8/6/2019 SP 472, Week 12, 2011

1/30

Critique What is cinema?

8/6/2019 SP 472, Week 12, 2011

2/30

Critique With D.W. Griffiths

Birth of a Nation, 1915,

came film criticism &theory

Realistic Film Theory

Formalistic Film Theory

Auteur Theory

Eclectic Film Theory

Historiography

8/6/2019 SP 472, Week 12, 2011

3/30

Critique Reviewers, Critics &

Theorists

Critics & Theorists areconcerned w/ the social

& political implications of

film as well as the

nature of the art form Theory is a grouping of

aesthetic

generalizations that

apply to different films in

different ways

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4/30

Critique Realist & Formalist

Theories

The Art

The Artist

The Audience

8/6/2019 SP 472, Week 12, 2011

5/30

Critique Realist & Formalist

Theories

The Art

The Artist

The Audience

8/6/2019 SP 472, Week 12, 2011

6/30

Critique Realism

Film as attempt to

capture externalreality as accurately

as possible

Camera records

not expressive Subject over

technique

Grapes of Wrath, 1940 & Dorothea Lange photo

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Critique How films reflect external

reality

Emphasis on ordinary

people laborers, factoryworkers or real people

Compassion refusal to

pass moral judgments

Emotions over abstract ideas

Greed & Hotel Rwanda

8/6/2019 SP 472, Week 12, 2011

8/30

Critique Formalist film theory

Cinema is possible

because it is unlikereality the camera

is not the human eye

Metropolis & Transformers

8/6/2019 SP 472, Week 12, 2011

9/30

Critique Patterns in mise en

scne

Visual & aural motifs

8/6/2019 SP 472, Week 12, 2011

10/30

Critique Patterns in mise en

scne

Visual & aural motifs

8/6/2019 SP 472, Week 12, 2011

11/30

Critique Stylized dialogue

Symbolic sounds

Reservoir Dogs

8/6/2019 SP 472, Week 12, 2011

12/30

Critique Too many

exceptions for

theories to beabsolute

Amlie & Nosferatu

8/6/2019 SP 472, Week 12, 2011

13/30

Critique Auteur Theory

Mid-1950s French

theorists: AndreBazin, the high

priest of realism

begat Truffaut,

Godard & French

New Wave and the

dominance of the

director and his

vision of reality

8/6/2019 SP 472, Week 12, 2011

14/30

Critique With auteurs, its not

the subject or story

but how its told Still a dominant

theory in film

criticism

Inglorious Basterds

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15/30

Critique Eclectic:

1.selecting what

appears to be bestin various doctrines,

methods, or styles

2 : composed of

elements drawnfrom various

sourcesKill Bill, Vol. 1

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16/30

Critique Eclecticism rejects

the notion that one

theory fits all All reaction is

personal and thus

subjective

Pauline Kael vs

Andrew Sarris

8/6/2019 SP 472, Week 12, 2011

17/30

8/6/2019 SP 472, Week 12, 2011

18/30

Critique Film as Art

Judged on artistic

richness Film & Technology

Film through

inventions &

machinery

Stalker & Avatar

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19/30

Critique Film & Economics

Film is expensive and

development is oftendetermined by economics

like Hollywoods Studio

System & Vertical

Integration

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20/30

Critique Production,

distribution and

exhibition allconsolidated under

one entity - Vertical

Integration

maximized profitslike manufacturing

8/6/2019 SP 472, Week 12, 2011

21/30

Critique Block or Blind

booking

Owned theatres Monopoly

System of

manufacture

Front officeassigned personnel

8/6/2019 SP 472, Week 12, 2011

22/30

Critique Film as Social History

Collective sentiment

during a period of time Film as reflection of the

audience

Bonnie & Clyde

8/6/2019 SP 472, Week 12, 2011

23/30

Critique Different

approaches lead to

differentinterpretations of the

same text

uno

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24/30

Critique Italian Neo-realism

considered a high

point of realistic filmtheory applied

Post WWII response

to Italys Fascist

years and thehardship and

poverty of the post-

war years

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25/30

Critique Neo-realism

avoidance of neatly

plotted stories documentary visual

style

the use of actual

locations rather thanstudio sets

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26/30

Critique Neo-realism

use of non-

professional actors conversational

speech

avoidance of artifice

in editing & camerawork

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27/30

Critique Open City, I

Vitelloni, La Terra

Trema

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28/30

Critique Roberto Rossellini,

Federico Fellini,

Luchino Viscontiand Vittorio De Sica

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Critique La Strada, 1954

Dir. By Federico Fellini

(1920-1993) withGuilietta Masina,

Anthony Quinn &

Richard Basehart,

music by Nino Rota

First Oscar ever forBest Foreign Language

Film

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Critique Breaks with Neo-realism as, while the

characters are poor, they are not

ordinary - adds an element of the

fantastic to the everyday

Based on characters from his childhoodin Northern Italy

Fellinis films include La Dolce Vita, 8

*, IVitelloni, Nights of Cabiria*, Juliet

of the Spirits, Il Bidone, Amarcord*,

Casanova

I always direct the same film. I can'tdistinguish one from another."

In the 5th edition of 1001 Movies You

Must See Before You Die, 7 of Fellini's

films are listed

*Oscar, Best Foreign Language Film