Film professor rolls credits on his career
by Susan Griffith
After all the directions, scripts and editing, Louis Giannetti, CWRU's
master of film studies, reached "the end" of his credits and closed the
door on more than three decades of teaching his popular "Understanding
Movies: An Introduction to Film" course. 
Giannetti spent his last class in Room 323 at Guilford House reading two student critiques-one of George Lucas' Star Wars and the other on Alan Parker's Pink Floyd: The Wall.
The ease with which he passed out papers, collected the final ones for grading and granted a reprieve from a Monday final was a stark contrast to his first day of teaching at the University of Iowa, where he was enrolled in the playwrights writing workshop and was teaching introductory English courses.
"I remember I chained smoked my way through that class, steadying myself against the desk for support because my legs were so wobbly," he said. "Afterwards, a student came up to me and remarked how cool I was."
Students since the late 1960s have attended his class to learn about the silver screen.
Over the years, some have left their marks. Among them are Jonathan Foreman, who is founder of the Cleveland International Film Festival and owns the Cedar-Lee Theater, the area's showcase for foreign films, and David Wittkowsky, the former CEO of the film festival. Others such as Stefan Czapsky became cinematographers in Hollywood or entertainment journalists like Heather Dean, who wrote the 20-page interview with Drew Carey for Playboy and has reported for MTV. Another, David Shaw, is a lawyer for "Entertainment Tonight."
Giannetti structured his film course around his best-selling college text, which has sold more than 1.25 million books. Understanding Movies is now in its ninth edition. The popular text is required reading for film schools like New York University, the University of Southern California and Harvard University.
Giannetti wrote the book as a response to students at Emory University who asked him to teach a film course. He could not find a suitable text.
The book, the capstone of his career, was first published in 1972 shortly after he arrived at CWRU in 1970. With each new edition, he updates images and text to reflect some of the latest box office giants and gems.
Giannetti first attended Northeastern University. After a year, he transferred to Boston University and graduated. In the early 1960s, he decided to be a playwright and went west to the University of Iowa, where he switched from writing to teaching and earned his doctorate in British 18th Century literature. His first faculty position was at Emory.
As the film on his life rolls forward, Giannetti said he plans to "muck around the garden." Over the past eight years, Giannetti and his partner, Charles Haddad, have transformed their half-acre lot on South Woodland in Shaker Heights into a Japanese garden with a pond and waterfall.
Giannetti said he also will spend more time with his daughters, Christina and Francesca.
