In this tutorial course, we will study briefly the idea of genre, then will focus for most of the semester on four of the central genres of Hollywood cinema: the gangster film, the Western, the screwball comedy, and the film noir. We will approach the subject by reading theoretical work on literary genres along with plays such as Shakespeare's Macbeth and A Midsummer Night's Dream. In order to explore differences between literary and film genres, we will compare these plays with films from comparable Hollywood genres (for example, the gangster film The Roaring Twenties and the screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby). Our study of Hollywood genres will focus principally on films from the 1930's and 1940's, the period when these genres were developed and reached their peak: such films as Hawks's Scarface, Ford's Stagecoach and Hawks's Red River, Capra's It Happened One Night and Sturges's The Palm Beach Story, Wilder's Double Indemnity and Tourneur's Out of the Past. Collectively, they raise questions about the temptations and limits of ambition for power, civilization's drive to displace the wilderness and tame human savagery, class conflict and rapprochement, the subversive energies of sexuality and their impact on shifting gender roles, the complicities of law and transgression. We will also examine a few more recent revisionist or hybrid variations on these genres; examples might include such films as Scorsese's GoodFellas, Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, Wilder's Some Like It Hot, Welles's Touch of Evil, and Polanski's Chinatown. A week's assignment, apart from writing, will normally comprise either one film screening and one or two essays of genre criticism, or two film screenings. Format: tutorial. Requirements: after two weeks in which we will meet as a group to discuss the literary genres, students will meet with the instructor in pairs for one hour each week during the rest of the semester. They will write a 5- to 6-page paper every other week (five in all), and comment on their partners' papers in alternate weeks. Emphasis will be placed on developing skills not only in reading, viewing, and interpretation, but also in constructing critical arguments and responding to them in written and oral critiques. Prerequisites: a 100-level English course, except 150; and English 204 (The Feature Film) or equivalent basic training in film analysis. Enrollment limit: 10 (expected: 10). (Criticism)