English 336: Mystery, Cinema, Narrativity
Dean Flower
MW 1:10-2:30

Cross listed with Film Studies, this course is designed for anyone interested in the investigation of mysteries, visual or verbal. We'll start with some examples of the popular genre-"The Maltese Falcon," some Sherlock Holmes-and consider Poe stories as prototypes. But even the earliest mysteries are not simple whodunits, and much of the course will be given over to study of problematic solutions, prejudiced detection, Oedipal irony (the investigator is the murderer), criticisms and parodies of the mystery genre, issues of framing and projection, deconstruction and reflexivity. Mysteries are often by their very nature reflexive, that is, concerned with their own making, investigating the very processes of investigation. Often too they are about social and political power: who has the authority to re-write what happens? Whose gaze determines the solution? These are a few of the questions we will pursue, through many a tricky modernist text and wickedly deceptive film.

Films to be studied:
The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941)
The Woman in the Window (Fritz Lang, 1945)
The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1950)
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
The Spider's Stratagem (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970)
Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)

Literature to be studied:
Edgar Allan Poe short stories
Sherlock Holmes stories
E. C. Bentley's Trent's Last Case, 1913
Jorge Luis Borges short stories
Alain Robbe-Grillet, The Erasers
Tom Stoppard, The Real Inspector Hound
Vladimir Nabokov, Despair

Pre-requisites: You need to have some background in college-level writing of analytical essays about literature or film. Previous experience in film courses and/or the interpretation of modernist writing will be an advantage, but is not required.