The course deals with the main historical, theoretical and social problems related to the evolution of the most important film genres from the 1970s onwards, analysing in particular the national realities of the United Stares, France and Italy from a comparative angle.
The course focuses on three genres:
- "the science fiction": the course specifically explores how the massive use of special effects and technological innovations applied to visual languages changed a genre that has marked the history of the cinema from the very beginning;
- "the crime story": the aim is to reconstruct the evolution of a genre originated in the U.S. in the 1970s but whose production has taken peculiar directions also in Italy (with the so-called “poliziottesco”, linked to the more engaged “mafia movie”) and France (with the so-called “polar” movie);
- "the horror movie": the course analyses the features and social role of the so-called American “New Horror” as well as the Italian detective-thriller movies of the 1970s and 1980s up to the recent trends that revived the genre in the new millennium
Among the learning objectives we find:
- knowledge of the History of Cinema, particularly the production of the last 50 years related to the genres and authors under consideration;
- ability to connect the trends and film genres to their historical and social framework;
- capacity to analyse the text and narrative of a film;
- capacity to critically assess the differences of movies produced in different geographic and cultural contexts in terms of language and content.