Film studies

Film Noir was the term coined by French critics to describe a distinctive style in American cinema during the decade after the war. In the transitional 1950s, genres that had been Hollywood staples began to change, evolve, or fade away. Film Noir evolved because it was too vital, too useful, and just too enjoyable to fade away. Just as John Huston’s Maltese Falcon (1941) kick-started film noir in the forties, his Asphalt Jungle (1950) introduced a darker fifties’ noir. Or did noir begin and end with Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941) and Touch of Evil (1958)? ((See related courses on Fifties Melodrama and Musicals and 50 Films From the ‘50s: Hollywood’s Last Stand).

F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922) is acknowledged as one of the all-time greats of cinema, expressing as one critic describes it, the ‘poetry of fear’ and as one of the first feature length vampire films it’s influence, and legacy has been widely felt. Chris McKay’s Renfield (2023), comes just over one hundred years after Nosferatu and marks one of the most recent instalments in a genre that continues to renew itself for each generation of film viewers. Exploring a range of key vampire films from across this century of cinema, this course will explore why the vampire film remains such a popular sub-genre of the horror film and it will consider why it continues to exercise such power over its spectators.

Learn how to evaluate and discuss films while enjoying a working example of a City Lit Film Studies class. In this class we will view and explore clips from a number of films, including popular remakes, enabling us to consider and compare themes and techniques from differing filmmaking countries. There will be a chance to review – in brief – film courses at City Lit (January - March 2025).

Carefully-curated Christmas cornucopia overflows with seasonal films, from new entry The Holdovers (2023 Alexander Payne) to Home Alone (1990 Chris Columbus/John Hughes). This is a celebration of the genre of the Christmas film packed with clips and hidden gems: Scrooge (1951 Brian Desmond Hurst) remixed as a film noir, Lindsay Anderson’s Every Day Except Christmas (1957), his film about the old Covent Garden market later seen in My Fair Lady (1964) or Hitchcock’s Frenzy (1972) just before it closed down. Full of delights, discussions and a grown man dressed as an Elf (2003).

John Grierson has a lot to answer for. Not only did he popularise that most dreary and off-putting term ‘documentary’ in the 1930s, he only approved those that were utilitarian, pedagogic or impersonal. But in the 1950s a new generation of filmmakers rejected these restrictive forms and a Free Cinema was born: an interest in the poetry of the everyday and a talent for finding art hiding in plain sight in unsung and unprepossessing neighbourhoods. Documentary to provoke change. No film can be too personal. An urgent cultural revolution was suddenly exploding everywhere. New York’s ‘off Broadway’ film movement, influenced by Italian neorealism, shot Little Fugitive (1953 Morris Engel/Ruth Orkin) on location on Coney Island. It was nominated for an Oscar. This landmark film led to John Cassavetes’ independent style and was an acknowledged influence on the French New Wave, Direct Cinema (U.S.) and Cinema Verite (France). As if on cue, Agnes Varda filmed La Pointe Courte (1955) on location in Sete, inventing and kick-starting the New Wave of Godard and Truffaut and her own Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962). However, the biggest stirring of a new kind of documentary impulse was the Free Cinema in Britain, where Lindsay Anderson scorned the Griersonian style as didactic and dull and led the way to the British New Wave’s ‘kitchen sink’ films that were about our lives.

You've probably seen hundreds/thousands of films, but still wonder: how did they do that? Technique! Learn the secrets of filmmaking. Techniques such as shot composition, editing and camera movement can work together to tell a story in your own unique way. A film is made four times over: First the screenplay, which may be original or adapted. Secondly, the actual production, the direction and shooting of the film. Third, the editing. Fourth the music score. It all starts with the story, but how to tell it? Technique! What are film techniques and their effects? The camera never lies, but editing can—and the lighting hides or reveals. Are films magic or magic tricks? If I cut to a close up, I’m making a statement but did you notice the music cues? What’s the score?