A (film) Education - Part 1: Why Now?

This is something I've been meaning to do for a while now.

Since the summer looms on the horizon, you will have time on your hands, and what better to do with time on your hands than watch a bunch of films.

But what to watch? Hhhmmm????

Fear not, I've decided to create a list of classics - old and new - that it would be in your interest to see.

The slight problem with A level Media Studies as a subject is that the actual study of film is very limited - that's why there is A level Film Studies.

However, in order to be truly effective and enlightened producers of media, and to feed into your other units of study - to be able to talk intelligently about, amongst other things: genre, narrative theories, film language, pot-modernism at A2 etc., you need to develop a greater appreciation of cinema. This can only be done  by gaining some background knowledge about film and cinema history.

Currently (and don't take this the wrong way but...) what you all don't know about films could just about be crammed into the Olympic Stadium.

Fortunately for you the reverse could be said about me. Furthermore, the arrogance on my part that allows me to make such a claim, extends to a desire to share this knowledge with you.

Here's how it will work:

I will create a list (which will be by no means exhaustive) of films which I think you should see. They will be grouped roughly under two labels - CLASSICS (from the Dawn of Cinema to the 1960's) and MODERN CLASSICS (1970's to the present).

Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra in Cleopatra (1963)

This is my own categorization, based on the fact that the Hollywood studio system had largely collapsed by the 1960's, due to an over-reliance on what critics regarded as bloated epics like Cleopatra and Doctor Zhivago (both of which I love ironically, but there's no accounting for taste - more on that subject later).

Doctor Zhivago (1965)

The days of out and out genre pictures and the star system was essentially at an end, or at least undergoing a period of radical change and adaptation.




With the 1970's, the era of contemporary American filmmakers (often referred to as the Movie Brats, or in academic film books as the
"New Hollywood") like Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola had arrived. These directors were as much inspired by European and Japanese cinema as by classic Hollywood, and that - if only for a brief, beautiful moment - transformed the possibilities of what an "American" film might constitute.

From left to right: Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Brian DePalma, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola

Sadly the whole moment had largely blown out by 1980 in a  snowstorm of cocaine and the rampaging egos that excessive use of that drug seems to spawn in creative, yet incredibly insecure people. They had it all and they blew it. Go figure.


If you want to know the full story behind that era then seek out Peter Biskind's fabulously entertaining and somewhat depressing book Easy Rider's, Raging Bulls.

An aside:

My own love and appreciation of cinema does not simply revolve around American films. However, I do understand that there is often a resistance in young people to engage with foreign films, consequently I have framed the idea of "classics" to essentially revolve around the American milieu. This does not mean foreign films will not make the list, merely that they will be more limited than if I were compiling the list for a more open-minded audience. Sorry if you feel like that sells you short, but I am basing it on the understanding I have gleaned thus far of the level of your appreciation of film.

Now back to business.