Undergraduate - UnitATS2073 - Film noir in France: Dark visions of self and society

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2012 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

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6 points, SCA Band 1, 0.125 EFTSL

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Level	Undergraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Arts
Offered	Clayton Second semester 2012 (Day)
Coordinator(s)	Dr Philip Anderson

Notes

Previously coded FRN2702

Synopsis

This unit will take as its starting point the interest aroused in post-Occupation France by American cinema and the French identification, within then recent filmic production of which France had been deprived, of a genre: film noir. Students will study the history of noir in France, paying particular attention to representative filmic works ranging from the pre-war period to the present day. They will situate its emergence and development in France in its socio-political and (inter-) cultural context. They will make a critical analysis of the genre and its shifts.

Outcomes

Upon completion of this course students will have:

Familiarized themselves with the history of the genre known as film noir in France, with the emergence of the concept at the interface of two cultures (American and French), with the tracing of its antecedents in French high and popular culture, and with the development of the genre at the interface of high and popular culture up to the present day;
Questioned, analyzed and argued conclusions about connections between the genre and socio-political history and contemporary thinking on modernity;
Questioned, analyzed and argued conclusions about connections between the genre and contemporary thinking on the human subject;
Studied a number of filmic and literary works, making a critical analysis of the genre as it is posited, comparing existing hypotheses with filmic and literary texts and developing and testing their own hypotheses;
Developed a critical understanding of the notion of genre itself, paying special attention to the problem of its crossing cultures and filmic discourses;
Developed their language skills in French, especially in the area of exposition and argument, practising those skills in oral presentations and essay-writing.