Note: this list is supplementary. For 2010-11 and subsequent years, you should treat the web notes for each of the lecture topics (refer to the schedule) as your primary reading material. The following, and the hypertext links within your web notes, should be treated as your secondary readings.
The names of scholars refer to the works indicated in the reading list on the home page. Students should not treat the readings as sacrosanct. There are of course other relevant readings that they may want to read, in addition to, or instead of, the readings indicated below. More advanced readings outside the recommended texts are indicated with double asterisks (unless otherwise indicated, these advanced studies are available online, either freely through the Internet, or via the NUS Library's intranet).
Topic 1: Discourse, Style and Narrative in Cinema
Bordwell (1985),
Chapter 4: Principles of Narration
Bordwell (2008), Chapter 3: Three Dimensions
of Film Narrative
Heath, Chapter 5: Film, System, Narrative
Metz, Chapter 6: Textual Systems
Metz, Chapter 11: Cinema and Writing
Topic 2: Discoursal and Cinematic Audiences
Bordwell (1985),
Chapter 3: The Viewer's Activity
from
Bordwell (2008), pp 43-55 ‘What Snakes,
Eagles, and Rhesus Macaques Can Teach Us’
Buckland, Chapter 1: The Cognitive Turn in Film
Theory
Topic 3: The Nature and Limits of Narrative in
Cinema
The readings for topic 1 by Bordwell (1985), Bordwell (2008) and
Heath.
Topic 4: Cinema and Language: A Critical Look
Bordwell (1985), Chapter 2: Diegetic Theories of
Narration
Buckland, Chapter 2: The Body on the Screen and
in the Frame: Film and Cognitive Semantics
Buckland, Chapter 3: Not What Is Seen through
the Window but the Window Itself: Reflexivity, Enunciation, and Film
from Heath, Chapter 9: Language, Sight and Sound
(avoid the references to psychoanalysis, look esp. at pp. 194-7, 207-12,
214-17)
from Metz, Chapter 2: Sections 2.3 & 2.4
from Metz, Chapter 4: Section 4.3
Metz, Chapter 9: The Problem of Distinctive Units
Topic 5: Language and Cinema Studies: The Semiotic and
Discoursal Connections
from Ehrat, 1: On Signs,
Categories, and Reality and How They Relate to Cinema (pp 8-31)
Ehrat, 2: Semiotic and Its Practical Use for Cinema
Metz, Chapter 4: Plurality of Cinematic Codes
Metz, Chapter 5: From Code to System; Message to
Text
Topic 6: Stasis in Motion: Understanding Cinematic Space
Bordwell (1985),
Chapter 7: Narration and Space
Heath, Chapter 2: Narrative Space
**Ronit Schwartz 'Spatial Cues in the Cinematic Discourse: Selection,
Function and Style in Jurassic Park and Prospero's Books'
Journal of Pragmatics 26 (1996): 767-91.
Topic 7: Cinematic Genres and (Cross-)Generic Connections
Bordwell (1985),
Chapter 5: Sin, Murder, and Narration
Bordwell (1985),
Chapter 8: Modes and Norms
Bordwell (1985),
Chapter 9: Classical Narration: The Hollywood Example
Bordwell (1985),
Chapter 10: Art-Cinema Narration
Bordwell (2008), Chapter 6: The Art Cinema as a Mode
of Film Practice
Bordwell (2008), Chapter 14: Aesthetics in Action: Kung-Fu, Gunplay,
and Cinematic Expression
Metz, Chapter 7: Textuality and ‘Singularity’
Topic 8: Cinematic Authorship
from
Bordwell (1985),
Chapter 4: Principles of Narration –
Narrator, Author (pp 61-2)
Caughie, Chapter 1: ‘Introduction’
in Caughie, Chapter 3: Buscombe, ‘Ideas of
Authorship’
Wexman, Introduction
in Wexman, Sarris, ‘The Auteur Theory
Revisited’
in Wexman, MacCabe, ‘The Revenge of the
Author’cg
Topic 9: Cinematic Acting and Characterisation
in Wojcik, Chapter 1: Kracauer, ‘Remarks
on the Actor’
in Wojcik, Chapter 12: Wojcik, ‘Typecasting’
Topic 10: Cinematic Events
Bordwell (1985),
Chapter 4: Principles of Narration
Bordwell (1985),
Chapter 6: Narration and Time
from
Bordwell (1985),
Chapter 7: Narration and Space –
Ideal Positionality: Shot/reverse Shot (pp 110–113)
Bordwell (2008), Chapter 6:
Film Futures
from Ehrat, 3.1: Cinema Is Syntagma
Metz, Chapter 8: Paradigmatic and Syntagmatic
Topic 11: Cinematic Narration
Bordwell (1985),
Chapter 1: Mimetic Theories of Narration
from
Bordwell (2008), pp. 121-133 ‘Afterword:
Narrators, Implied Authors, and Other Superfluities’
Topic 12: Cinematic Presentation of Perspective, and of
Speech & Thought
from
Bordwell (1985),
Chapter 7: Narration and Space –
Perspective and the Spectator; Ideal Positionality:
Shot/reverse shot
**Kenneth Johnson, ‘The Point of View of the Wandering Camera’ Cinema
Journal 32.2 (Winter, 1993): 49-56.