Historical Context: Sontag’s Cinema
This handout introduces the 20th-century films Sontag features in essays and investigates the role of a film critic.
FILM LESSON 2: HANDOUT 3
½-1 class period (30-60 min) + film screening (30-120+ min)
- Art and Culture
Medium > Visual Arts
Subject Matter > Art History
- History and Social Studies
Themes > Culture
- Literature and Language Arts
Genre > Drama
Genre > Essay
Place > Modern World
- Analysis
- Compare and contrast
- Critical analysis
- Critical thinking
- Cultural analysis
- Discussion
- Evaluating arguments
- Interpretation
- Literary analysis
- Making inferences and drawing conclusions
- Media analysis
- Summarizing
- Synthesis
- Textual analysis
- Visual art analysis
- ELA Reading: 1, 7, 10
- ELA Speaking & Listening: 1-2
- HSS Reading: 1-2, 7-10
OR complete the lesson now with one of our Student Activity Options
- Allow additional time for students to watch longer excerpts of Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player, Godard’s Vivre Sa Vie, Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures, Bergman’s Persona, Varda’s Lions Love (…and Lies), Sontag’s Duet for Cannibals, and/or Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, or to view more than one of these films.
- Assign the full text of Sontag’s “Against Interpretation,” “Godard’s Vivre Sa Vie,” and/or “Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures” in Against Interpretation, “Bergman’s Persona” in Styles of Radical Will, Duet for Cannibals, Lions and Cannibals, and/or “Novel in Film: Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz” in Where the Stress Falls in advance, in place of handout excerpts.
- Reflection and concluding questions may also be assigned as short essays or response papers.