HS2O11: Hollywood Histories: Film and the Past

Module code: HS2O11

Module provider: History; School of Humanities

Credits: 20

Level: Level 2 (Intermediate)

When you'll be taught: Semester 1

Module convenor: Professor Patrick Major, email: p.major@reading.ac.uk

Pre-requisite module(s):

Co-requisite module(s):

Pre-requisite or Co-requisite module(s):

Module(s) excluded:

Placement information: NA

Academic year: 2024/5

Available to visiting students: Yes

Talis reading list: Yes

Last updated: 21 May 2024

Overview

Module aims and purpose

Film was the twentieth-century mass medium, offering box-office entertainment, social critique and sometimes propaganda. The period costume-drama represented Hollywood’s bid for respectability (measured in Oscars). We tackle film aesthetics and off-camera censorship and reception, including historical films evoking a different past from the present in which they were made, and contemporary social change films which have become historical documents in their own right. Focussing on Hollywood, but including British, German and Russian counter-examples, we range from silents to epics, to television slow-burn docudramas. Students will know a documentary from a feature, and become familiar with key genres (biopics, war films, ancient epics, westerns and experimental arthouse) and film cycles. We explore directors’ and screenwriters’ homages to each other, both nationally and internationally, and their attempts to dodge governmental pressure, asking: did films reflect or shape popular notions of the past? Are they nostalgically conservative or disruptively radical? Realist or escapist?

Module learning outcomes

By the end of the module, it is expected that students will be able to:

1. Read a film’s aesthetic choices (cinematography, cutting, dialogue, casting, costume, score);
2. Measure a film’s historicity and truth-claims against the past its purports to evoke;
3. Situate a film within the contemporary reception (censorship, reviews and audience reaction);
4. Locate a film within the historiography, identifying film studies and film history approaches.

Module content

Weekly seminar topics:

1. What is a Historical Film? 
2. Breaking the Code: Production, Censorship and Reception in the Gangster Movie
3. Personalising the Past: Biopics and the Historical Costume Drama
4. Shooting the Masses: The Social Realist, National Socialist and Soviet Documentary
5. Recruiting the Past: Film Propaganda and National Identity in the Age of Total War
6. Confronting Dark Pasts: Film after Totalitarianism
7. The Past as Spectacle: The Rise and Fall of the ‘Swords and Sandals’ Ancient Epic
8. Frontiers of the Past: Westerns and the Search for Diversity in a Racially Divided America
9. New Waves: Radical Cinema, Class and Social Change since the Sixties
10. Back to the Future: Time-Travel between Past and Present in Science Fiction and Fantasy
11. The Episodic Past: TV Historical Docudrama from the BBC to Netflix in the Age of Binge

Structure

Teaching and learning methods

• Weekly lecture on each week’s genre;
• Weekly seminar on each week’s genre;
• Weekly viewing online in own time of one common film to be quizzed & discussed in seminar;
• Breakout groups (x5) to view one related film online in own time for presentation/commentary;
• Independent study based on secondary reading.

Study hours

At least 33 hours of scheduled teaching and learning activities will be delivered in person, with the remaining hours for scheduled and self-scheduled teaching and learning activities delivered either in person or online. You will receive further details about how these hours will be delivered before the start of the module.

Please note the independent study hours above are notional numbers of hours; each student will approach studying in different ways. We would advise you to reflect on your learning and the number of hours you are allocating to these tasks.

Semester 1 The hours in this column may include hours during the Christmas holiday period.

Semester 2 The hours in this column may include hours during the Easter holiday period.

Summer The hours in this column will take place during the summer holidays and may be at the start and/or end of the module.

Assessment

Requirements for a pass

Students need to achieve an overall module mark of 40% to pass this module.

Summative assessment

Penalties for late submission of summative assessment

The Support Centres will apply the following penalties for work submitted late:

Assessments with numerical marks

• where the piece of work is submitted after the original deadline (or any formally agreed extension to the deadline): 10% of the total marks available for that piece of work will be deducted from the mark for each working day (or part thereof) following the deadline up to a total of three working days;
• the mark awarded due to the imposition of the penalty shall not fall below the threshold pass mark, namely 40% in the case of modules at Levels 4-6 (i.e. undergraduate modules for Parts 1-3) and 50% in the case of Level 7 modules offered as part of an Integrated Masters or taught postgraduate degree programme;
• where the piece of work is awarded a mark below the threshold pass mark prior to any penalty being imposed, and is submitted up to three working days after the original deadline (or any formally agreed extension to the deadline), no penalty shall be imposed;
• where the piece of work is submitted more than three working days after the original deadline (or any formally agreed extension to the deadline): a mark of zero will be recorded.

Assessments marked Pass/Fail

• where the piece of work is submitted within three working days of the deadline (or any formally agreed extension of the deadline): no penalty will be applied;
• where the piece of work is submitted more than three working days after the original deadline (or any formally agreed extension of the deadline): a grade of Fail will be awarded.

The University policy statement on penalties for late submission can be found at: https://www.reading.ac.uk/cqsd/-/media/project/functions/cqsd/documents/qap/penaltiesforlatesubmission.pdf

You are strongly advised to ensure that coursework is submitted by the relevant deadline. You should note that it is advisable to submit work in an unfinished state rather than to fail to submit any work.

Formative assessment

Formative assessment is any task or activity which creates feedback (or feedforward) for you about your learning, but which does not contribute towards your overall module mark.

1,000 words or 2 pages of A4 maximum to include, at the module convenor's discretion, an essay plan, bibliography, book review or other preparatory work towards the summative essay.

Reassessment

Additional costs