In this course, we will study masterworks in the history of motion pictures from the emergence of sound production to the present. We will discuss themes, forms, ideologies, and trends from a variety of exciting works, with an eye to film style and language, political milieus, and modes of production. Our focus will be on American and European classics of the past seven decades. Major directors will include Sergei Eisenstein, Orson Welles, Vittorio De Sica, Alfred Hitchcock, Francois Truffaut, Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Luis Buñuel, Ingmar Berman, Akira Kurosawa, Werner Herzog, Jane Campion, and possibly others. We will discuss such movements as poetic realism, Italian Neorealism, the American Renaissance, the French New Wave, and more recent trends. This course will give you new eyes on the world, the most influential films of the past, and the nature and variety of contemporary film production.