Module: EN7012-30 Crime Stories: From Page to Screen

Level: 7

Credit Value: 30

Module Tutor: Fiona Peters

Module Tutor Contact Details: f.peters@bathspa.ac.uk

1.Brief description and aims of module

This module explores the scope and changing possibilities of the crime film as a genre which continues to defy its formulaic limitations. Using narrative theory, adaptation theory and film theory, it will study film adaptations of literary texts and analyse their narrative transformation from page to screen.

The module will use a combination of chronological and thematic approaches. While the chronological approach will enable students to follow the evolution of the genre in British and American film, the thematic approach will direct their lines of enquiry to particular forms of the genre and the social, cultural and political contexts in which they were produced. In so doing, the module will refer to a wide corpus of relevant film texts and critical scholarship. It will contextualise these texts as part of a line of wider enquiry which examines the relationship between crime and social anxieties that are the product of particular historical moments.

The module will examine crime narratives not only as a post-Enlightenment form aided by reason, but will also trace some of their pre-Enlightenment origins in order to examine the continued relevance of religious and classical themes (including representations of the ‘devil’) in contemporary crime film.

This module aims to equip students with an in-depth understanding of the range and conventions of Gothic film cultures. It does this by:

1. Identifying traditions of crime film with reference to their literary sources b. Analysing the changing thematic and generic conventions of crime film
2. Applying advanced conceptual models and critical skills to undertake an in-depth reading of key film texts in the genre

2.Outline syllabus

• Narrative Origins: Aristotle, Oedipus and the literary origins of crime film
• Murder most foul: Crime and Shakespeare adaptations on film
• The triumph of reason: Holmes on screen
• Classic Film Noir: Adaptations of Chandler, Hammett and Cain
• The psychological thriller and the films of Alfred Hitchcock
• Bond, spy thrillers and the cold war
• Corruption as public crime: The ‘investigator’ in post classical film
• Modern satans: the ‘devil’ on film and its literary sources.
• Religious and classical themes in crime film (e.g. adaptations of Umberto Eco and Dan Brown)
• The return of the femme fatale in post 1990s American film

3.Teaching and learning activities

Students will participate in a variety of intense, postgraduate-level tasks during contact time, and will carry out digital as well as library-based research under their own direction. Representative activities in the seminar room will include

• tutor and student led seminars
• plenary and small-group discussion
• individual and group presentations
• analysis of film texts
• independent study
• use of Minerva and other web resources

• Assessment Item 1:
• Assessment Type: Course Work
• Description: Essay 3500 words
• % Weighting: 50%

Assessment Item 2:

• Assessment Type: Course Work
• Description: Essay 3500 words
• % Weighting: 50%