Film theory is a set of scholarly approaches within the
academic discipline of
film or cinema studies that began in the 1920s by questioning the formal
essential attributes of
motion pictures; and that now provides conceptual frameworks for understanding
film
A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmospher ...
's relationship to
reality
Reality is the sum or aggregate of all that is real or existent within a system, as opposed to that which is only imaginary. The term is also used to refer to the ontological status of things, indicating their existence. In physical terms, re ...
, the other
arts, individual viewers, and
society
A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Soc ...
at large. Film theory is not to be confused with general
film criticism
Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films and the film medium. In general, film criticism can be divided into two categories: journalistic criticism that appears regularly in newspapers, magazines and other popular mass-media outle ...
, or
film history, though these three disciplines interrelate.
Although some branches of film theory are derived from
linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Ling ...
and
literary theory
Literary theory is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for literary analysis. Culler 1997, p.1 Since the 19th century, literary scholarship includes literary theory and considerations of intellectual history, mor ...
, it also originated and overlaps with the
philosophy of film.
History
Early theory, before 1945
French philosopher
Henri Bergson
Henri-Louis Bergson (; 18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941) was a French philosopherHenri Bergson. 2014. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 13 August 2014, from https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/61856/Henri-Bergson Le Roy, ...
's ''
Matter and Memory
''Matter and Memory'' (French: ''Matière et mémoire'', 1896) is a book by the French philosopher Henri Bergson. Its subtitle is ''Essay on the relation of body and spirit'' (''Essai sur la relation du corps à l’esprit''), and the work presen ...
'' (1896) anticipated the development of film theory during the birth of cinema in the early twentieth century. Bergson commented on the need for new ways of thinking about movement, and coined the terms "the movement-image" and "the time-image". However, in his 1906 essay ''L'illusion cinématographique'' (in ''L'évolution créatrice''; English: ''The cinematic illusion'') he rejects film as an example of what he had in mind. Nonetheless, decades later, in ''
Cinéma I and
Cinema II'' (1983–1985), the philosopher
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Louis René Deleuze ( , ; 18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volu ...
took ''Matter and Memory'' as the basis of his
philosophy of film and revisited Bergson's concepts, combining them with the
semiotics
Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the systematic study of sign processes ( semiosis) and meaning making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates something ...
of
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician and scientist who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism".
Educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for ...
. Early film theory arose in the
silent era
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, when ...
and was mostly concerned with defining the crucial elements of the medium.
Ricciotto Canudo was an early Italian film theoretician who saw cinema as "''plastic art in motion''", and gave cinema the label "''the Sixth Art''", later changed to "''the Seventh Art''".
In 1915,
Vachel Lindsay wrote a book on film, followed a year later by
Hugo Münsterberg. Lindsay argued that films could be classified into three categories: ''action films'', ''intimate films'', as well as ''films of splendour''.
According to him, the action film was ''sculpture-in-motion'', while the intimate film was ''painting-in-motion'', and splendour film ''architecture-in-motion''.
He also argued against the contemporary notion of calling films ''photoplays'' and seen as filmed versions of theatre, instead seeing film with ''camera-born'' opportunities. He also described cinema as ''hieroglyphic'' in the sense of containing symbols in its images. He believed this visuality gave film the potential for universal accessibility. Münsterberg in turn noted the analogies between cinematic techniques and certain mental processes. For example, he compared the
close-up
A close-up or closeup in filmmaking, television production, photography, still photography, and the comic strip medium is a type of shot (filmmaking), shot that tightly film frame, frames a person or object. Close-ups are one of the standard s ...
to the mind paying attention. The
flashback, in turn, was similar to
remembering. This was later followed by the
''formalism'' of
Rudolf Arnheim, who studied how techniques influenced film as art.
Among early French theorists,
Germaine Dulac brought the concept of ''
impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passa ...
'' to film by describing cinema that explored the malleability of the border between internal experience and external reality, for example through
superimposition. ''
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to ...
'' also had an influence on early French film culture. The term ''photogénie'' was important to both, having been brought to use by
Louis Delluc
Louis Delluc (; 14 October 1890 – 22 March 1924) was an Impressionist French film director, screenwriter and film critic.
Biography
Delluc was born in Cadouin in 1890. His family moved to Paris in 1903. After graduating from the university, h ...
in 1919 and becoming widespread in its usage to capture the unique power of cinema.
Jean Epstein
Jean Epstein (; 25 March 1897 – 2 April 1953) was a French filmmaker, film theorist, literary critic, and novelist. Although he is remembered today primarily for his adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's ''The Fall of the House of Usher'', he directe ...
noted how filming gives a "personality" or a "spirit" to objects while also being able to reveal "the untrue, the unreal, the 'surreal'". This was similar to
defamiliarization used by
avant-garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretica ...
artists to recreate the world. He saw the close-up as the essence of ''photogénie''.
Béla Balázs also praised the close-up for similar reasons. Arnheim also believed defamiliarization to be a critical element of film.
After the
Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution was a period of political and social revolution that took place in the former Russian Empire which began during the First World War. This period saw Russia abolish its monarchy and adopt a socialist form of government ...
, a chaotic situation in the country also created a sense of excitement at new possibilities. This gave rise to montage theory in the work of
Dziga Vertov and
Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (russian: Сергей Михайлович Эйзенштейн, p=sʲɪrˈɡʲej mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪtɕ ɪjzʲɪnˈʂtʲejn, 2=Sergey Mikhaylovich Eyzenshteyn; 11 February 1948) was a Soviet film director, scree ...
. After the establishment of the
Moscow Film School,
Lev Kuleshov set up a workshop to study the formal structure of film, focusing on editing as "the essence of cinematography". This produced findings on the
Kuleshov effect. Editing was also associated with the foundational
Marxist
Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialecti ...
concept of
dialectical materialism. To this end, Eisenstein claimed that "montage is conflict". Eisenstein's theories were focused on montage having the ability create meaning transcending the sum of its parts with a ''thematic effect'' in a way that
ideograms turned graphics into abstract symbols. Multiple scenes could work to produce themes (''tonal montage''), while multiple themes could create even higher levels of meaning (''intellectual montage''). Vertov in turn focused on developing
Kino-Pravda, ''film truth,'' and the
Kino-Eye
Kino-Eye (Anglophonic: Cine-Eye) is a film technique developed in Soviet Russia by Dziga Vertov. It was also the name of the movement and group that was defined by this technique. Kino-Eye was Vertov's means of capturing what he believed to be "i ...
, which he claimed showed a deeper truth than could be seen with the naked eye.
[Bulgakowa, Oksana. 2008. "The Ear against the Eye: Vertov's symphony." ''Kieler Beiträge zur Filmmusikforschung'' (2): 142-158. p. 142]
Later theory, after 1945
In the years after
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
, the French film critic and theorist
André Bazin argued that film's essence lay in its ability to mechanically reproduce reality, not in its difference from reality. This had followed the rise of ''
poetic realism'' in French cinema in the 1930's. He believed that the purpose of art is to preserve reality, even famously claiming that "The photographic image is the object itself". Based on this, he advocated for the use of
long takes and
deep focus
Deep focus is a photographic and cinematographic technique using a large depth of field. Depth of field is the front-to-back range of focus in an image, or how much of it appears sharp and clear. In deep focus, the foreground, middle ground, and b ...
, to reveal the ''structural depth'' of reality and finding meaning objectively in images. This was soon followed by the rise of
Italian neorealism.
Siegfried Kracauer was also notable for arguing that
realism
Realism, Realistic, or Realists may refer to:
In the arts
*Realism (arts), the general attempt to depict subjects truthfully in different forms of the arts
Arts movements related to realism include:
* Classical Realism
*Literary realism, a mov ...
is the most important function of cinema.
The
Auteur theory derived from the approach of critic and filmmaker
Alexandre Astruc, among others, and was originally developed in articles in ''
Cahiers du Cinéma'', a film journal that had been co-founded by Bazin.
François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut ( , ; ; 6 February 1932 – 21 October 1984) was a French film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film critic. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. After a career of more th ...
issued auteurism's manifestos in two ''Cahiers'' essays: "Une certaine tendance du cinéma français" (January 1954) and "Ali Baba et la 'Politique des auteurs'" (February 1955).
His approach was brought to American criticism by
Andrew Sarris in 1962. The auteur theory was based on films depicting the directors' own worldviews and impressions of the subject matter, by varying lighting, camerawork, staging, editing, and so on.
Georges Sadoul deemed a film's putative "author" potentially even an actor, but a film indeed collaborative.
Aljean Harmetz cited major control even by film executives.
[Aljean Harmetz, ''Round up the Usual Suspects'', p. 29.] David Kipen's view of screenwriter as indeed main author is termed ''
Schreiber theory''.
In the 1960s and 1970s, film theory took up residence in academia importing concepts from established disciplines like
psychoanalysis
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might ...
,
gender studies
Gender studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to analysing gender identity and gendered representation. Gender studies originated in the field of women's studies, concerning women, feminism, gender, and politics. The field n ...
,
anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...
,
literary theory
Literary theory is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for literary analysis. Culler 1997, p.1 Since the 19th century, literary scholarship includes literary theory and considerations of intellectual history, mor ...
,
semiotics
Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the systematic study of sign processes ( semiosis) and meaning making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates something ...
and
linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Ling ...
as advanced by scholars such as
Christian Metz.
However, not until the late 1980s or early 1990s did film theory ''per se'' achieve much prominence in American universities by displacing the prevailing humanistic,
auteur theory that had dominated cinema studies and which had been focused on the practical elements of film writing, production, editing and criticism.
[Weddle, David.]
Lights, Camera, Action. Marxism, Semiotics, Narratology: Film School Isn't What It Used to Be, One Father Discovers
" ''Los Angeles Times'', July 13, 2003; URL retrieved 22 Jan 2011. American scholar
David Bordwell
David Jay Bordwell (; born July 23, 1947) is an American film theorist and film historian. Since receiving his PhD from the University of Iowa in 1974, he has written more than fifteen volumes on the subject of cinema including ''Narration in ...
has spoken against many prominent developments in film theory since the 1970s. He uses the derogatory term "SLAB theory" to refer to
film studies based on the ideas of
Ferdinand de Saussure
Ferdinand de Saussure (; ; 26 November 1857 – 22 February 1913) was a Swiss linguist, semiotician and philosopher. His ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in both linguistics and semiotics in the 20th century. He is wide ...
,
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, , ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud", Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, and ...
,
Louis Althusser
Louis Pierre Althusser (, ; ; 16 October 1918 – 22 October 1990) was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École normale supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy.
Althusser ...
, and
Roland Barthes
Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western pop ...
.
Instead, Bordwell promotes what he describes as "
neoformalism" (a revival of
formalist film theory).
During the 1990s the digital revolution in image technologies has influenced film theory in various ways. There has been a refocus onto celluloid film's ability to capture an "indexical" image of a moment in time by theorists like
Mary Ann Doane
Mary Ann Doane (born 1952) is the Class of 1937 Professor of Film and Media at the University of California, Berkeley and was previously the George Hazard Crooker Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. She is a pioneer in the ...
, Philip Rosen and
Laura Mulvey who was informed by psychoanalysis. From a psychoanalytical perspective, after the Lacanian notion of "the Real",
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek (, ; ; born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian philosopher, cultural theorist and public intellectual. He is international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, visiting professor at New ...
offered new aspects of "the
gaze" extensively used in contemporary film analysis. From the 1990s onward the Matrixial theory of artist and psychoanalyst
Bracha L. Ettinger revolutionized
feminist film theory
Feminist film theory is a theoretical film criticism derived from feminist politics and feminist theory influenced by Second Wave Feminism and brought about around the 1970s in the United States. With the advancements in film throughout the years ...
. Her concept
The Matrixial Gaze, that has established a feminine gaze and has articulated its differences from the phallic gaze and its relation to feminine as well as maternal specificities and potentialities of "coemergence", offering a critique of
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts i ...
's and
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, , ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud", Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, and ...
's psychoanalysis, is extensively used in analysis of films by female authors, like
Chantal Akerman
Chantal Anne Akerman (; 6 June 19505 October 2015) was a Belgian film director, screenwriter, artist, and film professor at the City College of New York. She is best known for films such as ''Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles' ...
, as well as by male authors, like
Pedro Almodovar. The matrixial gaze offers the female the position of a subject, not of an object, of the gaze, while deconstructing the structure of the subject itself, and offers border-time, border-space and a possibility for compassion and witnessing. Ettinger's notions articulate the links between aesthetics, ethics and trauma. There has also been a historical revisiting of early cinema screenings, practices and spectatorship modes by writers Tom Gunning,
Miriam Hansen Miriam Hansen (28 April 1949 – 5 February 2011) was a film historian who made important contributions to the study of early cinema and mass culture.
Career
Born Miriam Bratu to Jewish parents, Arthur Egon Bratu and Ruth Bratu, in Offen ...
and Yuri Tsivian.
In ''Critical Cinema: Beyond the Theory of Practice'' (2011), Clive Meyer suggests that 'cinema is a different experience to watching a film at home or in an art gallery', and argues for film theorists to re-engage the specificity of philosophical concepts for cinema as a medium distinct from others.
Specific theories of film
See also
*
Cinematography
Cinematography (from ancient Greek κίνημα, ''kìnema'' "movement" and γράφειν, ''gràphein'' "to write") is the art of motion picture (and more recently, electronic video camera) photography.
Cinematographers use a lens to focu ...
*
Digital cinema
Digital cinema refers to adoption of digital technology within the film industry to distribute or project motion pictures as opposed to the historical use of reels of motion picture film, such as 35 mm film. Whereas film reels have to be sh ...
*
3D film
3D films are motion pictures made to give an illusion of three-dimensional solidity, usually with the help of special glasses worn by viewers. They have existed in some form since 1915, but had been largely relegated to a niche in the motion pic ...
*
Film
A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmospher ...
*
Film studies
Film studies is an academic discipline that deals with various theoretical, historical, and critical approaches to cinema as an art form and a medium. It is sometimes subsumed within media studies and is often compared to television studies.
...
*
Glossary of motion picture terms
*
Invisible auditor The invisible auditor model is a variation of the invisible witness model.
Overview
The invisible witness model was put forth by classical film theorists such as Hugo Münsterberg, V. Pudovkin, and André BazinJames Lastra, “Fidelity Versus ...
*
List of film periodicals
Film periodicals combine discussion of individual films, genres and directors with in-depth considerations of the medium and the conditions of its production and reception. Their articles contrast with film reviewing in newspapers and magazines whi ...
*
Narrative film
Narrative film, fictional film or fiction film is a motion picture that tells a fictional or fictionalized story, event or narrative. Commercial narrative films with running times of over an hour are often referred to as feature films, or feature ...
*
Philosophy of film
*
Psychology of film
The psychology of film is a sub-field of the psychology of art that studies the characteristics of film and its production in relation to perception, cognition, narrative understanding, and emotion. A growing number of psychological scientists an ...
References
Further reading
*
Dudley Andrew
James Dudley Andrew (born July 28, 1945) is an American film theorist. He is R. Selden Rose Professor of Film and Comparative Literature at Yale University, where he has taught since the year 2000. Before moving to Yale, he taught for thirty years ...
, ''Concepts in Film Theory'', Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1984.
*
Dudley Andrew
James Dudley Andrew (born July 28, 1945) is an American film theorist. He is R. Selden Rose Professor of Film and Comparative Literature at Yale University, where he has taught since the year 2000. Before moving to Yale, he taught for thirty years ...
, ''The Major Film Theories: An Introduction'', Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.
*
Francesco Casetti
Francesco Casetti (born April 2, 1947 in Trento, Italy) is an Italian naturalized US citizen film and television theorist. He is Sterling Professor of Humanities and Film and Media Studies at Yale University. He has been described as "the best ...
, ''Theories of Cinema, 1945–1990'', Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999.
*
Stanley Cavell
Stanley Louis Cavell (; September 1, 1926 – June 19, 2018) was an American philosopher. He was the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University. He worked in the fields of ethics, aesthetics, an ...
''The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film''(1971); 2nd enlarged ed. (1979)
*
Bill Nichols, ''Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary'', Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.
* ''The Oxford Guide to Film Studies'', edited by John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson,
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print book ...
, 1998.
* ''The Routledge Encyclopedia of Film Theory'', edited by Edward Branigan, Warren Buckland, Routledge, 2015.
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