Auteur Studies: John Cassavetes

This course is devoted to an in-depth analysis of maverick American auteur John Cassavetes work. A central figure in the New American Cinema scene in the late fifties in New York and in Independent Cinema Cassavetes was influenced by the New York School of Filmmaking—writers and actors who worked on television and acting prior to moving to Hollywood. Shadows (1958-59) his first feature is crucial in understanding the budding currents of experimental and indie work in early sixties in New York. His eccentricity to Hollywood, exacerbated by his acting work within the film industry, are exemplary of the struggles for an independent authorial vision.

Cassavetes narratives of individual autonomy emerge through a thematic constant: the friction between social scripts--notions of proper behavior-- and the alternate corporeal inventiveness of characters/actors. During the course we will discuss how Cassavetes aesthetics is propped on notions of individual expressivity –both his own as filmmaker and that of his characters and actors. We will discusss notions of improvisation and acting, his camera work, editing and sound. We will place his work in the context of independent cinema from the late fifties to the early eighties analyzing his eccentric relation to Hollywood.

This course will encourage modes of comparative analysis as well as further discussion on Cassavetes reception. With a focus on Cassavetes student will learn to identify auteurs according to their themes, their visual and aural style as well as manner of production; understand the relation of films to their historical and socio-cultural moment; consider the notion of American independent cinema historically with a special focus on New American cinema from the late fifties up to the 1980s.