- The development of the silent film
- Chaplin & Keaton as a comparative example of stylistic differences in silent comedy
- Silent drama as forerunner to modern film
- The conventions/inventions of film musicals
- Analyzing the differences between narrative & number
- The use of musical numbers to showcase a particular performer’s strengths
- The conventions/inventions of film westerns
- How an actor/director pair can work together across a series of similar films (John Wayne/John Ford)
- How the innovations within the western genre allow the conventions to move beyond the western setting
- The conventions/inventions of the Gangster Film
- How the gangster genre developed by exploring the personality of the criminal, often making them sympathetic
- How the gangster genre became more realistic
- Identifying a particular director’s (Hitchcock) signatures throughout a film and comparing that to the other signatures present
- What happened during the Blacklist era
- The development of the major studios & the mogul era
- The careers of major personalities such as Goldwyn, Thalberg, and the Warners.
- The changes resulting from the growth of television
- The “New Hollywood” era of the late 1960s and early 1970s under new corporate management
- The modern era of the blockbuster
- How to "read" a film visually
- Identifying key edits and sequences of shots that illustrate theme
- Tracking the development of American narrative film
- Identifying genre conventions & how they evolve
- Familiarization of major Hollywood stars of the past & the types of films they were associated with
- Stars who became known for particular genres
- Studios who specialized in particular styles of film
- Hollywood as social pecking order & the effect of politics upon it
- The role of the Director in determining screen content
- The role of the producer and studio in determining screen content
- The different eras of 20th century Hollywood history
