Spring 2017  |  GER 5630 Section 001: Topics in German Cinema -- Sex, Politics, & Comedy: Films of Ernst Lubitsch (67616)

Instructor(s)
Class Component:
Lecture
Credits:
3 Credits
Grading Basis:
Student Option
Instructor Consent:
No Special Consent Required
Instruction Mode:
In Person Term Based
Class Attributes:
Topics Course
Times and Locations:
Regular Academic Session
 
01/17/2017 - 05/05/2017
Wed 05:30PM - 09:30PM
UMTC, East Bank
Folwell Hall 18
Course Catalog Description:
Topics chosen may focus on specific directors, genres, film production or reception, and/or other formal, theoretical, historical, or political issues. prereq: 3xxx film course or instr consent
Class Notes:
Time includes film showing. http://classinfo.umn.edu/?mccor001+GER5630+Spring2017
Class Description:
The German-Jewish filmmaker Ernst Lubitsch was the most successful film director in Germany when he left for Hollywood in December 1922. In Hollywood, he would also be very successful, above all for his comedies. Comedy was the genre in which German career had begun, the so-called "Jewish comedies" which he directed and in which he starred from 1914 to 1918. Soon the "bad boys" he had played in those comedies were replaced by "bad girls" as he eased himself out of acting. He made some big-budget historical costume films in which the "bad girls" were punished, but in his anarchic comedies, they triumphed. In America, he no longer made broad, anarchic, slapstick comedies; he was hired to represent "European sophistication," so he developed the "sophisticated comedy"--always about sex and adultery but safely set in Europe. Meanwhile he brought over technicians from Germany to help him. Once the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, his ties to Germany were cut, but he then got involved in Jewish and anti-fascist causes, helping refugees from the German film industry to get jobs in Hollywood; for example he employed Billy Wilder as a screenwriter. By the late 1930s he developed a more political style of comedy that could be called "screwball anti-fascism," above all with his anti-Nazi comedy of 1942, "To Be or Not to Be." We will study the transnational politics of the Lubitsch comedy throughout his career, with an approach informed by German-Jewish, feminist, and queer studies.
Grading:
50% Two shorter papers analyzing films we have studied, the first due at midterm, the second at the end of the course.
20% Moodle responses, one for each film we watch in class.
20% In-class Presentations
10% Class Participation
Exam Format:
No exam
Class Format:
50% lecture/discussion
50% Film/Video; approximately half of the scheduled 4 hours will be devoted to the weekly film showing; the rest will be lecture/discussion and group activities, as well as student presentations.
Workload:
ca. 30-50 Pages Reading Per Week
14-20 pages formal writing (two papers
1-2 presentations
15 Moodle response: informal writing, ca. 1 page per film
Textbooks:
https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/67616/1173
Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
28 October 2016

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