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 self-contained field: it borrows from the disciplines of philosophy, art theory, social science, cultural theory, psychology, literary theory, linguistics, economics, and political science

Classical Film TheoryMedium SpecificityEarly 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.

RealismRealist 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 facecould 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' KracauerThey believe that there is a natural affinity between the cinema and the recording and revealing of reality.

Kracauer's Photographic TheorySiegfried 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.

can be negated because if there is human involvement then automatically reality is altered. The 'reality' revealed by the camera must depend on the film-maker and that admission denies the absolute basis of Kracauer's realist position.

Only proposition that can't be argued with

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.

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 TheoryAndr Bazin preferred films that use depth of field and long takes to emphasize mise-en-scne, preserving the spatio-temporal 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 deep-focus 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 TheoryAuteurism 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 structuralismUmberto 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 specific-pragmatic 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: expression in art is said to resemble patterns of feelings.

The requirement of generality dealt with above.

The divergence thesisMechanical 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:excellence requirement: the idea that there is something that each medium does best

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 artCamera Positioningif 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 depththe 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 ImageThe 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 rhythmThus 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.

TransitionsFading 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.

PositioningThe 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 StripWe 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.

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!)

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.

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.

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.

Delimitation of the size of the imageApplications. 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).

Distance from the objectApplications. 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),

absence of space time continuumApplications: 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.)

Absence of spatial orientationApplications. a) Relativization of movement: static things move, or moving things stand still. b) Relativization of spatial coordinates (vertical, horizontal, etc.).

Lessening of depth perceptionApplications. a) Perspective alterations of size made more compelling. b) Perspective connections in the plane projection made more compelling.

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 CameraApplications. 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. RewindApplications. a) Reversal of the direction of movements. b) Reversal of events (fragments join to make a whole object).

13. AccelerationApplications. 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 motionApplications. 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, dissolvingApplications. 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 ExposureApplications.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.

Manipulation of focusApplications. 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

Mirror ImagesApplications. 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 Formconflict 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 filmMontage is an idea that arises from the collision of independent shotsThis 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:tonalover-tonalrhythmicmetricintellectual^ Find summaryThe Kuleshov EffectThree 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 TheoryThough 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 TheoryInfluenced 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 mis-recognizing 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 MetzIn 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.

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The Apparatus TheoryApparatus 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 sub-consciousness 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 DreamsThis 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 SubjectThe dreamer does not know he is dreaming, the cinema-goer 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 & DreamsFilmic 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 SecondarisationAnother difference is that films follow a certain logic held within the institution of a genre even the avant-garde/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 cinemathe 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 ViseeThere 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-and-fro 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 onstereotypesof women in Hollywood and art cinema and drew attention to previously neglected women filmmakers. Later scholars sought to describe thepatriarchaldynamics of cinematic spectatorship. Laura Mulvey argued that classical Hollywood films invite a masculinistgazethat 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 broadersocial, 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 anactiveprocess of textualdecoding.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. UsingRussian formalistterminology, David Bordwell divides narrative into thesyuzhet(the order in which the narrative events are presented) and thefabula(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 calleddiegetic.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 calledextradiegeticornondiegetic.

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 asgenres,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