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This is a survey of British film and leading directors from Alfred Hitchcock in the late 1930s to Mike Leigh in the present, with an emphasis on historical and social contexts. Participants are asked to view each week's films in advance however they can. The films will be on reserve at the Film Study Center, 53 Wall Street, from Monday of the previous week. Class time will be devoted to discussion of clips from them.

Syllabus

  • April 2:  The Lady Vanishes; Brief Encounter
  • April 9:  Odd Man Out; The Fallen Idol
  • April 16:  The Third Man; The Man in the White Suit
  • April 23:  I Know Where I'm Going; The Red Shoes
  • April 30:  The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner; Distant Voices, Still Lives
  • May 7:  Vera Drake; Happy-Go-Lucky

Professor Bio

Photo of Professor Murray Biggs

Murray Biggs

Murray Biggs, semi-retired Adjunct Associate Professor of English, Theater Studies, and most recently Film at Yale, is known throughout the campus and with alumni everywhere for his dynamic teaching style that inspires great enthusiasm and active participation. He has led week-long theater seminars in various locations: in London; at the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario, and at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake; as well as in Ireland and at the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon. He also offers theater weekends in major cities in the U.S., most regularly in New York City, San Diego, and Sarasota as well as at the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival. In 2016 he was Artist-in-Residence at the Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach. Although retired from regular teaching, Professor Murray Biggs is still widely active at and for Yale.

Professor Biggs was born in England, brought up in South Africa, and returned to England as a Rhodes Scholar to take his second degree (in English) at Oxford, where he afterwards taught for two years. He later studied acting and for a time performed professionally in Boston. He worked at MIT for ten years, mainly as founder and first Director of the MIT Shakespeare Ensemble. He also taught at Wellesley, Berkeley, and the University of Connecticut before joining the Yale faculty in 1986. He has published many articles and reviews, especially about Shakespeare and his contemporaries in performance. In 1991 he edited a collection of essays, The Arts of Performance in Elizabethan and Early Stuart Drama. He has directed over 40 plays, a third of them from the English Renaissance.

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