Lent Term 2011

Censorship and Subversion in the 'Other Europe'

Location: TBC

Six classes. Weeks 2-7

Much has been written about the varied 'new wave' strands of filmmaking that emerged in France, Italy, and other countries west of East Germany in the 1950s and 60s; little is known about the New Wave that swept across cinemas behind the Iron Curtain, despite the fact that it produced such masterful directors as Andrzej Wajda, Roman Polanski and Milos Forman. This course will focus on films from the 'Other' Europe - Poland, former Czechoslovakia, and Hungary - in the period following the Stalinist Thaw in 1956, when the aesthetic and political doctrines of Socialist Realism were relaxed. Under the Eastern communist governments, film production and distribution were controlled entirely by the state, though sometimes imperfectly monitored by it. The course will consider the complex and unpredictable system of censorship, which banned some of the films, listed below, immediately, and allowed other provocative works to slip through the net. Also examined will be the way in which censorship necessitated the development of new ways of communicating with audiences, relying, for example, on implied metaphors concealed beneath a veneer of realism.

While filmmakers in the west, such as Godard and Antonioni, were focusing on the vacuous consumerism and moral decay that flourishes under capitalism, Eastern European films were attempting to deplore the conformism and bureaucracy imposed under socialism. The surrealism, cinema-verite style, disjunctive editing, and non-linear narratives which are characteristic of Western 'New waves' took on dangerously subversive qualities and politically charged implications in Eastern European films. More was at stake for directors who were not infrequently arrested or forced into exile. This course will consider the ways in which political repression was evoked thematically and cinematographically, as well as the way in which direct engagement with politics was avoided in order to focus on the minutiae of everyday life, and why this tended to infuriate the regime more than open criticism.

This course will encourage a more inclusive and comprehensive study of European film at a time when notions of Europe itself are expanding. While an introduction will be provided to the broad moral, political, and existential themes and historical dimensions, students will also be encouraged to present their own close analyses of the films' aesthetic and thematic strategies. The knowledge of other languages is unnecessary.

Background Viewing

Ashes and Diamonds. Dir Andrzej Wajda. Poland (1958)

Mother Joan of the Angels. Dir. Jerzy Kawalerowicz. Poland (1961)

Knife in the Water. Dir. Roman Polanski. Poland (1962)

Walkover. Dir Jerzy Skolimowski (1965)

Intimate Lighting. Dir Ivan Passer. Czechoslovakia (1965)

Loves of a Blonde. Dir Milos Forman. Czechoslovakia (1965)

My Way Home. Dir. Miklos Jansco. Hungary (1965)

Closely Observed Trains. Dir Jiri Menzel. Czechoslovakia (1966)

The Party and the Guests. Dir. Jan Nemec. Czechoslovakia (1966)

Love. Karoly Makk. Hungary (1971)

Background reading

Coates, Paul, The Red and the White (London and NY: Wallflower Press, 2005)

Cunningham, John, Hungarian Cinema (London and NY: Wallflower Press, 2004)

Ford, Charles and Hammond, Robert, Polish Film: A Twentieth Century History (London: McFarland, 2005)

Haltof, Marek, Polish National Cinema (New York: Berghahn Books, 2002)

Hames, Peter, The Czechoslovak New Wave (London and NY: Wallflower Press, 2005)

Hames, Peter (ed.), The Cinema of Central Europe (London and NY: Wallflower Press)

Iordanova, Dina, Cinema of the Other Europe (London and NY: Wallflower Press, 2003)

Liehm, Mira and Liehm, Antonin J., The Most Important Art: Eastern European Film After 1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977)

Michalek, Boleslaw and Turaj, Frank, The Modern Cinema of Poland (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988)

Paul, David W. (ed.), Politics, Art, and Commitment in the East European Cinema (London: The Macmillan Press, 1983)