with different stars.)

7. The “watch more movies” option, #2: compare Ninotchka (1939) to its 1957 cold-war era musical remake, Silk Stockings.

8. Study two or three contemporary movie-oriented magazines--Entertainment Weekly, Empire, Total Film and the like--and compare their contents, tone, and general goal to the account of promotional material given in Balio and Maltby. What sorts of things do they reveal to us (or force us to pay attention to) about stars? How do they fit into the way movies are marketed today, in the post-post-studio era?

9. Discuss the treatment of race (especially races other than that of the detective) in ethnic detective films featuring the likes of Charlie Chan, Mr. Moto, and Mr. Wong. (I can make some additional films in these series available.)