Film theory is a collection of interpretative frameworks

developed over time in order to understand better the way

films are made and received. Film theory is not a selfcontained field: it borrows from the disciplines of
philosophy, art theory, social science, cultural theory,
psychology, literary theory, linguistics, economics, and
political science
Classical Film Theory
Medium Specificity
Early film theorists had two main concerns: to legitimize
cinema as an art form and to identify its unique properties
and effects. Hugo Munsterberg and Rudolf Arnheim
considered (silent) film to be art because it does not merely
mechanically record reality but rather transforms the
normal ways in which the human eye perceives, through
editing, camera angles, and black-and-white photography.
These theorists made an attempt to understand the ways
in which cinema differed from the other arts: Jean Epstein
identified this difference as cinemas photogenie; Bela
Blzs attributed it to the unique, even spiritual,
expressiveness of the close-up.
Realism
Realist film theorists valued cinema for its ability to record
reality without authorial interventiona reversal of
Munsterbergs and Arnheims positions. This reversal was
caused in part by the development of cinema itself, which
increasingly resembled reality with the introduction of
sound, deep-focus photography, and Italian neo-realist
aesthetics.
The Realist Fallacy
The fascination of the early films lay in the movement on
the screen of objects which exactly resembled their
originals in real life and behaved like them down to the
minutest detail. Whatever was to be shown was taken from

the angle which most clearly presented it and its

movements.
In the beginnings of photography, and thus also of film art,
only all-inclusive images were taken, that is, pictures that
contained the whole of the event or object to be
represented. Close-upsa pair of hands, or half a face
could have been taken then as now, but they were not.
Things that are technically possible are utilized only after
the idea has penetrated that by their means useful and
valuable results can be achieved, and not merely forbidden
or unsound ones. If one wanted to take a shot of a man, his
complete figure, or at least the whole upper part of his
body, had to be in the picture. The margins of the screen
were considered only in a negative sensethey must not
cut parts of anything off
French critic Andre Bazin and German Siegfried Kracauer.
They are part of the 'great lunatic tradition'
'The essence of film they claim lies in its power to lay bare
the realities' Bazin or the 'redemption of physical reality'
Kracauer
They believe that there is a natural affinity between the
cinema and the recording and revealing of reality.
Kracauer's Photographic Theory
Siegfried Kracauer, a critic of authoritarian aesthetics,
argued that cinema should focus on the unpredictable,
unplanned events of everyday existence.
Kracauer's arguments:
it is the essence of photography to incline to a
straightforward recording of reality
film involves photography
although it involves other formative elements such as
editing or sound, photography has a legitimate claim
as top priority
therefore film shares with photography the inclination
toward capturing unaltered reality

 Hence, realism is the principle criterion of aesthetic

value in the cinema.
1)can be negated because if there is human involvement
then automatically reality is altered. The 'reality'
revealed by the camera must depend on the filmmaker and that admission denies the absolute basis of
Kracauer's realist position.
2)Only proposition that can't be argued with
3)Andrew Tudor says that film shouldn't be hidden
beneath photography as the tip of the iceberg.
Eisenstein and the importance of cutting shows that
editing is as huge a factor as photography in the
ultimate product of film.
4)Kracauer claims that 'film is uniquely equipped to
record and reveal physical reality like photography
and hence gravitates towards it but then science
fiction and horror movies would not exist. (geometric
equation)
Kracauer's definition of physical reality:
Anything stuck in front of a camera and photographed
must surely be actual and must physically exist.
Synonymous with Kracauer's term 'camera-reality'
Another synonym of his is reality with nature.
Bazin's Theory
Andr Bazin preferred films that use depth of field and long
takes to emphasize mise-en-scne, preserving the spatiotemporal integrity of the scene and empowering the
spectator to scan the image for meaning.
His two types of realism:
He is in favour of a purist realism but he also develops a
second case termed as 'spatial realism'
His purist view finds its expression in the 1945 essay
Ontologie de l'Image Photographique where he isolates
realism as the fundamental character of photography and

hence of film.
His distinction between two types of reality:
true realism: the need to give significant expression to
the world both concretely and its essence
pseudo-realism: that of deception and fooling the eye
6 years later he contradicts himself -.- in 'Theatre et
Cinema'
he says: 'illusion in the cinema is based on the reality of
that which is shown'
which implies; that the only reality is that which the
audience is convinced of a.k.a. pseudo-realism
There is a clear distinction wherein the camera records true
realism and this latter case, in which the camera through
its realistic nature lends realism to something which is
illusory.
Bazin has an obsession with the spatial realism of deepfocus photography which he claims recreates on screen our
normal conception of space.
A deep-focus shot is a variation of the long shot that keeps
objects in the foreground, middle ground and background
in focus all at once. Realist film-makers favour it because it
preserves spatial unity. Its opposite would be rack focus
which is an adjustment of focus within a show in order to
change the portion of the image that is in sharp focus. This
guides the spectator's attention from one area of the
screen to another.
Conclusion.
The paradox of Kracauer and Bazin is that the fundamental
essence of film as they see it leads ultimately to the
annihilation of everything which distinguishes it as film in
the first place.
Auteur Theory
Auteurism considers the film director not merely a
mechanical recorder of reality but rather a legitimate artist
whose personal vision battles the institutional limitations

imposed by industrial modes of film production. Influenced

by romantic notions of the artist and by canonization
studies in the other arts, auteurist critics hailed previously
neglected Hollywood directors, such as Nicholas Ray and
Samuel Fuller, as exemplary artists whose personal
experiences, convictions, and obsessions imbue each of
their films with an idiosyncratic style.
Semiotics and structuralism
Umberto Eco and others tried to define film language as a
set of codes and structures that organizes meaning in ways
predetermined by the medium itself rather than by
individual film-makers. In analysing narrative cinema,
Christian Metz identified the presence of eight principal
syntagmascombinations of sounds and images that are
organized into units of narrative autonomy. Peter Wollen,
Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, and others integrated structuralism,
genre studies, and auteurism into what came to be known
as auteur-structuralism.

Rudolf Arnheim
His theory contained in 'Film as Art' is the clearest
reflection of the aesthetic principles of the silent era.
Written in that era it deals with questions over whether film
could be art, attempting to overcome the prejudices that
film could not be an art as was not photography which was
viewed as a copy process back then. Photography and film
were problematic because it was thought that it would be
impossible for human temperament to shine through their
mechanical process.
Photography was attacked as slavish mimesis by those
such as Baudelaire and Croce.
Theatre and fine art attack film.
August Renoir thought that artists should thank Daguerre
for freeing them from portraiture.
Film can capture art but not be art itself.
These 2 charges that film is but a mechanical recording of

reality or else of theatre form the fundamental problematic

with which most silent film theorists concern themselves.
They differ by renouncing that if film recorded reality it
would not be art unlike the sound critics like Bazin and
Kracauer who relish in the representation of reality.
They believe in departure from reality. Creationist.
Theorists of silent :
Munsterberg
Balazs
Kuleshov
Eisenstein
Pudovkin
Rotha
So began the attempts to show that film could show things
that theatre could not, possibly the attack was focused on
theatre rather than fine art because they were in
competition for the same type of audience.
The most remarkable movements of silent cinema:
German expressionism
French Avant Garde-ism
Soviet Montage
even American silent film comedy can be seen in this light
for its central gambit is that reality can be seen in several
ways: a spaghetti can be a shoelace. Charlie Chaplin in
Gold Rush
So the directors of the silent era focused heavily on
manipulation
Classical film theorists generally ask 3 kinds of questions:
what is the role or value of film?
what is the deterministic quality of film ?
what are the various processes of articulation in film
editing, lighting, camera movement and how do they
each function as instances of the deterministic?

Arnheim argues that the special creativity of the medium

must flourish not where the medium best captures reality
but where its material properties block perfect imitation.
He also has a special independent theory about the nature
of expressive qualities as those found in artworks and in
real things like the willow tree example which seem to
emanate moods and anthropomorphic states from the way
they are structurally similar or analogous.
Arnheim noted that although we normally perceive
pragmatically, in artistic perception the spectator should be
brought to attend to qualities: it is no longer a matter of
realising that there stands a police man but rather how he
is standing.
The spectator is thus brought to see something familiar as
something new. At this moment is he capable of true
observation.
Natural perception first of all attends to expressive
qualities. The face of a person is more readily perceived
and remembered as being alert, tense, concentrated rather
than triangularly shaped, having slanted eyebrows etc.
In these passages, Arnheim contrasts the specificpragmatic mode of perception with another kind of
perception one that sounds like what is sometimes called
aesthetic perception that is directed at expressive
patterns. The latter is said to be more normal though the
former has been more infused into adults in our culture.
One function of art, then is to revive this perceptual
sensitivity to expressive pattern. To do this art cannot rely
on the mechanical reproduction of geometric-technical
properties because that is the very thing which stands in
the way of apprehension of expressive patterns.
Film art by transcending mechanical recording, shows
objects in such a way that spectators jaded by the
quantitative way of seeing can once again perceive
normally and naturally as children do.

The peculiar characteristics of film, it is held, make it the

art of the animated image, in contradistinction to theatre
which is the art of speech. As one might imagine these
points are made during discussions of the sound film.
Arnheim opposes sound, particularly dialogue because he
believes that truly artistic dialogue of Shakespearean
complexity paralyses action as the camera focuses on the
stationary actors delivering intensely ornate speeches
rather than film art. For Arnheim, in theatre the visual
action merely serves the dialogue whereas in film the
animated image is impeded by dialogue.
Mechanical recording is the denotative, expression the
connotative.
The central aesthetic tenets of Arnheim's film theory
include:
art is expression or expression thesis
art diverges from mechanical recording or divergence
thesis
each art form must diverge from mechanical recording
in terms of the peculiar limitations of its medium or
specificity thesis.
The expression thesis:
expression or expressiveness is a defining characteristic of
film. An argument which Arnheim does not use that
attempts to show that all art is expressive is the proposition
that all human artefacts are expressive because in making
something a human necessarily leaves in it a trace of
his/her attitude, personality, concerns and point of view.
Some film theorists like Balazs rely on such arguments but
this theory is usable only to the theorist that champions a
self-expression concept of art, that is the notion that all art
is the expression of the artist's inner thoughts and feelings.
It is not viable for a theorist like Arnheim who holds that
expressive qualities are in the pattern of things.

According to Arnheim, generality is a component of artistic

expression and a work of art is expressive of qualities that
are common features of things. Anything can be
understood only because it is made up of ingredients not
reserved to itself but common to many or all other things.
Braque has said: By putting a lemon next to an orange they
cease to be a lemon and an orange and become fruit. It
shows the way in which things are similar and by doing so
defines their individuality.
Arnheim not only holds an expression theory of art he also
has a special theory of expression, that of an analogy
theory of expression which has two components:
1. expression in art is said to resemble patterns of
feelings.
2. The requirement of generality dealt with above.
The divergence thesis
Mechanical recording is rote, pragmatic, utilitarian,
quantitative, scientific, unimaginative. Arnheim believes
that when the normal appearances of things are subverted
their expressive properties will become perceptible.
> realist Andre Bazin believed that human beings have a
psychological need to immortalise the past. The need was
satisfied imperfectly by painting and then ideally by the
invention of photography. Thus when confronted by the
ostensibly unanswerable question: what purpose could
slavish imitation serve? Bazin had an answer: to preserve
things or their appearance from the corruption of time. This
counter-acts Arnheim's redundancy argument.
The specificity thesis:
the arts differ from each other in terms of what each
represents (imitates) best due to the peculiar (specific)
structure of its formal/physical medium.
Although for many reasons the thesis no longer seems
acceptable, in its days it performed a useful service: it
served as a corrective to the vagueness of the tendency to

reduce all the arts to a common denominator.

Arnheim is most interested in where a medium falters in
terms of perfect representation.
Specificity thesis has two components:
1)excellence requirement: the idea that there is
something that each medium does best
2)differentiation requirement: the idea that each of the
arts should do what differentiates them from the other
arts.
In application to Arnheim, it states that film-makers should
stress the differentiating features (the limitations) that
enable the medium to portray animated action (what
cinema does best)
Examples to show how film is art
Camera Positioning
if I wish to photograph a cube it is not enough for me to
bring the object within the range of my camera. It is rather
a question of my position relative to the object or of where I
place it. Whether it looks like a two dimensional square or
its true nature that of a cube is shown.
The film like theatre provides a partial illusion. Up to a
certain degree it gives the impression of real life. This
component is all the stronger since in contrast to the
theatre the film can actually portray real that is not
simulated life in real surroundings. On the other hand it
partakes strongly of the nature of a picture in a way that
the stage never can. By the absence of colours, of three
dimensional depth, by being sharply limited by margins
and so forth, film is most satisfactorily denuded of its
realism.
Whereas the theatre stage differs from real life in that the
4th wall is missing, the setting of the action changes and
the people talk in theatrical language, the film deviates
much more profoundly. The position of the spectator is
continually changing since we must consider him located at
the starting point of the camera whereas a spectator in the

theatre is always at the same distance from the stage. If I

turn my eyes or my head, the field of vision is altered.
Perhaps a moment ago I was looking at the door, now I am
looking at the bookcase. This panorama does not pass
before my eyes and give me the impression that everything
is moving. Instead I realise that the room is stationary as
usual, but that the direction of my gaze is changing. This is
not the case in film. If the camera was rotated while the
picture was being shot, the door and bookcase will seem to
move across the screen. For since the camera is not part of
the spectator's body/head he cannot tell that it has been
turned. Thus there is relativity of movement in film: since
there are no bodily sensations to indicate whether the
camera was at rest or in motion, and if in motion at what
speed or in what direction, the camera's position is
presumed to be fixed.
The absence of any feeling of the force of gravity also
makes a worm's-eye view particularly compelling. If, for
instance, a human being is photographed from below, it is
of course obvious from the shot that the camera has been
directed upward, but this recognition is not quite absorbed
by perceptionthe spectator still feels very strongly that
the picture plane is vertical and therefore the figure
slanting. The figure appears to be inclined backward; the
longitudinal axis of the figure does not appear vertical but
oblique, sloping from the bottom front to the top back.
Diagram 1 shows the actual circumstances of the case; the
human figure (AB) is upright, the camera (CD) inclined at
an angle (fig. 1). But as there is nothing to show the
spectator that the camera was inclined, he supposes (fig.
2) that CD was upright and therefore sees AB as slanting.
This effect helps to make a slanting view very much more
striking than it would appear in real life.
The camera may accompany the hero through all the
rooms of a house, down the stairs, along the street; and the
human figure may always remain the same, while the
surroundings pass as a panorama, continually changing.
The film artist is thereby able to do what is very hard for
the theater director, namely, to show the world from the

standpoint of an individual, to take man as the center of his

cosmosthat is, to make a very subjective experience
accessible to the eyes of all.
In Chaplin's film the Immigrant, the opening scene shows a
boat rolling horribly and all the passengers being sea-sick.
They stagger to the side of the ship pressing their hands to
their mouths. Then comes the first shot of Chaplin, seen
hanging over the side with his back to the audience, legs
kicking wildly everyone thinks he is paying his toll to the
sea. But suddenly he pulls himself up turns around and
shows everyone that he has hooked a large fish with his
walking stick.
The conditions under which the picture is taken, the choice
of a particular angle of approach are not treated as
negligible quantities, or necessary evils, but are
consciously brought into relief as factors contributing to the
composition of the picture. This very limitation yields the
artistic opportunity of making the particular pictured event
convey an idea.
Coup d'esprit to get a fresh angle on things, bringing out
the unfamiliar In a familiar object.
Rene Clair's Entr'acte ballet dancer on glass.
It is conceivable that the sudden turning of a person's
head, a movement of flight, or something of the same sort,
might be more impressively shown by cutting a few frames
out of the strip and thus achieving a jerk within the
movement. That inanimate things may be made mobile to
a certain degree was shown above in the example of the
stone lions.
Artistic utilisation of reduced depth
the purely formal qualities of the picture come into
prominence only because of the lack of depth. Every good
film shot is satisfying in a purely formal sense as a linear
composition, the lines being harmoniously disposed with
reference to one another as well as to the margins.

It is one of the most important formal qualities of film that

every object reproduced appears simultaneously in two
entirely different frames of reference, namely the two
dimensional and the three dimensional and that as one
identical object it fulfils two different functions in the two
contexts. In a film which gives stronger illusion of depth the
perspective alterations in size have scarcely more effect
than they have in real life. Their efficacy as an artistic
device will be practically negligible.
Problem with 3D???
Lighting
The primitive but always effective symbolism of light
versus darkness, white purity versus black evil, the
opposition between gloom and radiance is inexhaustible.
By the help of clever lighting, irregular features can be
made to look harmonious, a face can be made to look
haggard or full, old or young. It is the same with interiors
and landscapes. Depending on the light a room can look
warm and comfortable, or cold and bare, large or small,
clean or dirty.
The special delight in getting the texture of ordinary
materials like dull iron, shining tin, smooth fur, soft skin is
also heightened by lack of hues.
A high key lighting scheme minimises the contrast between
darker and brighter parts of the image. A low key lighting
scheme creates a chiaroscuro effect with dark shadows and
stark contrasts.
Delimitation of the Image
The delimitation of the image is as much a formative tool
as perspective for it allows of some particular detail being
brought out and given special significance, and conversely
of unimportant things being omitted, surprises being
suddenly introduced into the shot, reflections of things that
are happening off being brought in.
The Power of The Silent Film.
In Jacques Feyder's Les Nouveaux Messieurs a political

meeting becomes very uproarious, and in order to calm the

rising emotions Suzanne puts a coin into a mechanical
piano. Immediately the hall is lit up by hundreds of electric
bulbs, and now the music chimes in with the agitative
speech. The music is not heard: it is a silent film. But
Feyder shows the audience excitedly listening to the
speaker; and suddenly the faces soften and relax; all the
heads begin quite gently to sway in time to the music. The
rhythm grows more pronounced until at last the spirit of the
dance has seized them all; and they swing their bodies
gaily from side to side as if to an unheard word of
command. The speaker has to give way to the music. Much
more clearly than if the music were actually heard, this
shows the power that suddenly unites all these
discontented people, puts them into the same merry mood;
and indicates as well the character of the music itself, its
sway and rhythm
Thus silent film derives definite artistic potentialities from
its silence. What it wishes particularly to emphasize in an
audible occurrence is transposed into something visual;
and thus instead of giving the occurrence "itself," it gives
only some of its telling characteristics, and thereby shapes
and interprets it.
Silent laughter is often more effective than if the sound is
actually heard. The gaping of the open mouth gives a vivid,
highly artistic interpretation of the phenomenon "laughter."
If, however, the sound is also heard, the opening of the
mouth appears obvious and its value as a means of
expression is almost entirely lost.
The creative power of the artist can only come into play
where reality and the medium of representation do not
coincide. > collision so no wonder montage is a
fundamental part of showing that film is art.
Timelapses, Accelerated Motion
In taking the shots for the I. G. Farben film Miracle of
Flowers, which consisted of nothing but accelerated
pictures of plants and is certainly the most fantastic,

thrilling, and beautiful film ever madein taking these

shots it was shown that plants have expressive gestures,
which we do not see because they are too slow for our
minds but which become visible in accelerated pictures.
Transitions
Fading in and fading out can be used to show people's
subjective perception; for instance, when a person is
waking up or falling asleep. But above all, it is a good
means of keeping one scene distinct from the next; for
since shots that follow immediately on one another usually
appear as part of an unbroken time sequence, it is often
not easy to show that an episode has come to an end, and
that the scene of action is changing.
Positioning
The top of the film image carries more intrinsic weight, so
balanced compositions usually keep the horizon line above
the middle of the frame. A low horizon line can lead to a
top-heavy composition, emphasizing the threatening or
oppressive nature of the sky or of figures situated in the
top part of the image.
The edges of the image carry less intrinsic weight optically,
so figures placed there can seem insignificant or
marginalized.
Summary of the Formative Means of Camera and Film Strip
We have examined in detail the various aspects of filmic
representation and have found that even at the most
elementary level there are significant divergences between
the image that the camera makes of reality and that which
the human eye sees. We found, moreover, that such
differences not only exist, but that they can be used to
mould reality for artistic purposes. In other words, that
what might be called the "drawbacks" of film technique
(and which engineers are doing their best to "overcome")
actually form the tools of the creative artist.
1. Every object must be photographed from one

particular viewpoint Applications.

a) View that shows the shape of the object most
characteristically.
b) View that conveys a particular conception of the
object (e.g., worm's-eye view, indicating weight and
forcefulness).
c) View that attracts the spectator's attention by being
unusual.
d) Surprise effect due to the concealment of the back
side (Chaplin sobbing; no!mixing a cocktail!)
2. Objects are put behind or beside one another by
perspective. Applications.
a) Unimportant objects are hidden by being wholly or
partly covered; important objects are thereby
emphasized.
b) Surprise effect by the sudden revealing of what had
been concealed by something else.
c) Optical swallowing-upone object comes in front of
another and obliterates it.
d) Relationships indicated by perspective connections
(convict and prison bars).
e) Decorative surface patterns.
3. Apparent size; objects near the front are large and
those behind are small
Applications.
a) Emphasizing of individual parts of an object (feet
thrust toward the camera come out huge).
b) Increase and decrease of size to indicate relative
power.
4. Arrangement of light and shade, absence of colours
Applications.
a) Moulding the volume and relief of the object at will
by the placing of lights and shadows.
b) Accentuating, grouping, segregating, hiding by the
arrangement of light and shade.

5. Delimitation of the size of the image

Applications.
a) Selection of the theme of the picture.
b) Showing the whole or a part.
c) Surprise effect. Some object, which was always
present but had been cut off by the frame, suddenly
comes into the picture from outside,
d) Increase of suspense; the centre of interest lies
outside the picture (for example, only the effect of it
on someone is seen).
6. Distance from the object
Applications.
a) Objects can be made small or large.
b) Choice of optimal distance (a pin, a mountain).
c) Relativization of dimensions (doll's house human
house),
7. absence of space time continuum
Applications:
Montage. a) Showing beside (and among) one another,
episodes that are separate in time.
b) Juxtaposition of places that are actually separate.
c) Presenting the characteristic features of a scene by
showing selected portions of it.
d) Combination of things whose connection is not one
of time and space but of meaning (symbolic) or shape.
e) Imperceptible montage. Illusion of altered (fantastic)
reality (sudden appearances and disappearances, etc.)
8. Absence of spatial orientation
Applications.
a) Relativization of movement: static things move, or
moving things stand still.
b) Relativization of spatial coordinates (vertical,
horizontal, etc.).
9. Lessening of depth perception
Applications.

a) Perspective alterations of size made more

compelling.
b) Perspective connections in the plane projection
made more compelling.
10.
Absence of Sound
Applications.
a) Stronger emphasis on what is visible; as, for
instance, on facial expression and gesture.
b) Qualities and effects of unheard sounds specially
brought out by their being transposed into the sphere
of the visible (suddenness of revolver shotbirds
rising).
11. Mobile Camera
Applications. a) Representation of subjective states
such as falling, rising, swaying, staggering, giddiness,
etc. b) Representation of subjective attitudes such as
the individual being always the centre of the scene
(i.e., of the plot).
12. Rewind
Applications.
a) Reversal of the direction of movements.
b) Reversal of events (fragments join to make a whole
object).
13. Acceleration
Applications. a) Visible acceleration of a movement
or an event;
change in the dynamic character (to
symbolize bustle). b) Compression of time (the breathing of
flowers) .
14. Slow motion
Applications. a) Visible retarding of a movement or an
event; change in dynamic character (laziness, gliding).
b) Lengthening of periods of time (showing more
clearly events that pass very rapidly).

15. Fading in and out, dissolving

Applications.
a) To mark breaks in the action.
b) Subjective impressions: waking up, falling asleep.
c) Stronger contact and coherence between two
pictures by dissolving one into the other.
17. Superimposition or Multiple Exposure
Applications.
a) Chaos, confusion.
b) Indication of relationships by juxtaposition and
superimposition. c) Indication of symbolic similarities.
d) Modifications of reality (wraiths).
18. Special Lenses
Applications. Multiplication, distortion.
19.
Manipulation of focus
Applications. a) Subjective impressions: waking up,
going to sleep. b) Suspense by gradual exposition
("appears slowly").
c) Directing the spectator's gaze to the back or the
foreground
20.
Mirror Images
Applications. Destroying, distorting an object (or the
"world").
In a "naturalistic" film any symbolic scene must be so
planned that it not only makes this implicit meaning visible
in a comprehensible manner, but also fits smoothly into the
action and the world depicted in the film. For the
unexpected and gripping effect is produced mainly by
disclosing the congruence of two themes which are fraught
with meaning inherently and independently of each other.
The film artist chooses a particular scene that he wishes to
photograph. Within this scene he can leave out objects,

cover them up, make them prominent, and yet not interfere
with reality. He can increase or decrease the size of things,
can make small objects larger than big ones, and vice
versa. He can put beside, behind, among one another,
things that are entirely separate in space and time. He can
pick out what is important, however small and
inconspicuous it may be, and thus let the part represent
the whole. He can lay down what is upright, and set upright
what is recumbent, can move what stands still, and arrest
what is moving. He eliminates entire areas of sensory
perception, and thereby brings others into higher relief,
ingeniously making them take the place of those that are
missing. He can let the dumb speak and thereby interpret
the sphere of sound. He shows the world not only as it
appears objectively but also subjectively. He creates new
realities, in which things can be multiplied, turns their
movements and actions backward, distorts them, retards or
accelerates them. He calls into existence magical worlds
where the force of gravity disappears, mysterious powers
move inanimate objects, and broken things are made
whole. He brings into being symbolic bridges between
events and objects that have had no connection in reality.
He intervenes in the structure of nature to make quivering,
disintegrate ghosts of concrete bodies and spaces. He
arrests the progress of the world and of things, and
changes them to stone. He breathes life into stone and bids
it move. Of chaotic and illimitable space he creates pictures
beautiful in form and of profound significance, as subjective
and complex as painting. It must be admitted that most
film directors do not make much original use of the artistic
means at their disposal. They do not produce works of art
but tell the people stories. They and their employers and
audiences are not concerned with form but with content.
Nevertheless there are plenty of examples to show that film
is capable of better things; not a great many first-rate
works of art, complete, coherent, and highly finishedthe
art is still too young for that, it is still too much in the
experimental stagebut there are nevertheless enough
films that show in individual scenes, individual inventions,

in the efforts of individual actors, what might be, what still

lies hidden and untapped. And there is, in art, nothing to
prevent one's clinging to the little that is good, instead of
the great quantity that is bad.
A Dialectic Approach to Film Form
conflict is the fundamental principle for the existence of
every art work and every art form.
Art is a conflict according to:
its social mission, because it is its task to stir up
contradictions within the spectator's mind and to forge
accurate intellectual concepts from the dynamic clash
of opposing passions
its nature, because it is a conflict between its natural
existence and creative tendency. At the intersection of
nature (organic form) and industry (inorganic form) is
art.
its methodology
Montage and shot are the basic elements in film
Montage is an idea that arises from the collision of
independent shots
This can be found in Chinese and Japanese languages
where two concrete words are placed adjacent to form an
abstract term.
Can be seen in the paintings of Lautrec who created
marvellous mobility by putting each part of the body in his
figures in a different position.
Types of conflict in film:
graphic conflict
conflict of planes
conflict of volumes
spatial conflict
light conflict
tempo conflict
conflict between matter and viewpoint, achieved by
spatial distortion through camera angle

 conflict between matter and its spatial nature achieved

through optical distortion of lens.
Conflict between an event and its temporal nature
achieved by slow motion or stop motion.
Conflict between the whole optical complex.
Types of Montage:
tonal
over-tonal
rhythmic
metric
intellectual
^ Find summary
The Kuleshov Effect
Three pairs of images from the film experiment carried out
by the Russian psychologist Lev Kuleshov around 1920.
Kuleshov discovered that audiences interpreted the actor's
expression (the right of each pair, and all identical) in
relation to the image it was paired with (left of each pair).
The actor was perceived as hungry, sad, romantically
intrigued, etc., depending on what was edited together
with the actor. Kuleshov's results significantly influenced
the development of montage theory.
Language is much closer to film than painting is as in
painting the form arises from abstract elements of line and
colour while in the cinema the material concreteness of the
image within the frame is the hardest element to
manipulate.
Intellectual dynamisation: in October, Kerensky rising to
power and dictatorship after July uprising of 1917 is seen
rising the stairs at the same pace. This is satire.
Montage allows for the directing of thought process rather
than just emotions.
Intellectual montage could lead to a synthesis of art and
science.

Genre Theory
Though generic similarities between films have existed
since the beginning of cinema, it was the advent of
semiotics and structuralism that gave scholars a
sophisticated methodology with which to analyse film
genre. Jim Kitses defined genre in terms of structuring
oppositions, such as the wilderness-civilization binary
found in westerns. Rick Altman divided genre into the
semantic (iconographic elements such as the cowboy hat)
and the syntactic (structural and symbolic meanings).
Recent genre theory has emphasized the post-modern
mutation of genres toward hybridity and reflexivity .

Contemporary Film Theory

This study-unit is a critical analysis of current
psychosemiotic Marxist film theories which examine the
allegedly inherent ideological nature of realist cinematic
structures and the relations of the cinematic apparatus and
its spectatorship via such Freudian and Lacanian concepts
as Oedipal identification, voyeurism, disavowal, fetishism,
(day) dreaming and suturing. Also analysed are
psychoanalytic feminist correctives to the presumed
patriarchal bias implicit in the above film theories.
Ideology Theory
Influenced by Lacanian psychoanalysis, Louis Althussers
theory of ideology, and student revolts in France in May
1968, film scholars began to analyse the cinema as an
ideological apparatus that interpellates spectators into misrecognizing their relation to the real conditions of their
existence.
According to scholars such as Jean-Louis Comolli and
Stephen Heath, films evoke consent for the dominant order

by giving the viewer the illusion of freedom, naturalising

and legitimizing the existing exploitative class structure.
Christian Metz
In the mid 1970s a shift within film studies was beginning
to take shape. Many theorists, most notably Christian Metz
and Jean-Louis Baudry, involved with semiotics begin to
stray away from their interest of film language and
structure to the study of the spectator and the cinematic
apparatus, creating a second semiology." These theorists
began using psychoanalysis, instead of linguistics, as the
basis of their theoretical frameworks. Following this shift, in
the 1980s and 1990s a new way of looking at films began
to take shape yet again. The theorists involved in this new
development, exemplified by Nol Carroll and David
Bordwell, began what has come to be known as the
cognitive theory movement. These theorists wanted to look
at many of the same issues that the second semiology
theorists dealt with but utilizing a cognitive framework
instead of a semiotic one.
Before analysing each theorists notions of spectator-ship,
their basic theoretical frameworks need to be defined.
Christian Metz based his spectator theories upon semiotics
and psychoanalysis. Semiotics is concerned with the study
of codes and signs. These codes and signs make up
language systems, but they can also come together in a
smaller scale to create a system or text, in this case a film.
Cinematic codes could be anything from specific editing
techniques to different lighting techniques. Metz also
applied psychoanalysis, specifically Lacans notion of the
mirror stage, to his theory on spectatorship. For Lacan, the
mirror stage was the moment in a childs development,
usually between the age of six to eighteen months, when
they finally recognize themselves as different from the
world, i.e., the child recognizes that they are experiencing
the world through their own subjectiveness.
On the other side of the spectrum lies the cognitivist

approach. Instead of understanding the world through the

study of language and its signs and systems, cognitivists
seek to understand the world through processes of mental
representations. For cognitivists, there are certain
physiological and cognitive systems hard-wired into all
human beings, which come before any knowledge of
history, culture or identity. Bordwell calls these systems
contingent universals and they consist of simple
assumptions ranging from the assumption that natural
light falls from above to the understanding of a coherent
space within a film. Cognitivists also want to stray away
from the notion of applying a theoretical model and trying
to prove it through interpretation.
Now that their basic theoretical frameworks have been
explained, their respective notions of film spectator-ship
can be considered. Metz compared the spectators situation
while watching a film with the mirror stage, acknowledging
one difference: that with film the spectator does not get a
reflection of himself. He claims that since the spectator has
already experienced the real mirror stage, he is thus
able to constitute a world of objects without having to first
recognize himself within it; creating an all-perceiving
spectator. The spectator is not only all-perceiving but has
a dual knowledge as well: that what is being perceived is
imaginary (the film) and that he himself (the spectator) is
the one perceiving it. The spectator is also in the unique
position of receiving and releasing the film. He receives
the film, like the screen in the auditorium, but he also
releases it, like the projector, since it does not pre-exist
my entering the auditorium and I only need close my eyes
to suppress it." Metz states that the spectator identifies not
only with himself as look but also with the camera since
it looked at everything the spectator is now looking at first.
Metz divides these cinematic forms of identification, which
he distinguishes from regular identification, in two: primary
identification with the camera and ones own look and
secondary identification with characters within the filmic
world. In order to make sense of the film, the spectator

must simultaneously put himself in the position of the

character of the film so that he can accept and understand
the filmic world, but at the same time reject himself from
that position so that he can accept the fiction as symbolic.
Instead of believing that the spectator makes meaning out
of symbolism through an identification process with the
film, Carroll believes that films are emotively focused.
What he means is that film-makers emotionally organize
films in order to elicit different emotional states in the
spectator throughout the film. The spectator is
encouraged to adopt pro attitudes to certain
developments in the story and where these story
developments mesh with those preferences, the response
is likely to be euphoric; where they clashdysphoric." The
emotional response then leads to the emotive focus that
guides our attention to the events in the film. In the
process of eliciting this emotional response, the spectators
faculties of cognition and judgement are brought into
play." In order to analyse films then, research should be
focused on how films are emotively focused and if the
emotion desired is pertinent with actions of the film. The
cognitivist analysis disregards the positioning of the
spectator by the camera, instead emphasizing an active
spectator responding to the film emotionally.
These contrasting theories do share some similarities. Both
theories apply a theoretical model to their approaches in
analysing the spectator, Metz with Lacans mirror stage and
semiotics while Carroll creates his own theory based on
emotions. Understanding Lacans notion of the mirror stage
or how emotions work for Carroll is crucial to their
perspective views on spectator-ship. Both theorists also
believe that films are constructed in a certain way as to
create certain effects on the viewer. For Metz these effects
are different stages of belief as for Carroll they are different
emotions. They both believe that films are meticulously
constructed to carry out these effects that keep audiences
engaged. Even though they share some similarities in how

they construct their theoretical arguments, the theories are

opposed in the most fundamental aspect of how the mind
works: for semioticians language systems come first and
for cognitivists thinking comes first.
Both of these contrasting theories fall short in certain
aspects when analysing spectator-ship. As mentioned
before, both theorists set out a theoretical stage in which to
analyse the spectator but Metz is applying a non-cinematic
theory to film instead of creating a specifically cinematic
one. Carroll creates his theory of how films are structured
and their effects on spectators solely based on cinematic
phenomena. Carrolls account can also explain how and
why certain emotions are elicited in the spectator within
separate films and genres, while Metzs seems to only
account for our passion for perceiving films in general.
The cognitivist approach also has its shares of fall-backs,
for example, Carroll states that when looking at a horror
film like From Beyond from an analytic point of view
requires dissecting, so to say, the way in which the monster
has been designed to engender a horrified emotional
response from audiences." This sort of dissection, by
focusing solely on emotional responses, seems to restrict
analysis. Metzs theory of identification allows for a
spectator to think of the filmic world as symbolic and not
just as a phenomenon that produces certain emotions,
arriving at more interesting theories behind films. Neither
theory deals with what the spectator does while viewing
avant-garde or experimental films. A film like Peter
Kubelkas Arnulf Rainer does not provide room for any sort
of identification or emotional response.
Metz and Carrolls theories on spectatorship provide
different notions of how spectators experience a film. Metz
provides an account of a passive spectator who is
positioned by and identifies with the camera, while Carroll
portrays the spectator as active and responding to the
criterially prefocused filmic text.

http://www.slideshare.net/jseliab/session-11-auteur-theoryfilm-appreciation-course?qid=0969175c-36c8-420f-8425a8cda7a3add7&v=default&b=&from_search=10
The Apparatus Theory
Apparatus Theorists such as Jean-Louis Baudry claimed that
films technological characteristics, as well as the
conditions of spectator-ship (such as the darkness of movie
theatres and the silence and motionlessness of theatre
audiences), have inherent ideological effects.
~ Jean Louis Baudry
In book seven of The Republic, Plato talks about an
underground den full of people who have been chained
from birth and cannot even move their heads. There is a
wall opposite them where, because of a big fire that is
blazing in the distance higher up, they can see the
shadows of people passing that are thrown against the
wall. Plato believes that this is their reality; not flesh and
blood people but shadows. To them I said the truth would
be literally nothing but the shadows of the images When
the prisoner is eventually let out of the cave he will suffer
sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be
unable to see the realities of which in his former state had
been shadows. Plato goes on to say will he not fancy that
the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the
objects which are now shown to him? Far truer comes
the reply.
We can see how relevant Lacan and Platos comments are
for a psychoanalytic criticism concerned with a subconsciousness transitioning into false-consciousness. Does
cinema so often give us a false sense of mastery, and keep
us in an arrested state of development? Does it frequently
leave us believing the shadows are more real than the
reality? How much of a hold does cinema have over our
minds? In apparatus theory, proposed by Jean-Louis

Baudry amongst others, the cave becomes the cinema.

There are similarities between the bound prisoners
shackled to their chairs and the seating at a cinema. This
lack of motor ability allows for acceptance of what is real
by limiting reality to what is shown in front of them.
In Plato's cave theory the fire is 'at some distance higher
up', as he was aware that if it were directly behind the
prisoner's their own shadows would be shown on the wall in
front of them. This is similar to the screen of a puppet
show, a curtain at a theatre, a projector at a cinema.
It is remarkable that Plato in his attempt to show the locus
of what is known through the intellect, was lead to
construct an apparatus which will make it possible, so that
it would be capable of producing special effect through the
impression of reality that it communicates to the spectator.
The allegory of the cave is the text of a signifier of desire
which haunts the invention of the cinema and the history of
its invention.
Apparatus Theory & its Relation to Dreams
This image can be stretched further to dreaming and
Freud's theories of the interpretation of dreams. What are
the determining factors of a necessarily meta-psychological
order involving the construction and operation of the
psychical apparatus which makes it possible for a dream to
pass itself off as reality? Freud begins with sleep saying
that it is a revivescence of one's stay in the body of the
mother, certain conditions which it recreates: the rest
position, warmth and isolation which protects him from
excitement. This is a form of temporal regression in two
ways: regression of the libido back to a previous period of
hallucinatory satisfaction of desire and the regression of
the development of the self back to a primitive narcissism
which results in the egotistical nature of the dream as the
person who plays the main part of the dream scenes is
always the dreamer himself. A dream is an hallucinatory
psychosis of desire, a state in which mental perceptions are
taken for perceptions of reality.

His propositions:
taking into account the darkness of the movie theatre,
the relative passivity of the situation, the forced
immobility of the cine-subject and the effects which
result from the projection of the images, the cinematic
apparatus brings about a state of artificial regression,
back to an anterior phase which dreams and certain
pathological forms of our mental life have shown are
barely hidden. This desire to return to a previous state
may play a determining role in the pleasure cinema
brings. It also brings back a return to a relative
narcissism and even more towards a mode of relating
to reality which could be defined as enveloping and in
which the separation between one's body and the
exterior world is not well defined, a dream-scene
model found in the baby/breast-screen relationship.
It is important also to note the partial elimination of
the reality test. Undoubtedly, the means of cinematic
projection would keep the reality test intact when
compared to dreams and hallucinations as the subject
always has the choice to close his eyes or leave and
there is no way of changing or acting upon the object
of his perception as in a dream.
The cinematographic apparatus is unique in that it
offers the subject perceptions of a reality whose status
seem similar to that of representations experienced as
perception (dreams).
According to Freud, 'to desire initially must have been a
hallucinatory cathexis of the memory of satisfaction'. The
dream was a vestige of the subject's phylogenetic past and
the expression of a wish to have it again.
> Research about lucid dreaming and also the effect of 3D
movies or 4D, 5D etc perhaps gaming is even more so,
research thing about headset that projects image around
you.

The Knowledge of the Subject

The dreamer does not know he is dreaming, the cinemagoer knows he is at a cinema. So the cinema can only be
an impression of a reality. However the gap between the 2
states sometimes tends to diminish. At the cinema
affective participation, depending on the fiction of the film
and the spectator's personality can become very lively and
perceptual transference then increases by a degree for
very brief instances.
Perception and Hallucinations: Film & Dreams
Filmic perception is a real perception, it is not reducible to
an internal psychical process, it is true images and sound
capable of reaching other spectators as well whereas the
production of a dream consists of a series of operations
remaining from start to finish within the psychical
apparatus.
Each slackening in the full exercise of perceptual
transference corresponds to the weakening of sleep to a
certain manner or degree of waking. The degree of illusion
of reality is inversely proportional to that of wakefulness.
As hallucinatory wish fulfilment the fiction film fails more
often than the dream. This is because it is not hallucinatory
but relies on true perceptions which the viewer cannot
fashion to his own liking.
Degrees of Secondarisation
Another difference is that films follow a certain logic held
within the institution of a genre even the avantgarde/experimental films, whereas dreams are intelligible.
Film and daydreams are more similar due to wakefulness
being present and more of a logical order/story/diegetic
nature of the dream.
Christian Metz
"In order to discuss [films] critically we have to find ways of
defining . . . the nature of our involvement." V.F. Perkins

 no communication without identification

film language is more similar to day dreaming rather
than night dreaming
draws analogies between the cinematic experience
and the Imaginary Signifier:
voyeurism
fetishism
disavowal
biographic criticism; using the biography of the creator
to try and analyse the works of the artist, we can't rely
on information; the artistic works stand on their own
(trust the tale and not the teller)
differentiation between theatre and cinema
the interplay between presence and absence
theatre is a medium of presence because whatever
you see is present there, even if they are props they
are present in their physical state
film is a medium of absence (Baudry relations,
cinema is a medium of shadows absences) as in
film we only see an impression of what is being
represented
psycho-sexual representation in the Imaginary
Signifier (Jacques Lacan)
Lacanian psychoanalysis: mirror stage when a
baby first sees (18 months) itself it gains a notion
of power over the impression of what is not there,
hence representation of what is cinema A
Medium of Absent Presences
Lacanian mirror stage is how Metz draws an
analogy between how a baby behaves with his
mirror image and how people react with their
encounter with film (the strange medium of
shadows and absent presences)
The Filmic Visee
There exist many different filmic states, for example a critic
going to a cinema would put themselves in a more wakeful
state, into the work regime and so perceptual transference,

regression and degree of belief will be minimised even if

they go to the cinema for fun they may still keep this
mindset.
Voyeurism.
Film also exists as our product, the product of society which
consumes it, as an orientation of consciousness, whose
roots are unconscious.
At a movie theatre one is present in both senses. The
spectator keeps the film alive as to be watched is its sole
purpose. The film is exhibitionist but at the same time it is
not as there are several kinds of exhibitionism and
voyeurism.
True exhibitionism contains an element of triumph and is
always bi-lateral and is based on the play of reciprocal
identifications, on the conscious acceptance of the to-andfro movements from I to you.
A story according to Emile Benveniste's sense of the term
is always by definition a story from nowhere that nobody
tells but which nevertheless somebody receives (otherwise
it would not exist) so in a sense it is the receiver or rather
the receptacle who tells and at the same time it is not told
at all since the receptacle is only required to be a place of
absence.
Feminist film theory: Early feminist film scholars, such as
Molly Haskell and Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, focused
on stereotypes of women in Hollywood and art cinema
and drew attention to previously neglected women
filmmakers. Later scholars sought to describe
the patriarchal dynamics of cinematic spectatorship.
Laura Mulvey argued that classical Hollywood films invite a
masculinist gaze that aligns itself with active male
characters and voyeuristically looks at or fetishizes passive
female characters. According to Mary Ann Doane, female
spectators have few options: they may either empower
themselves (at the expense of their gender) by identifying
with the male protagonist or identify (masochistically) with

the female victim. Feminist theorists encouraged women

filmmakers to create alternative film aesthetics, which
Claire Johnston said should channel female desire, Laura
Mulvey said should destroy spectatorial (and hence sexist,
patriarchal) pleasure, and Luce Irigaray said should be
based on the unique properties of the female body and
feminine subjectivity.
Cultural studies: Cultural studies scholarship goes
beyond apolitical investigations of medium specificity and
film language and tries to situate film texts within
broader social, cultural, political, and industrial
networks of power. Rejecting previous theorists high-art
elitism and blindness to racial and sexual difference,
cultural scholars consider all aspects of popular culture
(such as daytime television, punk clothing, and hip-hop
music) as valid objects of study. Unlike apparatus theorists,
cultural scholars like Stuart Hall argue that spectatorship is
an active process of textual decoding. Cultural studies is
often concerned with the demographics and sites of
cinematic spectatorship, revealing how certain groups in
certain reception contexts and historical moments are
capable of reading films subversively, against the grain of
their dominant ideology. This approach has led to a
proliferation of queer, feminist, and racial reinterpretations
of classical and contemporary Hollywood films.
Cognitive theory: In contrast to psychoanalysis, cognitive
film theory tries to understand how audiences interpret
films in terms of rational, conscious processes.
Using Russian formalist terminology, David Bordwell
divides narrative into the syuzhet (the order in which the
narrative events are presented) and the fabula (the actual
chronological order of events). According to Bordwell,
spectators use the syuzhet to reconstruct the fabula in
their mindsan example of how meaning is created
through cognitive rather than emotional or unconscious
processes. Cognitive theory assumes that perception and
cognition are universal human characteristics, so it does
not take cultural or historical differences into account. This

approach puts weight on intellectual rather than emotional

aspects of watching film.
Elements of a film that take place within the world of the
films story are called diegetic. Elements of the film that
exist outside of that world (such as music heard by the
audience but not the characters in the film) are
calledextradiegetic or nondiegetic.
The profit motive driving Hollywood studios leads producers
to repeat, with some variation, formulas that prove
financially successful. This practice has led to the
establishment of familiar categories of films, known
as genres,some of which are first developed in literature
and then adapted for the screen. Some genres, like the
western and the screwball comedy, are quintessentially
American, while others, like the musical and the
melodrama, are popular around the world.
In the 1940/50s gangster films took on a darker film
noir style, with low key lighting, a claustrophobic
urban setting, a morally compromised protagonist,
and seductive deceptive femal characters known as
femme fatales