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filmreviewamericanpluralism.rtf
Hist 3401: American Pluralism to 1877
Film Review Assignment
You are to review a popular movie about America before 1877. The film can have been produced any time, but its main setting has to be America before the end of Reconstruction.
Any genre is fine: Westerns, movies about immigrants, dramas about wealthy Bostonians or southerners, any topic. Keep in mind, though, that the goal is to find a film that might be of value for students in this class.
1. Download the Film Evaluation Form. (Rich Text Format) –I’ve included it in this document 2. Identify and acquire the movie. One excellent resource for identifying films and finding out the basic facts about the stars, director and other basic facts is the IMDB database (www.imdb.com); or visit www.rottentomatoes.com for reviews of thousands of films.
For the purposes of this assignment, you might just Google the topic you’re interested in and “movies about…” I just Googled “Civil War Movies” and a lot of helpful websites came up.
3. Watch the movie actively a. Before you watch:
Don’t watch until you’ve read the evaluation form.
Read some online reviews or other sources. For historians and history students, you can find readable but scholarly reviews written by historians, published in history journals. Search for your movie on the online database “America: History & Life” or J-Stor (in either case, come to the search engine from the Brooklyn Library web site so that you have access to the journal articles)
If your film was made more than a few years ago, be aware that an important part of watching for this class is to look for those features of the movie that reveal something about the time the film was made. Take westerns for example: High Noon (1952) can be read as an allegory about anticommunism in the McCarthy years, Blazing Saddles (1974) ridicules racism, but has much to show about American pop culture at the end of the long 1960s.
b. Watching:
It’s often helpful to watch a movie more than once. First time, immerse yourself in the story, the images, the music—the whole cinematic experience. Second time, watch with a notebook in hand—and the remote (for skipping those boring love scenes and long panning shots of the Wyoming scenery) 4. Complete the evaluation form and write your essay. Use your own words. Please be careful about cutting and pasting “interesting information” from the web. Even if you plagiarize accidentally, the consequences can be serious!
Motion Picture Evaluation Form
Complete this form in your word processor..
Student Name: _______________________
Movie Title:______________________________ Year Released: ___________
Director: ________________________ Company: _______________________
Writer(s): ________________________________________________________
Starring (main two or three characters)
____________________________ as ____________________________
____________________________ as ____________________________
____________________________ as ____________________________
Did the film win any major awards? _____________________________
Describe the movie’s setting: what years does the story cover, where does the action take place?________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Identify one or two famous historical events, trends, or people discussed in the movie:
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
What is the last spoken line in the movie? (If a silent movie, describe the last image or dialogue titles): _____________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
Review: On a separate page, write a one-page (typed, double-spaced) review of the movie, from the perspective of a student in American Pluralism. Your review should directly answer the following questions: Should students in this class watch this film? In your opinion, what aspects of history does the film get right (possible considerations include issues of race, ethnicity, gender, class or any of the big themes of this course)? What does it miss or misrepresent? What does the film tell you about the time in which it was produced?
