This course will introduce the range of silent films made up to the late 1920s. We will be looking at both European and American cinema, ranging across comedy, melodrama, romance, the epic and the avant-garde. Many of the iconic films of the 1930s were reacting to their silent predecessors, and we will have plenty of time to discuss the links between silent and sound movies. We will show at least three full length films: Diary of a Lost Girl (1929) starring the iconic Louise Brooks, Anthony Asquith’s avant-garde influenced melodrama A Cottage on Dartmoor (1929) and Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), widely regarded as not just one of the best silent films, but one of the greatest films of all time.  

Stephen Longstaffe

Residential: £350 Non-residential: £245