Universitat Internacional de Catalunya - BarcelonaEthics
Main language of instruction: English
Head instructor
Dr. Joan Vianney DOMINGO - vdomingo@uic.es
Office hours
After each lecture in my office
Feel the suspense in the architecture! Architecture plays an important part in Alfred Hitchcock's films. Having worked as a set designer in the early twenties, Hitchcock continued to concern himself closely with the art direction of his films, where houses are often shown as oppressive places.
In the films of Alfred Hitchcock, architecture plays an important role. Having worked as a set designer in the early 1920s, Hitchcock remained intensely concerned with the art direction of his films. In addition, the ’master of suspense’ made some remarkable single-set films, such as Rope and Rear Window, that explicitly deal with the way the confines of the set relate to those of the architecture on screen. Spaces of confinement also turn up in the ’Gothic plot’ of films in which the house is presented as an uncanny labyrinth and a trap. Furthermore, it became a Hitchcock hallmark to use famous monuments as the location for a climactic scene. Last but not least, Hitchcock used architectural motifs such as stairs and windows, which are closely connected to Hitchcockian narrative structures (suspense) or typical Hitchcock themes (voyeurism).
The thread is provided by the sets for houses and interiors Hitchcock designed for such films as 'The Lodger' (1926), 'Rebecca' (1940), 'Rope' (1948), 'Psycho' (1960) and 'The Birds' (1963). The work of the 'master of suspense' is seen in a completely new way by means of film compilations, reconstructed plans and the spatial interventions.
1. To owe and understand
To understand the reality
To know everything and your parts
Knowledge is not to have but to be
To share and to announce the truth
Study habit
To plan the work,
To programme calendar
To verify, to revise, to correct
2. To apply knowledge
Problems answer(solution)
To include and to annotate the threads
To be right
To multiply the working capacity and array
Competitiveness,
Problem solving
Sense of the opportunity and of the efficacy
Safety and confidence in the work
3. To assemble to interpret.
To judge
Set vision
To be right
To consider
To find the virtue
To share the vital decisions
Valor to discover lagoons
Sense of the prudence and of the adventurousness
To wait without extracting hasty conclusions
4. To communicate
Explanatory clarity
To go to the main thing without neglecting the secondary thing
To generate confidence
To speak skylight,
To be appended,
To transmit the innovation and the value of the tradition
To dose the information
Quality in the briefness
5. To be autonomous
Worldliness
Personal ripeness
To be able to consult without losing the tiemposaber to depend on others
To be wise persons without being autosufficient(self-sufficient)
To flee of the precipitation,
To exercise control on the reality
Personal and group safety
THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL FRAME. DEPARTMENT EDUCATION AND SCIENCE. State Department of Universities and Investigation
1. The kernel of the targets of the new organization of the education is the competitions acquisition on the part of the students
2. It will have to do emphasis on the learning methods of the above mentioned competitions and on the procedures to evaluate them
3. The term(end) competition is used exclusively in your academic meaning, and not in your meaning of professional attribution
4. Competitions 1: combination of knowledge, skills (intellectual, manual, social, etc.), attitudes and values to solve problems or to intervene in matters.
4.1. To distinguish between the exception and the rule, the parts and everything, the periphery and the center
4.2. To increase simultaneity skills in the analysis and the synthesis before complex problems
4.3. To base the self-esteem on the self-knowledge
4.4. To discover talents. To create and to form teams. Not to become essential
4.5. To compare ideas. To recount what is learned to what is known
4.6. To discern targets. I cut, come up, long term
4.7. Proved(Turned out to be) Objetivar. To distinguish advance, achievement and success
5. Competitions 2: especificity of the acquired knowledge and your application to the grade of architecture (before every competition there is specified your numerical denomination relative to the Curriculum of the BOE):
The kernel of the targets of the subject will have been the competitions acquisition on the part of the students it will have to have done emphasis on the learning methods of the above mentioned competitions and on the procedures to evaluate it the term(end) competition will have been used exclusively in your academic meaning, and not in your meaning of professional attribution there will be understood like valid result of the education the sense of the expression "competitions" as combination of knowledge, skills (intellectual, manual, social, etc.), attitudes and values to solve problems or to intervene in matters.
Structures of Suspense
Alfred Hitchcock and architecture
Unit 1: What is the suspense...? Relations between the space and the time. Concept of limit and eternal moment. Architectural space and emotions. Rhythm, repetition and unleashing. Suspense notion along history. Suspense and action. The role of Alfred Hitchcock in the history of cinema: mute movies, German expressionism (F. Lang) and Russian constructivism (S. Eisenstein). François Truffaut and his interview to Hitchcock (1962)
Unit 2: Of between the dead persons (Vertigo, 1958) and the formalization of the limit. Of between the dead persons. The duality Madeleine-Judy Barton. The beautiful and the sublime in Hitchcock. Structures of the suspense in Vertigo: Band of Moebius, Spiral, Limit. Iconography of the suspense in Vertigo: bun, kiss, knob of flowers, mirrors, thresholds, doors. Life, death and the relation between past, present and future. Movements of the camera; zooms, travellings, approaches, planes. Architectural iconographies: the Mission san Juan, the bridge of san Francisco, the cemetery, old hotels, the sequoyas and the passage of time, the Palace - museum of the Legion of honor, the painting with the allegory of the architecture and the palace of Madame Pompidou. Vertigo and architecture. Centripetal - centrifugal space. Black movies(movie theater): elements.
Unit 3: Literary sources in the esthetics of the suspense. Longino. Dante. Milton and the lost paradise. Hamlet of Shakespeare. The attraction of the evil. Stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Murders in the Rue Morgue, The incriminating heart. Prologue of Alfred Hichcock to an editing in French of the stories. Charles Baudelaire: prologue and translation of the stories of Poe. The dénuement and the Philosophy of the composition of Poe: The poem The Rave.
Unit 4: The Rope, 1948, and the continuous plane. Space, time and cinematographic assembly. Again Eisenstein. The black-outs. Thomas de Quincey and the crime as work of art. Nietzsche and the notion of Superman Technical aspects: technicolor, the penthouse-set, the art in Hitchcock, the diorama of Manhattan: real-time and screenplay. Metascript: the rope and the criticism of the national socialism post the Second World war.
Unit 5: Rear Window, 1954. Reading of The man of the multitude, Edgar Allan Poe. The voyeurism in the role of architects. To see without being seen. To look at the architecture for the section. Section proyectual and real action. Architecture and camera obscura. Again the marmoreal beauty. Movies and feminine fashion. Dollhouse and architecture in section. 7 of Rue of the Percebe. Dynamism of the project in section. Something happens with the cut. Architecture and scenography in Rear Window: the construction of the set. The flash of light as a weapon against Arbogast.
Unit 6: Psycho, 1960. Analysis of two architectural typologies: French Second Empire and modern functionalism. Superposition of road networks and reticles: postmodern speech. The disorder schizoid or schizophrenia. Architectural project and double identity. The architecture schizoid as deliberate strategy of the project. Tension between vertical position and horizontal. Taxidermy definition: classification of skins. The sinister: Pharaohs, face-lift, crystal eyes at that they do not look. The dissected: to have "given" life. Architectural project and disguise or shop window. Architecture and taxidermy. Skins and hairs: overlaping and postmodern intention. The eye of Norman, the camera obscura and a spied Marion Crane; The iconography of Susana and the Old men. Bernard Herrmann, the movies and the symphonic music in the XXth century.
Thread 7: Strangers on a train. The transference of the guilt. Is it possible to be another architect...? Assembly and dubbing. Black movies. The map of the treasure. To plan in the concavity. The overlaping shades. The glasses: transparence and reflex.
Lectures on filmography
Oral presentations on paralels
| TRAINING ACTIVITY | COMPETENCES | ECTS CREDITS |
|---|---|---|
| Class exhibition | 40 48 50 51 53 54 55 57 66 67 68 69 75 76 77 | 0,69 |
| Clase practice | 40 48 50 51 53 54 55 57 66 67 68 69 75 76 77 | 0,81 |
| Individual or group study | 40 48 50 51 53 54 55 57 66 67 68 69 75 76 77 | 1,5 |
70% final exam 1 exercise of 1 A4 extension (5 points) + comentary to 2 images (1 A4 side) (2,5+2,5 puntos). Total, 120 minutes, 10 points
30% attendance and involvement in lectures.
Primary Sources:
- Th. De Quincey, On Murder as a Fine Art, London, Philip Alan & Co., Quality Court, 1925 (1827).
- S. Gottlieb (ed.), Hitchcock on Hitchcock. Selected Writings and Interviews, London, Faber and Faber Limited, 1995.
- Hitchcock by François Truffaut, The Definite Study of Alfred Hitchcock by François Truffaut,(Revised Edition), New York, Simon and Schuster Inc., 1985 (1983).
- E. Trías, Vértigo y pasión, Vértigo y pasión : un ensayo sobre la película "Vértigo" de Alfred Hitchcock, Barcelona, Taurus, 1998
- E. Trías, Lo bello y lo siniestro, Barcelona, Seix Barral, 1982
Fonts secundàries:
- B. Amengual y R. Borde, Alfred Hitchcock, Lyon, Premier Plan, SERDOC, 1960
- Cahiers du Cinema, núm. 39 (especial), Paris, octubre, 1953 y núm. 62, París, agosto-septiembre, 1956
- D. Spoto, “Vertigo: The Cure is Worse than the Dis-Ease”, en: Classics of the Cinema, recop. de Stanley Solomon, New York, Hartcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973
- D. Spoto, Alfred Hitchcock. El lado oscuro de un genio, Barcelona, 1985 (1983)
- D. Spoto, The Art of Alfred Hitchcock, New York, Hopkinson & Blake, 1976 y Doubleday, 1979
- D. Sterritt, “Vértigo”, en: The Films of Alfred Hitchcock, Cambridge, 1993
- E. Alberich, Alfred Hitchcock (el poder de la imagen), Barcelona, 1987
- E. Rohmer y C. Chabrol, Hitchcock, Paris, Editions Universitaires, 1957
- G. Perry, The Films of Alfred Hitchcock, London, Studio Vista Ltd., 1965
- H. P. Manz, Alfred Hitchcock, Zürich, Sanssouci Verlag, 1962
- J. M. Carreño, Alfred Hitchcock, Madrid, 1980
- P. Bogdanovich, The Cinema of Alfred Hitchcock, New York, Doubleday & Co. Inc. , 1962
- P. Noble, “An Index to the Creative Work of Alfred Hitchcock”, Suplemento de Sight and Sound, “Index Series, núm. 18, Londres, 1949
- R. Wood, Hitchcock’s Films, London, A. Zwemmer Ltd., 1965
- R. Wood, Hitchcock’s Films Revisited, New York, 1989
- S. Brown, “Vertigo as Orphic Tragedy”, en: Perspectives on Alfred Hitchcock, New York, David Boyd, 1995.