Evolution of the class

I started teaching the Film class in the fall of '91 when the school needed an elective class for seniors. It was not truly elective since the seniors were dumped into it to fill out their schedule. This was in the old days when all students had a full schedule.

For whatever reason, the idea of only teaching film seemed somehow not kosher to me, so I taught a combination of film, poetry, literature and media stuff all dumped into general humanities course. The students were pretty tolerant of the whole affair, but there were one or two sour pusses I had to deal with. After all, their friends at New Dorp were going home at 11 and they were explicating Eliot's The Waste Land at 1:15, or reading Kafka's The Trial later that night. In year two, i decided to kick the other stuff to the curb and stick to film, but the films were going to have a historical component. Thus, All Quiet on the Western Front corresponded to the earlist period covered in American history part two, which we taugtht at the same time. In other words, I was teaching WW1 in my Am. His class and All Quiet in Film, to the same group of students.

It Happened One Night reveals some of the ideas and attitudes of the Great Depression, so I showed that. A unit on the Cold War included Dr. Strangelove, Atomic Cafe. Later on, I'd show Apocalypse Now as a Vietnam War movie, though it is really not about that in any meaningful way.

Over the years, though, the history imperative fell away, and I dropped the poetry, and just concentrated on great films, with great themes and showed them and analyzed them. I became interested in Existentialism around this time, probably because I had to teach it in a meaningful way in an AP European History class I was teaching. So, I started seeing existential themes in the films that I was already showing. I sometimes wonder if we can see whatever we want in a film, should our minds me leaning in that direction. Anyway, the idea of alienation, and finding meaning in a disordered universe started to jump out at me more and more from teh films I showed, and the ones that I saw and liked outside the class.

Here's the film list from the last time i taught the course. We may see most of these again, depending.

All Quiet
Citizen Kane
Midnight Cowboy
Runaway Train
Top Hat
The Seventh Seal
Unforgiven
Asphalt Jungle
Dark City
Memento
A Siimple Plan
Signs
Dr. Strangelove
Atomic Cafe

Other films that I've shown over the years:

Ed Wood
Apocalypse Now
Hearts of Darkness
It Happened one Night
Something Wicked This Way Comes
The Truman Show
A Clockwork Orange
Full M etal Jacket
Battleship Potemkin