“How I detest the dawn. The grass looks as though it’s been left out all night” The Dark Corner (1946).

The beautiful, seductive and dangerous femme fatale, the private eye, the anti-hero, chiaroscuro, low-key lighting, high-angle shots, rain-washed streets, scuttling footsteps fading into the distance, crime, corruption, death, suffering, paranoia, tragedy, unhappiness and existential despair are all characteristics of film noir, a genre of the 1940s and 1950s with its roots in German Expressionism.

This course takes the example of film noir as a way of exploring evaluative and analytical film writing. Whilst websites such as Rotten Tomatoes tend to publish opinion-based reviews, academic film writing, like that found in the journal Sight & Sound, is based on a viewer’s “reading” of a film, which is supplemented by critical, technical analysis and argumentation. This course aims to develop your writing in both directions, enabling you to move from having an opinion on a film to augmenting your own “reading” of it with technical, genre-specific knowledge, subject-specific vocabulary and in-depth analysis.

This Written English course forms one half of the compulsory module ang311: Integrated Language Skills. The module is assessed via a portfolio and the assessment requirements are a take-home essay and an edited version of this essay. The grade will be added to the result from Spoken English. Homework assignments as required by the lecturer will count towards active participation.