Guiseppe Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso had the honour of leading the way for Film Studies at second level. The latest list, for those doing their exams in 2019, contains John Crowley’s Brooklyn, Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, Asghar Farhadi’s About Elly, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, Alex Holmes’ Stop at Nothing: The Lance Armstrong Story, Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables and Jason Reitman’s Juno. What is interesting about the list is the fact that a Shakespearean adaptation has been replaced by a musical.
The list of films can be broken down into four broad categories; Irish films, ‘foreign’ films, classics, modern films and adaptations. The fact that for many years one of the films had to be a Shakespearean adaptation is very telling. Film was important enough to be included but, really, it wasn’t real art. After all they could sacrifice one of the films for an adaptation of what they must have considered to be a far superior art form.
The films that have appeared over the years vary greatly from such fare as Inside I’m Dancing, Death of a Superhero, Il Postino and Billy Elliot to Blade Runner, Rear Window, On the Waterfront and Citizen Kane. All tastes have been catered for.
When we delve into the actual teaching of the texts we find that none of the modes really opens the door to Film being studied as an art form of its own. Although aspects of Film language can be referred to in all the modes, most especially Literary Genre, Film language is never a central pillar of the conversation. How can it be when it is being studied as part of English?
Although Film became part of English undergraduate courses by the end of the 1990s (as it was part of mine in UCC) it has since moved out of this restrictive categorisation. At second level this move was reversed when film was included in the new Junior Cycle. Here it became embedded within the study of English. The new Learning Outcomes (the basis of everything to be taught and learned up to 3rd year) includes statements explaining that students must be able to ’Select key moments from their texts and give thoughtful value judgements on the main character, a key scene, a favourite image Specification Junior Cycle English 20 from a film, a poem, a drama, a chapter, a media or web based event.’ (Known as R7, reading outcome 7)
Students must also be able to ‘Write about the effectiveness of key moments from their texts commenting on characters, key scenes, favourite images from a film, a poem, a drama, a chapter, a media or web based event.’ (W8, or writing outcome number 8)
14 CinÉireann / December 2017
Brooklyn
Inside I'm Dancing
Cinema Paradiso