Curriculum Connections

The TCM By the Book: Stage to Screen series encourages students to "read" film as thoroughly as they would a play and promotes the use of film to satisfy curriculum objectives and Language Arts Standards*. As they work with Stage to Screen, students will:

• Use personal response to text as a basis for writing
• Relate personal responses to the text with that intended by the author [playwright and director]
• Identify and analyze actions between main characters, events, motives and causes of conflict
• Identify and critique the author's [playwright and director] purpose and point of view and its effect on the text
• Identify and critique devices the author [playwright and director] uses to persuade readers
• Analyze how attitudes and values of the time period in which a play was written affects the text
• Understand complex dialogue and analyze the stylistic effect of dialogues in a story
• Apply the reading process and strategies to literature with regard to character, plot, theme, dialogue, literary devices, point of view and style
• Analyze the effects of complex literary devices on the overall quality of a work (e.g. foreshadowing, flashbacks, etc.)
• Analyze the effectiveness of complex elements of plot (e.g. settings, major events, problems, conflicts, resolutions)
• Understand the defining features and structure of satires and parodies at this developmental level
• Apply the reading process and strategies to plays that are of substantial length
• Make well-informed and well-organized formal presentations to the class
• Demonstrate an understanding of why certain literary works may be considered classics or works of enduring quality and substance

The chart below provides recommendations for how these films can be used to teach specific literary devices.

ELEMENTS OF DRAMA	Julius Caesar	The Philadelphia Story	Cat on a Hot Tin Roof	Casablanca	The Man Who Came to Dinner	Brigadoon	Ah, Wilderness!	Gaslight
Theme	X	X	X	X		X	X	X
Foreshadow	X							X
Symbolism			X	X		X
Comedy					X
Plot								X
Characterization		X	X			X	X
Soliloquies/Asides/Monologues	X
Setting	X			X		X	X
Irony		X
ASPECTS OF FILM
Costumes/Sets	X	X	X	X		X	X	X
Music/Choreography		X			X	X	X
Dialogue		X	X		X
Special Effects			X
Cinematography	X			X	X	X	X	X