Framing an Interdisciplinary Approach to Film: Teaching Amadeus

  • Nancy Rachel November The University of Auckland
  • Brenda Allen The University of Auckland
Keywords: Literacy, Film, Amadeus, Pedagogy, Interdisciplinary Studies, Musicology

Abstract

This article discusses a collaboration between two teachers, from Music History and Film Studies, respectively. We sought to develop a literacy skill that is highly relevant to today’s undergraduates: the ability to read popular and visual media critically, using Miloš Forman and Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus. We observed that Music History students tended to underestimate their abilities to read and talk about visual aspects of the film. However, they tended to overestimate their abilities to understand how music is used in film in service of characterisation and myth making. In this paper, we offer guidelines on how to ‘correct’ this imbalance. We set up a framework for interdisciplinary understanding of film through a discussion of of ‘crux points’—concepts that are likely to be tricky for students (and teachers if they are not from Film Studies). Each point is illustrated with examples from Amadeus. We then consider how best to enable students to think more consciously about what they are doing when they view and hear film, in order that they develop not only a more critical approach to biopics, but also a greater understanding of their own learning modes and preferences.

Author Biographies

Nancy Rachel November, The University of Auckland
Nancy November is a senior lecturer in musicology at the University of Auckland. Her research and teaching interests centre on the music of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries:  aesthetics, analysis, and performance history and practices.  She has edited and published several volumes of chamber music by Beethoven’s contemporaries, for example Wranitzky, Six Sextets (A-R Editions, Recent Researches in Music of the Classical Era, 2012). She recently completed a monograph entitled Beethoven’s Theatrical Quartets:  Opp. 59, 74, and 95 (Cambridge University Press, 2013).
Brenda Allen, The University of Auckland

Brenda Allen taught and researched at the University of Auckland in the School of Social Sciences, and has recently retired. She previously taught music privately and in schools. Her current research area is the feature film, and her interests include print media and twentieth-century poetry. Recent articles include a discussion of fast food and American nourishment in the animation Ratatouille. She continues to research and write about Indigenous Australian feature film.

Published
2017-01-31
Issue
Vol 7 No 2 (2017)
Section
Articles

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