Assignment for Thursday, 09.24.20

Dear Cinemythologists,

On Thursday, September 24, our unit on Heracles/Hercules continues. Please do the following.

VIEWING

  • Hercules (Le fatiche di Ercole) (Pietro Francisci, 1958)

Streaming on Amazon Prime. Take notes as you see fit. The film is dubbed from the Italian, so there will be a disconnect between the characters’ mouths and their voices. (And that is not the voice of Steve Reeves under any circumstances.)

As you will have learned from our introduction to peplum, this film is epoch-making in many ways — difficult as it might be to appreciate them in the 21st century.


ANALYSIS

Speaking of epoch-making, our Analysis enterprise gets underway today with Graubart and Ricci presenting their video on a sequence from Hercules.


READING

  • Blanshard, Alastair J. L. and Kim Shahabudin. 2011. “Peplum Traditions: Hercules.” Classics on Screen: Ancient Greece and Rome on Film. Chapter 3, 58–76. Bristol Classical Press.

Blanshard and Shahabudin take our ongoing discussion on peplum a step further by focusing on the place of Hercules in the cinematic tradition.


SEQUENCES

  • Jefferson, Pettit.

Use the comments feature on this post to recommend a sequence to be reviewed and discussed in class.

Recommendations should contain the following:

  • A brief description of the sequence.
  • Precise starting and ending times (hh:mm:ss — hh:mm:ss).
  • A rationale as to why this sequence is worth our time.

DC

Assignment for Thursday, 09.17.20

Dear Cinemythologists,

On Thursday, September 17, our survey of Perseus movies comes to a close, even as we look ahead to our unit on Hercules. No viewing for today, only reading.

READING

  • Ogden, Daniel. 2008. “Medusa and the Gorgons.” Perseus (chapter 3), 34–66. London and New York: Routledge.

We’ve had a chance to discuss Perseus in some detail. Ogden’s chapter will start our conversation on Perseus’ arch-nemesis.

  • Chapman, David. 2002. “In the Beginning…” Retro Stud: Muscle Movie Posters from around the World (chapter 1), 4–37. Portland, OR: Collectors Press.

Chapman, through a bright and breezy survey of classic movie posters, will introduce us to peplum, the movie genre in which we most often find Hercules and other Greco-Roman heroes. Put it this way: All peplums are sword-and-sandal movies, but not all sword-and-sandal movies are peplum.


In class we’ll survey visual representations of Medusa and her fellow Gorgons from antiquity to modernity. And we’ll bid Perseus farewell by surveying some scenes from the 1963 classic, Perseo l’invincibile, which will also introduce us to the conventions of peplum.

DC

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