American Film Studies

Joan Crawford was more than a movie star. From silent film ingénue to Oscar-winning actress, Crawford’s career spanned over four decades and reflected both the glamour and the grit of Hollywood’s golden age. This course explores how she shaped her own stardom, challenged the limits of the roles available to women, and crafted a persona that was equal parts elegance, ambition, and resilience.

This course explores the extraordinary life and career of Bette Davis, one of Hollywood’s most enduring and iconic actresses. Known for her fierce independence, magnetic screen presence, and bold choices both on and off camera, Davis redefined the role of women in Hollywood and paved the way for future generations of performers.
Through a mix of film analysis, historical context, and cultural critique, students will examine Davis not only as a performer, but as a force who challenged studio power structures, gender norms, and audience expectations. This course also reflects on the broader themes of fame, femininity, and resilience in the Golden Age of Hollywood.

The late 1960s witnessed the rise of the modern American horror film, its redefining of the limits of horror being both critically problematic and enormously successful with audiences. This course explores its development through films such as Night of the Living Dead (1968), The Exorcist (1973), and Halloween (1978), its status as a major genre, and a range of critical responses to the films.

“The outlaws of the West have always fascinated me…I suppose I’m something of an outlaw myself” Sam Peckinpah only felt alive when directing. In the 1960s and 70s he was one of Hollywood’s more colourful, innovative and controversial directors. This day long course will explore and immerse in his individual signature style.

Hollywood’s high point was in the years when the studio system flourished. Now that Paramount has bought Warner Brothers and Amazon owns MGM, studying the development of the studio system is more important than ever. Every era since the 1950s declared the end of Hollywood. In 1951 Ben Hecht listened to his former boss verbally topple the town he helped create. The movies, said David O. Selznick, “were over and done with and Hollywood was already a ghost town trying to seem alive”. But if something was over and done with, it wasn’t the movies. It was the dominant studio system. If that vertically integrated infrastructure was gone with the wind, what had Hollywood been? And what was there beyond Hollywood? One answer: Italian neorealism, French new wave, kitchen sink realism, Kurosawa and Bergman. Another answer: the New Hollywood.

Explore the Hollywood Western from the first classic of this major genre, Stagecoach, to a late masterpiece, Unforgiven. We will look at the ways in which it has evolved, in terms of both filmmaking and theme, its mythical representation of the American west and its powerful visual style, while also considering the impact of key stars and directors and a range of critical approaches to the genre.

Once a significant part of Hollywood's output, the 'B' movie, characterised by low budgets, shorter running times and an absence of stars, originated in a Depression era strategy offering a cheaper, second feature as part of a double bill. Explore the history of the 'B' movie through a range of examples and consider their production and exhibition contexts along with their critical reputations.

From 1973 to 1982, Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese forged the most dynamic actor-director relationship in American cinema. The iconoclastic, uncompromising films they made together were at the vanguard of The New Hollywood and yet - by virtue of the pair’s New York origins and attitude - distinctly separate from it. This course explores what made Scorsese and De Niro so different, so un-Hollywood, and yet so central to the culture of the 70s and early 80s - and assesses their influence on contemporary cinema.

Hitchcock's American period saw his most spectacular work, a body of films that cemented his reputation not only as the 'master of suspense' but as a major filmmaker, one whose work includes some of cinema's most popular and critically admired films. This course explores Hitchcock's Hollywood career, the films, their production and their reception, while also assessing his critical reputation.

By the second half of the 1960s 'old' Hollywood had fragmented and a new generation of studio heads and filmmakers had set the industry on a different course in which 'blockbuster' and 'event' films, along with more personal auteurist projects, came to typify production. Explore the 'new' Hollywood, the films and filmmakers behind it, and the innovations that shaped this key moment of change.

This course examines how Hollywood has repeatedly turned the camera on itself, producing films that reflect, critique, and mythologize the film industry. From early backstage musicals to contemporary satires, the course explores how Hollywood narrates its own labour, power structures, stardom, creativity, and decline. By analysing films that depict filmmaking, students will investigate how cinema constructs its own history.