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How to read a movieByRoger Ebert on August 30, 2008

At left: Hitchcock's "Notorious." Bergman on strong

axis. Grant at left. Bergman lighter, Grant shadowed.Grant above, Bergman below. Movement towardlower right. The attention and pressure is on her.

I've mentioned from time to time the "shot at

a time" sessions I do at film festivals and

universities, sifting through a film with the

help of the audience. The e-mails I receive

indicate this is perceived as some kind of

esoteric exercise. Actually, it's something

anyone can do, including you, and you don't

need to be an expert, because the audience,

and the film itself, are your most helpful

collaborators. Of course it would be wise to research a film you hope to dismantle in public,

and be familiar with its director and context, but I believe the process in its pure form could

be applied to a film you've never even heard of. I want to tell you how.

This all began for me in about 1969, when I started teaching a film class in the University of

Chicago's Fine Arts program. I knew a Chicago film critic, teacher and booker named John

West, who lived in a wondrous apartment filled with film prints, projectors, books, posters

and stills. "You know how football coaches use a stop-action 16mm projector to study game

films?" he asked me. "You can use that approach to study films. Just pause the film and think

about what you see. You ought to try it with your film class."

I did. The results were beyond my imagination. I wasn't the teacher and my students weren't

the audience, we were all in this together. The ground rules: Anybody could call out "stop!"

and discuss what we were looking at, or whatever had just occurred to them. A couple of

years later, when I started doing shot-by-shots at the Conference on World Affairs at the

University of Colorado at Boulder, the conference founder, Howard Higman, described this

process as "democracy in the dark." Later he gave it a name: Cinema Interruptus. Perhaps it

sounds grueling, but in fact it can be exciting and almost hypnotic. At Boulder for more than

30 years, I made my way through a film for two hours every afternoon for a week, and the

sessions had to be moved to an auditorium to accommodate attendance that approached a

thousand.

One thing I quickly discovered was that even much smaller audiences can contain someone

who can answer any question. In "The Third Man," if a character spoke German, there would

be a German speaker. If a scene required medical knowledge, there would be a doctor. A

Japanese film at Boulder turned up Japanese speakers, experts on the society, students of the

director. There would be somebody who could tell you what a Ford truck could and couldn't

do. Or a rabbi, a physicist, an artist, a musician. When Criterion asked me to record a

commentary track on Ozu's "Floating Weeds," I reflected that I didn't know a fraction of what

Donald Richie or David Bordwell knew about Ozu (and Richie was already doing the film's

silent version). How to talk for two hours about the visuals of a film where every scene is a

single static shot? I took the film to Boulder, and together we discovered there was a richabundance of things to say.

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Of course you don't simply creep along and talk about what you're looking at. It helps to have

a grounding in basic visual strategy. When the Sun-Times appointed me film critic, I hadn't

taken a single film course (the University of Illinois didn't offer them in those days). One of

the reasons I started teaching was to teach myself. Look at a couple dozen New Wave films,

you know more about the New Wave. Same with silent films, documentaries, specific

directors.

I bought some books that were enormously helpful. The most useful was Understanding

Movies,by Louis D. Giannetti, then in its first edition, now in its 11th. He introduced me to

the concept that visual compositions have "intrinsic weighting." By that I believe he means

that certain areas of the available visual space have tendencies to stir emotional or aesthetic

reactions. These are not "laws." To "violate" them can be as meaningful as to "follow" them.

I have never heard of a director or cinematographer who ever consciously applied them. It

may be that intrinsic weighting is sort of hard-wired. I am not the expert to say. I can say that

I have been through at least 10 Hitchcock films and never found a single shot that doesn't

reflect them.

I already knew about the painter's "Golden Mean," or the larger concept of the "golden ratio."

For a complete explanation, see Wiki. To reduce the concept to a crude rule of thumb in the

composition of a shot in a movie: A person located somewhat to the right of center will seem

ideally placed. A person to the right of that position will seem more positive; to the left, more

negative. A centered person will seem objectified, like a mug shot. I call that position

somewhat to the right of center the "strong axis."

Now what do I mean by "positive" or "negative?" I mean that these are tendencies within the

composition. They are not absolutes. But in general terms, in a two-shot, the person on the

right will "seem" dominant over the person on the left. Does this apply even to films from

cultures that read right to left or top to bottom? From my treks through many Asian films,

yes, it seems to.

There are many other rules of thumb. I will outline some broadly, and if you're interested you

can examine them in films, or read about them in books by such as Giannetti or David

Bordwell (both often used as textbooks). They will not use the same terms, and by no means

do I imply they would agree with me; I am summarizing my own beliefs, based on hundreds

of shot-by-shot experiences over the years. But they are scrutinizing films with the same

intense curiosity, and that's the real point. Consider Bordwell, whose great book on Ozu uses

many panels of individual frames to illuminate a director who virtually never moved his

camera, and yet whose compositions are alive with visual strategy.

In simplistic terms: Right is more positive, left more negative. Movement to the right seems

more favorable; to the left, less so. The future seems to live on the right, the past on the left.

The top is dominant over the bottom. The foreground is stronger than the background, but

note well: Diagonals in a composition seem to "move" in the direction of the sharpest angle

they form, even though of course they may not move at all. Therefore, a composition could

lead us into a background that becomes dominant over a foreground. Symmetrical

compositions seem at rest. Movement is dominant over things that are still. Some films have

overall strategies. In Bertolucci, for example, the past often lives in left background, the

future in right foreground. Brighter areas tend to be dominant over darker areas, but far from

always: Within the context, you can seek the "dominant contrast," which is the area we are

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drawn toward. Sometimes it will be darker, further back, lower, and so on. It can be as

effective to go against intrinsic weightings as to follow them.

Now let me walk you through a single shot from Hitchcock's "Notorious." The situation:

Cary Grant, a U.S. agent, is in love with Ingrid Bergman, the daughter of a Nazi spy. He

recruits her to go undercover and seduce a Nazi (Claude Rains) who has fled to Rio and ispart of a plot. Consider that he has essentially called upon the woman he loves to live with

(i.e., sleep with) another man, as her patriotic duty. He is conflicted about this, resents it, is

jealous, begins to think of her as a slut ("notorious").

In the Rio office of U.S. intelligence, Grant's chief is positioned on the strong axis. Grant

enters and talks to him, standing on the right (positive). Bergman enters, and begins to

discuss her relationship with Rains. As she speaks, Grant walks to the left of the composition.

She continues. He turns his back to us. We all instinctively read this as

negative/rejecting/angry. Bergman goes into still more detail. Grant walks into the

background. Wow. Now the picture has the intelligence chief as the stable presence on the

strong axis, Bergman in the positive right foreground, Grant in the negative left background,and the "movement" from right front to left back, underlining the central emotional reality of

the film, which will inform all of Grant's behavior.

Of course I should employ quotation marks every time I write such words as positive,

negative, stronger, weaker, stable, past, future, dominant or submissive. All of these are

tendencies, not absolutes, and as I said, can work as well by being violated as by being

followed. Think of "intrinsic weighting" as a process that gives all areas of the screen

complete freedom, but acts like an invisible rubber band to create tension or attention when

stretched. Never make the mistake of thinking of these things as absolutes. They exist in the

realm of emotional tendencies. Often use the cautionary phrase, "all things being equal"--

which of course they never are.

You and those joining you will also find yourselves discussing color, lighting, shadows,

construction, characters, dialogue, acting, history, sources, influences, and messages both

obvious and buried. Anything and everything. It truly is a democracy in the dark. Everything

worth noticing on the screen will eventually be seen by somebody. For example, I had been

through "Citizen Kane" at least 30 times before I took it to the Savannah Film Festival, and

someone noticed a detail I had never seen before. I write about it here: [URL to come.]

Now you're on your own. DVDs make it so easy. Never be doctrinaire. Depend on the

audience. If you want to see the process in action, Jim Emerson, the editor of this site,

continues the tradition every April at Boulder. It's free and open the public, like the wholeconference, which is like nothing else I've ever experienced. Google the Conference on

World Affairs to get the dates.

"Notorious," "Floating Weeds" and "Citizen Kane" are all in my Great Movies collection.

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7CommentsBy Q. Le on August 30, 2008 11:46 AM

Do you suppose the right:left::positive:negative aesthetic of most films derives from a

subconscious thought of the right hand dominant over the left hand? When the thought first

popped up, I thought it was rather silly; but the more I read in your writing, the more I mulled

over the traditions of right- versus left-handedness. Varying between different cultures, itseems that left-handedness is either exotic, discouraged, or demonized - either way, it's

considered abnormal. For instance, my father is naturally left-handed, but was disciplined in

school to use his right hand (I am also left-handed, but was never forced into using my

weaker hand); another prime example would be the Satan, who is described to be left-handed,

thus stemming the tradition that left-handedness is the devil's hand and evil.

In that regard, perhaps the right-positive, left-negative aesthetic has been ingrained in our

subconscious for many generations that it is a "rule of thumb" in compositions, especially

movies. The same imagery of up-positive, down-negative is applicable to the concept of

heaven and hell, ascent and descent - the sort of intrinsic, inexplicable desire to touch what

we cannot reach rather than to sink into the depths of darkness.

Whatever the reason, it seems that the most successfully artistic endeavors are those which

pluck upon our innermost humanity which we cannot explain.

Ebert: I suspect our visual perceptions are innate even before we become aware of

handedness, and that heaven and hell got their locations via the same innate tendencies.

But what do I know? What I do know is: Someone reading this will inform us.

Commentators on a blog entry work just like the audience at a shot-by-shot session.

Someone always knows. (/b>

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By Greg DeSantis on August 30, 2008 12:22 PM

This is a fascinating topic, and I have found that Jennifer Van Sijll's Cinematic Storytelling is

a very useful book to help illustrate these ideas. I'm sure that this topic is covered in many

texts, but Van Sijll utilizes still shots from films and devotes a section to each single

storytelling concept, which helps to make things very clear.

I had never considered this shot-at-a-time style of watching, but will try it myself. Are there

films from the last few years that you would consider particularly valuable for this exercise?

Ebert: Maybe "No Country for Old Men."-------------

By Damian Sarcuni on August 30, 2008 12:29 PM

In regards to your comment about audience participation and knowledge: "Democracy in the

Dark". How wonderful that putting enough people together in a room eventually yields the

answers we are looking for. Why does this not work consistently in government bodies? Does

the addition of darkness (or anonymity, in the case of the internet) bring large groups to a

more pro-active state of mind? Can we dim the lights on congress and improve their

efficiency?

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By TC Candler on August 30, 2008 1:06 PM

The modern director, whose films demand that I notice such intricate composition, is Paul

Thomas Anderson. All five of his films seem to consciously apply these things. All five of

them are masterpieces. With these techniques widely explained and appreciated, how could

they not be used consciously by wise directors? It seems rather like a tool of cinema ratherthan a fortunate happenstance.

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By Blake Hyde on August 30, 2008 1:27 PM

I recently watched Tarkovsky's "Stalker" and was struck by some of the things you talk about

here. The concurrence of your post and my watching that film is serendipitous, as it helps me

put into words some of the things I thought about that film. You could use the entire movie as

an illustration of these points: as Writer and Professor follow the directions of Stalker, they

usually move into the foreground of the scene (following the thrown bolt, of course), while

Writer moves away from him on a the occasions when he is being obnoxious.

My favorite scene of the movie is a sequence of objects filmed underwater, a very deliberate

scene with a sense of progression: drugs, money, God, guns, a discarded bolt (guidance?).

An astounding movie, the first of Tarkovsky's I've seen.

I would agree, too, that No Country for Old Men bears study scene-by-scene, frame-by-

frame. It was easily the best and most carefully filmed movie I saw last year, in my opinion.

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By Blake Hyde on August 30, 2008 1:30 PM

Damian, I hesitate to discuss politics--it's such a negative influence on discussion--but

remember that movie dissections are essentially free of corrupting factors. There is no

money, no power changing hands when we say something about a movie. The same cannot

be said of the legislative process.

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By Don Tingle on August 30, 2008 1:50 PM

Hi Roger, I have often wondered what you meant by "Shot at a time" analysis. Have you

considered/examined who is actually responsible for the construction of shots using such

techniques? Is it the Director? The Story Board Artist? The DP (Cinematographer)? SetDesigner? Many directors use the same team for many movies so could it be that the director

seems to be the motivating force when his role was to pick the DP who had the eye for the

shots he likes?

I work with kids, teaching filmmaking workshops using home video equipment. I teach kids

to use the "Rule of Thirds" to help in placing the focus of attention of a scene. Kids get it

quickly. Sometimes parents seem baffled until after they see it demonstrated, then suddenly

they get an "Aha!" moment and often comment that they didn't understand why their personal

family photos were not very good until this moment.

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How long does it take to do your Shot at a time analysis for a single film? I'd like to try it as

an exercise with our local film co-op's monthly workshop. Is there one film that you could

recommend as a good way to help learn this process?

Thanks and best wishes,

Don Tingle

Ebert: I think the director and cinematographer work together, in varying degrees of

which one decides. In cases like Bergman and Nykvist, one of the greatest teams ever, I

almost imagine they are telepathic. You could start with "Notorious," or "The Third

Man"--lots of tilt shots, which imply that the world has lost its balance.

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