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Study Guide for Exam 2

Note: This is intended as a guide, but it may not cover everything. Material not listed here might appear on the exam. The notes you took in class should be your best guide.

Exam 2 will be held on Friday, May 7, from 10:10 a.m. to 12:10 p.m. in our usual room.

I. Format.

Exam 2 will include some multiple choice questions, identification questions, and an essay. It is designed to take 75 minutes, but you're welcome to take more time if you wish.

II.Terms and concepts (Note: This list is not comprehensive. You should check Belton and Corrigan as well as your notes for more concepts.)
* Screwball comedy
* New Wave cinema
* General trends in film (nostalgia, etc.)
* Film noir
* Hollywood and the "Communist menace": blacklisting, the House Un-American Activities Committee, and so on
* Conformity and rebellion in the 1950s and 1960s
* Auteur theory
* The "journey film" (Belton, p. 26)
* Information included in the chapters in Belton (8,10, 13, 15, 16, 17) and Corrigan (ch. 6, but also remember the terms from previous chapters as we have used them in class: melodrama, etc.)
* These aren't terms per se, but you should be aware of them as concepts: poverty, racial prejudice, class mobility, the Depression, changes in sexual mores, youth culture, characteristics of Martin Scorsese's films.
* You should also be aware of information from the reports, since they covered information pertinent to the films.

III. Films covered

You should have an idea of the era of these films, the name of the director, and the principal features that we discussed in class.You should be aware of films from which we saw excerpts but do not need to know them in the same kind of detail.
* The Grapes of Wrath (1940; dir. John Ford)
* Sullivan's Travels (1941, dir. Preston Sturges). Film clips: Bringing Up Baby
* Double Indemnity (1944, dir. Billy Wilder). Film clips: The Big Sleep
* A Place in the Sun (1951, dir. George Stevens). Film clips: Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, Storm Warning, Gentleman's Agreement, All That Heaven Allows
* Bonnie and Clyde (1967, dir. Arthur Penn) Film clips: The Graduate
* Goodfellas (1990, dir. Martin Scorsese) Film clips: Raging Bull, The Age of Innocence, Taxi Driver, Casino
* Boyz n the Hood (1991, dir. John Singleton) Film clips: Talk to Me
* Smoke Signals (1998, dir. Chris Eyre) (Note: Since we did not get to discuss this as a class, you will not be expected to know the details of the film, but you should be able to talk about it.)

IV. Possible topics for essays

* Analyze one technical element, such as sound, as it enhances the themes of one or more films.
* In what ways does Film X combine two or more of the genres we have studied?
* Contrast the ways in which a certain social issue is handled in two or more films.
* In what ways is the presentation of a certain theme (such as poverty, a young boy's growth into manhood, or the nature of love) different in a particular recent film than when the same theme appeared in a film earlier in the semester?
* In what ways is violence used in Film X, and what purpose does it serve that could not be achieved in any other way?

V. Presentations. These contain only the outlines, not the lectures themselves, and they can be found on the Lectures page at http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/engl339/lectures.htm.