Film - Paper Answers

***The Question is in the Word Doc.***

Scene Analysis Essay

(at least 3 full pages double-spaced)

In this essay assignment, you will choose a key scene in one of the films we have watched so far in order to produce a scene analysis of this moment in the film. It is up to you which film and which scene to write about in your paper – recall the textbook’s definition of a film “scene” as

“one or more shots that depict a continuous space and time.”

At the beginning of your essay, it would be effective to first briefly introduce the scene that you will examine and to explain why you think it is significant to the film as a whole. Then, provide a detailed analysis of the cinematic techniques used in this scene: in your essay, you are required to accurately identify and apply at least four terms for film techniques from our textbook – each should be set in boldface type within your essay and discussed in respect to this particular scene. The scene’s stylistic techniques should then be related to the film’s narrative and its main themes.

Your essay should not just summarize your chosen scene or restate the film’s events. Instead, the crucial part of your essay is to put forward an argument on how the stylistic features of this scene contribute to the film’s themes, tone, and effect on viewers. No research should be conducted for your essay – your ideas must be supported by evidence from this specific scene in the film.

Closely rewatching this scene, and any other relevant moments in the film, will figure into your interpretive process. Additionally, reviewing our readings (the textbook) would be helpful as you start planning your essay.

———————————————–

-As per MLA style, use Times New Roman 12-point font with 1-inch margins on all sides.

-No works cited list is required, and no outside research should be conducted for this essay.

-Review our readings – but no need to quote from them, as the focus should be on your analysis.

-Please be sure to give your essay a title that reflects your take on your chosen scene and film.

-The page length for this essay is three full pages double-spaced, up to four pages maximum.

-The Scene:

(This video is helpful:

)

****USE ATTACHED FILES ONLY****

Adapted from http://wire.rutgers.edu/p_reading_film.html By Holly Blackford, Rutgers University

And Reading In The Dark by John Golden

The Basics of How to
Read a Film

Films can be read like texts. Their images should be unpacked just as we would unpack the
imagery in a written passage. Think carefully about how visual or aural (sound) tools enact,
reshape, change, or critique an author’s textual expressions.

Framing: What is in a shot? What is excluded? What is centered?

 Close-up: takes up majority of the frame
 Medium Shot: people seen from the waist up
 Long Shot: taken from a distance, shows the full subject and surrounding

environment
 Establishing Shot: sets the scene

Depth of Focus: What is in focus and what is blurry? Focus creates foreground and
background; it can create relationships between objects and/or characters within the shot.

 Soft focus: slightly out of focus, slightly blurry
 Rack focus: shifting the focus from one subject to another without cutting the scene
 Deep focus: foreground and background are equally in focus

Camera Angle: Linked with the shot’s size, camera angle creates focal points. Is the
camera looking upward, downward, or level? The figure in the shot is manipulated by the
camera angle (aggrandized or diminished). Camera angle indicates point of view, much like
the narrator. Is the camera acting as the eyes of the character (first person narration) or as
the eyes of the audience (omniscient narrator)?

 Low angle: camera is below the subject looking up
 High angle: camera is above subject looking down
 Eye level: camera is even with character’s eyes
 Canted angle: camera is tilted in relation with the horizon

Camera Movement:
How does the camera shift to change frame,
depth of focus, the size of the shot, or the camera
angel? Movement affects point of view and
viewer equilibrium. It can be lyrical or turbulent,
slow or fast-paced, disorienting or “grounded,”
creating psychological moods in the viewer.

http://wire.rutgers.edu/p_reading_film.html

Adapted from http://wire.rutgers.edu/p_reading_film.html By Holly Blackford, Rutgers University
And Reading In The Dark by John Golden

Lighting: What is lit and what is not? Is the lighting harsh or soft? Are there shadows?
What colors are highlighted? Light/shadow and color interact to produce psychological and
symbolic effects.

Sound: Sounds add important, yet often devalued, emotional components to film.
Frequently certain characters will have musical themes and aural associations that can be
made quite apart from the visual.

 Diegetic: sounds are natural to the scene (ambient noise, character dialogue)
 Non-diegetic: sound that cannot be heard by the characters and only by the

audience

Scene Design: Where is the scene? How is the scene constructed? What visual strategies
are being used to create atmosphere or develop characters, plot, et.

Editing: What is the rhythm of the editing in a particular scene-long and lyrical, or short
and clipped? Does the rhythm speed up or slow down? How are the scenes connected-by
cutting, by dissolving, by fading, by blackout? Often one thing will dissolve into another,
creating a symbolic link.

 Fade: scene fades to black or white
 Cut: one scene transitions to another with a hard “cut”
 Dissolve: an image or scene fades into another
 Flashback: scene change represents a passage of time – usually accompanied by a

change in lighting, music, sound, voice over, color scheme, etc.
 Crosscutting: cut to action that is happening simultaneously (usually happens more

than once)
 Eye line match: a shot of a person looking, then cut to what he or she saw, followed

by a cut back for reaction.

Miscellaneous:

 Does the film use slow or fast motion at key moments?
 How do figures move within a frame (sometimes a character will take another’s

place, symbolically showing us that he/she is taking over the other’s space)?
 What other sound effects are used?
 Is there a voiceover?
 Do things happen offstage?
 How does the film gesture to the author?
 Are there cameo appearances?
 Is the director offering homage (an honorable wink) to another film?

http://wire.rutgers.edu/p_reading_film.html

Description
The front cover shows the name of the book, the edition, and the logo of
Macmillan Learning at the top. Below, the cover photo shows the back
view of a man standing at a doorway. In-built shelves on either side and
above the door display a range of glasses and crockery. The authors’
names are printed below the cover photo.

Bring your film experiences to life.
Description
The inside front cover shows three movie stills along with a text in the top
portion.

The heading reads, “Bring your film experiences to life.” The first movie
still shows a man in uniform, along with a teenager in a forest. The man
wears the Nazi symbol on his uniform. The second movie still shows a
man walking down a narrow street with buildings on either side. The third
movie still shows a young woman standing on a small hill on a sunny day.
The accompanying text reads, “From I MAX-sized screens to streaming
on tablets, there are more ways than ever to experience movies. The
Film Experience is the perfect guide to understanding the full scope of
this versatile, evolving medium. No matter how you watch them, The Film
Experience will change the way you look at movies.” The image credits
read, “Copyright 2019 C J E N M Corporation, Barunson E and A All
Rights Reserved.”
Text alongside the logo of LaunchPad reads as follows. LaunchPad Puts
The Film Experience in Motion
LaunchPad is an online platform that contains
(An e-book symbol) the full e-book of The Film Experience, Sixth Edition,
plus additional e-readings that go beyond the print text
(A checkbox; checked) new LearningCurve adaptive quizzing for each
chapter, which helps students practice and master key concepts
(A play button) a wealth of clips from new and classic films, each
accompanied by thought-provoking questions from the book authors.
The bottom portion shows a screenshot of a page titled, “Technology in
Action.” The text reads as follows. The Changing Technologies of Film
Promotion
The history of cinema is, in part, a history of changing technologies, and
the art and business of film promotion and marketing have continually
changed over time along with those technologies. In the first decades of
the twentieth century, the movies moved rapidly from a vaudevillian

novelty to an important institution within the cultural mainstream.
Supporting this cultural shift, traditional print media (including
newspapers, posters, and fan magazines) began to celebrate new films
and stars as a part of a new and exciting literacy, a way of seeing the
world in tune with the energies of the emerging twentieth century.
Photoplay magazine appeared in 1911, just as the Hollywood star system
was beginning to emerge as a major promotional strategy. This magazine
attracted passionate readers and moviegoers to stories about upcoming
films and about the public and private lives of directors and actors. Such
publications broadened the reach of film promotion to the growing middle
class and assimilated the new film arts into literary and journalistic media,
bridging a cultural past and a cultural present [Figure 1.21a]. Figure
1.21a shows a cover page of Photoplay magazine. The caption reads,
Photoplay magazine cover (February 1931). Magazines and newspapers
welcomed the new art of cinema through traditional journalistic vehicles.
Transcendental Graphics/Archive Photos/Getty Images.
As promotional technologies expanded through the mid-twentieth century
to include radio and television, film studios immediately took advantage
of the broad markets reached by these outlets. As audio and visual
media, radio and television allowed potential audiences to see and hear
the actors, music, and images being promoted in advance of the films
themselves. For instance, a ninety-second radio ad for Superman the
Movie (1978) alternated between voiceover narration quoting the praise
of critics (“a super hit!”), the film’s musical score, and pieces of lively
dialogue (“the problem with men of steel is that there’s never one around
when you want one”). Both radio and television became ubiquitous
promotional vehicles that integrate sound and (in the case of television
ads) images to draw viewers into theaters [Figure 1.21b]. Figure 1.21b
shows a photo of Joan Collins, and the caption reads, “Television
promotion (1960). Television and radio made stars like Joan Collins
(pictured here) come alive as a new form of promotion. C B S Photo
Archive/C B S/Getty Images.”

More recently, the internet brought another major technological change in
film promotion. Today, many marketing campaigns encourage interactivity
and direct involvement from potential viewers, teasing mysteries and
unexpected surprises intended to boost word of-mouth engagement. The
pioneering example of internet marketing was The Blair Witch Project
(1999), a low-budget horror film that generated excitement through an
immersive viral campaign. Over several months prior to its release, the
film’s distributors released realistic “newsreel” footage online that made
the plot of the film seem believable, to the point where potential viewers
actually debated whether the film was fiction or documentary. Due to its
commercial and critical success, The Blair Witch Project has become a
model for subsequent viral marketing campaigns, illustrating the extent to
which promotional technologies impact our film experience [Figure
1.21c]. Figure 1.21c shows a poster for missing people, and the caption
reads, “The Blair Witch Project (1999). Today the internet often makes
promotion part of an interactive engagement with viewers. William
Thomas Cain/Hulton Archive/Getty Images.”

Description
New Visuals and Examples Throughout the Book
With hundreds of images, The Film Experience visually reinforces all the
major techniques, concepts, and film traditions discussed in the text with
eye-catching examples. New part-opening and chapter-opening images

cover films from cinema’s early years to today. Contemporary additions
include Bohemian Rhapsody, Dunkirk, Free Solo, Jojo Rabbit, Little
Women, Parasite, Roma, and Us alongside classics like Touch of Evil,
Midnight Cowboy, The Shining, In the Mood for Love, and many more.
Chapter 1
Encountering Film
From Preproduction to Exhibition
Between 2013 and 2018, Ryan Coogler directed three very different
films: Fruitvale Station (2013), Creed (2015), and Black Panther (2018).
Although all three feature Michael B. Jordan and share important
questions about racial identity and cultural violence, the production,
distribution, and exhibition of the three films illustrate how films, even by
the same director, can be shaped by extremely different institutional
histories that in turn shape our understanding of them.
Based on actual events that occurred in 2008 in California, Fruitvale
Station is a small but intense drama about an African American man
mistakenly shot and killed by a transit policeman. When the film’s
theatrical release in July 2013 coincided with the acquittal of the police
officer who killed a young, unarmed African American man in Florida,
Fruitvale Station became part of larger conversations, still ongoing, about
justice in the streets of America.
Creed traveled a different path. This franchise film inherited the whole
history of the Rocky series, which focused on star Sylvester Stallone’s
character as a working-class boxer. In Creed, Rocky, an older and wiser
man, trains the son of his old rival. A more formulaic film than Fruitvale
Station, it appealed to both African American and broader audiences and
became a box-office success.

Finally, as part of the popular Marvel Cinematic Universe film series,
Black Panther ramped up its production values and its financial and
cultural success. The film — about superhero T’Challa’s fight to save the
fictional African nation of Wakanda — won three Academy Awards and
grossed over $1.3 billion worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing
movie in history with a black director and a majority-black cast.
As these three disparate films suggest, film production, distribution, and
exhibition shape our encounters with movies, and these aspects of film
are in turn shaped by how movies are received by audiences.
Proven Learning Tools That Foster Critical Viewing and Analysis
The Film Experience offers a great array of learning tools that have been
updated for this edition, including
new Viewing Cues in every chapter
in-depth Film in Focus essays, including new ones on films like A Quiet
Place and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
History Close Up boxes that advance a conversation about how film
history interacts with contemporary film culture
the most in-depth coverage of writing about film in any introductory film
textbook
History Close Up
Oscar Micheaux
One of the most important rediscovered figures in film history is the
African American novelist, writer, producer-director, and impresario Oscar
Micheaux (right), who in 1918 directed his first feature film, The
Homesteader, an adaptation from his own novel. Micheaux owned and
operated an independent production company from 1918 to 1948,

producing more than forty feature films on extremely limited budgets,
most of which have been lost. Reusing footage and working with
untrained actors, he fashioned a distinctly non-Hollywood style whose
“errors” can be interpreted as an alternative aesthetic tradition. His most
controversial film, Within Our Gates (1920) (discussed later in this
chapter), realistically portrays the spread of lynching and was threatened
with censorship in a period of race riots. Later, in Body and Soul (1925),
Micheaux teamed up with actor, singer, and activist Paul Robeson in a
powerful portrait of a corrupt preacher. Paradoxically, efforts made in the
1940s to persuade Hollywood to produce more progressive
representations of African Americans helped put an end to the
independent tradition of “race movies,” and Micheaux released his last
film, The Betrayal, in 1948.

SIXTH EDITION

THE FILM EXPERIENCE
An Introduction
Timothy Corrigan
University of Pennsylvania
Patricia White
Swarthmore College

For Bedford/St. Martin’s
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Cover Image: © 2019 CJ ENM CORPORATION, BARUNSON E&A ALL
RIGHTS RESERVED

Copyright © 2021, 2018, 2015, 2012 by Bedford/St. Martin’s
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
except as may be expressly permitted by the applicable copyright
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For information, write: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 75 Arlington Street,
Boston, MA 02116
ISBN 978-1-319-32423-0 (mobi)
Acknowledgments
Art acknowledgments and copyrights appear on the same page as
the art selections they cover.

This book is dedicated to Kathleen and Lawrence Corrigan, to
Marian and Carr Ferguson, and to Max Schneider-White.

About the Authors
Timothy Corrigan is a professor emeritus of cinema and media
studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His other books include
New German Film: The Displaced Image (Indiana UP); The Films of

Werner Herzog: Between Mirage and History (Routledge); Writing about
Film (Longman/Pearson); A Cinema without Walls: Movies and Culture
a�er Vietnam (Routledge/Rutgers UP); Film and Literature: An
Introduction and Reader (Routledge); Critical Visions in Film Theory:
Classical and Contemporary Readings (Bedford/St. Martin’s), with
Patricia White and Meta Mazaj; American Cinema of the 2000s
(Rutgers UP); Essays on the Essay Film (Columbia UP), with Nora M.
Alter; and The Essay Film: From Montaigne, A�er Marker (Oxford UP),
winner of the 2012 Katherine Singer Kovács Award for the
outstanding book in film and media studies. He has published essays
in Film Quarterly, Discourse , and Cinema Journal, among other
collections, and is also an editor of the journal Adaptation and a
former editorial board member of Cinema Journal. In 2014, he
received the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Award for
Outstanding Pedagogical Achievement.

Patricia White is professor and chair of film and media studies at
Swarthmore College. She is the author of Women’s Cinema/World
Cinema: Projecting Twenty-first Century Feminisms (Duke UP) and
Uninvited: Classical Hollywood Cinema and Lesbian Representability
(Indiana UP). Her essays have appeared in journals including

Camera Obscura, Cinema Journal, Film Quarterly , and Screen, and in
books including A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema, Out in Culture ,
and The Routledge Companion to Cinema and Gender. She is coeditor
with Timothy Corrigan and Meta Mazaj of Critical Visions in Film
Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings (Bedford/St. Martin’s). She
is a member of the editorial collective of the feminist film journal
Camera Obscura. She serves on the board of the feminist distributor
and media organization Women Make Movies and the editorial
board of Film Quarterly.

Preface
In our culture, movies have become a near-universal experience,
even as their delivery methods have expanded and changed.
Whether watching the newest Star Wars adventure with a packed
crowd, viewing Academy Award–winner Parasite (2019), or catching
up with classics or old favorites in our homes, we all have
experienced the pleasures that movies can bring. The film
experience can begin with journeying to imaginary worlds,
witnessing recreations of history, observing stars in familiar and
unfamiliar roles, and exploring the laughter, thrills, or emotions of
different genres. Understanding the full depth and variety of these
experiences, though, requires more than just initial impressions.
This book aims to help students learn the languages of film and
synthesize those languages into a cohesive knowledge of the
medium that will, in turn, enhance their movie watching. The Film
Experience: An Introduction offers readers a serious, comprehensive
introduction to the art, industry, culture, and experience of movies —
along with digital tools to bring that experience to life and help
students master course material.
As movie fans ourselves, we believe that the complete film
experience comes from understanding both the formal and cultural
aspects of cinema. Knowing how filmmakers use the familiarity of
star personas, for example, can be as valuable and enriching as

understanding how a particular editing rhythm creates a specific
mood. The Film Experience builds on formal knowledge and cultural
contexts to ensure that students gain a well-rounded ability to
engage in critical analysis. The sixth edition is better equipped than
ever to meet this challenge with a renewed focus on the changing
technologies of film, including an extensively revised chapter on
animated and experimental media (Chapter 9), a new Technology in
Action feature that helps students understand how technology has
influenced film form and film culture, and better-than-ever digital
support in LaunchPad, our online course platform (learn more at
launchpadworks.com). LaunchPad for The Film Experience now
includes the full e-book, new video clips with discussion questions
that bring cinematic concepts to life, and LearningCurve adaptive
quizzing to help students practice and master key concepts from the
book. The learning tools we have created help students make the
transition from movie fan to critical viewer, allowing them to use
the knowledge they acquire in this course to enrich their movie-
watching experiences throughout their lives.

http://launchpadworks.com/

The Best Coverage of Film’s Formal
Elements
We believe that comprehensive knowledge of film practices and
techniques allows students a deeper and more nuanced
understanding of film meaning. Going beyond mere descriptions of
the nuts and bolts of film form, The Film Experience highlights how
formal elements like cinematography, editing, and sound can be
analyzed and interpreted within the context of a film as a whole —
formal studies made even more vivid by our suite of film clips in
LaunchPad.
In choosing our text and video examples, we draw from the widest
variety of movies in any introductory text, demonstrating how
individual formal elements can contribute to a film’s larger
meaning. We understand the importance of connecting with
students through films they may already know, and we have added
new examples referring to recent films like Jojo Rabbit (2019), Little
Women (2019), Parasite (2019), A Quiet Place (2018), Spider-Man: Into
the Spider-Verse (2018), Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker
(2019), and Us (2019). We also feel that it is our responsibility to help
students understand the rich variety of movies throughout history,
utilizing classics like The Jazz Singer (1927), Citizen Kane (1941), Touch
of Evil (1958), Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and The Godfather (1972), as
well as a wealth of experimental, independent, and international
films.

Fully Encapsulating the Culture of Film
In addition to a strong foundation in film form, knowledge of the
nature and extent of film culture and its impact on our viewing
experiences is necessary for a truly holistic understanding of
cinema. One of the pillars of The Film Experience story has always
been its focus on the relationship among viewers, movies, and the
industry. Throughout, the book explores how these connections are
shaped by the social, cultural, and economic contexts of films
through incisive discussions of such topics as the influence of the
star system, the marketing strategies of indies versus blockbusters,
and the multitude of reasons that we are drawn to some films over
others. That discussion continues in this new edition with additional
emphasis on how the medium’s history informs the ways we watch
movies today.

New to This Edition
In response to reviewer feedback, we have overhauled The Film
Experience’s coverage of technology and animation. As ever, The Film
Experience is the best textbook at representing today’s film culture —
and in this edition, we have renewed our focus on technology. With
an extensively revised Chapter 9 and a new Technology in Action
feature in every chapter, we show how changes in technology have
influenced film form and film culture. Additionally, this edition of
The Film Experience can be packaged with LaunchPad, which for the
first time contains the full e-book and LearningCurve adaptive
quizzing.
Technology in Action Places Current Trends in Historical
Context
Every chapter now includes a full-page Technology in Action feature
— some of which are supplemented by video activities in LaunchPad
— and each explores how technology in a certain area, like
cinematography or film sound, has changed over time. Today,
technological changes in film are rapid and far-reaching. Over the
last two decades, video stores have gone from a major segment of
the industry to virtually nonexistent, while in-home streaming
services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video have emerged as the
most common way that many of us experience film. Other changes,
like theaters’ transition to digital projection and the resurgence of

3D film, are equally impactful. The Technology in Action feature
helps students understand these and other changes in a historical
context, revealing that film technology has always been evolving and
that these changes have always affected the culture, exhibition, and
experience of film.
A Heavily Revised Chapter 9 on Animation and
Experimental Media
Our pre-revision reviewers requested more coverage of animated
film, and we have provided it in this revised chapter. Chapter 9 now
covers the history, form, technologies, and theory of both animated
and experimental film, providing an integrated look at these topics.
LaunchPad for The Film Experience
The Film Experience goes further with LaunchPad, our online
platform. LaunchPad contains
the full e-book of The Film Experience, Sixth Edition, plus
additional e-readings that go beyond the print text
LearningCurve adaptive quizzing, which helps students practice
and master key concepts in each chapter of the book

numerous movie clips, video essays, discussion questions, and
more — perfect for interactive learning
Bringing print and digital together, the Viewing Cue feature in the
margins of each chapter directs students to clips of both classic and
contemporary films available online in LaunchPad. A dozen new
clips have been added for the sixth edition, all accompanied by
thought-provoking discussion questions.
LaunchPad also includes many additional Film in Focus features not
available in the print book. The LaunchPad platform makes it easy
to assign readings from the e-book, videos, and LearningCurve
activities. Access to LaunchPad for The Film Experience can be
packaged with the book or purchased on its own. Learn more at
launchpadworks.com.
New Examples Enhance the Strongest Art Program
Available
Each generation of students that takes the introductory course (from
eighteen-year-old first-year students to returning adults) is familiar
with its own recent history of the movies. Hence, we have updated
this edition with a number of new examples that reflect the diverse
student body — Hollywood blockbusters such as Avengers: Endgame
(2019), Ready Player One (2018), and Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of
Skywalker (2019); independent fare like Booksmart (2019) and The

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Dead Don’t Die (2019); and international films like Honeyland (2019),
Pain and Glory (2019), and Parasite (2019).

Proven Learning Tools Foster Critical
Viewing and Analysis
The Film Experience transforms students from movie buffs to critical
viewers by giving them the help they need to translate their movie
experiences into theoretical knowledge and analytical insight. Our
host of learning tools includes the following:
Chapter-opening vignettes place students inside a film. Each
compelling vignette, many of them new to this edition, draws
from actual scenes in a real movie to connect what students
know as movie fans to key ideas in the chapter’s discussion. For
example, Chapter 1 opens with a contrast between filmmaker
Ryan Coogler’s projects Fruitvale Station (2013), Creed (2015), and
Black Panther (2018), illustrating the different scopes, scales, and
frames of reference for contemporary filmmaking.
Film in Focus essays in each chapter provide close analyses of
specific films, demonstrating how particular techniques or
concepts inform and enrich those films. For example, a new
feature in Chapter 6 analyzes how sound — its use and its
absence — in A Quiet Place (2018) creates emotional and visceral
effects.
A focus on history, including History Close Up boxes, shows
students how film history interacts with contemporary film
culture. The Film Experience continues to provide better and
more inclusive coverage of history than any other introductory
film textbook, with a particular emphasis on spotlighting the

achievements of historically marginalized groups, such as
women and people of color.
Viewing Cues adjacent to key discussions in the chapter
highlight key concepts and prompt students to consider these
concepts while viewing films on their own or in class — and to
visit LaunchPad for specific video clips with questions.
The best instruction on writing about film and the most
student writing examples of any introductory text are offered
throughout. Praised by instructors and students as a key reason
they love the book, Chapter 12, “Writing a Film Essay:
Observations, Arguments, Research, and Analysis,” is a step-by-
step guide to writing papers about film — taking notes, choosing
a topic, developing an argument, incorporating film images,
and completing a polished essay. It includes several annotated
student essays and coverage of creating video essays, exploring
a popular format for film analysis.
Resources for Instructors
To find more information on the instructor resources, please visit
the online catalog at macmillanlearning.com/filmexperience6e.
All of the resources listed below can be downloaded from the online
catalog or from LaunchPad for The Film Experience.
The Online Instructor’s Resource Manual by John Bruns
(College of Charleston) recommends methods for teaching the
course using the chapter-opening vignettes, the Viewing Cues,
and the Film in Focus and Technology in Action features. In

http://macmillanlearning.com/filmexperience6e

addition, the manual offers teaching aids like chapter
overviews, questions to generate class discussion, ideas for
encouraging critical and active viewing, sample test questions,
and sample syllabi.
The Online Test Bank, also by John Bruns (College of
Charleston), includes multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, and
short-answer questions for every chapter, except Chapter 12.
Lecture Slides help instructors lead class discussions. Each
chapter’s slides contain the most important concepts and
definitions.
Print and Digital Formats
For more information on these formats and packaging information,
please visit the online catalog at
macmillanlearning.com/filmexperience6e.
LaunchPad is a dynamic platform that enhances teaching and
learning. LaunchPad for The Film Experience collects the full e-book,
LearningCurve adaptive quizzing, videos, activities, and instructor’s
resources on a single site and offers a student-friendly approach,
organized for easy assignability in a simple user interface.
Instructors can create reading, video, or quiz assignments in
seconds, as well as embed their own videos or custom content. A
gradebook quickly and easily allows instructors to review the
progress of the whole class, of individual students, and of individual
assignments. Meanwhile, film clips with questions enhance every

http://macmillanlearning.com/filmexperience6e

chapter of the book. LaunchPad can be packaged with The Film
Experience or purchased on its own. Learn more at
launchpadworks.com.
The Film Experience is available as a print text. To get the most out
of the book and gain access to LearningCurve adaptive quizzing and
our extensive video program, consider packaging LaunchPad with
the print text. Use package ISBN: 978-1-319-38505-7.
The loose-leaf edition of The Film Experience features the same
print text in a convenient, budget-priced format, designed to fit
into any three-ring binder. Consider packaging LaunchPad with the
loose-leaf edition. Use package ISBN: 978-1-319-38507-1.
The Film Experience is also available as a standalone e-book, which
includes the same content as the print book and provides an
affordable option for students. For more information, visit
macmillanlearning.com/ebooks.

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Acknowledgments
A book of this scope has benefited from the help of many people. A
host of reviewers, readers, and friends have contributed to this
edition. Timothy Corrigan is especially grateful to his students and
his University of Pennsylvania colleagues Peter Decherney, Nicola
Gentili, Meta Mazaj, and Karen Redrobe for their hands-on and
precise feedback on how to make the best book possible. Patricia
White thanks her colleagues in Film and Media Studies at
Swarthmore, Bob Rehak and Sunka Simon; Helen Lee and the many
colleagues and filmmakers who have offered feedback; and her
students and assistants, especially Robert Alford, Mara Fortes, Willa
Kramer, Brandy Monk-Payton, and Natan Vega Potler.
Instructors throughout the country have reviewed the book and
offered their advice, suggestions, and encouragement at various
stages of the project’s development. For the sixth edition, we would
like to thank Donnetrice Allison, Stockton University; Drew Ayers,
Eastern Washington University; Aegina Barnes, York College, CUNY;
William Beard, University of Alberta; Judith Brodhead, North
Central College; Liz Czach, University of Alberta; Lindsey Decker,
Boston University; Nicole Denner, Stetson University; John Hall,
Boston University; Matthew Holtmeier, East Tennessee State
University; Mark Howell, Northwestern Michigan College; Mikki
Kressbach, Michigan State University; Owen Lyons, Ryerson
University; James McWard, Johnson County Community College;

Alonzo Medcalf, Missouri Baptist University; Jeffrey Middents,
American University; Miranda Miller, Gillette College; Sarah Nilsen,
University of Vermont; Steven Reschly, Truman State University;
Priscilla Riggle, Truman State University; L. M. K. Sheppard,
University of East Anglia; Celine Shimizu, San Francisco State
University; Edit Toth, Penn State Altoona; Logan Walker, San Jose
State University; Gabriel Wardell, University of North Georgia;
Chelsea Wessels, East Tennessee State University; Alex Wilson,
University of Arkansas; and Benjamin Wright, University of Toronto.
At Bedford/St. Martin’s, we thank Erika Gutierrez, senior program
director for communication, for her belief in and support of this
project from the outset, as well as vice president for humanities
Leasa Burton for her support as we developed the sixth edition. We
are especially grateful to development editor Will Stonefield for
guiding us with patience and good humor through the extensive
revision for this edition. We are indebted to our permissions team —
including Hilary Newman, director of rights and permissions;
Angela Boehler, permissions editor; and Krystyna Borgen, photo
researcher — for their enormous help with this edition’s art
program. Special thanks to Catalina Lassen for her excellent work
capturing new images for the book and new videos for LaunchPad:
the art and video program was a tremendous undertaking, and the
results are beautiful. Thanks to Peter Jacoby, senior content project
manager, and Lisa McDowell, senior workflow manager, for their
diligent work on the book’s production. We also thank Diana Blume
for overseeing the design and Billy Boardman for a beautiful new

cover. Thanks also go to Katherine Nurre, marketing manager; Rand
Thomas, media project manager; Katherine McInerney, associate
editor; William Hwang, assistant editor; and Bill Yin, editorial
assistant. A very special thanks to all who helped us secure
permission for the gorgeous cover image from Parasite (2019): Jesse
Sisgold, Skydance Media; Hyun Park, Studio Dragon; Jerry Ko, CJ
Entertainment; and Juhee Yi, CJ Entertainment.
We are especially thankful to our families — Marcia Ferguson and
Cecilia, Graham, and Anna Corrigan; George and Donna White,
Cynthia Schneider, and Max Schneider-White. Finally, we are
grateful for the growth of our writing partnership and for the rich
experiences this collaborative effort has brought us. We look
forward to ongoing projects.
Timothy Corrigan
Patricia White

Brief Contents
Preface
PART 1 CULTURAL CONTEXTS: Watching, Studying, and
Making Movies
CHAPTER 1 Encountering Film: From Preproduction to
Exhibition
CHAPTER 2 History and Historiography: Hollywood and
Beyond
PART 2 FORMAL COMPOSITIONS: Film Scenes, Shots, Cuts,
and Sounds
CHAPTER 3 Mise-en-Scène: Exploring a Material World
CHAPTER 4 Cinematography: Framing What We See
CHAPTER 5 Editing: Relating Images
CHAPTER 6 Film Sound: Listening to the Cinema
PART 3 ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES: From Stories to
Genres
CHAPTER 7 Narrative Films: Telling Stories
CHAPTER 8 Documentary Films: Representing the Real
CHAPTER 9 Animation and Experimental Media: Challenging
Form
CHAPTER 10 Movie Genres: Conventions, Formulas, and
Audience Expectations
PART 4 CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES: Reading and Writing about
Film

CHAPTER 11 Reading about Film: Critical Theories and
Methods
CHAPTER 12 Writing a Film Essay: Observations, Arguments,
Research, and Analysis
Glossary
Index
The Next Level: Additional Sources

Contents
Preface
PART 1 CULTURAL CONTEXTS: watching, studying, and
making movies

Description
The first still, from Fruitvale Station (2013), shows Michael B. Jordan
holding a dog and looking at its eyes on the road. The second still, from
Creed (2015), shows Michael B. Jordan running on the street during a
fitness training session. The third still, from Black Panther (2018), shows
Michael B. Jordan wearing armor along with the chief of the border tribes
W’Kabi.
CHAPTER 1 Encountering Film: From Preproduction to
Exhibition
Production: How Films Are Made
Preproduction
Production
Postproduction
Distribution: What We Can See
Distributors
Ancillary Markets
Distribution Timing
Marketing and Promotion: What We Want to See
Generating Interest
FILM IN FOCUS: Distributing Killer of Sheep (1977)
Advertising
VIEWING CUE: Suicide Squad (2016)

TECHNOLOGY IN ACTION: The Changing
Technologies of Film Promotion
Word of Mouth and Fan Engagement
Movie Exhibition: The Where, When, and How of Movie
Experiences
The Changing Contexts and Practices of Film Exhibition
Technologies and Cultures of Exhibition
The Timing of Exhibition
FILM IN FOCUS: Exhibiting Citizen Kane (1941)
Chapter 1 Review

CHAPTER 2 History and Historiography: Hollywood and
Beyond
Silent Cinema (1895–1929)
Silent Features in Hollywood
German Expressionist Cinema
Soviet Silent Films
French Cinema
HISTORY CLOSE UP: Oscar Micheaux
Classical Cinema (1929–1945)
European Cinema in the 1930s and 1940s
Golden Age Mexican Cinema
Postwar Cinemas (1945–1975)
Postwar Hollywood
International Art Cinema
VIEWING CUE: Gilda (1946) and Rome, Open City
(1945)
FILM IN FOCUS: Mother India and Postwar
History (1957)
Cinematic Globalization (1975–2000)
New Hollywood in the Blockbuster Era
The Commercial Auteur
American Independent Cinema
From National to Transnational Cinema in Europe

African Cinema
Chinese Cinema
Iranian Cinema
Cinema in the Digital Era (2000–present)
Global Hollywood
Diversifying Screens
VIEWING CUE: Beyond the Lights (2014)
Film Culture in the Twenty-First Century
TECHNOLOGY IN ACTION: Film Preservation and
Archives
FILM IN FOCUS: Rediscovering Within Our Gates
(1920)
Chapter 2 Review
PART 2 FORMAL COMPOSITIONS: film scenes, shots, cuts, and
sounds

Description
The first still shows the protagonist, Watney, standing amidst a row of
cultivated potatoes inside his Mars station. The second still shows
Watney in a space suit outside a Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV). The third
still shows a spaceship from above the surface of Mars.
CHAPTER 3 Mise-en-Scène: Exploring a Material World
A Short History of Mise-en-Scène
Theatrical Mise-en-Scène and the Prehistory of Cinema
1900–1912: Early Cinema’s Theatrical Influences
1915–1928: Silent Cinema and the Star System
1930s–1960s: Studio-Era Production
1940–1970: New Cinematic Realism
1975–Present: Mise-en-Scène and the Blockbuster
The Elements of Mise-en-Scène
Settings and Sets
Scenic Realism and Atmosphere
VIEWING CUE: Life of Pi (2012)
Props, Costumes, and Lights
VIEWING CUE: Boyhood (2014)
Performance: Actors and Stars
FILM IN FOCUS: Mise-en-Scène in Do the Right
Thing (1989)

TECHNOLOGY IN ACTION: Scenic Lighting
Space and Design
Thinking about Mise-en-Scène
Mise-en-Scène as an External Condition or a Measure of
Character
Primary Traditions for Mise-en-Scène
FILM IN FOCUS: Naturalistic Mise-en-Scène in
Bicycle Thieves (1948)
Chapter 3 Review

Description

Depth of Field
TECHNOLOGY IN ACTION: Color in Film
VIEWING CUE: Roma (2018)
VIEWING CUE: Fish Tank (2009)
VIEWING CUE: Barry Lyndon (1975)
From Special Effects to Visual Effects
Thinking about Cinematography
The Image as Presentation and Representation
VIEWING CUE: Vertigo (1958)
Traditions of Images
FILM IN FOCUS: Recreating History in Once Upon
a Time … in Hollywood (2019)
Chapter 4 Review

Description

Editing and Temporality
VIEWING CUE: The General (1927)
Thinking about Film Editing
TECHNOLOGY IN ACTION: Editing, Then and Now
Editing as a Subjective Experience or as an Objective
Perspective
FILM IN FOCUS: Patterns of Editing in Bonnie and
Clyde (1967)
Primary Traditions in Editing Practices: Continuity,
Disjunctions, and Convergences
Converging Editing Styles
Chapter 5 Review

Description
The still shows a woman in a black dress standing on a beach beside a
piano. A girl in a white dress sits on the piano.
CHAPTER 6 Film Sound: Listening to the Cinema
A Short History of Film Sound
Prehistories of Film Sound
1895–1920s: The Sounds of Silent Cinema
1927–1930: Transition to Synchronized Sound
1930s–1940s: Challenges and Innovations in Cinema
Sound
1950s–1980s: From Stereophonic to Dolby Sound
1990s–Present: Sound in the Digital Era
The Elements of Film Sound
Sound and Image
TECHNOLOGY IN ACTION: Sound and Image
VIEWING CUE: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
FILM IN FOCUS: Sound and Image in Singin’ in the
Rain (1952)
Sound Production
Voice in Film
Music in Film
Sound Effects in Film

VIEWING CUE: The Thin Red Line (1998)
Thinking about Film Sound
Sound Continuity and Sound Montage
VIEWING CUE: Winter’s Bone (2010)
Authenticity and Attention
FILM IN FOCUS: The Sound of Silence in A Quiet
Place (2018)
Chapter 6 Review
PART 3 ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES: from stories to
genres

Description
The first still from the movie, The Wizard of Oz, shows the protagonist
Dorothy walking through a meadow on a yellow brick road along with the
Tin Man, the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion. The second still shows the
same characters as portrayed in “The Wiz.” The third still from the movie,
Oz, the Great and Powerful shows Glinda flying ahead of Oscar, both
encased in a large bubble, across a landscape with mountains.
CHAPTER 7 Narrative Films: Telling Stories
A Short History of Narrative Film
1900–1920s: Adaptations, Scriptwriters, and Screenplays
1927–1950: The Coming of Sound and Classical
Hollywood Narrative
1950–1980: Art Cinema
1980s–Present: Franchises, Narrative Reflexivity, and
Games
HISTORY CLOSE UP: Salt of the Earth (1954)
The Elements of Narrative Film
Stories and Plots
Characters
Diegetic and Nondiegetic Elements
Narrative Patterns of Time
VIEWING CUE: Shutter Island (2010)
Narrative Space

Narrative Perspectives
TECHNOLOGY IN ACTION: Immersive Film Narrative
VIEWING CUE: The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
Thinking about Film Narrative
FILM IN FOCUS: Narration and Gender in Gone
Girl (2014)
Shaping Memory, Making History
Narrative Traditions
VIEWING CUE: Midnight Cowboy (1969)
FILM IN FOCUS: Classical and Alternative
Traditions in Mildred Pierce (1945) and Daughters of
the Dust (1991)
Chapter 7 Review

CHAPTER 8 Documentary Films: Representing the Real
A Short History of Documentary Cinema
A Prehistory of Documentaries
1895–1905: Early Actualities, Scenics, and Topicals
The 1920s: Robert Flaherty and the Soviet
Documentaries
1930–1945: The Politics and Propaganda of
Documentary
1950s–1970s: New Technologies and the Arrival of
Television
1980s–Present: Digital Cinema, Cable, and Reality TV
The Elements of Documentary Films
Nonfiction and Non-Narrative
Expositions: Organizations That Show or Describe
VIEWING CUE: The Cove (2009)
FILM IN FOCUS: Nonfiction and Non-Narrative in
Stories We Tell (2013)
Rhetorical Positions
VIEWING CUE: He Named Me Malala (2015)
Thinking about Documentary Films
Confronting Assumptions
Altering Opinions
Interpretive Contexts and Traditions

HISTORY CLOSE UP: Indigenous Media
TECHNOLOGY IN ACTION: Documentary Sound
Chapter 8 Review

CHAPTER 9 Animation and Experimental Media: Challenging
Form

A Short History of Animation and Experimental Media
1910s–1920s: Early Avant-Garde Movements
1930s–1940s: Sound and Vision
1950s–1960s: International Animation and the Postwar
American Avant-Garde
FILM IN FOCUS: Avant-Garde Visions in Meshes in
the A�ernoon (1943)
HISTORY CLOSE UP: Floyd Norman
1968–1980: Beyond North America
1989–Present: New Technologies and New Media
Principles of Experimental Media and Animation
Abstraction and Figuration
Experimental Organizations: Associative, Structural,
and Participatory
Animation Modes: 2-D, 3-D, Stop-Motion
TECHNOLOGY IN ACTION: Animation through the
Decades
Thinking about Experimental Media and Animation
Expanding Perception
Experimental Film Styles and Approaches
VIEWING CUE: Gently Down the Stream (1981)
VIEWING CUE: The Future (2011)

FILM IN FOCUS: Webs of Style in Spider-Man: Into
the Spider-Verse (2018)
Chapter 9 Review

Description
The blackboard shows a chalk drawing of many stick figures holding
hands from the left side of the frame to the right side. The woman is
cutting out red stick figures holding hands.
CHAPTER 10 Movie Genres: Conventions, Formulas, and
Audience Expectations
A Short History of Film Genre
Historical Origins of Genres
1890s–1910s: Early Film Genres
1920s–1940s: Genre and the Studio System
1948–1970s: Postwar Film Genres
1970s–Present: New Hollywood, Sequels, and Global
Genres
The Elements of Film Genre
Conventions
Formulas and Myths
TECHNOLOGY IN ACTION: Special Effects and
Iconography in Science Fiction
Audience Expectations
Six Movie Genres
Comedies
Westerns
Melodramas

VIEWING CUE: The Searchers (1956)
Musicals
VIEWING CUE: La La Land (2016)
Horror Films
Crime Films
FILM IN FOCUS: Genre and Gender in Jennifer’s
Body (2009)
Thinking about Film Genre
Prescriptive and Descriptive Approaches
Classical and Revisionist Traditions
VIEWING CUE: Unforgiven (1992)
HISTORY CLOSE UP: John Waters and Midnight Movies
Local and Global Genres
Chapter 10 Review
PART 4 CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES: reading and writing about
film

CHAPTER 11 Reading about Film: Critical Theories and
Methods
The Evolution of Film Theory
Early and Classical Film Theory
Early Film Theory
Classical Film Theories: Formalism and Realism
Postwar Film Culture and Criticism
Film Journals
Auteur Theory
Genre Theory
Contemporary Film Theory
Structuralism and Semiotics
VIEWING CUE: The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Poststructuralism
Theories of Gender and Sexuality
Cultural Studies
FILM IN FOCUS: Clueless about Contemporary
Film Theory? (1995)
Film and Philosophy
Postmodernism
Film Theory and Digital Culture
Chapter 11 Review

CHAPTER 12 Writing a Film Essay: Observations, Arguments,
Research, and Analysis
Writing an Analytical Film Essay

Personal Opinion and Objectivity
VIEWING CUE: Birdman (2014)
Identifying Your Readers
Elements of the Analytical Film Essay
Preparing to Write about a Film
Asking Questions
Taking Notes
Selecting a Topic
FILM IN FOCUS: Analysis, Audience, and Minority
Report (2002)
Elements of a Film Essay
Thesis Statement
Outline and Topic Sentences
Revising, Formatting, and Proofreading
Writer’s Checklist
Researching the Movies
Distinguishing Research Materials
Primary Research
Secondary Research
FILM IN FOCUS: Interpretation, Argument, and
Evidence in Rashomon (1950)
TECHNOLOGY IN ACTION: Creating a Video Essay

Using and Documenting Sources
FILM IN FOCUS: From Research to Writing about
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
Chapter 12 Review
Glossary
Index
The Next Level: Additional Sources

THE FILM EXPERIENCE

PART ONE CULTURAL CONTEXTS
watching, studying, and making movies
Description
The first still, from the movie Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, shows
the characters Rey, Finn, and Poe in the foreground and Chewbacca, B
B-8, and C-3 P O in the background. The second still, from the movie I
Am Mother, shows the mother, a robot, seated at a desk containing
colorful pens and papers.
CHAPTER 1
Encountering Film: From Preproduction to Exhibition

Stages of narrative filmmaking
Mechanisms of film distribution
Practices of marketing and promotion
Contexts of film exhibition
CHAPTER 2
History and Historiography: Hollywood and Beyond
Early silent cinema around the world
Classical cinema in Hollywood and beyond
Cinema a�er World War II
Globalization of the movies
Dawn of digital cinema
Preserving film history
The continual box-office success of the Star Wars sequels, most recently
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019), has been fueled by a nostalgia for
the original movie known and loved by multiple generations of viewers,
by the marketing synergy of Lucasfilm and Walt Disney Studios, and by
the state-of-the-art visual effects that re-created and expanded on the
original Star Wars (1977) aesthetic.
Another science fiction film released in 2019, the Australian I Am Mother,
targeted specialized audiences at the Sundance Film Festival, where its
success attracted the streaming platform Netflix for distribution. The
narrative, centered on the unsettling relationship between the robot
Mother and a human daughter, has cinematic antecedents in Metropolis
(1927), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Terminator (1984), and Ex Machina
(2014). By contrast, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker tells a more

conventional heroic tale, yet reflects the values of its contemporary
audience with a female hero and a racially diverse cast.
Despite differences of scale, complexity, and impact, the films were both
box-office successes and received positive critical recognition. Although I
Am Mother earned a fraction of the blockbuster’s take, it was a financial
success given its comparatively modest production budget. From their
production through their promotion, distribution, and exhibition, social
and institutional forces shaped these two films in very different ways.
Part 1 of this book identifies institutional, cultural, and historical contexts
that shape the film experience, showing us how to connect our personal
movie preferences with larger critical perspectives on film. Chapter 1
introduces the movie production process as well as the mechanisms and
strategies of film distribution, promotion, and exhibition. Chapter 2 gives
an overview of film history as well as strategies for organizing historical
information. Understanding these different contexts will help us to
develop a broad and analytical perspective on the film experience.

CHAPTER 1 ENCOUNTERING FILM
From Preproduction to Exhibition

Description

The first still, from Fruitvale Station (2013), shows Michael B. Jordan
holding a dog and looking at its eyes on the road. The second still, from
Creed (2015), shows Michael B. Jordan running on the street during a
fitness training session. The third still, from Black Panther (2018), shows
Michael B. Jordan wearing armor along with the chief of the border tribes
W’Kabi.
Between 2013 and 2018, Ryan Coogler directed three very different films:
Fruitvale Station (2013), Creed (2015), and Black Panther (2018). Although
all three feature Michael B. Jordan and share important questions about
racial identity and cultural violence, the production, distribution, and
exhibition of the three films illustrate how films, even by the same
director, can be shaped by extremely different institutional histories that
in turn shape our understanding of them.
Based on actual events that occurred in 2008 in California, Fruitvale
Station is a small but intense drama about an African American man
mistakenly shot and killed by a transit policeman. When the film’s
theatrical release in July 2013 coincided with the acquittal of the police
officer who killed a young, unarmed African American man in Florida,
Fruitvale Station became part of larger conversations, still ongoing, about
justice in the streets of America.
Creed traveled a different path. This franchise film inherited the whole
history of the Rocky series, which focused on star Sylvester Stallone’s
character as a working-class boxer. In Creed, Rocky, an older and wiser
man, trains the son of his old rival. A more formulaic film than Fruitvale

Station, it appealed to both African American and broader audiences and
became a box-office success.
Finally, as part of the popular Marvel Cinematic Universe film series,
Black Panther ramped up its production values and its financial and
cultural success. The film — about superhero T’Challa’s fight to save the
fictional African nation of Wakanda — won three Academy Awards and
grossed over $1.3 billion worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing
movie in history with a black director and a majority-black cast.
As these three disparate films suggest, film production, distribution, and
exhibition shape our encounters with movies, and these aspects of film
are in turn shaped by how movies are received by audiences.
can help you review. Go to launchpadworks.com
Before audiences experience a film, an extensive process of
preproduction, production, distribution, and promotion has already
taken place. Understanding this process deepens our appreciation
for film form and for the labor and cra� of filmmakers and reveals
ways that culture and society influence filmmaking itself.
This chapter describes the process of production as well as the fate
of a finished film as it is distributed, promoted, and exhibited. Such
extrafilmic processes describe events that precede, surround, or

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follow the actual images we watch and are inseparable from the film
experience.
As viewers, our response, enjoyment, and understanding are shaped
by where and when we see a movie as much as by the film’s form
and content. The film experience now encompasses ever smaller
viewing devices (including computers, iPads, and smartphones),
changing social environments (from IMAX to home theaters), and
cultural activities designed to promote interest in individual films
(reading about films, directors, and stars; playing tie-in video games;
watching special editions on DVD or Blu-ray; or connecting to social
media that support a film franchise). Waiting in line with friends for
a Thursday night premiere and half-watching an edited in-flight
movie are significantly different experiences that lead to different
forms of appreciation and understanding. Overall, it is helpful to
think of production and reception as a cycle rather than a one-way
process: what goes into making and circulating a film anticipates the
moment of viewing, and viewing tastes and habits influence film
production and dissemination.
KEY OBJECTIVES
List the stages of filmmaking, from preproduction through production to
postproduction, and explain how each stage informs what we see on the
screen.
Describe how the mechanisms of film distribution determine what films we
can see as well as when and how we can see them.

Analyze how film promotion predisposes us to see certain films and to see
them in certain ways.
Evaluate the ways in which film exhibition both structures and is influenced
by audience reception.
Explain the ways in which media convergence and rapid technological
advances are affecting all aspects of the film experience, from production to
consumption.

Production: How Films Are Made
The aim at each step of filmmaking is to create an artistic and
commercial product that will engage, please, or provoke viewers. In
short, film production is a multilayered activity in which industry,
art, technology, and imagination intertwine. It describes the
different stages — from the financing and scripting of a film to its
final edit and the addition of production credits naming the
companies and individuals involved — that contribute to the
construction of a movie. Does the film showcase the work of the
director or the screenwriter? The cinematographer or the composer
of the musical score? How do the answers to these questions affect
viewers’ perspectives on the film? Although some films highlight
certain dimensions of filmmaking more than others, the production
process almost always anticipates an audience and implies a certain
kind of viewer. Therefore, understanding the production process
allows us to better appreciate and effectively analyze films.
Preproduction
Although the word production describes the entire process of making
a film, a great deal happens — and o�en a long time passes — before
a film begins to be shot. Preproduction is the phase when a film
project is in development. In narrative filmmaking (scripted films;
see also Chapter 7), the efforts of the screenwriter, producer, and

sometimes director — o�en in the context of a studio or an
independent production company — combine at this stage to
conceive and refine an idea for a film. Funds are raised, rights are
secured, a crew is assembled, casting decisions are made, and key
aspects of the film’s design (including location scouting and the
construction of sets and costumes) are developed during the
preproduction phase. Documentary filmmakers might conduct
archival or location research, investigate their subject, and conduct
interviews during this period.
Screenwriters
A screenwriter (or scriptwriter) is o�en the individual who
generates the idea for a narrative film, either as an original concept
or as an adaptation of another source (such as a novel, true story, or
comic book). The screenwriter presents that early concept or
material in a treatment, a short prose description of the action of a
film and major characters of the story, written before the
screenplay. The treatment is then gradually expanded to a complete
screenplay (or script) — the text from which a movie is made,
including dialogue and information about action, settings, shots,
and transitions. This undergoes several versions, from the
temporary screenplay submitted by the screenwriter to the final
shooting script that details exact scenes and camera setups. As these
different scripts evolve, one writer may be responsible for every
version, or different writers may be employed at each stage,

resulting in minor and sometimes major changes along the way.
Even with a finished and approved script, in the studio context an
uncredited script doctor may be called in to do rewrites. From
Sunset Boulevard (1950), about a struggling screenwriter trapped in
the mansion of a fading silent film star, to Their Finest (2016), about a
female screenwriter’s struggles to script a propaganda film about the
heroic evacuation of Dunkirk during World War II, numerous films
have found drama in the process of screenwriting itself [Figure 1.1].
One reason may be the dramatic shi�s and instabilities in the
process of moving from a concept to a completed screenplay to a
produced film, a process that highlights the difficulties of trying to
communicate an individual vision to an audience.
1.1 Their Finest (2016). A story set in World War II during the British evacuation of Dunkirk,
France, the film focuses on a young woman screenwriter (Gemma Arterton) whose personal
strength and writing skills describe a different kind of heroism, one that is particularly
associated with the contribution of women during that war.

Producers and Studios
The key individuals in charge of movie production and finances are
a film’s producers. A producer oversees each step of a film project,
especially the financial aspects, from development to
postproduction and a distribution deal. At times, a producer may be
fully involved with each step of film production from the selection
and development of a script to the creation of an advertising
campaign for the finished film. At other times, a producer may be an
almost invisible partner who is responsible principally for financing
a movie. On some films, the director, screenwriter, or actors also
serve as producers.
Producers are extremely powerful in studio systems, a term that
describes the industrial practices of large film production
companies in Hollywood and in other national film industries. The
Hollywood studio era extended from the 1920s through the 1950s.
During this time, producers o�en had significant input into creative
decisions. For example, production supervisor Irving B. Thalberg
and studio mogul Louis B. Mayer strongly influenced the creative
direction of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), one of the largest and
most profitable studios. Meanwhile, producer David O. Selznick le�
MGM and founded his own studio, where he controlled all stages of
production, beginning with the identification of the primary
material for films. For instance, he acquired Gone with the Wind as a
property even before the novel was published. Selznick supervised

every aspect of the 1939 film version of the best-seller, even
changing directors during production — a process documented in
his famous production memos. Since the end of the studio system,
producers of Hollywood films continue to be heavily involved with
financing, but in most cases today, they no longer have the same
level of creative control.
The Hollywood production model is not the only one. For example,
producers of independent films from the 1990s onward have o�en
taken a different sort of role and have worked to facilitate the
creative freedom of the writer and director, arranging the financing
for the film as well as hiring a cast and crew, scheduling, shooting,
postproduction (the period in the filmmaking process that occurs
a�er principal photography has been completed, usually consisting
of editing, sound, and visual effects work), and distribution. For
example, producer James Schamus first worked with Ang Lee on the
independent film Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) and cowrote the
screenplays of Sense and Sensibility (1995), Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Dragon (2000), and Taking Woodstock (2009). As vice president of
Focus Features (a specialty division of Universal), Schamus
shepherded Lee’s Brokeback Mountain (2005) through all stages of
production.
Regardless of the size or type of film being made, distinctions
among the tasks and roles of types of producers exist. In recent
years, an executive producer may be connected to a film primarily

in name, playing a role in financing or facilitating a film deal and
having little creative or technical involvement. On a documentary,
an executive producer might work with a television channel
commissioning the program, a streaming site such as Netflix, public
funding agencies like the National Endowment for the Arts, or even
private donors. A coproducer credit may designate an investor or an
executive with a particular production company who helped fund
the movie but may have had no role in its actual production. The
line producer is in charge of the daily business of tracking costs and
maintaining the production schedule of a film, while a unit
production manager is responsible for reporting and managing the
details of receipts and purchases.
The budget of a film, whether big or minuscule, is handled by the
producers. In budgeting, above-the-line expenses are the initial
costs of contracting the major personnel, such as directors and
stars, as well as administrative and organizational expenses in
setting up a film production. Below-the-line expenses are the
technical and material costs — costumes, sets, transportation, and
so on — involved in the actual making of a film. Production values
demonstrate how the quality of the film’s images and sounds reflects
the extent of these two expenses. In both subtle and not-so-subtle
ways, production values o�en shape viewers’ expectations about a
film. High production values suggest a more spectacular or more
professionally made movie. Low production values do not
necessarily mean a poorly made film. In both cases, we need to
adjust our expectations to the style associated with the budget.

Financing Film Production
Financing and managing production expenses is a critical ingredient
in making a movie. Traditionally, studios and producers have
worked with banks or large financial institutions to acquire this
financing, and the term bankable has emerged as a way of indicating
that a film has the necessary ingredients — such as a famous star or
well-known literary source — to make that investment worth the
risk. A mainstream action movie like Suicide Squad (2016), starring
Will Smith, might cost well over $100 million to produce — a
significant investment that assumes a significant financial return.
Developed alongside the conception of a film, therefore, is a plan to
find a large enough audience to return that investment and, ideally,
a profit.
Some films follow a less typical financing path. Kevin Smith made
Clerks (1994) by charging expenses to various credit cards. The 1990s
saw a rise in independent film as financing strategies changed.
Instead of relying on a single source such as a bank or a studio,
independent filmmaking is financed by organized groups of
individual investors or presales of distribution or broadcast rights in
different markets. In the absence of studio backing, an independent
film must appeal to potential investors with a known quantity, such
as the director’s reputation or the star’s box-office clout. Even then,
fundraising is o�en challenging. Although major star Julianne
Moore was attached to Lisa Cholodenko’s project The Kids Are All

Right (2010) for five years, raising the film’s $4 million budget was
difficult [Figure 1.2]. Filmmakers as successful as Spike Lee (Do the
Right Thing, 1989) and Zach Braff (Garden State, 2004) have turned to
the Kickstarter website to raise funding for recent projects.
1.2 The Kids Are All Right (2010). A modestly budgeted independent production usually
requires name stars to attract financing. Even with cast members committed, however, Lisa
Cholodenko’s comedic drama about lesbian parents took years to produce.
Nonfiction films also require financing. Documentaries may be
sponsored by an organization, produced by a television channel, or
funded by a combination of individual donors and public funds.
Casting Directors and Agents

With the increasing costs of films and the necessity of attracting
money with a bankable project, the roles of casting directors and
agents have become more important. Traditionally the work of a
casting director, the practice of identifying the actors who would
work best in particular scripted roles emerged during the advent of
the star system around 1910. Around this time, Florence Lawrence,
the exceedingly popular star of Biograph Studio who was known as
the “Biograph Girl,” first demanded to be named and given a screen
credit. Since then, o�en in consultation with directors, producers,
and writers, casting directors have become bigger and more widely
credited players in determining the look and scale of films as they
revolve around the cast of stars and actors in those films.
Agents represent actors, directors, writers, and other major
individuals in a film production. They negotiate with writers, casting
directors, and producers and enlist different personnel for a movie.
The significance and power of the agent extends back at least to the
1930s, when talent agent Lew Wasserman, working as a publicist for
the Music Corporation of America (MCA), began to create
independent, multiple-movie deals for Bette Davis, Errol Flynn,
James Stewart, and many others. By the mid-1950s, Wasserman and
others had established a package-unit approach to film production
whereby the agent, producer, and casting director determine a
script, stars, and other major personnel as a key first step in a major
production, establishing the production model that would dominate
a�er the demise of the traditional studio system. From the mid-
1970s through the 1990s, so-called superagents would sometimes

predetermine a package of stars and other personnel from which a
film must be constructed. In the heyday of superagents, Michael
Ovitz wielded extraordinary power and control, assembling movie
production packages around Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise,
Madonna, and Robert De Niro for films such as Jurassic Park (1993),
Tootsie (1982), and Goodfellas (1990).
Locations, Production Design, Sets, and
Costumes
In narrative films, the interaction between characters and the
physical location of the action is o�en a central dimension of a film;
hence, choices about location and set design are critical. Likewise,
documentary filmmaking depends on location as well — from the
record of a strike in Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976) to nature
documentaries like Planet Earth II (2016) — but it also uses sets for
interviews.
Location scouts became commonplace in the early twentieth
century. These individuals determine and secure places that provide
the most suitable environment for shooting different movie scenes.
Choosing a location is o�en determined by a series of pragmatic
questions: Does the place fit the requirements of the script, and how
expensive would it be to film at this location? Many films rely on
constructed sets that re-create a specific place, but the desire for
movie realism o�en results in the use of actual locations to

invigorate a scene. Thus the Lord of the Rings (2001–2003) and Hobbit
trilogies (2012–2014) take advantage of the lush and wild location
filming in New Zealand, while Only Lovers Le� Alive (2013) [Figure
1.3] makes the labyrinthine streets of Tangiers and the ravaged and
vacated urban landscape of nighttime Detroit important backdrops
for its tale about two emotionally impoverished and disenchanted
vampires. In recent decades, the cinematic task of re-creating real-
seeming environments has shi�ed to computer-graphics
technicians. These technicians design the models to be digitally
transferred onto film, becoming, in a sense, a new kind of location
scout.
1.3 Only Lovers Le� Alive (2013). Cities like Tangiers and Detroit become distinctive
backgrounds for Jim Jarmusch’s moody, mordantly funny vampire story.

The production designer determines the film’s overall look. Art
directors are responsible for supervising the conception and
construction of the physical environment in which actors appear,
including sets, locations, props, and costumes. The set decorators
complete the look of a set with the details. For example, in a movie
set in a particular historical period and place, such as Argo (2012),
the art department coordinated to create sets and locations that
accurately reflected Tehran in 1980 and that also highlighted the
suspenseful atmosphere surrounding the rescue of six Americans.
The role of costume designers, those who plan and prepare how
actors will be dressed as their characters, greatly increased as the
movie business expanded in the 1930s. Costume designers ensure
the splendor, suitability, and sometimes the historical accuracy of
the movie characters’ appearances. Indeed, for those films in which
costumes and settings are central to the story — films set in fantasy
worlds or historical eras, such as Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), which uses
both kinds of settings — one could argue that the achievement of the
film becomes inseparable from the decisions made about the art
and costume design. In the end, successful films integrate all levels
of the design, from the sets to the costumes, as in The Grand
Budapest Hotel (2014), where the costumes re-create the 1930s in a
luxurious hotel in Eastern Europe but have a zany excess and
decadence that mirrors the plot and themes.
Production

Most mythologized of all phases of moviemaking is production itself
or principal photography, which is the majority of footage that is
filmed. The weeks or months of actual shooting, on set or on
location, are known as a film shoot. Countless films, from The Bad
and the Beautiful (1952) and Irma Vep (1996) to Once Upon a Time … in
Hollywood (2019), dramatize inspired or fraught interactions among
cast, crew, and the person in charge of it all, the director [Figure
1.4]. The reality of production varies greatly with the scale of the
film and its budget, but the director, who has o�en been involved in
all of the creative phases of preproduction, must now work closely
with the actors and production personnel — most notably, the
camera units headed by the cinematographer — to realize a
collaborative vision.

1.4 Irma Vep (1996). Maggie Cheung stars in a film about making a film — starring Maggie
Cheung.
The Director
The earliest films of the twentieth century involved very few people
in the process of shooting a film, with the assumption that the
cameraman was the de facto director. By 1907, however, a division of
labor separated production roles, placing the director in charge of
all others on the film set. Today the director is commonly regarded
as the chief creative presence and the primary manager in film
production, responsible for and overseeing virtually all the work of
making a movie — guiding the actors, determining the position of
the camera, and selecting which images appear in the finished film.
Directors have different methods and degrees of involvement.
Alfred Hitchcock claimed he never needed to see the action through
the camera viewfinder because his script directions were so precise
that there would be only one way to compose the shot. Others are
comfortable relinquishing important decisions to their assistant
director (AD), cinematographer, or sound designer. Still others, like
Woody Allen and Barbra Streisand, assume multiple roles
(screenwriter, actor, and editor) in addition to that of director. In
Hollywood during the studio era, when directors’ visions o�en were
subordinated to a “house style” or a producer’s vision, directors
worked so consistently and honed their cra� with such skilled

personnel that critics can detect a given director’s signature style
across routine assignments. This has elevated directors like Howard
Hawks (Bringing Up Baby, 1938, and His Girl Friday, 1940) and
Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without a Cause, 1955) to the status of auteurs —
directors who are considered “authors” of films in which they
express their own individual vision and experiences.
Today a company backing a film will choose or approve a director
for projects that seem to fit with his or her skills and talents. For
example, Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón’s success with films like
A Little Princess (1995) and Great Expectations (1998) led to his early
involvement with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004).
Because of the control and assumed authority of the director,
contemporary viewers o�en look for stylistic and thematic
consistencies in films by the same director, and filmmakers like
Quentin Tarantino have become celebrities. This follows a model
prevalent in art cinema made outside Hollywood in which the vision
of a director like Jean-Luc Godard or Tsai Ming-liang (What Time Is It
There?, 2001) is supported by the producer and made manifest in
virtually every aspect of the film.
The Cast, Cinematographer, and Other On-
Set Personnel
The director works with the actors to bring out the desired
performance, and these collaborations vary greatly. Because film

scenes are shot out of order and in a variety of shot scales, the cast’s
performance must be delivered in bits and pieces. Some actors
prepare a technical performance; others rely on the director’s
prompting or other, more spontaneous inspiration. Daniel Day-
Lewis, the star of Lincoln (2012), There Will Be Blood (2007), and
Phantom Thread (2017), is known for immersing himself in every role
to such an extent that he stays in character throughout the entire
production, even when the cameras are not rolling. David Fincher’s
exacting directorial style requires scores of takes, or different
versions of a shot, a grueling experience for Zodiac (2007) actors Jake
Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr. Some directors gravitate to
particularly sympathetic and dynamic relations with actors — for
example, Tim Burton with Johnny Depp, Pedro Almodóvar with
Penelope Cruz, and Martin Scorsese with Robert De Niro and
Leonardo DiCaprio.
The cinematographer, also known as the director of photography
(DP), selects the cameras, film stock, lighting, and lenses to be used
as well as the camera setup or position. In consultation with the
director, the cinematographer determines how the action will be
shot, the images composed, and, later, the kind of exposure needed
to print the takes. The cinematographer oversees a camera operator
(who physically manipulates the camera) and other camera and
lighting crew. Many films owe more to the cinematographer than to
almost any other individual in the production. Days of Heaven (1978)
profits as much from the eye of cinematographer Néstor Almendros

as from the direction of Terrence Malick. Likewise,
cinematographer Michael Ballhaus’s work on films such as Rainer
Werner Fassbinder’s The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) and Martin
Scorsese’s The Departed (2006) arguably displays the artistic
singularity and vision that are usually assigned to film directors
[Figure 1.5].
1.5 The Departed (2006). Cinematographer Michael Ballhaus suggests interpretations of the
characters’ motives through shot composition and lighting.
Other personnel are also on the set — including the production
sound mixer (who is the sound engineer on the production set) and
other sound crew, including the boom operator; the grips who
install lighting and dollies; the special effects coordinator; the
scenic, hair, and make-up artists; and the catering staff. A
production coordinator helps this complex operation run smoothly.
During the shoot, the director reviews dailies (footage shot that day)
and begins to make selects (takes that are chosen to use in editing a

scene). A�er principal photography is completed, sets are broken
down, and the film “wraps,” or completes production. A film shoot is
an intense, concentrated effort in which the contributions of
visionary artists and professional crew mesh with schedule and
budget constraints.
Postproduction
Some of the most important aspects of a finished film — including
editing, sound, and visual effects — are achieved a�er principal
photography is completed and production is over. How definitive or
efficient the process is depends on many factors. A documentary
may be constructed almost entirely during this phase, or a
commercial feature film may have to be recut in response to test
screenings or the wishes of a new executive who has assumed
authority over the project.
Editing and Sound
The director works closely with the editor and his or her staff during
editing — the process of selecting and joining film footage and shots
into a finished film with a distinctive style and rhythm. This process
now is largely carried out with digital footage and computer-based
editing. Editing is anticipated during preproduction of fiction films
with the preparation of a shooting script, and in production it is
recognized in the variety and number of takes provided. Only a

fraction of the footage that is shot is included in the finished film,
making editing crucial to its final form. In documentary production,
editing may be the most important stage in shaping the film. When
the editing is completed, the picture is said to be locked.
Postproduction also includes complex processes for editing sound
and adding special effects. A sound editor oversees the work of
sound editing — combining music, dialogue, and effects tracks to
interact with the image track. Less apparent than the editing of
images, sound editing can create noises that relate directly to the
action of the image (such as matching the image of a dog barking),
underpin those images and actions with music (such as the
pounding beats that follow an army into battle), or insert sounds
that counterpoint the images in ways that complicate their
meanings (such as using a religious hymn to accompany the flight of
a missile). In the sound mixing process, all of the elements of the
soundtrack — music, effects, and dialogue — are combined and
adjusted to their final levels.
Special Effects
Special effects are techniques that enhance a film’s realism or
surpass assumptions about realism with spectacle. Whereas some
special effects are prepared in preproduction (such as the building
of elaborate models of futuristic cities), others can be generated in

production (with special camera filters or setups) or created on set
(for example, by using pyrotechnics).
Today most special effects are created in postproduction and are
distinguished by the term visual effects — imagery combined with
live action footage by teams of computer technicians and artists. In
the contemporary digital age, computer technicians have virtually
boundless postproduction capabilities to enhance and transform an
image. Fantastical scenes and characters can be acted out using
green-screen technology, in which actors perform in front of a
plain green background; and motion-capture technology, which
transfers the actors’ physical movements to computer-generated
imagery (CGI), such as Andy Serkis as Gollum in The Lord of the
Rings trilogy (2001–2003). The settings of the Star Wars sequel trilogy
(2015–2019) were generated largely in postproduction [Figure 1.6].
All of the personnel who work behind the scenes on these many
levels of filmmaking are acknowledged when the titles and credits
are added in the final stage of postproduction.

1.6 Star Wars: Episode VIII — The Last Jedi (2017). Although the original Star Wars films used
multiple sets, models, and props, much of the sequel series was generated using state-of-
the-art computer technology.

Distribution: What We Can See
The completed film reaches its audience through the process of
distribution, in which films are provided to venues including
theaters and video stores, broadcast and cable television, internet
streaming and video on demand (VOD), libraries and classrooms —
even hotels and airlines. Despite these many outlets for distribution,
many worthy films never find a distributor and are never seen. As
avenues of distribution multiply, new questions about the role of
film culture in our individual and collective experience arise. Our
tastes, choices, and opportunities are shaped by aspects of the
industry of which we may be unaware, and we, in turn, influence
the kinds of films that distributors choose to release.
The discussion that follows, which emphasizes the U.S. feature-film
distribution system since it o�en controls even foreign theaters,
explores how viewers are prepared by the social and economic
machinery of distribution. Some contemporary companies, such as
Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and Disney, occupy dual roles as both
distributors and producers of films. Thus, the line between the two
operations begins to blur — as does the relation between production
and exhibition (see also Movie Exhibition: The Where, When, and
How of Movie Experiences later in this chapter).
Distributors

A distributor is a company or an agency that acquires the rights to a
movie from the filmmakers or producers (sometimes by
contributing to the costs of producing the film) and makes the
movie available to audiences by renting, selling, or licensing it to
theaters or other exhibition outlets. Top-grossing distributors today
include Walt Disney, Warner Bros., Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox,
Universal, Paramount Pictures, and Lionsgate. Smaller companies
include A24, Magnolia Pictures, and divisions of both Netflix and
Amazon.
The types of films that are produced depend on what Hollywood and
other film cultures assume can be successfully distributed. Film
history has been marked with regular battles and compromises
between filmmakers and distributors about what audiences are
willing to watch. Michael Cimino’s 1980 film Heaven’s Gate has
become an infamous example: with an unprecedented budget of
over $40 million, the completed version of the film was over four
hours long, severely complicating how the film could be distributed
and provoking harsh reviews from critics and audiences. Decades
earlier, Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) faced
similar problems when studio heads determined that they needed to
cut over an hour from the 135-minute movie in order to distribute it
successfully.
Evolution of the Feature Film

Consider the following examples of how the prospects for
distributing and exhibiting a film can influence and even determine
its content and form, including decisions about its length. From
around 1911 to 1915, D. W. Griffith and other filmmakers struggled
to convince movie studios to allow them to expand the length of a
movie from roughly fi�een minutes to over 100 minutes. Although
longer films imported from Europe achieved some success, most
producers felt that it would be impossible to distribute longer
movies because they believed audiences would not sit still for more
than twenty minutes. Griffith persisted and continued to stretch the
length of his films, insisting that new distribution and exhibition
patterns would create and attract new audiences — those willing to
accept more complex stories and to pay more for them. In the end,
Griffith proved to be right: his three-hour epic, The Birth of a Nation
(1915), was both an enormous commercial and financial success and
a major cultural event, comparable to a traditional theatrical or
operatic experience. Perhaps because of this success, the film also
unleashed major debate and protests about its racist representations
of African Americans and its depiction of the Ku Klux Klan as heroic
saviors [Figure 1.7]. The film nonetheless became a benchmark in
overturning one distribution formula, which offered a continuous
program of numerous short films, and establishing a new one,
which concentrated on a single feature film, a longer narrative
movie that is the primary attraction for audiences.

1.7 Advertisement for The Birth of a Nation (1915). The ambitious nature of D. W. Griffith’s
controversial epic was apparent in its advertisements and unprecedented three-hour
running time.
Description
The advertisement shows John Wilkes Booth armed with a gun, jumping
off a balcony. Three men try to stop him as a woman tends to President
Lincoln seated in the balcony. The U. S. flag is draped around the railing
of the balcony. Text at the right-center reads, “Lincoln’s Assassination.
The fatal blow that robbed the South of its best friend.” The text below
reads, D. W. Griffith’s Mighty Spectacle, The Birth of a Nation, founded
on Thomas Dixon’s ‘The Clansman.’
A�er 1915, most films were distributed with ninety-to 120-minute
running times, and this pattern has proved durable. Sometimes,
studios produce epic films with unusually long running times —
from Gone with the Wind (1939) to The Lord of the Rings: The Return of
the King (2003) — which may be perceived by audiences as more
important or more serious than the average movie because of their
length. In a different manner, serial or sequel films can present an
extremely long narrative as part of an episodic viewing experience,
as with the television distribution of the three Godfather films (1972–
1990) or the eight Harry Potter movies (2001–2011), allowing viewers
to watch and absorb a lengthy and highly complex story
periodically.

Our experience of a movie — its length, its choice of stars (over
unknown actors, for example), its subject matter, and even its title —
is determined by decisions made about distribution before the film
becomes available to viewers. Most movies are produced to be
distributed to certain kinds of audiences. Distribution patterns —
whether a movie is available everywhere for everyone at the same
time, is released during the holiday season, or is available only in
specialty video stores or on specific streaming sites — bring
expectations that a particular film either fulfills or frustrates.
Release Strategies
As one of its primary functions, distribution determines the number
of copies of a film that will be available and the number of locations
at which the movie will be seen. During the heyday of the
Hollywood studio system, studios either showed their films in their
own theater chains or sold them to theaters in packages, a practice
known as block booking. Under the block booking model, studios
required theaters to show cheaper, less desirable films as a
condition of booking the star-studded A pictures. This practice was
the target of antitrust legislation and finally was outlawed in the 1948
Supreme Court decision United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc.,
which divorced the studios from their theater chains and required
that films be sold individually. Before and a�er 1948, distribution
strategies have sometimes kicked off with a premiere — a red carpet
event celebrating the opening night of a movie that is attended by

stars and attracts press attention. A film’s initial opening in a limited
number of first-run theaters (theaters that show recently released
movies) as exclusive engagements gradually was expanded, allowing
for a series of premieres.
In 1975, Steven Spielberg’s Jaws introduced the practice of wide
release, opening in hundreds of theaters simultaneously. In these
cases, a film with a mass circulation of premieres — sometimes
referred to as saturation booking or a saturated release — is
screened in as many locations as possible in the United States (and
increasingly abroad) as soon as possible. For a blockbuster such as
Avengers: Endgame (2019), the distributors immediately release the
movie in a maximum number of locations and theaters to attract
large audiences before its novelty wears off. This distribution tactic
usually promises audiences a film that is easy to understand and
appeals to most tastes (for example, offering action sequences,
breathtaking special effects, or a light romance rather than
controversial topics).
A limited release may be distributed only to major cities — the cult
comedy Wet Hot American Summer (2001) never played in more than
thirty theaters — and then expand its distribution, depending on the
film’s initial success. Audience expectations for films following a
limited release pattern are generally less fixed than for wide
releases. These films usually will be recognized in terms of the
previous work of the director or an actor, but they will offer a

certain novelty or experimentation (such as a controversial subject
or a strange plot twist) that presumably will be better appreciated as
the film is publicly debated and understood through the reviews and
discussions that follow its initial release. The Weinstein Company’s
decision to limit the release of Todd Haynes’s experimental biopic of
Bob Dylan, I’m Not There (2007), to major cities was a strategic bid to
maximize critical attention to the film’s daring and the intriguing
premise of its star performances, which include Cate Blanchett
playing the 1960s Dylan.
As part of these general practices, distribution strategies have
developed over time to shape or respond to the interests and tastes
of intended audiences. Platforming involves releasing a film in
gradually widening markets and theaters so that it slowly builds its
reputation and momentum through reviews and word of mouth.
The strategy for expanding a release depends on box-office
performance: if a film does well in its opening weekend, it will open
in more cities on more screens. When the low-budget supernatural
horror film Paranormal Activity (2007) was acquired and released by
Paramount, audiences became directly involved in determining
where the film would open by voting on director Oren Peli’s website.
Independent films also use platforming as a strategy. For example,
Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation (2003) — which does not use a
conventional screenplay and was edited on a home computer with
an alleged production budget of about $200 — screened at the

Sundance Film Festival with John Cameron Mitchell and Gus Van
Sant as executive producers. This publicity led to other festival
invitations, a distribution deal for a limited theatrical release, and
considerable critical attention.
A movie also can be distributed for special exclusive release,
premiering in only one or two locations. A dramatic example of this
strategy was the restored version of Abel Gance’s silent classic
Napoléon, an epic tale of the life of the French emperor that
periodically presents the action simultaneously on three screens.
The original film premiered in April 1927. In 1981, the exclusive
release of the restored film toured to one theater at a time,
accompanied by a full orchestra; seeing it became a privileged
event.
Target Audiences
Since the late twentieth century, movies have been distributed with
an eye toward reaching specific target audiences — viewers whom
producers feel are most likely to want to see a particular film.
Producers and distributors aimed Sha� (1971), an action film with a
black hero, at African American audiences by distributing it
primarily in large urban areas. Distributors positioned T2
Trainspotting (2017), a hip sequel about former heroin users
returning to their lives in Edinburgh, to draw art-house and younger
audiences in cities, some suburbs, and college and university towns.

The original Nightmare on Elm Street movies (1984–2010), a violent
slasher series about the horrific Freddy Krueger, were aimed
primarily at the male teenage audience who frequented cineplexes
and, later, video stores.
The various distribution strategies all imply important issues about
how movies should be viewed and understood. First, by controlling
the scope of distribution, these strategies determine the quality and
importance of an audience’s interactions with a film. As a saturated
release, the 2015 attempt to restart the Fantastic Four series aimed
for swi� gratification with a focus on special effects and action,
before disappointed word of mouth could spread. On the other
hand, Green Book (2018) was platformed gradually and benefited
from critical reflections on the relationship it depicts between a
black classical pianist touring the U.S. south and his white working-
class driver [Figure 1.8].

1.8 Green Book (2018). Platforming this modestly budgeted film cultivated audiences and
critical responses.
Second, distribution can identify primary, intended responses to the
film as well as secondary, unexpected ones. Movies from the Pixar
animation studio might resonate the most with children and their
parents, with stories like Inside Out (2015), Finding Dory (2016), and
Toy Story 4 (2019) [Figure 1.9] that address childhood and the
process of parenting, with inside jokes and references for adults. But
as Pixar has established itself as a source of high-quality animation,
their adult following has grown — including former kids who grew
up on the company’s early movies and now continue to see follow-
ups with their favorite characters even as they age out of the
primary audience but remain part of the target audience. Awareness
of these strategies of targeting indicates how our identification with
and comprehension of films are as much a product of our social and
cultural locations as they are a product of the film’s subject matter
and form.

1.9 Toy Story 4 (2019). This computer-animated film is aimed principally at families, but
childless audiences may still find plenty to identify with.
Ancillary Markets
Commercial cinema’s reach has been expanding ever since studios
began to take advantage of television’s distribution potential in the
mid-1950s. New technologies for watching movies continue to
proliferate. In addition to commercial television, films have been
distributed via home video formats (like VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray) and
video on demand (VOD), which includes online streaming services
like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney Plus. Today more of a
film’s revenue is generated by such ancillary markets than by its
initial theatrical release.
Broadcast and Cable Television
Distribution

Originally, the motion picture industry competed with broadcasting,
which distributed entertainment directly to the home through radio
and later television. However, as television became popular in
postwar America, film studios realized that the new medium
provided an unprecedented distribution outlet. Later, with the rise
of cable television, studios gained even more lucrative opportunities
to sell their vast libraries of films. The launch of dedicated movie
channels like Turner Classic Movies, for example, were a boon to
cinema lovers. As both network and cable channels proliferated,
more and more movies began to be presented through television
distribution.
In an attempt to reach specialized audiences through subscription
cable, distributors like IFC Films have made critically acclaimed
foreign and U.S. independent films available on demand the same
day they are released in art-house theaters in major cities, allowing
television audiences in markets outside large cities access to such
works as the Romanian 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days (2007), winner of
the Cannes Film Festival’s top prize. Although the traditional
wisdom is that such access will hurt the theatrical box office, the
strategy allows such films to reach wider audiences, and positive
word of mouth, for both the film and the distributor’s “brand,” might
enhance overall theatrical revenue.
Guaranteed television distribution can also reduce the financial risk
for producers and filmmakers and thus, in some situations, allow

for more experimentation or filmmaker control. Starting in the
1990s, (subscription) cable channels such as HBO increasingly began
producing their own films that included riskier subjects. Even
though these films are presented on the cable channels, a theatrical
window for the film to receive reviews and become eligible for
awards is sometimes allowed.
Was the movie recently screened for class likely to have been shown on television?
If so, in what way? How might such distribution have significantly changed its look
or feel?
Television distribution has both positive and negative implications.
In some cases, films on television must adjust their style and
content to suit constraints of both time and space. For films
originally made for theatrical distribution, scenes might be cut to fit
a time slot or be interrupted with commercial breaks. In other cases,
television distribution may expand the ways movies can
communicate with audiences and experiment with different visual
forms. For example, The Singing Detective (1986) — made explicitly
for BBC distribution in the United Kingdom — uses the long length
of a television series watched within the home as the means to
explore and think about the passage of time, the difficulty of
memory, and the many levels of reality and consciousness woven
into our daily lives. Meanwhile, Ken Burns’s documentary The

Vietnam War (2017) uses its episodic ten-part distribution to
investigate o�en overlooked details and facts of that controversial
war from multiple angles, too numerous for a theatrical film.
Home Video and Video on Demand
Each new format for the public or private consumption of media —
VHS (video home system), LaserDisc, DVD (digital video disk), Blu-
ray, and video on demand (VOD), including today’s streaming
services like Netflix — has offered a new distribution challenge for
media makers and a potential new revenue model for rights holders.
Independent producers may find it difficult to transfer existing
media to new formats or to make enough sales for a particular
avenue of distribution to be viable. As with distribution through
theaters and through broadcast and cable television, distribution of
home video formats and video on demand determines the
availability of particular titles to audiences. Viewers may stream a
film online, rent or purchase it in a store, receive it by mail from
companies like Netflix, or order it from independent distributors
such as Kino Lorber.
Historically, there was a specific lag time between a film’s theatrical
release in a cinema and its release on home video, but these
relationships have changed over time. Some movies are distributed
direct to home video, skipping the traditional theatrical release
altogether, such as the ongoing series of follow-ups to Bring It On

(2000). Whether a movie is released on home video a�er its
theatrical run or is made expressly for home video, this type of
distribution usually aims to reach the largest possible audience and
thus to increase revenues.
As new technologies emerge, distributors frequently engage in
“format wars,” in which different companies offer competing
versions of similar products. For example, the home video era began
in the 1980s with competition between Sony’s Beta format and VHS.
The VHS format won out, and with the widespread use of
videocassette recorders (VCRs), studios released films on VHS
cassettes, first for rental and then increasingly for sales. A similar
battle took place in the mid-2000s between high-definition DVD (HD-
DVD, backed by Toshiba) and Blu-ray (backed by Sony); in the end,
Blu-ray prevailed. Typically, as in these two cases, one format ends
up dominating the market and becomes the primary distribution
channel through which viewers experience films at home during
that time period.
One of the most significant challenges to distributors posed by home
video and video on demand is piracy, the unauthorized duplication
and circulation of copyrighted material. Despite anticopying
so�ware, the circulation of pirated films is widespread and can
bypass social, cultural, and legal controls, bringing banned films to
viewers in China, for example, or building subcultures and networks
around otherwise hard-to-access films.

Before the closing of many video stores caused by the shi� to
subscriber and on-demand services in the 2000s, the video store was
a significant site of film culture. Because the selection in rental
stores was based on a market perspective on local audiences as well
as the tastes of individual proprietors, some films were distributed
to certain cities or neighborhoods and excluded from other
locations. The dominant chains (such as Blockbuster, which filed for
bankruptcy in 2010) focused on high-concentration, family-oriented
shopping sites, offering numerous copies of current popular
mainstream movies, as well as mainstream video games. They
typically excluded daring subject matter or older titles. Some local
independent video stores specialized in art films, cult films, or
movie classics (such as those released on DVD by the Criterion
Collection). Still other local stores depended on X-rated films for
their primary revenue. Sometimes in-store distribution followed
cultural as well as commercial logic. Bollywood films, which were
available in video and even grocery stores in U.S. neighborhoods
with large South Asian populations, provided a tie to cultural
traditions and national stars and songs before access to such films
became widespread.
For viewers, there are two clear consequences to these patterns of
video distribution. The first is that video distribution can control
and direct — perhaps more than theatrical distribution does — local
responses, tastes, and expectations. The second consequence
highlights the sociological and cultural formations of film
distribution. As community outlets, video stores were part of the

social fabric of particular neighborhoods. Viewers are consumers,
and video stores were forums in which the interests of a community
of viewers — in children’s film or art-house cinema, for instance —
could determine which films were distributed at the store. Michel
Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind (2008) shows an urban community coming
together around the films made available at its locally owned video
store a�er its employees begin to produce their own versions of
rental titles to replace their demagnetized inventory [Figure 1.10].
Such ties are less likely to be forged around recent alternatives to
dedicated stores, such as DVD kiosks in grocery stores.
1.10 Be Kind Rewind (2008). The employees at a neighborhood video store attract a loyal
local audience with their do-it-yourself inventory, like this re-created scene from Stanley
Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
The innovation in distribution that was probably most responsible
for the decline of the local video store is the DVD rental-by-mail
model launched by Netflix in the early 2000s and followed by other

companies. As part of a subscription system that offers viewers a
steady stream of DVDs, Netflix members can select and return films
as rapidly or as slowly as they wish. This kind of distribution lacks
the kind of social interaction that used to exist in video stores.
More recently, high-speed internet has made downloading movies
and live streaming the preferred option for many consumers. Online
distributors like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and Disney face their own
set of challenges. If a movie is rented on demand, how many times
can it be watched? On how many different devices? Unauthorized
downloading and sharing have become even more difficult for
distributors to regulate. At the same time, new opportunities for
viewing have been generated: mobile devices allow us to choose
from an enormous selection of films to watch at any time from any
place with an internet connection. With the success of streaming,
viewers may feel that they finally have overcome the limits set by
distribution, even though economic decisions still shape the
circulation of film.
This new ease of online film consumption raises different questions
about changing viewing patterns and their implications. Do these
new paradigms undermine the social and communal formations of
the film experience? Does increased ease of access to film traditions
remote in time or location make for a richer film culture? Do more
platforms actually result in more viewing options, or do many of
these services redivide smaller slices of the same pie? Finally, how
do these patterns influence and change the kinds of movies that are

made? The answers to these questions are not clear or certain.
These new viewing patterns may simply offer different ways for
audiences to create different kinds of communities based on their
own interests. Similarly, increased access to periods of film history
or foreign film cultures through online services like Kanopy and the
Criterion Channel may broaden our sense of both but also may
require more work and research into those discovered times and
places.
How might the distribution of a film that was released in the last year have been
timed to emphasize certain responses? Was it a seasonal release?
Finally, many other films — such as artists’ films, activist
documentaries, alternative media, and medical or industrial films —
are made without the intention of showing them for a profit, and
they are not available to view either in a traditional theatrical
context or via ancillary markets like broadcast television or home
video. Some of these works serve a specific training or promotional
purpose and are distributed directly to their intended professional
or target audience. Others may find television or educational
distributors, like PBS or Women Make Movies. Still others may be
uploaded to the internet by individuals.
Distribution Timing

Distribution timing — when a movie is released for public viewing in
certain locations or on certain platforms — is another prominent
and changing feature of distribution. Adding significantly to our
experience of movies, timing can take advantage of the social
atmosphere, cultural connotations, or critical scrutiny associated
with particular seasons and calendar periods. The summer season
and the December holidays are the most important release dates in
the United States because audiences usually have more free time to
see thrill rides like John Wick 3 (2019).
Offering a temporary escape from hot weather, a summer release
like Jurassic World (2015) offers the visual thrills and fun of
rampaging dinosaurs, a bit like an old-fashioned sci-fi movie and a
bit like the amusement park that the film’s plot depicts. The
Memorial Day release of Pearl Harbor (2001) immediately attracted
the sentiments and memories that Americans had of World War II
and other global conflicts. The film industry is calculating releases
ever more carefully — for example, by holding a promising film for a
November release so that it can vie for prestigious (and business-
generating) award nominations.
Mistiming a film’s release can prove to be a major problem, as was
the case in the summer of 2013, when the DreamWorks cartoon
Turbo followed too close on the heels of Monsters University and
Despicable Me 2 to gain much traction with the family audience that
all three were targeting. Avoiding unwanted competition can be a

key part of a distributor’s timing. For example, distributors moved
up the opening of The Shallows (2016) to capitalize on positive buzz
and to avoid Fourth of July weekend competition [Figure 1.11].
1.11 The Shallows (2016). Just a few weeks before the scheduled June 2016 release of the
shark thriller The Shallows, the studio moved its date up by five days to capitalize on rising
excitement over the film.
Multiple Releases
Of the several other variations on the tactics of timing, movies
sometimes follow a first release or first run with a second release or
second run. The first describes a movie’s premiere engagement, and
the second refers to the redistribution of that film months or years
later. A�er its first release in 1982, for example, Ridley Scott’s Blade
Runner made a notable reappearance in 1992 as a longer director’s
cut [Figure 1.12]. Although the first release had only modest
success, the second (supported by a surprisingly large audience

discovered in the home video market) appealed to viewers newly
attuned to the visual and narrative complexity of the movie.
Audiences wanted to see, think about, and see again oblique and
obscure details in order to decide, for instance, whether Deckard,
the protagonist, was a replicant or a human.
1.12 Blade Runner (1982, 1992, 2007). Although its initial opening was disappointing, Ridley
Scott’s dystopian “future noir” was an early success on home video. Theatrical releases of a
director’s cut for its tenth anniversary and a final cut for its twenty-fi�h make the question of
the film’s definitive identity as interesting as the questions of human versus replicant
identity posed by its plot.
For Blade Runner’s twenty-fi�h anniversary in 2007, a final cut was
released theatrically but catered primarily to DVD customers. With
multiple releases, financial reward is no doubt a primary goal, as the
trend to reissue films in anticipation of or following major awards
like the Oscars indicates.

With a film that may have been unavailable to viewers during its first
release or that simply may not have been popular, a rerelease can
lend it new life and reclaim viewers through a process of
rediscovery. When a small movie achieves unexpected popular or
critical success or a major award, for example, it can be
redistributed with a much wider distribution circuit and to a more
eager, sympathetic audience that is already prepared to like the
movie. In a version of this practice, Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay!
(1988) was rereleased in 2013 to commemorate the twenty-fi�h
anniversary of the debut film by this now-celebrated Indian
filmmaker. A rerelease also may occur in the attempt to offer
audiences a higher-quality picture or a 3-D repackaging of an older
film or to clarify story lines by restoring cut scenes, as was done in
1989 with Columbia Pictures’ rerelease of the 1962 Academy Award–
winning Lawrence of Arabia.
Similarly, television distribution can retime the release of a movie to
promote certain attitudes toward it. It’s a Wonderful Life did not
generate much of an audience when it was first released in 1946.
Gradually (and especially a�er its copyright expired in 1975),
network and cable television began to run the film regularly, and the
film became a Christmas classic shown o�en and everywhere
during that season [Figure 1.13]. In 1997, however, the NBC
television network reclaimed the exclusive rights to the film’s
network broadcast in order to limit its television distribution and to
try to make audiences see the movie as a special event.

1.13 It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). A box-office disappointment when it initially was released,
Frank Capra’s film became a ubiquitous accompaniment to the holiday season on television.
In recent years, NBC’s broadcast restrictions attempted to restore the film’s status as an
annual family viewing event.
Day-and-Date Release
The theatrical release window of a film — the period of time before
its availability on home video, video on demand, or television
platforms, during which it plays in movie theaters — was historically
about three to six months to guarantee box-office revenue. Recently,
this period has become shorter and shorter. Day-and-date release

refers to a simultaneous-release strategy across different media and
venues, such as a theatrical release and VOD availability. This
practice is now routine for many smaller distributors. Sometimes
films from Magnolia Pictures, like High-Rise (2015), will debut on
VOD platforms before their theatrical release. In the future, day-and-
date release may go further. Some filmmakers such as Christopher
Nolan and James Cameron have denounced this idea, while others
like Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese have encouraged it.
Whether or not this kind of distribution strategy actually announces
a radical change in film distribution, it does signal the kinds of
experimentation that digital production and distribution allow and
the inevitable changes and adjustments that will occur in the future
in response to shi�ing markets, tastes, and technologies. The
division between Nolan and Spielberg also suggests larger concerns
about how these changes can affect our responses to films and the
kinds of films that will be made.

Marketing and Promotion: What We
Want to See
Marketing and promotion, which accompany distribution, shape
why and how we are attracted to certain movies. A film might be
advertised online as the work of a great director, for example, or it
might be described as a steamy love story and illustrated with a
sensational poster. A film trailer might emphasize the comedic
aspect of an unusual or disturbing film like The Lobster (2016).
Although these preliminary encounters with a film might seem
marginally relevant to how we experience the film, promotional
strategies, like distribution strategies, prepare us in important ways
for how we will see and understand a film.
Name a movie you believe has had a strong cultural and historical influence.
Investigate what modes of promotion helped highlight particular themes in and
reactions to the film.
The terminology used to define and promote a movie can become a
potent force in framing our expectations. In the first part of the
twentieth century, the Hollywood studios marketed films according
to a production distinction between an A picture, a feature film with

a large budget and prestigious source material or actors that has
been historically promoted as a main attraction receiving top
billing, and a B picture, a low-budget, nonprestigious movie that
usually played on the bottom half of a double bill. Today, the term
blockbuster (a big-budget film intended for wide release, whose
large investment in stars, special effects, and advertising attracts
large audiences and big profits) prepares us for action, stars, and
special effects; and the term art film (a film produced primarily for
aesthetic rather than commercial or entertainment purposes, whose
intellectual or formal challenges are o�en attributed to the vision of
an auteur) suggests a more visually subtle, perhaps slower-paced or
more intellectually demanding movie.
FILM IN FOCUS Distributing Killer of Sheep (1977)
See also: Bless Their Little Hearts (1983);
Daughters of the Dust (1991)
To watch a clip from Killer of Sheep (1977), go to LaunchPad for The Film
Experience at launchpadworks.com
Distribution is almost invisible to the public and hence much less glamorous than
film production or exhibition, but it determines whether a film will ever reach an
audience. Independent filmmakers o�en bring new perspectives to mainstream,
formulaic filmmaking, but their visions need to be shared. African American

http://launchpadworks.com/

filmmakers, who have historically been marginalized within the industrial system
of production, o�en encounter additional challenges in getting their films
distributed. The career of Charles Burnett, considered one of the most significant
African American filmmakers despite his relatively small oeuvre, is marked by the
vicissitudes of distribution. The successful limited release of his first feature, Killer
of Sheep (1977), in 2007 — more than thirty years a�er it was made — not only
illuminates black American filmmakers’ historically unequal access to movie
screens but also illustrates the multiple levels on which current distribution
campaigns function. The way the film’s distributor, Milestone Films, handled the
film’s theatrical, nontheatrical, and DVD release in order to maximize critical
attention and gain significant revenue serves as a model for similar endeavors
[Figure 1.14].
1.14 Killer of Sheep (1977). Charles Burnett’s legendary independent film about an
African American family in Los Angeles’s Watts neighborhood infuses its realism with

poetic images, like the child wearing a mask. The film was finally distributed
theatrically thirty years a�er it was made.
Produced in the early 1970s as a master’s thesis film, Burnett’s Killer of Sheep
emerged amid a flowering of African American filmmaking talent at the University
of California, Los Angeles, film school. In place of the two-dimensional stereotypes
of past classical Hollywood films, the almost-too-good-to-be-true characters
played by Sidney Poitier in the 1960s, or the o�en cartoonish, street-wise
characters of the low-budget blaxploitation films that Burnett saw on urban
screens in the early 1970s, he depicted his protagonist, Stan, as the father of a
black family living in the impoverished Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles. A
decent man whose slaughterhouse job and daily struggles have numbed and
depressed him, Stan nevertheless gets by, and his bonds with his family and
community, depicted in grainy, beautifully composed black-and-white images, are
profoundly moving. In one poignant scene, Stan and his wife slow dance to a song
by Dinah Washington, getting through another day.
Killer of Sheep was never distributed theatrically before its restoration. Essential to
the mood and meaning of the film is its soundtrack, composed of blues and
rhythm and blues music by Paul Robeson, Dinah Washington, and Earth, Wind &
Fire. Without the resources to clear the music rights for public presentation,
Burnett circulated his film over the years in occasional festivals and museum and
educational settings. His artistic reputation became firmly established. In 1990,
the film was among the first fi�y titles named to the National Film Registry by the
Library of Congress. But audiences never got to see the film. Only when Burnett
was able to complete To Sleep with Anger in 1990, due to the participation of actor
Danny Glover and Burnett’s receipt of a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, did one
of his films receive theatrical distribution. But even To Sleep with Anger, a family
drama that lacked violence and clear resolutions, was overlooked amid the
media’s attention to more sensationalized depictions of ghetto culture set to hip-
hop soundtracks, such as John Singleton’s Boyz N the Hood (1991).

Eventually, Burnett’s critical reputation helped secure the restoration of Killer of
Sheep by the UCLA Film & Television Archive just when its original 16mm elements
were in danger of disintegrating beyond repair. The restoration, one of several
planned for independent films of historical significance, was funded by Turner
Classic Movies and filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, whose own debut feature, sex,
lies, and videotape (1989), changed the landscape for the distribution of
independent film.
In March 2007, the specialty, or “boutique,” distributor Milestone Films, whose
founders (Dennis Doros and Amy Heller) have long been in the business of
releasing important classic and contemporary films theatrically, opened Killer of
Sheep in a restored 35mm print in New York. Excellent reviews positioned the film
in relation to African American history, to filmmaking movements like Italian
neorealism (a film movement that began in Italy during World War II and lasted
until about 1952, depicting everyday social realities using location shooting and
amateur actors), and to the grassroots support of the Harlem-based organization
Imagenation. The film’s opening was a record-breaking success, and it soon
opened in art cinemas around the country.
The next phase was release on DVD to institutions such as universities that did not
have the facilities to show Killer of Sheep on 35mm but wanted the rights to have a
public screening. Later, the film was released on DVD for the consumer market,
packaged with another unreleased early feature by Burnett, My Brother’s Wedding
(1983), along with a commentary track and other features. Thus, an experienced
“niche” distributor helped a thirty-year-old film win a place on critics’ top-ten lists,
a special prize from the New York Film Critics Circle, and a place in public memory.
Generating Interest
Marketing and promotion aim to generate and direct interest in a
movie. Film marketing identifies an audience for a specific product

(in this case, a movie) and brings the product to its attention for
consumption so that buyers will watch the product. Film promotion
refers to the aspect of the industry through which audiences are
exposed to and encouraged to see a particular film. It includes
advertisements, trailers, publicity appearances, and product tie-ins.
The star system is the most pervasive and potent component of the
marketing and promotion of movies around the world. One or more
well-known actors who are popular at a specific time and within a
specific culture act as the advertising vehicle for the movie. The goal
of the star system, like that of other marketing and promotional
practices, is to create specific expectations that will draw an
audience to a film. These marketing and promotional expectations
— that Leonardo DiCaprio stars or that indie filmmaker Debra
Granik directs, for example — o�en become the viewfinders through
which an audience sees a movie.
The methods of marketing and promotion are many and creative.
Viewers find themselves bombarded with newspaper and billboard
advertisements, previews shown before the main feature, tie-in
games featured on the official movie website, and trailers that
appear when browsing social media. Stars make public appearances
on radio and television talk shows and are profiled in fan magazines,
and media critics attend early screenings and write reviews that are
quoted in the ads for the film. All these actions contribute to movie
promotion. In addition, although movies have long been promoted
through prizes and gi�s, modern distributors are especially adept at

marketing films through tie-ins — ancillary products (such as
soundtracks, toys, games, and other gimmicks made available at
stores and restaurants) that advertise and promote a movie. Minions
(2015), for example, was anticipated with an extensive line of toys
and games that generated interest in the movie and vice versa.
Marketing campaigns for blockbuster films have become more and
more extensive since the 1990s, with the promotion budget equaling
and o�en even exceeding the film’s production budget. A marketing
blitz of note accompanied Independence Day (1996). Given its
carefully timed release to coincide with the Fourth of July holiday,
following weeks of advertisements in newspapers and on television,
it is difficult to analyze first-run viewers’ feelings about this film
without taking into account the influence of these promotions.
Defining the film as a science fiction thriller, the advertisements and
reviews drew attention to its status as the film event of the summer,
its suitability for children, and its technological wizardry. Ads also
emphasized the film’s patriotic American themes [Figure 1.15]. In
that light, many posters, advertisements, and publicity stills
presented actor Will Smith together with Bill Pullman or Jeff
Goldblum, not only to promote the film’s stars but also to draw
attention to the racial harmony portrayed in the film and to
maximize its appeal to both African American and white audiences.
During the first month of its release, when U.S. scientists discovered
a meteorite with fossils that suggested early life on Mars, promotion
for the movie responded immediately with revised ads: “Last week,

scientists found evidence of life on another planet. We’re not going
to say we told you so….” In contrast, the 2016 sequel Independence
Day: Resurgence never found a strong marketing hook and made far
less money twenty years later.
1.15 Independence Day (1996). The film’s massive promotional campaign for its Fourth of
July weekend opening drew on blatant and subtle forms of patriotism, such as the
multicultural appeal of its cast.
Some Hollywood promotions and advertisements emphasize the
realism of movies, a strategy that promises audiences more accurate
or more expansive reflections of the world and human experience.
In Silver Linings Playbook (2012), for example, the struggle of Bradley
Cooper’s character to cope with his bipolar disorder while living

with his Philadelphia family was a reality that the film’s marketing
claimed had rarely before been presented in movies. A related
marketing strategy is to claim textual novelty in a film, drawing
attention to new features such as technical innovations, a rising star,
or the acclaimed book on which the film is based. With early sound
films like The Jazz Singer (1927), The Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929),
and Innocents of Paris (1929), advertisements directed audiences
toward the abundance and quality of the singing and talking that
added a dramatic new dimension to cinematic realism [Figure 1.16].
Today, promotions and advertisements frequently exploit new
technologies. Avatar’s (2009) marketing campaign emphasized that
the film was designed to be viewed in theaters with cutting-edge
three-dimensional (3-D) technology. Marketers also can take
advantage of current political events, as when they advertised the
plot of Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit (2017) — which tells the story of the
racial riots in Detroit, Michigan, during the summer of 1967 — by
evoking its relevance amid contemporary racial tensions in the
United States, such as the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014
[Figure 1.17].

1.16 Innocents of Paris (1929). The marquee for the movie promotes the novelty of sound
and song and this early musical’s singing star.

1.17 Detroit (2017). As with her other films, Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit addresses topical
issues that engage contemporary audiences — in this case, debates about race and police
tactics.
As official promotion tactics, stars are booked to appear on talk
shows and in other venues in conjunction with a film’s release, but
they may also bring unofficial publicity to a film. Brad Pitt and
Angelina Jolie boosted audiences for the film Mr. and Mrs. Smith
(2005) when they became a couple during its filming. Conversely,
unwelcome publicity can cause an actor’s contract to be canceled or
raise concerns about the publicity’s effect on ticket sales. Mel
Gibson, for example, encountered difficulty finding big-studio work
in Hollywood a�er his well-publicized personal troubles starting in
2006.
Independent, art, revival, and foreign-language films have less
access to the mechanisms of promotion than do current mainstream
films, but social media have afforded new opportunities for

filmmakers and distributors to spread the word to specialized
audiences. In addition, audiences for these films are led to some
extent by what we might call “cultural promotion” — academic or
journalistic accounts that discuss and value films as aesthetic
objects or as especially important in movie history. A discussion of a
movie in a film history book or a university film course thus could
be seen as an act of marketing, which confirms that promotion is
about urging viewers not just to see a film but also to see it with a
particular point of view. Although these more measured kinds of
promotion are usually underpinned by intellectual rather than
financial motives, they also deserve our consideration and analysis.
How does a specific film history text, for instance, prepare you to
see a film such as Bonnie and Clyde (1967)? Some books promote it as
a modern gangster film. Others pitch it as an incisive reflection of
the social history of the turbulent 1960s. Still other texts and essays
may urge readers to see it because of its place in the oeuvre of a
major U.S. director, Arthur Penn [Figure 1.18]. Independent movies
promote the artistic power and individuality of the director;
associate themselves with big-name film festivals in Venice,
Toronto, and Cannes; or call attention, through advertising, to what
distinguishes them from mainstream Hollywood films. For a foreign
film, a committed publicist who attracts critics’ attention can play a
crucial role in attaining distribution. Documentaries can be
promoted in relation to topical or controversial subject matter. In

short, we do not experience any film with innocent eyes;
consciously or not, we come prepared to see it in a certain way.
1.18 Bonnie and Clyde (1967). Critical accounts may position this film as an updated
gangster film or as social commentary on the turbulent 1960s.
Advertising
Advertising is a central form of promotion that uses television,
billboards, film trailers or previews, print ads, images and videos on
websites and social media, and other forms of display to bring a film
to the attention of a potential audience. Advertising o�en
emphasizes connections with and differences from related or
similar films or highlights a particularly popular actor or director.
The poster for Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid (1921), for example, proudly

pronounces that it is “the great Film he has been working on for a
whole year” [Figure 1.19]. For different markets, Prometheus (2012)
was promoted as a star vehicle for Sweden’s Noomi Rapace or as the
latest film from Ridley Scott, the director of Alien (1979), Blade
Runner (1982), Thelma & Louise (1991), and Black Hawk Down (2001).
It is conceivable that these two promotional tactics created different
sets of expectations about Prometheus — one more attuned to tough
female protagonists and the other to lavish sets and technological
landscapes. As this example reveals, promotion tends both to draw
us to a movie and to suggest what we will concentrate on as a way of
understanding its achievement.

1.19 The Kid (1921). Unlike posters for his well-known slapstick comedies, this poster shows
Charlie Chaplin displaying a demeanor that suggests the serious themes of his first feature
film.
Description
The poster shows an illustration of Charlie Chaplin holding a kid in his
arms. The text below reads, “Charles Chaplin in ‘The Kid’ Written and
directed by Charles Chaplin, 6 reels of joy, This is the great film he has
been working on for a whole year, A first national attraction.
Trailers
One of the most carefully cra�ed forms of promotional advertising
is the trailer — a short video that previews edited images and scenes
from a film in theaters before the main feature film, in television
commercials, or online. In just a few minutes, the trailer provides a
compact series of reasons why a viewer should see that movie. A
trailer for Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999) is indicative of this
form of advertising: it moves quickly to large bold titles announcing
separately the names of Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, and Kubrick,
foregrounding the collaboration of a star marriage and a celebrated
director of daring films. Then, against the refrain from Chris Isaak’s
soundtrack song “Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing,” a series of images
condenses the progress of the film, including shots of Kidman
undressing, Cruise sauntering with two beautiful women, the two
stars sharing a passionate kiss, two ominous-looking men standing

at the gate of an estate, and Cruise being enticed by a prostitute.
Besides the provocative match of two then-married star sex symbols
with a controversial director, the trailer underlines the dark erotic
mysteries of the film within an opulently decadent setting. It
introduces intensely sexual characters and the alternately seedy and
glamorous atmosphere of the film in a manner meant to draw fans
of Cruise, Kidman, Kubrick, and erotic intrigue [Figure 1.20]. That
this promotion fails to communicate the stinging irony in the
movie’s eroticism may account for some of the disappointed
reactions that followed its eager initial reception. The availability of
trailers on the internet has increased the novel approaches to this
format, and trailers are now rated and scrutinized like theatrical
releases.

1.20 Eyes Wide Shut (1999). Advertisements and trailers for Stanley Kubrick’s last film
emphasized the film’s director, its stars — Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, who were married
at the time — and its sexual content.
T E C H N O LO G Y I N A C T I O N
The Changing Technologies of Film
Promotion
The history of cinema is, in part, a history of changing technologies, and the art
and business of film promotion and marketing have continually changed over time
along with those technologies. In the first decades of the twentieth century, the
movies moved rapidly from a vaudevillian novelty to an important institution
within the cultural mainstream. Supporting this cultural shi�, traditional print

media (including newspapers, posters, and fan magazines) began to celebrate new
films and stars as a part of a new and exciting literacy, a way of seeing the world in
tune with the energies of the emerging twentieth century. Photoplay magazine
appeared in 1911, just as the Hollywood star system was beginning to emerge as a
major promotional strategy. This magazine attracted passionate readers and
moviegoers to stories about upcoming films and about the public and private lives
of directors and actors. Such publications broadened the reach of film promotion
to the growing middle class and assimilated the new film arts into literary and
journalistic media, bridging a cultural past and a cultural present [Figure 1.21a].

1.21a Photoplay magazine cover (February 1931). Magazines and newspapers
welcomed the new art of cinema through traditional journalistic vehicles.
Description

The cover shows a woman with soft blonde curls, smiling. Text at the top
reads, The National Guide to Motion pictures. The magazine title below
reads, Photoplay. The month below reads, February, along with price, 25
cents. Text to the left of the woman reads, Earl Christy, and another text to
the right of the woman reads, Dorothy Mackaill. Text at the bottom left reads,
Garbo versus Dietrich, The battle is on! Text at the bottom right reads, Goofy
Genius in Hollywood.
As promotional technologies expanded through the mid-twentieth century to
include radio and television, film studios immediately took advantage of the broad
markets reached by these outlets. As audio and visual media, radio and television
allowed potential audiences to see and hear the actors, music, and images being
promoted in advance of the films themselves. For instance, a ninety-second radio
ad for Superman the Movie (1978) alternated between voiceover narration quoting
the praise of critics (“a super hit!”), the film’s musical score, and pieces of lively
dialogue (“the problem with men of steel is that there’s never one around when
you want one”). Both radio and television became ubiquitous promotional
vehicles that integrate sound and (in the case of television ads) images to draw
viewers into theaters [Figure 1.21b].

1.21b Television promotion (1960). Television and radio made stars like Joan Collins
(pictured here) come alive as a new form of promotion.
More recently, the internet brought another major technological change in film
promotion. Today, many marketing campaigns encourage interactivity and direct
involvement from potential viewers, teasing mysteries and unexpected surprises
intended to boost word-of-mouth engagement. The pioneering example of
internet marketing was The Blair Witch Project (1999), a low-budget horror film that
generated excitement through an immersive viral campaign. Over several months
prior to its release, the film’s distributors released realistic “newsreel” footage
online that made the plot of the film seem believable, to the point where potential

viewers actually debated whether the film was fiction or documentary. Due to its
commercial and critical success, The Blair Witch Project has become a model for
subsequent viral marketing campaigns, illustrating the extent to which
promotional technologies impact our film experience [Figure 1.21c].
1.21c The Blair Witch Project (1999). Today the internet o�en makes promotion part of
an interactive engagement with viewers.
Description
Text below the woman’s photo reads, Heather Donahue, Age: 22, Height: 5
feet 6 inches, Weight: 127 l b, Eyes: Hazel and Hair: Brown. Text below a
man’s photo reads, Joshua Leonard, Age: 23, Height: 5 feet 10 inches,
Weight: 152 l b, Eyes: Blue, and Hair: Blonde. Text below another man’s
photo reads, Michael Williams, Age: 24, Height: 5 feet 8 inches, Weight: 169
l b, Eyes: Brown and Hair: brown.
Text below photo text reads, last seen camping in the Black Hills Forest area,
near Burkitsville. Please call Frederick county sheriff’s office with any

information you may have! (301)
Media Convergence
Today, movie advertising and marketing has adapted strategies of
media convergence — the process by which formerly distinct media
(such as cinema, television, the internet, and video games) and
viewing platforms (such as television, computers, and cell phones)
have become interdependent. A viewer might find and play an
online game set in a film’s fictional world on the film’s website, read
a comic-book tie-in, and watch an online promotion with the films’
stars, all before viewing the movie in a theater. The enormous sums
spent on marketing a film’s theatrical release are deemed
worthwhile because they relate directly to the promotion of other
media elements within the brand or franchise, such as video games,
books, toys, music, and DVD releases. Viewers understand these
tactics and may participate in this convergence: a viewer who enjoys
a film and its soundtrack might download a ringtone for her phone
and buy the special edition on Blu-ray months later. But viewers may
also decide to skip the theatrical release altogether and catch the
film later on video on demand or DVD.

Go to launchpadworks.com to watch a clip of the trailer for Suicide Squad (2016).
What kinds of messages does the trailer send about the film and its tone?
The enormous popularity of social media has fostered the technique
of viral marketing — a process of advertising that relies on existing
social networks to spread a marketing message by word of mouth,
social media posts, or other means. Because viral marketing works
through networks of shared interest, it is less dependent than
conventional promotional techniques on market research and can
be a highly effective and informative indicator of audience
preferences. Yet it is also less easily controlled than deliberately
placed ads that are based on target demographics. In many ways,
media convergence has allowed today’s viewers to affect how films
are understood and produced more than viewers did in years past.
The Rating System

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Rating systems, which provide viewers with guidelines for movies
(usually based on violent or sexual content), are also used in
marketing and promotion. Whether they are wanted or unwanted by
viewers, ratings are fundamentally about trying to control the kind
of audience that sees a film and, in some cases, about advertising
the content of that film.
In the United States, the current Motion Picture Association of
America (MPAA) ratings system classifies movies as G (general
audiences), PG (parental guidance suggested), PG-13 (parental
guidance suggested and not recommended for audiences under
thirteen years old), R (persons under age seventeen must be
accompanied by an adult), and NC-17 (persons under age seventeen
are not admitted). Films made outside the major studios are not
required to obtain MPAA ratings, but exhibition and even
advertising opportunities are closely tied to the system.
Other countries, as well as some religious organizations, have their
own systems for rating films. Great Britain, for instance, uses these
categories: U (universal), A (parental discretion), AA (persons under
age fourteen are not admitted), and X (persons under age eighteen
are not admitted). The age limit for X-rated films varies from
country to country, the lowest being age fi�een in Sweden.
As a film is being produced and then marketed, the studio and
producers usually have a specific desired MPAA rating in mind to
maximize the film’s audience and revenues. A project like The

Peanuts Movie (2015), an animated adaptation of the famous comic
strip, depends on its G rating to draw large family audiences,
whereas sexually explicit films like Steve McQueen’s Shame (2011,
rated NC-17) and Nagisa Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses (1976, not
rated and confiscated when it first came to many countries) can use
the notoriety of their ratings to attract curious adult viewers. An NC-
17 rating can damage a film’s box-office prospects, however, because
many outlets will not advertise such films. Many mainstream movies
eagerly seek out a middle ground. Movies like Ghostbusters (2016)
prefer a PG-13 rating because it attracts a young audience of eight-,
nine-, and ten-year-olds who want movies with some adult language
and action, as well as adult audiences who are drawn by the film’s
cast of well-known comedic actors and who may be fans of the
original Ghostbusters (1984) [Figure 1.22].
1.22 Ghostbusters (2016). A PG-13 rating can suggest a certain edge to a film that makes it
attractive to preteens without alienating older viewers.

Word of Mouth and Fan Engagement
Our experiences when viewing a movie are shaped in advance in
less evident and predictable ways as well. Word of mouth — the oral
or written exchange of opinions and information sometimes
referred to as the “buzz” around a movie — may seem insignificant
or vague, yet our likes and dislikes are formed and given direction
by the social groups we move in. Social media, which allow us to list
or indicate our likes and dislikes with a click, have expanded these
social groups exponentially. We know that our friends like certain
kinds of films, and we tend to enjoy and promote movies according
to the values of our particular age group, cultural background, and
other social determinants. When marketing experts promote a
movie to a target audience, they do so in ways that will maximize
word-of-mouth or “viral” communication, knowing that viewers
recommend films to people who share their values and tastes
[Figure 1.23].

1.23 Titanic (1997). Word of mouth anticipating the release of James Cameron’s film focused
on special effects. A�er the film’s release, word of mouth among young female fans was
appreciative of its star Leonardo DiCaprio and its romance plot.
Consider, for instance, how friends who enjoyed the novel might
have discussed the making of the film The Hunger Games (2012).
Would they be excited about the casting of rising star Jennifer
Lawrence as the tough young heroine? About the genre of science
fiction films set in a dystopian future and the potential for
interesting visual effects? About other books by Suzanne Collins
with which they are familiar? What would each of these word-of-
mouth promotions indicate about the social or personal values of
the person promoting the movie and the culture of taste influencing
his or her views?
Fan magazines were an early extension of word of mouth as a form
of movie promotion and have consistently shed light on the
sociology of taste. Emerging in the 1910s and widely popular by the
1920s, such “fanzines” brought film culture home to audience
members. Posing as objective accounts, many stories were actually
produced by the studios’ publicity departments. Today, in place of
print fanzines, we have social media as well as internet discussion
groups, promotional and user-generated websites, conventions, and
other fan activities, which have become an even bigger force in film
promotion and culture. Social media are the most powerful
contemporary form of fan engagement, allowing information about
and enthusiasm for a movie to be efficiently exchanged and spread

among potential viewers. Even before the proliferation of social
media, online discussion boards allowed film fans to discuss
upcoming releases. Notoriously, the title Snakes on a Plane (2006) was
so resonant with viewers in its very literalness that online activity
around the film (even before its release) prompted changes to make
the film more daring and campier. The subsequent box-office
disappointment may have been a measure of viewers’ reaction to
marketing manipulations.
Consider a recent film release that you’ve seen, and identify which promotional
strategies were effective in persuading you to watch it. Was anything about the
promotion misleading? Was there anything about the film you feel was ignored or
underplayed in the promotion?
Promotional avenues from fanzines to social media deserve
attention and analysis to try to determine how they add to or
confuse our understanding of a film. Our different experiences of
the movies take place within a complex cultural terrain where our
personal interest in certain films intersects with specific historical
and social forces to shape the meaning and value of those
experiences. Here, too, the film experience extends well beyond the
big screen.

Movie Exhibition: The Where,
When, and How of Movie
Experiences
Exhibition is the part of the industry that shows films to a paying
public, traditionally in movie theaters. It may involve promotional
elements like movie posters and publicity events in a theater lobby
or may be related to distribution through the calendar of film
releasing. But exhibition, which is closely tied to reception — the
process through which individual viewers or groups make sense of a
film — is at the heart of the traditional film experience. Exhibitors
own individual theaters or theater chains and make decisions about
programming and local promotion. They are responsible for the
actual experience of moviegoing, including the concessions that
make a night out at the movies different from one spent watching
films at home and that bring in an estimated 40 percent of theater
owners’ revenue. Like distribution and promotion, we may take
exhibition for granted, forgetting that the many ways we watch
movies contribute a great deal to our feelings about, and our
interpretations of, film. We watch movies within a cultural range of
exhibition venues — in theaters, at home on video monitors, or on a
plane or train on portable devices. Not surprisingly, these contexts
and technologies anticipate and condition our responses to movies.

The Changing Contexts and Practices
of Film Exhibition
Very different responses can be elicited by seeing the same movie at
a cineplex or in a college classroom or by watching it uninterrupted
for two hours on a big screen or in thirty-minute segments over four
days on a computer. A viewer watching a film on an airplane
monitor may be completely bored by it, but watching it later at
home, he or she may find the film much more compelling and
appreciate its visual surprises and interesting plot twists.
Movies have been distributed, exhibited, and seen in many different
contexts historically. At the beginning of the twentieth century,
movies rarely lasted more than twenty minutes and o�en were
viewed in small, noisy nickelodeons — storefront theaters or arcade
spaces where short films were shown continuously for a five-cent
admission price to audiences passing in and out — or in carnival
settings that assumed movies were a passing amusement
comparable to other attractions. By the 1920s, as movies grew
artistically, financially, and culturally, the exhibition of films moved
to lavish movie palaces like Radio City Music Hall in New York City
(which opened in 1932), with sumptuous seating for thousands amid
ornate architecture. By the 1950s, city centers gave way to suburban
sprawl, movie palaces lost their crowds of patrons, and drive-ins and
widescreen and 3-D processes were introduced to distinguish the
possibilities of theatrical exhibition from its new rival, television at

home. Soon television became a way to experience movies as special
events in the flow of daily programming. In the 1980s, VCRs gave
home audiences access to many movies and the ability to watch
them when and how they wished. At the same time, the multiplex, a
movie theater complex with many screens, became increasingly
important as a way to integrate a choice of moviegoing experiences
with an outing to the mall.
Today we commonly view movies at home on a TV or computer
screen, where we can watch them in the standard ninety-to 120-
minute period, extend our viewing over many nights, or rewatch
favorite or puzzling portions of them. Portable devices such as
laptops, smartphones, and tablets give mobility to our viewing. As
theaters continue to compete with home screens, film exhibitors
have countered with so-called megaplexes — massive versions of
grand exhibition spaces that began with the movie palaces of the
1920s, now with twenty or more screens, more than six thousand
seats, and over a hundred showtimes per day. New entertainment
complexes may feature not just movies but also arcade games,
restaurants, and coffee bars. One such complex is the Alamo
Dra�house Theater, a chain known for serving food and drinks to
viewers during film screenings. Home exhibition has responded
with more elaborate digital picture and sound technologies and
convergence between devices such as game consoles and smart TVs
for streaming movies.

Technologies and Cultures of
Exhibition
Viewing forums — the locations where we watch a movie —
contribute to the wider culture of exhibition space and the social
activities that surround and define moviegoing. Theatrical
exhibition highlights a social dimension of watching movies
because it gathers and organizes individuals as a specific audience at
a specific place and time. Further, our shared participation in that
social environment directs our attention and shapes our responses.
A movie such as Zootopia (2016) will be shown as a Saturday matinee
in suburban theaters (as well as other places) to attract families with
children to its talking-animal adventure [Figure 1.24]. The time and
place of the showing coordinate with a period when families can
share recreation, making them more inclined to appreciate this
empowering tale of societal harmony and self-confidence.
Conversely, The Room (2003), a cult film about a love triangle that
rambles through unrelated subplots and has sometimes been
deemed the worst movie ever made, is frequently shown in art
houses for midnight audiences. This movie appeals to an urban
crowd with experimental and ironic tastes and to those who
appreciate marginal films [Figure 1.25]. Reversing the exhibition
contexts of these two films would indicate how those contexts could
generate wildly different reactions.

1.24 Zootopia (2016). Family films are distributed widely to theater chains and exhibited in
early time slots, although some become crossover hits.
1.25 The Room (2003). Cult films and other marginal movies tend to find their audiences at
small theaters that cultivate late-night viewers who come equipped with a taste for the
bizarre.

The technological conditions of exhibition — that is, the industrial
and mechanical vehicles through which movies are shown — shape
the viewer’s reaction as well, with screen sizes and locations varying
widely from experience to experience. Different technological
features are sometimes carefully calculated to add to both our
enjoyment and our understanding of a movie. Cecil B. DeMille’s epic
film The Ten Commandments (1923) premiered in a movie palace,
where the plush and grandiose surroundings, the biblical magnitude
of the images, and the orchestral accompaniment supported the
grand spiritual themes of the film. Thus, the conditions for watching
a film may parallel its ideas or formal practices. With the special
projection techniques and 3-D glasses worn for Creature from the
Black Lagoon (1954), the creature’s appearance becomes even more
startling. 3-D technology is an excellent example of changing
exhibition technologies and cultures [Figure 1.26]. Long regarded
nostalgically as a gimmick of the 1950s, it made a comeback with
new digital production and exhibition technologies in the 2000s,
reaching its peak with Avatar (2009). Theater owners worldwide
converted screens to 3-D in order to show the film and to attract
local audiences with the novelty of the spectacle. Partially as a result
of 3-D viewing, digital projection is now more prevalent than 35mm
film.

1.26 3-D exhibition. Viewers enjoy a screening with special 3-D glasses in the 1950s, the first
heyday of the technology. As a technological innovation, 3-D brings the focus to exhibition
contexts and offers a chance for theater owners to increase revenue.
In contrast to viewing technologies that attempt to enhance the
spectacular nature of the big-screen experience are those that try to
maximize (sometimes by literally minimizing) the uniquely personal
encounter with the film image. Consumers have adapted quickly as
distinct media (such as cinema, television, the internet, and video
games) and viewing platforms (such as television, computers, and
smartphones) have become commercially, technologically, and
culturally interdependent.

The Timing of Exhibition
Consider how viewing the movie you most recently watched in class on a large
screen versus a laptop would affect your response.
Whereas distribution timing determines when a film is made
available and in what format, the timing of exhibition is a more
personal dimension of the movie experience. When and for how
long we watch a film can shape how it affects us and what our
attitude toward it is as much as where we see the film and with
whom. Although it is common to see movies in the early evening,
either before or a�er dinner, audiences watch movies of different
kinds according to numerous rituals and in various time slots.
A�ernoon matinees, midnight movies, or in-flight movies on long
plane rides give some indication of how the timing of a movie
experience can vary and how that can influence other
considerations about the movie. In each of these situations, our
experience of the movies includes a commitment to spend time in a
certain way. Instead of spending time reading, talking with others,
sleeping, or working on a business project, we watch a movie. That
time spent with a movie accordingly becomes an activity associated
with relaxing, socializing, or even working in a different way.
FILM IN FOCUS Exhibiting Citizen Kane (1941)

To watch a clip from Citizen Kane (1941), go to LaunchPad for The Film
Experience at launchpadworks.com
The tale of a man obsessed with power and possessions, Citizen Kane (1941) is
o�en considered one of the greatest films ever made. It is usually hailed for Orson
Welles’s portrayal of Charles Foster Kane, Welles’s direction of the puzzle-like
story, and the film’s complex visual compositions. It also is a movie that ran into
trouble even before its release because of its thinly disguised and critical portrayal
of U.S. media mogul William Randolph Hearst [Figure 1.27]. Less o�en is Citizen
Kane seen and understood according to its dramatic exhibition history, one that
has colored or even decided the changing meanings of the film.

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1.27 Citizen Kane (1941). William Randolph Hearst objected to the film’s thinly veiled
portrayal of his life and blocked it from opening at Radio City Music Hall. The film’s
wider release was negatively affected as well. Major theater chains did not want to
screen it for fear of incurring Hearst’s wrath.
As the first film of a twenty-five-year-old director already hailed as a “boy genius”
for his work as a theater actor and director, Citizen Kane was scheduled to open
with appropriate fanfare at the spectacular Radio City Music Hall in New York City,
where RKO premiered its top films. Besides highlighting the glamorous and
palatial architecture of this building, exhibiting the film in New York first would
take advantage of the fact that Welles’s career and reputation had been made
there. The physical and social context for this opening exhibition would combine
the epic grandeur of the Radio City building and a New York cultural space attuned
to Welles’s artistic experimentation. Already offended by rumors about the film,
however, Hearst secretly moved to block the opening at Radio City Music Hall.
A�er many difficulties and delays, the film’s producer and distributor, RKO,
eventually premiered the film simultaneously at an independent theater in Los
Angeles and at a refurbished vaudeville house in New York City.
The film’s wider release was detrimentally affected by Hearst’s attack on the film.
Hearst newspapers were banned from running ads for it, directly affecting its box-
office potential. When major theaters such as the Fox and Paramount chains were
legally forced to exhibit the film, they sometimes booked Citizen Kane but did not
actually screen it for fear of vindictive repercussions from Hearst. Where it was
shown, the controversy overshadowed the film itself, making it appear for many
audiences strange and unnecessarily confrontational, resulting in a box-office
failure.
Changing sociological and geographical contexts for exhibition have continued to
follow Citizen Kane as its reputation has grown through the years. A�er its
tumultuous first exhibition in the United States, the film was rediscovered in the
1950s by the art-house cinemas of France. There it was hailed as a brilliantly
creative expression of film language. Today many individuals who see Citizen Kane
watch it in a classroom — in a college course on American cinema, for example. In

the classroom, we look at movies as students or as scholars, and we are prepared
to study them. In this context, viewers may feel urged to think more about the film
as an art object than as entertainment or exposé. In the classroom, we may focus
more on the serious aspects of the film (such as Kane’s real and visual alienation
from his best friends) than on the comic interludes (such as the vaudevillian dance
number).
Someone watching Citizen Kane in an academic situation can see and think about
it in other ways, but exhibition contexts suggest certain social attitudes through
which we watch a movie. The exhibition history of Citizen Kane likewise describes
significant differences in how the film is experienced through different
technologies. Its original 35mm exhibition showed off the imagistic details and
stunning deep-focus cinematography that made the film famous. The visual
magnitude of scenes such as Susan Alexander’s operatic premiere and Kane’s
safari picnic at Xanadu or the spatial vibrancy and richness of Kane and Susan’s
conversation in one of Xanadu’s vast halls arguably require the size and texture of
a large theatrical image.
Since its first theatrical exhibition, the film has circulated to film societies and
colleges on 16mm film and later appeared on the successive consumer
technologies of video, laserdisc, DVD, and Blu-ray. The content of the film remains
the same, but the different technologies have sometimes muted the visual power
of its images and scenes because of lower quality or smaller image size. Digital
formats enhance the image, perhaps redirecting our understanding to visual
dynamics rather than the events of the story.
The shi� in the exhibition context may also affect our level of concentration from
focused to distracted attention. A viewing experience on television may be broken
up because of commercials, and on a digital format we can affect the duration of
the experience when we start and stop the movie ourselves. Whereas the large
images in the theater may direct the viewer more easily to the play of light and
dark as commentaries on the different characters, a DVD player might instead
allow the viewer to replay dialogue in order to note levels of intonation or
wordplay.

Consumer editions of Citizen Kane give viewers the added opportunity to
supplement the film with rare photos, documents from the advertising campaign,
commentaries by filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich and critic Roger Ebert, and a
documentary, The Battle over Citizen Kane (1996), that describes the history of its
script and its exhibition difficulties.
To whatever degree these supplemental materials come into play, it is clear that a
DVD exhibition of Citizen Kane offers possibilities for significantly enriching an
audience’s experience of the film. Viewers taking advantage of these materials
would conceivably watch Citizen Kane prepared and equipped with certain points
of view. They might be attuned to Welles’s creative innovation and influence on
later filmmakers like Bogdanovich or interested in how the film recreates the
connections between Hearst and Kane that are detailed in the documentary
supplement. That the DVD provides material on “alternative ad campaigns” for the
original release of the film even allows viewers to investigate the way different
promotional strategies can direct their attention to certain themes and scenes.
The fame of Citizen Kane among critics as the best film ever made (remaining at
the top of the Sight and Sound poll taken each decade since 1962 until 2012, when
it dropped to number two) and its frequent invocation as the effort of a “boy
wonder” contribute to yet another exhibition context. Fans post excerpts on the
internet in video-sharing sites such as YouTube, and would-be filmmakers
compare their efforts to Welles’s or remix parts of his film, introducing new
generations to the classic.
Leisure Time
Think of a movie you’ve watched as a “leisure time” versus a “productive time”
activity. How might the film be viewed differently in a classroom versus during a

long airplane flight? How might your film choice be affected by the timing and
context in which you view the movie?
Traditionally, movie culture has emphasized film exhibition as
leisure time, a time that is assumed to be less productive than time
spent working and that reinforces assumptions about movies as the
kind of enjoyment associated with play and pleasure. To some
extent, leisure time is a relatively recent historical development.
Since the nineteenth century, when motion pictures first appeared,
modern society has aimed to organize experience so that work and
leisure could be separated and defined in relation to each other. We
generally identify leisure time as an “escape,” “the relaxation of our
mind and body,” or “the acting out of a different self.” Since the early
twentieth century, movie exhibition has been associated with leisure
time in these ways. Seeing a comedy on a Friday night promises
relaxation at the end of a busy week. Playing a concert film on a
DVD player while eating dinner may relieve mental fatigue.
Watching a romantic film on television late at night may offer the
passion missing from one’s real life.
Productive Time
Besides leisure time, we can and should consider film exhibition as
productive time — time used to gain information, material
advantage, or knowledge. From the early years of the cinema,
movies have been used to illustrate lectures or introduce audiences

to Shakespearean performances. Educational films like those shown
in health classes or driver education programs are less glamorous
versions of this function of film. Although less widely acknowledged
as part of film exhibition, productive time continues to shape
certain kinds of film exhibition. For a movie reviewer or film
producer, an early morning screening may be about “financial
value” because this use of time to evaluate a movie will presumably
result in certain economic rewards. For another person, a week of
films at an art museum represents “intellectual value” because it
helps explain ideas about a different society or historical period. For
a young American, an evening watching Schindler’s List (1993) can be
about “human value” because that film aims to make viewers more
knowledgeable about the Holocaust and more sensitive to the
suffering of other human beings.
The timing of exhibitions may frame and emphasize the film
experience according to certain values. The Cannes Film Festival
introduces a wide range of films and functions both as a business
venue for buying and selling film and as a glamorous showcase for
stars and parties. The May timing of this festival and its French
Riviera location ensure that the movie experience will be about
pleasure and the business of leisure time. In contrast, the New York
Film Festival, featuring some of the same films, has a more
intellectual or academic aura. It occurs in New York City during
September and October, at the beginning of the academic year and

the calendars of arts organizations, which associates this experience
of the movies more with artistic value and productive time.
Classroom, library, and museum exhibitions tend to emphasize
understanding and learning as much as enjoyment. When students
watch films in these kinds of situations, they are asked to attend to
them somewhat differently from the way they may view films on a
Friday night at the movies. They may watch more carefully, consider
the films as part of historical or artistic traditions, and take notes as
a logical part of this kind of exhibition. These conditions of film
exhibition do not necessarily change the essential meaning of a
movie, but in directing how we look at a film, they can certainly
shade and even alter how we understand it. Exhibition asks us to
engage and think about the film not as an isolated object but as part
of the expectations established by the conditions in which we watch
it.

Chapter 1 Review
SUMMARY
Our film experience is influenced by processes that occur
before we ever sit down to watch a movie: production,
distribution, promotion, and exhibition. These processes shape
our response, enjoyment, and understanding of a film.
Film production is generally broken down into three stages:
preproduction, production , and postproduction.
Preproduction describes activities that take place before the
filming of a movie, including financing, screenwriting,
casting, location scouting, storyboarding, costume design,
set building, and so forth. Key personnel include
screenwriters, producers, casting directors, agents, art
directors, set designers , and costume designers.
Production typically refers to actual shooting of a film on sets
or on locations. Key personnel for this stage include the
director, cinematographer , actors, production sound
mixers, stunt coordinators, camera operators, grips ,
electricians, carpenters, make-up artists, caterers, and other
on-set assistants and crew members.
Postproduction refers to processes that occur a�er — and
o�en also simultaneously with — principal production,
including editing, sound mixing , and special effects.

Distribution is the practice and means through which movies
are placed in venues where audiences can see them. A
distributor is a company that acquires the rights to a movie
from the filmmakers or producers and then makes the film
available to public audiences by renting or selling the film to
theaters. Distributors also make films available in ancillary
markets, which include network and cable television, video
stores, and online streaming services.
Film marketing involves identifying an audience in order to
best bring a movie to the attention of viewers so that they will
want to watch it. Promotion refers to the specific ways a movie
can be made into an object that audiences will want to see. The
most common marketing and promotional strategy involves the
star system, in which one or more well-known actors serve as
advertising vehicles for a film. Other promotional strategies
include trailers, television ads, social media marketing, and tie-
ins like toys and games. Viral marketing refers to any process
of advertising that relies on existing social networks to generate
word-of-mouth excitement.
Film exhibition encompasses where, when, and how we watch
movies. Throughout the twentieth century, most exhibition took
place in movie theaters, from movie palaces to multiplexes.
Over the last two decades, that has changed, and most
exhibition now occurs on TVs and other devices in private
homes. The social activity of watching a movie in a theater
differs greatly from the much more independent activity of
watching a movie at home, raising questions about what this
shi� means for the film experience.

KEY TERMS
production
credits
preproduction
narrative
screenwriter
treatment
screenplay
script doctor
producer
studio system
postproduction
executive producer
line producer
unit production manager
above-the-line expenses
below-the-line expenses
production values
casting director
agent
package-unit approach
location scout
production designer
art director
set decorator
costume designer
principal photography

film shoot
director
auteur
take
cinematographer
camera operator
production sound mixer
grip
dailies
selects
editing
sound editing
sound mixing
special effects
visual effects
green-screen technology
motion-capture technology
computer-generated imagery (CGI)
distribution
video on demand (VOD)
distributor
feature film
block booking
premiere
first-run theaters
wide release
saturation booking
limited release

platforming
exclusive release
ancillary markets
piracy
theatrical release window
day-and-date release
A picture
B picture
blockbuster
art film
marketing
promotion
blaxploitation
Italian neorealism
star system
tie-ins
trailer
media convergence
viral marketing
exhibition
reception
exhibitor
nickelodeon
movie palaces
multiplex

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CHAPTER 2 HISTORY AND
HISTORIOGRAPHY
Hollywood and Beyond

Three films retell a similar story at different points over nearly fi�y years
of film history — All That Heaven Allows, a Hollywood melodrama made in

1955 by German émigré director Douglas Sirk; Ali: Fear Eats the Soul,
directed in 1974 by German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder; and Far
from Heaven, made in 2002 by American independent Todd Haynes. The
first, starring Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman in a romance between a
middle-class widow and her gardener, is a glossy Technicolor tale of
social prejudice in small-town USA. The second, concentrating on the
love affair between an older cleaning woman and a young Arab worker, is
a grittier story about age, race, class, and immigration in modern
Germany. The third juxtaposes a husband’s desire for men with his wife’s
developing interracial intimacy with their gardener, critiquing the facade
of a typical 1950s family. Although these are very different films — a
product of the Hollywood studio system, a low-budget film by an
acclaimed German filmmaker of the 1970s, and an independent art-
house film — they are deeply connected, an original and two remakes
that use a central love story as social critique at a particular historical
place and time. They represent threads in the rich tapestry of films past,
which can be approached as a series of partial histories and particular
viewpoints.
can help you review. Go to launchpadworks.com
Every year, Hollywood’s greatest spectacle, the Academy Awards
nominations and ceremony, attracts media attention and global
audiences as Academy voters determine the “best” work in twenty-
four categories. Interested viewers can watch marathons of previous

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winners on cable television to educate themselves in the history of
great movie art. But awards — perhaps especially the Oscars — can
be influenced by a film’s critical profile, genre, advertising
campaign, production values, and the prominence of its personnel
within the industry. Other influential lists of “greatest” films give top
honors to Hollywood productions — Citizen Kane (1941), Vertigo
(1958), Singin’ in the Rain (1952), The Searchers (1956), for example —
that were passed over for the Oscar for best picture in their time.
Conversely, some Academy Award winners are not included on the
Library of Congress’s National Film Registry, a list of films of
historical significance that admits additional films each year a�er a
public nomination process. Looking only at Oscar winners is not the
most unbiased or comprehensive approach to the global history of
cinema; foreign-language films are grouped in one Academy Award
category, to which each country is allowed to submit only a single
film.
Movie history can take many shapes and forms beyond “best of ”
lists. How we look at film history is the product of certain formulas
and models. For example, industrial histories look at the
technologies, business practices, and policies that shape filmmaking
and the distribution and exhibition of films. Social histories relate
film genres, stars, and filmgoing habits to larger social contexts.
Formal histories analyze prevalent stylistic choices. Genealogies
look at how power relations operating during a certain period
influence one particular historical development over another. In our

discussion of film history, we aim not only to present key facts,
names, and events but also to direct attention to how history is
written.
Since the first days of moving pictures, movies themselves have
attempted to write history. The first movies, with their remarkable
ability to present people and events as living images, began to
record actual historical happenings (such as the 1900 Paris
Exposition) and to re-create historical moments (such as the
assassination of President William McKinley in 1901). Cinema
quickly became one of the most common ways that people
encounter the figures of the past. Some historical movies — such as
the tale of the eighteenth-century Russian monarch Catherine the
Great in The Scarlet Empress (1934), the story of John Reed and the
Greenwich Village le�ist movement in Reds (1981), and the 1965
voting rights march led by Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil
rights leaders in Selma (2015) [Figure 2.1] — have so powerfully and
convincingly reconstructed the past that they have become the
dominant framework through which many of us see and understand
history.

2.1 Selma (2015). History in the movies: David Oyelowo portrays Martin Luther King Jr. in
Ava DuVernay’s drama about a crucial moment in the U.S. civil rights era.
The study of the methods and principles through which the past is
viewed according to certain perspectives and priorities is called
historiography. Just as the movies construct visions of history for
us, so, too, do written accounts shape our view of film history in
particular ways. Attention to historiography gives us a broader
perspective on the kinds of historical narratives available to us,
allowing us to understand the many stories that constitute the movie
past rather than to take a singular perspective as given.
It has been nearly 125 years since films were first exhibited to paying
audiences, and those first exhibitions were the culmination of long
efforts of invention and imagination. We have selected
periodization as the most useful historiographic tool to give readers
a broad overview of film history that can serve as background for
the concepts to be introduced in the book. Periodization is a method

of organizing film history by periods that are defined by historical
events or that produced movies that share thematic and stylistic
concerns. Although different periodizations are possible, this survey
is divided into the following broad periods — silent (1895–1929),
classical (1929–1945), post–World War II (1945–1975), globalization
(1975–2000), and digital (2000–present). For each era, we reference
key social events that define film histories and highlight formal and
stylistic features that are tied to industrial and technological
developments.
Inevitably, writing film history involves interpretation and making
choices about what to include and what to leave out. The commonly
accepted list of great works in a field of study is called the canon. In
this chapter, we introduce canonical films and filmmakers as an
essential orientation to film history, while recognizing that the very
concept of a film canon confers cultural weight on certain movies
over others. We have therefore also highlighted undervalued
contributions and traditions that help reveal the antecedents of
some of today’s diverse film practices and drive changes in the
canon.
Although Hollywood has achieved a dominant economic and
stylistic position in world film history, any view of film history would
be incomplete if it ignored the rich traditions of filmmaking beyond
Hollywood. Film arose as an international medium and in its first
decades even transcended language barriers. A variety of factors
internal and external to the film industry led to the rise of

Hollywood’s storytelling and commercial models. This chapter
examines film cultures from around the world — some as old as
Hollywood and some just beginning to emerge — without attempting
to be comprehensive.
This chapter concludes with attention to the issue of preserving our
rich and diverse film history. The Film Foundation, founded by
director Martin Scorsese, estimates that more than 50 percent of
films made worldwide before 1950 are no longer extant. How can we
tell the full story of cinema with this many gaps in the record? These
losses encourage the writing of film histories that go beyond the
films themselves to consider institutions like archives and practices
like public memories of filmgoing.
Indeed, every aspect of the film experience can be weaved into the
history of the medium. While this chapter offers a broad overview,
later chapters also include historical material explaining technical
and stylistic developments as well as the evolution of modes and
genres of filmmaking.
KEY OBJECTIVES
Draw the broad outlines and periods of film history.
Introduce important films, filmmakers, and movements.
Explain the concept of historiography as writing history from a particular
viewpoint.
Identify film practices and filmmakers marginalized by traditional Hollywood-
centered histories.

Give a sense of the global dimensions of film history, emphasizing the
distinctive nature of different national traditions as well as transnational
influences.
Describe “lost” film history and the importance of film preservation.

Silent Cinema (1895–1929)
The silent cinema period, from 1895 until roughly 1929, was
characterized by rapid development and experimentation in film
technology, form, and culture and the establishment of successful
film industries around the world. A�er World War I (1914–1918),
Hollywood achieved dominance as it established the practices and
formulas that carried into the classical period a�er the
incorporation of synchronized sound technology. This period saw
the development of the major film genres, the star system, the
studio system, and the theatrical exhibition of feature-length
narrative films.
Around the turn of the twentieth century in the United States,
massive industrialization attracted large numbers of immigrants
and rural Americans to urban centers, shi�ing traditional class,
race, and gender lines as the country experienced economic
prosperity. Industrialization also fostered the growth of leisure time
and commercialized leisure activities, allowing popular culture to
compete with high culture as never before. These patterns of
modernization — including the invention of cinema and its rapid
integration into the life of the masses — were, to some extent,
international phenomena, also appearing most notably in Western
Europe, Russia, and some Asian capitals.

For many historians, the beginning of cinema history proper is the
first screening of August and Louis Lumière’s Workers Leaving the
Lumière Factory on March 22, 1895, followed by the public screening
of this and other films by the brothers in Paris on December 18,
1895. Seeking the shock of the new, viewers in major cities around
the world looked to see demonstrations of the new medium in films
like Robert W. Paul’s 1896 racing film The Derby [Figure 2.2]. Soon
commercial and theatrical venues for showing movies to the general
public arrived in the form of nickelodeons — storefront theaters
and arcade spaces where short films were showed continuously for a
five-cent admission price to audiences passing in and out. The early
development of film technology, technique, subject matter, and
exhibition practices took place on many fronts. In part to control
this growth, the major film companies in the United States
standardized practices by forming the Motion Picture Patents
Company (known as “the Trust”) in 1908.

2.2 The Derby (1896). The finish of the annual Epsom Derby horse race, captured by British
filmmakers Robert W. Paul and Birt Acres, stands at the beginning of cinema’s evolution.
This period of rapid change in how films were made and seen is
known as early cinema, which stretches from 1895 to the rise of the
feature film form around 1915. In early cinema, the impulse was less
to tell a story than to provide an exciting spectacle for audiences.
The first movies encompassed trick films, comic sketches,
travelogues, and scenes of everyday life. Stylistically, early cinema
was characterized by the shi� from single to multiple shots and the
early elaboration of narrative form. From simple scenes like Fred
Ott’s Sneeze (1896), movies quickly evolved to dramatize real or

fictional events using multiple shots that were logically connected in
space and time. Released in 1903, Edwin S. Porter’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin
presented fourteen shots introduced by intertitles to depict the
highlights of the famous novel and play. By 1911, D. W. Griffith’s The
Lonedale Operator, a short film about burglars threatening a
telegraph operator, used around one hundred shots and parallel
editing to build suspense. The kind of cutting and variations in
camera distance that Griffith employed eventually characterized the
influential American narrative style, whereas narrative styles in
other film-producing countries like Denmark and Russia relied on a
more presentational, tableau format.
The early film era was an entrepreneurial period that attracted
women caught up in rapid changes in gender roles and expectations.
Although they have only recently been restored to the historical
record, women participated as directors and producers as well as
assistants, writers, editors, and actors. Alice Guy Blaché made what
some consider the first fiction film, La fée aux choux (The Cabbage
Fairy) in 1896 in France and later turned out hundreds of films from
her New Jersey studio [Figure 2.3]. Lois Weber, a director in the
1910s who was nearly as well-known as fellow filmmakers Cecil B.
DeMille and D. W. Griffith, made a film about birth control, Where
Are My Children? (1916) [Figure 2.4], and at least eleven women were
credited with directing movies at Universal in the 1910s. As the
Hollywood mode of production began to solidify in the 1920s, all of
these women were driven out of the industry.

2.3 Alice Guy Blaché in 1915. The earliest and most prolific woman director in history has
barely been acknowledged in mainstream film histories.

2.4 Where Are My Children? (1916). This film by Lois Weber deals with the controversial social
issues of birth control and abortion.
Description
A man seated on a chair points to a woman kneeling on the floor. The
woman’s body faces away from the man as she looks over her should,
raising a hand, and crying out.
Another sign of the promise of filmmaking before the standard
practices and economic interests of the studio system pushed out
different approaches can be seen in early African American film
culture. In the first decades of the twentieth century, black

filmmakers like Oscar Micheaux (see the History Close Up later in
this chapter), produced work for African American audiences
confronting the realities of racism and segregation. Opposition to
the inflammatory depictions of blacks in Griffith’s The Birth of a
Nation (1915) was a significant impetus for African Americans to
claim film as a medium for self-representation. So-called race
movies — early-twentieth-century films that featured all–African
American casts — were circulated to African American audiences,
sometimes at segregated, late-night screenings known as “midnight
rambles.” Some race movies were produced by white entrepreneurs,
but several prominent production companies were owned by
African Americans. In 1910, for example, Bill Foster founded the
Foster Photoplay Company in Chicago, and in 1916, actor Noble
Johnson formed the all-black Lincoln Motion Picture Company in
Los Angeles with his brother and other partners.
Throughout the 1910s, French and American studios churned out
films for export in genres including slapstick comedy and literary
adaptations. The characters in these short films were originally
anonymous actors and actresses, but the emergence of the star
system enhanced the cultural power of film. By 1911, Biograph
Studios’ most popular actress, Florence Lawrence, was known as the
“Biograph Girl,” and celebrities like Mary Pickford (“America’s
Sweetheart”) became the focus of wildly popular fan magazines and
collectables. In Japan, film production flourished, and a unique film
culture developed, with storytellers called benshi who narrated and

interpreted silent films. In the 1910s, epic films produced in Italy
challenged the standards of film length set in the United States by
the Trust, which was finally dissolved in 1918. American movie
production advanced in length and complexity, and Hollywood
extended its reach around the world, producing half the films made
worldwide in 1914 on the cusp of World War I.
Silent Features in Hollywood
Hollywood came of age with three major historical developments —
the standardization of film production, the establishment of the
feature film, and the cultural and economic expansion of movies
throughout society. As the industry grew, standardized formulas for
film production took root, and the studios created efficient teams of
scriptwriters, producers, directors, camera operators, actors, and
editors and established the longer feature-film model with a running
time of approximately 100 minutes. The movies also found more
sophisticated subject matter and more elegant theaters for
distribution, reflecting their rising cultural status and their ability to
attract audiences from all corners of society. Internationally,
Hollywood continued to extend its reach. While World War I
wreaked havoc on European economies, Hollywood increased its
exports fivefold and its overseas income by 35 percent. The most
pronounced and important aesthetic changes during this period
included the development of narrative realism and the integration of
the viewer’s perspective into the editing and narrative action.

Narrative realism came to the forefront of movie culture as the
movies sought legitimization. From D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a
Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916) [Figure 2.5] through King Vidor’s
The Big Parade (1925), films learned to explore simultaneous actions,
complex spatial geographies, and the psychological interaction of
characters through narrative — with camera movements, framing,
and editing that situated viewers within the narrative action rather
than at a theatrical distance.
2.5 Intolerance (1916). D. W. Griffith intertwines stories set in four different historical periods
in this landmark in the evolution of narrative film form.

With these aesthetic developments came the refinement of genres.
During this time, comedians and prominent silent film directors
Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton drew audiences in with their
slapstick vignettes and early narratives, defining the art of the
comedy in 1920s Hollywood. Although Chaplin and Keaton each
created distinct styles and stories, both replaced the clownish and
chaotic gymnastics of early film comedies (such as Mack Sennett’s
Keystone comedies) with nuanced and acrobatic gestures that
dramatized serious human and social themes. Providing a
bombastic counterpoint to silent comedies and dramas, Cecil B.
DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1923) was an expensive and
technically advanced spectacle that marked another direction in
silent film history [Figure 2.6]. Perhaps the most interesting
balancing act in The Ten Commandments is its portrayal of lurid sex
and violence in scenes that are continually reframed by a strong
moral perspective. A similar contradiction characterized American
attitudes toward the movies more generally. The early 1920s saw a
series of sex and drug scandals involving Hollywood stars, and calls
for censorship became widespread.

2.6 The Ten Commandments (1923). Cecil B. DeMille’s first version of the biblical story was a
silent movie spectacular.
By 1920, comedies, lavish spectacles, and thrilling melodramas
attracted fi�y million weekly moviegoers, and attendance continued
to soar during that decade as audiences followed the offscreen lives
of their favorite stars in fan magazines. Technological experiments
with sound fostered competition among the studios, culminating in
Warner Bros.’ successful exhibition of The Jazz Singer (1927), the first
feature-length film with synchronized speech.

German Expressionist Cinema
By the end of the 1930s, the aesthetic movements and national film
industries that had developed in Europe during the silent and early
sound eras were shaken by the threat of military conflict. But the
internationalism of the first decades of cinema meant that the
aesthetic influences of these movements were still considerable and
lasting. Expressionism (in film, theater, painting, and other arts)
turned away from realist representation and toward the
unconscious and irrational sides of human experience. German
expressionist cinema (1918–1929) represented such dark forces
through lighting, sets, and costume design.
A�er a national film industry was centralized toward the end of
World War I, German films began to compete successfully with
Hollywood cinema. The postwar Weimar Republic was a period in
which culture, science, and the arts flourished, and social norms
were relaxed and modernized. The first LGBT activist movie, Anders
als die Andern (Different from the Others), was produced in Germany in
1919 in the socially tolerant Weimar era. Dramatizing the risk of
blackmail to a prominent citizen because of his sexual preference,
the film advocates the decriminalization of male homosexuality (no
statute specifically prohibited lesbianism) and features a lecture by
German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld.

As part of the larger artistic and cultural avant-garde movements of
the late 1910s and early 1920s, Weimar-era cinema differed from
Hollywood models in that it successfully integrated an explicit
commitment to artistic expression into studio production primarily
through the giant national Universum Film AG (UFA). The most
famous achievement of the expressionist trend in film history is
Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), a dreamlike story of
a somnambulist who, in the service of a mad tyrant, stalks innocent
victims [Figure 2.7]. Along with its story of obsessed and troubled
individuals, the film’s shadowy atmosphere and strangely distorted
artificial sets became trademarks of German expressionist cinema.
Meanwhile, G. W. Pabst was a master of the more realistic “street
film” genre of the Weimar period. In his film The Joyless Street (1925),
the realities of city streets become excessive, morbid, and
emotionally twisted.

2.7 The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). Expressionist sets make this one of the most visually
striking films in history.
Two of the most important filmmakers at UFA were Fritz Lang,
director of Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler (1922), Metropolis (1927), and M
(1931), and F. W. Murnau, director of Nosferatu (1922) and The Last
Laugh (1924). Lang, the most prominent director in pre-Nazi
Germany, created the first science fiction blockbuster with
Metropolis and later had a successful Hollywood career where he
enriched film noir pictures like The Woman in the Window (1944)
with expressionist style and themes. In Nosferatu, Murnau re-creates

the vampire legend within a naturalistic setting, one that lighting,
camera angles, and other expressive techniques infuse with a
supernatural anxiety. Murnau, too, emigrated to Hollywood, where
he made one of the masterpieces of silent cinema, Sunrise (1929).
Soviet Silent Films
Soviet silent films from 1917 to 1931 represent a break from the
entertainment history of the movies. The Soviet cinema of this
period developed out of the Russian Revolution of 1917, suggesting
its distance from the assumptions and aims of the capitalist
economics of Hollywood. These conditions resulted in an emphasis
on documentary and historical subjects and a political concept of
cinema that was centered on audience response.
Dziga Vertov, a seminal theoretician and practitioner in this
movement, established a collective workshop — the Kinoki or
“cinema-eyes” — to investigate how cinema communicates both
directly and subliminally. He and his colleagues were deeply
committed to presenting everyday truths rather than distracting
fictions, yet they also recognized that cinema elicits different ideas
and responses according to how images are structured and edited.
They developed a montage aesthetic suited to the modern world into
which the people of the Soviet Union were being catapulted. In the
spirit of these theories, Vertov’s creative nonfiction film Man with a
Movie Camera (1929) records not only the activity of the modern city

but also how its energy is transformed by the camera recording it.
By moving rapidly from one subject to another; using split screens,
superimpositions, and variable film speeds; and continually placing
the camera within the action, this movie does more than describe or
narrate the city [Figure 2.8].
2.8 Man with a Movie Camera (1929). The image of the cameraman looms over the city,
implying the central role that cinema plays in modern life.
Although Soviet cinema at this time produced many exceptional
films, Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925) quickly became
the most renowned outside the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

(USSR). This film about an uprising of oppressed sailors that
heralded the coming revolution retains its place in film history
because it brilliantly demonstrates Eisenstein’s theories of montage.
The film’s extraordinary international and critical success enabled
Eisenstein to travel throughout Europe, Hollywood, and Mexico.
Eventually, he returned to the Soviet Union, where, under Joseph
Stalin, socialist realism became the official program in filmmaking.
Consequently, the careers of Eisenstein, Vertov, and the other major
experimental filmmakers of the revolutionary period declined, with
Eisenstein developing an influential body of writing on film.
French Cinema
Alongside the Lumière brothers at the very origin of cinema,
magician George Méliès took film art in the direction of the
fantastical, producing hundreds of trick films like The Vanishing
Lady (1896) for export all over the world. The French film industry
was the world’s most successful before World War I, fueled by
successful genre films and thrilling serials like Les Vampires (1915),
produced by Louis Feuillade for the powerful Gaumont studio.
H I STO R Y C LO S E U P
Oscar Micheaux
One of the most important rediscovered figures in film history is the African
American novelist, writer, producer-director, and impresario Oscar Micheaux
(right), who in 1918 directed his first feature film, The Homesteader, an adaptation

from his own novel. Micheaux owned and operated an independent production
company from 1918 to 1948, producing more than forty feature films on extremely
limited budgets, most of which have been lost. Reusing footage and working with
untrained actors, he fashioned a distinctly non-Hollywood style whose “errors”
can be interpreted as an alternative aesthetic tradition. His most controversial
film, Within Our Gates (1920) (discussed later in this chapter), realistically portrays
the spread of lynching and was threatened with censorship in a period of race
riots. Later, in Body and Soul (1925), Micheaux teamed up with actor, singer, and
activist Paul Robeson in a powerful portrait of a corrupt preacher. Paradoxically,
efforts made in the 1940s to persuade Hollywood to produce more progressive
representations of African Americans helped put an end to the independent
tradition of “race movies,” and Micheaux released his last film, The Betrayal, in
1948.

In the 1920s, cinema as an art form was championed by avant-garde
artists and intellectuals in new journals and ciné clubs, and artists
and filmmakers conducted radical experiments with film form.
Paralleling contemporaneous visual arts like impressionist painting,
French impressionist cinema was a 1920s avant-garde film
movement that aimed to destabilize familiar or objective ways of
seeing and to revitalize the dynamics of human perception.
Representative of the early impressionist films are Germaine Dulac’s

The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928), Jean Epstein’s The Fall of the
House of Usher (1928), Marcel L’Herbier’s L’Argent (1928), and Abel
Gance’s three daring narrative films — I Accuse (1919), The Wheel
(1923), and Napoléon (1927). Dulac’s surrealist film illustrates the
daring play between subject matter and form that was typical of
these films. The Seashell and the Clergyman barely concentrates on its
story (a priest pursues a beautiful woman), focusing instead on the
memories, hallucinations, and fantasies of the central character,
depicted with split screens and other strange imagistic effects.
Equally lyrical but very different in form, Danish director Carl
Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) focuses on the
expressivity of the human face in close-up in what many consider
the pinnacle of silent film as an art form [Figure 2.9].

2.9 The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928). This searing portrait explores spiritual and cinematic
expressivity through a series of powerful close-ups.

Classical Cinema (1929–1945)
The introduction of synchronized sound in 1927 inaugurated a
period of Hollywood consolidation that lasted until the end of World
War II in 1945. The Great Depression, triggered in part by the stock
market collapse of 1929, defined the American cultural experience
at the beginning of the 1930s. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal
became the political antidote for much of the 1930s, pumping a
determined spirit of optimism into society. The catastrophic conflict
of World War II then defined the last four years of the classical
period, in which the United States fully asserted its global leadership
and control.
The film industry followed the turbulent events with dramatic
changes of its own. The “Big Five” studios (20th Century Fox, Metro-
Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount, Warner Bros., and RKO) along with the
“Little Three” (Columbia, Universal, and United Artists) dominated
the industry by controlling distributors and theater chains and
exerting great industrial and cultural power. With social issues more
hotly debated and the movies gaining more influence than ever, the
messages of films came increasingly under scrutiny.
Formed in 1922, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors
Association of America (MPDAA, now the MPAA) enlisted former
postmaster general William H. Hays to regulate movies’ moral

content through what became known as the “Hays Office.” The
Motion Picture Production Code, adopted in 1930, was at first widely
ignored, but in 1934 the MPDAA set up the Production Code
Administration, headed by Joseph I. Breen, to enforce it strictly. The
code’s conservative list of principles governed primarily the
depiction of crime and sex and kept censorship efforts within the
industry rather than under government regulation.
Sometimes the Code’s provisions led to distortions of original source
material. Lillian Hellman’s hit Broadway play The Children’s Hour
[Figure 2.10] dealt with the consequences of a malicious child’s lies
about the lesbian relationship between the headmistresses of her
school. But because under the Code, “homosexuality and any
inference to it are prohibited,” the 1936 movie version, These Three,
implied that the child’s gossip was about one teacher’s affair with the
other’s fiancé, a change that puzzled audiences familiar with the
play.

2.10 The Children’s Hour (1961). Lillian Hellman’s 1936 play was eventually faithfully
adapted to the screen a�er the Production Code was relaxed in the 1960s, but by then its
depiction of the main character’s suicide was dated and damaging.
At this time, Hollywood films followed these industry shi�s with two
important stylistic features: the elaboration of movie dialogue and
the growth of characterization in films, and the prominence of
generic formulas in constructing film narratives. Sound technology
opened a whole new dimension to film form that allowed movies to
expand their dramatic capacity. Accomplished writers flocked to
Hollywood, literary adaptations flourished, and characters became
more psychologically complex through the use of dialogue. Popular
music o�en was featured, and African American performers were
included even as they remained barred from central dramatic roles.
Meanwhile, generic formulas, like musicals and westerns, became

the primary production and distribution standard. In fact, genres
sometimes superseded the subject matter and actors in defining a
film and expectations about it.
During Hollywood’s golden age in the 1930s and 1940s, an
exceptional number and variety of studio classics emerged. Frank
Capra’s It Happened One Night (1934) is perhaps one of the best
representations of the energy that was making its way from the New
York theatrical stage to the Hollywood screen a�er the arrival of
synchronized dialogue. The film’s social allegory about common
people correcting the greed and egotism of the rich defined Capra’s
vision throughout this decade and into the 1940s [Figure 2.11].
Similarly, veteran director John Ford elevated the western with
Stagecoach (1939). In 1939, Stagecoach joined Gone with the Wind, The
Wizard of Oz, Wuthering Heights, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington as
a contender for the year’s best picture Oscar (Capra’s You Can’t Take
It with You won the honor), making it a banner year for classical
Hollywood.

2.11 It Happened One Night (1934). Frank Capra’s screwball comedy — about a rebellious
socialite (Claudette Colbert) who flees her wealthy father and takes up, reluctantly, with a
reporter (Clark Gable) who hopes to use her scandalous behavior as a news scoop — is a
quintessential 1930s Hollywood film.
Although 65 percent of Americans attended the movies weekly in
1930, many kinds of Americans were not represented in them.
Stereotypes of racial and ethnic minorities and the casting of white
actors to portray people of color were endemic to this period. Hattie
McDaniel won the first Oscar awarded to an African American
performer for her portrayal of Mammy in Gone with the Wind even as
the film met with criticism in the black press for glorifying the

slaveholding South. By 1942, many African American men were
serving in the U.S. military, and the studios reached an agreement
with National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) leader Walter White to monitor the representation of
African Americans in films. Also during the war, representations of
Latin Americans were encouraged, and monitored, under the
Roosevelt administration’s official Good Neighbor policy.
Employment behind the scenes in Hollywood was also limited, with
few people of color working in key creative positions. One of these,
Chinese American cinematographer James Wong Howe, was
nominated for ten Academy Awards and won two. Women were
restricted by the studios to specific production roles, such as script
supervisor or editor. The most prominent and, for a considerable
period, the only active female director in sound-era Hollywood was
Dorothy Arzner [Figure 2.12]. Her films Christopher Strong (1933) and
Dance, Girl, Dance (1940) feature strong heroines played by top stars
Katharine Hepburn and Lucille Ball, and they portray significant
bonds between women within their more traditional storylines of
heterosexual romance.

2.12 Dorothy Arzner. Arzner was the only woman to direct Hollywood films in the 1930s, the
heyday of the studio system.
European Cinema in the 1930s and
1940s
The introduction of synchronized sound presented a challenge to
cinema’s internationalism even as rising nationalism in Europe used
cinema to define linguistic and cultural heritage. Weimar cinema
shows these tensions in the early sound film The Blue Angel (1930),
which was filmed simultaneously in German, French, and English.
Marlene Dietrich plays her breakthrough role as a cabaret singer

who seduces an aging professor. Another Weimar film, Mädchen in
Uniform (1931), written by lesbian author Christa Winsloe and based
on her own play [Figure 2.13], depicts a young woman’s boarding-
school crush on a sympathetic teacher. Featuring an all-female cast
and directed by a woman, Leontine Sagan, the film cautions against
repressive hierarchies that would soon become omnipresent in Nazi
Germany and itself was subject to censorship.

2.13 Mädchen in Uniform (1931). This Weimar-era film about a student’s crush on her
teacher features an all-female cast and was written and directed by women.
Socially conscious directors René Clair, Jean Vigo, Marcel Carné,
and Jean Renoir integrated artistic innovations into traditional
narrative in poetic realism — a film movement in 1930s France that
incorporated a lyrical style and a fatalistic view of life. Renoir’s The
Rules of the Game (1939) [Figure 2.14] is on one level a realistic
account of social conflict and disintegration. A tale of aristocrats
and their servants gathered for a holiday in the country, the film is a
satirical and o�en biting critique of the hypocrisy and brutality of
this microcosm of decadent society. The film’s insight and wit come
from lighting, long takes, and framing that draw out dark ironies not
visible on the surface of the relationships. One of the film’s most
noted sequences features a hunting expedition in which the editing
searingly equates the slaughter of birds and rabbits with the social
behavior of the hunters toward each other.

2.14 The Rules of the Game (1939). Jean Renoir’s masterwork of poetic realism is known for
its fluid style and critique of bourgeois society.
Meanwhile, Jean Vigo’s Zero for Conduct (1933) takes up the themes of
rebellion and social critique by depicting tyranny at a boys’ boarding
school. The boys’ spirit of rebellion is conveyed in a combination of
realistic narrative and lyrical, sometimes fantastical, images. These
images dramatize the wild and anarchic vision of the young boys: at
one point a pillow fight erupts in the dormitory, and the whirlwind
of pillow feathers transforms the room into a paradise of disorder.
The spirit of poeticism and critique that informed these directors’
visions, although not impossible to convey in Hollywood films of the

period, was discouraged by the industrial and commercial
orientation of filmmaking in Hollywood.
Golden Age Mexican Cinema
In the mid-1930s, the Mexican film industry entered its own golden
age with films like Fernando de Fuentes’s drama Vamonos con Pancho
Villa! (Let’s Go with Pancho Villa) (1936), celebrating the revolutionary
leader. With European production directly affected by war and
Hollywood focusing on wartime genres, Mexican studios became a
center of film production for national and international markets.
Successful melodramas, comedies, and musicals featured beloved
stars such as Pedro Infante. Dolores del Rio returned from a
successful career in Hollywood to her native Mexico to star in
prolific director Emilio “El Indo” Fernandez’s Maria Candelaria
(1944). Fernandez also guided Maria Félix in Enamorada (1946).
Perhaps most iconic of all was the comic actor Cantinflas, the
persona of actor Mario Moreno, who became a symbol of the
Mexican people. Although the Mexican film industry was eclipsed in
the postwar period, a resurgence of auteurism in an industrial
context took place much later, at the end of the century.

Postwar Cinemas (1945–1975)
World War II indelibly altered the map of world politics and culture.
Cinema, already a mature art form and social force, became an
important barometer of these changes. The Hollywood studio
system faced legal, economic, and cultural challenges at home and
artistic and political challenges from the many new wave cinemas
emerging around the world, which were catalyzed by new ideas and
alliances in the postwar period. As new media technologies and
leisure options began to vie with cinema, the movies attempted to
consolidate their hold on the public.
Postwar Hollywood
Unrest characterized postwar America. The start of the Cold War
began an extended period of tension and anxiety about national
identity and security. Traditional institutions — such as the family
unit, sexual relationships, and established social relations — stood
on the brink of tremendous change. In the 1950s and 1960s, the civil
rights movement and women’s liberation began to mobilize to
challenge social injustice. Changes within the film industry
dismantled some of the power of the studios, opening American
cinema to many of these social and political changes. The end of the
studio era led to two important shi�s: the recognition and eventual

dominance of youth audiences and the increasing influence of
European art films.
The most notorious ideological conflict in Hollywood history
occurred immediately a�er World War II, when the film industry
came under congressional investigation for alleged Communist
infiltration. The movie colony was a sensational target for the House
Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings, held as part of
the Red Scare instigated by Senator Joseph McCarthy. Ten directors,
screenwriters, and producers — who became known as the
“Hollywood Ten” — refused to answer HUAC’s questions and were
jailed for contempt of Congress.
A number of other events greatly affected Hollywood during the
postwar period. A�er the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1948 decision in
United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc., the studios were ordered to
divest their theater chains, effectively ending their control of the
industry. This decline in studio power was accompanied by the
arrival of television and its rapid spread in the 1950s. Finally, in
1968, the Production Code era officially ended, and the MPAA
ratings system was introduced. Movies grew more daring and darker
as they loosened or challenged the formulas of classical Hollywood
and explored controversial themes and issues. Competing with
television, they also developed a more self-conscious and
exaggerated sense of image composition and narrative structure.

Beginning with The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and its layered tale
of postwar trauma in small-town America, films delved into such
subjects as family betrayal, alcoholism and drug abuse, sexuality,
racial injustice, and psychological breakdowns. African American
actor Sidney Poitier took on a symbolic role for a nation coming to
terms with racial division in films like The Defiant Ones (1958) and In
the Heat of the Night (1967). These new topics introduced more
unpredictable characters and narratives as well as sometimes
subversive and violent visual styles, exemplified in Orson Welles’s
Touch of Evil (1958) and Alfred Hitchcock’s shocking Psycho (1960).
John Ford’s westerns can be seen as historical barometers of this
transitional and turbulent period in Hollywood. My Darling
Clementine (1946), the prototypical western, is a meditation on the
power of nature and communal individualism to overcome evil,
while The Searchers (1956) is a morally ambivalent tale about where
violence and racism reside, featuring an older John Wayne as a
racist cowboy [Figure 2.15].

2.15 The Searchers (1956). John Ford’s late western uses lead actor John Wayne and the
Monument Valley settings familiar from their long collaboration to bring out dark themes of
racist violence in the settling of the West.
As examples of the film noir cycle, Charles Vidor’s Gilda (1946) and
Howard Hawks’s The Big Sleep (1946) both reflect the postwar period’s
social and personal instability and explore the perceived threat of
female sexuality and autonomy. As if reflecting their troubled
characters and actions in their form, film noir narratives seem to
lose their direction, and their visual styles are overwhelmed with
gloom. Rita Hayworth’s performance in Gilda transforms the femme
fatale into a sympathetic character, however, appealing to female
audiences who were confronting the conflicted roles of women in
the 1940s, when their new freedoms in the workforce were
perceived as a threat to job-seeking veterans [Figure 2.16].

2.16 Gilda (1946). Set in a casino in Argentina at the end of World War II, this film indirectly
represents fears about shi�ing gender roles on the home front.
As the studio mode of production loosened its hold, more
independent producers came forward. Ida Lupino, a well-known
actress, began directing hard-hitting, low-budget independent films
such as Hard, Fast and Beautiful (1951), about a mother who pushes
her daughter to succeed in a tennis career. Lupino later had a
successful directing career in television, an arena that offered more
opportunities for women to create in the postwar period.

By the late 1950s and 1960s, younger audiences came to the forefront
of movie culture. Drive-in movie theaters, which catered to teenage
audiences, were one manifestation of this trend. Another was the
college and urban audiences for art films and other alternative
cinemas that proliferated a�er 1960. Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a
Cause (1955) gives what was a shocking depiction of a generational
crisis in America in which teenagers dri� aimlessly beyond parental
guidance [Figure 2.17]. Roger Corman’s American International
Pictures made even more blatant attempts to exploit young
audiences with work like Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957) and a
series of 1960s films based on the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. At the
same time, with films like Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957)
and Federico Fellini’s 8½ (1963) — two very different meditations on
existential questions — movies shown in new art-house theaters
came to be considered complex artistic objects that justified
aesthetic appreciation and academic study.
2.17 Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Teenage angst and juvenile delinquency are on display in
Nicholas Ray’s CinemaScope classic.

Postwar prosperity and the growth of the suburbs led audiences to
new consumption patterns, especially the rapid adoption of the
television. Hollywood answered with spectacular color and
widescreen technologies that could not be duplicated at home.
When the studios were ordered to divest their theater holdings,
independent cinema owners were able to court new urban
demographics. Both foreign art cinema and exploitation cinema
found audiences among nonconforming youth, with depictions of
sexuality and violence prohibited in mainstream filmmaking.
Although the studio system produced one of its last and highest-
budgeted family films in 1965, The Sound of Music, classical
Hollywood’s reign was waning as the civil rights movement, political
violence, and the war in Vietnam heated up.
Younger filmmakers influenced by the rebellious energy of new
European films ironically showed Hollywood its survival path. The
unprecedented violence and irreverent tone of Arthur Penn’s Bonnie
and Clyde (1967), made at Warner Bros. with the support of star
Warren Beatty, challenged mainstream sensibilities. But it was a
box-office hit, turning Hollywood’s attention to youth audiences for
decades to come.
In the early 1970s, Hollywood also targeted an urban market with a
genre of low-budget films about streetwise African American
protagonists known as blaxploitation. Although the term cynically

suggests the economic exploitation of black film audiences, the
genre was made possible in part by the black power movement, and
some African American filmmakers turned the genre to their own
purposes. The studio-produced and immensely successful Sha�
(1971) was directed by noted photographer Gordon Parks. And
Melvin Van Peebles wrote, directed, scored, and starred in Sweet
Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971), which incorporates revolutionary
rhetoric in a kinetic tale of a black man pursued by racist cops
[Figure 2.18].
2.18 Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971). Melvin Van Peebles’s militant
blaxploitation film became a hit.

An independent New American Cinema was emerging in New York,
exemplified by John Cassavetes’s Faces (1959), made on low-budget,
16mm film. At the same time, Hollywood was doing its best to
incorporate new voices into the system, hiring younger, o�en film-
school-trained directors. Francis Ford Coppola’s Oscar-winning The
Godfather (1972) [Figure 2.19] defined the convergence of directorial
and marketing talent characteristic of the era of the New Hollywood.
2.19 The Godfather (1972). Perhaps the key example of the New Hollywood, Francis Ford
Coppola’s film was an economic and artistic success.
International Art Cinema
In the a�ermath of World War II, new filmmaking styles and fresh
voices emerged in Europe and quickly spread around the world.

Studio filmmaking was either compromised by its alliance with
defeated government powers or seemed old-fashioned in the face of
emerging youth culture and prosperity. These new currents in
cinema served an important political role in the immediate postwar
period, with major European film festivals in Cannes, Venice, and
Berlin establishing their prominence in defining cultural worth.
Highlighting the work of particular directors, they cultivated an
auteurist approach to film art and, by including directors from
outside of Europe, emphasized the internationalism of the medium
as part of a hoped-for new order of peace and prosperity.
Italian Neorealism
One of the most profound influences in international postwar art
cinema was Italian neorealism, a film movement that began in Italy
during World War II and lasted until approximately 1952.
Neorealism shed light on everyday social realities, o�en using
location shooting and nonprofessional actors. Its relatively short
history belies its far-reaching effects. At a critical juncture of world
history, Italian cinema revitalized film culture by depicting postwar
social crises and using a stark, realistic style clearly different from
the glossy entertainment formulas of Hollywood and other studio
systems.
Earlier in the century, Italian film spectacles such as Quo Vadis?
(1913) and Cabiria (1914) had created a taste for lavish epics. The

films produced at the Cinecittà (“cinema city”) studios under Benito
Mussolini’s fascist regime (1922–1943) were similarly glossy,
decorative entertainments. During wartime in 1942, screenwriter
Cesare Zavattini set the stage for neorealism, calling for a new
cinema that would forsake entertainment formulas and promote
social realism instead. Luchino Visconti responded with Ossessione
(1943), and Vittorio De Sica directed Zavattini’s screenplays to
produce such classics as Bicycle Thieves (1948). Perhaps the best
example of the accomplishments and contradictions of this
movement is Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City (1945), shot under
adverse conditions at the end of the war [Figure 2.20]. Set during the
Nazi occupation of Rome (1943–1944), the film intentionally
approximates newsreel images to depict the strained and desperate
street life of the war-torn city. (The phrase open city refers to a city
that has agreed not to defend itself against invaders, who then agree
not to bomb or destroy buildings.) The plot tells of a community that
protects a resistance fighter who is being hunted by the German
Gestapo/SS and that experiences the tragic deaths of people caught
in between, sounding a note that reverberated throughout postwar
movie cultures. Subsequent Italian cinema — including the work of
directors Pier Paolo Pasolini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Vittorio and
Paolo Taviani, Marco Bellocchio, Bernardo Bertolucci, and even
Federico Fellini — follows from this neorealist history even when it
introduces new forms and subjects.

2.20 Rome, Open City (1945). Roberto Rossellini’s film exemplifies Italian neorealism in its
use of war-ravaged locations, nonprofessional actors, and contemporary subject matter.
French New Wave and Other New Wave
Cinemas
A particularly rich period of cinema history occurred in the wake of
Italian neorealism, from the 1950s through the 1970s, when
numerous daring film movements, o�en designated as new waves,
appeared in Brazil, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Japan, and
the United Kingdom. Despite their exceptional variety, these

different new waves share two common postwar interests that
counterpoint their o�en nationalistic flavor — the use of film to
express a personal vision and a break with past filmmaking
institutions and genres.
Go to launchpadworks.com to view the online clips of Gilda (1946) and Rome,
Open City (1945), which were produced at roughly the same time. What makes
them identifiable by period? Can you identify contrasts between classical
Hollywood and Italian neorealist style?

http://launchpadworks.com/

The first and most influential new wave cinema, the Nouvelle Vague
or French New Wave, came to prominence in the late 1950s and
1960s in France in opposition to the conventional studio system.
These films o�en were made with low budgets and young actors on
location, used unconventional sound and editing patterns, and
addressed the struggle for personal expression. These exceptionally
rich and varied films were influenced by filmmakers as diverse as
the minimalist Robert Bresson and the comedic genius Jacques Tati.
Within a little more than a year, three definitive films appeared —
François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959), Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima
mon amour (1959), and Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960). Although
the style and subject matter of these films are extremely different,
they each demonstrate the struggle for personal expression and the
formal investigation of film as a communication system.
The vitality of these films broke with the past and immediately
affected international audiences. Indeed, this vitality o�en was
expressed in memorable stylistic innovations, such as the freeze-
frame on the boy protagonist’s face that ends The 400 Blows, the
jump cuts that register the restlessness of the antihero of Breathless,
and the time-traveling editing of Hiroshima mon amour.
Much of the inspiration for the French New Wave filmmakers
sprang from the work of film critic and theoretician André Bazin. In
1951, Bazin helped establish the journal Cahiers du cinéma, many of
whose contributors would become some of the most renowned

directors of the movement, including Eric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol,
Truffaut, and Godard. The revitalization of film language occurred
in conjunction with the journal’s policy of auteurism (la politique des
auteurs) or auteur theory, which emphasized the role of the director
as an expressive author. Writing and directing their own films,
paying tribute to the important figures emerging around the world
(like Michelangelo Antonioni, Ingmar Bergman, and Akira
Kurosawa), and reevaluating the work of Hollywood directors, the
young French filmmaker-critics helped shape the perspective and
culture that elevated film to the art form it is considered to be today.
Figures less directly associated with Cahiers du cinéma, such as Chris
Marker and Agnès Varda [Figure 2.21], brought a similar spirit and a
more political focus to documentaries and other personal films.

2.21 Agnès Varda in The Gleaners and I (2000). With the feature film Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962),
Varda became the only woman director celebrated in the French New Wave. She also made
documentaries like Salut les Cubains (Hello to the Cubans) (1963), a practice to which she
later returned.
Many French filmmakers took up political positions as the war for
Algeria’s independence from France unfolded (1954–1962) and as
student and worker strikes swept the nation in May 1968. Among
them, Godard was the most formally experimental, collaborating
under the name Dziga Vertov Group on films like Vent d’est (Wind
from the East) (1969). Other new waves in the 1960s and 1970s were
influenced by the Nouvelle Vague’s use of amateur actors,

improvised dialogue, street locations, and increasing politicization.
Although the spirit of these movements and the formal innovations
of the films challenged entrenched state-and commercially
dominated national film industries, they were still largely identified
with the concept of the nation. Since the 1980s and 1990s, French
cinema has moved in new directions, producing numerous
commercial and artistic successes, such as Amélie (2001), The Artist
(2011), and Les Misérables (2019).
Catalyzed by the neorealism of the Nouvelle Vague, new wave
cinemas burst out across the globe. The British New Wave —
sometimes referred to as “kitchen sink” cinema and related to the
“angry young men” of John Osborne’s play and the UK theater scene
in 1950s — typically focused on working-class realism and
discontent. Rebellious youth took center stage in films like The
Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962) and A Taste of Honey
(1961). British cinema has o�en thrived on inventive literary
adaptations like Tom Jones (1963) and Mrs. Dalloway (1997) and has
featured major international directors like Stephen Frears, Derek
Jarman, Sally Potter, and Ken Loach, who has remained true to the
social realism of the fi�ies and sixties with films like I, Daniel Blake
(2016) and Sorry We Missed You (2019).
Other new wave cinemas proliferated across the globe in the
decades a�er World War II. A brief efflorescence of o�en absurdist
films like Věra Chytilová’s Daisies (1966) constituted the politically

subversive Czech New Wave. This movement came to prominence
in 1960s Czechoslovakia and used absurdist humor, nonprofessional
actors, and improvised dialogue to express political dissent. It ended
with the Soviet invasion in 1969. Meanwhile, the Cinema Novo
movement (1960s–1970s) in Brazil emphasized social equality and
intellectualism and broke with studio gloss. Brazilian director
Glauber Rocha embraced an “aesthetics of hunger” in the violent
and mystical Black God, White Devil (1964).
Japanese Cinema
The Golden Lion awarded at the 1951 Venice International Film
Festival to Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950) marked a new era of
visibility for Japanese cinema in the West. Japan is one of the world’s
largest film-producing nations and has a long and varied tradition of
using distinct perceptual and generic forms and drawing on a range
of cultural and artistic traditions. A�er World War II and the
subsequent Allied occupation, Japanese films increasingly
incorporated Hollywood forms and styles, yet still emphasized the
contemplative aspect of images and placed character rather than
action at the center of the narrative.
Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasujiro Ozu, Akira Kurosawa, and Nagisa Oshima
are among the most celebrated names in Japanese cinema, with the
long careers of the first two beginning in the silent period (which
lasted into the 1930s in Japan). Ozu’s midcareer masterpiece, Tokyo

Story (1953), highlights his exquisite sense of the rhythms of
everyday life, conveyed through carefully composed frames, long
takes, and a low camera height.
Japanese cinema has been particularly dynamic in recent years,
with the Cannes Film Festival becoming a barometer of this
resurgence. In 2010, Takeshi Kitano’s Outrage competed for Palme
d’Or, and Takashi Miike’s Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai in 2012
became the first 3-D film to be part of that competition. In 2018,
Hirokazu Kore-Eda’s Shopli�ers won that prize [Figure 2.22].
2.22 Shopli�ers (2018). A tale of a family of lost children and mismatched parents who
survive by shopli�ing, this film is one of the latest achievements in the rich history of
Japanese cinema.

The energies of postwar cinema are especially evident in Rashomon,
which uses multiple, contradictory narrations of the same crime
from characters’ differing points of view. Recognition at European
film festivals — such as the Silver Lion won by Mizoguchi’s ghost
story Ugetsu (1950) at Venice — established Japanese cinema’s
centrality to postwar art cinema and helped Japanese auteurs
achieve international notoriety. Later, Oshima helped define Japan’s
new wave with the violent erotic masterpiece In the Realm of the
Senses (1976).
Going beyond art cinema, many distinctly Japanese genres
produced for national audiences eventually earned international
followings. The first of dozens of films featuring the monster
Godzilla was produced in 1954 [Figure 2.23]. Meanwhile, Japanese
animation, or anime, which was first launched following World War
II, received international attention through 1960s television exports
and eventually became a subculture among fans in the United
States.

2.23 Godzilla (1954). The seminal Japanese monster movie spawned a series that continues
to this day. Shin Godzilla was released in 2016.
Indian Cinema
The first Indian movie premiered in 1913, but the golden age of
Indian cinema came a�er independence in 1948 with the
ascendance of the Bombay-based industry with its stars, songs, and
spectacular successes. During the same period, Parallel Cinema,
centered mainly in Calcutta and exemplified by the films of
renowned director Satyajit Ray, arose as an alternative to India’s
commercial cinema. Ray’s modest black-and-white film Pather
Panchali (1955) has been heralded internationally as a masterpiece

of realist style. This film, together with the two subsequent features
in the “Apu trilogy” (named a�er their main character), is rooted in
Bengali literature, landscape, and culture. Both traditions — popular
blockbusters and realist, regional dramas — continue to thrive in
contemporary Indian cinema.
In the 1970s, India overtook Hollywood as the world’s largest film
producer, driven largely by the hundreds of Hindi-language films
produced annually in Mumbai. O�en referred to as Bollywood
films, they are a dominant cultural form notable for rootedness in
Hindu culture and mythology and for elaborate song-and-dance
numbers.
With an episodic narrative form based in theatrical traditions that
accommodate musical numbers, many Hindi films highlight star
performances. Nargis plays the title role of Mehboob Khan’s Mother
India (1957; see also the Film in Focus feature later in this chapter),
and the phenomenally successful action star Amitabh Bachchan was
featured in one of the most popular Bollywood films of all time,
Sholay (1975).
Indian cinema remains the world’s most prolific film industry, with
the subcontinent’s large population served by films produced in a
number of languages besides Hindi, including Bengali, Marathi, and
Tamil. Indian diasporan audiences in South and Southeast Asia, the

Middle East, and the West contribute to the industry’s increasingly
global success and influence.
FILM IN FOCUS Mother India and Postwar History (1957)
See also: Pyassa (1957); The Apu Trilogy
(1955–1959)
To watch a clip from Mother India (1957), go to LaunchPad for The Film
Experience at launchpadworks.com
India’s drive for self-rule and freedom from British colonization, spanning ninety
years of regular rebellions, culminated in the Indian Independence Act of 1947. It
was one of many countries that achieved independence in the wake of World War
II as the world map shi�ed away from the colonial empires of Britain and France to
reflect the anticolonial positions of the postwar powers, the United States and the
Soviet Union. In India and in other newly independent nations across the world,
new national identities began to form — and, with them, new national film
cultures that aimed to represent those identities. One of the defining films of
postwar Indian cinema was Mehboob Khan’s Mother India (1957), a nearly three-
hour epic that immediately established box-office records in India and won
numerous global awards and critical accolades. Since then, the film has become a
definitive Indian classic that, even at the time of its release, announced India’s
growing importance and prominence on the changing stage of world cinema.
An intensely patriotic film, Mother India was released in 1957 to commemorate the
ten-year anniversary of Indian independence. The film tells the story of Radha, an

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elderly matriarch who at the beginning of the film is asked to inaugurate the
opening of her village’s new irrigation canal. The film then transitions to the
beginning of her story as an extended historical flashback: her marriage to Shamu,
their crushing debt because of the extravagance of their wedding, a farming
accident that leaves her husband crippled, his subsequent inability to support his
family, his self-exile in disgrace, and, finally, the death of Radha’s mother-in-law
and two of her four sons. When a violent storm later destroys the village and its
fields, Radha refuses to let the villagers abandon their homes and instead inspires
them to rebuild their fields and their lives. Later, one of her two remaining sons
becomes an embittered and vindictive outlaw, whom Radha must tragically shoot
in order to preserve her honor and the greater good of the village.
Throughout the catastrophic events of her life, Radha stands as a pillar of virtue,
defying her misfortunes and resisting a tyrannical moneylender’s demands.
“Radha is not for sale,” she tells the corrupt moneylender. “She’ll die but not sell
herself. She can be sold only for her kids.” In the end, she leads the village and its
people into a brighter future as the film comes full circle and returns to the
celebration of the new canal, which irrigates the village fields, now flourishing
under her maternal gaze.
Radha becomes an unmistakable image of and metaphor for modern, postwar
India, personified as a woman who looks both backward and forward in its history
[Figure 2.24]. On the one hand, she is the emblem of a historical past, an
embodiment of the ancient Hindu female archetype of the mother who nurtures
society through self-sacrifice and virtue. In close-up shots of her determined face
and body, she works side by side with her new husband in the dry, rocky fields,
and, when faced with starvation, she sells her wedding jewelry to feed her
children. On the other hand, Radha represents a new, independent India that
overcomes its many hardships and challenges to thrive as a new nation in which
women are active and independent leaders. Abandoned by her proud but
humiliated husband, she steps forward as a vocal leader of her family and
eventually becomes the matriarch of her village.

Linking India’s rich precolonial history and its boundless energy and potential a�er
independence, Mother India — much like Gone with the Wind (1939) in the United
States — is the epitome of a midcentury national epic heralding a nation’s
advancement out of its past and into a dynamic future. Most national epics — from
Virgil’s Aeneid about Italy to Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” about the United
States — narrate the intersection of a heroic individual with the discovery of a
singular national identity. In Mother India, it is a female heroine who maps that
path to future liberation through her struggles to overcome the past.
2.24 Mother India (1957). Legendary Indian actress Nargis (born Fatime Rashid) takes
on the iconic role of a mother who withstands hardship and becomes an allegorical
figure of an independent India.
A subtle but important sign of the film’s historical significance is its music.
Bollywood cinema is well known for weaving song and dance into the narrative as
a way of articulating characters’ desires, questions, and actions. In Mother India,

the music not only identifies the characters’ needs and hopes but also blends
Indian songs, dance, and melodies with classical Western motifs and structure,
alongside an orchestral score by celebrated composer Naushad Ali that echoes the
music of Hollywood studio films. Thus, the film’s music underscores the expansion
of India’s postwar culture as necessarily in dialogue with other global, and
specifically Hollywood, perspectives and formulas.
The visual compositions of the film likewise present a similar awareness of India’s
changing place in history. Throughout the film, Technicolor long shots draw
attention to the connection between the physical land of India and the
rejuvenating force of water. This dynamic intersection produces a fecund and
flourishing culture where the vast landscape of dry plains and open wilderness is
transformed into vibrantly beautiful images. Maintaining and cultivating one’s own
land is the way to an independent identity for Radha, for the village, and for India
as a whole — and as part of that emerging agency, the land itself shimmers with a
new radiance. Anticipating the bulldozers, cranes, and industrial trucks that open
the film in her future life, throughout the film Radha works the fields with tireless
resolve to preserve herself, her village, and — by implication — her new nation. At
one dramatic point, a�er Radha leads the village back from the catastrophic loss
of its fields, the villagers’ celebration of their new harvest appears in a long crane
shot shaped like a multicolored map of India from above [Figure 2.25].
Mother India acts out the signs of its historical times and the transformative social
and artistic energies that followed World War II and the expansion of global
cultures. By linking India’s past, present, and future, the film pays tribute to its
country’s rich history while signaling the rise of an influential Indian cinema which
remains a thriving industry to this day.

2.25 Mother India (1957). The labor to preserve a village becomes the image of a new
India.
Third Cinema
Scan local film and television listings, noting how many different countries are
represented. If the range is limited, why do you think this is so? If you have located
foreign films, what kinds of venues or channels show them?

Inspired by the politicized atmosphere of Third World
decolonization in the 1960s, Argentine filmmakers Fernando
Solanas and Octavio Getino championed revolutionary filmmaking
in Latin America in their 1969 manifesto “Towards a Third Cinema.”
Their populist vision arose in opposition to Hollywood and to
commercial film cultures elsewhere (which they dubbed “first
cinema”) and in response to the elitist aesthetics of auteur films (or
“second cinema”). The term Third Cinema has been used to unite
films from many countries under one political and formal rubric,
including some made by Europeans, such as The Battle of Algiers
(1966), directed by Italian Marxist Gillo Pontecorvo in cooperation
with the victorious Algerian revolutionary government. In Latin
America, Solanas and Getino’s The Hour of the Furnaces (1968) incited
political opposition and cultural renewal in Argentina.
For advocates of Third Cinema, the creation of the Cuban Institute
of Cinematographic Art and Industry in postrevolutionary Cuba
provided the ideal testing ground for the role of film within an
emerging nation’s cultural identity. Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s Memories
of Underdevelopment (1968), about a middle-class intellectual
contemplating the changes in postrevolutionary society, is among
the best-known examples of Cuban cinema [Figure 2.26].

2.26 Memories of Underdevelopment (1968). Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s film paints an
ambivalent portrait of a disaffected intellectual who grapples with the survival of traditional
culture in postrevolutionary Cuba.
The very term Third Cinema evokes its particular era in world
politics — one that was dominated by First and Second World
superpowers preoccupied with the Cold War and that witnessed
sometimes-violent nation-building struggles in the Third World. As
the global contours of politics and culture shi�ed, Third Cinema
became an aesthetic catalyst for a transnational filmmaking culture.

Cinematic Globalization (1975–
2000)
The last quarter of the twentieth century saw significant economic,
political, and technological changes that consolidated U.S.
dominance in global film markets and fostered an efflorescence of
film art around the world. In the United States, new cultural
pressures followed the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. The
globalization of financial markets and the dissolution of the Soviet
bloc in the 1990s redistributed global power. Postcolonial migrations
continued to transform European societies and global cities, and
international debt policies affected developing nations. The rise of
new nationalisms and fundamentalisms ignited violent conflicts and
prolonged wars. Cinema and other kinds of cultural production
became crucial to mediating individuals’ experiences of these events
and transformations.
It is impossible to be fully inclusive of the world’s film culture in this
period. New cinemas came to prominence on the global scene, and
international coproductions increased. In addition to the story of
New Hollywood in the era of blockbusters and franchises, we have
selected a few examples of national and regional cinemas to
illuminate important histories and trends. European, Indian,
Chinese, African, and Iranian cinemas illustrate different
developments of cinema and globalization, but many other national

and regional cinemas, directors, aesthetic movements, and
institutions would be equally deserving of attention.
New Hollywood in the Blockbuster Era
With Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) [Figure 2.27], the commercial
movie industry in the United States introduced economic strategies
that guided blockbuster and franchise production and releases
through the end of the century, consolidating Hollywood power and
media ownership in a small number of companies. As has been
seen, at the end of the 1960s, Hollywood turned some of its power
over to young filmmakers, who began to address the teenage
audiences that made up larger and larger portions of the
moviegoing public. The success of The Godfather (1972) at the
beginning of the decade ushered in a remarkable series of New
Hollywood films. Influenced by European art cinemas, films such as
The Godfather Part II (1974), Taxi Driver (1976), and The Deer Hunter
(1978) took imaginative risks in form and subject matter and pushed
the representation of violence well beyond what classical Hollywood
had permitted.

2.27 Jaws (1975). Widely considered the first summer blockbuster, Steven Spielberg’s shark
thriller was the highest-grossing movie of all time until it was surpassed by Star Wars a few
years later.
New Hollywood’s strategy for courting youth audiences changed
significantly, however, when global conglomerate enterprises began
to assimilate and shape the industry. Corporate Hollywood
redirected youthful energy toward more commercial blockbusters
and global markets. As the first film to be released simultaneously
on hundreds of theater screens and promoted though national
television advertising, Jaws (1975) ushered in the era of aggressively
marketed summer blockbusters. Jaws was soon topped at the box
office by George Lucas’s Star Wars (1977), which ushered in the now
prevalent franchise formula with its sequels, reissues, and tie-ins.
Film critic Robin Wood characterizes the films of the Reagan era as a
“cinema of reassurance,” with films like Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
expressing nostalgia for an era of clearly defined heroes and bad
guys. During this same period, technological innovations and

market innovations (including home video and cable television)
disseminated movies in new ways, offering viewers more variety
and control while increasing media companies’ profits from
ancillary markets.
Amid so many sweeping changes in film culture, two trends
characterize the last quarter of the twentieth century in film: the
elevation of spectacles featuring special effects and the
fragmentation and reflexivity of narrative constructions. Both were
facilitated by the introduction of digital technologies that would
come to fully define the commercial cinema and new media
alternatives a�er 2000.
On the one hand, movies began to dri� away from a traditional
focus on engrossing narrative and instead emphasized sensational
mise-en-scène or dramatic manipulations of the film image. In this
context, conventional realism gave way to intentionally artificial and
spectacular representations of characters, places, and actions.
Playful films like Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) allowed cartoon
characters to interact with human ones. Computer-generated
imagery (CGI) was used to introduce spectacular effects in Tron
(1982) and, beginning with Pixar’s Toy Story (1995), to generate entire
films.
On the other hand, movies that emphasized narrative engagement
o�en intentionally fragmented, reframed, or distorted the narrative

in ways that challenged its coherence. Movies like Quentin
Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994) and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia
(1999) interlocked story lines across different timelines and
locations. Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010) reconstructed
narrative through the shi�ing landscapes of different dream realities
in which the protagonist steals secrets from the subconscious of
adversaries [Figure 2.28 on p. 64].
2.28 Inception (2010). In this mind-game film about dreams and realities, Dom Cobb
(Leonardo DiCaprio) steals secrets from the minds of others. The story follows Cobb as he
traverses many “layers” of dreams, resulting in an intricate and o�en mind-bending
narrative structure.
The Commercial Auteur

The combination of the New Hollywood’s recognition of the auteur
and its commercial orientation resulted in a relatively new
formation in Hollywood moviemaking — the idea of the auteur, most
o�en the director, as a brand. We can pinpoint three signature films
of this period as evidence of this phenomenon: Ridley Scott’s Blade
Runner (1982), David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986), and Quentin
Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994). Each of these films is a dramatic
visual and narrative experiment that investigates the confusion of
human identity, violence, and ethics at the end of the twentieth
century. In Blade Runner, Deckard (played by Harrison Ford) hunts
down androids in a dark and visually complex dystopia where
technology creates beings who are “more human than human.” With
Blue Velvet, Lynch fashions a nightmarish version of small-town
America in which Jeffrey, the protagonist, discovers violence
seething throughout his everyday community and his own naive
soul. In Pulp Fiction, where violence is also a measure of human
communication, the narrative follows the unpredictable actions and
reflections of two hit men who philosophically meditate out loud
about the Bible, loyalty, and McDonald’s hamburgers [Figure 2.29].

2.29 Pulp Fiction (1994). The running commentary of the hit men played by John Travolta
and Samuel L. Jackson marks this as a Quentin Tarantino film.
These filmmakers are able to produce such daring and disturbing
projects and successfully distribute them within mainstream film
culture in part because their own personae become part of what is
marketed. The prominence of the director in driving movie
commerce has taken on even higher financial stakes as studio film
budgets have soared. This is nowhere more evident than in the
career of James Cameron. Although its huge budget, innovative
technology, and massive promotional campaign helped make Titanic
(1997) one of the highest-grossing films in both United States and
worldwide box-office history, Cameron’s “brand” was also key to the
film’s success and helped pave the way for the even more grandiose
Avatar (2009) and Alita: Battle Angel (2019).

American Independent Cinema
The promotion of a director’s unique vision also helped
independently financed films to gain visibility in the 1980s, opening
up pathways to female and nonwhite filmmakers. New York–based
writer-directors committed to their own visions — like Susan
Seidelman (Desperately Seeking Susan, 1985) and Spike Lee (She’s Gotta
Have It, 1986) — earned critical praise and audience attention.
Seidelman’s film featured Madonna just as her career took off, and
Lee’s stylish and engaging film announced an important voice in
American cinema and catalyzed a wave of African American films in
the 1990s. Working through his production company, 40 Acres and a
Mule, Lee addressed political issues in American history in Malcolm
X (1992) and BlacKkKlansman (2018) [Figure 2.30], chronicled race
relations in Do the Right Thing (1989), and promoted the careers of
young women of color like Darnell Martin, who directed I Like It Like
That (1994).

2.30 BlacKkKlansman (2018). Spike Lee confronts the racial violence of the 1970s in this
drama about an undercover infiltration of the KKK by a white detective and a black
colleague.
In 1989, the success of Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies, and videotape at
both the Cannes and Sundance film festivals marked a new era of
American independent filmmaking, with Sundance successes
attracting industry interest. Independent feature films — such as
Todd Solondz’s Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995) and Mary Harron’s
American Psycho (2000) — are o�en noted for controversial subject
matter and dark tone. Distributors like Miramax developed an
aggressive marketing model for these edgy films, and the expansion
of art-house cinemas outside university towns helped build a viable
independent sector in the 1990s. Stars were drawn to independent
films for challenging roles and awards prospects. Some observers
lamented the incorporation of the movement into business as usual,
as Hollywood studios began to distribute and develop independent
films through specialty divisions.
But with their low budgets and openness to first-time directors,
independent films offered many opportunities for marginalized
groups. Chinese American Wayne Wang launched his significant
filmmaking career with Chan Is Missing (1982), and playwright and
director Luis Valdez looked at Chicano history in La Bamba (1987).
The first feature film by and about Native Americans, Smoke Signals
(1998), directed by Chris Eyre and written by Sherman Alexie,

provided a gently funny picture of the contradictions of
contemporary Native American life.
Women filmmakers also carved out a place in independent
filmmaking. Allison Anders connected with audiences in films
based on her own experiences, such as Gas Food Lodging (1992), and
films based on the experiences of other girls and women, such as Mi
Vida Loca (My Crazy Life) (1993). Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust
(1991) became the first feature by an African American woman to be
released nationally in theaters. A prize winner for its
cinematography at Sundance, it later inspired the visual style of
Beyoncé Knowles’s Lemonade (2016).
Independent feature film producer Christine Vachon was central to
the 1990s phenomenon known as New Queer Cinema. This
efflorescence of feature films, daring in form and subject matter,
proved there was a viable theatrical market for work by and about
lesbians and gay men. Vachon’s company Killer Films brought to the
screen Rose Troche and Guinevere Turner’s lesbian romance Go Fish
(1994); Kimberly Peirce’s debut drama based on the murder of young
transman Brandon Teena, Boys Don’t Cry (1999); and numerous
features by Todd Haynes, including the critically acclaimed Far from
Heaven (2002) and Carol (2015).
A diversity of voices emerged in independent filmmaking during
these decades, energized by politics (including AIDS activism) and

the affordability of video technology. The audiences most receptive
to these voices were incorporated into an increasingly specialized
view of the filmgoing public — corresponding to developments in
cable “narrowcasting” in the 1990s.
From National to Transnational
Cinema in Europe
As Hollywood blockbusters pushed local films off movie screens in
many countries, European film industries focused on what makes
their products aesthetically distinctive, at the same time enacting
funding, import and export, and distribution policies to keep them
competitive. State-subsidized film industries sustained the work of
auteur directors through movies made for national television and
through international coproduction agreements. An increasingly
efficient circuit of film festivals offered outlets for exhibition and
exposure to critical attention, and awards and prizes distinguished
such films from their Hollywood counterparts.
New German Cinema
A unique mix of government subsidies, international critical
acclaim, domestic television broadcast, and worldwide film festival
exposure established New German Cinema as an integral product of
West Germany’s national culture. Although extraordinarily vital and
stylistically diverse, this cinema o�en confronts Germany’s Nazi and

postwar past, approached directly or through an examination of the
contemporary political and cultural climate, and emphasizes the
distinctive, o�en maverick, visions of individual directors.
Alexander Kluge, one of the political founders of New German
Cinema, used modernist film practices to question the
interpretation of history in Yesterday Girl (1966). Before his death at
age thirty-six, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, perhaps the movement’s
most celebrated and its most prolific director, made more than forty
feature films. The first and best known among his influential trilogy
about postwar Germany, The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979), adapts
the Hollywood melodrama to tell of a soldier’s widow who builds a
fortune in the a�ermath of the war [Figure 2.31]. By 1984, Edgar
Reitz’s sixteen-hour television series Heimat (1984), in part a
response to the American television miniseries Holocaust (1978),
demonstrated that the cultural silence about the Nazi era had
definitively been broken.

2.31 The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979). Rainer Werner Fassbinder made forty feature films
in a short career as one of the most celebrated representatives of New German Cinema. This
historical drama featuring frequent Fassbinder star Hanna Schygulla was one of his most
commercially successful films.
On the international stage, however, the hallmark of New German
Cinema was less its depiction of historical, political, and social
questions than the distinctive personae and filmic visions of its most
celebrated participants. The visionary Wim Wenders, the driven
Werner Herzog, and the enormously productive, despotic, and hard-
living Fassbinder were easily packaged as auteurs with outsized
personalities. Wenders’s films, including Alice in the Cities (1974) and
Wings of Desire (1987), are philosophical reflections on the nature of
the cinematic image and the encounter between Europe and the
United States. Herzog’s Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972) and
Fitzcarraldo (1982) are bold depictions of extreme cultural

encounters set in Latin American jungles. As these and other
successful directors began to work abroad and as wider social shi�s
and changes in cultural policy took place in Germany, the heyday of
New German Cinema came to an end. In the 1980s, domestic
audiences welcomed comedies like Doris Dörrie’s Men (1985). The
industry underwent changes a�er the fall of the Berlin Wall and the
establishment in 1992 of the European Union. With Tom Tykwer’s hit
Run Lola Run (1998) and Fatih Akin’s The Edge of Heaven (2007) and In
the Fade (2017), German films again achieved wide international
recognition.
African Cinema
African cinema encompasses an entire continent and many
languages, cultures, and nations, each with varying levels of
economic development and infrastructure. An initial distinction can
be made between the longer history of North African cinema and
the more recent emergence of sub-Saharan African cinema.
North Africa was more smoothly integrated into international film
culture. The Lumière brothers’ Cinématographe debuted in Egypt in
1896, and a�er the introduction of sound, a commercial industry
developed in Egypt that still dominates the movie screens of Arab
countries. Youssef Chahine, working both in popular genres and on
more political and personal projects (in which he sometimes
appeared), was a cosmopolitan presence in Egyptian cinema from

the 1950s to his death in 2008. His autobiographical trilogy,
beginning with Alexandria … Why? (1979), is notable for its humor,
frank approach to sexuality, and inventive structure. Meanwhile, in
recent Tunisian production, art films predominate, several of which
are directed by or tell the stories of women. Moufida Tlatli’s The
Silences of the Palace (1994) opens in the postindependence period
and follows a young woman singer as she remembers her girlhood
as a palace servant. Many prominent filmmakers from Tunisia,
Morocco, and Algeria have received training or financing from
France, which allows for high production values and distribution
abroad but also depends on their countries’ colonial past.
Taking shape in the 1960s a�er decolonization and o�en linked to
the political and aesthetic precepts of Third Cinema, sub-Saharan
African cinema encompasses the relatively well-financed
francophone, or French-language, cinema of West Africa; films from
a range of anglophone, or English-speaking, countries; and films in
African languages such as Wolof and Swahili. Although it is difficult
to generalize about this rapidly expanding film culture, some of its
most influential features and shorts have been united by a focus on
social and political themes rather than commercial interests and by
an exploration of the conflicts between tradition and modernity.
At the forefront of this vital development is the most respected
proponent of African cinema, Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane
Sembène, who in 1966 directed sub-Saharan Africa’s first feature

film, Black Girl, with extremely limited technical and financial
resources. The film, based on Sembène’s own novel, follows a young
woman who travels from Dakar, Senegal, to Monte Carlo, France, to
work with a white family as a nanny. She soon becomes
disillusioned with her situation, which leaves her trapped in the
home, cooking and cleaning. Her French voiceover records her
alienation and her increasing despair. Simply composed long shots
depict her as enclosed and restricted by her surroundings [Figure
2.32]. Although he made only eight features before his death in
2007, Sembène’s films are remarkable for their moral vision,
accessible storytelling, and range of characters. His protagonists
represent aspects of traditional and modern African life without
becoming two-dimensional symbols. Other internationally known
francophone filmmakers include Idrissa Ouedraogo from Burkina
Faso (Tilai, 1990) and Souleymane Cissé (Finye, 1982; Yeelen, 1987)
and Abderrahmane Sissako (Life on Earth, 1998; Bamako, 2006) from
Mali. Sissako’s films have been hailed as exquisite commentaries on
the effects of globalization on Africa.

2.32 Black Girl (1966). Simple long shots and a stark mise-en-scène depict the young
woman’s sense of entrapment and alienation.
Chinese Cinema
Chinese cinema poses its own challenge to models of national
cinema because it includes films from the “three Chinas” — the
People’s Republic of China (Communist mainland China); the island
of Hong Kong, which reverted to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 a�er
being under British control since 1842; and the Republic of China
(the island of Taiwan, settled by nationalists at the Communist Party
takeover of China in 1949). Each of these areas developed under a

different social and political regime, so the industries vary greatly in
terms of commercial structure, degree of government oversight,
audience expectations, and even language. Yet they all share a
cultural history and are increasingly economically interdependent.
Film in the People’s Republic of China
In mainland China a�er the 1949 Communist Revolution, cinema
production was nearly halted and limited to propaganda purposes. It
was further disrupted during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s,
when leader Mao Zedong referred to American films as “sugar-
coated bullets.” It was not until the 1980s that a group of filmmakers
emerged, the so-called Fi�h Generation (referring to their class at
the Beijing Film Academy), who were interested both in the formal
potential of the medium and in critical social content. Two
characteristics stood out: ordinary protagonists and an emphasis on
rural or historical subjects filmed with great beauty.
The enthusiastic reception given to Yellow Earth (1985) at
international film festivals made director Chen Kaige and
cinematographer Zhang Yimou the most acclaimed filmmakers of
this movement. With Zhang’s directorial turn came a series of lush,
sensuous films featuring Gong Li, an unknown actress who became
an international film star. Zhang’s films Ju dou (1990) and Raise the
Red Lantern (1991) [Figure 2.33] were the targets of censorship at
home and the recipients of prizes abroad. The strong aesthetic

vision of Fi�h Generation films, stemming from the filmmakers’
experiences growing up as marginalized artists during the Cultural
Revolution, made a critical statement in its own right.
2.33 Raise the Red Lantern (1991). Gong Li became an international art-film star in the films
of Fi�h Generation Chinese director Zhang Yimou.
Compare at least two films from the same movement (such as New German
Cinema or Hong Kong New Wave). Do the characteristics discussed in this chapter
apply?
A�er the violent suppression of protests in Tiananmen Square in
1989, a new underground film movement emerged in the People’s
Republic of China. The work of the so-called Sixth Generation was

characterized by the exploration of controversial themes in
contemporary urban life and by production without official
approval. For example, Zhang Yuan’s East Palace, West Palace (1996)
was mainland China’s first film about gay life.
Hong Kong Cinema
A�er the phenomenal international success of low-budget Hong
Kong kung-fu films in the 1970s, the sophisticated style of the Hong
Kong New Wave led by producer-director Tsui Hark exploded on the
scene. These Hong Kong films were known for expensive production
methods and a canny use of Western action elements. Director John
Woo became internationally known for his technical expertise and
visceral editing of violent action films like The Killer (1989). Along
with legendary stunt star Jackie Chan, Woo brought the Hong Kong
style to Hollywood in such films as Face/Off (1997).
The stylish, even avant-garde work of Wong Kar-wai told quirky
stories of marginal figures moving through a postmodern, urban
world, photographed and edited in a distinctive style that finds
beauty in the accidental and the momentary. Happy Together (1997)
is the ironic title of a tale of two men dri�ing in and out of a
relationship, set in a Buenos Aires that is not so different, in its
urban anxiety, from the men’s home of Hong Kong. Wong’s In the
Mood for Love (2000) is set in the 1960s among cosmopolitan former

residents of Shanghai who are trying to establish a pattern of life in
Hong Kong [Figure 2.34].
2.34 In the Mood for Love (2000). In this film by Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-wai, stylish
characters make chance connections amid the urban alienation of Hong Kong.
Taiwan Cinema
Two contemplative family sagas by acclaimed auteurs of the new
Taiwan cinema — Hou Hsiao-hsien’s A City of Sadness (1989) and
Edward Yang’s Yi yi (2000) — reflect on the identity of contemporary
Taiwan. Influenced by mainland China (where much of its
population and nationalist government come from), Japan (which
ruled the island from 1895 to 1945), and the West (with which it

trades), Taiwan cinema had little chance to explore indigenous
culture onscreen before the li�ing of martial law in 1987. Although
these directors were heralded by international critics, their films
o�en were less successful at home than U.S. and Hong Kong films.
Iranian Cinema
Although many Chinese films have achieved strong commercial as
well as critical success internationally, Iranian cinema is especially
notable for receiving festival prizes and critical acclaim abroad. The
art films of this Islamic nation are characterized by spare pictorial
beauty, o�en of landscapes or scenes of everyday life on the
margins, and an elliptical storytelling mode that developed in part
as a response to state regulation. Meanwhile, the thriving domestic
industry favors more populist melodramas.
Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, cinema was attacked
as a corrupt Western influence and movie theaters were closed, but
by the 1990s, both a popular cinema and a distinctive artistic film
culture developed. The latter became a way to enhance Iran’s
international reputation, especially during the more moderate rule
of Mohammad Khatami from 1997 to 2005. Films by such directors
as Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf became the most
internationally admired and accessible expressions of
contemporary Iranian culture as well as some of the most highly
praised examples of global cinema. In Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry

(1997), beautiful, barren landscapes are the settings for wandering
characters’ existential conversations. Jafar Panahi’s popular The
White Balloon (1995) depicts a little girl’s search for a goldfish. Rural
settings and child protagonists helped filmmakers avoid the
censorship from religious leaders that contemporary social themes
would attract. These strategies also evaded strictures forbidding
adult male and female characters from touching — a compromise
that at least avoided offering a distorted picture of domestic and
romantic life. Asghar Farhadi’s The Salesman (2016), which revolves
around a Tehran production of Arthur Miller’s 1949 play Death of a
Salesman, draws out the international dialogue and subsequent
stress within Iranian cinema, as they accent the strained private
space of a marital crisis.
More recently, however, filmmakers have used the international
approval accorded Iranian films to tackle volatile social issues such
as drugs and prostitution in portrayals of contemporary urban life.
Panahi’s The Circle (2000), banned in Iran, focuses on the plight of
women, some of whom find prison a refuge. Makhmalbaf ’s
Kandahar (2000) depicts the situation of neighboring Afghanistan
just before that country became the focus of international attention
and the target of a U.S.-led military campaign [Figure 2.35]. These
depictions of controversial issues have tested the limits of the
government’s tolerance. In December 2010, Panahi was sentenced to
a six-year jail term and banned from making films for twenty years
by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s regime. Released from prison but with

the threat still looming, he has defied the ban by making modest
films like Taxi (2015), which he shot in his car as he impersonates a
cab driver and discusses his situation with family members (see
Chapter 8).
2.35 Kandahar (2000). Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s film explores the volatile social issues in
Afghanistan just prior to the U.S.-led military campaign there.
One of the most interesting apparent contradictions in Iranian
cinema is the success of women filmmakers. Strict religious decrees
require that female characters be portrayed with their heads
covered and forbid a range of onscreen behaviors, including
singing. Nevertheless, many Iranian women filmmakers have
achieved prominence behind the camera. The prolific Tahmineh
Milani was arrested for her film The Hidden Half (2001), and Samira
Makhmalbaf (daughter of Mohsen Makhmalbaf ) made her first

feature film, The Apple (1998), when she was only eighteen. Perhaps
the most visible example of Iranian feminist perspectives is the
French animated film Persepolis (2007) by Vincent Paronnaud and
Marjane Satrapi, based on the latter’s graphic novel about her
girlhood in Iran [Figure 2.36].
2.36 Persepolis (2007). Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel satirizes the Islamic
Revolution in Iran. The film adaptation, made with Vincent Paronnaud in France, was not
looked on favorably in the country of her birth.
In each of these examples of film cultures at the end of the twentieth
century, we can see the role played by cinema’s powerful images and
narratives in defining and challenging national and regional
identities. With the further incorporation of digital technologies in
the twenty-first century, cinema continues to define and be defined
by globalization.

Cinema in the Digital Era (2000–
present)
Cinema in the twenty-first century has built on many trends that
emerged in the late twentieth century, with some key new features
tied to the adoption of digital technology at the largest and smallest
scales. The year 2000 saw the introduction of industry standards for
the commercial exhibition of films digitally, and by 2016, 98 percent
of the world’s screens had been digitized. Moreover, nearly 80
percent of top-grossing Hollywood films were shot on digital
formats. At the other end of the scale, new technology made some
productions far more affordable. Independent filmmaker Sean
Baker used an iPhone to make his award-winning theatrical feature
Tangerine (2015), and a vast range of media producers and cultures
overcame distances and format differences to circulate
entertainment, political media, and artwork over global networks.
Rapidly changing technologies that were developed in the late
twentieth century reshaped film viewing and audience engagement.
Starting in the 1980s, home video, DVD, and Blu-ray sales made it
possible for viewers to own and watch films repeatedly and
selectively, piecing together narrative strands of complex works and
forming communities with like-minded viewers. Cable and, later,
online streaming services made the viewing experience both more

intentional and more fragmented. Because of these changing habits,
marketing tactics became increasingly particularized. At the same
time, audiences could drive more diverse representation by making
their tastes and interests known. Most significantly, the 2000s
ushered in a rapid process of media convergence by which formerly
distinct media (such as cinema, television, the internet, and video
games) and viewing platforms (such as TV, computers, and cell
phones) have become interdependent. As media content is linked
across platforms through digitization, convergence allows media
conglomerates and service providers to maximize and profit from
their contact with consumers, but it also engages audiences directly
in the circulation and recombination of media.
Global Hollywood
Evolving digital technologies are on constant display in high-budget,
visual effects–driven franchises. Sequels, animation, and superhero
films have become formulas for Hollywood success abroad,
including in the rapidly expanding Chinese market. The popularity
of the Transformers series (2007–2018) in East Asia drives the
continued production of those films, perhaps more than the U.S.
market does. Corporations like Disney now earn more revenue
internationally than from the U.S. theatrical release of their films,
creating a pervasive brand presence. Sequels of popular properties
like the Marvel Cinematic Universe play to built-in audiences and
increasingly vocal fandoms around the world, minimizing risk for

unprecedentedly expensive productions and maximizing audience
awe with special-effects innovations.
The Chinese market, in particular, drives certain decisions by U.S.
production companies because of its enormous size and revenue
potential. For example, in the Marvel comic book adaptation Doctor
Strange (2016), a U.S. production by Disney, a character named the
Ancient One — who, in the comics, is a Tibetan man — was
reimagined as a white character played by Tilda Swinton. This
decision was reportedly motivated by the desire of Disney executives
to avoid alienating Chinese audiences over ongoing tensions in
China regarding the political status of Tibet. Although this is a
particularly striking example of a U.S. production company making
decisions with a particular overseas market in mind, similar
decisions are relatively common as a result of Hollywood’s
increasingly global presence.
Diversifying Screens
Despite its record box-office take and the worldwide conversion to
digital projection launched by James Cameron’s Avatar (2009), the
Academy Award for best director that year went to Kathryn Bigelow,
the first woman to receive the honor. Conversations about diversity
and inclusion familiar in independent sectors increasingly targeted
mainstream films, where women and people of color remain
underrepresented both on-and offscreen. Women directed only 8

percent of the 250 top-grossing films in the United States in 2018, for
example. Wide protests against all-white slates of Oscar acting
nominees prompted the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences to invite hundreds of new members to help diversify the
voting pool, which nevertheless remained 84 percent white and 69
percent male in 2019.
In contrast to the edgy, action-oriented films of Bigelow, women
directors’ successes o�en remained tied to genres considered
typically female. Screenwriter turned director Nora Ephron
mastered the romantic comedy formula in Sleepless in Seattle (1993)
and continued to focus on women’s themes in Julie & Julia (2009).
Nancy Meyers (It’s Complicated, 2009; The Intern, 2015) was well
established as a writer and producer before turning to directing,
making films aimed comfortably at female audiences.
Women directors such as Mira Nair (The Namesake, 2006), Sofia
Coppola (The Bling Ring, 2013), and Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird, 2017;
Little Women, 2019) established the critical and commercial success
needed to sustain high-profile careers, and many more are making
their mark, including women of color like Gina Prince-Bythewood
(Love & Basketball, 2000; Beyond the Lights, (2014) [Figure 2.37], and
Karyn Kusama (Jennifer’s Body, 2009; The Invitation, 2016).
Palestinian American director Cherien Dabis, whose Amreeka (2009)
[Figure 2.38] is a modest immigration tale about a Palestinian
mother working at a Midwestern fast-food place, examines the

merging and clashing of two cultures. Maryam Touzani’s first
directorial feature Adam (2019), a slow-paced film about the
developing bond between two Moroccan women, was one of several
successful films directed by women at the 2019 Cannes Film
Festival.
2.37 Beyond the Lights (2014). Gina Prince-Bythewood’s romantic drama looks at a budding
romance through the lens of music industry pressures and prejudices.

2.38 Amreeka (2009). A Palestinian American family experiences life in suburban Chicago.
Director Lisa Cholodenko’s incisive comedy about lesbian parenting,
The Kids Are All Right (2010), appealed to crossover audiences with
prominent stars in the main roles, anticipating the success of the
summer love story between two young men in Call Me by Your Name
(2017) [Figure 2.39]. The films’ success corresponded to
unprecedented changes in American public opinion on LGBT issues
in the 2000s, culminating in the 2015 Supreme Court decision
legalizing marriage between same-sex couples.

2.39 Call Me by Your Name (2017). An Academy Award winner for writer James Ivory, this film
sets its coming-of-age story of two gay lovers in rural Italy.
Go to launchpadworks.com to view the clip from Gina Prince-Bythewood’s
Beyond the Lights (2014). How do dialogue and form position the black woman
protagonist? How do you think this relates to the unique perspective of a black
woman director behind the camera?

http://launchpadworks.com/

The first decades of the 2000s saw commercial and political gains in
black cinema. Playwright-producer-actor-director Tyler Perry’s
comedies achieved spectacular success with African American
audiences. Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005) introduced his
signature character, no-nonsense grandmother Madea (played by a
cross-dressing Perry), to the screen. More than a dozen films have
followed, grossing half a billion dollars at the box office. Perry and
Oprah Winfrey also helped promote a very different kind of black
story: Lee Daniels’s drama Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by
Sapphire (2009), a devastating and yet soaring story of an overweight
young woman’s life of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. Ava
DuVernay became one of the most high-profile black women
directors within the industry with the historical drama Selma (2015)
and the first to receive an Oscar nomination with the documentary
13th (2016). Several films — Selma; Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2013),

about an African American man’s career in the White House; Steve
McQueen’s Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave (2013), the harrowing
story of a free black man who was kidnapped into slavery in 1841;
and Nate Parker’s cinematic telling of the Nat Turner slave rebellion,
The Birth of a Nation (2016) — contributed to important shi�s in the
national conversation about the country’s racial past that occurred
under the Barack Obama presidency.
Proliferating social media platforms (like Twitter) and television
formats (like reality television) stoked public interest in celebrity
culture. Although this type of convergence serves media
conglomerates in influencing markets and consumer options, its
innovations allow audiences to communicate and make connections
between media representations and social movements and invite
artists to experiment with different forms of expression and
outreach. One example is HBO’s hour-long film Lemonade (2016),
which coincided with the surprise internet launch of Beyoncé
Knowles’s album of the same name. A collaboration with multiple
visual and musical artists, the film explores black women’s cultural
heritage. The scope and ambition of the project were matched in its
release strategy. Publicity and clips spread the visual and musical
elements rapidly through social media, and the film was released on
streaming services a�er its debut on cable television and packaged
with the music for download and physical purchase. Such
innovations in media genres and modes of consumption and
distribution urge new definitions of film and the film experience.

Film Culture in the Twenty-First
Century
Providing alternatives to Hollywood, world film culture in the
twenty-first century depends increasingly on international financing
and the circulation of films through networks of festivals, where
prizes and reviews help publicize the films, their directors, and the
cultures from which they originate. Extensive coverage of festivals
through online blogs and media outlets increases public awareness
of the diversity of film culture, and digital media allows for the
widespread accessibility of films and film history via the internet.
Both auteurs and national and regional film movements come to the
fore in this context, giving access to viewers worldwide.
Transnational Europe
From Europe, Fatih Akin’s films, including The Edge of Heaven (2007)
[Figure 2.40], explore the cultural interpenetration of Germany and
Turkey, and Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Academy Award–
winning The Lives of Others (2006) shows life under state surveillance
in the former East Germany. Austrian director Michael Haneke’s
o�en-disturbing films — including Caché (2005), Amour (2012), and
Happy End (2017) — make the conflicts and tensions of the recent
European past resonate in the present.

2.40 The Edge of Heaven (2007). Several of Fatih Akin’s films address clashes between
German and Turkish cultures in the lives of their characters.
Originating with a group of Danish filmmakers, the Dogme
movement is a keen example of the branding and transnational flow
of film culture in this period. Announced at a 1995 Paris film
festival, the Dogme 95 manifesto included a list of rules for a new
realism and authenticity in filmmaking. The first film to receive a
Dogme certificate, Thomas Vinterberg’s The Celebration (1998), used
low-end digital cameras for a visceral immediacy, and the aesthetic
was embraced by filmmakers around the world. At the same time,
Danish films — ranging from Lars von Trier’s controversial Antichrist
(2009) and Melancholia (2011) to Susanne Bier’s Academy Award–
winning drama In a Better World (2010), about a Danish doctor who
works in Africa and his son’s rebellion at home — received exposure

unusual for a small country. As Bier’s film illustrates, globalization is
reflected in both the subject matter and the model of financing of
much of European cinema today.
A�er the founding of the European Union in 1993, transnational and
supranational film production structures became prominent. For
example, the collaborative Ibermedia fund, originating in Spain, has
facilitated the completion of hundreds of Latin American films since
its founding in 1996, including the Claudia Llosa’s Oscar-nominated
The Milk of Sorrow (2009), a stylistically innovative exploration of the
legacy of violence against indigenous women in postconflict Peru
[Figure 2.41].
2.41 The Milk of Sorrow (2009). Claudia Llosa’s drama became the first Peruvian film to be
nominated for the Foreign Language Film Academy Award in the United States.

East Asian Cinemas
Many of the most celebrated directors and national movements in
world cinema in the 2000s originated in East Asia. As China emerged
as the most important export market for film, it also stepped up
production and collaborations with filmmaking talent in Hong
Kong, like auteur Wong Kar-wai’s martial arts epic The Grandmaster
(2013). More modest in scale and critical of rapid development in
China, the work of the “urban generation” of mainland Chinese
filmmakers was made possible by digital cameras and incorporates
documentary aesthetics. The most internationally acclaimed
filmmaker of this group, Jia Zhangke, was granted state approval for
the first time to make his fourth feature, The World (2004), which
depicts the uprooted lives of young employees at a Beijing theme
park in heartbreaking, wry visual compositions. Taiwan auteur Tsai
Ming-liang produced Café Lumière (2003) in Japan. The director’s
formal precision, such as very long takes o�en deployed to convey a
pervasive melancholy, is indebted to Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu.
Alongside the international reputations of its auteurs, Taiwan saw
domestic audiences return to locally made films, responding to the
pop star cast of Cape No. 7 (2008). In Korea, a cinema renaissance in
the 2000s saw domestic films regularly outperform Hollywood, with
directors like Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, 2003; The Handmaiden, 2016)
and Bong Joon-ho (The Host, 2006; Okja, 2017; and Cannes Palme
d’Or winner Parasite, 2019 [Figure 2.42]) becoming cult figures and
making forays into English-language production.

2.42 Parasite (2019). Bong Joon-ho’s films exemplify the transnational dynamics of twenty-
first century cinema. His award-winning Parasite was funded by both Korean and U.S.
companies, and his previous film Okja (2017) was distributed to a global audience on Netflix.
Global Bollywood
In the 2000s, film production and distribution in India continued to
operate outside Hollywood influence, and the internet allowed
Indian cinema’s global reach to reach a massive South Asian
diasporan audience and to introduce new viewers to Bollywood-style
entertainments. Actor and producer Shah Rukh Khan skyrocketed to
popularity in such films as Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (The Big-
Hearted Will Take the Bride) (1995) and Om Shanti Om (2007), with a
fan base numbering in the billions. The cricket film Lagaan: Once
upon a Time in India (2001) capitalized on the international
popularity of Indian cinema to bid for attention from more
mainstream critics and audiences in North America and the United
Kingdom. This strategy became more successful throughout the

decade with international hits like PK (2014) [Figure 2.43]. The
transnational dimension of Indian film also can be seen in movies
directed by filmmakers of the Indian diaspora. For example,
Gurinder Chadha’s Bride & Prejudice (2004) — an adaptation (with
musical numbers) of Jane Austen’s 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice —
and Mira Nair’s award-winning Monsoon Wedding (2001) borrow
some of the visual and narrative tropes of Bollywood cinema. In
2008, when Slumdog Millionaire, British director Danny Boyle’s film
about a Mumbai street kid turned game-show contestant, won the
Oscar for best picture, the international influence of Indian cinema
could not be contested.
2.43 PK (2014). This Bollywood-produced science fiction comedy became one of India’s
biggest-ever box-office hits in 2014 — and became the first Indian movie to gross over $10
million in North America.
African Film in the Age of Video

Also able to counter Hollywood with domestic audiences is the
Nigerian film industry, known as Nollywood, which witnessed a
stunning boom beginning in the 1990s. Driven by the hunger of
audiences for African-produced images that are relevant to their
lives, Nollywood produces popular genre films such as Tunde
Kelani’s Arugbá (2010) [Figure 2.44]. Bridging the gap between
francophone art cinema and popular African entertainment and
funded by a fraction of typical Hollywood filmmaking costs
(averaging $25,000), Nollywood films are shot and distributed on
video, essential on a continent that lacks Western-style film studios
and movie theaters. In 2006, Nollywood overtook Hollywood and
Bollywood in terms of the number of films released annually,
attracting audiences at film festivals and in diasporic communities
across the globe. Best-known films include Kelani’s Thunderbolt:
Magun (2000) and Kunle Afolayan’s The Figurine: Araromire (2009),
among others.

2.44 Arugbá (2010). Veteran Nigerian filmmaker Tunde Kelani’s film, which depicts the issues
facing an accomplished young woman selected to participate in the annual community
festival, was embraced by critics and audiences but economically undermined by video
piracy.
Because of the limited financial and technical resources for film
production, distribution, and exhibition, the Pan-African Film and
Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO) in Burkina Faso has
been a vital spur to African film culture. Filmmakers from all over
the continent and the African diaspora meet at the festival, held
every other year, to show and view others’ work and to strategize
about how to extend the cinema’s popular influence. The shi� to
digital production has significantly affected undercapitalized
industries in Ghana, Congo, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and elsewhere
in Africa.

The internet makes information about films, filmmakers,
institutions, festivals, and history much more accessible all over the
globe. Distribution remains a challenge, with uneven access,
insufficient bandwidth for streaming film content in many areas,
and piracy and copyright concerns. But new technologies allow
students to research film culture and expand their film experience
like never before.
T E C H N O LO G Y I N A C T I O N
Film Preservation and Archives
This chapter’s overview of global film history mentions only a tiny fraction of the
films that have been produced over 125 years. Of those films, many no longer
exist. Films were considered an ephemeral entertainment in the early days of the
medium, heavy and costly to ship back to their producers and bulky to store.
Moreover, they were dangerous. The nitrate base of the film stock used on virtually
all films made before the 1950s was extremely flammable and susceptible to
decomposition. Many films were lost to the ages. Today, preserving the material
history of cinema requires skills and resources in film preservation, storage,
access, and information science that are provided by a network of moving image
archives worldwide.
Digital technologies expedite the transfer, storage, and circulation of original film
and have enabled studios and other commercial interests to retrieve material for
which there is a market interest “from the vaults.” But this is not a solution to the
challenges of preserving the breadth and variety of our movie past. For one thing,
digital storage also can degrade over time. Historians and audiences need to have
access to materials in their original format, both as viewing experiences and as
artifacts.

The importance of archives and preservation is especially vital to silent film history
because 80 percent of our silent film heritage is believed to be lost. Kevin
Brownlow and David Gill’s 1981 restoration of Abel Gance’s epic Napoléon (1927) is
a complex and particularly sensational example of restoration. Frustrated with the
tattered versions of this silent French classic, Brownlow pursued the confused
history of the film, searching out different versions from private and public
archives and eventually patching together an accurate reproduction of the film for
a highly publicized tour in 1981. In 2016, Brownlow’s ongoing efforts resulted in a
definitive digital version of Gance’s over five-hour film.
Go to launchpadworks.com to visit LaunchPad for The Film Experience and
read about orphan films, which do not have copyright holders.
The preservation movement may highlight films that have been neglected by
canonical film histories and need to be recovered materially as well as critically,
such as Dorothy Arzner’s Working Girls (1931) and Micheaux’s Within Our Gates
(1920; see the Film in Focus in this chapter). In 1990, Martin Scorsese established
the Film Foundation with a group of fellow filmmakers to support restoration
efforts for American films. Hundreds of projects have been completed, including a
restoration of The Night of the Hunter (1955) — a dark, offbeat tale of a religious
con man pursuing his two stepchildren and a hidden stash of money [Figure
2.45a]. In 2007, the World Cinema Foundation expanded this effort. The
foundation has preserved crucial films from India, the Philippines, Mexico, and
Senegal since its first project, the documentary Trances (1981) by Moroccan
filmmaker Ahmed El Mannouni [Figure 2.45b].

http://launchpadworks.com/

2.45a The Night of the Hunter (1955). This dark fable was restored with the support of
Martin Scorsese and The Film Foundation.

2.45b Trances (1981). This documentary about the Moroccan band Nass El Ghiwane
was the first film preserved by the World Cinema Foundation.
FILM IN FOCUS Rediscovering Within Our Gates (1920)
See also: Where Are My Children? (1916)
and Salomy Jane (1914)
To watch a clip from Within Our Gates (1920), go to LaunchPad for The Film
Experience at launchpadworks.com
Oscar Micheaux’s Within Our Gates (1920) is a crucial film in the counterhistory of
American cinema because of its content, its circumstances of production and

http://launchpadworks.com/

reception, and its fate [Figure 2.46]. Produced independently in 1919 and released
in 1920, it is the earliest surviving feature film by an African American filmmaker.
Despite its historical significance, however, the film was lost for decades. Greeted
with controversy on its initial release, it came back into circulation in the 1990s
a�er the Library of Congress identified a print titled La Negra in a film archive in
Spain as Micheaux’s lost film and then restored it. The film’s recovery was part of
the efforts of film historians and black cultural critics to reinvestigate the vibrant
world of early-twentieth-century race movies and the remarkable role that
Micheaux played in this culture. The film’s long absence from the historical record
deprived generations of viewers and cultural producers of a picture of African
American life and politics in the North and South during that era and of awareness
of the audience that Micheaux addressed.

2.46 Poster for Within Our Gates (1920). Oscar Micheaux’s rediscovered film about the
lives and philanthropic work of middle-class African Americans provoked controversy

for its dramatic scenes of lynching.
Description
The poster reads, Oscar Micheaux’s Screen masterpiece “Within Our Gates,”
A story of the race with an all-star colored cast! Featuring Evelyn Preer and
other capable artists, The greatest preachment against race prejudice and
the glaring injustices practiced upon our people, It will hold you spellbound!
Full of details that will make you Grit your teeth in silent indignation, on
account of enormous rental of this picture prices with adults 30 c, children 15
c, including war tax., Thursday, Friday and Saturday, January 29, 30 and 31.
Hammond’s Pickford Theater, thirty-fifth Street at Michigan Avenue.
Within Our Gates is important to an alternative film history because it offers a
corrective view of a devastating historical phenomenon — the lynching of African
Americans, which had reached epidemic proportions in the first decades of the
twentieth century. When the film was returned to circulation in the 1990s, viewers
immediately saw it as a countervision to D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, which
boldly uses cinematic techniques like parallel editing to tell the inflammatory
story of a black man pursuing a white virgin, who commits suicide rather than
succumb to rape. The Ku Klux Klan is formed to avenge her death, and the would-
be rapist is captured and punished in what the film depicts as justified vigilante
justice.
Micheaux offers an equally visceral story that counters the myth of lynching as a
reaction to black male violence by presenting a testament to white racist mob
violence against African Americans. A�er an African American tenant farmer,
Jasper Landry, is unjustly accused of shooting the wealthy landowner Girdlestone
(the guilty party is actually an angry white tenant), a lynching party attacks
Landry’s family. Within Our Gates poignantly depicts the lynching of the mother
and father and the last-minute escape of their small son as a public spectacle
attended by the townspeople, including women and children. This powerful
sequence stands as perhaps the strongest cinematic rebuttal to The Birth of a
Nation’s racist distortion of history. It uses the power of the visual to make history,

just as Griffith’s film does. Finally, as a director, Micheaux offers an important
contrast to Griffith. Whereas Griffith has long been heralded as a father of
American cinema, Micheaux’s diverse talents, his unique approach to film
language, his business savvy, and his modernity have waited decades for full
recognition.
The structure of Micheaux’s film also rewards historical inquiry because it requires
viewers to think about how certain modes of storytelling become naturalized.
Although Within Our Gates’s treatment of lynching is its most noted feature, this
controversial material, which threatened to prevent the film’s exhibition in
Chicago where racial tensions had recently erupted in rioting, is buried in an
extensive flashback. The flashback fills in the past of Sylvia Landry, described by a
title card as someone “who could think of nothing but the eternal struggle of her
race and how she could upli� it.” The language of racial upli� directly addresses
the racially conscious, middle-class black audiences for Micheaux’s film. Sylvia’s
quest to raise funds for a black school in the South, her romance with the
politically active Dr. Vivian, and several side plots featuring less noble characters
make the lynching story at the film’s heart feel even closer to the historical record
[Figure 2.47]. The story serves a didactic purpose in the film — demonstrating the
racial injustice that propels Sylvia’s struggle.

2.47 Within Our Gates (1920). In the framing story of Oscar Micheaux’s film, Dr. Vivian
hears the story of Sylvia Landry’s past.
But the film does not spare melodramatic detail. The inclusion of white male
violence against black women is another rebuttal of the distortions in The Birth of
a Nation. We learn that Sylvia, the Landrys’ adopted daughter, escapes the lynch
mob only to be threatened with rape by landowner Girdlestone’s brother [Figure
2.48]. The attack is diverted when the would-be rapist notices a scar that reveals
she is actually his daughter. The improbability of the rescue scenario can be
understood as the use of melodramatic coincidence to right wrongs that cannot
easily receive redress in other ways. In other words, Micheaux uses the form of the
movies to imagine social reality differently.

2.48 Within Our Gates (1920). In the flashback, a last-minute coincidence saves the
heroine from assault by a white man who is revealed to be her biological father.
Micheaux’s films were made with extreme ingenuity on low budgets. When
Micheaux’s affecting melodrama of African American hardship and determination
disappeared from film history, a great deal was lost. The film’s subject matter was
not undertaken in mainstream cinema. The perspective of African American
filmmakers was absent in Hollywood, and black audiences were marginalized by
Hollywood films. The title Within Our Gates speaks to the film’s own status — a
powerful presence within American film history that was too long
unacknowledged. Preserved by the Library of Congress Motion Picture
Conservation Center and contextualized by the scholarship of black film historians
like Pearl Bowser, Within Our Gates will remain a touchstone of American cultural
history.

Chapter 2 Review
SUMMARY
Studying film history requires an awareness of film
historiography, the study of the methods and principles
through which we organize the past. One common way of
organizing film history is periodization, which divides film into
historical segments.
The silent cinema period lasted from 1895 until roughly 1929.
The first section of this period, until roughly 1915, is known as
early cinema and was notable for (1) the shi� from single to
multiple shots and (2) the invention of continuity editing and
variations in camera distance.
During the later part of the silent period, Hollywood
underwent three major changes: the standardization of film
production; the establishment of the feature film; and the
cultural and economic expansion of movies throughout
society.
German expressionist cinema focused on the dark fringes of
human experience, as embodied in lighting, sets, and
costume design.

Soviet silent films focused on documentary and historical
subjects, and presented a political concept of film centered
on audience response.
Sound was introduced in 1927 and brought about the “classical”
period of cinema, which lasted until 1945. Sound led to more
elaborate dialog and to the rise of genres as a way of
constructing narrative films.
During this time, the Hollywood studio system reached its
peak. The U.S. Motion Picture Production code was adopted
in 1934, establishing guidelines for depictions of crime and
sex.
In France, the classical period featured two influential
movements: French impressionist cinema and poetic
realism.
Many national and international film movements emerged out
of World War II during the period from 1945 to 1975.
The Hollywood studio system weakened due to shi�ing
economic patterns among consumers and the 1948 Supreme
Court decision United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. As
suburbs boomed and multiplexes proliferated, Hollywood
began aggressively marketing to teenage viewers, as well as
to African American audiences with blaxploitation films.
Italian neorealism depicted postwar social crises using a
stark, realistic style. It helped inspire “new wave”

movements in many countries, including the French New
Wave, British New Wave, Czech New Wave , and Brazilian
Cinema Novo. Though different from each other, these
movements generally shared two common features: (1) a
break with past filmmaking institutions and genres and (2)
the use of film to express personal vision.
In India, Bollywood became a major creative and economic
force and, by 1970, overtook Hollywood as the most prolific
film industry in the world.
Third Cinema refers to a movement of films, mainly
produced in Third World countries, that challenged both
Hollywood and the elitist aesthetics of independent cinema
and sought to use film to express the voice of the people.
The period from 1975 to 2000 saw many economic, political,
and technological changes that both consolidated U.S.
dominance in global film markets and fostered a flourishing of
film in many other countries.
In the 1970s, Hollywood shi�ed back toward commercial
blockbusters. This shi� led to the rise of the commercial
auteur and to the rapid growth of American independent
cinema.
A number of youth-driven new wave movements, including
New German Cinema, emerged in Europe and elsewhere as
a counterpoint to Hollywood.

Iranian cinema, Chinese cinema, and cinemas in various
African countries also flourished during this period.
In the twenty-first century, Hollywood further expanded its
reach into global markets amid rapid technological changes:
most notably the spread of online streaming services and a
widespread shi� in viewing habits from movie theaters to
private homes.
India’s Bollywood has continued to expand, as have
independent cinemas in Europe, Asia, and Africa (including
Nigeria’s Nollywood).
Although we can’t come close to covering every film industry or
movement, this chapter attempts to give an overview of global
film history, including the intersection of cultural history and
film history and a look at how filmmakers of different genders,
races, and nations have continually offered new insights into
how we inhabit our histories.
KEY TERMS
historiography
periodization
canon
nickelodeon
early cinema
race movies

benshi
German expressionist cinema
French impressionist cinema
poetic realism
blaxploitation
Italian neorealism
French New Wave
auteur theory
British New Wave
Czech New Wave
Cinema Novo
anime
Bollywood
Third Cinema
New German Cinema
media convergence
Nollywood
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PART TWO FORMAL
COMPOSITIONS
film scenes, shots, cuts, and sounds
CHAPTER 3
Mise-en-Scène: Exploring a Material World
Settings and sets
Actors and performance styles
Costumes and make-up
Lighting

CHAPTER 4
Cinematography: Framing What We See
Camera angle, height, and perspective
Framing, depth of field, and camera movement
Visual effects and digital technology
CHAPTER 5
Editing: Relating Images
Organization through editing
Construction of spatial and temporal relationships
Graphic and rhythmic relations
Continuity and disjunctive editing
CHAPTER 6
Film Sound: Listening to the Cinema
Interactions between sound and image
Speech, music, and sound effects
Diegetic and nondiegetic sound
To some extent, every movie mimics how we use our senses to
experience the real world. Film studies examines the ways that movies
activate our senses through specific formal systems: mise-en-scène,
cinematography, editing, and sound. In Broken Blossoms (1919), D. W.
Griffith uses composition to create the claustrophobic sensations of
being physically trapped in a small room. La La Land (2016), a romantic
tale about an aspiring actress and a jazz pianist, moves across Los
Angeles — the freeways, the Hollywood hills, studio backlots, and small
music clubs — to transform those spaces and places into theatrical

stages for a contemporary musical fantasy. By invigorating and
manipulating the senses, film images and sounds create experiences
viewers recognize and respond to — physically, emotionally, and
intellectually.
The next four chapters identify the formal and technical powers
associated with four different categories of film form. Chapter 3 on mise-
en-scène explores the roles played by sets, props, and other onscreen
elements. Chapter 4 examines cinematography — the art of how films are
shot. Chapter 5 looks at film editing, and Chapter 6 focuses on film
sound. Each chapter begins with a short historical overview of the
element and then details the properties and strategies associated with
each of these aspects of film form. Chapters conclude with an
examination of how some of the scenes, shots, cuts, and sounds are used
to guide our reactions to and interpretations of movies.

CHAPTER 3 MISE-EN-SCÈNE
Exploring a Material World

Description

The first still shows the protagonist, Watney, standing amidst a row of
cultivated potatoes inside his Mars station. The second still shows
Watney in a space suit outside a Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV). The third
still shows a spaceship from above the surface of Mars.
Ridley Scott’s The Martian (2015) could be described as a film about the
desperate need to explore and reconstruct an adequate mise-en-scène. A
sci-fi tale of an astronaut mistakenly assumed dead and abandoned on
Mars in 2035, this film presents Matt Damon as the astronaut who must
find a way to survive in a barren climate that lacks enough oxygen or
resources to sustain human life. A botanist by training, Damon responds
by ingeniously constructing a sustainable home from the shelter and
materials le� behind on the planet. He builds a survival set where he can
artificially manufacture food and air and later travels to a former Mars
probe, where he modifies its windows, nose cone, and panels in order to
fly it to a dangerous rendezvous in space. In an unaccommodating outer
space, the film explores and celebrates one man’s heroic ability to create
another material space and mise-en-scène as a reconstructed world that
allows him to survive.
can help you review. Go to launchpadworks.com
A French term meaning literally “placement in a scene” or
“onstage,” mise-en-scène (pronounced meez-on-sen) refers to all the
elements of a movie scene that are organized, o�en by the director,

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to be filmed and that are later visible onscreen. It includes actors,
lighting, sets, costumes, make-up, and other features of the image
that exist independently of the camera and the processes of filming
and editing. Cinema orchestrates a rich and complex variety of
formal and material elements inherited from theater, using
principles of composition derived from painting and photography.
Outside the movies, our surroundings function like a mise-en-scène.
The architecture of a town might be described as a public mise-en-
scène. How a person arranges and decorates a room could be called
a private mise-en-scène. Courtrooms construct a mise-en-scène that
expresses institutional authority. The placement of the judge above
the court, of the attorneys at the bar, and of the witnesses in a
partially sequestered area expresses the distribution of power. The
flood of light through the vast and darkened spaces of a cathedral
creates an atmospheric mise-en-scène aimed at inspiring
contemplation and humility. The clothes, jewelry, and make-up that
a person chooses to wear are, in one sense, the functional
costuming all individuals don as part of inhabiting a particular
mise-en-scène: businessmen wear suits, clergy dress in black, and
service people in fast-food restaurants wear uniforms with company
logos. This chapter describes how mise-en-scène organizes and
directs much of our film experience by putting us in certain places
and by arranging the people and objects of those places in specific
ways.

We respond to the sensations associated with physical settings and
material surfaces and objects in many ways. Whether we actually
touch the materials or simply imagine their texture and volume, this
tactile experience of the world is a continual part of how we engage
with and understand the people and places around us. This is also
the case with the movies. Characters attract or repulse us through
the clothing and make-up they wear. In Some Like It Hot (1959),
Marilyn Monroe’s eroticism is inseparable from her slinky dresses.
In the Swedish film Border (2018), the drama hinges on customs
agent Tina’s strange appearance and her gradual realization that she
is, in fact, a troll rather than a human [Figure 3.1].
3.1 Border (2018). In many films, make-up accentuates features of the character. Here the
extraordinary make-up (nominated for an Academy Award) becomes the center of the
character’s complicated identity and her realization of that identity.
Actions set in open or closed spaces can generate feelings of
potency or hopelessness. In Lawrence of Arabia (1962), the open

desert shimmers with possibility and danger, whereas in Room
(2015), a kidnapped woman and her young son born in captivity are
held prisoner in a small room from which there seems to be no
escape, and the viewer experiences their extreme and frightful
claustrophobia [Figure 3.2]. In Vertigo (1958), viewers share the
perspective of the protagonist when he relives again and again the
dizzying fear of heights that he first experiences when he watches a
partner fall from a roof. These feelings can be culturally modified,
influenced, or emphasized in very different ways by specific films.
3.2 Room (2015). The film’s confined setting becomes a formal structure and a visceral
experience for the protagonist, played by Brie Larson.
The artistic precedent for cinematic mise-en-scène is the theatrical
stage, where the sensual and tactile engagement of audience
members is based on the presence of real actors performing in real
time on a physical stage. Film engages us in a different way. A film’s
material world may be actual objects and people set in authentic

locations, like the stunning wilderness vistas captured in The
Revenant (2015). Or it may include objects and settings constructed
by set designers to appear realistic or fantastic, as in Tim Burton’s
Alice in Wonderland (2010) with its living cards and unusual
creatures. In all its variation, mise-en-scène — a film’s places and
spaces, people and objects, lights and shadows — is a key dimension
of our movie experience.
KEY OBJECTIVES
Define mise-en-scène, and identify how theatrical and other traditions affect
the history of cinematic mise-en-scène.
Describe how settings and sets relate to a film’s story.
Summarize the ways props, costumes, and make-up shape our perception of
a character.
Explain how lighting is used to evoke particular meanings and moods.
Explain how actors and performance styles contribute to mise-en-scène.
Compare and contrast the various ways in which mise-en-scène directs our
interpretation.

A Short History of Mise-en-Scène
The first movies were literally “scenes.” Sometimes they were quaint
public or domestic scenes, such as pioneer filmmakers Auguste and
Louis Lumière’s films of a baby being fed or a pillow fight. O�en
they were dramatic scenes re-created on a stage for a movie camera.
Soon movies like The Automobile Thieves (1906) and On the Stage; or,
Melodrama from the Bowery (1907) began to coordinate two or three
interior and exterior settings, using make-up and costumes to create
different kinds of characters and exploiting the stage for visual
tricks and gags. In D. W. Griffith’s monumental Intolerance (1916), the
sets that reconstructed ancient Babylon were, in many ways, the
main attraction [Figure 3.3]. In the following section, we sketch
some of the historical paths associated with the development of
cinematic mise-en-scène throughout more than a century of film
history.

3.3 Intolerance (1916). The film’s massive Babylonian set became a Los Angeles tourist
attraction until it was dismantled in 1921.
Theatrical Mise-en-Scène and the
Prehistory of Cinema
The clearest heritage of cinematic mise-en-scène lies in the Western
theatrical tradition that began with early Greek theater around 500
BCE and evolved through the nineteenth century. Stages served as
places where a community’s religious beliefs and truths could be
acted out. Non-Western theatrical traditions, such as Sanskrit

dramas in India, also flourished in the millennia before cinema. All
of these dramatic forms featured recognizable characters in familiar
plots. During the European Renaissance of the late sixteenth and
early seventeenth centuries, the addition of sets, costumes, and
other physical elements reflected a secular world of politics and
personal relationships. Similarly, Japanese kabuki — which
appeared in the seventeenth century — incorporated o�en elaborate
costumes, props, and make-up. Through these elements of mise-en-
scène, individuals and communities fashioned their values and
beliefs.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century, lighting and other
technological developments rapidly altered the nature of mise-en-
scène and set the stage apart from the audience, anticipating the
cinema. In contrast to the drawing-room interiors that had prevailed
before, lighting grew more elaborate and professional, and stages
and sets grew much larger and more spectacular, sometimes with
massive panoramic scenery and machinery. In the nineteenth
century, an emphasis on individual actors, such as Fanny and John
Kemble and Ellen Terry in England, influenced the rising cult of the
star, who became the center of the mise-en-scène.
1900–1912: Early Cinema’s Theatrical
Influences

The subjects of the first films were limited by their dependence on
natural light. But by 1900, films revealed their theatrical influences.
The Downward Path (1901), a melodrama familiar from the popular
stage, used five tableaux — brief scenes presented by sets and actors
as “pictures” of key dramatic moments — to convey the plight of a
country girl who succumbs to the wickedness of the city. Further
encouraging this theatrical direction in mise-en-scène was the
implementation of mercury-vapor lamps and indoor lighting
systems around 1906 that enabled studio shooting. By 1912, one of
the most famous stage actors of all time, Sarah Bernhardt, was
persuaded to participate in the new medium and starred in the films
Queen Elizabeth (1912) and La dame aux camélias (1912). Besides
legitimate theater, other aspects of nineteenth-century visual
culture influenced the staging of early films. The famous “trick”
films of Georges Méliès, with their painted sets and props, were
adapted from magicians’ stage shows. In the United States, Edwin S.
Porter’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1903) imitated the staging of familiar
scenes from the “Tom shows,” seemingly ubiquitous regional
adaptations for the stage of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s antislavery
novel.
1915–1928: Silent Cinema and the Star
System
The 1914 Italian epic Cabiria, which included a depiction of the
eruption of Mount Etna, established the public’s taste for movie

spectaculars. Feature-length films soon became the norm, and
elaborately constructed sets and actors in carefully designed
costumes defined filmic mise-en-scène [Figure 3.4]. By 1915, art
directors or set designers (at the time, called technical directors who
did interior decoration) became an integral part of filmmaking. The
rapid expansion of the movie industry in the 1920s was facilitated by
the rise of studio systems in Hollywood, Europe, and Asia. Studios
had their own buildings and lots on which to construct expansive
sets and their own personnel under contract to design and construct
them. Erich Kettelhut’s famous futuristic set designs for Fritz Lang’s
film Metropolis (1927), constructed on the soundstage of the German
UFA studios, were influenced by the modernist architecture of the
Manhattan skyline.

3.4 The Sheik (1921). The charismatic power of silent film star Rudolph Valentino is o�en
linked to the romanticized Western notions of North Africa and the Middle East that were
created through set and costume design.
1930s–1960s: Studio-Era Production
The rapid introduction of sound at the end of the 1920s was
facilitated by the stability of the studio system, in which a company
controlling film production and distribution had sufficient capital to
invest in production facilities and systems. Soundstages were large
soundproofed buildings designed to house the construction and
movement of sets and to capture sound and dialogue during filming.
Art directors were essential to a studio’s signature style. During his

long career at MGM, Cedric Gibbons was credited as art director on
1,500 films, including Grand Hotel (1932), Gaslight (1944), and An
American in Paris (1951). He supervised a large number of personnel
charged with developing each film’s ideal mise-en-scène from the
studio’s resources. Producer David O. Selznick coined the title
production designer for William Cameron Menzies’s central role in
creating the look of the epic Gone with the Wind (1939), from its
dramatic historical sets, décor, and costumes to the color palette
that would be highlighted by the film’s Technicolor cinematography.
Studio backlots enabled the construction of entire worlds — the
main street of a western town or New York City’s Greenwich Village,
for example. Other national cinemas invested considerable
resources in central studios. Cinecittà (“cinema city”) was
established by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in 1937, bombed
during World War II, then rebuilt and used for Italian and
international productions. The expense lavished on mise-en-scène
during the heyday of the studio system shapes contemporary
expectations of “movie magic.”
1940–1970: New Cinematic Realism
Photographic realism and the use of exterior spaces and actual
locations — identifiable neighborhoods and recognizable cultural
sites — complement cinema’s theatrical heritage. Although the
Lumières’ earliest films were of everyday scenes and their

operatives traveled all over the world to record movies, location
shooting did not influence mainstream filmmaking until World War
II. Italian neorealist films were shot on city streets to capture the
immediacy of postwar lives (and because refugees were housed in
the Cinecittà studios). Ever since, fiction and documentary
filmmaking have come to depend on location scouting for suitable
mise-en-scène. Naked City (1948) returned U.S. filmmaking to the
grit of New York’s crime-ridden streets. Realistic mise-en-scène was
central to many of the new cinema movements of the 1970s that
critiqued established studio styles, including in the
postrevolutionary cinema in Cuba and the emergence of feature-
filmmaking in sub-Saharan Africa in such films as Ousmane
Sembène’s Xala (1975).
1975–Present: Mise-en-Scène and the
Blockbuster
Since the mechanical shark (nicknamed “Bruce”) created for Steven
Spielberg’s Jaws in 1975, the economics of internationally marketed
blockbuster filmmaking have demanded an ever more spectacular
emphasis on mise-en-scène. The cinematic task of re-creating
realistic environments and imagining fantastical mise-en-scène has
shi�ed to computerized models and computer-graphics technicians,
who design the models to be digitally transferred onto film. Pan’s
Labyrinth (2006) portrays the internal world of its lonely child
heroine in a rich mise-en-scène constructed from actual sets,

costumes, prosthetics, and computer-generated imagery [Figure
3.5]. Films may benefit from the technical capacity of computers to
re-create the exact details of historical eras, such as the nineteenth-
century New York streets of Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York
(2002). Many contemporary audiences look for and many
contemporary movies provide an experience that is “more real than
real,” to adapt the motto of the Tyrell Corporation in Blade Runner
(1982).
3.5 Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). A girl’s fantasy life is rendered in a combination of computer-
generated imagery and constructed mise-en-scène.

The Elements of Mise-en-Scène
Describe, with as much detail as possible, one of the sets or settings in a movie
you watch for class. Other than the actors, which features of the film seem
most important? Explain why.
In this section, we identify the elements of mise-en-scène and
introduce some of the central terms and concepts underpinning the
notion of mise-en-scène. These include settings and sets, props,
actors, costumes, and lighting — and the ways that all of these
important elements contribute to scenic and atmospheric realism
and are coordinated through design and composition.
Settings and Sets
Settings and sets are the most fundamental features of mise-en-
scène. The setting is a fictional or real place where the action and
events of the film occur. The set is, strictly speaking, a constructed
setting, o�en on a studio soundstage, but both the setting and the set
can combine natural and constructed elements. For example, one
setting in Citizen Kane (1941) is a Florida mansion, which, in this

case, is a set constructed on an RKO soundstage and based on the
actual Hearst estate in San Simeon, California.
Working within the production designer’s vision, members of the art
department construct sets and arrange props within settings to draw
out important details or to create connections and contrasts across
the different places in a film. An especially complex example is
Birdman (2014), which shi�s between the stage sets and rooms
inside a New York theater and the streets outside the theater in a
manner that may indicate a realistic setting or a setting marked as
fantasy.
Historically and culturally, sets and settings have changed regularly.
The first films were made either on stage sets or in outdoor settings,
using the natural light from the sun. Films gradually began to
integrate both constructed sets and natural settings into the mise-
en-scène. Today’s cinematic mise-en-scène continues to use
constructed sets, such as the studio creation of the detective’s
residence for Sherlock Holmes (2009), as well as actual locations, such
as the Philadelphia streets and neighborhoods of The Sixth Sense
(1999) or the deserts and dusty streets of Jordan (standing in for
Iraq) in The Hurt Locker (2008). Models and computer enhancements
of mise-en-scène are used increasingly, notably in science fiction
and fantasy films like Interstellar (2014), which uses a mixture of
practical and digital effects to depict space and time travel [Figure
3.6].

3.6 Interstellar (2014). Location shooting and visual effects together create the mise-en-
scène of a desolate, distant planet.
Scenic Realism and Atmosphere
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What is communicated through the elements of the mise-en-scène alone?

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Settings and sets contribute to a film’s mise-en-scène by establishing
scenic realism and atmosphere. Realism is an artwork’s quality of
conveying a truthful picture of a society, person, or some other
dimension of everyday life. It is the term most viewers use to
describe the extent to which a movie creates a truthful picture. The
word realism — one of the most common, complicated, and elusive
yardsticks for the cinema — can refer to psychological or emotional
accuracy (in characters), recognizable or logical actions and
developments (in a story), or convincing views and perspectives of
those characters or events (in the composition of the image).
The most prominent vehicle for cinematic realism, however, is the
degree to which mise-en-scène enables us to recognize sets and
settings as accurate evocations of actual places. A combination of
selection and artifice, scenic realism is the physical, cultural, and

historical accuracy of the backgrounds, objects, and other figures in
a film. For example, Glory (1989), a Civil War film telling the story of
the first African American regiment of the U.S. Army, drew on the
expertise of historian Shelby Foote for the physical, historical, and
cultural verisimilitude of the sets and setting [Figure 3.7].
Recognition of scenic realism frequently depends on the audience’s
historical and cultural point of view. The Blind Side (2009), for
example, set in an affluent American suburb, may seem realistic to
many Americans but could appear to be a fantastic other world to
farmers living in rural China.
3.7 Glory (1989). The scenic realism of this Civil War drama enhances the effect of its story of
the first African American regiment’s bravery.
In addition to scenic realism, the mise-en-scène of a film creates
atmosphere and connotations, those feelings or meanings

associated with particular sets or settings. The setting of a ship on
the open seas might suggest danger and adventure; a kitchen set
may connote comfortable, domestic feelings. Invariably these
connotations are developed through the actions of the characters
and developments of the larger story. The early kitchen set in
Mildred Pierce (1945) creates an atmosphere of bright but slightly
strained warmth. In E.T.: The ExtraTerrestrial (1982), a similar set
describes the somewhat chaotic space of a modern, single-parent
family. In The Favourite (2018), the splendor of the eighteenth-
century court of Queen Anne evokes an emotional luxury and
material excess that acts as the ideal stage for an extreme emotional
and political competition between two powerful women [Figure
3.8].
3.8 The Favourite (2018). Palatial splendor creates a surreal atmosphere in which the
characters compete for power and control.

Props, Costumes, and Lights
As we have seen, unlike other dimensions of film form such as
editing and sound, mise-en-scène was in place with the first films,
so the early decades of film history were explorations in how to use
the materials of mise-en-scène. Here we examine the multiple
physical objects and figures that are the key ingredients in a
cinematic mise-en-scène, moving from inanimate objects and
human figures to the accentuation of those figures and objects with
costumes and lighting.
Props
A prop — short for property — is an object that functions as a part of
the set or as a tool used by the actors. Props acquire special
significance when they are used to express characters’ thoughts and
feelings, their powers and abilities in the world, or the primary
themes of the film. In Singin’ in the Rain (1952), when Gene Kelly
transforms an ordinary umbrella into a gleeful expression of his
new love, an object that normally protects a person from rain is
expressively used in a dance: the pouring rain makes little
difference to a man in love [Figure 3.9]. In Alfred Hitchcock’s
Suspicion (1941), a glass of milk, brought to a woman who suspects
her husband of murder, suddenly crystallizes the film’s unsettling
theme of malice hiding in the shape of innocence. Even natural
objects or creatures can become props that concentrate the

meanings of a movie. In E.T.: The Extraterrestrial, a flower withers
and then revives when the alien does. When E.T. takes the flower
with him on the spaceship, it signals an ongoing connection with
the children who gave it to him.
3.9 Singin’ in the Rain (1952). An ordinary umbrella is transformed into a dancing prop,
expressing how Gene Kelly’s new love can transform a rainy world and all its problems into a
stage for an exuberant song and dance.
Props appear in movies in two principal forms. Instrumental props
are objects displayed and used according to their common function.
Metaphorical props are those same objects reinvented or employed

for an unexpected, even magical, purpose — like Gene Kelly’s
umbrella — or invested with metaphorical meaning. The distinction
is important because the type of prop can characterize the kind of
world surrounding the characters and the ability of those characters
to interact with that world. In Babette’s Feast (1987), a movie that
uses the joys and generosities of cooking to bridge cultural and
other differences in a small Danish village, a knife functions as an
instrumental prop for preparing a meal [Figure 3.10]. In Psycho
(1960), that same prop (a knife) is transformed into a hideous
murder weapon and a ferocious sexual metaphor [Figure 3.11]. The
Red Shoes (1948) might be considered a film about the shi�ing status
of a prop, red dancing slippers. At first, these shoes appear as an
instrumental prop serving Victoria’s rise as a great ballerina, but by
the conclusion of the film, they have been transformed into a darkly
metaphorical prop that magically dances the heroine to her death.

3.10 Babette’s Feast (1987). In this movie about the joys and generosities of cooking, a
kitchen knife is a simple instrumental prop.
3.11 Psycho (1960). In contrast to the knife used in Babette’s Feast, this prop also can be a
murder weapon associated metaphorically with male sexuality.

In addition to their function within a film, props may acquire
significance in two other prominent ways. Cultural props, such as a
type of car or a piece of furniture, carry meanings associated with
their place in a particular society. In the first Back to the Future
(1985), the cultural and historical significance of different props
become key elements in the film when Marty time-travels back to
the 1950s where his skateboard, designer underwear, and other
objects from the 1980s highlight the comically confusing encounter
between two different generations [Figure 3.12].
3.12 Back to the Future (1985). Props with certain cultural values or from different historical
contexts can sometimes function at the heart of a film: here, as markers of the humorous
confusion of time travel.

Contextualized props acquire a meaning through their changing
place in a narrative. The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964) and The Red Violin
(1998) focus on the changing meaning of the central prop. In the
first film, three different romances are linked through their
connection to a beautiful Rolls-Royce. The second film follows the
path of a Nicolò Bussotti violin from seventeenth-century Italy to an
eighteenth-century Austrian monastery, to nineteenth-century
England, to the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the twentieth
century, and finally to a contemporary shop in Montreal, Canada
[Figure 3.13].
3.13 The Red Violin (1998). The changing significance of a violin dramatizes how different
contexts make meaning of objects.
Some films play with the meaning that a contextual prop comes to
acquire. In Ronin (1998), a mysterious briefcase unites a group of

mercenaries in a plot about trust and betrayal, but its secret
becomes ultimately insignificant. Alfred Hitchcock’s famous
“McGuffins” are props that are important only at first — like the
stolen money in Psycho and the uranium in Notorious (1946). They
move a plot forward but contribute little to the primary drama of
love, danger, and desire.
Costumes and Make-Up
Costumes are the clothing and related accessories worn by a
character that define the character and contribute to the visual
impression and design of the film overall. These can range from
common fashions, like a dark suit or dress, to historical or more
fantastic costumes. Cosmetics, or make-up, applied to the actor’s
face or body highlight or even disguise or distort certain aspects of
the face or body.
How actors are costumed and made up can play a central part in a
film, describing tensions and changes in the character and the story.
Sometimes a character becomes fully identified with one basic look
or costume. Through his many movie incarnations, James Bond has
always appeared in a tuxedo at some point in the action. In Legally
Blonde (2001), much of the humor revolves around the disjuncture
between Elle’s bright pink Los Angeles fashions and accessories and
the staid environment of Harvard Law School. The dynamic of
costuming also can be highlighted in a way that makes the clothes

the center of the movie. Pygmalion (1938) and its musical adaptation
as My Fair Lady (1964) are essentially about a transformation of a girl
from the street into an elegant socialite. Along with language and
diction, that transformation is indexed by the changes of costume
and make-up from dirt and rags to diamonds and gowns [Figures
3.14a and 3.14b].
3.14a and 3.14b My Fair Lady (1964). Cecil Beaton’s costumes and set designs transformed a
flower seller into a refined member of society.
Description
The first still shows two well-dressed women engaged in a conversation.
The second still shows a young girl being introduced by a middle-aged
man to an elderly couple.
Costumes and make-up function in films in four different ways.
First, when costumes and make-up support scenic realism, they
reproduce, as accurately as possible, the clothing and facial features
of people living in a specific time and place. Thus, Napoleon’s
famous hat and jacket, pallid skin, and lock of hair across his brow
are a standard costume and the basic make-up for the many films
featuring this character, from Abel Gance’s 1927 Napoléon to Sacha

Guitry’s 1955 Napoléon. Increasingly sophisticated prosthetics —
artificial facial features or body parts used to alter actors’
appearances — enhance realism in performance, as with Leonardo
DiCaprio as J. Edgar Hoover in J. Edgar (2011).
Second, when make-up and costumes function as character
highlights, they draw out or point to important parts of a character’s
personality. O�en these highlights are subtle, such as the ascot a
pretentious visitor wears. Sometimes they are pronounced, as when
villains in silent films wear black hats and twirl their moustaches. In
William Wyler’s film Jezebel (1938), Bette Davis’s character shocks
southern society when she appears in a red dress. Even though the
film is in black and white, her performance and the blocking of her
entrance convey the tensions created by the dress’s scandalous
color. Movies with multiple superheroes like the Marvel Cinematic
Universe films depend on recognition of each of the Marvel
superheroes by costume and props [Figure 3.15].

3.15 The Marvel Cinematic Universe (2008–present). Across this sprawling franchise of over
twenty films adapted from Marvel Comics, iconic costumes distinguish each of the heroes.
Identify the single most important prop in the last film you watched for class. In
what ways is it significant? Does the prop function as an instrumental prop, a
metaphorical prop, or both? Explain.
Third, when costumes and make-up act as narrative markers, their
change or lack of change becomes a crucial way to understand and
follow a character and the development of the story. O�en a film
chronicles the story through the aging of the protagonist: gradually
the hair is whitened and the face progressively lined. The Curious
Case of Benjamin Button (2008) juxtaposes the aging of Cate
Blanchett’s character with the regression of the protagonist played
by Brad Pitt, augmenting the illusions of make-up with computer-
generated imagery (CGI). The use of more modern styles of clothing
also can advance the story. In Lee Daniels’s The Butler (2013), the
main character played by Forest Whitaker works in the White House
for three decades, during eight presidential administrations.
Although his job and uniform remain the same through convulsive
historical changes, history registers in the changing costumes
Oprah Winfrey wears in the role of his wife [Figures 3.16a and
3.16b]. In The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–2003), the dark
corruption of Gollum appears most powerfully in the changes in his

physical appearance, measured in a dramatic flashback to his
origins as the hobbit Sméagol at the beginning of The Return of the
King (2003) [Figures 3.17a and 3.17b]. Make-up, prosthetics, and
costuming can also be used as a part of overall production design to
signify genre, as they do in the fantasy world of The Lord of the Rings.
3.16a and 3.16b Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2013). Oprah Winfrey wears costumes designed by
Ruth Carter to reflect her social status and the historical changes swirling around her
character and her husband during his long career as the White House butler.
Description
The first still shows Ophrah Winfrey wearing a floral scarf over her hair.
The second still shows a middle-aged woman engaged in a conversation
with a man and woman in a living room.
3.17a and 3.17b The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003). Viewers waited until
the trilogy’s last installment for a glimpse of Sméagol (Andy Serkis), the hobbit whose greed

will deform him into the shape of the creature Gollum.
Describe the ways that costuming and make-up add scenic realism, highlight
character, or mark the narrative development in the film viewed for class.
Costumes and make-up that appear natural or realistic in films carry
important cultural connotations as well. The desire to define her
own gender and sexuality guides the teenager Alike’s choice of
clothes in Pariah (2011); she does not feel like herself in the pink top
her mother buys for her. In The Devil Wears Prada (2006), the
maturation of the naive Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) becomes
literally apparent in the changes in her outfits, which evolve from
college frumpy to designer fashionable.
Lighting
One of the most subtle and important dimensions of mise-en-scène
is lighting — which not only allows an audience to observe a film’s
action and understand the setting in which the action takes place
but also draws attention to the props, costumes, and actors in the
mise-en-scène. Our daily experiences outside the movies
demonstrate how lighting can affect our perspective on a person or
thing. Entering a dark, shadowed room may evoke feelings of fear,
while the same room brightly lit may make us feel welcomed and

comfortable. Lighting is a key element of cinematography, but
because lighting choices affect what is visible onscreen and relate
profoundly to our experience of mise-en-scène, they are discussed
here in this context. Mise-en-scène lighting refers specifically to
light sources located within the scene itself. This lighting may be
used to shade and accentuate the figures, objects, and spaces of the
mise-en-scène. As we discuss in more detail later in this chapter, the
primary sources of film lighting are usually not visible onscreen, but
they nevertheless affect mise-en-scène.
The interaction of lighting, sets, and actors can create its own drama
within the mise-en-scène. How a character moves through light or
how the lighting on the character changes can signal important
information about the character and story. As the title suggests,
Moonlight (2016) uses overwhelming darkness and harsh light as the
narrative moves through three episodes of the main character
Chiron’s difficult life, culminating in the glow of so� moonlight that
illuminates the character from within and without [Figure 3.18].
Meanwhile, in Citizen Kane, the regular movement of characters,
particularly of Kane, from shadow to light and then back to shadow
suggests moral instability.

3.18 Moonlight (2016). This film uses contrasting lighting to show a young black man’s
coming of age. He eventually discovers his identity in the calm light of a new self.
The mise-en-scène can use both natural and directional lighting.
Natural lighting usually assumes an incidental role in a scene; it
derives from a natural source in a scene or setting, such as the
illumination from the sun, the moon, or a fire. Spread across a set
before more specific lighting emphases are added, set lighting
distributes an evenly diffused illumination throughout a scene as a
kind of lighting base. Directional lighting is lighting coming from a
single direction. It may create the impression of a natural light
source but actually directs light in ways that define and shape the
object or person being illuminated. As illustrated in the shots
presented on page 98 from Sweet Smell of Success (1957) [Figures
3.19–3.25], an even more specific technical grammar has developed
to designate the various strategies used in lighting the mise-en-
scène:

Three-point lighting is a common lighting technique that uses
three sources: key lighting (to illuminate the object),
backlighting (to pick out the object from the background), and
fill lighting (to minimize shadows) [Figure 3.19].
Key light is the main source of non-natural lighting in a scene.
It may be balanced with little contrast between light and dark in
the case of high-key lighting or the contrasts between light and
dark may be stark, as in low-key lighting. These terms indicate
the ratio of key to fill lighting: high-key lighting is even (low
ratio of key to fill) and used for melodramas and realist films;
low-key lighting is dramatic (high ratio of key to fill) and used in
horror films and film noir [Figures 3.20 and 3.21].
Fill lighting is a technique that uses secondary fill lights to
balance the key lighting by removing shadows or to emphasize
other spaces and objects in the scene [Figure 3.22].
Highlighting describes the use of the different lighting sources
to emphasize certain characters or objects [Figure 3.23].
Backlighting is a highlighting technique that illuminates the
person or object from behind, tending to silhouette the subject
[Figure 3.24].
Frontal lighting, sidelighting, underlighting, and top lighting
are used to illuminate the subject from different directions in
order to draw out features or create specific atmospheres
around the subject [Figure 3.25].

3.19 Sweet Smell of Success (1957). Cinematographer James Wong Howe’s celebrated
scathing tale of the newspaper business uses Hollywood’s classic three-point lighting
schema as a basic setup.

3.20 Sweet Smell of Success (1957). High-key lighting emphasizes the daytime glare of a
crowded coffee shop.
3.21 Sweet Smell of Success (1957). Low-key lighting heightens the contrast between light
and shadow in a dangerous encounter.

3.22 Sweet Smell of Success (1957). Fill lighting picks out press agent Sidney Falco (Tony
Curtis) as he listens to J. J. Hunsucker (Burt Lancaster) twist the facts.

3.23 Sweet Smell of Success (1957). Highlighting picks out the powerful columnist from the
background.
3.24 Sweet Smell of Success (1957). Backlighting foregrounds the illicit nature of an
encounter.

3.25 Sweet Smell of Success (1957). Underlighting distorts a policeman’s smile into a threat.
The mise-en-scène can use both hard lighting (a high-contrast
lighting style that creates hard edges, distinctive shadows, and a
harsh effect, especially when filming people) and so� lighting
(diffused, low-contrast lighting that reduces or eliminates hard
edges and shadows and can be more flattering when filming
people). These lighting techniques, in conjunction with the narrative
and other features of the mise-en-scène, elicit certain responses.
Shading — the use of shadows to shape or draw attention to certain
features — can explain or comment on an object or a person in a
way the narrative does not. Hard and so� lighting and shading can
create a variety of complex effects through highlighting and the play

of light and shadow that enlighten viewers in more than one sense
of the word.
In a movie like Barry Lyndon (1975), the story is conspicuously
inseparable from the lighting techniques that illuminate it.
Extraordinarily low and so� lighting, with sharp frontal light and
little fill light on the faces, creates an artificial intensity in the
expressions of the characters, whose social desperation hides their
ethical emptiness [Figure 3.26]. One particular version of this play
of light is referred to as chiaroscuro lighting, a dramatic, high-
contrast lighting that emphasizes shadows and the contrast between
light and dark. This pictorial arrangement of light and dark creates
depth and contrast. In the opening scene of The Godfather (1972), the
chiaroscuro lighting in Don Corleone’s den contrasts with the
brightly lit wedding party outdoors.

3.26 Barry Lyndon (1975). In this example of chiaroscuro lighting, the so� glow of the
candles creates areas of brightness (chiaro) as the background is engulfed in darkness
(scuro). The murky color scheme contributes to the eerie atmosphere and the characters’
ghostlike appearance.
Go to launchpadworks.com to watch a clip from Richard Linklater’s Boyhood
(2014). Consider the role of lighting in this sequence. Does it use low-key lighting or
high-key lighting? Does the lighting dramatically add to the sequence’s emotional
impact? Or if you consider the lighting unremarkable, how would you argue that it
is still significant?

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None of the elements of mise-en-scène — from props to costumes to
lighting — can be assigned standard meanings because they are
always subject to different uses in each film. They also carry
different historical and cultural connotations at different times.
Although the low-key lighting of German expressionist cinema, as in
the 1924 horror film Waxworks, may be formally similar to that
found in 1950s film noir, such as in Kiss Me Deadly (1955), the
lighting has a very different significance, reflecting the distinctive
perspective of each film and the cultural context that produced it.
The metaphoric darkness that surrounds characters like Dracula
and Jack the Ripper in the first film suggests a monstrous evil with
psychological effects; in the second, that shadowy atmosphere
describes a corruption that is entirely human, a function of brutal
greed and sexualized violence. The contemporary independent film
Pi (1998) uses high-contrast lighting and black-and-white film stock

to evoke associations with these earlier film movements and
connote both the psychological disturbance of the math-obsessed
protagonist and the ruthless motives of those who seek to profit
from his predictions.
Performance: Actors and Stars
At the center of the mise-en-scène is most o�en a flesh-and-blood
actor who embodies and performs a film character through gestures
and movements. A more intangible yet essential part of mise-en-
scène, performance describes the actor’s use of language, physical
expression, and gesture to bring a character to life and to
communicate important dimensions of that character to the
audience. Because characters help us see and understand the
actions and world of a film and because performance is an
interpretation of that character by an actor, the success or failure of
many films depends on an actor’s performance. In a film like Kind
Hearts and Coronets (1949), in which Alec Guinness plays eight
different roles, the shi�ing performances of the actor may be its
greatest achievement.
In a performance, we can distinguish two primary elements — voice,
which includes the natural sound of an actor’s voice along with the
various intonations or accents he or she may create for a particular
role, and bodily movement, which includes physical gestures and
facial expressions and, especially important to the movies, eye

movements and eye contact. (As in many elements of mise-en-
scène, these features of performance also rely on other dimensions
of film form, such as sound and camera positions.) Woody Allen has
made a career of developing characters through the performance of
a strident, panicky voice and bodily and eye movements that dart in
uncoordinated directions. At the heart of such movies as The Blue
Angel (1930) and Shanghai Express (1932) is Marlene Dietrich’s sultry
voice, complemented by drooping eyes and languid body poses and
gestures [Figure 3.30].
3.30 The Blue Angel (1930). The voice, body, and eyes of Marlene Dietrich become the
signature vehicles for her dramatic performances as an actor and character in her
breakthrough role.

Additionally, different acting styles define performances. With
stylized acting, an actor employs emphatic and highly self-conscious
gestures or speaks in pronounced tones with elevated diction. The
actor seems fully aware that he or she is acting and addressing an
audience. Much less evident today, these stylized performances can
be seen in the work of Lillian Gish in Broken Blossoms (1919), in Joel
Grey’s role as the master of ceremonies in Cabaret (1972) [Figure
3.31], and in the comic performances seen in virtually any Monty
Python movie.
3.31 Cabaret (1972). Joel Grey is the master of ceremonies whose own stylized performance
introduces a film replete with stylized performances on and off the stage.

More influential since the 1940s, naturalistic acting requires an actor
to embody the role that he or she is playing fully and naturally in
order to communicate that character’s essential self, famously
demonstrated by Marlon Brando as Stanley in A Streetcar Named
Desire (1951), a role in which the actor and character seem almost
indistinguishable [Figure 3.32].
3.32 A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). Ever since this landmark adaptation, Marlon Brando’s
physical performance of Stanley has become difficult to distinguish from the essence of that
fictional character.

Types of Actors
As part of the usual distribution of actors through mise-en-scène,
leading actors — the two or three actors, o�en stars, who represent
the central characters in a narrative — play the central characters.
Recognizable actors who are associated with particular character
types, o�en humorous or sinister, and o�en are cast in minor parts
are sometimes referred to as character actors. They might play the
role of the bumbling cook in a western. Supporting actors play
secondary characters in a film, serving as foils or companions to the
central characters. Supporting actors and character actors o�en add
to the complexity of a film’s plotline or emotional impact. They may
involve us more thoroughly in the action or highlight a movie’s
themes. In the hands of a strong actor, such as James Earl Jones in a
supporting role in Field of Dreams (1989) or Jennifer Lawrence in
American Hustle (2014), these supporting roles frequently balance
our perspective on the main characters, perhaps requiring us to
rethink and reassess the main character’s decisions and motivations.
In Field of Dreams, the writer that Jones plays, Terence Mann, fulfills
his fantasy of entering the field and joining the baseball game, while
lead actor Kevin Costner’s character must remain behind. Finally,
realism and spectacle are enhanced by extras — actors without
speaking parts who appear in the background and in crowd scenes.
Those relatively large groups of “background artists” provide
character and sometimes personality to large crowd scenes.

Actors frequently are selected for parts precisely because of their
association with certain character types — conventional characters
typically portrayed by actors cast because of their physical features,
their acting style, or the history of other roles they have played. Tom
Hanks portrays “everyman” characters, while Helen Mirren played
both Elizabeth I and Elizabeth II in the same year. To appreciate and
understand a character can consequently mean recognizing this
intersection of a type and an actor’s interpretation or transformation
of it. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s large and muscular physical stature,
clipped voice, and stiff acting style suit well the characters he plays
in The Terminator (1984) and Total Recall (1990). The comedy of
Kindergarten Cop (1990) arises from his tough character’s attempt to
act “against type” in his undercover role of a kindergarten teacher.
FILM IN FOCUS Mise-en-Scène in Do the Right Thing (1989)
See also: Crooklyn (1994); Summer of
Sam (1999); 25th Hour (2002)
To watch a clip from Do the Right Thing (1989), go to LaunchPad for The Film
Experience at launchpadworks.com
In Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989), characters wander through Bedford-
Stuyvesant, a gentrifying African American neighborhood in Brooklyn. Here, life

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becomes a complicated negotiation between a private mise-en-scène
(apartments, bedrooms, and businesses) and a public mise-en-scène (city streets
and sidewalks crowded with people). With Lee in the role of Mookie, who acts as a
thread connecting the various characters, stores, and street corners, the film
explores the different attitudes, personalities, and desires that clash within a
single urban place by featuring a variety of stages — rooms, stores, and restaurants
— with personal and racial associations. On the hot summer day of this setting,
lighting creates an intense and tactile heat, and this sensation of heat makes the
mise-en-scène vibrate with energy and frustration. Working with his usual
production designer, Wynn Thomas, and cinematographer, Ernest R. Dickerson,
Lee transforms the neighborhood into a theatrical space for fraught encounters.
Lee’s performance in the central role of Mookie draws on his then-emerging status
as a star actor and a star filmmaker. In fact, this double status as star and director
indicates clearly that what happens in the mise-en-scène is about him. Physically
unimposing, restrained, and cautious throughout the film, Lee’s performance
seems to shi� and adjust depending on the character he is responding to. As the
central performer in a neighborhood of performers, Lee’s Mookie is a chameleon,
surviving by continually changing his persona to fit the social scene he is in. By the
end of the film, however, Mookie must decide which performance will be the real
self he brings to the mise-en-scène — how, that is, he will “act” in a time of crisis by
taking responsibility for the role he is acting.
The costumes (by Ruth Carter) and make-up (by Matiki Anoff) in Do the Right Thing
reflect the styles of dress in U.S. cities in the 1980s. Both contribute to a kind of
scenic realism of the time, yet Lee also uses them to define and highlight each
character’s place in the film’s narrative. Mookie’s Brooklyn Dodgers shirt with the
name and number of the legendary baseball player Jackie Robinson on the back
symbolizes his hometown and African American pride [Figure 3.27], whereas Pino
(John Turturro) wears white, sleeveless T-shirts that signify his white working-class
background. Jade (Joie Lee), Mookie’s sister, stands out in her dramatic hats,
skirts, and earrings and elegant make-up and hairstyles, calling attention perhaps

to the individuality and creativity that allow her, uniquely here, to casually cross
racial lines.
3.27 Do the Right Thing (1989). Mookie wears a Brooklyn Dodgers shirt with Jackie
Robinson’s number as a symbol of hometown and African American pride.
The central crisis of Do the Right Thing turns on the drama of instrumental props
that become loaded with cultural meanings and metaphorical powers. Early in the
film, Smiley (Roger Guenveur Smith) holds up a photograph of Martin Luther King
Jr. and Malcolm X as a call to fight against racism with both nonviolence and
violence. Shortly therea�er, Da Mayor (Ossie Davis) nearly instigates a fight
because Sonny, the Korean grocer (Steve Park), has not stocked a can of his
favorite beer, Miller High Life. But the walls of Sal’s pizzeria contain photographs of
famous Italian Americans — Frank Sinatra, Joe DiMaggio, Liza Minnelli, Al Pacino,
and others [Figure 3.28] — and they are what ignites the film. When Buggin’ Out
(Giancarlo Esposito) complains that there should be photos of African Americans
on that wall because Sal’s clientele is all black, Sal (Danny Aiello) angrily responds
that he can decorate the walls of his pizzeria however he wishes. Later, when
Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) refuses to turn down his boom box (an object that has
become synonymous with who he is), he and Buggin’ Out again confront Sal with

the cultural significance of the photos and the neighborhood residents’ social
rights within this mise-en-scène: why, they demand, are there no photographs of
African Americans on the wall? Finally, at the climactic moment in the film, Mookie
tosses a garbage can through the window of the pizzeria, sparking the store’s
destruction but saving the lives of Sal and his son.
3.28 Do the Right Thing (1989). Nostalgic black-and-white photos of Italian Americans
on the pizzeria wall illustrate the potential of props to serve as political flashpoints.
Both social and graphic blockings become dramatic calculators in a film explicitly
about the “block” and the arrangement of people in this neighborhood. In one
scene, Pino, Vito (Richard Edson), and Mookie stand tensely apart in a corner of
the pizzeria as Mookie calls on Vito to denounce his brother’s behavior and Pino
counters with a call for family ties. Their bodies are quietly hostile and territorial
simply in their arrangement and in their movements around the counter that
separates them. This orchestration of bodies climaxes in the final showdown at
Sal’s pizzeria. When Buggin’ Out and Radio Raheem enter the pizzeria, the
screaming begins with Sal behind the counter, while Mookie, Pino, Vito, and the
neighborhood kids shout from different places in the room. As the fight begins, the
bodies collapse on each other and spill onto the street in a mass of

undistinguishable faces. A�er the police arrive and Radio Raheem is killed, the
placement of his body creates a sharp line between Mookie, Sal, and his sons on
one side and the growing crowd of furious blacks and Latinos on the other. Within
this blocking, Mookie suddenly moves from one side of the line to the other and
then calmly retrieves the garbage can to throw through the window. The riot that
follows is a direct consequence of Mookie’s decisions about where to position
himself and how to shatter the blocked mise-en-scène that divides Sal’s space
from the mob.
Do the Right Thing employs an array of lighting techniques that at first may seem
naturalistic, but over the course of the film, directional lighting becomes
particularly dramatic. From the beginning, the film juxtaposes the harsh, full glare
of the streets with the so� morning light that highlights the interior spaces of DJ
Mister Señor Love Daddy’s (Samuel L. Jackson) radio station, where he announces
a heat wave for the coming day, and the bedroom where Da Mayor awakens with
Mother Sister (Ruby Dee). Here the lighting of the interior mise-en-scène
emphasizes the rich and blending shades of the dark skin of the African American
characters, while the bright, hard lighting of the exterior spaces draws out
distinctions in the skin colors of blacks, whites, and Asians. This high-key lighting
of exteriors, in turn, accentuates the colors of the objects and props in the mise-
en-scène as a way of sharply isolating them in the scene — for example, the blues
of the police uniforms and cars, the yellows of the fruits in the Korean market, and
the reds of the steps and walls of the neighborhood [Figure 3.29].

3.29 Do the Right Thing (1989). The high-key lighting against a glaringly red wall adds
to the intensity and theatricality of these otherwise casual commentators on the
street.
Other uses of lighting in the film are more dramatic and complex. For example, the
dramatic backlighting of Mookie as he climbs the stairs to deliver the pizza adds an
almost religious and certainly heroic/romantic effect to the pizza delivery. When
Pino confronts Vito in the storage room, the scene is highlighted by an overhead
light that swings back and forth, creating a rocking and turbulent visual effect. In
the final scene, Mookie walks home to his son on a street sharply divided between
bright, glaring light on one side and dark shadows on the other.
More charged with the politics of mise-en-scène than many films, Do the Right
Thing turns a relatively small city space into an electrified set where actors,
costumes, props, blocking, and lighting create a remarkably dense, jagged, and
mobile environment. Here the elements of mise-en-scène are always theatrically
and politically in play, always about the spatial construction of culture in a specific
time and place. To live here, people need to assume, as Mookie eventually does,
the powers and responsibilities of knowing how and when to act.

Stars
The leading actors in many films are movie stars — individuals who,
because of their cultural celebrity, bring a powerful aura to their
performance, making them the focal points in the mise-en-scène.
Unlike less famous actors, star performers o�en dominate the
action and space of the mise-en-scène, bring the accumulated
history and significance of their past performances to each new film
appearance, and acquire a status that transforms their individual
physical presence into more abstract or mythical qualities [Figure
3.33]. Stars thus combine the ordinary (they embody and play types
audience members can identify with) and the extraordinary,
bringing their distinct personality to their roles. Early in Hollywood
history, the star-driven system o�en identified an actor with a
particular genre that had a distinctive mise-en-scène. Douglas
Fairbanks, for example, starred in swashbuckling adventure tales,
and Charlie Chaplin’s comic “Little Tramp” character was instantly
recognizable by his costume.

3.33 The Post (2017). In this film about how the Washington Post exposed a massive
government cover-up, stars Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks add a larger-than-life dimension to
a historical re-creation of the 1971 investigation.
A star’s performance focuses the action of the mise-en-scène and
draws attention to important events and themes in the film. In
Casablanca (1942), several individual dramas about different
characters trying to escape Casablanca are presented, but
Humphrey Bogart’s character Rick Blaine is, in an important sense,
the only story. The other characters become important only as they
become part of his life. In Money Monster (2016), George Clooney
plays a wacky, histrionic financial adviser on an absurdly theatrical
television show about investing. The show’s producer is played by
Julia Roberts, and the interactions between the two star performers
overshadow the hostage crisis at the center of the film’s plot. Johnny
Depp’s tongue-in-cheek performance as Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the

Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) contributed to the film’s
unexpected success and generated sequels highlighting the
character’s antics.
In all three of these films, much of the power of the characters is a
consequence of the star status of the actors, recognized and
understood in relation to their roles in other films — and in some
cases, in relation to a life off the screen. Recognizing and identifying
with Rick in Casablanca implies, especially for viewers in 1942, a
recognition on some level that Rick is more than Rick, that this star
character in Casablanca is an extension of characters Bogart has
portrayed in such films as High Sierra (1941) and The Maltese Falcon
(1941). A similar measuring takes place as we watch Clooney and
Roberts. Clooney’s performance in Money Monster impresses viewers
because the character he plays is so unlike the characters he plays in
more serious roles in Syriana (2005) and The Descendants (2011). Part
of our appreciation and understanding of his role is the skill and
range he embodies as a star. Depp’s pirate captain builds on the
actor’s association with eccentric characters and on cultural
recognition of the rock star persona of Keith Richards of the Rolling
Stones. We understand these characters as an extension of or
departure from other characters associated with the star.
Blocking

The arrangement and movement of actors in relation to one another
within the physical space of a mise-en-scène is called blocking.
Social blocking describes the arrangement of characters to
accentuate relations among them. In The Imitation Game (2014),
while working to break the German Enigma code, Alan Turing and
his team gather together in scenes blocked to draw attention to the
tension within the group [Figure 3.34].
3.34 The Imitation Game (2014). In this example of social blocking, several mathematicians
remain tensely at odds within the framework of a necessary cooperation.
Graphic blocking arranges characters or groups according to visual
patterns to portray spatial harmony, tension, or some other visual
atmosphere. Fritz Lang, for instance, is renowned for his blocking
of crowd scenes. In Metropolis (1927), the oppression of individuality
is embodied in the mechanical movements of rectangles of
marching workers. In Fury (1936), a mob lynching in a small town is
staged as graphic-blocked patterns whose directional arrow suggests

a kind of dark fate moving against the lone individual. Both forms of
blocking can become especially dynamic and creative in dance or
fight sequences. In Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004), the choreographed
movement of bodies visually describes social relations and tensions
as well as graphic patterns suggesting freedom or control.
T E C H N O LO G Y I N A C T I O N

Scenic Lighting
Lighting, like all elements of mise-en-scène, becomes integrated into the various
strategies of cinematography, editing, and sound. The technologies of lighting
determine key possibilities and directions in the development of a cinematic mise-
en-scène.
In the early years of film history, movies relied on sunlight made available through
on-location filming and from buildings with open, retractable glass. In the first
decade of the twentieth century, mercury-vapor lamps and large Cooper-Hewitt
lights began to allow for interior shooting. Thomas Edison’s famous Black Maria
studio featured a glass roof on a rotating structure that allowed it to follow the
sun, and one of the main reasons for the film industry’s move to California was the
sunny climate. Not surprisingly, because of the limitations in lighting, a majority of
early films focused on exterior action or theatrical interiors.
Improvements in artificial lighting technology eventually encouraged more
experiments with lighting as a source of meaning. In films such as D. W. Griffith’s
Enoch Arden (1911), so� direct lighting illuminates the faces of characters, o�en
meant to glamorize actors in a way that reinforced the emerging star system. By
the 1920s, expressionistic lighting explored the creative possibilities of artificial
lighting with o�en dramatically contrasting light-and-shadow effects, portraying
psychological and social worlds filled with shadows and conflicts [Figure 3.35a].

3.35a The Third Man (1949). The heritage of sharp, contrastive lighting extends from
German Expressionism to postwar film noir.
Since the 1930s, classical highlighting delineates and complicates characters
within the three-point lighting system provided by arc lamps and incandescent
lights. While this system appears less obvious with the introduction of color film
stock, three-point lighting allows for a spectrum of sharp and so� illuminations
and therefore remains a critical compositional tactic for creating the nuanced and
complex characters so central to classical narratives [Figure 3.35b].

3.35b An American in Paris (1951). Even with the rise of Technicolor films, classical
lighting became a key vehicle for character development.
Following World War II, naturalistic lighting reappeared in the different new waves
from the 1950s to 1970s. Rather than a technological necessity like the naturalistic
lighting of early cinema, the lighting of such postwar films, from Rome: Open City
(1945) to Taxi Driver (1976), became a thematic centerpiece to the story. Unlike
classical lighting, these techniques frequently foreground the exterior world rather
than the primary characters in order to describe a new social order in which the
characters struggle to find their place.
Since the 2000s, digital lighting has provided an open palette for filmmakers, far
less dependent on physical equipment or external conditions. Although there is
some loss of lighting texture in the products of this new technology, it also offers
more freedom to color the world in fantastic lights and primary hues. The
tendency toward comic-book adaptations has, in part, followed this technology.

Since it lowers the lighting requirements for filmmakers, this technology also has
become a factor in the proliferation of contemporary documentary films [Figure
3.35c].
3.35c Life of Pi (2012). Ang Lee’s film uses digital lighting to paint a world of dynamic
colors that fluctuate between realism and fantasy.
Space and Design
The overall look of a film is coordinated by its design team, which
uses space and composition to create a scene for the film’s action.
The set design of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is characterized by
futuristic design elements arranged sparsely within the elongated
widescreen frame. The crowded warrens of Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
fill the frame but give the viewer little sense of depth, with stop-

motion figures and props jumbled together [Figure 3.36]. The
frontal orientation of Marie Antoinette (2006) emphasizes the
screens, drapes, and wallpaper of Versailles, giving the film a
compositional style reminiscent of decorative arts. Even as most
designers would say their work is in the service of the story, the
actors who move through these spaces are picked out by lighting,
carefully made up, and costumed in palettes that integrate the work
of all these departments into the mise-en-scène.
3.36 Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009). Even an animated mise-en-scène can create complex spatial
designs, here emphasizing a two-dimensional world with crowded activities and lateral
movements.

Thinking about Mise-en-Scène
The elements of mise-en-scène that we have designated are used
together to create the world of the film. Mise-en-scène describes
everything visible within the frame. Properties of cinematography
that are discussed in the next chapter (including framing, angle, and
color) render the mise-en-scène in a particular way, but a visual
impression starts with what is in front of the camera or later placed
in the frame with special effects technology.
How do audiences interpret mise-en-scène within the longer
traditions of this composition? Whether a film presents authentic
places or ingeniously fabricates new worlds, its sets, props, acting
styles, blocking, and lighting create opportunities for audiences to
find significance. From the miniaturized reenactment of Admiral
Dewey’s naval victory in one of the first “newsreels,” The Battle of
Manila Bay (1898), to the futuristic ductwork located “somewhere on
the Los Angeles–Belfast border” of Brazil (1985), to the winter light
of the Swedish countryside in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
and the vast and crowded World War II beaches of Dunkirk (2017),
mise-en-scène can produce specific meanings through views of real
lands and landscapes as well as imaginatively designed settings
[Figure 3.37]. In this section, we explore how different approaches
to and cultural contexts for mise-en-scène help us identify

prominent concepts and larger assumptions within the history of
mise-en-scène.
3.37 Dunkirk (2017). The mise-en-scène in this film about a famous World War II evacuation
re-creates the seaside beaches full of desperate Allied soldiers.
Mise-en-Scène as an External
Condition or a Measure of Character
For most movie viewers, recognizing the places, objects, and
arrangements of sets and settings has never been simply a formal
exercise. The mise-en-scène has always been the site where viewers
measure human, aesthetic, and social values; recognize significant
cinematic traditions; and in those interactions, identify and assign
meaning to the changing places of films.

The most fundamental value of mise-en-scène is that it defines
where we are: the physical settings and objects that surround us
indicate our place in the material world. Some people crave large
cities with bright lights and active crowds; others find it important
that their town have a church as the visible center of the
community. Much the same holds true for cinematic mise-en-scène,
in which the place created by the elements of the mise-en-scène
becomes the essential condition for the meaning of the characters’
actions. As part of this larger cultural context, cinematic mise-en-
scène helps to describe the limits of human experience by
indicating the external boundaries and contexts in which film
characters exist (corresponding to our own natural, social, or
imaginary worlds). On the other hand, how mise-en-scène is
changed or manipulated in a film can reflect the powers of film
characters and groups — and their ability to control or arrange their
world in a meaningful way. Although the first set of values
(conditions and limits) can be established without characters, the
second (changing or manipulating those limits) requires the
interaction of characters and mise-en-scène.
As an External Condition
Mise-en-scène as an external condition indicates surfaces, objects,
and exteriors that define the material possibilities in a place or
space. The mise-en-scène may be a magical space full of active
objects, or it may be a barren landscape with no borders. In King

Solomon’s Mines (1937) and The African Queen (1951), arid desert
plains and dense jungle foliage threaten the colonial visitors,
whereas films like The Lady Vanishes (1938) and The Taking of Pelham
123 (2009), set in the interiors of trains and subways, feature long,
narrow passageways, multiple windows, and strange, anonymous
faces. An individual’s movements are restricted as the world flies by
outside. In each case, the mise-en-scène describes the material
limits of a film’s physical world. From those terms, the rest of the
scene or even the entire film must develop.
As a Measure of Character
Mise-en-scène as a measure of character dramatizes how an
individual or a group establishes an identity through interaction
with (or control of ) the surrounding setting and sets. In The
Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), the mise-en-scène of a forest
becomes a sympathetic and intimate place where the outlaw-hero
can achieve justice and find camaraderie. In Brokeback Mountain
(2005), the wide-open space of the mountain expands the horizons
of the characters’ sexual identities [Figure 3.38]. In the science
fiction film Donovan’s Brain (1953), the vision and the personality of
a mad scientist are projected and reflected in a laboratory with
twisted, mechanized gadgets and wires. Essentially, his ability to
create new life forms from that environment reflects both his genius
and his insane ambitions. The interactions between character and

elements of the mise-en-scène may convey more meaning to
viewers than even the interactions between the characters.
3.38 Brokeback Mountain (2005). In the expansive mountains and plains of the American
West, two cowboys explore new sexual intimacies as the film confounds expectations
associated with setting.
Keep in mind that our own cultural expectations about the material
world determine how we understand the values of a film’s mise-en-
scène. To modern viewers, the mise-en-scène of The Gold Rush (1925)
might appear crude and stagy, and the make-up and costumes might
seem more like circus outfits than realistic clothing. For viewers in
the 1920s, however, the fantastical and theatrical quality of this
mise-en-scène made it entertaining. For them, watching the Little
Tramp perform his balletic magic in a strange location was more
important than the realism of the mise-en-scène.

Primary Traditions for Mise-en-Scène
Two prominent contexts for eliciting interpretations, or readings, of
films include naturalistic mise-en-scène and theatrical mise-en-
scène. Naturalistic mise-en-scène appears realistic and recognizable
to viewers. Theatrical mise-en-scène denaturalizes the locations and
other elements of the mise-en-scène so that its features appear
unfamiliar, exaggerated, or artificial. Throughout their history,
movies have tended to emphasize one or the other of these contexts,
although many films have moved smoothly between the two. From
The Birth of a Nation (1915) to Bridge of Spies (2015), settings,
costumes, and props have been selected or constructed to appear as
authentic as possible in an effort to convince viewers that the
filmmakers had a clear window on a true historical place. The first
movie re-creates the historical sites and events of the Civil War, even
titling some of its shots “historical facsimiles,” whereas the second
reconstructs a variety of Cold War–era settings in the United States,
Russia, and Germany. In other films, from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
(1920) to the Harry Potter series (2001–2011), those same elements of
mise-en-scène have exaggerated or transformed reality as most
people know it. Caligari uses sets painted with twisted buildings and
nightmarish backgrounds, and the fantastical settings of the Harry
Potter films are inhabited by magical animals and animated objects.
The Naturalistic Tradition

Naturalism is one of the most effective — and most misleading —
ways to approach mise-en-scène. If mise-en-scène is about the
arrangement of space and the objects in it, as we have suggested,
then naturalism in the mise-en-scène means that a place looks the
way it is supposed to look. We can, in fact, pinpoint several more
precise characteristics of a naturalistic mise-en-scène. Elements of
the mise-en-scène follow assumed laws of nature and society and
have a consistently logical relation to each other, and the mise-en-
scène and characters mutually define one another.
Naturalistic mise-en-scène is consistent with accepted scientific
laws and cultural customs. Thus, in a naturalistic setting, a person
would be unable to hear whispers from far across a field, and a
restaurant might have thirty tables and several waiters or waitresses.
This kind of realistic mise-en-scène also creates logical or
homogeneous connections among different sets, props, and
characters. Costumes, props, and lighting are appropriate and
logical extensions of the naturalistic setting, and sets relate to each
other as part of a consistent geography. The Battle of Algiers (1966)
uses location shooting in an attempt to re-create with documentary
realism the revolution that was fought in the city’s streets a decade
earlier. Naturalism in the movies also means that the mise-en-scène
and the characters mutually define or reflect each other. The gritty
streets and dark rooms of a city reflect the bleak attitudes of thieves
and femmes fatales in The Killers (1946). In Crazy Rich Asians (2018),
the wealthy world of contemporary Singapore becomes the

background for the romance between a New York University
professor and her rich boyfriend. Here the naturalistic background
of upper-class Singapore, with its luxurious spaces and fashionable
outfits, clashes with the expectations and experiences of everyday
New York City [Figure 3.39].
3.39 Crazy Rich Asians (2018). Two naturalistic social worlds and assumptions about them
conflict in this romance between a middle-class New Yorker and the heir to a wealthy
Singaporean family.
Two specific traditions have emerged from naturalistic mise-en-
scène. First, historical mise-en-scène re-creates a recognizable
historical scene, highlighting those elements that call attention to a
specific location and time in history. All Quiet on the Western Front
(1930) can still stun audiences with its brutally accurate
representation of trench warfare in World War I, and the setting and
costumes of The Last Emperor (1987) capture the clash of tradition
with Chinese Communist society.

Another variation on the naturalistic tradition, everyday mise-en-scène
calls attention to the ordinary rather than the historical and
constructs commonplace backdrops for the characters and the
action. In Louisiana Story (1948), a swamp and its rich natural life are
the always-visible arena for the daily routines of a young boy in the
Louisiana bayous. In Winter’s Bone (2010), the struggles of the
heroine to protect her family home are set against the stark beauty
and sparse settlement of the Ozarks. In the Brazilian film Central
Station (1998), a railroad station in Rio de Janeiro and a poor rural
area in the Brazilian countryside are the understated stages in a
touching tale of a woman’s friendship with a boy in search of his
father.
The Theatrical Tradition
In contrast, theatrical mise-en-scène creates fantastical
environments that display and even exult in their artificial and
constructed nature. In films in this tradition, elements of the mise-
en-scène violate or bend the laws of nature and society, dramatic
inconsistencies occur within or across settings, or the mise-en-
scène takes on an independent life that requires confrontations
between its elements and the characters.
O�en violating the accepted laws of how the world functions,
theatrical mise-en-scène can call attention to the arbitrary or
constructed nature of that world. In movies from Top Hat (1935) to

Silk Stockings (1957), Fred Astaire somehow finds a way to dance on
walls and ceilings and transform spoons and brooms into magical
partners. In Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die (2019), a zombie
invasion of a small town quickly evolves into a movie-within-a-
movie where the town begins to resemble a parodic film set for
George Romero’s classic horror movies, such as Night of the Living
Dead (1968) [Figure 3.40]. Dramatic inconsistencies within a film’s
mise-en-scène indicate the instability of those scenes, costumes,
and props — and the world they define. In a theatrical mise-en-
scène, props, sets, and even bodies assume an independent (and
sometimes contradictory) life that provokes regular confrontations
or negotiations between the mise-en-scène and the characters. Two
historical trends — expressive and constructive — are associated
with theatrical mise-en-scène.

3.40 The Dead Don’t Die (2019). Although zombie films necessarily violate most naturalistic
rules and expectations, here the characters inhabit the theatrical formulas of a self-
conscious horror-film set.
A specific version of the theatrical tradition is expressive mise-en-
scène. In this type of mise-en-scène, the settings, sets, props, and
other dimensions of the mise-en-scène assert themselves
independently of the characters and describe an emotional or
spiritual life permeating the material world. Associated most
commonly with the German expressionist films of the 1920s, this
tradition is also seen in surrealism, in horror films, and in the magic
realism of Latin American cinema. Since Émile Cohl’s Fantasmagorie
(1908) depicted an artist surrounded by sketches and drawings
whose life and activity are independent of him, expressive mise-en-
scène has enlivened the terrifying, comical, and romantic worlds of
many films, including The Birds (1963), in which birds become
demonic; Barton Fink (1991), in which wallpaper sweats; and The
Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies (2014), which continues the fantastic
landscapes and magical props of the franchise to create a material
world infused with the metaphysics and ethics of good versus evil.
By contrast, in a constructive mise-en-scène, the theatrical world can
be shaped and even altered through the work or desire of the
characters. Films about putting together a play or even a movie are
examples of this tradition as characters fabricate a new or
alternative world through their power as actors or directors. In

François Truffaut’s Day for Night (1973), for example, multiple
romances and crises become entwined with the project of making a
movie about romance and crises, and the movie set becomes a
parallel universe in which day can be changed to night and sad
stories can be made happy. Other films have employed constructive
mise-en-scène to dramatize the wishes and dreams of their
characters. In Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971), the grim
factory exterior hides a wonderland where, as one character sings,
“You can even eat the dishes.” Likewise, the mise-en-scène of Being
John Malkovich (1999) constantly defies the laws of spatial logic, as
Craig the puppeteer and his coworker Maxine struggle for the right
to inhabit the body of the actor Malkovich.
Describe why the mise-en-scène of the film you most recently watched fits best
within a naturalistic or a theatrical tradition. Explain how this perspective helps
you experience the film. Illustrate your position using two or three scenes as
examples.
We rarely experience the traditions of naturalistic and theatrical
mise-en-scène in entirely isolated states. Naturalism and theatrics
sometimes alternate within the same film, and following the play
and exchange between the two can be an exciting and productive
way to watch movies and to understand the complexities of mise-en-
scène in a film — of how place and its physical contours condition

and shape our experiences. In this context, Preston Sturges’s
Sullivan’s Travels (1941) is a remarkable example of how the
alternation between these two traditions can be the heart of the
movie [Figure 3.41]. In this film, the lead character is Hollywood
director John L. Sullivan, who a�er a successful career making films
with titles like So Long, Sarong, decides to explore the world of
suffering and deprivation as material for a serious realistic movie he
intends to title O Brother, Where Art Thou? He subsequently finds
himself catapulted into a grimy world of railroad boxcars and prison
chain gangs, where he discovers, ironically, the power that the
movie fantasies he once created have to delight and entertain
others. The theatrical mise-en-scène of Hollywood, he learns, is as
important to human life as the ordinary worlds people must inhabit.

A still from the movie Sullivan’s Travels shows Joel McCrea.
3.41 Sullivan’s Travels (1941). The opposition between the “real” world and Hollywood
fantasy may not be as absolute as its director hero at first assumes.

There have been many movie “spectaculars” where the magnitude
and intricacy of the mise-en-scène share equal emphasis with or
even outshine the story, a tradition extending back to the 1914
Italian film Cabiria and continued with films like Gone with the Wind
(1939), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Gangs of New York (2002), Avatar
(2009), and Midway (2019). The spectacular elements of these films
can still contribute to a narrative. Low-budget independent films
usually concentrate on the complexity of character, imagistic style,
and narrative, but movie spectaculars attend to the stunning effects
of sets, lighting, props, costumes, and casts of thousands. Movie
spectaculars exploit one of the primary motivations of film viewing
— the desire to be awed by worlds that exceed our day-to-day reality.
FILM IN FOCUS Naturalistic Mise-en-Scène in Bicycle Thieves (1948)
To watch a clip of Bicycle Thieves (1948), go to LaunchPad for The Film
Experience at launchpadworks.com
The setting of Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948) is post–World War II Rome, a
mise-en-scène whose stark and impoverished conditions are the most formidable
obstacle to the central character’s longing for a normal life. Antonio Ricci, played
by nonprofessional actor Lamberto Maggiorani, finds a job putting up movie
posters, a humble but adequate way to support his wife and his son Bruno in an
economically depressed city. When the bicycle he needs for work is stolen, he

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desperately searches the massive city on foot, hoping to discover the bike before
Monday morning, when he must continue his work.
The winding streets and cramped apartments of the actual Roman locations
appear as bare, crumbling, and scarred surfaces. They create a frustrating and
impersonal urban maze through which Ricci walks asking questions without
answers, examining bikes that are not his, and following leads into strange
neighborhoods where he is observed with hostile suspicion. In what was once the
center of the Roman empire, masses of people wait for jobs, crowd onto buses, or
sell their wares. The most basic materials of life take on disproportionate
significance as props: the sheets on a bed, a plate of food, and an old bike are the
center of existence. In the mise-en-scène, the generally bright lighting reveals
mostly blank faces and walls of poverty.
Bicycle Thieves is among the most important films within the naturalistic tradition
of mise-en-scène, which is associated specifically with the Italian neorealist
movement of the late 1940s [Figure 3.42]. The laws of society and nature follow
an almost mechanical logic that cares not at all for human hopes and dreams.
Here, according to a truck driver, “Every Sunday, it rains.” In a large city of empty
piazzas and anonymous crowds, physical necessities reign: food is a constant
concern, most people are strangers, a person needs a bicycle to move around
town, and rivers are more threatening than bucolic. Ricci and other characters
become engulfed in the hostility and coldness of the pervasive mise-en-scène, and
their encounters with Roman street life follow a path from hope to despair to
resignation.

A still from the movie Bicycle Thieves shows a man walking in an empty
street.
3.42 Bicycle Thieves (1948). The unadorned street locations of postwar Rome and an
ordinary bicycle are at the heart of this naturalistic mise-en-scène.

In the beginning, objects and materials, such as the bed linens Ricci’s wife pawns
to retrieve his bicycle, offer promise for his family’s security in a barren and
anonymous cityscape. However, the promise of these and other material objects
turns quickly to ironic emptiness: the bicycle is stolen, the marketplace
overwhelms him with separate bicycle parts that can never be identified, and
settings (such as the church into which he pursues one of the thieves) offer no
consolation or comfort.
Finally, Ricci himself gets caught in this seemingly inescapable logic of survival
when, unable to find his bike, he tries to steal another one. Only at the end of the
day, when he discovers his son is not the drowned body pulled from the river, does
he give up his search for the bicycle. Realizing that this setting and the objects in it
will never provide him with meaning and value, he returns sadly home with the
son he loves.
The purpose of Bicycle Thieves is to accentuate the common and everyday within a
naturalistic tradition. Ricci and his neighbors dress as the struggling working-class
population from whom the actors were cast, and the natural lighting progresses
from dawn to dusk across the various locations that mark Ricci’s progression
through the day. This film’s everyday mise-en-scène is especially powerful because
without any dramatic signals, it remains permeated by the shadow of World War II.
Even within the barest of everyday settings, objects, and clothing, Bicycle Thieves
suggests the traces of history — such as Mussolini’s sports stadium — that have
created these impoverished conditions.
Along with these traces of history within its everyday mise-en-scène, we are
reminded of a theatrical tradition that ironically counterpoints the film’s realism.
While performing his new duties in the first part of the film, Ricci puts up a
glamorous poster of the U.S. movie star Rita Hayworth [Figure 3.43]. Later, the
sets and props change when Ricci wanders from a workers’ political meeting to an
adjacent theater where a play is being rehearsed. In these instances, a poster prop
and a stage setting become reminders of a world that has little place in the daily
hardships of this mise-en-scène — a world where, as one character puts it, “movies
bore me.”

A still from the movie Bicycle Thieves shows a pair of hands putting up a
sensual poster of Rita Hayworth.
3.43 Bicycle Thieves (1948). The glamour of Hollywood is evoked ironically in the
protagonist’s modest job putting up movie posters in the streets of postwar Rome.

For many modern viewers, Rome might be represented by that other theatrical
tradition — as a city of magnificent fountains, glamorous people, and romantic
restaurants. But for Ricci and his son, glamorous Rome is a strange place and a
fake set. A touching scene in which they eat at a restaurant brings out the contrast
between their lives and that of the rich patrons before they return to the streets
they know. For Europeans who lived through World War II (in Rome or other cities),
the glaring honesty of the film’s mise-en-scène in 1948 was a powerful alternative
to the glossy theatrical tradition of Hollywood sets and settings.

Chapter 3 Review
SUMMARY
Mise-en-scène refers to elements of a movie like actors,
lighting, sets and settings, costumes, make-up, and other
features of the image that exist independent of the camera and
the processes of filming and editing.
The earliest movies depended on natural light. The introduction
of artificial lighting in the 1900s allowed filmmakers to move
film production into studios and onto elaborate soundstages.
On-location shooting came to prominence again around
World War II, evident in Italian neorealist films and
Hollywood crime dramas.
Settings and sets establish scenic realism and atmosphere.
Props are objects that function as parts of the set.
Actors are usually at the center of mise-en-scène. Performance
describes actors’ use of language and physical expression to
bring a character to life. Leading actors play the central
characters in a film, while supporting actors play secondary
characters. Blocking is the arrangement and movement of
actors in relation to one another on a stage or set.
Costumes are the clothing and related accessories that define
specific characters. Make-up refers to cosmetics, including

prosthetics, applied to the actors’ faces and bodies that
highlight or distort certain features.
Lighting can be natural or directional and can range from hard
to so�. Natural lighting comes from a natural source, like
sunlight or firelight. Directional lighting is deliberately set up
to define and shape the object, area, or person being
illuminated.
Three-point lighting is a common style of directional
lighting that uses three sources: a key light to illuminate the
object, backlighting to pick out the object from the
background, and fill lighting that minimizes shadows.
High-key lighting is diffused, low-contrast lighting that
reduces or eliminates hard edges and shadows and can be
more flattering when filming people. Low-key lighting is a
high-contrast style that creates hard edges, distinctive
shadows, and a harsh effect.
There are two prominent traditions of cinematic mise-en-scène:
naturalistic and theatrical.
Naturalistic mise-en-scène appears to correspond to the real
world and is recognizable to viewers. This category includes
historical and everyday mise-en-scène.
Theatrical mise-en-scène presents locations and other
elements so that they appear unfamiliar, exaggerated, or
artificial. This category includes expressive mise-en-scène
and constructive mise-en-scène.

KEY TERMS
mise-en-scène
soundstage
setting
set
realism
scenic realism
prop
prosthetics
lighting
natural lighting
set lighting
directional lighting
three-point lighting
key light
high-key lighting
low-key lighting
fill lighting
highlighting
backlighting
frontal lighting
sidelighting
underlighting
top lighting
hard lighting
so� lighting
chiaroscuro lighting
actor

performance
leading actor
character actor
supporting actor
extra
character type
blocking
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CHAPTER 4 CINEMATOGRAPHY
Framing What We See

Three stills from the 2018 film, Roma.
Description

The first still portrays a woman standing near a young boy seated under
a thatched roof on a beach.
The second still depicts the woman running up the beach to the
seashore.
The third still depicts the woman and three children in swimming clothes
kneeling on the beach, embracing one another. A fourth child stands
behind them.
Roma (2018) is a film steeped in filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón’s memory of
his childhood in Mexico City around 1970. Filmed in naturalistic black and
white on a large-format digital camera that allows for finely detailed
interplay between foreground and background, Roma tells the parallel
and intertwined stories of domestic laborer Cleo and the middle-class
family for whom she works. Cuarón — who became the first filmmaker in
history to win Oscars for both Best Cinematography and Best Director in
the same year for this film — combines subjectivity and objectivity in his
idiosyncratic framing and panoramic location shots. For example, in the
film’s first image, water on paving stones reflects a patch of light in which
the shadow of an airplane’s flight can be traced, refracting and layering
impressions of the past. Later, the city streets teem with rebellion as the
central characters face their private dramas in a tableau carefully
composed for the film’s widescreen frames. Camera movement
heightens the film’s emotional crescendo, as a tracking shot follows Cleo
and the family’s youngest child on screen le� as the older kids frolic in
the surf on screen right. Cleo turns back to watch them, but soon the
swimmers are no longer visible to us. The tension is almost unbearable

as the camera reverses direction to follow Cleo as she races back to pull
them from the swelling waves. Although Cuarón had previously
collaborated with award-winning cinematographer Emmanuel “Chivo”
Lubezki on films like Gravity, he realized that in order for Roma to capture
the impressions of his childhood accurately, he would have to shoot this
one himself.
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Visual stimuli determine a significant part of our experience of the
world around us. We look le� and right for cars before we cross a
busy street, we watch sunsets in the distance, we focus on a face
across the room. Vision allows us to distinguish colors and light, to
evaluate the sizes of things near and far, to track moving objects, or
to invent shapes out of formless clouds. Vision also allows us to
project ourselves into the world, to explore objects and places, and
to transform them in our minds. In the cinema, we know the
material world only as it is relayed to us through the filmed images
and accompanying sounds that we process in our minds. The
filming of those images is called cinematography — motion-picture
photography (literally, “movement-writing”).
This chapter describes the feature at the center of most individuals’
experiences of movies — film images. Although film images may
sometimes seem like windows on the world, they are purposefully

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constructed and manipulated. Here we detail the subtle ways that
cinematography composes individual movie images in order to
communicate feelings, ideas, and other impressions.
KEY OBJECTIVES
Outline the development of the film image from a historical heritage of visual
forms.
Describe how the frame of an image positions our point of view according to
different distances, heights, and angles.
Explain how film shots use the depth of the image in various ways.
Identify how the elements of cinematography — film stock, camera or lens
type, color, lighting, and compositional features of the image — can be
employed in a movie.
Compare and contrast the effects of different kinds of camera movement and
lens adjustment.
Introduce the array of methods used to create special effects.
Explore the impact of digital technology on the art and practice of
cinematography.
Describe prevailing concepts of the film image within different cinematic
conventions.

A Short History of the Cinematic
Image
We go to the movies to enjoy stimulating sights, share other people’s
perspectives, and explore different worlds through the details
contained in a film image. In Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (1966), a
woman’s tense and mysterious face suggests the complex depths of
her personality. At the beginning of Saving Private Ryan (1998), we
share the visceral experience of confused and wounded soldiers as
bullets zip across the ocean surface during the D-Day invasion in
France [Figure 4.1]. Zero Dark Thirty (2013) uses a different approach
for a different combat context: brightly and starkly lit images
capture both an arid desert landscape and the brittle tension that
seems to electrify the light [Figure 4.2].

A still from the movie, Saving Private Ryan, depicts a close-up
scene of soldiers dying on Normandy Beach.
4.1 Saving Private Ryan (1998). The film uses visceral camera work to bring viewers close to
dying soldiers on D-Day.

A still from the movie, Zero Dark Thirty, captures two young
men conversing in a desert. The still is saturated in color.
4.2 Zero Dark Thirty (2013). In a very different war, monochromatic cinematography conveys
the tension that permeates the desert spaces.

Vision occurs when light rays reflected from an object strike the
retina of the eye and stimulate our perception of that object’s image
in the mind. Photography (literally, “light writing”) mimics vision in
the way it registers light patterns onto film or codes them to be
reproduced digitally. Yet whereas vision is continuous, photography
freezes a single moment in the form of an image. Movies connect a
series of these single moments and project them above a particular
rate of frames per second to create the illusion of movement.
Apparent motion is the psychological process that explains our
perception of movement when watching films, in which the brain
actively responds to the visual stimuli of a rapid sequence of still
images exactly as it would in actual motion perception.
The human fascination with creating illusions is an ancient one. In
The Republic, Plato writes of humans who are trapped in a cave and
misinterpret shadows on the cave’s wall for the actual world.
Leonardo da Vinci describes how a light source entering a hole in a
camera obscura (literally, “dark room”) projects an upside-down
image on the opposite wall, offering it as an analogy of human
vision and anticipating the mechanism of the camera. One of the
earliest technologies used to project images was the magic lantern
— a device developed in the seventeenth century using a lens and a
light source to project an image from a painted glass slide. In the
eighteenth century, showmen used these to develop elaborate
spectacles called phantasmagoria. The most famous of these were
Étienne-Gaspard Robert’s terrifying mobile projections of ghosts

and skeletons on columns of smoke in an abandoned Paris crypt.
These fanciful devices provided the basis for the technology that
drives modern cinematography and the film image’s power to
control, explain, and entertain. In this section, we examine the
historical development of some of the key features in the production
and projection of the film image.
1820s–1880s: The Invention of
Photography and the Prehistory of
Cinema
The components that finally converged in cinema — a photographic
recording of reality and the animation of images — were central to
the visual culture of the nineteenth century. Combining amusement
and science, the phenakistoscope (developed in 1832) and the
zoetrope (developed in 1834), among other precinema contraptions,
allowed people to view a series of images in a manner that creates
the illusion of a moving image.
In 1839, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre announced the first still
photograph, building on the work of Joseph Nicéphore Niépce.
Photography’s mechanical ability to produce images of reality and
make them readily available to the masses proved to be one of the
most significant developments of the nineteenth century. In the
1880s, both Étienne-Jules Marey in France and Englishman
Eadweard Muybridge, working in the United States, conducted

extensive studies of human and animal figures in motion using
chronophotography — a series of still images that record
incremental movement [Figure 4.3]. Muybridge’s Zoopraxiscope, a
rotating glass disk introduced in 1879, enabled moving images to be
projected for the first time.

A series of 20 consecutive photographs show the frame by frame
movement of a horseback rider while the horse jumps over a
barricade.
4.3 Eadweard Muybridge’s motion studies. Experimenting with still photographs of figures
in motion, Muybridge laid the groundwork for cinematography.

1890s–1920s: The Emergence and
Refinement of Cinematography
The official birth date of the movies is widely accepted as December
28, 1895, when the brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière debuted
their Cinématographe, a device that combined camera and
projector, at the Grand Café in Paris. They showed ten short films,
including a famous scene of workers leaving the Lumière factory.
The Lumières successfully joined two key elements: the ability to
record a sequence of images on a flexible, transparent medium and
the capacity to project the sequence.
The first movies consisted of a single moving image. The Lumières’
Niagara Falls (1897) simply shows the famous falls and a group of
bystanders, but its compositional balance of a powerful natural
phenomenon and the people on its edge draws on a long history of
painting, infusing the film with remarkable energy and beauty that
motion renders almost sublime [Figure 4.4]. In the United States, W.
K. L. Dickson, working for Thomas Edison, developed a motion
picture camera patented as the Kinetograph in 1891. The early
Edison films were shot in the Black Maria studio in New Jersey and
viewed individually by looking into a Kinetoscope or “peep show”
machine. One such film, The Kiss (1896), titillated viewers by giving
them a playfully analytical snapshot of an intimate moment [Figure
4.5].

A still from the documentary movie, Niagara Falls, shows a
small group of people on the edge of a fenced cliff overlooking a
large waterfall.
4.4 Niagara Falls (1897). One of the Lumière brothers’ actualities, or nonfiction moving
snapshots, shows the wonder and balance of a single moving image.

A black-and-white still from the movie, The Kiss, presents a
close-up shot of a man and woman kissing.
4.5 The Kiss (1896). From the Edison company, one of the most famous early films regards an
intimate moment.

In the early years of film history, technical innovations in the film
medium and in camera and projection hardware were rapid and
competitive. Eastman Kodak quickly established itself as the
primary manufacturer of film stock, a length of unexposed film
consisting of a flexible backing or base such as celluloid and a light-
sensitive emulsion. The standard nitrate film base of 35mm film
stock was highly flammable, and its pervasive use is one reason that
so much of the world’s silent film heritage is lost. Cellulose acetate
film stocks or safety film were adopted but did not fully replace
nitrate until the early 1950s.
A�er early competition among technologies, in 1909 the width of the
film stock, or film gauge, used for filming and exhibiting movies
was standardized as 35mm. In the 1920s, the smaller 16mm film was
introduced for portable cameras and amateur filmmakers, and
higher-resolution 70mm was experimented with for more
spectacular effects. But 35mm remained the industry standard for
film production and theatrical exhibition until challenged by digital
formats at the end of the twentieth century [Figures 4.6–4.8]. By the
1920s, the rate at which moving images were recorded and later
projected increased from sixteen frames to twenty-four frames per
second (fps), a standard that offered more clarity and definition to
moving images.

A 16-millimeter film gauge displays 10 black-and-white photos
of a man leaning against a wall on the corridor of an apartment,
captured in a long shot.
4.6 16mm film gauge drawn to scale. The lightweight cameras and portable projectors used
with this format have been effective for documentary, newsreel, and independent films as
well as for prints of films shown in educational and home settings.

A 35-millimeter film gauge displays four animated images of a
woman captured in a close shot.

4.7 35mm film gauge drawn to scale. The standard gauge for theatrically released films was
introduced in 1892 by Edison and was the dominant format for both production and
exhibition until the end of the twentieth century.

A 70-millimeter film gauge displays four colored images of a
piece of a bone against a blue backdrop.
4.8 70mm film gauge drawn to scale. A wide, high-resolution gauge was in use since the
early days of the film industry but was highlighted in feature films in the 1950s for
spectacular effect. A horizontal variant of 70mm is used for IMAX formats.

The silent film era saw major innovations in lighting and in
mechanisms for moving the camera and varying the scale of shots.
A�er 1926, panchromatic stock, which responded to a full spectrum
of colors by rendering them as shades of gray, became the standard
for black-and-white movies. Cameramen like Billy Bitzer, working
with D. W. Griffith in the United States, and Karl Freund, shooting
such German expressionist classics as Metropolis (1927), brought
cinematographic art to a pinnacle of visual creativity. These visual
achievements were adversely affected by the introduction of sound
in 1927 because bulky and sensitive sound recording equipment
created restrictions on outdoor and mobile shooting.
1930s–1940s: Developments in Color,
Wide-Angle, and Small-Gauge
Cinematography
A�er triumphing over other technologies for synchronizing sound
and image, sound was recorded as an optical track directly on film,
and technical innovations continued as the aesthetic potential of the
medium was explored. By the 1930s, color processes had evolved
from the individually hand-painted frames or tinted sequences of
silent films, to colored stocks, and finally to the rich Technicolor
process that dominated color film production until the 1950s. The
Disney cartoon Flowers and Trees (1932) was the first to use

Technicolor’s three-strip process, which recorded different colors
separately, using a dye transfer process to create a single image with
a full spectrum of color. Although color promised a new realism,
initially it o�en was used to highlight artifice and spectacle, notably
in The Wizard of Oz (1939) [Figures 4.9a–4.9c].

Three stills from the movie, The Wizard of Oz, show the
difference and impact of Technicolor on the movie. The stills are
labeled (a) through (c).
4.9a–4.9c The Wizard of Oz (1939). (a) Viewers sometimes find the opening, sepia-tinted
scenes of the film jarring. (b) When Dorothy first opens the door to Munchkinland, the drab
tints of Kansas are le� behind. (c) Technicolor’s saturated primary colors are so important in

the film that the silver slippers described in the book were changed to ruby slippers for the
screen.
Description
The still (a) depicts a girl holding a dog in a house and reacting as a
window comes off the wall.
The still (b) shows the girl standing inside a house and opening a door.
Outside the door is a colorful landscape of a countryside, while the girl
and the inside of the home are tinted in sepia.
The still (c) shows the girl and dog with a woman in a large dress and
crown, surrounded by individuals. The clothing of those in the still and the
countryside are depicted in bright colors.
Meanwhile, the introduction of new camera lenses (pieces of
curved glass that focus light rays in order to form an image on film)
allowed cinematographers new possibilities. Wide-angle, telephoto,
and zoom lenses use different focal lengths (the distance from the
center of the lens to the point where light rays meet in sharp focus)
that alter the perspective relations of an image. A wide-angle lens
has a short focal length, a telephoto lens (a lens with a focal length
of at least 75mm and capable of magnifying and flattening distant
objects) has a long one, and a zoom lens has a variable focal length.
The range of perspectives offered by these advancements allowed
for better resolution, wider angles, more variation in perspective,
and more depth of field — the range or distance before and behind
the main focus of a shot within which objects remain relatively
sharp and clear.

During the 1920s, filmmakers used gauzy fabrics and, later, special
lenses to develop a so-called so� style that could highlight the main
action or character. From the mid-1930s through the 1940s, the
wide-angle lens was developed and used. This is a lens with a short
focal length, typically less than 35mm, that allows
cinematographers to explore a depth of field that can
simultaneously show foreground and background objects or events
in focus. Cinematographer Gregg Toland is closely associated with
refinements in using wide-angle lenses for his dramatic, deep-focus
cinematography on Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941) and William
Wyler’s The Heiress (1949) [Figure 4.10].

A black-and-white still from the movie, The Heiress, shows a
well-dressed woman standing in front of a mirror inside a
mansion.
4.10 The Heiress (1949). Gregg Toland’s cinematography uses wide-angle lenses and faster
film stocks to create images with greater depth of field. Both foreground and background
are in sharp focus.

Description
The mirror shows the full-view of the girl. The shot is taken from the top
of the stairs behind her.
Camera technology developed with the introduction of more
lightweight handheld cameras that were widely used during World
War II for newsreels and other purposes. These lightweight cameras
could be carried by the operator rather than mounted on a tripod.
Small-gauge production also expanded during this period, with
8mm film developed in 1932 for the amateur filmmaker and the
addition of sound and color to the 16mm format. The portability and
affordability of 16mm film encouraged its use in educational films
and other documentaries as well as in low-budget independent and
avant-garde productions such as Maya Deren and Alexander
Hammid’s Meshes of the A�ernoon (1943).
1950s–1960s: Widescreen, 3-D, and
New Color Processes
The early 1950s witnessed the arrival of several widescreen
processes that widened the image’s aspect ratio (the width-to-
height ratio of the film frame as it appears on a movie screen,
television, or monitor). The dimensions of the movie screen
changed from a near-square to a rectangular frame. The larger

image was introduced in part to distinguish the cinema from the
new competition of television. One of the most popular of these
processes in the 1950s, CinemaScope, used an anamorphic lens — a
camera lens that compresses the horizontal axis of an image onto a
strip of 35mm film and a projector lens that “unsqueezes” such an
image to produce a widescreen image. Other widescreen films, such
as the historical epic Lawrence of Arabia (1962), used a wider film
gauge of 70mm to render spectacular scenes of desert warfare
[Figure 4.11]. This period, during which the popularity of television
urged motion-picture producers to develop more spectacular
displays, also saw a craze for 3-D movies such as House of Wax (1953).
By 1954, more than half of Hollywood movies were shot in color, and
color soon became the norm, facilitated by the introduction of
Eastman color as an alternative to the proprietary, three-strip
Technicolor process.

A panoramic view of the movie, Lawrence of Arabia, depicts a
wide desert landscape where men ride on camels and carry flags.
4.11 Lawrence of Arabia (1962). The film’s 70mm widescreen format is suited to panoramic
desert scenes and military maneuvers.

In the 1960s, Hollywood began to court the youth market, and
cinematographers experimented more aggressively with ways to
distort or call attention to the image by using one or more of the
following tools:
Think about the cinematography of a film you have seen in relation to the larger
history of the image. Do certain shots seem like paintings, photographs, or other
kinds of visual display? Explain how visual references within a specific shot or
series of shots affect your understanding or interpretation of the film.
a filter, a transparent sheet of glass or gels placed in front of the
lens to create various effects;
a flare, a spot or flash of white light created by directing strong
light directly at the lens;
a telephoto lens, a lens that has a focal length of at least 75mm
and is capable of magnifying and flattening distant objects; and
zooming, rapidly changing focal length of a camera to move the
image closer or farther away.
Amateur filmmaking was enhanced by the Super 8 format
introduced in 1965, which brought better picture quality and was
easier to work with than 8mm film.
1970s–1980s: Cinematography and
Exhibition in the Age of the

Blockbuster
In the 1970s, the flexibility of camera movement was greatly
enhanced with the use of the Steadicam. This camera stabilization
system introduced in 1976 allows a camera operator to film a
continuous and steady shot. It is responsible for the uncanny
camera movements of The Shining (1980). Special-effects technology
also developed rapidly in the era of the blockbuster ushered in by
Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977), movies with expensive budgets that
promised shocking, stunning, or simply wondrous images. Although
the robotic shark in Jaws remained mostly unseen, George Lucas’s
Industrial Light & Magic used both traditional models and
computer-based effects to characterize the Star Wars franchise and,
in time, much of Hollywood film culture [Figure 4.12].

A still from the movie, Jaws, shows a man in a boat confronting
a shark that tries to attack him.
4.12 Jaws (1975). This Steven Spielberg film ushered in the blockbuster era with surprisingly
modest special effects. A full glimpse of the mechanical shark, known on set as “Bruce,” is
not seen until ninety minutes into the film.

The spectacular qualities of motion pictures are on display in the
IMAX format and projection system developed in the 1970s. The
IMAX large-format film system is projected horizontally rather than
vertically to produce an image approximately ten times larger than
the standard 35mm frame. The higher resolution was displayed in
special venues featuring giant screens and stepped seating. Today
many theater chains have adopted a digital version of IMAX that
allows them to project in this format without the system’s original
size and space requirements.
In the 1970s, documentary filmmakers and artists also began to
shoot on video — a medium used for television that captures and
displays moving images electronically — as a distinct alternative to
filming on celluloid. Although the quality of video images at the
time was inferior to that of film images, the high costs and
inconvenience of film stock and developing made video an
appealing format. With the development of camcorders and
videocassette recorders (VCRs) in the 1980s, video spread widely
among consumers. Evolving broadcast and consumer video
technologies (including Portapak, U-matic, Beta, and VHS) were
analog formats, which converted a continuous signal into one at an
analogous speed in order to record on magnetic tape. Analog video
paved the way for the industrial and consumer embrace of even
more lightweight and versatile digital video in the next decade.

1990s to the Present: The Digital Era
The shi� to digital filmmaking is a critical transition in the history of
cinematography. Rather than being recorded on film or magnetic
tape, digital images are captured and stored as binary code on hard
drives or other storage media. Digital formats do not use film stock
and thus do not require processing in a laboratory, physical editing,
or printing effects. The process is less costly and allows for
manipulation and exact reproduction of the image at various stages
of the filmmaking and exhibition process. Digital technologies were
adopted for different phases of the production and postproduction
processes at different rates. For example, the development of
nonlinear editing systems greatly improved efficiency, and digital
editing was quickly incorporated into independent and studio
filmmaking in the 1990s. However, it took until the 2000s for digital
cinematography — shooting with a camera that records and stores
visual information electronically as digital code — to became a
viable alternative to 35mm film in terms of image quality within the
industry.
As early as the mid-1970s, the film industry developed digital
technology to create visual effects and generate title sequences in
films like Westworld (1973) and Superman (1978). Since then, effects
work has become a chief area of innovation, driving the growth of
science fiction and superhero franchises. Animation, historically
dominated by Walt Disney Studios, became a more important sector

of the film market with the advent of computer-generated imagery
(CGI), especially in the productions of Pixar and DreamWorks
studios and in Disney’s more recent computer-animated films. (See
Chapter 9 for more on traditional and digital animation.)
Technically, the digital image brought certain advantages. With
lightweight and mobile cameras, digital moviemaking can be more
intimate than 35mm cinematography, which involves large cameras
and more crew members. Initially, the quality of digital images
suggested the immediacy of home movies or news or surveillance
footage in films like Thomas Vinterberg’s acerbic family drama The
Celebration (1998). For independent filmmakers, digital images were
a vast improvement over the quality of analog video for projection
and offered an alternative to the expense of film. For Rebecca
Miller’s Personal Velocity (2002), for example, cinematographer Ellen
Kuras films three women’s stories with emotional texture and
intimacy using mini-DV (digital video) cassettes. Digital
cinematography is not restricted by the length of a reel of film,
allowing for longer takes, a dimension central to Alejandro González
Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki in Birdman (2014).
Early adopters like Robert Rodriguez, who shot the sequels to his
breakthrough big-budget film Spy Kids (2001) on high-definition
digital [Figure 4.13], found that the flexibility of digital filmmaking
enhanced creativity and allowed him to remain based in Austin,
Texas.

A still from the movie, Spy Kids 2: The Island of the Lost
Dreams, shows a boy and a girl standing near an advanced
electronic device, which produces a digital image.
4.13 Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams (2002). Director Robert Rodriguez embraced the
innovations of digital cinematography in the second installment of this endearing,
spectacular trilogy.

Digital cinematography also has disadvantages, especially evident
when it was first introduced. Digital images are recorded and
displayed in pixels (densely packed dots) rather than the grain
produced by the celluloid emulsion used for film. A
cinematographer could predict how a particular film stock responds
to light, but shooting digitally depends more on familiarity with the
camera’s capabilities. However, with improvements in frame rate,
resolution, and light sensitivity, digital cameras became attractive
even to studio filmmakers. Ultimately, greater processing power and
storage capacity enabled digital technology to transform
cinematography from the amateur to the blockbuster level. Star
Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones (2002) was the first high-profile
film to be shot in high-definition (HD) digital video. In 2009,
cinematographer Anthony Dod Boyle was the first to win an Oscar
for a film shot partly in digital formats, Slumdog Millionaire (2008). At
the other end of the spectrum, the feature film Tangerine (2015) was
shot on the streets of Los Angeles on an iPhone 6 [Figure 4.14].

A still from the movie, Tangerine, shows a seated transgender
woman in a conversation with another individual.
4.14 Tangerine (2015). The do-it-yourself promise of digital technology is reflected in this
breakthrough depiction of transgender women’s lives and loves on the streets of Los
Angeles, shot an iPhone and released theatrically.

Both traditional film and digital cinematography have their aesthetic
champions, a debate explored in the 2012 documentary Side by Side
that has continued to evolve with rapid technological advances.
Innovations within the film industry like better lenses and the high-
end Genesis, RedOne, and Alexa cameras attempt to surpass the
quality of shooting on film. In 2009, the first Hollywood features
were shot in high-definition video with 4K resolution (referring to
the number of pixels composing the image). The image quality was
roughly equivalent to that of 35mm film, and soon digital
cinematography eclipsed shooting on film as an industry standard.
In 2018, only twenty-four Hollywood films were shot in whole or in
part on traditional film.
Sometimes the push for technological enhancement exceeds the
norms of human perception. For example, the high frame rate of 48
frames per second in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit franchise (2012–2014)
was critiqued for looking artificial. Meanwhile, industry auteurs like
Christopher Nolan, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Quentin Tarantino
cultivate reputations as purists who continue to shoot on film,
exploring the capacity of enhanced formats like 70mm. Greta
Gerwig chose to shoot her 2019 adaptation of Little Women on film to
suit the warmth and intimacy of its historical subject as well as to
make a statement about what kinds of films and filmmakers can set
aesthetic standards through such choices [Figure 4.15].

A still from the movie, Little Women, shows a panoramic view
of a field in New England during autumn.
4.15 Little Women (2019). The autumnal tones of the film’s nineteenth-century New England
setting are rendered more subtly by the choice to shoot on 35mm film.

Even works shot on film are typically completed using digital
technology, which has revolutionized postproduction and
profoundly changed the role of the cinematographer. While the
cinematographer (also known as a director of photography or D.P.) was
traditionally central only to the production phase of filmmaking, the
widespread adoption of the digital intermediate (DI) — a digital
scan of the edited film — has expanded the D.P.’s role into
postproduction. The convenience and aesthetic potential of this
technology were seized on, as the cinematographer and the visual
effects supervisor collaborate on color grading and other elements
of the image. On O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000), for example,
cinematographer Roger Deakins used the digital intermediate not
only to enhance certain sequences but to adjust the entire film to a
sepia tone. Thus, the role and expertise of the cinematographer
today extends beyond image capture.
New kinds of equipment and shi�s in production norms have also
made space for women finally to enter the production role that has
historically been least open to them. D.P. Rachel Morrison became
the first woman nominated for an Oscar for Best Cinematography
for Dee Rees’s Mudbound (2017) [Figure 4.16] and continued her
collaboration with director Ryan Coogler on his blockbuster Black
Panther (2018).

A still from the movie, Mudbound, shows the silhouette of a
farmer as he overlooks a distant and colorful sunset.
4.16 Mudbound (2017). Rachel Morrison’s atmospheric cinematography for this evocative
drama about the intertwined fates of black and white families in the Mississippi Delta
earned her an Oscar nomination, the first for a woman director of photography.

Although the debate between shooting on film and shooting on
digital continues to have aesthetic currency, economics has decided
the question of exhibition in favor of digital. Avatar (2009) ushered
in a second era of 3-D spectaculars using digital technology, and
theaters worldwide were obliged to convert projection systems from
35mm to digital to accommodate these new films. By 2012, digital
projection from a hard drive called a digital cinema package (DCP)
— a collection of digital files that store and convey audio, image, and
data streams — surpassed 35mm film exhibition. By 2019, the
projection on film of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in
Hollywood was touted as a rare and nostalgic experience. The work
of great cinematographers of previous eras is encountered in digital
remasters.

The Elements of Cinematography
The basic unit of cinematography and the visual heart of cinema is
the shot — a continuous point of view (initially a continuously
exposed piece of film) between two edits. During a single shot, the
camera may move forward or backward, up or down, but the film
does not cut to another point of view or image. A cinematographer
shooting a high schooler’s home the morning a�er a wild party may
depict the scene in different ways. One version might show the
entire room — with its broken window, a fallen chair, and a man
slumped in the corner — as a single shot that surveys the wreckage
from a calm distance. Another version might show the same scene
in a rapid succession of shots — the window, the chair, and the man
— creating a visual disturbance missing in the first version. What
viewers see onscreen depends on the cinematographer’s point of
view.
On set, the director and cinematographer film multiple takes of
each shot from a unique camera setup in order to have choices
when editing the film. Multiple camera setups are used to film a
single scene, including a master shot of all the action and closer
shots of each character as they speak their lines or react to others. In
postproduction, this coverage gives the editor enough footage to
shape the scene in different ways. Creating and conveying meaning
to an audience can be done within a remarkable range of options in

the camera department — including framing, depth, color, and
movement. For the astute viewer, recognizing and analyzing how
these options are used in a film can be one of the most satisfying
ways to experience and understand it.
Point of View
In cinematographic terms, point of view refers to the position from
which a person, an event, or an object is seen or filmed. All shots
have a point of view. A subjective point of view re-creates the
perspective of a character as seen through the camera, whereas an
objective point of view does not associate the impersonal
perspective of the camera with that of a specific character. Scenes of
the road ahead capture Furiosa’s subjective point of view as she
drives in Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), whereas an establishing shot of
the citadel from which she flees is objective.
A scene’s point of view may be discontinuous. For instance, in the
suspenseful climactic prom scene of Carrie (1976), as one of the
protagonist’s classmates, Sue, watches the crowning of the prom
king and queen from backstage, she spots a rope leading above the
curtain and follows it with her eyes before investigating where it
leads [Figures 4.17a–4.17d]. The gym teacher watches but does not
understand Sue’s movements. A point-of-view shot from under the
stage reveals where Chris and her boyfriend are hiding to play a
cruel trick on Carrie. Finally, Carrie’s humiliation leads to a distorted

point-of-view shot of a laughing crowd of students, which incites her
to punish them with her telekinetic powers.

Four stills from the movie, Carrie, labeled (a) through (d), show
four different points of view.
4.17a–4.17d Carrie (1976). Brian De Palma utilizes different points of view in a single
sequence: (a) an overhead shot that shows Sue’s realization of the cruel trick about to be
played on Carrie; (b) an objective shot that introduces a teacher’s subjective point of view;

(c) a shot from the perspective of the hidden perpetrators; and (d) the distorted perception
of the victim.
Description
The still (a) shows an overhead shot of a bucket positioned with a rope
on an overhead wooden beam. The still (b) is a close-up shot of a
teacher among the audience. The still (c) shows a viewpoint from just off
and below the stage, looking up at the individuals on the stage. The still
(d) shows the repeated image of a smiling couple.
In Emmanuel Lubezki’s immersive cinematography for The Revenant
(2015), the camera moves through the chaos of a Native attack on a
party of fur trappers as if it is participating in the action, shi�ing
from subjective to objective and then to another subjective point of
view in a continuous take.
Four Attributes of the Shot
Every shot orchestrates four important attributes: framing, depth of
field, color, and movement. The distance, angle, and height of the
camera determine the portion of the filmed subject that appears
within the borders of the frame. These elements make framing one
of the key aesthetic choices in filmmaking.
The range or distance before and behind the main focus of a shot
within which objects remain relatively sharp and clear is its depth of
field. Elements of cinematography such as choice of film stock and

lighting give an image its particular visual quality. None is as
prominent as color, which conveys aesthetic impressions as well as
visual cues. Finally, a film image or shot may depict or incorporate
movement. When the camera moves or the borders of the image are
altered by a change in the focal length of the camera lens to follow
an action or explore a space, it is called a mobile frame. For
example, during the championship match in Bend It Like Beckham
(2002), mobile framing shows the protagonist as she darts down the
field on her way to scoring the winning goal. The movement of the
shot captures the strength and dexterity of her strides in a single
motion [Figure 4.18].

A still from the movie, Bend it like Beckham, shows a girl in a
soccer uniform running with the soccer ball.
4.18 Bend It Like Beckham (2002). A mobile camera increases the viewer’s excitement during
the winning goal.

Framing
Go to launchpadworks.com to watch the clip from Touch of Evil (1958), and make
a sketch or sketches of each shot. Describe how the framing and depth of field
contribute to perception of the scene.

http://launchpadworks.com/

A screenshot of a paused video shows a scene from the movie, Touch of Evil. A
play button is present at the center of the screenshot.
Description
The scene shows two men engaged in a conversation.

Although we may not be accustomed to attending to every individual
image in a movie, each shot involves careful construction by
filmmakers and rewards close observation by viewers. The square or
rectangle shape of the frame is usually taken for granted. In an early
experiment with the power of framing, Abel Gance’s Napoléon (1927)
orchestrated images to appear simultaneously on three side-by-side
screens at the film’s rousing climax, culminating with red and blue
tinted projections on either side, recalling the French flag. Since
then, filmmakers have experimented with and refined ways to
manipulate the film frame. A canted frame is framing that is not
level, creating an unbalanced appearance. It is produced by tilting
the camera to the side. Such unbalanced framing famously recurs in
The Third Man (1949) to indicate that things are not always what they
appear to be [Figure 4.19]. But even when the shape or alignment of
the frame itself is not altered, framing determines what we see.

A still from the black-and-white movie, The Third Man, shows a
man holding a gun. The background behind him is tilted to the
right.
4.19 The Third Man (1949). Suspicions about Orson Welles’s character Harry Lime are
reinforced by the canted framing.

The three dimensions of the film image — the height and width of
the frame and the apparent depth of the image — offer endless
opportunities for representing the world and the ways we see it.
Here we examine and detail formal possibilities that, when
recognized, enrich our experience of the movies.
Aspect Ratio
Like the frame of a painting, the basic shape of the film image on
the screen determines the composition. The aspect ratio is the
width-to-height ratio of the film frame as it appears on a movie
screen or television monitor. Grand Illusion (1937), Citizen Kane
(1941), and most films made before the 1950s employ the academy
ratio of 1.37:1. This aspect ratio of screen width to height was
adopted by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences as the industry standard in 1932 and was used by most
films until the introduction of widescreen ratios in the 1950s. The
dimensions of these films are similar to those of early television
screens and are rendered as 4:3 in digital formats. This almost-
square image draws on associations between the film frame and
both windows and picture frame. Widescreen ratios, which have
largely replaced academy ratio since the early 1950s, range from
1.66:1 to CinemaScope at 2.35:1. The wider image allows for grander
and more spectacular cinematography. The widescreen ratio 1.85:1
is widely prevalent and corresponds to the digital aspect ratio 16:9 —

the shape of widescreen television sets and computer screens
[Figure 4.20].

A still from the movie, Support the Girls, shows a restaurant
with five young women in uniform speaking with another woman
around a table.
4.20 Support the Girls (2018). The 1.85:1 ratio introduced in 1953 quickly replaced the square
format and remains in use for its ability to capture both intimacy and spatial relations
among figures and setting.

Aspect ratios o�en shape our experience to align with the themes
and actions of the film. For example, CinemaScope uses an
anamorphic lens to compress an image that will be uncompressed
during projection to achieve a widescreen ratio of 2.35:1. It was first
introduced for spectacles like religious epics and musicals. In
Nicholas Ray’s 1955 drama of teenage frustration and fear, Rebel
Without a Cause, the elongated horizontal CinemaScope frame
depicts the loneliness and isolation of Jim Stark (played by James
Dean) in a potentially violent showdown with a high school rival and
bully [Figure 4.21]. Outside the planetarium, Ray’s cinematography
conveys the city below as an unreachable place for these small-town
youths who seem overwhelmed by social and psychological
distances. Compared to the more confined frame of Citizen Kane,
which depicts a man who is driven to control the world, the
widescreen space in Rebel Without a Cause suits the fitful searching
of restless teens. Both films use carefully composed frames that
highlight their respective screen dimensions.

A still from the movie, Rebel Without a Cause, depicts Jim Stark
cornered on the top of an observatory by another man. The
background shows an expansive view of Los Angeles.
4.21 Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Nicholas Ray uses the exaggerated width of the
CinemaScope frame to show Jim Stark (James Dean) cornered above the streets of Los
Angeles.

Although aspect ratio may not be a crucial determinant in every
movie — both 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 are used widely today — it does not
escape the consideration of the filmmaker. Stanley Kubrick shot his
war film Full Metal Jacket (1987) in academy ratio rather than
widescreen, which had become standard by the time he shot the
film. With this choice, Kubrick emphasizes a central theme: that the
Vietnam War entered world consciousness through the box-like
screen of television. More recently, Pawel Pawlikowsky chose
academy ratio for his film about the austere life of a Polish nun, Ida
(2013) [Figure 4.22]. The verticality of the frame and the consistent
use of space above the characters’ heads evokes both spirituality and
the oppressiveness of the unspoken. In The Grand Budapest Hotel
(2014), the aspect ratio changes when the film’s action shi�s to the
1940s, emulating films of that period.

A still from the movie, Ida, depicts four nuns praying in a
convent. The frame is square with the nuns shown only in the
lower half of the image.
4.22 Ida (2013). This film’s square aspect ratio and careful, consistent framing capture the
young nun’s circumscribed existence.

The changes in film ratios over the years have presented interesting
challenges when movies appear on television or are recorded to tape
or disc. For a long time, most television broadcasts and home video
releases of widescreen films were reformatted to fit square TV
screens through the pan-and-scan process. In this process, a
computer-controlled scanner determines the most important action
in the image and then crops peripheral action and space or presents
the original frame as two separate images. Reframing the image in
these ways causes loss of elements of the picture. Wider aspect
ratios can be preserved on square TV screens by the letterbox
format, in which the top and bottom strips of the frame are blacked
out to accommodate a widescreen image.
DVDs, developed in 1995, made letterboxing much more common,
and since the popularization of digital media a decade later,
television sets have been manufactured to display the horizontal
proportions of widescreen cinema frames. Wider aspect ratios are
commonly slightly cropped to fill a flatscreen television, although
some 2.35:1 features are now letterboxed. Blu-rays and DVDs tend to
be more accurate in preserving native aspect ratio, although even
these formats can be adjusted slightly to fill a TV screen.
Masks
Besides the proportions determined by the aspect ratio, a film frame
can be reshaped by various masks — attachments to the camera or
lights to cut off portions of the frame so that part of the image is

blocked and the eye is directed to the subject of the shot. Mostly
associated with silent films like D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916), a
mask may open only a corner of the frame, create a circular effect,
or leave just a strip in the center of the frame visible. Martin
Scorsese’s knowledge of film history informs his frequent use of
masking. The social restrictions that inhibit the love of the central
couple in his 1993 adaptation of Edith Wharton’s novel The Age of
Innocence are signaled in his use of masking around the edges of the
frame [Figure 4.23].

A still from the movie, The Age of Innocence, shows three well-
dressed people on a balcony.
4.23 The Age of Innocence (1993). Scorsese’s use of masking so�ens the shape of the frame,
concentrating our gaze on details that betray the characters’ feelings in this historical
drama.

Description
Two people are in full color near the center of the frame, while the third is
shrouded in a shadow effect that borders the left and right frames.
In an iris shot, the corners of the frame are masked in a black,
usually circular, form. In Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman (1925), a shot
of a timid collegian first appears in an iris-in (a transition that
expands the small circle to reveal the entire image) to show him
surrounded by a crowd of hostile football players. Conversely, a full
image may be reduced, as an iris-out (a transition that gradually
obscures the whole image by decreasing the circle to focus on one
object), to isolate and emphasize a specific object or action in that
image. In The Night of the Hunter (1955), an iris-out follows the
demonic preacher as he walks toward the house of the children he
threatens [Figure 4.24]. Such techniques are o�en adapted to
cartoons or used in modern movies like the Star Wars franchise in
self-conscious reference to an earlier filmmaking style.

A still from the movie, The Night of the Hunter, shows a man in
a suit walking toward a house. The circular shot is centered on
him, with the outer edges of the rectangular frame in black.
4.24 The Night of the Hunter (1955). An iris-out emphasizes the threat of a figure of evil.

Composition
As with any visual medium, the arrangement of the pictorial
elements within the frame is crucial in cinematography. Onscreen
space refers to the space visible within the frame of the image,
whereas offscreen space is the implied space or world that exists
outside the film frame. Onscreen space is carefully composed so
that the position, scale, and balance of objects or lines within the
frame direct our attention or determine our attitude toward what is
being represented. Composition may create interest in the
foreground or background, drawing the eye into the image through
depth cues, or may make use of static vertical and horizontal lines
or dynamic diagonals. Wes Anderson’s style is instantly recognizable
in his frequent use of symmetrical compositions [Figure 4.25].

A shot from the movie, The Grand Budapest Hotel, shows a
man, smoking a pipe, walking up the stairs in the center of the
still. The stairs and walls of the frame are identical on both sides.
4.25 The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). Director Wes Anderson’s symmetrical compositions
are an instantly recognizable feature of his style. When the film switches aspect ratios, it
uses different compositional strategies for square and rectangular frames.

Some practices of composition are so widely adopted that they are
referred to as rules. For example, the rule of thirds is a technique
that imagines the frame divided horizontally and vertically into
thirds and dictates placing objects along these lines for maximum
visual interest. Leaving lead room — the space in front and in the
direction of an object being filmed — balances the viewer’s tendency
to look at that space. While certain compositions are frequently
used, there are infinite ways to fill a film frame, and the
distinctiveness of a director’s collaboration with a cinematographer
may lie in the exceptions that they make to these rules.
Identify the original aspect ratio of the film you are studying in class. How is it
appropriate or inappropriate to this film’s themes and aims? If the film is
exhibited in a different ratio, explain how that process affects certain scenes.
The action taking place in offscreen space is usually less important
than the action occurring in the frame, as when a close-up focuses
on an intimate conversation and excludes other people in the room.
Offscreen space sometimes contains important information that
will be revealed in a subsequent image, however, as when one
person engaged in conversation looks beyond the edge of the frame
toward a glaring rival shown in the next shot. Offscreen spaces in
horror films like Alien (1979) seethe with a menace that is more

terrifying because it is not visible [Figure 4.26]. In Robert Bresson’s
films, offscreen space suggests a spiritual world that exerts pressure
on but eludes the fragmented and limited perspectives of the
characters within the frame [Figure 4.27].

A still from the movie, Alien, shows a close-up shot of an
anxious woman looking out through a window.
4.26 Alien (1979). The horror genre makes significant use of offscreen space to generate
suspense. What is Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) going to see?

A still from the movie, L’Argent, shows a close-up shot of a hand
holding a man by his shirt.
4.27 L’Argent (1983). The agency of characters in Robert Bresson’s films o�en seems to be
limited by external forces that are signified by the emphasis on offscreen space.

Camera Distance
Another significant aspect of framing is the distance of the camera
from its subject, which determines the scale of the shot, signals
point of view, and contributes greatly to how we understand or feel
about what is being shown. Close-ups (abbreviated CU in scripts
and notes) are framings that show details of a person or an object,
such as the face or hands or a flowerpot on a windowsill, perhaps
indicating nuances of the character’s feelings or thoughts or
suggesting the special significance of the object [Figure 4.28].
Conventionally, female stars were depicted in close-up to signal
glamour or emotion. An extreme close-up (ECU) is a shot that is
framed comparatively tighter than a close-up, singling out, for
instance, an insect or a hand. As used by filmmakers like Quentin
Tarantino, the framing can be a dramatic way to direct the viewer’s
attention and a striking compositional element [Figure 4.29].

A still from the black-and-white movie, Vivre sa vie, shows the
expression of a woman in a close-up shot from the shoulders up.
4.28 Vivre sa vie (1962). A close-up of the film’s protagonist leads the viewer to speculate
about her thoughts.

A close-up shot from the movie, Jackie Brown, shows a hand
flipping through a stack of hundred-dollar bills.
4.29 Jackie Brown (1997). An extreme close-up of the cash that entangles the film’s assorted
cast of characters.

Look for a pattern of framing distances in the next film you view for class. Do there
seem to be a large number of long shots? Close-ups? Explain how this pattern
reinforces themes of the film.
At the other end of the compositional spectrum, a long shot (LS)
places considerable distance between the camera and the scene,
object, or person being filmed so that the object or person is
recognizable but is defined by the large space and background. An
extreme long shot (ELS) is framed from a comparatively greater
distance than a long shot; the surrounding space dominates human
figures. The larger space of the image dwarfs objects or human
figures, such as with distant vistas of cities or landscapes. Most films
feature a combination of these long shots — sometimes to show
distant action or objects, sometimes to establish a context for
events, and sometimes, as with the introduction and conclusion of
Shane (1953), to emphasize the isolation and mystery of a character
in the distance [Figures 4.30a and 4.30b].

Two stills, (a) and (b), show two long shots from the movie,
Shane.
4.30a and 4.30b Shane (1953). Barely seen, Shane approaches through an extreme long
shot. Then the mysterious figure becomes more recognizable in a long shot.

Description
The still (a) shows a startled deer standing at a pond as it looks at a man
riding a horse from a long distance. The still (b) shows a man riding a
horse by the bank of the pond.
Between close-ups and long shots, a medium shot is a middle-
ground framing in which we see the body of a person from
approximately the waist up. A medium shot of the scientist played
by Kate McKinnon in Ghostbusters (2016) shows part of her
laboratory behind her [Figure 4.31]. A medium long shot slightly
increases the distance between the camera and the subject
compared with a medium shot, showing a three-quarter-length view
of a character (from approximately the knees up). This framing
o�en is used in westerns when a cowboy’s weapon is an important
element of the mise-en-scène [Figure 4.32].

A still from the movie, Ghostbusters, shows a scientist in a
laboratory filled of equipment.
4.31 Ghostbusters (2016). Physical comedy requires framing wide enough to allow for
interaction between the characters and the mise-en-scène. A medium shot captures the
scientist in the context of her lab.

A still from the Hollywood western movie, Red River, shows a
gunman brandishing a pistol. The shot is wide with the actor in
the center of the frame.

4.32 Red River (1948). The medium long shot was o�en used in westerns to keep weapons in
view. French critics dubbed it the plan américain or “American shot.”
A very common framing in conversation scenes, the medium close-
up shows a character’s head and shoulders. Melodramatic or
romantic films about personal relationships may feature a
predominance of medium close-ups and medium shots that capture
the facial expressions of the characters. In Ginger & Rosa (2012),
which focuses on a young woman’s coming of age, the protagonist’s
view of the behavior of the people around her is frequently captured
in medium close-up [Figure 4.33]. Open-air adventures — such as
Seven Samurai (1954), the tale of a sixteenth-century Japanese village
that hires warriors for protection — tend to use more long shots and
extreme long shots in order to depict the battle scenes. As these
descriptions imply, framing is defined relatively. There is no
absolute cut-off point between a medium shot and a medium long
shot, for example. As we have seen, the most common reference
point for the scale of the image is the size of the human figure
within the frame, a measure that is not a universal element of the
cinematic image. The significance of framing patterns arises in the
context of a particular film, genre, or style.

A still from the movie, Ginger and Rosa, shows a close-up shot
of a young girl.
4.33 Ginger & Rosa (2012). In this coming-of-age story set in the 1960s, the heroine’s
perspective is emphasized by frequent medium close-ups of her taking in what’s happening
around her.

Although many shots are taken from approximately eye level, the
camera height also can vary to present a particular compositional
element or evoke a character’s perspective. Japanese director
Yasujiro Ozu’s signature camera level is low to the ground, an ideal
position for filming Japanese interiors, where characters sit on the
floor [Figure 4.34]. A camera might be placed higher to show large-
scale objects, such as tall buildings or landscapes [Figure 4.35]. A
crane shot is taken from a camera mounted on a crane, giving it the
advantage of height and mobility.

A still from the movie, Tokyo Story, shows a young girl kneeling
and talking to an elderly couple who sit on tatami mats. The
camera is set behind her, close to the floor.
4.34 Tokyo Story (1953). A camera placed low to the ground presents characters sitting on
tatami mats.

A still from the movie, Safety Last, shows a man climbing along
the side of a building by using ridges as footholds and handholds.
The shot captures the stretch of the city street and its cars.
4.35 Safety Last (1923). Harold Lloyd’s iconic stunt was performed on a roo�op set. The
camera height captures the city skyline.

Camera Angles
Film shots are taken from a multitude of angles, from straight on to
above or below. These o�en are correlated with camera height, as
demonstrated by the series of shots from Jane Campion’s The Piano
(1993), a film about a mute Scottish woman who travels with her
daughter to New Zealand to complete an arranged marriage. High
angles are shots directed at a downward angle on individuals or a
scene [Figure 4.36], and low angles are shots from a position lower
than its subject [Figure 4.37]. In either case, the exact angle of the
shot can vary from very steep to slight. An overhead shot depicts
the action from above, generally looking directly down on the
subject from a crane, helicopter, or drone [Figure 4.38]. In the
Czech film The Shop on Main Street (1965), a clever opening crane
shot looking down on the town reflects the point of view of a stork
nesting on a chimney. Shots vary in terms of horizontal angles as
well, with characters’ faces more o�en shown in three-quarter view
than in profile or frontally.

A still from the movie, The Piano, shows two people walking on
a beach towards a large, glowing shape in the sand that resembles
a seahorse. The still is captured from high above.
4.36 The Piano (1993). A high-angle long shot of the arrival on the beach.

A still from the movie, The Piano, shows a man with an axe
walking on a bridge in the countryside. The shot is captured
looking up at the side of the bridge, and the frame is canted.
4.37 The Piano (1993). An extreme low-angle shot, slightly canted, shows the
farmer/husband as he furiously descends toward his unfaithful wife.

A still from the movie, The Piano, shows a woman playing a
piano. The shot is taken from above and behind the woman, with
her hands and full length of the keys visible.
4.38 The Piano (1993). With this overhead shot, the film depicts a rare moment of
contentment and harmony at the piano.

Shots change their angle depending on physical or geographical
position or point of view, so that a shot from a tall adult’s perspective
may be a high-angle shot, whereas a child’s view may be seen
through low angles. Point-of-view (POV) shots reproduce a
character’s optical point of view, o�en preceded or followed by shots
of the character looking. Such subjective shots might indicate point
of view through camera movement or optical effects as well as
through camera height and angle. Much of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear
Window (1954) conveys the point of view of its protagonist, confined
to his apartment with a broken leg, through camera angle and
distance. Camera angles can sometimes indicate psychological,
moral, or political meanings in a film, as when victims are seen
from above and oppressors from below, but such interpretations
must be made carefully. Formal features like these assume
particular meanings in the context of the film’s own patterns.
Depth of Field
In addition to the various ways an image can be framed to create
perspectives and meanings, shots can be focused to create different
layers of depth that subtly shape our understanding. As noted in the
history section of this chapter, technological advances in camera
lenses played a central role in allowing filmmakers to experiment
with depth of field in a variety of ways. One of the most dramatic
products of these developments is deep focus — a camera technique
in which multiple planes in the shot are all in focus simultaneously.

A film about three physically and psychologically brutalized
veterans returning home from World War II, William Wyler’s The
Best Years of Our Lives (1946), shot by Gregg Toland, provides superior
examples of how deep focus can create relationships within a single
image. In one image, the two grown children in the foreground
frame the happy reunion of their parents in the background, all in
harmonious balance and focus, with just a hint of the theme of
isolation that will be developed a�er the homecoming [Figure 4.39].
In another image from the same film [Figure 4.40], shallow focus, in
which only a narrow range of the field is focused, is used. Here the
choice of a depth of field indicates that what is significant in the
image is the embracing lovers. With a rack focus (also known as a
pulled focus), there is a rapid change in focus from one object to
another, such as refocusing from the face of a woman to the figure
of a man approaching from behind her. The effect can emphasize
depth of field or avoid cutting in a dialogue scene. The manipulation
of focus also can be used to convey a subjective effect, as when the
protagonist of Still Alice (2014), a professor at Columbia University
suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, becomes disoriented
when running on what should be familiar campus terrain [Figure
4.41].

A still from the movie, The Best Years of Our Lives, shows a
young woman and man on either side of the foreground, as two
people embrace in the center of the background.
4.39 The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). The deep focus and balanced composition indicate
restored family harmony at a soldier’s homecoming.

A still from the movie, The Best Years of Our Lives, shows two
people embracing. The shot is close up, taken from the chest up.
4.40 The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). The focused foreground of embracing lovers
deemphasizes the veteran’s disability.

A still from the movie Still Alice, shows a woman in clear focus
against a blurred background.
4.41 Still Alice (2014). The protagonist’s sudden confusion with her surroundings is conveyed
through shallow depth of field.

Contrast and Color
Color profoundly affects our experience and understanding of a film
shot. Even black-and-white films use contrast and gradations to
create atmosphere or emphasize certain motifs. In F. W. Murnau’s
Nosferatu (1922), black and white and tones of gray create an
ominous world where evil lives not in darkness but in shading
[Figure 4.42]. Contemporary use of black and white can evoke a “lo-
fi” or improvised aesthetic. In Frances Ha (2013), writer-director
Noah Baumbach uses a digital version of monochrome to make his
New York–set film recall French New Wave films [Figure 4.43].
Computer Chess (2013) goes so far as to use a vintage black-and-white
tube camera to produce the so� look of analog video footage from
the early 1980s. Pleasantville (1998) was one of the first films to use
digital processing to manipulate color in the service of the plot. In it,
the world of a black-and-white 1950s television show switches to
color as metaphor for the characters’ emotional awakening.

A still from the movie, Nosferatu, shows a young man standing
before a glaring light, in a room filled with dark shadows and little
light.
4.42 Nosferatu (1922). Diffuse shadows and shades of gray create an atmosphere of dread.

A still from the black-and-white movie, “Frances Ha,” shows a
young girl smiling widely in the foreground. The background of
the still is blurred.
4.43 Frances Ha (2012). This modest story of young New Yorkers uses black and white to
recall both its French New Wave influences and Woody Allen’s Manhattan (1979).

Color can be described by hue (such as yellow or purple, discerned
by detecting light of a particular wavelength), value (degree of
lightness or darkness), and intensity (brightness or dullness).
Beginning with the locations, set decoration, make-up, and
costumes, and enhanced by lighting, gels, and filters, color can be
used to sharpen, mute, or balance the effects of the scene during
shooting. When used effectively, metallic blues, so� greens, and
deep reds can elicit very different emotions from viewers.
Cinematographer Bradford Young is known for his striking use of
color and composition in films from the independent Pariah (2011)
[Figure 4.44] to the Oscar-nominated Arrival (2016). Depending on
genre or desired effect, a film may use realistic or unrealistic
palettes, create mood through a monochromatic color scheme, or
add tension through dramatic oppositions in color.

A still from the movie, Pariah, shows a young African American
teenage girl on a bus at night. The still is primarily tinted green
and blue, with saturated light on the bus.
4.44 Pariah (2011). Cinematographer Bradford Young and director Dee Rees designed their
film’s color palette to reflect the heroine’s search for identity.

Color is a key element in the composition of the image. The
spectacular nature of the Technicolor process was used for
heightened emotional effect by masters of cinematography like Jack
Cardiff in The Red Shoes (1948), in which a dancer’s experience takes
on the vividness of her red shoes. When color ceased to be a novelty,
it was used for both realist and expressive purposes. For example,
Néstor Almendros filmed Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven (1978) at
the “magic hour” just before sunset to capture a particular quality of
light for the historical setting in the Great Plains. The five sections of
Zhang Yimou’s martial arts epic Hero (2002), shot by Christopher
Doyle, are correlated with five different colors to emphasize its
prismatic narrative of betrayal.
Choices, from whether to shoot on film or digitally to what type of
stock or camera to use, are crucial to creating a film’s palette and
color effects. For example, digital cameras capture red, green, and
blue separately and are much more capable of shooting in low light.
(See Chapter 3 for a fuller discussion of lighting as an aspect of mise-
en-scène.) Film stock can vary in speed (a measure of a stock’s
sensitivity to light) and the ways it registers color. Manipulation of
exposure and choices in printing called color timing also affect the
color of a particular film. Cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto used
different stocks, cameras, and lenses to achieve the looks of three
interconnected stories that span the globe in Babel (2006). In digital
processing, color correction refers to adjusting the accuracy and

consistency of the footage (for example, exposure and white
balance) and color grading to enhancing the color style of the film.
T E C H N O LO G Y I N A C T I O N

Color in Film
The expressive use of color in film has evolved through artistic vision and technical
innovation — from hand tinting to Technicolor experiments, faster stocks, and
digital processing. Early silent films like King Lear (1910) created an impression of
color film through its hand-tinted frames [Figure 4.45a], an effect reconstructed in
the British Film Institute’s preservation. Because of the time and labor involved,
this practice never became a widespread phenomenon. Before releasing Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Disney introduced the three-strip Technicolor
process through a series of vibrant short films like Flowers and Trees (1932) [Figure
4.45b]. This short, part of the Silly Symphonies (1929–1939) series, became a
sensation and was followed in 1935 by the first Technicolor feature, Becky Sharp.

A still from the restored version of the black-and-white movie, King Lear. The
still features several people with pale skin and dressed in bright garments.
4.45a King Lear (1910). Early films presented in hand-tinted color formats may survive
only in black-and-white prints.

A still from the Technicolor animation, Flowers and Trees, depicts a
humanoid tree trunk playing a harp made from the bent trunk of an adjacent
tree.
4.45b Flowers and Trees (1932). Disney’s Silly Symphonies shorts introduced
Technicolor processes that were used in live-action narrative features by the end of
the decade.

In 1950, Eastman Kodak introduced a less cumbersome single-strip color process.
Marketed under different brands, Eastmancolor would soon displace Technicolor
as the industry standard. By 1955, color production finally exceeded black-and-
white cinematography. DeLuxe Color and CinemaScope were brand names
advertised along with the stars of The Girl Can’t Help It (1956), a Jayne Mansfield
rock-and-roll farce that spoofs advertising culture, to attract audiences to the
spectacle of cinema [Figure 4.45c]. The movie opens in black and white until an
onscreen host reveals its “gorgeous, lifelike color” and pushes back the edges of
the image to the full 2.35:1 widescreen ratio.

A still from the movie, The Girl Can’t Help It, shows a woman singing on stage
with a band playing behind her. The still is in color.
4.45c The Girl Can’t Help It (1956). In the 1950s, new cinema color processes were
aggressively marketed, along with widescreen technology, to compete with
television’s small black-and-white images.

To watch a clip about the use of color in The Master (2012), go to
LaunchPad for The Film Experience at launchpadworks.com
The advent of digital technology in the 1990s made possible the saturated visuals
of computer-generated imagery (CGI) in animated films like Up (2009), as well as
the altering of color in postproduction. A color script laid out the movie’s moods
and tones and guided animators through the transition into bright images when
the elderly man, Carl, embarks on his adventure. Yet some filmmakers still favor
the depth and richness of recording color on film, as in the 65mm format used to
film most of The Master (2012) [Figure 4.45d], which preserved more detail and
color nuance than either 35mm or digital formats.

http://launchpadworks.com/

A still from the movie, The Master, shows a man breaking coconuts under a
canopy on a beach.
4.45d The Master (2012). Working with cinematographer Mihai Mă laimare Jr. shooting
on 65mm film, Paul Thomas Anderson used color to evoke the look of a film shot in the
1960s.

Movement
Examine this clip from Roma (2018), and describe the effects of the moving
camera. Why is a moving frame used here instead of a series of shots?

A video clip from the movie, Roma, depicts several people on a sidewalk,
waiting at a signal.

Movement in movies re-creates a part of the human experience that
could be represented only a�er the advent of film technology. In our
daily lives, we anticipate these movements of a shot — for instance,
when we focus on a friend sitting at a table and then refocus beyond
that friend on another person standing at the door, when we stand
still and turn our head from our le� shoulder to our right, or when
we watch from a moving car as buildings pass. As these adjustments
within our field of vision do, the camera can move (by panning,
tilting, or tracking) and then refocus (by adjusting the lens to zoom
in or out).
Reframing refers to the process of moving the frame from one
position to another within a single continuous shot. One extreme
and memorable example of reframing occurs in the flashback to the
protagonist’s childhood in Citizen Kane (1941). Here the camera pulls
back from the boy in the yard to reframe the shot to include his
mother observing him from inside the window. It then continues
backward to reframe the mother as she walks past her husband and
seats herself at a table next to the banker Thatcher, who will take
charge of their son [Figures 4.46a–4.46c]. O�en such reframings are
more subtle, such as when the camera moves slightly upward so that
a character who is rising from a chair is kept centered in the frame.

A succession of three stills, labeled (a) through (c), shows a
scene from the movie, Citizen Kane.
4.46a–4.46c Citizen Kane (1941). The camera movement reframes three planes of the image
and four characters to condense a traumatic moment in Kane’s lost childhood.

Description
The still (a) shows a young boy, a sled, and a snowman outside with
falling snow. The still (b) shows a woman watching the boy of still A play
outside in the snow through the window of a house. The still (c) shows
the woman seated with a man at a table, looking at papers. A second
man stands watching them. The boy from still A can still be seen playing
outside through the window in the background.
Pans and Tilts
Pans and tilts are mobile frames in which the camera mount
remains stationary. A pan (short for panorama) is a le� or right
rotation of the camera whose base remains in a fixed position,
producing a horizontal movement onscreen. The camera pivots as if
a character is turning his or her head. For example, the long shot
that scans the roo�ops of San Francisco for a fugitive at the
beginning of Vertigo (1958) is a pan, as are many similar establishing
shots of a skyline. In a 360-degree pan, the camera completes its
rotation, a disorienting effect used by experimental filmmaker
Chantal Akerman in her early short La Chambre (1972) [Figure 4.47].

Two stills a and b from the movie, La Chambre, shows a woman
in her bed. The first still shows the woman in bed, a chair next to
her legs. The second still shows a table, and a chest of drawers
kept next to her bed.
4.47a and 4.47b La Chambre (1972). As the camera completes a 360-degree rotation of the
room’s interior, the filmmaker disappears screen right and reappears screen le�.

Less common, tilts are upward or downward rotations of the
camera, whose tripod or mount remains in a fixed position,
producing a vertical movement onscreen, as when the frame swings
upward to re-create the point of view of someone looking at a
skyscraper starting at street level and moving upward into the
clouds. In Wim Wenders’s Paris, Texas (1984), a story about a father
and son searching for the boy’s mother, repeated tilt shots become a
rhetorical action, moving the frame up a flagpole with an American
flag, along the sides of Houston skyscrapers, and into the sky to view
a passing plane. In this case, vertical tilts seem to suggest an
ambiguous hope to escape or find comfort from the long quest
across Texas.
Tracking Shots
A tracking shot is taken by a mounted camera moving through
space. It can also be called a dolly shot when the camera is moved
on a wheeled dolly. Elaborate camera movements can be achieved in
this way through intricate planning. Max Ophüls was famous for
using lengthy, fluid tracking shots in his films — for example,
following a waltzing couple in The Earrings of Madame de … (1953).
This feature distinguishes the films he made in four different
countries over the course of his career. In the remarkable first shot
of Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt (1963), a camera on tracks moves
forward into the foreground of the image, following a woman
reading. When it reaches the foreground, the camera turns and aims

its lens directly at us, the audience. When moving camera shots
follow an individual or object, they are sometimes called following
shots. In The 400 Blows (1959), a single following shot tracks the boy,
Antoine Doinel, for eighty seconds as he runs from the reformatory
school to the edge of the sea. Cameras can be raised on cranes,
mounted on moving vehicles, or carried in helicopters to follow a
movie’s action. High-definition, lightweight, and miniaturized
digital cameras have greatly expanded mobility. Kedi (2016), a
documentary about the street cats of Istanbul, uses remotely
controlled cameras to travel with the cats near the ground and
drones to record their world on the roo�ops of the city.
Handheld and Steadicam Shots
Even greater mobility is afforded when the camera is carried by the
camera operator. Encouraged first by the introduction of lightweight
16mm cameras and later by video formats, handheld shots are
o�en-unsteady film images produced by an individual carrying the
camera. They frequently are used in news reporting and
documentary cinematography or to create an unsteady frame that
suggests the movements of an individual point of view. The Dogme
95 manifesto issued by several Danish filmmakers in 1995 called for
updating the language of cinema through the use of handheld
cameras, among other “rules” for fostering immediacy in
filmmaking. A�er the first Dogme film, The Celebration (1998), the
movement spread, with filmmakers outside Denmark intrigued by

the challenge. The restless energy of the fi�een-year-old protagonist
of Fish Tank (2009) as she faces the limited options of her upbringing
and class position are palpably conveyed by the rushing handheld
shots [Figure 4.48]. In these cases, the handheld point of view
involves the audience more immediately and concretely in the
action.

A still from a movie, Fish tank, shows a handheld camera, with
its screen tilted toward the speaker. The screen shows a woman
inside a room.
4.48 Fish Tank (2009). The film uses a handheld camera to capture the protagonist’s
frustrated energy and, when she films herself within the film, her isolation.

Go to launchpadworks.com to watch a clip from Fish Tank (2009). How does the
use of a handheld camera contribute to the effect of this clip?

http://launchpadworks.com/

A video clip from the movie, Fish Tank, depicts a woman, two girls, and a man
enjoying a picnic by a river.

To achieve the stability of a tripod mount, the fluidity of a tracking
shot, and the flexibility of a handheld camera, cinematographers
may wear the camera on a special stabilizing mount o�en referred
to by the trademarked name Steadicam. In Goodfellas (1990), a film
about mobster Henry Hill, a famous Steadicam shot, lasting several
minutes, twists and turns with Hill and his entourage through a back
door, across a kitchen, and into the main room of a nightclub,
suggesting the bravura and power of a man who can go anywhere,
who is both onstage and backstage [Figure 4.49]. In the restaurant
scene in Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), Quentin Tarantino goes even further,
incorporating a crane in a virtuoso Steadicam sequence.

A still from the movie Goodfellas, shows a man in a suit leading
a woman in a dress through the busy kitchen of a nightclub.
4.49 Goodfellas (1990). The long and winding trail of power behind the scenes is depicted in
a three-minute Steadicam shot.

Zooms
A zoom occurs not when a camera is moved but when adjustments
are made to the camera lens during filming that magnify portions of
the image. The kind of compositional reframing and apparent
movement that is accomplished with zoom lenses, which employ a
variable focal length of 75mm or higher, are different than the kind
of movement accomplished by a moving camera used during a
tracking shot. For example, Stanley Kubrick’s historical film Barry
Lyndon (1975) uses frequent zooms to move from characters to
extreme wide shots, creating a kind of stasis within movement.
(During a zoom-in, the lens’s focal length is changed to narrow the
field of view on a distant object, magnifying and reframing it, o�en
in close-up, while the camera remains stationary. Less noticeable in
films, a zoom-out reverses the action of a zoom-in so that objects
that appear close initially are distanced and reframed as small
figures.)
Go to launchpadworks.com to watch a clip from Barry Lyndon (1975), and
describe the effect of the zoom. How does it differ from the tracking shot in
Citizen Kane (1941) discussed in this chapter?

http://launchpadworks.com/

A screenshot of a paused video shows a scene from the movie, Barry
Lyndon. The scene shows the profile of a girl standing on a road. A play
button is present at the center of the screenshot.

Although camera movements (such as tracking or Steadicam shots)
and changes in the lens’s focal length (zooms) may serve the same
function of bringing the focus of a shot closer or relegating it to the
distance, there are perceptible differences in the images. In a zoom-
in, the image tends to flatten and lose its depth of field, whereas a
tracking shot calls attention to the spatial depth that the camera
moves through. They also can vary in their significance. Long lenses
were first introduced in photojournalism in the 1940s. The use of the
zoom lens in The Battle of Algiers (1966) evokes the newsreel
technology through which the historical events were initially seen.
Sometimes techniques are combined. In Vertigo (1958), Hitchcock
used a trackin while zooming out to suggest his main character’s
feeling of vertigo. The effect changes the focus of the image while
the image stays the same size.
From Special Effects to Visual Effects
Since the dawn of cinema, filmmakers have employed special
effects — techniques that enhance a film’s realism or surpass
assumptions about realism with spectacle. In fact, for Georges
Méliès, the foremost illusionist of early cinema, the
cinematographic illusion of motion was one of many special effects
that included background paintings, smoke and mirrors, and tinted
images. Mechanical effects (also known as practical effects) are
produced on set, o�en with props, costumes, and make-up, and

include pyrotechnics (fires and explosions), weather effects, and
scaled models.
The earliest films also used optical effects — special effects
produced in camera or with an optical printer, including common
visual transitions between shots such as dissolves, fade-outs, and
wipes, or process shots that combine figures and backgrounds
through the use of matte shots. Optical effects also include basic
manipulations of the camera, such as slow motion (or fast motion)
— a special effect that makes the action move at slower-than-normal
(or faster-than-normal) speeds, achieved by filming the action at a
high speed (or slow speed) and then projecting it at standard speeds.
Examples of optical effects produced in-camera include forced
perspective, which is created by positioning the camera to create
illusions of scale; color filters, which are devices fitted to the
camera lens to change the tones of the recorded image; and the
dolly zoom, the famous effect in Hitchock’s Vertigo (1958), in which
the camera is moved to keep the object the same size.
Another common optical effect is a process shot — a special effect
that combines two or more images as a single shot. Masks are used
to leave part of the film unexposed. A second image is then filmed
on that portion of the frame, and the two are combined in the
printing or postproduction process. A process shot might be used to
add a background to the action onscreen. In rear projection, a
projected image is positioned behind a screen in front of which the

actors perform; the technique was widely used before computer
compositing [Figure 4.50].

A still from the movie, North by Northwest, shows a well-
dressed man running in a barren field and being chased by a
small plane in flight.
4.50 North by Northwest (1959). In a famous scene, Hitchcock’s protagonist is pursued by a
crop-dusting plane. Location shooting in a barren field is intercut with process shots using
rear projection for a harrowing effect.

A matte shot is a process shot that joins two or more pieces of film
— one with the central action or object and the other with a painted
or digitally produced background that would be difficult to create
physically for the shot. Elaborate matte paintings are used to create
atmosphere, background, and a sense of scale in films such as King
Kong (1933). Traveling mattes are required when a figure moves in
the foreground [Figure 4.51].

A still from the movie, War for the Planet of the Apes, shows a
realistic chimpanzee in the foreground of a snowy region.
4.51 King Kong (1933). The jungle matte painting provides a mysterious background for
stop-motion animation by Willis O’Brien.

Visual effects (VFX) are special effects created in postproduction
through digital imaging. With the advent of computer-generated
imagery, the technologies and artistry of cinematography,
animation, and visual effects began to overlap more and more.
Science fiction, superhero, and action films became more dominant
in the market as visual effects made possible images that would be
too costly, dangerous, or challenging to film. Some visual effects use
a combination of cinematography and computer techniques, such as
the celebrated “bullet time” in The Matrix (1999), in which images
taken by a set of still cameras surrounding a subject are put together
to create an effect of suspension or extreme slow motion. In
Inception (2010), recognizable images of cityscapes and mountain
fortresses are remade as the fragile and malleable virtual shapes of
a dreamscape through a combination of in-camera effects and CGI
[Figure 4.52]. The fantasy world of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings
trilogy (2001–2003) was created through a range of special effects
that include the use of simple forced perspective (to put hobbit,
elven, and human characters in proper scale) and the imaginative
work of the New Zealand–based animation studio Weta Digital. The
company innovated performance-capture technology, generating
computer models from data gathered from actor Andy Serkis’s
physical performance and facial expressions and incorporating
them into the character Gollum. Weta and Serkis later collaborated
to create Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) and its sequels
[Figure 4.53].

A still from the movie, Inception, shows a city scene where the
street runs along the roofs of big city buildings, some of which are
partially or completely upside down.
4.52 Inception (2010). Images of real and virtual worlds merge in the production and
postproduction process, appropriate to a drama that takes place in the layers of a dream.

A still from the movie, War for the Planet of the Apes, shows a
human-sized ape with a strange facial expression.
4.53 War for the Planet of the Apes (2017). From Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy
(2001–2003) to Caesar, the leader of the ape rebellion in the rebooted Planet of the Apes

franchise (2011–2017), actor Andy Serkis’s work spans the history and increasing
sophistication of performance capture technology.
The art of cinematography has been irrevocably altered by digital
technologies. In addition to spectacular effects, minor adjustments
to the image are now made in postproduction. Continuity mistakes
can be corrected, wires and rigs used in stunt scenes can be
removed, and colors can be enhanced or muted for naturalistic or
atmospheric effects.

Thinking about Cinematography
From the desert expanses of Lawrence of Arabia (1962) to the
dreamscapes of Inception (2010), movie images have been valued for
their beauty, realism, or ability to inspire wonder. O�en these
qualities are found in their production values. But film images carry
other values in what they preserve and say about the world. French
filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard’s remark that film is truth twenty-four
frames per second is one way to describe the power and importance
of the film image. Yet as Godard’s many films themselves
demonstrate, this “truth” is not just the truth of presentation but
also the truth of representation. In short, film images are prized
both for their accuracy in showing or presenting us with facts and
for the ways they interpret or represent them.
Images hold a remarkable power to capture a moment. Flipping
through a photo album provides glimpses of past events. The
morning newspaper collapses a day of war into a single poignant
image. However, images can do far more than preserve the facts of a
moment. They also can interpret those facts in ways that give them
new meanings. A painting by Norman Rockwell evokes feelings of
warmth and nostalgia, while the stained-glass windows lining a
cathedral aim to draw our spiritual passions. When motion is added,
the power of images to show and interpret information magnifies
exponentially. A film image may be designed both to present — to

show the visual truth of the subject matter realistically and reliably
— and to represent — to color that truth with shades of meaning.
The Image as Presentation and
Representation
The image as presentation reflects our belief that film communicates
the details of the world realistically, even while showing us
unrealistic situations. We prize the stunning images of the
forbidding mountain in Everest (2015) [Figure 4.54] and the dynamic
close-ups of a boxing match in Creed II (2018) for their authenticity
in depicting realities or perspectives. In pursuing this goal,
cinematography may document either subjective images (which
reflect the points of view of a person experiencing the events) or
objective images (which assume a more general accuracy or truth).
In Little Big Man (1970), images from the perspective of a 101-year-
old pioneer raised by Native Americans succeed in both ways. They
become remarkably convincing displays of known historical
characters and events — such as General George Custer at the Battle
of Little Bighorn — and they poignantly re-create the perspective of
the pioneer as he lived through and now remembers those events.

A still from the movie, Everest, shows several people pitching
tents together in the snowy mountains.
4.54 Everest (2015). Location shooting at base camp in Nepal rendered in IMAX 3-D presents
viewers with evidence of nature’s might.

The image also can influence or even determine the meaning of the
events or people it portrays by re-presenting reality through the
interpretive power of cinematography. The image as representation is
an exercise in the power of visual stimuli. The way in which we
depict individuals or actions implies a kind of control over them,
knowledge of them, or power to determine what they mean. When
we frame a subject, we capture and contain that subject within a
particular point of view that gives it definition beyond its literal
meaning. This desire to represent through control over an image
permeates the drama of Vertigo (1958) — in which the main
character, Scottie, tries desperately to define the woman he was
hired to follow, Madeleine, through appearances — and the
cinematography aids him by framing her as a painting.
Representation as power over images can be found at the heart of
films as diverse as Blonde Venus (1932) and Pan’s Labyrinth (2006),
which in different ways show the ability of the film image to capture
and manipulate a person or reality in the service of a point of view.
In Blonde Venus, as in many of the films directed by Josef von
Sternberg and starring Marlene Dietrich, the heroine is depicted as
a self-consciously erotic figure, whether in an outrageous costume
as a showgirl or as a housewife and mother at home. In Pan’s
Labyrinth, a young girl escapes from the frightening reality of her
father’s brutality during the Spanish Civil War into a fantasy world
rendered real for the spectator through artful cinematography and
special effects [Figure 4.55].

A still from the movie, Pan’s Labyrinth, A lonely child’s fantasy
world is represented as real to the viewer
4.55 Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). A lonely child’s fantasy world is represented as real to the
viewer.

Go to launchpadworks.com to watch a clip from Vertigo (1958) and contrast a
shot that presents an objective situation with one or more shots that seem to
represent Scottie’s particular reality.

http://launchpadworks.com/

A screenshot of a paused video shows a scene from the movie, Vertigo. The
scene shows a man peeking through a door near a woman in a building. A play
button is present at the center of the screenshot.

Part of the art of film is that these two primary imagistic values —
presentation and representation — are interconnected and can be
mobilized in intricate and ambiguous ways in a movie. When Harry
Potter speaks in the language of snakes in Harry Potter and the
Chamber of Secrets (2002), the cinematography highlights the fear and
confusion among Harry’s classmates. Is the image an objective
presentation of the perspective of the Hogwarts students, or is it an
interpretive representation on the part of the film itself, trying to
make the viewer think Harry is deserving of fear? A perceptive
viewer must consider the most appropriate meanings for the shot —
whether it reflects the students’ position or the film’s position.
Watching closely how images carry and mobilize values, we
encounter the complexity of making meaning in a film and the
importance of our own activity as viewers.
Traditions of Images
Our encounters with the values embedded in the images we
experience shape our expectations of subsequent films. For some
kinds of movies, like documentaries and historical fiction films, we
have learned to see the film frame as a window on the world and
seek accuracy in its images. For others, such as avant-garde or art
films, we learn to approach the images as puzzles, perhaps revealing
secrets of life and society. Here we designate two conventions in the
history of the film image — the convention of image as presence and

the convention of image as text. In the first case, we identify with the
image; in the second, we read it.
The Image as Presence
The compositional practices of the film image that we call the
conventions of presence imply a close identification with the image’s
point of view, a primarily emotional response to that image, and an
experience of the image as if it were a lived reality. Images in this
tradition are able to fascinate us with a visual activity we participate
in, overwhelm us with their beauty or horror, or comfort us with
their familiarity. Although not entirely separable from the story and
other elements of the film form, imagistic presence can be seen as
what principally entertains us at the movies, what elicits our tears
and shrieks. A shot of horses and riders dashing toward a finish line
or of a woman embracing a dear friend communicates an
immediacy or truth that engages us and leads us through
subsequent images. A film image that approximates the way we
experience the physical world, like a shot that re-creates the
dizzying perspectives from a mountaintop, emphasizes the
phenomenological process of being present in the same time and
space as the image. A film image that reflects a state of mind or
emotion relies on the presence of the image as a psychological
process. For example, in Midnight Cowboy (1969), disorienting,
blurry images at a party re-create Joe’s mental and perceptual
experience a�er taking drugs [Figure 4.56].

A still from the movie, Midnight Cowboy, shows a man’s face
surrounded by bright colors and bubbles.
4.56 Midnight Cowboy (1969). Special effects and blurred, colored contrasts create a
psychological representation of the cowboy’s drug experience.

The Image as Textuality
The word textuality refers to properties of the film image that
demand emotional and analytical distancing from the image, which
is experienced as artifice or a construction to be interpreted. We
stand back to look at textual images from an intellectual distance,
and they seem loaded with signs and symbols for us to decipher.
They impress us more for how they show the world than for what
they show. So-called difficult, abstract, or experimental films —
from Germaine Dulac’s surrealist film The Seashell and the Clergyman
(1928) to A Ghost Story (2017) — enlist viewers in this way, but many
films integrate images that test our abilities to read and decipher. A
canted framing of an isolated house or a family reunion shot
through a yellow filter may stand out in an otherwise realistic movie
as a puzzle image that asks for more reflection: How do we read this
image? Why is this unusual composition included? In The Seashell
and the Clergyman (1928), apparently about a priest in love with a
beautiful woman, images resemble the cryptic language of a strange
dream, requiring viewers to struggle to decipher them as a way of
understanding the film’s complex drama of repression and desire
[Figure 4.57].

A still from the movie, The Seashell and the Clergyman, shows a
man in dark, priest robes crawling on a brick pavement. The shot
is captured in very bright light.
4.57 The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928). Extreme angles, shadows, and highlighted
patterns in the pavement suggest a complex dream image in this surrealist collaboration
between playwright Antonin Artaud and Germaine Dulac.

Recognizing the dominance of images either of presence or of
textuality within a film is one way to begin to appreciate and
understand it. A romance like Eat Pray Love (2010) exudes the
presence of location shooting in Italy, India, and Bali and invites
audiences to share the heroine’s emotional adventure through its
exotic locales. A more dense and complex film about an
underground gang of Nazi “werewolves,” Lars von Trier’s Zentropa
(1991) asks us to decipher images constructed with special effects
and mixed media, and part of its success lies in how it engages the
complexities of a tradition of textuality.
We experience and process — and enjoy — film images by
recognizing the concepts and contexts that underpin them and our
expectations of them. The initial hostile reception of Bonnie and
Clyde in 1967, for instance, turned to admiration several months
later. One way of understanding the dynamics of this change is to
note that viewers realized that the film’s images belong not to a
tradition of presence but to a tradition of textuality. Many viewers
initially may have seen the film as glamorizing 1930s violence and
only later recognized the distance of those images as an ironic
commentary on 1960s violence. Film, like chance, favors the
prepared mind.
FILM IN FOCUS Recreating History in Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood (2019)

See also: Velvet Goldmine (1998);
Computer Chess (2013); The Hateful
Eight (2015)
To watch a clip from Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood (2019), go to
LaunchPad for The Film Experience at launchpadworks.com
Quentin Tarantino’s homage to the waning years of studio-era Hollywood is set in
a Southern California bathed in golden sunlight. But anyone familiar with
Tarantino will expect the color red to be part of the film’s palette; eventually there
will be blood. The film revisits one of the most grisly episodes of the late 1960s,
when five people, including actress Sharon Tate, were murdered in Benedict
Canyon by followers of the cult leader Charles Manson. The title’s “once upon a
time” is a clue that this is a fictionalized version of events, and indeed Tarantino
reimagines the outcome so the “good guys” win. “Once upon a time” signifies this
movie-loving director’s homage to the way things used to be done in Hollywood,
both the town itself and the global cultural empire. Cinematography is perhaps
the film’s greatest tool in this project.
Robert Richardson, director of photography on six of Tarantino’s movies, shares
the director’s passion for celluloid. While their films together are set in different
times and places, from Nazi-occupied France (Inglourious Basterds, 2009) to 1870s
Wyoming (The Hateful Eight, 2015), Richardson has consistently used cameras,
lenses, lighting set-ups, and film stocks that are either vintage or made to look that
way. His saturated colors, true blacks, controlled camera movements, and precise
lens adjustments produce complete cinematic worlds, inhabited by larger-than-
life characters who may themselves be considered artifacts of times past. The

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violence and bloodshed that occur in these worlds are both amplified and
excused. It’s all just moviemaking, the viewer is assured, as full of mayhem as a
vintage cartoon. Richardson’s artistry immerses the viewer, to thrilling and o�en
disturbing effect.
Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, with its setting in the world of filmmaking,
opens new vistas for Tarantino and Richardson’s collaboration. Their protagonist,
Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), made his reputation in the quintessential
Hollywood genre: the western. In keeping with that genre’s grandeur, the studio
backlots and streets of Los Angeles are beautifully captured on Kodak 35mm color
stocks. DiCaprio and his stunt double, driver, and buddy Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt)
have the unreal skin tones of classic movie stars [Figure 4.58]. Richardson uses a
range of anamorphic lenses to give the widescreen images an unmistakable
cinematic look and zooms to evoke the restless camerawork of the 1960s. Dailies
were printed of each day’s shoot for review, a return to older on-set practices. Once
Upon a Time … in Hollywood shows off the big-screen attractions that aimed to
entice suburban audiences back to cinema a�er the advent of television.

A still from the movie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, shows a man
standing at the flat tire of a car on a forest road. The shot is very saturated in
color and tinted yellow.
4.58 Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood (2019). Saturated colors give the film’s stars a
larger-than-life quality.

But Tarantino and his team also revel in the textures and formats of the 1950s and
’60s television westerns in which Dalton originally made his name. Episodes of
Dalton’s fictional hit TV series Bounty Law are shot on an Eastman black-and-white
16mm stock [Figure 4.59]. Green-screen footage of DiCaprio is inserted into an
actual clip from The FBI (a show that aired from 1965 to 1974) and into The Great
Escape (1963), replacing star Steve McQueen. When Dalton guest-stars as a villain
on Lancer, the classic series (1968–1970) is perfectly reconstructed.
Complementing these shows-and films-within-the-film, brief sequences were shot
on nostalgia-infused 16mm and Super-8 Ektachrome. Does the screen image
reflect reality or confer it?

A still from the movie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, shows a black-and-
white vintage image of cowboy in the foreground. Over him the text reads,
“Starring, Rick Dalton.”
4.59 Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood (2019). Robert Richardson used Eastman
black-and-white 16mm stock to create a vintage look for Rick Dalton’s fictional TV
series Bounty Law.

This loving attention to the look of Dalton’s imagined filmography implies that the
values of his world are also in need of preservation. By 1969, when the film is set,
the number of American homes with televisions had grown to 44 million from less
than one million in 1949. While the TV western remained a programming staple, its
fantasy heroism was now juxtaposed with televised news images of the realities of
war in Vietnam. Why are rugged individualists Dalton and Booth bumming around
Southern California? Dalton’s only real career option — moving to Italy to star in
spaghetti westerns (Italian westerns that copy and embellish the Hollywood genre
formula even as Hollywood itself is fading) — suggests that the masculine ideal he
strives to embody only exists onscreen. The title’s echo of the Sergio Leone classic
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) evokes both the vanished American frontier
and the mythical years of the Hollywood western.
Tarantino also explores questions about masculinity and authenticity through the
figure of the stunt double. Once upon a time, Booth actually performed the
dangerous actions that Dalton merely feigned. Now, in diminished circumstances
— he lives in a trailer with his pit bull — he drives around town wearing sunglasses
and bright yellow shirts that match his golden tan and blond hair, looking as cool
as a cowboy on horseback. Unlike Dalton, he holds his liquor. Booth connects the
world of moviemaking with real-world violence. His wanderings lead him to the
hideout of the Manson “family” cult at a dilapidated ranch where B-movie
westerns were once shot. Ultimately, the film endorses Booth’s physical brutality
as heroism, as he changes the course of history. Evoking the “bromance” of classic
films like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill, 1969), Tarantino’s
Hollywood is both familiar and frightening.
Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood’s meticulous attention to filmmaking formats
directs attention to the actual labor and technology that underpin screen culture.
Spotting the title of a film in which she appears on a movie marquee [Figure 4.60],
Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) stops in for the show. Safe inside the cinema, she
takes in the grandeur of the big-screen image. This counter-historical fantasy is

served by the film’s commitment to celluloid, both in the filmmaking process and
in the select theaters exhibiting the film on 35mm.
A still from the movie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, shows a woman
posing beside a poster of a film titled, The Wrecking Crew.

4.60 Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood (2019). Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) poses
with a poster advertising one of her films; the actress lives on in Tarantino’s Hollywood
fable.

Chapter 4 Review
SUMMARY
The filming of images is called cinematography, which means
motion-picture photography or, literally, “writing in
movement.”
The history of cinematography is marked by continually
changing technology.
Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope displayed moving images
photographed on Eastman Kodak’s flexible celluloid film
stock. Early film stock was made from highly flammable
nitrate, later replaced with acetate-based safety film.
Early black-and-white movies were o�en colored through
tinting or toning processes before the eventual development
of two-strip and three-strip Technicolor in the 1930s and
later color processes in the 1950s and beyond.
The development of different camera lenses allowed
cinematographers to use different focal lengths — the
distance from the center of the lens to the point where light
rays meet in sharp focus — to alter the perspective of an
image.
Wide-angle lenses have a short focal length, telephoto
lenses have a long one, and a zoom lens is a variable
focus lens.

Later technological developments included:
lightweight handheld cameras, widely used from World
War II on;
widescreen processes and 3-D technology in the 1950s;
the Steadicam in the 1970s;
computer-generated imagery (CGI) introduced in the
1970s;
digital cinematography in the 1990s; and
advances in 3-D cinema and virtual reality (VR) in the
2000s.
The most basic unit of cinematography is the shot — a
continuously exposed piece of film or continuous digitally
captured image without cuts.
Each shot orchestrates four important attributes: framing,
depth of field , color, and movement.
Point of view is the position from which a person, an event,
or an object is seen or filmed.
The aspect ratio is the relation of width to height of the film
frame as it appears on a screen or monitor.
Onscreen space refers to the space visible within the frame.
Offscreen space is the implied space or world outside the
film’s frame.
The scale of the shot is the distance between the camera and
the shot subject. Scale is described by a variety of terms,
including extreme close-ups, close-ups, medium close-ups,
medium shots, medium long shots, long shots , and
extreme long shots.

A deep-focus shot is one in which multiple focal planes —
foreground, middle ground, and background — are all in
sharp focus.
Film shots are positioned according to several angles, from
straight on to above or below.
High angles present a point of view from above. Low
angles present a point of view from below.
A film camera can be moved in numerous ways to create
different visual impressions.
While on a stationary tripod, a camera can pan or tilt to
provide horizontal or vertical movement, respectively.
Reframing refers to the movement of the frame from one
position to another within a single continuous shot.
A tracking shot changes the position of the point of view by
moving the camera forward, backward, or around the
subject.
A handheld shot allows freedom of movement that may
result in a shaky image.
Moving cameras can be stabilized through equipment like a
Steadicam.
Special effects include explosions and illusions, optical effects
(slow motion, fast motion, process shots, matte shots) and
visual effects produced digitally (computer-generated imagery
(CGI), performance-capture technology).
A film image has two primary values: presentation as a true
record of the world, and representation as an interpretation of
reality.

Two traditions of compositional practice for the film image
are presence, in which the audience encounters the image
directly, and textuality, in which the audience engages
intellectually with the image.
KEY TERMS
cinematography
apparent motion
magic lantern
chronophotography
film stock
nitrate
safety film
film gauge
panchromatic stock
Technicolor
camera lens
focal length
telephoto lens
zoom lens
depth of field
wide-angle lens
handheld camera
widescreen processes
aspect ratio
anamorphic lens
filter

flare
zooming
camera movement
IMAX
analog video
digital cinematography
computer-generated imagery (CGI)
4K resolution
digital intermediate (DI)
digital cinema package (DCP)
shot
cut
take
master shot
coverage
point of view
subjective point of view
objective point of view
framing
mobile frame
canted frame
academy ratio
widescreen ratio
pan-and-scan process
letterbox
native aspect ratio
mask
iris

onscreen space
offscreen space
rule of thirds
lead room
scale
close-up
extreme close-up
long shot
extreme long shot
medium shot
medium long shot
medium close-up
camera height
crane shot
high angle
low angle
overhead shot
point-of-view (POV) shot
deep focus
rack focus
hue
value
intensity
color timing
color correction
color grading
reframing
pan

360-degree pan
tilt
tracking shot
dolly shot
following shot
handheld shot
Steadicam
zoom-in
zoom-out
special effects
mechanical effects
optical effects
slow motion
fast motion
forced perspective
color filter
dolly zoom
process shot
rear projection
matte shot
visual effects (VFX)
performance-capture technology
Visit launchpadworks.com to access LaunchPad for The Film Experience, which
includes:

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adaptive quizzes
Film clips with critical thinking questions
Supplemental readings, including Film in Focus features and more

CHAPTER 5 EDITING
Relating Images

The chapter opener shows three still from the movie, Bohemian
Rhapsody.
Description

The stills are arranged in the top to the bottom layout. The first still
captures a music band, comprising of three members, midst their
performance on the stage. The front man stands, in the foreground,
stands with legs apart, clutching the microphone tripod with his left hand,
and the other raised up to the sky. The other two members of the band,
stand behind holding a guitar each. Bright red and yellow stage lights fill
the stage from behind them. The second still shows three men talking
beside their car parked outdoors on the roadside; the man in the middle
holds a pen and paper. The third still shows the lead protagonist playing
the piano and singing in a room.
Winner of the Academy Award for Best Film Editing in 2019 and edited by
John Ottman, Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) is a relatively fast-and-loose
biopic about Freddie Mercury and the rock band Queen, covering the rise
of the band from 1970 to the death of Mercury from AIDS-related
pneumonia in 1991. Punctuated with live performances and recording
sessions (and featuring hit songs such as the six-minute “Bohemian
Rhapsody” and “We Will Rock You”), the film’s editing moves at a
breathtaking pace, with many sequences cut with an average shot length
of around two seconds. This rapid editing reflects both the powerful
energy of the band and its exuberant performances and also the
underlying anxiety and tension that describe the characters and their
emotionally and physically fraught rise to stardom.
For some viewers, the velocity of the editing, which moves quickly
between different characters and scenes, is worthy of the awards it
received, including the Oscar for Best Film Editing. For other viewers, the
editing style is a key problem and failure of the film, as it consistently

violates classical editing rules. For example, several sequences lack
establishing shots, which are commonly used in Hollywood to show
where scenes take place. In other scenes, unmotivated cuts and eye-line
mismatches arguably do not support the focus of the dialogue, and the
rapid editing does not reflect calmer or quieter moments in the story.
Whether you believe it is a stylistic accomplishment in subverting
classical editing style or a stylistic fault that creates visual incoherence,
the editing of Bohemian Rhapsody is a central part of our experience of
the film.
can help you review. Go to launchpadworks.com
Film editing is the process of selecting and joining film footage and
shots. As we move through the world, we may witness images that
are juxtaposed and overlapped in store windows, on highway
billboards, on our desktop computers, or on television when we
channel surf. But editing offers a departure from the way we
normally see the world. In our everyday experience, discrete images
are unified by our singular position and consciousness. And unless
we consciously or externally interrupt our vision (such as when we
blink), we do not see the world as separate images linked in selected
patterns. There are no such limits in editing. Editing may emulate
our ordinary ways of seeing or transcend them. The power and art
of film editing lie in the ways in which the hundreds or thousands of
discrete images that make up a film can be shaped to make sense or

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to have an emotional or a visceral impact. Many film theorists and
professionals consider editing to be the most unique dimension of
the film experience. This chapter explores in depth how film
connects separate images to create or reflect key patterns through
which viewers see and think about the world.
KEY OBJECTIVES
Understand the artistic and technological evolution of editing.
Examine the ways editing constructs different spatial and temporal
relationships among images.
Detail the dominant style of continuity editing.
Identify the ways in which graphic or rhythmic patterns are created by
editing.
Discuss the ways editing organizes images as meaningful scenes and
sequences.
Summarize how editing strategies engage filmic traditions of continuity or
disjuncture.

A Short History of Film Editing
Long before the development of film technology, different images
were linked sequentially to tell stories. Ancient Assyrian reliefs
show the different phases of a lion hunt, and the 230-foot-long
Bayeux tapestry chronicles the 1066 Norman conquest of England in
invaluable historical detail. In the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries, comic strips and manga have continued this tradition in
graphic art: each panel presents a moment of action in the story
[Figures 5.1a–5.1c]. In cinema, a storyboard is a shot-by-shot
representation of how a film or a film sequence will unfold.

A photo of an ancient engraving, a photo of an ancient tapestry,
and a comic strip sequentially labeled (a), (b), and (c), depict
storytelling.
5.1a–5.1c Telling stories through images. Different images linked sequentially — (a) ancient
Assyrian reliefs, (b) the eleventh-century Bayeux tapestry, (c) and comics — can resemble
storyboards in cinema.

Description
The engraving (a) shows three men carrying supplies. (b) shows a scene
from the eleventh-century Bayeux tapestry, depicting action in a war
fought on horses and awards. The comic strip labeled (c) has five panels
– the dialogues read in Cantonese.
Juxtaposed images that tell stories also have been used symbolically,
sensationally, and educationally. Religious triptychs convey spiritual
ideas via three connected images. The magic lantern was used by
showmen to project successive images and create illusions of the
supernatural. By the late nineteenth century, illustrated lectures
using photographic slides became popular. Such practices have
influenced film editing’s evolution into its modern form.
1895–1918: Early Cinema and the
Emergence of Editing
Films quickly evolved from showing characters or objects moving
within a single image to connecting different images. Magician and
early filmmaker Georges Méliès at first used stop-motion
photography and, later, editing to create delightful tricks, like the
rocket striking the moon in Trip to the Moon (1902) [Figures 5.2a and
5.2b]. In these early films appear the first creative uses of the edited
cut — the transition between two separate shots or scenes. Although
basic editing techniques were introduced by other filmmakers,

Edwin S. Porter, a prolific employee of Thomas Edison, synthesized
these techniques in the service of storytelling in Life of an American
Fireman (1903) and other early films. One of the most important
films in the historical development of cinema, Porter’s The Great
Train Robbery (1903) tells its story in fourteen separate shots,
including a famous final shot of a bandit shooting his gun directly
into the camera [Figure 5.3]. By 1906, the period now known as
“early cinema” gave way to cinema dominated by narrative, a
transition facilitated by more codified practices of editing.

Two stills from the movie, Trip to the Moon (1992), labeled (a)
and (b).
5.2a and 5.2b Trip to the Moon (1902). In a famous shock cut in his ambitious early science
fiction film, Georges Méliès linked the launch of a rocket to its landing on the face of the
moon.

Description
The still (a) shows a personified full moon, in the night sky, with a smiling
face. The still (b) shows a personified full moon with a rock plunged into
its right eye; its expression now depicts pain.

A still from the movie, The Great Train Robbery (1903), shows a
man pointing a gun. He has a hat on his head and a scarf around
the neck.
5.3 The Great Train Robbery (1903). Edwin S. Porter is credited with advancing the narrative
language of editing in this and other early films. The film’s last cut is used to enhance the
shock effect of the final image rather than to complete the narrative.

D. W. Griffith, who began making films in 1908, is a towering figure
in the development of the classical Hollywood editing style. Griffith
is closely associated with the use of crosscutting (also called
parallel editing) — an editing technique that cuts back and forth
between actions in separate locations, o�en implying simultaneity
— which he used in the rescue sequences that conclude dozens of
his films. In The Lonely Villa (1909), shots of female family members
isolated in a house alternate with shots of villains trying to break in
and then with shots of the father rushing to rescue his family. The
infamous climax of Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915) uses
crosscutting to portray the film’s white characters as victims of
Reconstruction and the Ku Klux Klan as heroes. Griffith cuts from
black soldiers breaking into a white family’s isolated cottage to a
mixed-race politician threatening a white woman with rape, to the
Ku Klux Klan riding to the rescue of both [Figures 5.4a–5.4c]. The
controversial merging of technique and ideology exemplified in
Griffith’s cra� is a strong demonstration of the power of editing.
A�er the success of Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, feature
filmmaking became the norm, and Hollywood developed the
classical editing style that remains the basis for many films today.

A sequence of three stills from the movie, The Birth of a Nation
(1915).The stills are labeled (a), (b), and (c).
5.4a–5.4c The Birth of a Nation (1915). In this sequence of images, Griffith’s white
supremacist views are advanced by the use of parallel editing, which encourages the viewer
to root for the Ku Klux Klan to arrive in time to rescue the white people being threatened in

two different locations. The last-minute rescue is a synthesis of the intercutting among
different spaces.
Description
Still (a) shows a white man hitting a black man. Still (b) shows a black
man and a white woman involved in an argument inside a room. Still (c)
shows several members of the Ku Klux Klan speeding on horses.
1919–1929: Soviet Montage
Less than a decade a�er The Birth of a Nation and in the wake of the
1917 Russian Revolution, Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein’s first
film, Strike (1925), influenced the cra� of editing in a different,
although equally dramatic fashion. Eisenstein’s films and writings
center on the concept of montage (the French word for editing):
editing that maximizes the effect of the juxtaposition of disparate
shots. Eisenstein and his fellow Soviet filmmakers Lev Kuleshov,
Vsevolod Pudovkin, and Dziga Vertov advanced montage as the key
component of modernist, politically engaged filmmaking.
Eisenstein advocated dialectical montage, also called intellectual
montage — a dramatic form of intercutting conflicting or unrelated
images to generate an idea or emotion in the viewer. He argued that
two contrasting or otherwise conflicting shots will be synthesized
into a visual concept when juxtaposed. For example, in Battleship

Potemkin (1925), the shots of several stone lions juxtaposed in
sequence suggest that one stone lion is leaping to life [Figures 5.5a–
5.5c]. According to Eisenstein, the concept of awakening, connected
to revolutionary consciousness, is thus formed in viewers’ minds
even as they react viscerally to the lion’s leap. Such an association of
aesthetic fragmentation with a political program of analysis and
action has persisted in many uses of disjunctive editing.

Three still from the movie, Battleship Potemkin (1925), shows
the lion sequence. The stills are labeled (a), (b), and (c).
5.5a–5.5c Battleship Potemkin (1925). Sergei Eisenstein rouses stone lions through
montage.

Description
Still (a) shows a statue of a lion sleeping on its paws. Still (b) shows the
lion half awake and keenly looking at a distance. Still (c) shows the lion in
a sitting posture.
H I STO R Y C LO S E U P
Women in the Editing Room

A black-and-white photo shows a woman working in the film editing room.
In the first decades of the twentieth century, women looking for new opportunities
during a period of rapid urbanization were attracted to the wide-open field of

filmmaking. They found work as actors and also as writers, editors, producers, and
directors. Dorothy Arzner, the most prominent female filmmaker of this era,
worked on silent films as a script supervisor, then as a cutter, and finally as the
main editor. Editing involves piecing together little bits of film with patience and
refinement of movement. These qualities were associated with work traditionally
performed by women, such as sewing, telegraph operating, and typing, which
made editing one of the few filmmaking fields that remained open to women.
Arzner’s editing of such epics as Blood and Sand (1922) and The Covered Wagon
(1923) impressed executives at Paramount, where she became a director. Before
her 1943 retirement, she made a dozen feature films, many of which employed
women editors such as Blanche Sewell.
One of the most exciting onscreen descriptions of the filmmaking process, the
Soviet silent film Man with the Movie Camera (1929), features a woman at an
editing table almost as prominently as the eponymous cameraman. Elizaveta
Svilova (shown above in a frame from the film) appears seated at a flatbed,
selecting and splicing strips of film, with the mechanical parts of the spinning reels
of film linked in montage to the parts of a sewing machine. A close-up of a strip of
images showing a child’s face suddenly comes to life, a magical transformation
that confirms the editor’s art. The technique of montage, so central to Soviet
cinema, is indebted to women like Svilova and Esfir Shub, whose film The Fall of
the Romanov Dynasty (1927) innovated the genre of compilation documentary.
Despite these prominent examples in two different traditions, women editors do
not have the reputations and opportunities they might have. The very invisibility
that editing strives for echoes other forms of women’s work that are effaced and
unrecognized. Only 23 percent of the top 250 films produced in 2019 employed
women on their editing teams, yet even these figures are slightly higher than
women’s participation in key creative roles on these films overall. Behind these
numbers is an important legacy.

1930–1959: Continuity Editing in the
Hollywood Studio Era
With the full development of the Hollywood studio system, the
movies refined the storytelling style known as continuity editing,
which gives the viewer the impression that the action unfolds with
spatiotemporal consistency. The introduction of synchronous sound
posed new challenges, but by the early 1930s editors integrated
picture and sound editing into the studio style.
Beginning in the 1940s, cinematic realism achieved new emphasis
as one of the primary aesthetic principles in film editing. The
influence of Italian neorealism, which used fewer cuts to capture the
integrity of stories of ordinary people and actual locations, was
evident in other new wave cinemas and even extended to classical
Hollywood. For example, Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place (1950)
emphasized imagistic depth and longer takes, cutting less frequently
between images [Figure 5.6]. Incorporating these variations, the
continuity editing style remained dominant at least until the decline
at the end of the 1950s of the studio system, whose stable personnel,
business models, and genre forms lent consistency to its products
and techniques. In many ways, its principles still govern storytelling
in film and television, even as the pace of that continuity editing has
rapidly increased in recent films such as Avengers: Endgame (2019)
[Figure 5.7].

A still from the movie, In a Lonely Place (1950), shows the
female protagonist along with two men.
5.6 In a Lonely Place (1950). Postwar cinema tended to explore the depth of images, cutting
less frequently between them to achieve a heightened realism.

Description
The scene shows a person’s hand holding up the protagonist’s as she
looks straight at the person. The older man besides the lady anguishes
the act.

A still from the movie, Avengers: Endgame (2019), shows Tony
Stark, A K A the Iron Man, standing wounded. A huge pile of
debris lays beside burning.
5.7 Avengers: Endgame (2019). The heritage of continuity editing has remained alive and
well into the twenty-first century, although its pace has intensified, particularly in action

films and comic book adaptations. Here, the fourth Avengers film breaks from a fast pace to
capture an image of Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man.
1960–1989: Modern Editing Styles
Political and artistic changes starting in the 1960s affected almost
every dimension of film form, and editing was no exception. Both in
the United States and abroad, alternative editing styles emerged that
aimed to fracture classical editing’s illusion of realism. Anticipated
to some extent by Soviet montage, these new more disjunctive styles
reflected the feeling of disconnection of the modern world. Editing
visibly disrupted continuity by creating ruptures in the story,
radically condensing or expanding time, or confusing the
relationships among past, present, and future.
The French New Wave produced some of the first and most dramatic
examples of modern styles of editing. Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless
(1960) innovated the use of jump cuts, edits that intentionally create
gaps in the action [Figures 5.8a and 5.8b]. In the 1960s and 1970s,
American filmmakers like Arthur Penn and Francis Ford Coppola
incorporated such styles within classical genres to contribute to the
New Hollywood aesthetic. In the 1980s, the fast-paced editing style
used in commercials and music videos began to appear in
mainstream films. Tony Scott’s Top Gun (1986), about fighter pilots
competing in flight school, is indicative of this period; Scott was

known for directing commercials before bringing his frenetic style
to feature films.

Two stills from the movie, Breathless (1960), labeled (a) and (b).
5.8a and 5.8b Breathless (1960). Jump cuts between or in the middle of shots are a visual
vehicle for conveying the distractions and disjunctions in a petty criminal’s life. Michel’s
voiceover continues as we see Patricia from different angles.

Description
The stills shows two different angles of the female protagonist seated in
the passenger’s seat of a car in traffic.
1990s–Present: Editing in the Digital
Age
Nonlinear digital editing ushered in perhaps the most significant
changes in the history of film editing. Whereas for decades editors
cut actual film footage by hand on a Moviola or flatbed editing table
or in linear sequence on tape, in the 1990s editors began to use
computer-based nonlinear digital editing systems. In nonlinear
editing, film footage is stored as digital information on high-capacity
computer hard drives. Individual takes can be organized easily and
accessed instantaneously, sound-editing options can be explored
simultaneously with picture editing, and optical effects such as
dissolves and fades can be immediately visualized on the computer
rather than added much later in the printing process. Feature films
were soon edited with nonlinear computer-based systems regardless
of whether they were shot on 35mm film or digital video.
The more rapid pace of contemporary films seems to correlate with
digital editing. Average shot length has declined significantly, with
shots in Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014) averaging around three

seconds, compared with the ten-second shots measured by scholars
in The Grapes of Wrath (1940). However, digital filmmaking also can
embrace the opposite aesthetic effect. On film, the length of a single
take was limited by how much stock the camera could hold; on
video, the duration of a shot is virtually limitless. Filmmaker
Aleksandr Sokurov’s Russian Ark (2002) is a virtuoso feature-length
film with no cuts at all [Figure 5.9]. Still other contemporary films
use fast-paced editing to innovative effect. For example, Baby Driver
(2017) combines an upbeat pop soundtrack with flashy, rapid editing
to tell the story of its protagonist, who skillfully drives getaway cars
for a bank [Figures 5.10a and 5.10b].

A still from the movie, Russian Ark (2002), shows an ongoing
event, with people performing both on the stage and in the
orchestra pit of a theater.
5.9 Russian Ark (2002). Wandering through the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and
seeming to pass through historical eras, the digital camera is the vehicle for this film’s
meditation on art, politics, and Russian history, conveyed as a single ninety-six-minute shot.

Two stills from the movie, Baby Driver (2017), titled (a) and (b).

5.10a and 5.10b Baby Driver (2017). Continuous music and discontinuous cutting
characteristic of music videos energize this film about a young getaway driver who locks
into a different rock tune for each bank robbery.
Description
Each still shows a different angle of the male protagonist hiding behind a
tree and carefully scanning the surrounding.

The Elements of Editing
Film editing is the process through which different images or shots
are linked together sequentially. A shot is a continuous image,
regardless of the camera movement or changes in focus it may
record, and editing can produce meaning by combining shots in an
infinite number of ways. One shot is selected and joined to other
shots by the editor to guide viewers’ perceptions. For example, the
opening sequence of Crooklyn (1994) depicts the Brooklyn block
where the film is set by editing together a high-angle moving crane
shot that provides an overview of the neighborhood and its
inhabitants and a variety of shots of people and their activities
[Figures 5.11a–5.11c].

5.11a–5.11c Crooklyn (1994). The credits sequence of Spike Lee’s film juxtaposes a moving
crane shot of a Brooklyn block with a series of short takes of daily activities to convey a
sense of a tight-knit community.
Description
Still (a) shows three young boys running through a street corner. Still (b)
shows three young girls playing the hop-scopes game in the street. Still
(c) shows three elderly men sitting at a table playing domino blocks.
Film editing conveys multiple perspectives by linking individual
shots (each presented from a single perspective) in various
relationships. Some of these relationships mimic the way a person
looks at the world — for example, by linking a shot of someone
looking off in the distance to an extreme long shot of an airplane in
the sky. But o�en these relationships exceed everyday perceptions,
as in a shot from The Birds (1963) that shows birds flying over Bodega
Bay, an inhuman perspective that, juxtaposed with shots on street
level, adds to the film’s uncanny effect. Edited images may leap from
one location to another or one time to another and may show
different perspectives on the same event. Editing is one of the most
significant developments in the syntax of cinema because it allows
for a departure from both the limited perspective and the
continuous duration of a shot.
The Cut and Other Transitions

The earliest films consisted of a single shot, which ran only as long
as the reel of film in the camera lasted. In his early trick films,
pioneer Georges Méliès manipulated this limitation by stopping the
camera, rearranging the mise-en-scène, and resuming filming to
make objects and people seem to disappear or transform. It was a
short step to achieving such juxtapositions by physically cutting the
film. In Méliès’s 1903 film Living Playing Cards, a magician, played by
Méliès himself, seems to make his props come alive [Figures 5.12a
and 5.12b].
5.12a and 5.12b Living Playing Cards (1903). Pioneer George Méliès anticipated later editing
techniques with magical transformations.
Description
Still (a), shows Méliès, on stage, exhibiting a life-size Queen card on a
white screen. A screen at the background of the stage shows a forest
scene with a pond at the center.
Still (b), shows the queen coming out alive from the card and stepping
down from the screen. Méliès holds the queen by her left arm.

Even when they are intended to seem like magic, transitions
between film shots and the technical labor of editing are o�en
obscured. Rarely can viewers describe or enumerate the edits that
make a particular film sequence memorable. Learning to watch for
this basic element of film language gives the viewer insights into the
art of the film.
The foundation for film editing is the cut — the join or splice
between two pieces of film. This break in the image marks the
physical connection between two shots from two different pieces of
film. A single shot can depict a woman looking at a ship at sea by
showing a close-up of her face and then panning to the right,
following her glance to reveal the distant ship she is watching. A cut,
on the other hand, renders this action in two shots, with the first
showing the woman’s face and the second showing the ship. The
facts of the situation remain the same, but the two approaches — the
single-shot pan and the cut joining two shots — create different
experiences of the scenario. The first might emphasize the distance
that separates the woman from the object of her vision. The second
might create a sense of immediacy and intimacy that transcends the
distance. In a key scene from The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), we
first see several characters occupying different spaces of the same
shot [Figure 5.13a]. A�er the character on the right shi�s his
attention to the character in the background, we are presented with
a cut isolating them [Figures 5.13b and 5.13c]. As these examples

illustrate, the use of a cut usually follows a particular logic — in this
case, emphasizing the significance of the character’s gaze. The less
frequently used shock cut juxtaposes two images whose dramatic
difference creates a jarring effect, o�en accompanied by a jolt on
the soundtrack, as in the shower murder sequence in Psycho (1960),
emulated in countless subsequent horror films such as The Visit
(2015) [Figure 5.14]. Later in this chapter, we investigate additional
ways that editing may create logical or unexpected links among
different images.

5.13a–5.13c The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). Director William Wyler uses composition in
depth and editing to bring out developing tensions in the friendship of three returning
veterans. (a) In the first shot, our attention is drawn to the figures in the foreground. (b)
When Al turns to watch Fred make a difficult phone call in the background of the shot, (c)
the film cuts to a second shot that emphasizes the relationship between these two figures.
Description
Still (a), shows two men, seated at a piano in a bar. One man plays on
the piano, while the other watches. The third man watch them by
standing beside them. The background shows the men seated at a bar
table.
Still (b), shows the two men continue playing piano, while the man
standing beside them turns around and looks at two other men seated at
the bar table. The men turn around to listen to the music played on the
piano.
Still (c), shows the close-up shot of the man who looks at the two men at
the bar table.

5.14 The Visit (2015). The shock cut has remained a staple of editing in horror films as a way
of dramatically unsettling the comfort of continuity editing with the sudden appearance of a
frightening or startling image.
Count the shots in the scene from Chinatown (1974) available online. What is
the motivation behind each cut? What overall pattern do these cuts create?

Description
The scene shows a man working at his office cabin looking at the files,
while the male protagonist, sitting opposite, is starring blindly into the
distance. A play button is present at the center of the screenshot.
Edits can be embellished in ways that guide our experience and
understanding of the transition. For example, a fade-out is an
optical effect in which an image gradually darkens to black, and in a
fade-in a black screen gradually brightens to a full picture (a fade-in
o�en is used a�er a fade-out to create a transition between scenes).
Alfred Hitchcock fades to black to mark the passing of time
throughout Rear Window (1954). A dissolve briefly superimposes one
shot over the next, which takes its place: one image fades out as
another image fades in [Figure 5.15]. In studio-era Hollywood films,
these devices were used to indicate a spatial or temporal break that
is more definite than that done by straight cuts, and they o�en mark
pauses between narrative sequences or larger segments of a film. A

dissolve can take us from one part of town to another, whereas a
fade-out (a more visible break) can indicate that the action is
resuming the next day. The iris (discussed in Chapter 4) masks the
corners of the frame with a black, usually circular form [Figure
5.16], and a wipe is a transition used to join two shots by moving a
vertical, horizontal, or sometimes diagonal line across one image to
replace it with a second image that follows the line across the frame
[Figure 5.17]. Wipes and irises are most o�en found in silent and
early sound films.
5.15 Psycho (1960). In another Hitchcock film, the concluding dissolve creates a terrifying
merger in which a skull as the image of death emerges from the face of Norman Bates.

5.16 Broken Blossoms (1919). The iris o�en was used in films by D. W. Griffith to highlight
objects or faces. Here it focuses our attention and emphasizes the vulnerability of Lillian
Gish’s character.

5.17 Desert Hearts (1985). In a film set in the 1950s, a wipe creates a nostalgic reference to
earlier editing techniques, but it also may suggest a certain kind of transience in the world of
the characters.
Although editing can generate an infinite number of combinations
of images, rules have developed within the Hollywood storytelling
tradition to limit those possibilities (as we discuss later in this
chapter). Other film traditions, most notably those of avant-garde
and experimental cinema (see Chapter 9), can be characterized by
their degree of interest in exploiting the range of editing
possibilities as a primary formal property of film.
Look for other examples of transitional devices besides cuts. What spatial,
temporal, or conceptual relationship is being set up between scenes joined by a
fade, a dissolve, an iris, or a wipe?

When watching movies, we make sense of a series of discontinuous,
linked images by understanding them according to conventional
ways of interpreting space, time, story, and image patterns. We
understand the action sequences in Furious 7 (2015) despite the
improbable feats performed by the characters. Likewise, we make
connections among the three separate narratives from three
separate periods in The Hours (2002). Editing patterns also anticipate
and structure narrative organizations. The next three sections
explore the spatial and temporal relationships established by editing
and introduce the rules of the Hollywood continuity editing system.
Subsequent discussion examines patterns of editing images based
on graphic, movement, and rhythmic connections in order to show
how different techniques provide very different experiences.
Continuity Style
In both narrative and non-narrative films, editing is a crucial
strategy for ordering space and time. Two or more images can be
linked to imply spatial and temporal relations to the viewer.
Verisimilitude (literally, “the appearance of being true”) is the
quality of fictional representation that allows readers or viewers to
accept a constructed world — its events, its characters, and their
actions — as plausible. In cinematic storytelling, verisimilitude is
enhanced by clear, consistent spatial and temporal patterns that —
along with conventions of dialogue, mise-en-scène, cinematography,

and sound — form part of Hollywood’s overall continuity style. In
the commercial U.S. film industry, spatial and temporal continuity
are greatly enhanced through conventions of editing. Because its
constructions of space and time are so codified and widely used, we
devote special consideration to this style.
Estimate the number of shots in a scene from Tangerine (2015), then watch the
scene, clapping with each cut. Were more shots used than you had imagined?
Description
The scene shows a woman with her hand raised. She appears to be in
the middle of a conversation. A play button is present at the center of the
screenshot.

The basic principle of continuity editing (sometimes called invisible
editing) is that each shot has a continuous relationship to the next
shot. It uses cuts and other transitions to establish verisimilitude, to
construct a coherent time and space, and to tell stories clearly and
efficiently, requiring minimal mental effort on the part of viewers.
Two particular goals constitute the heart of this style — constructing
an imaginary space in which the action develops and approximating
the experience of real time by following human actions.
In continuity editing, a�er the initial view of a scene, subsequent
shots typically follow the logic of spatial continuity. If a character
appears at the le� of the screen looking toward the right in the
establishing shot, he or she probably will be shown looking in the
same direction in the medium shot that follows. Movements that
carry across cuts also adhere to a consistent screen direction. A
character exiting the right of a frame probably will enter a new
space from the le�. Similarly, a chase sequence covering great
distances is likely to provide directional cues.
Continuity editing has developed and deployed these patterns so
consistently that it has become the dominant method of treating
dramatic material, with its own set of rules that narrative
filmmakers learn early. Continuity or invisible editing minimizes the
perception of breaks between shots. The argument between the
lovers in The Notebook (2004) uses numerous invisible cuts to shi�
focus from character to character and to underscore the scene’s

emotional resonance as they move within the clearly delineated
space between the front porch and a parked car.
Spatial patterns are frequently introduced through the use of an
establishing shot — generally an initial long shot that establishes
the location and setting and that orients the viewer in space to a
clear view of the action. A scene in a western, as in The Hateful Eight
(2015), might begin with an extreme long shot of wide-open space
and then cut in to a shot that shows a stagecoach or saloon, followed
by other, tighter shots introducing the characters and action.
A conversation usually is established with a relatively close shot of
both characters (also known as a two-shot) in a recognizable spatial
orientation and context. Then the camera alternates between the
speaking characters, o�en using over-the-shoulder shots where the
camera is positioned slightly behind and over the shoulder of one
character, focusing on another character or object. It o�en is used
when alternating between speaking characters. During an editing
sequence that proceeds back and forth, the editor may insert
reestablishing shots by periodically returning to the initial
establishing shot to restore a seemingly objective view to spectators.
Early in Howard Hawks’s The Big Sleep (1946), when detective Philip
Marlowe (played by Humphrey Bogart) is hired by General
Sternwood, the scene opens with an establishing shot, and their
conversation follows this pattern [Figures 5.18a–5.18h]. Although
the conversation is presented by many shots that are edited together,

the transitions remain largely invisible because the angle from
which each character is filmed remains consistent and the dialogue
continues over the cuts. Such editing practices are ubiquitous. We
have learned to expect that film conversations will be coordinated
with medium close-ups of characters speaking and listening, just as
we expect that these figures will be situated in a realistic space.

5.18a–5.18h The Big Sleep (1946). The simple interview, which provides a great deal of plot
information, is broken down by many imperceptible cuts. A�er an initial establishing shot,
alternating shots of the two characters in conversation cut in closer and closer and
eventually focus our attention on the protagonist’s face. Finally, the space is reestablished at
the end of the interview.
Description
The first still shows, in a huge home garden, an elderly man in a
wheelchair talking to the lead protagonist who sits opposite, while a third
man, wearing suit and tie, fills a glass of drinks. The two subsequent stills
capture both men talking. The fourth still shows the elderly man in the
middle of his speech. The fifth shows the protagonist, who is rolling up
his sleeves in the middle of is dialogue. The sixth captures the elderly
man talking. The subsequent still shows a close-up of the protagonist
during his speech. The last still shows the protagonist who is now
standing next to a liquor table heading for a bottle; the elderly man looks
on from behind.
Another device that is used in continuity editing is the insert — a
brief shot, o�en a close-up, that points out details significant to the
action. An insert might be a close-up of a hand slipping something
into a pocket or a subtle smile that other characters do not see. The
use of inserts helps overcome viewers’ spatial separation from the
action, pointing out significant details — for example, showing us an
object of great meaning to a character or helping to establish the
atmosphere of a desert scene [Figure 5.19].

5.19 The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018). An insert shows a close-up of a horse’s mouth.
Continuity editing minimizes disruptive effects and maximizes the
viewer’s ability to follow the action through practices that give a
sense of spatial and temporal consistency. Some of these practices
have become so codified that they are viewed as rules.
180-Degree Rule
The 180-degree rule is the primary rule of continuity editing and
one that many films and television shows consider sacrosanct. It
restricts possible camera setups to the 180-degree area on one side
of an imaginary line drawn between the characters or figures of a
scene. The two diagrams in [Figure 5.20] illustrate the 180-degree
rule in the scene from The Big Sleep (1946) discussed earlier.
Marlowe and the general are filmed as if the space were bisected by
a line known as the axis of action. All of the shots illustrated by the
still images from The Big Sleep in Figures 5.18a–5.18h were taken

from one side of the axis. In general, any shot taken from the same
side of the axis of action will ensure that the relative positions of
people and other elements of mise-en-scène, as well as the
directions of gazes and movements, will remain consistent. If the
camera were to cross into the 180-degree field on the other side of
the line (represented by the shaded area in Figure 5.20, Diagram A),
the characters’ onscreen positions would be reversed. During the
unfolding of a scene, a new axis of action may be established by
figure or camera movement. Directors may break the 180-degree
rule and cross the line, either because they want to signify chaotic
action or because conventional spatial continuity is not their
primary aim.

5.20 The Big Sleep (1946). Diagram A illustrates the 180-degree rule by depicting the
imaginary axis of action, bisecting the conversation scene from The Big Sleep. All shots in
Diagram B, which illustrates the editing of the conversation with reference to Figures 5.19b–
5.19g, were taken from the white portion of Diagram A. Each character is depicted in tighter
framings from a consistent camera angle. If the camera were to cross over to the shaded
portion, the position of the characters onscreen would be reversed.
Description
Diagram A shows the top view of two men having a conversation, seated
facing each other. The man seated in the wheelchair sits on the left while
the other man seats in a chair on the right. The axis of the action line
passes nearly through the middle horizontally. The portion above the line
is shaded. The first of diagram B shows the face of the man in the
wheelchair and an angular back view of the other man. The second part
of diagram B shows the back view of the man in the wheelchair and the
front view of the chair. The man in the chair sits with his face resting on
his right.
30-Degree Rule
The 30-degree rule illustrates the extent to which continuity editing
attempts to preserve spatial unity. This rule specifies that a shot
should be followed by another shot taken from a position greater
than 30 degrees from that of the first. In Winter’s Bone (2010), when
Ree shows her younger siblings how to skin a squirrel, an over-the-
shoulder shot that emulates her point of view is followed by a
medium shot in profile taken at a right angle to the action. The rule
aims to emphasize the motivation for the cut by giving a

substantially different view of the action. If a shot of the same
subject is taken within 30 degrees of the previous shot, it will appear
to jump in position onscreen.
Shot/Reverse Shot
Does the film you watched most recently in class follow continuity patterns, such
as the 180-degree rule? Locate an example, and identify other ways that spatial
continuity is maintained.
One of the most common spatial practices within continuity editing,
and a regular application of the 180-degree rule, is the shot/reverse-
shot pattern (also called the shot/countershot). It begins with a shot of
one character looking offscreen in one direction, followed by a shot
of a second character who appears to be looking back. The effect is
that the characters seem to be looking at each other. In the example
from The Big Sleep, this pattern begins with a shot of Philip Marlowe
taken from an angle at one end of the axis of action, continues with
a shot of the general from the “reverse” angle at the other end of the
axis, and proceeds back and forth. As can be seen in Figure 5.20,
Diagram B, the camera distance changes from medium shot to
close-up as the scene unfolds, but the angle on each character in the
shot/reverse-shot pattern does not. The use of over-the-shoulder
shots in shot/reverse-shot sequences increases the perception of

viewer participation in a conversation. As Alma Elson exchanges
looks with designer Reynolds Woodcock in Phantom Thread (2017),
the 180-degree change in angle — known as cutting on the line —
and symmetrical composition in the shot/reverse-shot sequence
describes the subtle but powerful control she has assumed over the
obsessive fashion designer [Figures 5.21a and 5.21b].
5.21a and 5.21b Phantom Thread (2017). A shot of Alma Elson (Vicky Krieps) followed by a
reverse shot of her lover Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis).
Description
The first still shows an over the shoulder shot of a female character in the
movie. The second still shows an over the shoulder shot of a man.
Eyeline Match
Shot/reverse-shot sequences use characters’ gazes to establish the
continuous space of the conversation. A cut that follows a shot of a
character looking offscreen with a shot of a subject whose screen

position matches the gaze of the character in the first shot is called
an eyeline match [Figures 5.22a and 5.22b]. If a character looks
toward the le�, the screen position of the character or object in the
next shot will likely appear to match the gaze. Eyelines give the
illusion of continuous offscreen space into which characters could
move beyond the le� and right edges of the frame.

5.22a and 5.22b Carol (2015). In this early scene, an eyeline match directs our gaze to the
protagonist’s first vision of the woman with whom she will fall in love.
Description

The first still shows a young female character standing inside the billing
counter of a gift shop and looking into the distance. The second still
shows two women, one in the background looking for items in the shop
while the woman in the background and stands and stares into the
distance.
Match on Action
To match images through movement means that the direction and
pace of actions, gestures, and other movements are linked with
corresponding or contrasting movements in one or more other
shots. Leni Riefenstahl’s extraordinary editing of athletes in motion
in her documentary Olympia (1938) has become a model for sports
montages [Figures 5.23a and 5.23b]. A common version of this
pattern is the continuity editing device called a match on action — a
cut between two shots continuing a visual action. In this technique,
the direction of an action is picked up by cutting to a shot depicting
the continuation of that action, such as matching the movement of a
stone tossed in the air to the flight of that stone as it hits a window.
O�en a match on action obscures the cut itself, such as when the cut
occurs just as a character opens a door, and the next shot shows the
character shutting the door from the other side.

5.23a and 5.23b Olympia (1938). The seemingly superhuman mobility of Olympic divers is
enhanced by Leni Riefenstahl’s editing.
Description
The first still shows a woman diver, midair during her performance in a
stadium with spectators in the background. The second still shows a
close up of the diver midair.
Cutting on action — or editing during an onscreen movement — also
quickens a scene or film’s pace. Action sequences such as fights and
chases exploit these possibilities by relying on the spatial
consistency of continuity editing to convey what’s happening and by
using variation to increase the surprise and excitement [Figures
5.24a and 5.24b].

5.24a and 5.24b Alita: Battle Angel (2019). The tension and suspense of battle between
cyborg Alita and her adversary increases through cutting on movement and matching on
action.
Description
The first still shows the protagonist midair as if approaching to kick
someone with her legs. The second still shows the protagonist midair
seconds before hitting a huge robot character with her legs.
Graphic Match
Formal patterns, shapes, masses, colors, lines, and lighting patterns
within images can link or define a series of shots according to
graphic qualities [Figures 5.25a and 5.25b]. This is most easily
envisioned in abstract forms: one pattern of images may develop
according to diminishing sizes, beginning with large shapes and
proceeding through increasingly smaller shapes; another pattern
may alternate the graphics of lighting, switching between brightly lit
shots and dark, shadowy shots; yet another pattern might make use
of lines within the frame by assembling different shots whose
horizontal and vertical lines create specific visual effects. Many

experimental films highlight just this level of abstraction in the
editing. Similarly, commercials capitalize on graphic qualities to
convey their message visually.

5.25a and 5.25b The Namesake (2006). A family drama set on two continents uses graphic
elements to connect India and the United States.
Description
The first still shows a bridge through the window. The second still shows
an elderly Indian woman, with a worried expression, staring outside into
the distance from a window.
Although it may not be their organizing principle, narrative films
edit according to graphic qualities as well. This can have an
aesthetic effect — by emphasizing sharp angles or soothing colors.
Coherence in shape and scale o�en serves a specific narrative
purpose, as in the continuity editing device called a graphic match
— an edit in which a dominant shape or line in one shot provides a
visual transition to a similar shape or line in the next shot. One of
the most famous examples of a graphic match links the shape of a
bone tossed in the air to the shape of a spaceship in outer space in
Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) [Figures 5.26a and
5.26b].
5.26a and 5.26b 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Centuries are elided in a graphic match,
which functions at the same time as a match on action.

Description
The first still shows a bone against a blue background. The second still
shows a space ship.
Point-of-View Shots
Many of Alfred Hitchcock’s most suspenseful scenes are edited to
highlight the drama of looking. O�en a character is shown looking,
and the next shot shows the character’s optical point of view, as if
the camera (and hence the viewer) were seeing with the eyes of the
character. Such point-of-view shots are o�en followed by a third shot
in which the character is again shown looking, which reclaims the
previous shot as his or her literal perspective. In a tense scene from
The Birds (1963) in which the heroine, Melanie, sits on a bench
outside a school as threatening crows gather on the playground
behind her, Hitchcock uses both eyeline matches and point-of-view
sequences. A bird flying high overhead catches Melanie’s attention
[Figure 5.27a]. When she turns her head to follow its flight, the
shots are matched by her eyeline [Figure 5.27b]. Next comes a
point-of-view sequence through which suspense is prolonged by
showing Melanie’s reaction before the sinister sight of congregating
birds [Figures 5.27c and 5.27d]. The editing of this scene serves
both to construct a realistic space and to increase our identification
with Melanie by focusing solely on the act of looking.

5.27a–5.27d The Birds (1963). (a)–(b) A low-angle shot of a flying bird is matched to
Melanie’s eyeline. (c)–(d) We see Melanie’s shocked face and then a point-of-view shot of the
gathering birds.
Description
The first still shows a bird in the sky. The second and the third stills show
a woman looking toward the sky with a worried expression. The fourth
still shows a gathering of birds outdoor in a children’s playground.
Elsewhere in the film, the point of view of Melanie’s romantic
interest, Mitch, is conveyed by partially masking the frame as if we
were looking along with him through his binoculars. Similarly, when
a character wakes from a knock on the head, we may see a blurry
image, foregrounding the subjective effect of the point-of-view
construction.

Reaction Shots
These components of the continuity system — which also include
shot/reverse-shot patterns, eyeline matches, and point-of-view shots
— construct space around the characters’ behavior. The editing
highlights human agency. A reaction shot, which depicts a
character’s response to something shown in a previous shot [Figure
5.28], emphasizes human perspective in a way that can be seen as
standing in for the audience’s own response. The cut back to the
character “claims” the view of the previous shot as subjective. A
scene from Clueless (1995) in which the protagonist, Cher, and her
friends, Dionne and Tai, converse in a coffee-shop booth shows a
typical conversation edited for continuity. The scene begins with a
tracking establishing shot that depicts the overall environment
[Figure 5.29a]. Then the scene cuts back and forth across the booth
in a shot/reverse-shot pattern using eyeline matches [Figures 5.29b–
5.29d]. Cher sits alone and has most of the scene’s shots, indicating
that she is the focal point of our identification. In this way,
continuity editing constructs spatial relationships to create a
plausible and human-centered world onscreen.

5.28 The Way We Were (1973). This reaction shot of Barbara Streisand’s face registers her
character’s response to catching sight of her former lover.
5.29a–5.29d Clueless (1995). A�er (a) an establishing shot, this conversation alternates (b
and d) shots of the heroine Cher’s friends with (c) a reverse shot of Cher, maintaining spatial
continuity.

Description
The first still shows three women sitting in a restaurant and chatting; two
sit on one side of the table and the other sits opposite. The second still
shows the lead protagonist sitting beside her friend. The third still shows
the girl sitting opposite. The fourth still shows the lead character in the
middle of her speech.
Art Cinema Editing
Continuity editing strives for an overall effect of coherent space;
however, many films, especially art films, use editing to construct
less predictable spatial relations. For example, in Carl Theodor
Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), a series of close-ups against
a white background conveys the psychological intensity of Joan’s
testimony before the inquisitors while never giving an overview of
the space. The use of close-ups elevates the spiritual subject matter
over the worldly space of her surroundings that establishing shots
and eyeline matches would depict [Figures 5.30a–5.30c]. Japanese
director Yasujiro Ozu o�en uses graphic elements to provide
continuity across cuts. In Early Summer (1951), rather than editing to
show an optical point of view, he sets up his camera near the ground
to balance his compositions around characters sitting on the floor.
These directors provide significant challenges to the “rules” of
Hollywood editing.

5.30a–5.30c The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928). The juxtaposition of the inquisitors’ faces
with that of Renée Falconetti as Joan ignores spatial continuity but is freighted with power
and significance.
Description
The first still shows a close-up shot of a female character. The second
still shows a close-up shot of a male character. The third still shows a
close-up of an elderly man’s character.
In postwar cinemas, directors explored characters’ restlessness
through editing that defied continuity. In Michelangelo Antonioni’s

film L’Avventura (1960), cuts join spaces that are not necessarily
contiguous. The landscapes the characters move through express
their psychological state of alienation in a way that a realistic use of
space would not. Contemporary independent films may incorporate
editing styles innovated in art cinema to convey a character’s state of
mind or a state of being that departs from the ordinary. In Beasts of
the Southern Wild (2012), the editing contributes to a sense of
enchantment and loss in a close-knit bayou community flooded
during a storm [Figures 5.31a and 5.31b]. We discuss such
alternatives in greater detail later in the chapter (see Primary
Traditions in Editing Practices: Continuity, Disjunctions, and
Convergences).
5.31a and 5.31b Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012). Cutting between two views of the
protagonist, Hushpuppy, conveys her magical, dreamlike experiences.
Description
The first still shows a blurry silhouette of a child. The second still shows
the protagonist from the back.

Editing and Temporality
Editing is one of the chief ways that temporality is manipulated in
narrative film. A two-hour film may condense centuries in a story.
Less frequently, it may expand story time, as in a prolonged rescue
or a dream sequence. It is helpful to keep distinct the concepts of
story time, the temporal length and range of events inferred during
the telling of a film’s story (such as the actual years when a young
girl grows to become an older woman, most of which takes place
offscreen); plot time, the temporal selection and arrangement of
events from that story (such as key moments when that young
woman discovers something new about herself ); and screen time,
the actual length of time that a movie takes to tell its story (such as
the 120 minutes or so when an audience views the film). Film is a
time-based medium, and editing strongly affects our experience of
the temporal unfolding.
Flashbacks and Flashforwards
Through its power to manipulate chronology — the order according
to which shots or scenes convey the temporal sequence of the story’s
events — editing organizes narrative time. A sequence of shots or
scenes may describe the temporal development of events as one
event or action follows another in progressive order, or it may order
events and actions in a nonlinear fashion whereby the temporal
order appears like pieces of a puzzle for the viewer to solve.

Editing may juxtapose events out of their temporal order in the
story. When using continuity editing, any nonlinear time
constructions tend to be introduced with strict cues about narrative
motivation. For example, a flashback — a sequence that follows an
image set in the present with an image set in the past — may be
introduced with a dissolve conveying the character’s memory or
with voiceover narration indicating the shi�ing timeframe. A large
number of flashbacks can blur the line between linear and
nonlinear structure. In one sense, Citizen Kane (1941) follows a
linear narrative, as a reporter conducts a series of interviews and
investigations when he looks for an angle on a great man’s death.
However, the story of Kane’s life is provided in a series of lengthy
flashbacks that add complexity to the film’s chronology. Certain
events are narrated more than once, a manipulation of narrative
frequency — the number of times a plot element is repeated
throughout a narrative. In more recent films, such temporal shi�s
may not be signaled by external cues. Blue Jasmine (2013) shi�s
fluidly between the down-on-her-luck heroine’s present existence
and scenes of her extravagant lifestyle before her marriage ended.
Yet even in this case, the heroine’s mental state serves as a
motivation for the temporal play; the audience is given cues to
follow the narrative’s complexity.
The less common flashforward is a sequence that connects an
image set in the present with one or more future images. Because it
involves “seeing” the future, the technique usually is reserved for

works that intentionally challenge our perceptions — movies
focused on psychology or science fiction. In Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t
Look Now (1973), for example, a couple is tormented by the recent
death of their daughter, and haunting images of a small figure in a
red rain slicker prove to be flashforwards to a revelatory encounter
[Figure 5.32]. In Memento (2000), the chronology of scenes is
completely reversed, but the maintenance of continuity within each
scene allows us to follow the film.
5.32 Don’t Look Now (1973). Images of a small figure in red prove to be flashforwards to a
horrifying encounter with the memories of a lost child.
Descriptive and Temporally Ambiguous
Sequences

Certain edited sequences cannot be located precisely in time. The
purpose of such a sequence is o�en descriptive, such as a series of
shots identifying the setting of a film. As one character in An
American in Paris (1951) describes the heroine to another, we see a
series of shots depicting her different qualities (with different outfits
to match). These vignettes are descriptive and do not follow a linear
or other temporal sequence. Music videos also defy chronology in
favor of associative editing patterns.
In art films and increasingly in commercial narrative films, the
cinema can be prized for its ability to depict ambiguous temporality.
Thus, editing may defy realism in favor of psychological
constructions of time. Writer Marguerite Duras and director Alain
Resnais make time the subject of their film Hiroshima mon amour
(1959), which constantly relates the present-day story, set in Japan,
to a character’s past. An image of her lover’s hand sparks the female
protagonist’s memory of being a teenager in France during World
War II, and the flashback begins with a matching image of another
hand. But temporality is such an important dimension of film
narration that even more traditional narratives explore the
relationship between the order of events onscreen and those of the
story. Steven Soderbergh’s The Limey (1999) ingeniously inserts shots
of the activities of the protagonist, played by Terence Stamp, into the
narrative but out of sequence, keeping us guessing about temporal
relations [Figures 5.33a and 5.33b]. Inception (2010) complicates our

sense of time by making us question whether entire sequences are
dreams or events in the lives of the characters.

5.33a and 5.33b The Limey (1999). Different shots of the protagonist (Terence Stamp) appear
in the film without a clear sense of when they occurred.

Description
The first still shows close-up shot of the male protagonist sitting in a
plane. The second still shows the character sitting at a table.
Duration
Narrative duration refers to the length of time used to present an
event or action in a plot. This may not conform to the length of time
that passes in the story. Editing is one of the most useful techniques
for manipulating narrative duration; it can contract or expand story
time. Although actions may seem to flow in a continuous fashion,
editing allows for ellipsis — an abridgement in time in the narrative
implied by editing. Cutting strategies both within scenes and from
scene to scene attempt to cover such ellipses. Grabbing a coat,
exiting through the front door, and turning the key in the car
ignition might serve to indicate a journey from one locale to the
next. As we have seen, transitional devices such as dissolves and
fades also manipulate the duration of narration. Without the
acceptance of such conventions, time would be experienced in a
disorienting fashion.
A continuity editing device that is used to condense time is the
cutaway — a shot that interrupts an action to “cut away” to another
image or action (for example, to a man trapped inside a burning
building), o�en to abridge time, before returning to the first shot or

scene at a point further along in time. We are so accustomed to such
handling of the duration of depicted events that a scene in real time
— such as the single shot of the central character taking a bath in
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) — seems
unnaturally long [Figure 5.34].
5.34 Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975). This long take records
the protagonist’s bath in real time. The film’s pacing emulates the everyday routine of the
housewife.
Less frequent than the condensation of time, the extension of time
through overlapping editing occurs when an edited sequence
presents two or more shots of the same action across several cuts. In
Battleship Potemkin (1925), a sailor, frustrated with the conditions
aboard ship, is shown repeatedly smashing a plate he is washing.

Plot time in this scene is longer than that of the action. The effect is
to emphasize this small moment’s decisive importance in a heroic
narrative of the sailors’ mutiny.
Overlapping editing is a violation in a continuity system, and
although it can be used for emphasis or for foreshadowing, it o�en
appears strange or gimmicky. In a masterfully choreographed fight
scene in John Woo’s Hard Boiled (1992), shots of the hero’s balletic
leap are overlapped [Figures 5.35a and 5.35b]. Such instances of
prolonging narrative duration emphasize editing’s rhythm, pulse,
and pattern over story event.

5.35a and 5.35b Hard Boiled (1992). The hero shoots up a restaurant without himself being
hit. His leaps are prolonged through overlapping editing, which makes the scene even more
spectacular.

Pace
The pace of a film is the tempo at which it seems to move,
influenced by the duration of individual shots and the style of
editing. The fast pace of a spy action movie like Jason Bourne (2016)
contrasts with the more relaxed pace of a comedy like School of Rock
(2003) or the slow elliptical editing of meditative films like
Melancholia (2011) and Leave No Trace (2018) [Figures 5.36a and
5.36b]. Chase scenes are likely to be cut more quickly than
conversations. Pace may vary historically, culturally, and
stylistically. There are no strict rules of pacing, although some
editors may measure shot lengths exactly to achieve a desired
rhythm.

5.36a and 5.36b Leave No Trace (2018). This film is paced with a measured editing style to
capture the secluded, meditative perspectives of its characters.

Observers have noted that the average shot length (ASL) of narrative
films has decreased over recent decades, and they correlate these
measures to industry and narrative patterns as well as to processes
of human perception. Rapid cutting of films whose average shot
length may be less than two seconds has been enabled by digital
technologies and driven by the prevalence of blockbuster action
films.
A different way of controlling pace through editing is by using long
takes, or shots of relatively long duration. Classical film theorist
André Bazin is famous for his advocacy of the long take in such
post–World War II films as William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives
(1946). Bazin especially championed the sequence shot, in which an
entire scene is played out in space and time in a single shot, arguing
that this type of filmmaking more closely approximates human
perception and is thus more realistic than editing. Films that are cut
with a preponderance of long takes use mise-en-scène — including
blocking and acting — and camera movement instead of editing to
focus viewers’ attention.
Two different tests of Bazin’s theories can be seen in contemporary
uses of the long take. Shots that are sustained for what can seem an
inordinate amount of time are prevalent in the styles of directors of
contemporary international art films, prompting researchers to coin
the term slow cinema for these works. Flowers of Shanghai (1998), by
Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien, unfolds with only forty

shots. The long takes evoke the city’s past and vanished way of life.
Minimal narrative incident, a contemplative or neutral camera, and
a patient spectator are required of such films, in which editing’s
deliberate pace is one of the most defining aesthetic criteria.
Long takes and sequence shots are used by Quentin Tarantino and
other contemporary directors not to promote Bazin’s realism but to
cra� virtuoso displays of the kinetic possibilities of cinema. The
spectacular unbroken shots in films like Tarantino’s Kill Bill: Vol. 2
(2004) keep pace with the film’s otherwise rapid editing by the
impressive choreography of characters, sets, and camera
movement.
Most films use shot length to create a rhythm that relates to the
particular aims of the film. One of the most influential examples of
fast cutting, the infamous shower murder sequence from
Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), uses seventy camera setups for forty-five
seconds of footage, with the many cuts launching a parallel attack
on viewers’ senses. In contrast, Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men
(2006) produces its uncanny mood in part through lengthy tracking
shots. In these examples, pace is specific to the film and also a
distinctive element of the director’s style.
Rhythm

The early French avant-garde filmmaker Germaine Dulac defined
film as “a visual symphony made of rhythmic images.” Rhythm or
rhythmic editing describes the organization of editing according to
different paces or tempos determined by how quickly cuts are made.
Like the tempos that describe the rhythmic organization of music,
editing in this fashion may link a rapid succession of quick shots, a
series of slowly paced long takes, or shots of varying length to
modulate the time between cuts. In Rocket Man (2019), a biopic
about rock star Elton John, the rhythm of the editing follows the
music [Figures 5.37a and 5.37b]. Because rhythm is a fundamental
property of editing, it o�en is combined with continuity aims or
graphic patterns.

5.37a and 5.37b Rocket Man (2019). The rhythms in the cutting of numerous sequences
reflect the energy of the music by Bernie Taupin and Elton John.
Description
The first still shows a band performing on the stage in a concert hall full
of people. The second still shows the pianist performing his piece with his
right leg on the piano.

Time the shots of the sequence from The General (1927) available online. How does
the rhythm of the editing in the sequence contribute to the film’s mood or
meaning?
Description
The scene shows the lead character jumping from one train car to another. A
play button is present at the center of the screenshot.
Without editing, a film’s screen time would equal its plot time.
Incorporating cuts shows the complexity of temporality in narrative

film by organizing the order, frequency, and duration of events and
descriptive information. Documentary and experimental films
manipulate temporality through editing as well. Finally, editing is
also integral to the viewer’s physical experience of watching movies
as they unfold in time: its rhythms can make us tense and fearful,
calm and contemplative, or energized and euphoric.
Scenes and Sequences
The coordination of temporal and spatial editing patterns beyond
the relationship between two shots results in a higher level of
cinematic organization in both narrative and non-narrative films.
Scene and sequence are two terms for larger units of edited shots that
are helpful to conceive of separately, even though they are not
always strictly distinguished. In a narrative film, a scene is
composed of one or more shots that depict a continuous space and
time — such as a conversation filmed following the 180-degree rule.
A sequence is any number of shots that are unified as a coherent
action (such as a walk to school) or an identifiable motif (such as the
expression of anger), regardless of changes in time and space. If the
conversation ends with one character rising from the breakfast table
and subsequent shots show the character driving, grabbing a coffee,
and taking the elevator to work, the unit is a sequence. The editing
bridges any changes of setting and covers ellipses of time, but the
character continues one primary action, and no significant time
passes. In a nonfiction film, a sequence could be defined by a topic

or an aesthetic pattern. Editing combines and organizes a film’s
many scenes and sequences into patterns according to the logic of a
particular story or mode of filmmaking.
What is the temporal organization of the film you’ve just viewed for class? Does
the film follow a strict chronology? How does the editing abridge or expand
time?
One way to relate editing on the micro, shot-to-shot level to editing
on a macro level is by segmentation — the process of dividing a film
into large narrative units for the purpose of analysis. A classical film
may have forty scenes and sequences but only ten large segments
corresponding to the significant moves of the plot. In such films,
locating editing transitions such as fades and dissolves can help
point to these divisions, which occur at significant changes in
narrative space, time, characters, or action. Tracing the logic of a
particular film’s editing on this level gives insight into how film
narratives are organized. For example, the setting of a film’s first
scene may be identical to that of the last scene, or two segments
showing the same characters may represent a significant change in
their relationship. Although these structural units and relations may
be dictated in the script, editing realizes them onscreen.
T E C H N O LO G Y I N A C T I O N

Editing, Then and Now
The formal possibilities of film editing have always been bound up with
production and postproduction technologies. How much film can be shot, and
how can that film later be edited? These questions have o�en determined, in
many ways, the formal styles and strategies that are part of the finished film.
In the early years of cinema, filmmakers would necessarily edit their films in the
camera while shooting. For filmmakers like the Lumière brothers in the late 1890s,
editing their films of barely a minute or so meant stopping the camera in order to
change a perspective, an action, or object. In 1995, to commemorate the one
hundredth anniversary of cinema, major filmmakers from around the world used
the Lumière camera to make films with the same restrictions: no more than fi�y-
two seconds in length, no synchronized sound, and no more than three takes
[Figure 5.38a].

5.38a Lumière and Company (1995). For this anthology film, celebrated directors
including Helma Sanders-Brahms, David Lynch, and Zhang Yimou used the same type
of camera as the Lumière brothers in the 1890s.
For most of the twentieth century, professional editing occurred on a Steenbeck
editing table, a flatbed table first introduced in 1931 and ubiquitous for many
years a�er [Figure 5.38b]. This technology allowed editors to rotate celluloid film
stock through nylon rollers, carefully inspect individual frames, move temporally
backward and forward, and delete or insert different images across the linear
rotation of the stock. This linear layout and movement in editing worked
harmoniously with the goals of continuity editing and linear film narratives.
5.38b Steenbeck editing table. This table was a ubiquitous piece of editing
technology from 1931 until the 1990s.
With digital editing systems, beginning in 1991, the priorities of linearity gave way
to new freedoms. With this technology, film images are loaded into a computer,
and an editor can choose and arrange scenes and sequences in multiple ways. As a

result, there are virtually limitless possibilities for the placement of images and the
manipulations of temporal sequences. For example, Mike Figgis’s Timecode (2000),
a drama set in a Los Angeles movie production house, divides the screen into four
different quadrants to present simultaneous actions taking place in different
locations [Figure 5.38c].
5.38c Time Code (2000). This film demonstrates the freedom of modern editing
technology by dividing the screen into four quadrants depicting simultaneous action
in multiple locations.
Description
The first three quadrants show three women in different locations talking on
their cell phones. The fourth quadrant shows a woman videotaping a man
lying dead on the floor with blood gushing out from his stomach.

Thinking about Film Editing
The editing styles we have discussed so far are not simply neutral
ways of telling stories or conveying information. When they are
applied in different contexts — Hollywood, art cinema,
documentary, or the avant-garde — editing styles convey different
perspectives. Cutting to a close-up in a silent film such as The Cheat
(1912) was an innovative way of smoothly taking the viewer inside
the film’s world; it served the psychological realism of Hollywood
storytelling. Documentary films have developed editing patterns
whose logic is made clear by a continuous voiceover narration.
Experimental films like The Flicker (1965) employ various patterns of
alternation or accumulation to generate aesthetic experiences and
reveal structural principles like those found in paintings or poetry.
Film editing serves two general aims — to generate emotions and
ideas through the construction of patterns of seeing and also to
move beyond normal temporal and spatial limitations. In Jordan
Peele’s Us (2019), for instance, we experience the palpable fear and
anxiety when a middle-class family sees shadows of themselves
appear in their driveway. Only toward the conclusion of the film
does the narrative release our perspective from the emotional
intensity and mystery of these subjective points of view by shi�ing
to a more objective, exterior point of view that allows both relief and
eventually resolution to the family’s interior, subjective nightmare.

Through logic and pacing, the editing does more than just link
images in space and time; it also generates emotions, thoughts, and,
more obliquely, open questions about racial identity and social class
[Figures 5.39a and 5.39b].
5.39a and 5.39b Us (2019). The editing of Jordan Peele’s Us concentrates on a drama of
frightening subjective perspectives that eventually open up on a more politicized and
objective social stage.

Description
The first still shows a young girl standing beside a crib and looking
straight at the camera. The second still shows, through the door, on the
other side of the room two woman and a man, seated at a table, having a
conversation.
These potential effects of editing are well illustrated in the
legendary editing experiments conducted by Soviet filmmaker Lev
Kuleshov in the 1910s and 1920s. A shot of the Russian actor Ivan
Mozzhukhin’s face followed by a bowl of soup signified “hunger” to
viewers, while the identical footage of the face linked to a child’s
coffin connoted “grief.” In the absence of an establishing shot,
viewers assumed these pairs of images to be linked in space and
time and motivation — the so-called Kuleshov effect.
A magisterial example of how editing overcomes the physical
limitations of human perception can be found in 2001: A Space
Odyssey (1968). No individual character’s consciousness anchors the
film’s journey through space and time. Instead, our experience of
the film is governed largely by the film’s editing — long-shot images
that show crew members floating outside the spaceship,
accompanied by Johann Strauss’s The Blue Danube waltz, and a
montage of psychedelic patterns that erases all temporal borders.
Our almost visceral response to these sequences is a result of the
cinema’s ability to defy our perceptual limits.

FILM IN FOCUS Patterns of Editing in Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
See also: Midnight Cowboy (1969); Fight
Club (1999)
To watch a video showcasing the editing of Bonnie and Clyde (1967), go to
LaunchPad for The Film Experience at launchpadworks.com
Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967) represented a new kind of American
filmmaking in the late 1960s, in part because its complex spatial and temporal
patterns of editing departed from established norms. Based on the story of two
famous outlaws from the 1930s, the film describes the meeting of the title
characters and their violent but clownish crime wave through the Depression-era
South. As their escapades continue, they are naively surprised by their notoriety.
Soon the gaiety of their adventures gives way to bloodier and darker encounters:
Clyde’s accomplice/brother is killed, and eventually the couple is betrayed and
slaughtered.
Frequently, Dede Allen’s editing of scenes emphasizes temporal and spatial
realism. The scene depicting the outlaw couple’s first small-town bank robbery
begins with a long shot of a car outside the bank. The next shot, from inside the
bank, shows the car parked outside the window. Spatially, this constructs the
geography of the scene; temporally, it conveys the action that takes place within
these linked shots. The scene creates verisimilitude.
At other points in Bonnie and Clyde, the logic of the editing emphasizes
psychological or emotional effects over realism. When Bonnie (Faye Dunaway) is
introduced, for example, the first image we see of her is an extreme close-up of her
lips; the camera pulls back as she turns right to look in a mirror. This is followed by
a cut on action as she stands and looks back over her shoulder to the le� in a

http://launchpadworks.com/

medium shot and then by another cut on action as she drops to her bed, her face
visible in a close-up through the bedframe, which she petulantly punches. Here
Bonnie’s restless movements are depicted by a series of jerky shots, and through
the editing, we sense her boredom and frustration with small-town life [Figures
5.40a and 5.40b].
5.40a and 5.40b Bonnie and Clyde (1967). The lack of an establishing shot combines
with the multiple framings to emphasize the claustrophobic mise-en-scène, taking us
right into the character’s psychologically rendered space.
Description
The first still shows a close up of a female character holding the steel
headboard of a bed and looking numb. The second still shows the close-up
of her eyes.
Next, Bonnie goes to her window and, in a point-of-view construction, spots a
strange man near her mother’s car. She comes downstairs to find out what he is
doing, and her conversation with Clyde (Warren Beatty) is handled in a series of
shot/reverse shots, starting with long shots as she comes outside and proceeding
to closer pairs of shots. The two-shot of the characters together is delayed. The
way this introduction is handled emphasizes the inevitability of their pairing.
The final scene is the film’s most famous and influential, and the strategies used
serve as an instructive summary of the patterns and logic of editing. Accompanied

by the staccato of machine-gun bullets, Bonnie’s and Clyde’s deaths are filmed in
slow motion, their bodies reacting with almost balletic grace to the gunshots and
to the rhythm of the film’s shots, which are almost as numerous. In nearly thirty
cuts in approximately forty seconds, the film alternates between the two victims’
spasms and the reestablishing shots of the death scene. Clyde’s fall to the ground
is split into three shots, overlapping the action [Figures 5.41a–5.41c]. The hail of
bullets finally stops, and the film’s final minute is composed of a series of seven
shots of the police and other onlookers gathering around, without a single reverse
shot of what they are seeing. One of the more creative and troubling dimensions of
the film is the striking combination of slow, romantic scenes and fast-paced action
sequences, which culminate in this memorable finale.
5.41a–5.41c Bonnie and Clyde (1967). Clyde’s famous death sequence uses slow-
motion cinematography, cutting on movement, and overlapping editing.

Description
The first still shows a male character getting shot at. The subsequent still
shows him trying to crawl on the ground as he gets shot. The third still show
his lying dead on the ground; he has bullet holes all over his body.
For linking sex with violence, glamorizing its protagonists through beauty and
fashion, and addressing itself to the antiauthoritarian feelings of young audiences,
Bonnie and Clyde is among the most important U.S. films of the 1960s. Together
with other countercultural milestones such as The Graduate (1967) and Easy Rider
(1969), it heralded the end of studio-style production and the beginning of a new
youth-oriented film market that revisited film genres of the past with a modern
sensibility. However, as we have seen, it was not only the film’s content that was
innovative. Bonnie and Clyde’s editing and the climactic linkage of gunshots with
camera shots also influenced viewers — from filmmakers to the American public.
Editing as a Subjective Experience or
as an Objective Perspective
These two aims of film editing o�en overlap. The abstract images in
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) make us think about the boundaries of
humanity and the vastness of the universe — and perhaps about
cinema as a manipulation of images in space and time. Many of
Alfred Hitchcock’s climactic sequences generate emotions of
suspense — achieved in Saboteur (1942) by suspending a character
from the Statue of Liberty [Figures 5.42a and 5.42b]. The scene also
transcends the confines of perception by showing us details that
would be impossible to see without the aid of the movie camera.

5.42a and 5.42b Saboteur (1942). Suspense is made literal — and visceral — as a man’s fate
hangs by a thread.
Description
The first still shows a man climbing up the hand of the draped lady
holding a torch statue. The second still shows a close-up of a pant
tearing up.
Our responses to such editing patterns are never guaranteed. We
may feel emotionally manipulated by a cut to a close-up or cheated
by a cutaway. Additionally, across historical periods and in different
cultures, editing styles can seem vastly different, and audience
expectations vary accordingly. In a song-and-dance sequence from
the Hindi film hit Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (The Big Hearted Will
Take the Bride) (1995), the editing uses flashbacks and costume
changes on match cuts to highlight the central couple’s predestined
romance [Figures 5.43a and 5.43b]. Audiences familiar with the
conventions accept these ruptures in time and space; those less

familiar may be surprised with the return to verisimilitude a�er the
number.
5.43a and 5.43b Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (The Big Hearted Will Take the Bride) (1995).
Editing transcends time and space within the film’s song-and-dance sequences and resumes
continuity as the narrative moves forward.
Description
Still (a), shows a young woman and a man standing by the side of a river.
The woman holds out the right hand with the palm facing downward.
Still (b), shows the close-up shot of the woman smiling as her hand his
held by an individual not in the frame.
Primary Traditions in Editing
Practices: Continuity, Disjunctions,
and Convergences
As we have noted, continuity editing is so pervasive in narrative film
and television that its basic tenets read as “rules.” These include

invisible editing, the 180-degree rule, shot/reverse-shot exchanges,
and matches on action (see Continuity Style earlier in this chapter).
Since the first uses of editing in the early twentieth century,
however, continuity rules have been paralleled and sometimes
directly challenged by various alternative practices [Figures 5.44a
and 5.44b]. Here we refer to these practices collectively as
disjunctive editing to distinguish these styles from continuity editing
and to illuminate historical, cultural, and philosophical differences
in editing styles. These traditions are not unified, however, and in
modern filmmaking, multiple editing methods sometimes converge
in the editing style of a single film.
5.44a and 5.44b Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959). The principles of continuity editing are
illustrated by their failed execution in a film by notorious B filmmaker Edward D. Wood Jr.
When actor Bela Lugosi died before filming was complete on this low-budget sci-fi horror
film, the director replaced him with another actor in a cape. Clearly, props alone do not
create continuity.

Description
The first still shows a male character in a graveyard. The second still
shows a character wearing a cape covering his nose and mouth.
Disjunctive editing is visible editing. It calls attention to the cut
through spatial tension, temporal jumps, or rhythmic or graphic
patterns and therefore makes a definitive break from cutting in the
service of verisimilitude. Alternative editing practices based on
oppositional relationships or other formal constructions can be
traced back to early developments in film syntax in various
countries and schools excited about the possibilities of film art.
These practices confront viewers with juxtapositions and linkages
that seem unnatural or unexpected with two main purposes — to
call attention to the editing for aesthetic, conceptual, ideological, or
psychological purposes and to disorient, disturb, or affect viewers
viscerally.
When viewers notice a particular cut or cutting pattern because it is
jarring, they may be led to reflect on its meaning or effect.
Disjunctive editing is prominent in avant-garde and political film
traditions, and some theorists argue that it leads the viewer to
develop a critical perspective on the medium, the film’s subject
matter, or the process of representation itself. Other effects of
disjunctive editing patterns may be more physical than rational.
Editing may be organized around any number of different aspects,

such as spatial tension, temporal experimentation, or rhythmic and
graphic patterns.
One technique that is used many different ways in disjunctive
editing is the jump cut — a cut that interrupts a particular action and
intentionally or unintentionally creates discontinuities in the spatial
or temporal development of shots. Used loosely, the term jump cut
can identify several different disjunctive practices. Cutting a section
out of the middle of a shot causes a jump ahead to a later point in
the action. Sometimes the background of a shot may remain
constant while figures shi� position inexplicably. Two shots from
the same angle but from different distances also create a jump when
juxtaposed. Although such jumps are considered grave errors in
continuity editing, as noted previously, they were reintroduced into
the editing vocabulary of narrative films by the French New Wave,
notably Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960). Jump cuts gave Godard’s
gangster narrative an outlaw energy. Contemporary films such as
The Big Short (2015) have appropriated this technique to allow
viewers to experience the disorientation and, in this case, the
frightening lack of logic that propelled the 2008 housing market
collapse [Figures 5.45a and 5.45b].

5.45a and 5.45b The Big Short (2015). Hollywood films have increasingly appropriated jump
cuts. Here, shots of Steve Carell’s character convey his distracted state.
Description
The first still shows the male protagonist walking on the sidewalk
preoccupied with his cell phone. A man boards a cab behind him. The
second still shows the character stills holds his phone in his right hand
and looking dead ahead distractedly.

Jump cuts illustrate the two primary aims of disjunctive editing. In
Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together (1997), they contribute to the film’s
overall stylization. Jumps in distance and time are combined with
changes in film stock within a supposedly continuous scene
[Figures 5.46a and 5.46b]. Rather than simply taking in the action,
the viewer notices how the action is depicted. The viewer may reflect
on how the disjointed shots convey the characters’ restless yet
stagnant moods, recognize in them the film’s theme of
displacement, or appreciate the aesthetic effect for its own sake.
5.46a and 5.46b Happy Together (1997). Here jump cuts draw attention to the restlessness
and displacement of two men who have moved from Hong Kong to Buenos Aires.
Description
The first still shows a man with a parcel knocking on a door. The second
still shows a man delivering a parcel directly to a person.
The jump cuts in Alain Resnais’s Last Year at Marienbad (1961) are a
central device that the film uses to play with space and especially
time. The major conceit of this classic art film is the characters’

different versions of the past. The protagonist (known only as X)
insists that he met the heroine (A) at the same hotel one year before,
and she denies it. This difference in point of view relates to the
viewer’s disorientation through editing. Numerous images show the
female protagonist striking poses around the hotel and gardens
[Figures 5.47a and 5.47b]. The temporal relationship among such
shots is unclear (are they happening now, are they flashbacks, or are
they X’s version of events?), and differences in costume and setting
are countered by similarities in posture and styling. Finally, the
editing strategy becomes a reflection on the process of viewing a
film. How can we assume that the action we are viewing is
happening now, when recording, editing, projection, and viewing
are all distinct temporal operations?
5.47a and 5.47b Last Year at Marienbad (1961). Delphine Seyrig strikes poses against
various backgrounds, challenging our perception of time and place in the narrative and in
cinematic viewing more generally. The technique was later adopted in music videos.
Description
The first still shows the female protagonist standing against the railing of
a balcony with her hands resting on it. The balcony overlooks a pathway

with manicured gardens on either side. The second still shows the
protagonist standing in the middle of a huge room, wearing a white dress
and a pair of stilettos, striking a pose.
One principle behind the use of disjunctive edits like jump cuts for
some filmmakers is the concept of distanciation introduced by
German playwright Bertolt Brecht in his plays and critical writings
of the 1920s. This artistic practice is intended to create an
intellectual distance between the viewer and the work of art in order
to reflect on the work’s production or the various ideas and issues
that it raises. When viewers are made aware of how the work is put
together, they are encouraged to think as well as to feel. In Two or
Three Things I Know About Her (1967), Jean-Luc Godard uses
nondiegetic inserts (like numbered chapter headings, printed text,
and advertising images) as distanciation devices. Recall that, strictly
speaking, the word montage simply means “editing.” As noted
previously, the most important tradition in disjunctive editing is the
Soviet theory of montage, which aims to grab viewers’ attention
through the collision between shots (see “1919–1929: Soviet
Montage” earlier in this chapter). As some of the techniques used by
the Soviets were adapted elsewhere, the term montage sequence
came to denote a series of thematically linked shots or shots meant
to show the passage of time, joined by quick cuts or other devices,
such as dissolves, wipes, and superimpositions. In studio-era
Hollywood, the Soviet émigré Slavko Vorkapich specialized in

creating memorable montage sequences such as the earthquake in
San Francisco (1936) [Figures 5.48a–5.48c].
5.48a–5.48c San Francisco (1936). Although continuity editing was the norm in studio-era
Hollywood, montage sequences were created for special purposes, such as this spectacular
earthquake scene.
Description
The first still shows parts of a building crumbing down and creating a
cloud of smoke; a man in the same building leans out of the window of
his apartment. The second still shows the remains of a building including

the piano that is fallen over. The scene is hazy and lightly grainy. The
third still shows a little girl crying as she looks upward.
Today the term montage is used to emphasize the creative power of
editing — especially the potential to build up a sequence and
augment meaning — rather than simply the removal of the
extraneous (as the term cutting implies). This principle of
construction is behind abstract and animated films and videos that
convey visual patterns through their editing (examples of which are
explored in Chapter 9). It also informs films made from found
footage, which date back at least to montage experiments like The
Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (1927), cut from existing footage by
Soviet filmmaker Esfir Shub when film stock was in short supply.
One of the first explorations of the overabundance of images that
saturated postwar consumer culture, Bruce Conner’s A Movie (1958)
is a rapid montage that creates humorous, sinister, and thought-
provoking relationships among images culled from newsreels,
pinups, war movies, and Hollywood epics. The introduction of
consumer videos in the 1980s made the editing of found footage and
the use of video effects accessible to artists as well as amateurs.
Cecilia Barriga’s low-budget analog video art piece Meeting of Two
Queens (1991) is ingeniously constructed by recutting brief clips from
the films of Hollywood icons Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. The
resulting video suggests a romance between the two by using
viewers’ expectations of continuity editing and altering mise-en-
scène through superimposition.

Converging Editing Styles
Does the editing of the film you’ve just viewed for class call attention to itself in
a disjunctive fashion, setting up conflicts or posing oppositional values? If so,
how and to what end?
Given the influence of other traditions and styles, editing in
mainstream films arguably no longer strives for invisibility.
Certainly, it is no longer possible (if it ever was) to assign specific
responses, such as passive acceptance or political awareness, to
specific editing techniques.
Digital technology has revolutionized the cra� and language of
editing. Using footage from one hundred small digital video
cameras, Lars von Trier in Dancer in the Dark (2000) breaks down
actions much more minutely than through standard editing, and the
arbitrariness of the cutting becomes apparent rather than
remaining hidden. As the two formal traditions of continuity and
disjunctive editing converge, the values associated with each
tradition become less distinct. For Eisenstein, calling attention to
the editing was important because it could change the viewers’
consciousness. For contemporary filmmakers, omitting establishing
shots, breaking the 180-degree rule, and using rapid montage may
serve primarily to establish a stylish, eye-catching look.

Editing is perhaps the most distinctive feature of film form. Editing
leads viewers to experience images viscerally and emotionally, and
it remains one of the most effective ways to create meanings from
shots. These interpretations can vary — from the almost automatic
inferences about space, time, and narrative that we draw from the
more familiar continuity editing patterns to the intellectual puzzles
posed by the unfamiliar spatial and temporal juxtapositions of
disjunctive editing practices.

Chapter 5 Review
SUMMARY
Editing is the process of combining shots into scenes and
sequences.
Editing technology and practices have changed significantly
over time.
Director D. W. Griffith helped pioneer the technique of
crosscutting (also called parallel editing), which involves
alternating between multiple strands of simultaneous
narrative action.
Montage refers to a theory of editing that emphasizes the
breaks and contrasts between images joined by a cut. It is
closely associated with Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein.
The introduction of sound technology in the late 1920s
solidified Hollywood’s commitment to continuity editing
(also called invisible editing), an approach that emphasizes
spatial and temporal clarity to establish verisimilitude.
Beginning in the 1940s, cinematic realism was established as
one of the primary aesthetic principles in film editing,
influenced in part by Italian neorealism and documentary
films. Around the same time, alternative editing styles
emerged, including various forms of disjunctive editing, such
as jump cuts.

From the 1990s to the present, digital editing has allowed
editors freedom to manipulate and combine images in new
ways. Editing in Hollywood films has become increasingly
fast paced.
Editing involves decisions about which shots to include, the
most effective take of each shot, the arrangement and duration
of shots, and the transitions between them.
A cut describes the break that links two different pieces of
film and separates two shots.
Other types of editing transitions between shots — known as
optical effects — include fade-outs, fade-ins, dissolves , the
iris, and wipes.
An establishing shot is an initial long shot that establishes
the setting and orients the viewer in space to a clear view of
the action.
The 180-degree rule is a conventional rule of continuity
editing in which the camera must film the action of a
scene from one side of an imaginary line called the axis of
action.
The 30-degree rule specifies that a shot should be
followed only by another shot taken from a position
greater than 30 degrees from that of the first.
Story chronology can be manipulated through flashbacks or,
more rarely, flashforwards.
Narrative duration denotes the temporal relation of shots
and scenes to the amount of time that passes in the story.

Editing styles convey different perspectives on art and realism.
Disjunctive editing confronts the viewer by calling attention to
the editing for aesthetic, conceptual, ideological, or
psychological purposes.
KEY TERMS
editing
storyboard
cut
crosscutting
parallel editing
montage
dialectical montage
intercutting
continuity editing
jump cut
shock cut
fade-out
fade-in
dissolve
wipe
verisimilitude
continuity style
establishing shot
two-shot
over-the-shoulder shot
reestablishing shot

insert
180-degree rule
axis of action
30-degree rule
shot/reverse shot
eyeline match
match on action
graphic match
reaction shot
story time
plot time
screen time
chronology
flashback
narrative frequency
flashforward
narrative duration
ellipsis
cutaway
overlapping editing
pace
average shot length
long take
sequence shot
slow cinema
rhythmic editing
scene
sequence

segmentation
disjunctive editing
distanciation
montage sequence
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CHAPTER 6 FILM SOUND
Listening to the Cinema

Description

The still shows a woman in a black dress standing on a beach beside a
piano. A girl in a white dress sits on the piano.
Jane Campion’s 1993 The Piano opens with its nineteenth-century
heroine Ada McGrath’s voiceover: “The voice you hear is not my speaking
voice; it is my mind’s voice.” This is the first indication of the inventive
uses to which the film will put sound — for Ada is mute, and we will not
hear her “mind’s voice” again until the film’s final moments. She is about
to emigrate from Scotland to New Zealand to marry a man whom she has
never met, and the grand piano that she takes with her becomes her
primary means of expression. Even when Ada is forced to leave the piano
on the beach where she lands because it is too large to transport, the
film’s soundtrack acts as a link between her and the piano, as Michael
Nyman’s score shi�s from Ada playing to the film’s soundtrack. Later the
piano becomes an instrument of exchange and erotic expression, when
she must barter for its return from the man who buys it from her
husband. The Piano recognizes from the start that film sound does not
simply play a supporting role and is not restricted to human speech.
Rather, film sound — as dialogue, music, and sound effects — can create
a drama as complex as mise-en-scène, cinematography, or editing.
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Cinema is an audiovisual medium, one among many that saturate
our contemporary media experience. Many of the visual

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technologies we encounter in daily life are also sound technologies:
you choose your smartphone’s ringtone, battle villains to the
soundtrack of your favorite video game, or notice that your
television’s volume soars when a commercial interrupts a program.
These devices use sound to encourage and guide interaction, to
complement visual information, and to give rhythm and dimension
to the experience. Cinema works similarly, using complex
combinations of voice, music, and sound effects. Too o�en given
secondary status, sound engages viewers perceptually, provides key
spatial and story information, and affords an aesthetic experience of
its own.
Sound is a sensual experience that in some cases makes an even
deeper impression than a film’s visuals. Viewers might cover their
eyes during the infamous shower scene in Psycho (1960), but to
lessen the scene’s horror, they would have to escape from the
shrieking violins that punctuate each thrust of the knife. To perceive
an image, we must face forward with our eyes open, but sound can
come from any direction. Listening to movies, just as much as
watching them, defines the filmgoing experience, and advanced
technologies have helped to make the sound experience more
immersive than ever before. This chapter explores how speech,
music, and sound effects are used in cinema and how they are
perceived by a film’s audience.
KEY OBJECTIVES

Explain the various ways sound is important to the film experience.
Describe how the use and understanding of sound reflect different historical
and cultural influences.
Explain how sounds convey meaning in relation to images.
Summarize how sounds are recorded, combined, and reproduced.
Detail the various functions of voice in film.
Describe the principles and practices that govern the use of music.
Outline the principles and practices that govern the use of sound effects.
Analyze the cultural, historical, and aesthetic values that determine
relationships between sounds and images.

A Short History of Film Sound
The history of film sound might appear to begin with the talkies at
the end of the 1920s, but in fact both the technical advances
necessary to the invention of the cinema and its roots in other
storytelling and entertainment practices are as tied to sound as they
are to image. “Silent” films were accompanied by live music, sound
effects, and human voices, and at most key moments of
technological change, sound innovations paralleled advances in
imaging.
Prehistories of Film Sound
The central role played by music in cinema arises from its theatrical
predecessors. The practice of combining music with forms of visual
spectacle in the Western tradition goes back at least as far as choral
odes in classical Greek theater. Perhaps most relevant to the use of
sound in early cinema is the tradition of stage melodrama — a
sensational narrative whose clearly identifiable moral types,
coincidences, and reversals of fortune are dramatized by music. In
eighteenth-century France, the word mélodrame designated a
theatrical genre that combined spoken text with music. In England,
plays with music provided popular theatrical spectacles during a
time when laws restricted “legitimate” theater to particular venues.
Stage melodrama dominated the nineteenth-century American

stage; its influence is seen in silent films like D. W. Griffith’s Way
Down East (1920), an adaptation of a successful play.
In addition to music, cinematic predecessors such as magic lantern
shows and travel lectures used sound effects and narration as aural
accompaniment. As far back as the late eighteenth century,
inventors were engaged in the problems of sound reproduction.
Thomas Edison’s introduction of the phonograph in 1877 greatly
expanded the public’s taste for technologically mediated
entertainment; his laboratory developed film technology within a
few decades.
1895–1920s: The Sounds of Silent
Cinema
The dream of joining image and sound haunted the medium from its
inception. Edison was a primary figure in the invention of the
motion-picture apparatus, and one of the first films made by his
studios in 1895 is a sound experiment in which Edison’s chief
inventor, W. K. L. Dickson, plays a violin into a megaphone as two
other employees dance [Figure 6.1]. Sound cylinders provided a way
of synchronizing image and sound very early in film history, and
inventors continued to experiment with means of providing
simultaneous picture and sound throughout the silent film era.

6.1 Dickson Experimental Sound Film (1894–5). The first film with live sound recording,
made with the Kinetophone system developed by W. K. L. Dickson and Thomas Edison at the
Black Maria, Edison’s New Jersey studio.
But before the successful development and widespread showing of
films with synchronized sound, loudspeakers lured customers into
film exhibitions that were accompanied by lecturers, pianos, organs,
small ensembles, and eventually full orchestras. The so-called silent
cinema used sound very intentionally. O�en sound effects were
supplied by someone standing behind the screen or by specially
designed machines. Occasionally, actors even provided dialogue to
go along with the picture. Moreover, in nickelodeons and other
movie venues, audiences themselves customarily made noise,

joining in sing-alongs between films [Figures 6.2a and 6.2b] and
talking back to the screen.
6.2a and 6.2b Early nickelodeon slides. From 1905 to 1915, films were interspersed with
sing-alongs, and slides like these provided the lyrics for an interactive experience.
Description
The slide (a) shows a romantic scene between a man and a woman
which features a sing-along that reads,”I press you, ca-ress you, And
bless the day you taught me to care, To al-ways re-mem-ber the ramb-
ling rose you wear in your hair.”
The slide (b) titled”all join in the chorus” shows the following lyrics.
“She’s on-ly a bird in a gild-ed cage,
A beau-ti-ful sight to see,
You may think she’s hap-py and free
from care, She’s not, though she
seems to be—
‘Tis sad when you think of her wast-ed life

For youth can-not mate with age—
And her beau-ty was sold
For an old man’s gold—
She’s a bird in a gild-ed cage.”
From the music halls in Great Britain to vaudeville theaters in the
United States, early cinema borrowed popular talent, proven
material, formats (such as the revue), and audiences that had
specific expectations about sound and spectacle. Because of the
preexisting popularity of minstrel shows and vaudeville, African
American and Jewish voices were heard in cinema when they might
otherwise have been excluded from entertainment directed at mass
audiences. For his sound film debut at MGM, director King Vidor
chose to make Hallelujah! (1929), a musical with an all-black cast,
capitalizing on the cultural associations of African Americans with
the expressive use of song [Figure 6.3]. Both musical performers
and stage performers with vocal training and experience were now
in demand in Hollywood, and they soon displaced many of the silent
screen’s most beloved stars.

6.3 Hallelujah! (1929). With the coming of sound, musicals abounded, from backstage
musicals to King Vidor’s film, shot on location and highlighting an all-black cast.
1927–1930: Transition to Synchronized
Sound
No event in the history of Hollywood film was as transformative as
the rapid incorporation of synchronized sound in the period from
1927 to 1930. Many dynamics were at work in the introduction of
sound, including the relationship of cinema to radio, theater, and
vaudeville, the economic position of the industry as the United

States headed into the Great Depression, and the popularity of
certain film genres and stars. Yet exhibitors needed to be convinced
to adopt the relatively untested new technology. Considerable
expense was involved in converting a sufficient number of theaters
to make the production of sound films feasible, and the studios had
to be willing to make the investment.
In 1926 and 1927, two studios actively pursued competing sound
technologies. Warner Bros. aggressively invested in sound and, in
1926, premiered its Vitaphone sound-on-disc system with a program
of shorts, a recorded speech by Hollywood censor Will H. Hays, and
the first feature film with a recorded score, Don Juan. Fox developed
the Movietone sound system, which recorded sound optically on
film. In 1928, Fox introduced its popular Movietone newsreels,
which depicted everything from ordinary street scenes to exciting
news (aviator Charles Lindbergh’s takeoff for Paris was the first use
of sound for a news item) and were soon playing in Fox’s many
theaters nationwide [Figure 6.4]. The new technology became
impossible to ignore when it branched out from musical
accompaniment and sound effects to include synchronous dialogue.
Public response was enthusiastic.

6.4 Ad for the Fox Movietone Magic Carpet series in the exhibitor’s journal Motion Picture
Herald (1934). Fox Studios’ theater holdings were equipped to show newsreels made with
the studio’s optical sound-recording technology. The newsreels ran from 1928 to 1963 in the
United States.
Description
An audience of silhouetted people stand in the background in front of the
projected image. Text at the bottom left of the poster reads,”Around the
World in Sound and Picture.” The bottom right reads,”A Fox Picture.”
Talking pictures, or “talkies,” were an instant popular phenomenon.
The Jazz Singer, Warner Bros.’ second feature film with recorded
sound, released in October 1927, is credited with convincing
exhibitors, critics, studios, and the public that there was no turning
back. Starring vaudevillian Al Jolson — the country’s most popular
entertainer of the time, who frequently performed in blackface —
the film tells a story, similar to Jolson’s own, of a singer who must
turn his back on his Jewish roots and the legacy of his father, a
cantor in a synagogue, in order to fulfill his show-business dreams.
Jolson introduces dialogue to the movies with a famous promise that
came true soon therea�er: “You ain’t heard nothing yet!” [Figure
6.5]. In the wake of The Jazz Singer’s remarkable success, the studios
came together and signed with Western Electric (a subsidiary of
AT&T) to adopt a sound-on-film system in place of the less flexible
Vitaphone sound-on-disc process. The studios also invested in
converting their major theaters and in acquiring new chains to show
sound films.

6.5 The Jazz Singer (1927). Warner Bros.’ Vitaphone sound-on-disc system became a
sensation because of Al Jolson’s singing and spontaneous dialogue.
1930s–1940s: Challenges and
Innovations in Cinema Sound
The transition to sound was not entirely smooth. The troubles with
exhibition technology were more than matched by the difficulties
posed by cumbersome sound-recording technology. Despite such
problems, the transition was extremely rapid. By 1930, silent films
were no longer being produced by the major studios, and only a few

independent filmmakers, such as Charlie Chaplin, whose art grew
from the silent medium, held out.
The ability of early films to cross national borders and be
understood regardless of the local language, a much-celebrated
property of the early medium, was also changed irrevocably by the
addition of spoken dialogue in a specific language. Film industries
outside the United States acquired national specificity, and
Hollywood set up European production facilities. Exports were
affected by conversion-standard problems and patent disputes. For a
time, films were made simultaneously in different languages.
Marlene Dietrich became an international star in The Blue Angel
(1930), produced in Germany in French, English, and German
versions.
By this period, the Radio Corporation of America had entered the
motion-picture production business, joining with the Keith-Albee-
Orpheum chain of vaudeville theaters. The new studio, RKO Radio
Pictures, quickly became one of five studios known as the “majors”
that dominated sound-era cinema. The score for RKO’s King Kong
(1933) was prolific composer Max Steiner’s breakthrough. Also made
at RKO, Citizen Kane (1941) was more adventurous in its use of
sound, befitting Orson Welles’s background in radio. The
establishment of norms in sound recording and mixing practices
such as continuous scoring and the precedence of dialogue over
other sounds proceeded rapidly a�er the introduction of sound.

1950s–1980s: From Stereophonic to
Dolby Sound
The postwar period saw new attention being paid to the qualities
and varieties of sound. Magnetic tape replaced the optical
soundtrack as a recording medium, bringing greater clarity as well
as new opportunities for creativity and new methods of both
recording and mixing. The increased competition with other forms
of entertainment including radio, television, and the recording
industry encouraged innovations in film sound style and practice.
Conventionally orchestral in style, scores began to incorporate jazz
and popular music [Figure 6.6]. Stereophonic sound — the
recording, mixing, and playback of sound on multiple channels to
create audio perspective — was promoted in the 1950s along with
widescreen technologies to lure audiences away from television
through an immersive sensory experience at the movies. Spectacles
like The Sound of Music (1965) were special events when seen and
heard in properly equipped movie theaters.

6.6 Anatomy of a Murder (1959). Jazz became more prevalent in movie music in the 1950s.
Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn scored Otto Preminger’s acclaimed crime drama, in
which Ellington made a brief appearance.
In the 1960s and 1970s, portable sound-recording technology helped
break out of the studio model, and location sound used in
independent cinema became part of the authenticity and artistry of
the new Hollywood. Sound designer Walter Murch helped make
Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) a new kind of sonic
experience. Dolby Laboratories turned its attention to making the
exhibition experience equal to the quality of film sound production,
and its surround sound systems gave the blockbusters of the 1980s
their powerful audio impact. The introduction of the MTV cable
television channel in 1981 helped producers cross-promote the
soundtrack albums for movies with popular music scores.

1990s–Present: Sound in the Digital
Era
Changes in sound technologies and practices have corresponded
with historical shi�s in film’s social role, with competition from
home video, the expansion of cable, and video games spurring
innovations in theatrical and home experiences. Digital sound
editing and mixing give sound engineers greater flexibility during
production and postproduction, and the sonic style of studio films
since the 1990s has become more dense and kinetic [Figure 6.7].
Just as in the 1950s, when CinemaScope and stereophonic sound
were used to lure customers back to the theaters, digital sound
systems today attract audiences to theatrical exhibition. Audiophiles
led the companion trend toward home theaters with digital sound
systems and speakers configured like those of movie theaters to
emulate surround sound. The perpetual quest for better-quality
images and sounds confirms that one part of cinema’s appeal is its
ability to provide a heightened sensory experience that intensifies
the ordinary.

6.7 Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound (2019). In this documentary about the art and
technology of film sound, directed by sound editor Midge Costin, sound designers like Gary
Rydstrom (pictured here working on Jurassic Park, 1993) demonstrate their cra�.
Description
The corresponding movie scene is displayed on a large screen in front of
him, with a T-rex roaring amidst cars on a street. In front of Gary is an
extensive array of sound design devices, on either side of which are a
computer and laptop.

The Elements of Film Sound
Sound is fully integrated into the film experience. In fact, one aspect
of sound — human speech — is so central to narrative
comprehension and viewer identification that we o�en can follow
what happens even when the picture is out of sight. Sounds can
interact with images in infinite ways, and strategies that combine
the two can affect our understanding of film. In Dr. Strangelove, or:
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), the song
“We’ll Meet Again” — a nostalgic 1940s song used to boost troop
morale during World War II — accompanies footage of hydrogen
bombs dropping and detonating, making it impossible to read these
images as noble or tragic. Instead, the song and images frame the
film’s view of war as dark satire [Figure 6.8].

6.8 Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). An image
of aggression set to nostalgic 1940s music sets the film’s dark satirical tone.
Sound effects of footsteps to accompany an image of a character
walking are not really necessary; such an image is easily interpreted
without the accompaniment. However, the sound of footsteps
heightens the sense of immediacy and presence. In the next section,
we explore the relationship of sound and image and the o�en
unperceived meanings of sound before considering more fully the
technology and aesthetics of film sound.
Sound and Image

Technologies of watching — and listening to — movies have changed rapidly in
recent years. Characterize the audio experience of the last film you watched. How
much of this experience was specific to the film’s sound design, and how much was
related to the format, platform, or venue through which you watched the film?
Any consideration of sound in film entails discussion of the
relationship between sounds and images. Some filmmakers, such as
the comic actor and writer-director Jacques Tati, have consistently
given equal weight to the treatment and meaning of sound in their
films. In Tati’s Playtime (1967), comic gags take place in long shots,
while sounds cue us where to look [Figure 6.9]. Filmmaker Jacques
Demy pursued a vision of film’s musicality in films like The Umbrellas
of Cherbourg (1964), in which all of the dialogue is sung to Michel
Legrand’s music. La La Land (2016) draws extensively from Demy’s
work, including in its color palette, which complements the sense of
heightened experience derived from the music [Figure 6.10]. Derek
Jarman’s Blue (1993), made a�er the filmmaker had lost his vision
due to an AIDS-related illness, combines an image track consisting
solely of a rich shade of blue with a soundtrack featuring a complex
mix of music, effects, and voices reading diaries and dramatic
passages. Gazing into a vast blue screen allows viewers to focus
more carefully on the soundtrack’s ideas and the emotions they
evoke.

6.9 Playtime (1967). Jacques Tati’s comic film emphasizes sound as much as image, o�en
cueing the gag through sound effects.
Description
A sign on the nearby wall reads,”Slam your Doors in Golden Silence.”
6.10 La La Land (2016). The score and mise-en-scène of Damien Chazelle’s bittersweet
romance are in part a tribute to the musical vision of Jacques Demy.

For many filmmakers, however, the function of sound is to enhance
the effect of the image. Many possible reasons exist for this
secondary status. Film is generally considered to be a
predominantly visual medium, following a hierarchy of vision over
sound. The artistry of the image track is perceived to be greater
because the image is more clearly a conscious rendering of the
object being photographed than the recording is of the original
sound. Sound also came later in the historical development of
cinema. Yet the importance and variety of aural experiences at the
movies were great even before the introduction of synchronized
soundtracks.
Since the early years of sound cinema, some directors and
composers have struggled against a too-literal and too-limited use of
sound in film, arguing that the infinite possibilities in image and
sound combinations are germane to the medium and its historical
development. French filmmaker René Clair feared that the
introduction of sound would diminish the visual possibilities of the
medium and reduce it to “canned theater.” In his musical film Le
Million (1931), he uses sound in a way that makes it integral to the
film. Through scenes of characters and crowds singing songs
essential to the plot, Clair demonstrates that sound’s potential is
more than additive. It transforms the film experience viscerally,
aesthetically, and conceptually.
T E C H N O LO G Y I N A C T I O N

Sound and Image
Thomas Edison’s role in the invention of both the phonograph and moving-image
technology underscores the integral role of sound — with its links to telephony,
radio, recorded music, and other communications devices — in the history of
cinema. In 1895, Edison marketed a device that he called the Kinetophone, which
allowed viewers to listen to music while they watched a short film on his
Kinetoscope, an early motion-picture viewing device. Since Edison’s time,
solutions for combining sound and image have become more sophisticated,
ranging from early sound-on-disc systems, to both analog and digital sound-on-
film technologies, to digital audio files.
In the early 1920s, engineers at Bell Laboratories and Western Electric developed
the first commercially viable technology for synchronizing projected images with
sound recorded on a disc. In 1925, the financially shaky Warner Bros. purchased
this technology, which they named the Vitaphone system and used for popular
features like Don Juan (1926) and The Jazz Singer (1927). This technology was
extraordinarily popular with audiences and forever changed the history of
cinemagoing. Around the same time, Fox Films’ prestigious release Sunrise: A Song
of Two Humans (1927), directed by F. W. Murnau, used the rival Movietone sound
system. In the format that eventually was widely adopted in Hollywood and in
other film industries, the soundtrack is printed directly on film alongside the
image track, resulting in perfectly synchronized sound as the wave form passes an
exciter lamp.

6.11a Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927). 1927 was a monumental year for cinema
sound, as several studios released films with groundbreaking sound technologies.
Fox’s Sunrise used Movietone sound, which competed with Warner Bros.’ Vitaphone
sound system.
Description
The scene shows a man in a meadow, smiling as he lifts a baby into the air.
A woman, on their left, sits and smiles as she looks on. A harnessed bullock
is on the right.
In the 1950s, studios sought to enhance the cinema sound experience by recording
and reproducing high-fidelity stereophonic sound, using two or more independent
channels. This new technology made use of magnetic sound systems: in this
process, magnetic tape on which a sound signal is stored is bonded to the

filmstrip. In MGM’s CinemaScope musical Silk Stockings (1957), the characters sing
about the spectacular impact of the widescreen technology with its four tracks of
magnetic sound.
6.11b Silk Stockings (1957). This musical adaptation of Ninotchka (1939) draws
attention to its use of high-fidelity stereophonic sound in a song lyric.
Audio signals encoded in digital form can be stored on 35mm or 70mm film in a
number of ways. Today, however, most commercial theaters project films using
Digital Cinema Packages (DCPs) that contain separate image, sound, and
metadata files. Warner Bros. equipped a select number of theaters to project the
Academy Award–winning Dunkirk (2017) in 70mm, and some theaters exhibited
the film in 70mm IMAX, but most viewers experienced it through digital projection.
While critics debated the differences in image quality between the digital and
analog versions, Dunkirk’s immersive sound experience (designed by Richard King)
and its enveloping score (created by Hans Zimmer in close collaboration with
director Christopher Nolan) also varied substantially depending on sound
technology.

6.11c Dunkirk (2017). Viewers’ experience of sound in this war film differed depending
on whether they saw a digitally projected exhibition or a traditional 35mm or 70mm
exhibition.
Synchronous and Asynchronous Sound
Distinguish an example of synchronous sound (with an onscreen source) from
an example of asynchronous sound (with an offscreen source) in the film you
are studying. Are these sounds easy to distinguish?
Because sound and image always create meaning in conjunction,
film theorists attentive to sound have looked for ways to talk about
the possibilities of the combination of sound and image. In his book
Theory of Film (1960), Siegfried Kracauer emphasizes a distinction

between synchronous and asynchronous sound. Synchronous
sound (also known as onscreen sound), whether recorded during a
scene or synchronized with the filmed images, has a visible
onscreen source, such as when dialogue appears to come directly
from the speaker’s moving lips. Asynchronous sound (also known
as offscreen sound) is sound that does not have a visible onscreen
source. For instance, although most film speech is synchronous,
voiceovers are asynchronous because they do not coordinate with
the action of the scene. A shot of an alarm clock accompanied by the
sound of its ringing is synchronous. An asynchronous knock in a
horror film might startle the characters with the threat of an
offscreen presence.
Kracauer goes on to differentiate between parallel sound (which
reinforces the image, such as synchronized dialogue or sound
effects, or a voiceover that is consistent with what is displayed
onscreen) and contrapuntal sound (which contrasts in meaning
with the image that is displayed onscreen). In Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004),
as The Bride attempts to break out of a sealed coffin, the selections
from Ennio Morricone’s early scores for spaghetti westerns offer a
counterpoint to this horrific situation [Figure 6.12]. Soon, the sound
of The Bride’s fist on the coffin lid, which parallels her methodical
punching, combines with the music for heightened effect.

6.12 Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004). Spaghetti western music acts as a counterpoint to the horrific
images of The Bride punching her way out of a sealed coffin.
The two pairs of terms are distinct from each other and not mutually
exclusive. A shot of a teakettle accompanied by a high-pitched
whistle is both synchronous and parallel. The teakettle
accompanied by an alarm bell would be a synchronous yet
contrapuntal use of sound. A voiceover of a nature documentary
may explain the behavior of the animals in a parallel use of
asynchronous sound. Idyllic images accompanied by a narration
stressing the presence of toxins in the environment and an ominous
electronic hum would be a contrapuntal use of asynchronous sound.

A familiar example of how relationships between sound and image
can achieve multiple meanings comes at the end of The Wizard of Oz
(1939). The booming voice and sound effects synchronized with the
terrifying image of the wizard are suddenly revealed to have been
asynchronous sounds produced by an ordinary man behind the
curtain. When we see him speaking into a microphone, the sound is
in fact synchronous, and what was intended as a parallel is revealed
to be a contrapuntal use of sound [Figure 6.13].
6.13 The Wizard of Oz (1939). The source of the wizard’s voice is revealed, interrupting the
synchronous effect that frightened the travelers.

Parallelism — the mutual reinforcing or even the redundancy of
sound and image — is the norm in Hollywood. For example, a shot of
a busy street is accompanied by traffic noises, although viewers
immediately understand the locale through the visuals. This
parallelism is an aesthetic choice. In contrast, at the dawn of the
sound era, Soviet theorists advocated a contrapuntal use of sound to
maximize the effects of montage.
Diegetic and Nondiegetic Sound
Watch this clip from Guardians of the Galaxy (2014). What would the scene be
like without the nondiegetic sound?
One of the most frequently cited and instructive distinctions that is
made in sound is between diegetic sound (which has its source in
the narrative world of film) and nondiegetic sound (which does not

have an identifiable source in the characters’ world). Materially, the
source of film sound is the actual soundtrack that accompanies the
image, but diegetic sound implies an onscreen source. Diegesis is
the world of the film’s story (its characters, places, and events),
including both what is shown and what is implied to have taken
place. The word diegesis comes from the Greek word meaning
“telling” and is distinguished from mimesis, meaning “showing.” The
implication is that mimetic representations imitate or mimic and
diegetic ones use particular devices to tell about or imply events and
settings.
One question offers a simple way to distinguish between diegetic
and nondiegetic sound: can the characters in the film hear the
sound? If not, the sound is likely to be nondiegetic. This distinction
can apply to voices, music, and even sound effects. Examples of
diegetic sounds include conversations among onscreen characters,
the voice of God in The Ten Commandments (1956), a voiceover that
corresponds to a confession a character is making to the police, and
the song “Superfreak” accompanying the little girl’s pageant dance
routine in Little Miss Sunshine (2006) [Figure 6.14]. Nondiegetic
sounds do not follow rules of verisimilitude. For example, the
voiceover narration that tells viewers about the characters in The
Magnificent Ambersons (1942), background music that accompanies a
love scene or journey, or sound effects such as a crash of cymbals
when someone takes a comic fall are all nondiegetic. Audio
practitioners use the term source music to refer to diegetic music,

such as a band performing at a party or characters listening to
music on the radio.
6.14 Little Miss Sunshine (2006). Source music provides the soundtrack in this scene from
Little Miss Sunshine.
The distinction between diegetic and nondiegetic sounds sometimes
can be murky. Certain voiceovers, although not spoken aloud to
other characters, can be construed as the thoughts of a character

and thus as arising from the narrative world of the film. Film
theorist Christian Metz has classified this as semidiegetic sound (it
can also be referred to as internal diegetic sound). The uncertain
status of the dead character’s voiceover in Sunset Boulevard (1950) is
an example. Diegetic music — such as characters singing “Happy
Birthday” — is o�en picked up as a nondiegetic theme in the film’s
score. Such borderline and mixed cases, rather than frustrating our
attempts to categorize, are illustrative of the fluidity and creative
possibilities of the soundtrack as well as of the complex devices that
shape our experience of a film’s spatial and temporal continuity.
In the film soundtrack — audio recorded to synchronize with a
moving image, including dialogue, music, and sound effects — these
three elements o�en are present simultaneously. In some sense, a
film’s image track, composed of relatively discrete photographic
images and text, is simpler and more unified. Nevertheless,
although these three sound elements can all be present and
combined in relation to any given image, conventions have evolved
governing these relationships. Usually dialogue is audible over
music, for example, and only in special cases does a piece of music
dictate the images that accompany it. In the following sections, we
examine each of the three basic elements of the soundtrack and its
potential to make meaning in combination with images and other
sounds. We uncover conventional usages of soundtracks and discuss
the ways that they have both shaped the film experience and given

direction to theorists’ inquiries into the properties and potential of
film sound.
FILM IN FOCUS Sound and Image in Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
See also: 42nd Street (1933); Om Shanti
Om (2007); The Artist (2011)
To watch a video about sound and image in Singin’ in the Rain (1952), go to
LaunchPad for The Film Experience at launchpadworks.com
Hollywood has furnished its own myth about the introduction of synchronized
sound in Singin’ in the Rain (1952). Directed by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly,
Singin’ in the Rain demonstrates an escapist use of sound in film while also being
about how sound in film achieves such effects. It addresses the relationship of
sound to image, the history of film sound technologies, and the process of
recording and reproducing sound.
Set in Hollywood at the end of the 1920s, Singin’ in the Rain follows efforts at the
fictional Monumental Pictures to make the studio’s first successful sound film.
Although the film’s self-consciousness about the filmmaking process invites the
audience into a behind-the-scenes perspective, the film itself continues to employ
every available technique to achieve the illusionism of the Hollywood musical.
One of the lessons of the film is that a “talking picture” is not just “a silent picture
with some talking added,” as the studio producer assumes it to be. The film shows
that adding sound to images enhances them with all the exuberance of song and
dance, comedy, and romance. It also suggests that a great deal of labor and
equipment are involved in creating such effects.

http://launchpadworks.com/

From the very beginning of Singin’ in the Rain, the technology responsible for
sound reproduction — technology that usually is hidden — is displayed. The film
opens outside a Hollywood movie palace where crowds have gathered for the
premiere of the new Don Lockwood and Lina Lamont picture. Our first orientation
is aural: “Ladies and gentlemen, I am speaking to you from ….” The asynchronous
announcer’s voice carries across the crowds and seems to address us directly. The
second shot opens directly on a loudspeaker, underscoring the parallelism of
image and soundtrack, and then begins to explore the crowd of listeners. When we
first see the radio announcer, the source of the synchronous voice, the microphone
is very prominent in the mise-en-scène [Figure 6.15]. Referring to the bygone days
of radio and silent movies, the film celebrates its modern audience’s opportunity
to watch sound and image combined in a sophisticated MGM musical.
6.15 Singin’ in the Rain (1952). A concern with sound-recording technology is evident
in the microphone’s prominence in the first scene.

Singin’ in the Rain immediately begins to exploit the resources and conventions of
studio-era sound cinema. When star Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) is interviewed, he
embellishes the story of his past to the assembled crowds and the radio listeners
at home. But a flashback contradicts his diegetic voiceover. As his offscreen voice
speaks of studying at a music conservatory, we see him and his buddy, Cosmo
Brown (Donald O’Connor), performing a vaudeville routine instead. Contrapuntal
sound shows that images and voices can be out of sync, a theme that becomes
prominent in the film as a whole. It also shows the multiple ways the soundtrack
can interact with the images. The comic vaudeville routine is, in turn,
accompanied by lively music and humorous sound effects — the diegetic sound of
the flashback world — encouraging our direct appreciation of the number. Next we
hear the crowd’s appreciative reactions to Lockwood’s narration, a narration that
we know to be phony. However, we do not experience these two different levels of
sound — Don’s self-serving narration and the debunking synchronized sound of
the flashbacks — as confusing. It is clear that the film’s unveiling of the
mechanisms of sound technology will not limit its own reliance on the multiple
illusions of sound-image relationships.
Later, when Don wants to express the depth of his feelings to Kathy Selden (Debbie
Reynolds), he takes her to an empty soundstage. Ironically, his sincerity depends
on the artifice of a sunset background, a wind machine, and a battery of mood
lights, which together render the very picture of romance [Figure 6.16]. Yet the
corresponding sound illusion is conjured without any visible sound recording or
effects equipment, much less an onscreen orchestra. Indeed, each of Don’s
touches, such as switching on the wind machine, is synchronized with a
nondiegetic musical flourish. It is possible to ask us to suspend our disbelief in this
way because, in the film’s world, music is everywhere.

6.16 Singin’ in the Rain (1952). The illusion of romance is visibly created on the
soundstage, but the music that the characters dance to has no apparent source.
Don’s love interest Kathy is depicted as genuine because she can sing: her image
and sound go together. In contrast, his onscreen leading lady, Lina Lamont (Jean
Hagen), represents an image without the animating authenticity of sound.
Although Lina is beautiful, she speaks with a comical accent. Ironically, the
actress’s hilarious performance is one of the greatest aural pleasures of the movie.
In the course of the film, Don Lockwood must learn to incorporate his true self —
the one who expresses himself by “singin’ and dancin’ in the rain” — into his
onscreen persona.
Nothing illustrates the film’s paradoxical acknowledgment of the sound-image
illusions constructed by Hollywood and its indulgence in them better than the
contrast between the disastrous premiere of the nonsinging The Dueling Cavalier
and the film’s final scene at the opening night of the musical The Dancing Cavalier,
in which the truth of Lina’s imposture comes out. In the former, a noisy audience

laughs at and heckles the errors of poor synchronous sound recording. The actors’
heartbeats and rustling costumes drown out their dialogue (for us, of course, the
laughter and the heartbeats are both sound effects, the latter mixed at comically
high levels). The film they have created fundamentally misunderstands the
promise of “talking pictures.”
At the premiere of the musical The Dancing Cavalier, in contrast, the film finally
makes the proper match, not only between sound and image (thus correcting the
humorous synchronization problems of the first version) but also between Don
and Kathy. A�er she is forced to dub Lina “live” at the premiere and the hoax is
exposed when the curtains are drawn for all the audience to see, the humiliated
Kathy runs from the stage. Don gets her back by singing “You Are My Lucky Star” to
her from the stage (thus demonstrating before the audience in the film that unlike
Lina, he used his own singing voice during the film within a film). Cosmo conducts
the conveniently present orchestra (the premiere is of a sound film that should not
require accompaniment), and Kathy joins Don in a duet.
But we should not read the film as suggesting that the onscreen orchestra is more
genuine than the romantic background music of the earlier scenes because it is
synchronous. The film ends triumphantly with asynchronous music. A full,
invisible chorus picks up “You Are My Lucky Star” as the camera takes us out into
the open air, to pause on the billboard announcing the premiere of Singin’ in the
Rain, starring Lockwood and Selden (who are represented by images of the stars of
the movie by the same name that we are watching, Gene Kelly and Debbie
Reynolds) [Figure 6.17]. This patently fake chorus and the billboard advertising
the film we are watching are the culmination of the film’s effort to render
Hollywood illusionism — so aptly represented by extravagant musicals such as
Singin’ in the Rain — natural. Singin’ in the Rain dramatizes the arrival of sound in
Hollywood as the inevitable and enjoyable combination of sound and image.

6.17 Singin’ in the Rain (1952). The film’s final reflexive moment is accompanied by an
invisible chorus on the soundtrack.
Sound Production
As early as preproduction, a sound designer plans a film’s overall
sound. During production, sound recording of dialogue and other
sound takes place simultaneously with the filming of a scene. At the
beginning of each take, the hinged clapstick on the clapperboard is
snapped to synchronize sound recordings and camera images
[Figure 6.18]. Microphones for recording sound may be placed on

the actors, suspended over the action outside the frame (on a long
pole called a boom), or placed in other locations on set.
6.18 Clapperboard. Invented by Australian filmmaker F. W. Thring, clapperboards have been
used to synchronize sound and image since the first sound films.
Direct sound is sound captured directly from its source, and
reflected sound is captured as it bounces from the walls and sets to
give a sense of space. The production sound mixer (or sound
recordist) combines these different sources during filming,
adjusting their relative volume or balance. In the multitrack sound-
recording process introduced in Robert Altman’s Nashville (1975), as
many as twenty-four separate tracks of sound can be recorded on
twelve tracks. Besides adding an audio density to the realism of the

image, both direct and reflected sound can be used to comment
creatively on the characters and their environment — for instance,
in Altman’s films, emphasizing the complexity of communication.
When a cut of the film is prepared, postproduction sound is
recorded to fill out the soundtrack. Sound effects may be gathered,
produced by sound-effects editors on computers, retrieved from a
sound library, or generated by foley artists. Named for the
legendary sound man Jack Foley, these are members of the sound
crew who generate live synchronized sound effects — footsteps, the
rustle of leaves, a key turning in a lock — while watching the
projected film on what is called a foley stage [Figure 6.19]. Room
tone may be recorded to approximate the aural properties of a
location or extras instructed to speak the nonsense word walla to
approximate the sound of a crowd to fill out the soundtrack.

6.19 Foley artists. While watching the film, foley artists use a range of props to create sound
effects like clothing rustling or doors opening and closing.
During automated dialogue replacement (ADR), actors watch the
film footage and rerecord their lines to be dubbed into the
soundtrack (this is also known as looping, as a section of image track
must be replayed while the new sound is recorded). Sound editing is
combining music, dialogue, and effects tracks to interact with the
image track. This creates rhythmic relationships, establishes
connections between sound and onscreen sources, and smooths or
marks transitions. When a sound is carried over a picture transition
or belongs to the coming scene but is played before the image
changes, it is termed a sound bridge. For example, music might
continue over a scene change or montage sequence, or dialogue

might begin before the speaking characters are seen by the
audience. The director o�en consults with the composer and with
the picture and sound editors to determine where music and effects
will be added, a process called spotting. The film’s composer then
begins composing the score, which is recorded to synchronize with
the film’s final cut [Figure 6.20].

6.20 Scoring Far from Heaven (2002). Director Todd Haynes and composer Elmer Bernstein
as they record the film’s score, which re-creates the sound of 1950s Hollywood movies.
Sound mixing (or rerecording) is the process by which all the
elements of the soundtrack — including music, effects, and dialogue
— are combined and adjusted to their final levels. It is an important
stage in the postproduction of a film and can occur only a�er the
image track, including the credits, is complete (that is, a�er the
picture is “locked”). As multiple tracks are mixed, they are cut and
extended, adjusted, and “sweetened” by the sound editor with the
input of the director and sometimes the sound designer and picture
editor. The final mix might place extra emphasis on dialogue,
modulate a mood through the volume of the music, or punch up
sound effects during an action sequence. In a film like Barton Fink
(1991), much of the sense of inhabiting a slightly unreal world is
generated by a sound mix that incorporates sounds such as animal
noises into the effects accompanying creaking doors. At a film’s final
mix, a sound mixer combines separate soundtracks into a single
master track that will be transferred onto the film print together
with the image track to which it is synchronized. Optical tracks are
“married” to the image track on the film print. Digital tracks may be
printed on film or recorded for digital projection.
Sound reproduction is sound playback during a film’s exhibition. It
is the stage in the process when the film’s audience experiences the

film’s sound in a movie theater as signals converted back to sound
waves by the sound system during projection.
The Social Network (2010), directed by David Fincher, is dominated by
the sound of actors’ voices reciting screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s
distinctive dialogue. The Terminator (1984) keys us to events in its
futuristic world by noises, and the title of The Sound of Music (1965)
announces what one can expect to hear on its soundtrack. In a film
soundtrack, these three elements o�en are present simultaneously.
In some sense, a film’s image track, composed of relatively discrete
photographic images and text, is simpler and more unified.
Nevertheless, although these three sound elements can all be
present and combined in relation to any given image, conventions
have evolved governing these relationships. Usually dialogue is
audible over music, for example, and only in special cases does a
piece of music dictate the images that accompany it. In the
following sections, we examine each of the three basic elements of
the soundtrack and its potential to make meaning in combination
with images and other sounds. We uncover conventional usages of
soundtracks and discuss the ways that they have both shaped the
film experience and given direction to theorists’ inquiries into the
properties and potential of film sound.
Voice in Film

Human speech, primarily in the form of dialogue, is o�en central to
understanding narrative film. The acoustic qualities of the voices of
actors make distinct contributions to films: Jimmy Stewart’s drawl is
relaxed and reassuring; a Sandra Bullock character can range
between high and low acoustic tones to create a personality that is
sometimes in control and then out of control. In animation, sound
commonly is prepared in advance of the images — which is the
reverse of live-action filmmaking. For many modern animated
features, like Moana (2016) [Figure 6.21], celebrities like Dwayne
Johnson are hired to voice major characters. In an example of an
increasingly common practice, Johnson (as Maui) and newcomer
Auli’l Cravalho (as the title character) recorded their parts separately
in the studio rather than together.
6.21 Moana (2016). Dwayne Johnson (formerly known as wrestler “The Rock”) voices the
demigod Maui in this Disney animated hit. Although his familiar face is not visible in the film,
his name featured prominently in the film’s advertisements.

Making an intelligible record of an actor’s speech quickly became
the primary goal in early film sound-recording processes, although
this goal required some important concessions in the otherwise
primary quest for realism. For example, think about how we hear
film characters’ speech. Although the image track may cut from a
long shot of a conversation, to a medium shot of two characters, and
finally to a series of close-up, shot/reverse-shot pairings, the
soundtrack does not reproduce these distances accurately through
changes in volume or the relationship between direct and reflected
sound. Rather, actors are miked so that what they say is recorded
directly and is clear, intelligible, and uniform in volume throughout
the dialogue scene. Sound perspective, which refers to the apparent
location and distance of a sound source, remains close.
Dialogue
But what actors say is crucial: speech establishes character
motivation and goals and conveys plot information. Advances in
recording technology have allowed filmmakers to experiment with
how dialogue is used to tell their stories. Director Robert Altman’s
innovations in multitrack film sound recording in Nashville (1975),
mentioned earlier in this chapter, allowed each actor to be miked
and separately recorded. One stylistic feature of this technique is
Altman’s extensive use of overlapping dialogue — mixing
characters’ speeches to imitate the rhythm of speech, a technique
Orson Welles attempted with less sophisticated recording

technology. In Nashville, characters constantly talk over each other
[Figure 6.22]. This technique, which may make individual lines less
distinct, is o�en used to approximate the everyday experience of
hearing multiple, competing speakers and sounds at the same time.
6.22 Nashville (1975). Robert Altman’s twelve-track recording process captures each
character individually, and overlapping dialogue is used in the final mix.
Dialogue is also given priority when it carries over visual shi�s, such
as shot/reverse-shot patterns of editing conversations. We watch one
actor begin a line and then watch the listener as the first actor
continues speaking. Sound preserves temporal continuity as the
scene is broken down into individual shots.
Voice-Off and Voiceover
A voice-off is a voice that originates from a speaker who can be
inferred to be present in the scene but is not currently visible. This

technique is a good example of the greater spatial flexibility of
sound over image. Early in the film M (1931), the murderer’s
offscreen whistle is heard, followed by an onscreen shadow of a
man, combining the expressive possibility of sound (recently
introduced when the film was made) with that of lighting and mise-
en-scène [Figure 6.23]. The opening shot of Laura (1944) follows a
detective looking around an elegantly furnished apartment as a
narrator — a character or other person whose voice and perspective
describe the action of a film, usually in voiceover — introduces the
film’s events. Abruptly, the same voice addresses the detective from
an adjacent room, telling him to be careful of what he touches. The
unidentified narrator becomes a character in the film in a striking
use of voice-off.

6.23 M (1931). An offscreen whistle first suggests the murderer’s presence in Fritz Lang’s
masterpiece of early sound cinema. Coupling the whistle with the shadow of the man, Fritz
Lang used both sound and lighting to heighten the suspense.
The use of the voice-off in a classical film is a strong tool in the
service of film realism, implying that the mise-en-scène extends
beyond the borders of the frame, but the illusion of realism can be
challenged if the origins of the voice-off are not clear. The voice-off
of HAL 9000, the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), is
consistent with realism because the voice has a known source.
However, the even level of volume makes it seem to pervade the
spaceship even as it retains its intimate quality. The film’s uncanny
combination of humanity and technology shows how the voice-off
can introduce distance into the customary match of sound and
image.
A voice-off is distinguished from the familiar technique of voiceover
— a voice whose source is neither visible in the frame nor implied to
be offscreen and typically narrates the film’s images — by the simple
fact that voiceovers are nondiegetic sounds. Characters cannot hear
the voiceover. The voiceover is an important structuring device in
film: a text spoken by an offscreen narrator can act as the organizing
principle behind virtually all of the film’s images, such as in a
documentary film, a commercial, or an experimental video or essay
film. The unseen narrators of the classic documentaries Night Mail
(1936) and The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936) offer a poem about

the British postal service and an account of the U.S. government’s
agricultural programs, respectively. The voiceover device soon
became the cornerstone of the documentary tradition, in which the
voiceover “anchors” the potential ambiguity of the film’s images.
The sonic qualities of such voiceovers — usually male, resonant, and
“unmarked” by class, regional, or foreign accent or other
distinguishing features — are meant to connote trustworthiness
(although today they can sound propagandistic). In Raul Peck’s
essayistic documentary I Am Not Your Negro (2016), Samuel L.
Jackson’s rendering of the words of James Baldwin introduces a
subjective, though still authoritative quality to the voiceover. The
traditional technique of directing our interpretation of images
through a transcendent voiceover is sometimes referred to as the
“voice of God.” Confident male voices of this type are still heard in
nature shows, commercials, and movie trailers. The title of the
independent comedy In a World (2013) is the catchphrase of famous
voiceover artist Don LaFontaine. The film pays homage to these
invisible talents while challenging gender hierarchies, as the film’s
protagonist (played by director Lake Bell) gets the opportunity to be
the first woman to use the phrase for a movie trailer, hinting at a
new world in Hollywood [Figure 6.24].

6.24 In a World (2013). The tradition of the booming male voiceover in movie trailers is
challenged in this comedy about communication, authority, and changing gender roles in
Hollywood.
Voiceovers can also render characters’ subjective states. Much of the
humor of the Bridget Jones series (2001–2016), for instance, comes
from viewers’ access to the heroine’s internal (semidiegetic)
comments on the situations she encounters [Figure 6.25]. But
voiceover can also be an important structural device in narration,
orienting viewers to the temporal organization of a story by setting
up a flashback or providing a transition back to the film’s present.
For example, a voiceover narration in the present can accompany a
scene from the past that uses both images and sounds from within
the depicted world. Use of voiceovers to organize a film’s temporality
is prevalent in certain genres such as film noir, in which the
voiceover imitates the hard-boiled, first-person investigative style of
the literary works from which many of these stories are adapted.
Sometimes, in keeping with the murky world of film noir or the

limited perspective of the investigator, such voiceovers prove
unreliable, as we find out in Laura (1944) [Figure 6.26].
6.25 Bridget Jones’s Baby (2016). The subjective voiceover of this film humorously
articulates the desires and anxieties of the heroine as she goes through pregnancy and
childbirth.

6.26 Laura (1944). Shown writing in a bathtub, Waldo Lydecker (Cli�on Webb) opens the film
with a voiceover narration. His account of the heroine’s death proves him to be unreliable
when she is discovered to be alive.
The use of voiceover in Michael Curtiz’s Mildred Pierce (1945) shows
the clash of styles in the film between the film noir genre, which
customarily has a male protagonist/narrator, and the women’s
pictures of the same period that featured female stars in romances
or melodramas. In these films, the lead character faces exaggerated
versions of the problems many women encounter. In the beginning
of the film, Mildred (played by Joan Crawford) confesses to a crime
she did not commit and begins her life story in a voiceover: “It

seems as if I was born in a kitchen,” she narrates. However, the
device is soon abandoned, and her voiceover’s credibility is
compromised as Mildred’s version of events is discredited by the
police; her voiceover ultimately confirms their point of view. Later
examples of female voiceovers, such as that of Sarah Connor in The
Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), gave more
credibility to the female narrator. The adult female narration that
frames Eve’s Bayou (1997) contrasts with the imperfect
understanding of the child’s point of view in the flashback. Together
they represent an untold story of African American female
experience [Figure 6.27].
6.27 Eve’s Bayou (1997). A little girl’s version of events gains credence through the voiceover
device.

In an experimental film, voiceovers may lead the viewer/listener to
think about different levels of the film’s fiction. The soundtrack of
Chantal Akerman’s News from Home (1976) consists of the director’s
voice reading the letters that her mother back home in Belgium
wrote to her in New York [Figure 6.28]. The images depict sparsely
populated New York streets and lonely subway platforms and cars.
The disjunction between voice and image reinforces the distance
mentioned in the correspondence.
6.28 News from Home (1976). Letters from home are read over images of a lonely New York
City, creating a poetic disjunction across the spaces of the film.

Description
The pole of a street sign that reads,”One Way” is bent to point slightly
downward, toward the car and a lone man walking in the direction of the
sign.
Ever since “the talkies” were introduced, the human voice has
organized systems of meaning in various types of film. Narrative
films are frequently driven by dialogue, documentaries by voiceover,
and experimental films o�en turn voice into an aesthetic element.
Some writers suggest that a theory of “voice” can open up cinema
analysis to more meanings than a model devoted to the image alone.
Although we have stressed how frequently film sound is
subordinated to the image, the realm of the voice shows us how
central sound is to cinema’s intelligibility.
Music in Film
Music is a crucial element in the film experience. Among a range of
other effects, it provides rhythm and deepens emotional response.
Music has rarely been absent from film programs, and many of the
venues for early film originally hosted musical entertainments. The
piano, an important element of public and private amusements at
the turn of the twentieth century, quickly became a cornerstone of
film exhibition. Throughout the silent film period, scoring for films
steadily developed from the collections of music cues that
accompanists and ensembles played to correspond with appropriate

moments in films to full-length compositions for specific films.
When D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation premiered in 1915, a full
orchestra, playing Joseph Carl Breil’s score in which the Ku Klux
Klan rallied to Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries,” was a major
audience attraction. Even the architecture of the large movie
palaces constructed during this period was acoustically geared to
audiences who listened to orchestral music in a concert setting. The
introduction of dialogue presented problems of scale and volume in
the movie palaces.
Although the term talkies for the new sound films soon took over,
musicals were a significant part of this transition, and the golden
age of Hollywood is o�en associated with the MGM musicals of the
1940s and 1950s. At the end of the studio era, the great tradition of
the Hollywood musical also began to wane, but the periodic revival
of the genre shows how central music is to the narrative film
experience, even at the cost of verisimilitude.
Yet movies of every genre — including western, historical, disaster,
crime, comedy, and science fiction films — relied on music from the
beginning. Music contributes to categorizing such films as genre
films. Vangelis’s music for Blade Runner (1982), for example,
distinctly marks it as a science fiction film. In contrast, Max Steiner’s
score for Gone with the Wind (1939) sets its nostalgic, romantic tone.
Narrative Music

Music is the only element of cinematic discourse besides credits that
is primarily nondiegetic. Film music encourages us to let our
barriers down and experience the movie as immediate and
enveloping, easing our transition into the fictional world. Although
overblown background music can jolt us out of a film, o�en we
value the musical score (music composed to accompany the
completed film) as a crucial element of our affective, or emotional,
response to a film. The celebrated gag in Mel Brooks’s Blazing
Saddles (1974), in which the musical soundtrack turns out to be
coming from Count Basie’s jazz orchestra playing in the middle of
the desert, shows how readily we accept the convention of
nondiegetic music [Figure 6.29].

6.29 Blazing Saddles (1974). Soundtrack music finds its onscreen source in Count Basie’s
orchestra playing in a desert in Mel Brooks’s western spoof.
Classical film music developed practices of composition and mixing
that supported the aim of storytelling. The term underscoring, also
referred to as background music (in contrast to diegetic source
music), emphasizes this status. Much of classical Hollywood film
music is derived from nineteenth-century, late-Romantic orchestral
music. The work of such composers as Richard Wagner, Johann
Strauss, and Richard Strauss relied on compositional principles such
as motifs assigned to different characters, settings, or actions. This
type of music conveyed to audiences particular associations and

values that ranged from the high cultural status conferred on
symphonic music of European origin (as opposed to the lower status
of American jazz or pop) to the recognizable connotations of
instrumentation, such as somber horns for a funereal mood, violins
for romance, and a harp for an ethereal or heavenly mood.
A piece of music composed for a particular place in a film is referred
to as a cue — a visual or aural signal that indicates the beginning of
an action, line of dialogue, or piece of music. O�en music reinforces
story information through recognizable conventions. For example,
the “Raiders March” in the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and its
sequels echoes classical adventure serials of the 1930s and 1940s.
Discontinuities in visual information represented by cuts and scene
changes are frequently bridged by music. Various arrangements of
the theme song of High Noon (1952) carry characters across space
and help bridge transitions between scene changes.
Narrative cueing is the way that sound tells viewers what is
happening in the plot. A few notes of “Deutschland über Alles” in
the score of Casablanca (1942), for example, signify the looming Nazi
threat. The most noticeable examples are stingers, which are
sounds that force the audience to notice the significance of
something onscreen — like the discordant blast in The Shining (1980)
that marks the moment when Wendy, the mother, looks at her
bedroom door through her mirror and sees the word murder
scrawled on it [Figure 6.30]. Overillustrating the action through the

score, such as by using plucked strings to accompany a character
walking on tip-toe, is called mickey-mousing, in reference to the
way cartoons o�en use the musical score to follow or mimic every
action. Composer Mark Mothersbaugh incorporates a contemporary
version of this practice in collaborations with Wes Anderson like The
Royal Tenenbaums (2001).
6.30 The Shining (1980). When Wendy awakens and sees through the mirror what Danny has
written on the door, a shocked look appears on her face. The stinger makes sure the
audience doesn’t miss the word murder.

Through the use of themes assigned to particular figures, music also
participates in characterization. O�en, we know when the main
character has entered the scene not only visually but also aurally.
The presence of “bad girl” Marylee Hadley in Written on the Wind
(1956) is signaled by a distinctive sultry theme. Meanwhile,
composed by Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead, the music identified
with Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood (2007) has a dissonant
string arrangement that eerily complements this troubled and
troubling character. For the three chapters that comprise the story
of the main character’s growing up in Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight
(2016), composer Nicholas Britell “chopped and screwed” a single
theme, slowing it down to bend the pitch and our associations
[Figure 6.31].
6.31 Moonlight (2016). The violin and piano theme composed for the character known as
“Little” in the film’s first section is reorchestrated for the adult Chiron in the third section.

Music is a powerful way to express emotion in cinema. In
Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945), for example, the mental state of the
hero is conveyed by the sound of the theremin, an unusual
electronic instrument that is played without physical contact and
whose spooky sound is also used in science fiction films [Figure
6.32]. The ambient score for David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon
Tattoo (2011) by Trent Reznor of the band Nine Inch Nails and
Atticus Ross helps create a bleak and tense emotional landscape.
Frequently, lush orchestration can ennoble specific events and make
them feel timeless. In War Horse (2011), the lavish musical score
adds an epic dimension to the boy’s relationship to his horse [Figure
6.33]. In a film like the Jane Austen adaptation Emma (1997), Rachel
Portman’s score is more restrained, introducing humor as it
comments on character’s emotions. Portman became the first
female composer to win an Oscar for her score. To date, only six
women have been nominated at the Oscars for film scoring.

6.32 Spellbound (1945). Gregory Peck’s character is stricken by an episode of vertigo,
signaled by the theremin on the soundtrack.

6.33 War Horse (2011). Composer John Williams’s score helps intensify the emotion in this
tale of a boy and his horse during World War I.
Although musical scoring conventions have evolved and changed
since the classical era of studio filmmaking, in the orchestral scores
of John Williams — the best-known composer of the past three
decades — we can hear an homage to the romantic styles of the
studio composers of earlier decades. Williams composes heroic,
nostalgic scores that support and sometimes inflate the narrative’s
significance. He is known for scoring the Star Wars movies (from the
1977 original to Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker in 2019), the Harry
Potter films (2001–2011), and the Indiana Jones films (1981–2008, plus
an upcoming fi�h film). His five Academy Awards and fi�y-one
nominations suggest that his style embodies ideals of Hollywood
scoring.
In Hollywood cinema of the studio era, nonclassical musical styles
such as jazz, popular, and dance music were used as source music
and featured in musicals, but their incorporation into background
music was gradual. One of the effects of the neglect of American
musical idioms in favor of European influences was that African
American artists and performers were rendered almost as inaudible
as they were invisible in mainstream movies. African American
performers frequently were featured in musicals, but they were
there to provide entertainment and were rarely integrated into the
narrative. Lena Horne’s talent, for example, was underutilized

because there were almost no leading roles for African American
women in the 1940s and 1950s [Figure 6.34].
6.34 Words and Music (1948). Jazz singer Lena Horne’s appearances in MGM musicals were
generally limited to cameo numbers that could be cut out by exhibitors in segregated
theaters.
As jazz music became more popular, jazz themes began to appear in
urban-based film noirs of the 1940s. Henry Mancini’s music for
Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil (1958) effectively connotes themes of
crime, violence, and sexuality in the exaggerated border-town
setting. With other changes in the U.S. film industry in the postwar

period, musical conventions shi�ed as well. Modernist and jazz-
influenced scores, such as Leonard Bernstein’s score for On the
Waterfront (1954), became more common as different audiences
were targeted through more individualized filmmaking practices.
More recently, in Whiplash (2014), the main character is a jazz
drumming student who is pushed to master the title composition by
Hank Levy.
Pop Music in Film
As you watch the film assigned for your next class, pay particular attention to its
music. Is the film’s score drawn from the classical tradition? Is popular music used?
How do scoring choices contribute to the film’s meaning?
Popular songs have long had a place in the movies, promoting
audience participation and identification by appealing to tastes
shared by generations or ethnic groups. Sheet music and recordings
sales were profitable tie-ins even before the era of sound cinema. By
the 1980s, the practice of tying the emotional (and commercial)
response of the audience to popular music in film was so well
established that pop scores consisting of prerecorded music, o�en
popular songs, began to rival originally composed music on a film’s
soundtrack. American Graffiti (1973) helped inaugurate this trend
with its soundtrack of nostalgic 1960s tunes, and The Big Chill (1983)

captured the zeitgeist of a generation through popular songs. In the
1980s, the proliferation of the pop soundtrack drew the film
experience outside the theater to the record store, and music videos
began to include scenes from upcoming films.
The centrality of prerecorded music is reflected in the rise of the
music supervisor, the individual who selects and secures the rights
for songs to be used in films. Sofia Coppola’s movies are
recognizable by the distinctive music selected by music supervisor
Brian Reitzell. The Bling Ring (2013) features M.I.A., Sleigh Bells, Lil
Wayne, and other contemporary musicians. In dance films such as
Step Up 3D (2010), the soundtrack becomes a way for viewers to
participate in the scene. Superhero films also draw effectively on the
connotations of pop songs. The Guardians of the Galaxy series (2014–
present) incorporates hit songs from the late 1960s and 1970s as a
defining characteristic of protagonist Peter Quill, who remembers
his deceased mother through the cassette tapes that she le� for him.
Meanwhile, Suicide Squad (2016) uses a jukebox’s worth of classic-
rock hits, reportedly worked into the film itself a�er they played well
in the movie’s trailers [Figure 6.35]. Although theme songs have
been composed for and promoted with films for decades (notably in
the James Bond films), the contemporary movie and music
industries have such close business relationships that many films
and franchises are expected to feature a tie-in song. The theme from
The Fast and Furious: Tokyo Dri� (2006) was by the Japanese hip hop
band Teriyaki Boyz. “See You Again,” the credits song from Furious 7

(2015), was a tribute to one of the film’s stars, Paul Walker, who died
before the movie’s release, and it became a hit in part because of
fans’ emotional response to that loss.
6.35 Suicide Squad (2016). Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) is introduced with Lesley Gore’s
1963 song “You Don’t Own Me,” a moment initially designed for a trailer that made it into the
finished film.
Sound Effects in Film
Much of the impression of film’s realism comes from the use of
sound effects, although, like other aspects of the soundtrack,
viewers may not consciously notice these effects. Dialogue in film is
deliberate; it tells a story and gives information. Nondiegetic
background music is unrealistic if we pay attention to it. But sound
effects o�en appear natural. In daily life, we hardly notice
ubiquitous sounds like fluorescent lights humming, crickets

chirping, and traffic going by — sounds that might be added to a film
to achieve a realistic sound mix.
In most films, every noise that we hear is selected, and these effects
generally conform to our expectations of movie sounds. Virtually
nothing appears onscreen that does not make its corresponding
noise: dogs bark, babies cry. However, the sounds that we expect to
hear in film are not always, in fact, realistic: for instance, a
spaceship that blows up in outer space in a movie will usually
produce a colossal bang, even though in reality there is no sound in
space. If a .38 revolver sounds like a cap gun when recorded, it will
be dubbed with a louder bang. These expectations vary according to
film genre. Traffic noise will be loud in an action film, in which we
remain alive to the possibilities of the environment. In a romance,
the sound of cars will likely fade away unless traffic is keeping the
lovers apart.
Asynchronous sound effects, such as the hoot of an owl in a dark
woods setting, both expand the sense of space and contribute to
mood, o�en in very codified, even clichéd ways. Adding the clank of
utensils and snatches of offscreen conversation to the soundtrack
when two characters are shown at a table conjures a restaurant
setting without having to shoot the scene in an actual restaurant. In
contrast, the synchronous sound effect of stirring tea with a spoon
in Get Out (2017) attunes the spectator to the repetitive sound that

hypnotizes the protagonist and reveals the horrific truth beneath the
placid surface of a wealthy white suburb [Figure 6.36].
6.36 Get Out (2017). Sound editor Trevor Gates and composer Michael Abels collaborated on
a chilling soundtrack that belies the setting’s patina of normalcy.
The expectation that every element of the mise-en-scène will make a
naturalistic noise can also be frustrated with creative use of effects.
German filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger’s Madame X: An Absolute Ruler
(1977) makes ingenious use of postsynchronous sound. Her film’s
motley crew of female pirates do not speak. Instead, their
movements are synchronized with noises like animal growls or
metallic clanking [Figure 6.37].

6.37 Madame X: An Absolute Ruler (1977). In Ulrike Ottinger’s film, in lieu of dialogue, the
character’s movements are synchronized with a sound montage of noises like animal growls
or metallic clanking.
Sound effects are one of the most useful ways of giving an
impression of depth to two-dimensional images when they are
reproduced in the three-dimensional space of the theater. A gunshot
may come from the le�-hand side of the screen, for example. At the
same time that they serve a mimetic function, sound effects have
become part of how the cinema experience is distinguished from
the ordinary. THX is a standards system — devised by director
George Lucas and named a�er his first feature film, THX 1138 (1971)
— for evaluating and ensuring the quality of sound presentation.
THX theaters promise to deliver an intense aural experience that is
identical in each certified venue.
The importance of a film’s sound to the Hollywood illusion is
marked in the relatively recent Academy Award category for sound-
effects editing. The extraordinary density of contemporary
soundtracks does not necessarily mean that they are more realistic
than the less dense soundtracks of classical Hollywood. Instead,
they use the particular properties of sound and new technologies to
convey an increasingly visceral experience of the cinema. Art
cinema auteurs like Argentine filmmaker Lucrecia Martel also
employ complex sound design to heighten and defamiliarize the
viewer’s experience of a situation. In the opening moments of her

debut film La Ciénaga (2001), sounds of clinking ice and outdoor
furniture being dragged around a pool add to a feeling of oppressive
heat and lethargy [Figure 6.38].
6.38 La Ciénaga (2001). Lucrecia Martel’s unique style as a filmmaker was established with
the sound design of this film set in the stifling heat of provincial Argentina.
Watch this scene from Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line (1998), and determine
which sound seems especially responsible for conveying information to the
spectator. How do voice, music, and sound effects work together?

The contemporary industry’s attention to sound technologies and
aesthetics creates audience expectations related to film genre. The
distinctive soundtrack of Jaws (1975), for example, gave us both the
now clichéd musical motif of the shark and a rich new standard for
sound-effects use. The film acknowledges a predecessor in the genre
when the death of the shark is accompanied by a sound effect of a
prehistoric beast’s death from King Kong (1933). In these monster
movies, sound effects can refer to familiar experiences and take us
far beyond everyday events.
Cartoons are excellent demonstrations of the ways that sound
effects are synchronized to onscreen actions. Drawings do not
“naturally” make sounds of their own, so every sound in an
animated film is conventionalized. In Frozen (2013), for example, a

simple sound like the cracking of ice must be precisely engineered
and calibrated for its effectiveness [Figure 6.39].
6.39 Frozen (2013). The dramatic sounds of cracking ice match the grandeur of the
animation.

Thinking about Film Sound
Sounds are grounded in viewers’ everyday activities and contribute
to movies’ immediacy and sensory richness. Film sound — whether
the pathos of Louis Gottschalk’s score for D. W. Griffith’s Broken
Blossoms (1919), the stimulating interactions between the musical
quotations in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Alex North’s original
music for the film, the indelible aural record of Laurence Olivier’s
performance of Hamlet (1948), or the comical sounds of Jacques
Tati’s Playtime (1967) — intensifies our viewing experience.
Paradoxically, movie soundscapes o�en eschew realism and
plausibility in order to heighten authenticity and emotion, like
foregrounding actors’ whispered conversation in a crowded room so
we feel intimately connected to them.
Sound Continuity and Sound Montage
To what extent do sound effects add to a film’s sense of realism? Watch this clip
from Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone (2010), and explain how sounds create a
particular impression of location, action, or mood.

The ways in which filmmakers choose to relate sound to image also
distinctively affect our viewing experience. Some filmmakers use
sound to support the narrative aim and smooth over gaps in a story.
Sound continuity describes the process of furthering the aims of
the narrative through scoring, sound recording, mixing, and
playback processes that strive for the unification of meaning and
experience. In contrast, other filmmakers use sound to act as a
counterpoint to the image. Sound montage is the collision or
overlapping of disjunctive sounds in a film. Most assumptions,
shared by technicians and viewers, about what constitutes a “good”
soundtrack emphasize a continuity approach. However, since the
introduction of sound, many filmmakers have used it as a separate
element for a montage effect, a practice enhanced by the increasing
sophistication of audio technology.

Sound Continuity
Matching up actors’ voices with their moving lips and ensuring the
words were intelligible were among the early goals of sound
technology. Audiences were thrilled just to see the match. The
degree of redundancy between image and sound in the continuity
tradition still makes it difficult to analyze the soundtrack
autonomously. From the priority granted to synchronization, we can
define several compatible continuity practices:
The relationship between image and sound and among separate
sounds is motivated by dramatic action or information.
With the exception of background music, the sources of sounds
are identifiable.
The connotations of musical accompaniment are consistent
with the images (for example, a funeral march is unlikely to
accompany a high-speed chase).
The sound mix emphasizes what we should pay attention to.
The sound mix is smooth and emphasizes clarity.
Attention is directed back to the characters, actions, and mise-en-
scène by sound that supports it. In The Big Sleep (1946), a
conversation in a car between the two protagonists, Marlowe and
Vivian, begins with engine noise in the background. We see that
there is a dog on the porch in the opening scene of The Searchers
(1956); when we hear it bark, the image comes alive. The
relationship between image and sound and among separate sounds

will also be motivated by dramatic action or information. In The Big
Sleep, the engine noise will soon disappear so we can focus on the
characters’ avowal of love. The continuous use of music to cover a
sequence of character activity draws our attention away from
discontinuity in the image track. For example, continuous orchestral
music links the training montage sequence in Rocky Balboa (2006)
[Figure 6.40]. Technology and techniques have developed in consort
with these aims. Dolby noise-reduction technology improves
frequency response and gives an almost unnatural clarity that serves
the goal of continuity.
6.40 Rocky Balboa (2006). The Rocky film series’ iconic theme song (Bill Conti’s 1977 “Gonna
Fly Now”) ties together disparate images of Rocky doing pull-ups, jogging, and li�ing
weights.
Sound Montage

In Chapter 5, we define montage in terms of images, but the term can
also denote the infinite possibilities of interactions among images
and sound. O�en operating in opposition to the principles of sound
continuity, sound montage calls attention to the fact that images and
sounds communicate on two different levels.
Sergei Eisenstein, the primary theorist of montage, extended his
ideas to sound even before synchronous sound technology was
perfected. In his first sound film, Alexander Nevsky (1938), he
experimented with what he called “vertical montage,” which
emphasized both the simultaneity of and the differences between
image and sound [Figure 6.41]. In the early sound era, filmmakers
such as Jean Vigo and René Clair in France and Rouben Mamoulian
and King Vidor in the United States combined sound and image in
lyrical and creative ways. In Mamoulian’s Applause (1929), for
instance, music and effects do not duplicate the image but create a
more subjective and atmospheric setting.

6.41 Alexander Nevsky (1938). The editing of Sergei Eisenstein’s first sound film was planned
to fit the film’s score by Sergei Prokofiev.
Over a career spanning more than fi�y years, Jean-Luc Godard is
probably the most exemplary practitioner of sound montage.
Godard emphasizes music in the organization of many of his films; a
favorite technique is to interrupt a music cue so that it literally
cannot fade into the background. In First Name: Carmen (1983), we
see a string quartet playing without knowing what its relationship to
the story might be. The abrupt cessation of a soundtrack element
may be extended to voices and effects as well. In the café scene in
Godard’s Band of Outsiders (1964), one of the characters suggests that

if the friends in the group have nothing to say to each other, they
should remain silent. This diegetic silence is conveyed by the
complete cessation of sound on the soundtrack. By using
nonauthoritative or discontinuous voiceovers as well as frequent
voice-offs and by having on-camera characters address the camera,
read, or make cryptic announcements, Godard challenges the
natural role of the human voice in giving character and narrative
information. Instead, language becomes malleable, an element in a
collage of meaning.
But even in Hollywood films, sound montage can dominate,
especially as soundtracks become more dense. Narratively
motivated by the futuristic setting, the soundscape of Ridley Scott’s
Blade Runner (1982) resembles that of an experimental film. Sound is
at least as responsible as the mise-en-scène and the story line for the
film’s theme of anxiety in a world characterized by unchecked
globalization and technological development. In Terrence Malick’s
The Tree of Life (2011), a sound montage of whispering voices, voice-
off commentary, and amplified noises from nature creates a
vibrating and shi�ing world that his characters struggle to
understand. Sound designer Ben Burtt used thousands of files for
the soundscape for the animated film Wall-E (2008) and also “voiced”
the title character [Figure 6.42]. The aim may not be, as it was in
Godard’s films, to encourage reflection in the viewer on the discrete
aesthetic and ideological functions of sound and image, but there is

no doubt that sound montage contributes key dimensions of the
viewer’s sense of wonder.
6.42 Wall-E (2008). The “voices” of the animated robots in Pixar’s Wall-E were created by
sound designers — both as computer sound files and as technology-based voiceover artists.
Authenticity and Attention
Authenticity is served by a subordination of sound to the cues given
by the image in a practice of sound-image continuity. The montage
approach, in contrast, explores the concrete nature of sounds and
their potential independence of images and of each other, directing
the viewer’s attention to the sound mix.
Film sound, because it surrounds and permeates the body of the
viewer in a way that images alone cannot, contributes to the
authenticity and emotion we experience while viewing a film. Sound
in film can indicate a real, multidimensional world and give the

viewer/listener the impression of being present in a particular
space. Additionally, sounds such as a particular piece of music or a
jarring sound effect encourage the viewer to experience emotion.
The impression of being present in space is supported by the
preferences established in the standard techniques of sound
recording, mixing, and reproduction. Hearing the taps on Eleanor
Powell’s shoes in Born to Dance (1936) makes us witnesses to her
virtuosity [Figure 6.43]. Foregrounding actors’ voices — through
close miking, sound perspective, and mixing that emphasizes
dialogue — also authenticates our perception. We are “in on” the
characters’ most intimate conversations. The sense of presence at
the dance contest in Saturday Night Fever (1977) is achieved through
a sound mix that sacrifices background noise to focus on the Bee
Gees’ music.

6.43 Born to Dance (1936). Eleanor Powell’s tap dancing is a perfect display of synchronized
sound.
Sound encourages the viewer to see the world in terms of particular
emotions. When the lovers in Now, Voyager (1942) cannot really say
what they mean to each other, the string section, performing Max
Steiner’s score, eloquently takes over. The zither theme of The Third
Man (1949) makes us feel disoriented in the streets of postwar
Vienna, just as the film’s characters are. Excruciating suspense is
generated in Jurassic Park (1993) when we hear the sound of the
menacing Tyrannosaurus rex [Figure 6.44]. The acoustic

environment in film attempts to orient us in a way that feels genuine
and genuinely gets us to feel.
6.44 Jurassic Park (1993). On the digital soundtrack, the Tyrannosaurus rex’s footsteps can
be heard approaching the truck where the children are hiding, generating suspense.
Despite its success in generating authenticity and emotion, film
sound is not a continuous gush from the real world. Rather it is
composed of separate elements whose relationship to one another
can be creatively manipulated, and numerous filmmakers use sound
to draw the viewer’s attention to this level. In spare films such as
Pickpocket (1959) and L’Argent (1983), which explore themes of
predestination and isolation through scrutiny of details, French
director Robert Bresson achieves an uncanny presence of select
sounds while refusing realistic indicators of space. In the book Notes
on Cinematography (1975), Bresson sums up his ideas: “What is for

the eye must not duplicate what is for the ear.” Without the use of
room tone or other techniques to give spatial cues or to make
sounds warmer, the minimalist sounds in his films become
concrete, a practice that has greatly influenced contemporary world
cinema.
The voice can draw our attention through direct address to the
viewer or recitation or reading instead of naturalistic dialogue, as in
the poetry in the soundtrack of Isaac Julien’s Looking for Langston
(1989), a film about historical erasures. The sensual quality of
sounds can be explored as it might be in a musical composition, and
poetic effects can be achieved by combining different sound
“images.” Voices are layered in this way in Marguerite Duras’s India
Song (1975). A film can deliver ideas through multiple channels; the
sound can contradict the image. Interview texts printed on the
screen are read aloud with slight alterations by the voiceovers in
Trinh T. Minh-ha’s Surname Viet Given Name Nam (1989) [Figure
6.45].

6.45 Surname Viet Given Name Nam (1989). The qualities of the film’s voices — they o�en
are accented and seem to belong to nonactors reciting — convey information that cannot be
gathered from images.
Description
One shot shows the woman looking at something in her hand, another
shows a close up of her gazing contemplatively beyond the frame, and
the third shows her looking down at a mirror that reflects her face.
FILM IN FOCUS The Sound of Silence in A Quiet Place (2018)
See also: The Quiet (2005); The Quiet
Ones (2014); Wonderstruck (2017)

To watch a clip from A Quiet Place (2018), go to LaunchPad for the Film
Experience at launchpadworks.com
Screams, long a staple of the soundtracks of horror films — and of their audiences’
reactions — come few and far between in A Quiet Place. This tense high-concept
genre film is set in a postapocalyptic world stalked by monsters with
supersensitive hearing: a quiet place full of menace. Director John Krasinski plays
the father of a nuclear family that hides out on their farm, scavenging for supplies,
walking barefoot and on tip-toe. The eldest child is deaf, and the family’s
knowledge of American Sign Language (ASL) has helped them survive. In this film,
screams are the cause rather than the consequence of attacks and sudden frights.
One source of foreboding is the pregnancy of the mother, played by Emily Blunt;
the family members all know that inevitably, the cries of childbirth and a newborn
will put them in danger.
The film’s soundtrack announces itself before the film begins with a menacing
tone over the company logo, mixed with a high-pitched metallic sound and a
pulsing rhythm as the volume swells. The audio motif fades out as the harrowing,
ten-minute long pretitle sequence commences, only to return at ominous
moments throughout the film. The diegetic soundscape of the opening sequence
also provokes anxiety, primarily through the absence of sound, establishing the
film’s highly effective mode of strained attention. We hear only muted,
synchronous sounds of the family’s cautious movements and the wind and
ambient noise of an abandoned main street. At first, we struggle to understand
why the family is keeping quiet. Later, we identify with them as they fear every
rustle or thud. Asynchronous sound effects are horrifying, and at the end of the
opening sequence, the viewer finds out why: one of the family’s children plays
with a toy that makes a jarringly loud electronic whirr [Figure 6.46]. A monster
dramatically snatches the boy moments later. Thus, the film’s opening sequence

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establishes the narrative stakes and causes the audience to experience suspense
from even the slightest noise in subsequent scenes.
6.46 A Quiet Place (2018). The absence of sound that characterizes the film’s
soundtrack is broken by brief episodes of loud and terrifying action, such as at the end
of the pretitle sequence.
A more melodic motif in Marco Beltrami’s score isn’t introduced until nearly seven
minutes into the film, and the first dialogue is spoken aloud a�er nearly thirty-
eight minutes have passed. The sparing use of music and speech makes the
soundscape, designed by supervising sound editors Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van der
Ryn, all the more unnerving. An imaginative array of terrifying foley effects come
from humble sources, like crunching celery and crackling crab legs. The creature
sound design is similarly subtle and creepy: the computer-generated monsters
emit a series of electrical clicks, whose real-life source — revealed in a behind-the-
scenes feature — is a stun gun held to grapes.
Sound technologies are also foregrounded in the film’s plot. The father searches
for a radio frequency that he hopes will allow him to make contact with other
survivors, and he tinkers to repair his daughter’s hearing aids [Figure 6.47]. A�er
the tragic episode that results in the younger son’s death, the mother designs do-
it-yourself solutions like padded Monopoly pieces and, later, a rig to mute their
newborn baby’s cries. The film’s sound mix links these technologies directly to the
viewer’s perception: when a character listens through headphones or a

stethoscope, the audience also hears the music or the heartbeat. Thus, signs of
human interiority and emotion are held private, apart from the external threat of
the monsters.

A still from the movie, A Quiet Place, shows a man wearing headset in front of
a microphone a radio station.
6.47 A Quiet Place (2018). The father spends hours each day trying to reach other
survivors via radio.

This technique of mixing audio according to characters’ perspectives aligns the
viewer with the eldest child, played by deaf actress Millicent Simmonds.
Sometimes the soundtrack goes completely silent when she is onscreen, allowing
rare moments of respite. But she remains alert to threats to her environment when
she catches sight of the hearing characters’ expressions of dread. At other times,
we hear shrieking feedback that she is evidently sensing through a cochlear
implant. Later in the film, the character’s own sensory experience gives her the
idea of turning painfully high frequencies against the monsters. The unpleasant
sounds to which the characters and the audience are subjected are also
excruciating to the creatures.
Unlike most movie sound mixes, A Quiet Place marginalizes speech, and yet as the
importance of the deaf character’s perception indicates, language and
communication are nevertheless central to the family drama. The father is able to
speak aloud to his son under a waterfall’s noisy cascade. Later, he comes to
recognize that his daughter needs him to declare his love and forgiveness outright,
and he delivers a poignant speech to her in ASL. The viewer, too, must become
attuned to gesture and facial expression, mirroring the onscreen images of
characters listening attentively to each other.
A Quiet Place was an unlikely box-office hit. Its estimated budget of $17 to $21
million was relatively low for a mainstream studio film in 2018, yet the film earned
almost twenty times that much, prompting a sequel. Its novel premise was partly
responsible for its success, as was the sound technology in theatrical exhibition.
Dolby Laboratories’ Atmos sound system, which fills and moves around the
theater, combined with the film’s unusually sparse soundtrack to create a unique
experience for viewers. The sense of fear of excessive noise spread from the
movie’s characters to the audience, who were notoriously terrified to chew
popcorn during the film. Viewers knew that the sounds they made in real life
would attract attention — if not from predatory creatures then from their fellow
moviegoers experiencing the film as much through sound as through image.

Chapter 6 Review
SUMMARY
Cinema is an audiovisual medium. Sound plays a key role in
enhancing — or challenging — our understanding of images
shown onscreen.
The role of sound has changed along with technology
throughout film history.
Early “silent” films were o�en shown with live musical
accompaniment and sometimes with narration, sound
effects, or actors reciting dialogue.
Hollywood rapidly converted to synchronized sound in the
late 1920s, requiring new sound equipment to be installed in
movie theaters.
Subsequent innovations in the 1950s (stereophonic sound),
the 1970s (Dolby and surround sound), and the 1990s (digital
sound) reflected both an attempt to improve sound fidelity
and a reaction to other competitive entertainment media,
including television, home video, and video games.
Sound guides our perceptions of cinematic realism.
Synchronous sound (also called onscreen sound) has a visible
source in the film. Asynchronous sound (also called offscreen
sound) does not.

Parallel sound occurs when the soundtrack and image “say
the same thing.” Contrapuntal sound occurs when two
different meanings are implied by the sound and the image.
Diegetic sound has its source in the narrative world of a film.
Nondiegetic sound does not.
Sound production is a complex process with many stages.
Sound recording can take place simultaneously with the
filming of a scene.
The snap of a clapperboard is recorded at the beginning
of each take to synchronize sound and image.
Microphones for recording synchronous sound may be
placed on actors or may be positioned overhead with a
long device called a boom.
Postproduction sound is recorded a�er the fact and then
synchronized with onscreen sources.
Sound effects may be gathered, produced by sound-effects
editors on computers, retrieved from a sound library, or
generated by foley artists.
During automated dialogue replacement (ADR), actors
watch the film footage and rerecord their lines to be
dubbed into the soundtrack (a process also known as
looping).
Sound editing involves selecting and combining music,
dialogue, and effects tracks to interact with the image track.
Sound mixing is the process of adjusting the levels of
music, dialogue, and sound effects.

The three primary elements of film sound are voice, music, and
sound effects.
The human voice is o�en central to audiences’
understanding of film. In narrative films, speech exposes
character motivations and conveys plot information.
Overlapping dialogue is a technique that makes
individual lines less distinct and is o�en used to
approximate the everyday experience of hearing multiple
speakers at the same time.
A voice-off originates from a speaker who can be inferred
to be present but who is not visible onscreen.
A voiceover is a voice whose source is not visible in the
frame but acts as the organizing principle behind the
film’s images, such as the narrator in a documentary film.
Music is a crucial element, providing rhythm and deepening
emotional responses.
Background music, or underscoring, literally
underscores what is happening dramatically. Noticeable
examples are stingers, musical cues that force us to notice
the significance of something onscreen.
Popular songs promote audience participation and
identification by appealing to tastes shared by age or
ethnic groups.
Sound effects are o�en an important element in creating
realism in film.

Sound contributes to movies’ sensory richness and can convey
essential meanings.
Sound continuity describes the range of scoring, sound
recording, mixing, and playback processes that strive to
unify meaning and experience by subordinating sound to the
aims of the narrative. It is conventional in Hollywood films.
Sound montage reminds us that sound can be creatively
manipulated and reflected upon to achieve certain effects.
KEY TERMS
melodrama
stereophonic sound
synchronous sound
asynchronous sound
parallel sound
contrapuntal sound
diegetic sound
nondiegetic sound
diegesis
source music
semidiegetic sound
soundtrack
sound designer
sound recording
clapperboard
boom

direct sound
reflected sound
production sound mixer
postproduction sound
foley artist
room tone
walla
automated dialogue replacement (ADR)
sound editing
sound bridge
spotting
sound mixing
mix
sound reproduction
sound perspective
overlapping dialogue
voice-off
narrator
voiceover
women’s picture
score
underscoring
cue
narrative cueing
stinger
mickey-mousing
prerecorded music
music supervisor

sound continuity
sound montage
Visit launchpadworks.com to access LaunchPad for The Film Experience, which
includes:
adaptive quizzes
Film clips with critical thinking questions
Supplemental readings, including Film in Focus features and more

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PART THREE ORGANIZATIONAL
STRUCTURES
from stories to genres

A still from the movie, Parasite, shows the protagonist sitting
with his family on the floor, surrounded by empty pizza carton
boxes around them. A partially constructed pizza box lays on the
floor between them.
CHAPTER 7

Narrative Films: Telling Stories
Stories and plots
Characters
Narration and narrative point of view
Classical and alternative narrative traditions
CHAPTER 8
Documentary Films: Representing the Real
Cultural practices
Nonfiction and non-narrative images and forms
Formal strategies and organizations
CHAPTER 9
Animation and Experimental Media: Challenging Form
Defining animation and experimental media
Aesthetic histories
Animation modes
Formal strategies and organizations
CHAPTER 10
Movie Genres: Conventions, Formulas, and Audience Expectations
Genre identification
Genre as cultural ritual
Prescriptive and descriptive understanding of film types
Six genres
Meaning through genre
We go to the movies not just to experience a film’s elaborate scenes,
brilliant images, dramatic cuts, and rich sounds. We also go for the

gripping suspense of a murder mystery, the fascinating revelations of a
documentary, the poetic voyage of a musical score set to abstract images
and sounds, and the satisfying iconography of a western. The
psychological thriller Us (2019) creates a mysterious narrative that slowly
uncovers a subtle politics of horror; the South Korean film Parasite (2019)
fluctuates between psychological tension and unexpected violence; the
documentary Honeyland (2019) explores the unseen, poetic life of a
Macedonian beekeeper; and The Irishman (2019) returns to the icons and
conventions of the American gangster film but with an atmosphere of
elegy and loss.
Besides the stylistic details found in the mise-en-scène, cinematography,
editing, and sound, movie experiences are also encounters with larger
organizational structures and attractions. Some of us may look first for a
good story; others may prefer documentary, experimental films, or films
that use animation in creative ways. Some days we may be in the mood
for a melodrama; other days we may feel like watching a horror film. Part
3 explores the principal organizations of movies — narrative,
documentary, experimental and animated films, and movie genres —
each of which, as we will see, arouses certain expectations about the
movie we are viewing. Each shapes the world for us into a distinctive kind
of experience, offering a particular way of seeing, understanding, and
enjoying it.

CHAPTER 7 NARRATIVE FILMS
Telling Stories

A sequence of three stills from three different Wizard of Oz
movies.
Description

The first still from the movie, The Wizard of Oz, shows the protagonist
Dorothy walking through a meadow on a yellow brick road along with the
Tin Man, the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion. The second still shows the
same characters as portrayed in “The Wiz.” The third still from the movie,
Oz, the Great and Powerful shows Glinda flying ahead of Oscar, both
encased in a large bubble, across a landscape with mountains.
L. Frank Baum’s 1900 children’s book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has
been one of the most ubiquitous narratives in American history.
Adaptations include a 1902 stage play, 1910 and 1925 silent versions, the
famous 1939 film starring Judy Garland, updates like Sam Raimi’s 2013
Oz the Great and Powerful, the modernized musical The Wiz (1978), and
the novel and Broadway show Wicked (2003). With a sepia-tone frame
questioning Dorothy’s place in Kansas farm life, The Wizard of Oz (1939)
catapults the heroine into a strange, Technicolor world where she meets
the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion, who then accompany
her as she encounters and overcomes a series of obstacles along her way
and finally defeats the Wicked Witch of the West. Despite its fantastical
elements, the narrative follows a cause-and-effect structure propelled by
the protagonist’s goal and eventually concludes in her return to her home
and family. Indeed, the basic outline of this narrative might describe the
shape of many very different stories, from Finding Nemo (2003) to The
Hurt Locker (2008). At the same time, this particular narrative is also a fine
example of how some narratives can approach the status of a cultural
myth, shared by many different audiences.

can help you review. Go to launchpadworks.com
Movies have thrived on the art and cra� of narrative, a story with a
particular plot and point of view. At its core, narrative maps the
different ways we have learned to make sense of our place in history
and the world as well as to communicate with others. Narrative film
developed out of a long cultural, artistic, and literary tradition of
storytelling that shows characters pursuing goals, confronting
obstacles to those goals, and ultimately achieving some kind of
closure. In general, narrative follows a three-part structure
consisting of a beginning, a middle, and an ending. An established
situation is disrupted, and events in the middle of the narrative lead
to a restoration of order in the ending.
Storytelling has always been a central part of societies and cultures.
Stories spring from both personal and communal memories and
reconstruct the events, actions, and emotions of the past through
the eyes of the present. They also offer explanations for events and
features of the world that may otherwise seem beyond
comprehension. In this way, stories strengthen both the memory
and the imagination of a society. Many stories — Bible stories, Hindu
scriptures, Icelandic sagas, oral tales of indigenous cultures, and
well-known stories of historical events (such as the Civil War) and
people (such as Martin Luther King Jr.) — are all driven by these

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aims. In a sense, stories are both the historical center of a culture
and the bonds of a community.
KEY OBJECTIVES
Recognize the ubiquity of storytelling in film.
Describe the different historical practices that create the foundations for film
narratives.
Explain how film narratives construct plots that can arrange the events of a
story in different ways.
Identify the ways that film characters motivate actions in a story.
Break down the ways that plots create different temporal and spatial
schemes.
Describe how narration and narrative point of view determine our
understanding of a story.
Distinguish the differences between classical and alternative narrative
traditions.

A Short History of Narrative Film
Over time, stories have appeared in a myriad of material forms and
served innumerable purposes, many of which reappear in movie
narratives. Some films, like Little Big Man (1970) and Contempt
(1963), make explicit references to the narrative history that
precedes them. Little Big Man, for instance, depicts the heritage of
Native Americans gathered around the fire listening to storytellers
recounting the history of their people. Contempt, in contrast,
struggles with the narrative forms found in Homer’s Odyssey and
those demanded by commercial filmmaking — between telling a tale
as an epic poem and as a Hollywood blockbuster [Figures 7.1a–
7.1c].

A sequence of three images shows how the Greek epic “Odyssey”
has been depicted in three different historical time periods.
7.1a–7.1c The Odyssey. The history of narrative invariably reflects the historical pressures
and conditions that determine how stories are told. (a) Ancient Greek epics, including the
renowned Odyssey, o�en were depicted as visual narratives. (b) Since medieval times, the

visual arts have incorporated stories and allegories into a single frame — for example,
depicting multiple characters and events from the Odyssey in one sixteenth-century
painting. (c) More modern visual arts, like Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt (1963), have
engaged directly with the history of narrative. Godard’s film is about the struggle to adapt
the Odyssey to the screen.
Description
The first image shows an ancient vase with an engraving of a warrior
about to shoot an arrow. The second image shows a sixteenth-century
painting that shows several characters and events of the epic in a single
frame. The third image is a still from the movie”Contempt” and shows a
person’s hand holding a clapperboard for the film”Odyssey” in front of a
shirtless actor.
To appreciate the richness of film narrative, viewers must keep in
mind the unique cultural history of narrative itself. For example,
oral narratives, which are spoken or recited aloud, represent a
tradition that extends from the campfire to today’s spoken word
artists. Written narratives, such as Charles Dickens’s Bleak House
(1853), appear in printed form, while graphic narratives develop
through a series of images, such as the stories told through
lithographs in the eighteenth century and through modern comic
books like D.C. Comics’ Wonder Woman series, which started in 1942.
In these and other examples, the form and material through which a
story is told affect aspects of the narrative, facilitating some
characteristics of expression and prohibiting others. Oral narratives
provide more direct and flexible contact with listeners, allowing a

story to be tailored to an audience and to change from one telling to
another. A visual narrative shows the appearance of characters more
concretely than a literary one, whereas a literary narrative is able to
present characters’ thoughts more seamlessly than a visual
narrative. A film narrative commonly draws from and combines
other narrative traditions, and attending to how a particular film
narrative employs the strategies of, say, oral narratives or operatic
narratives illustrates the broad and complex history of storytelling
embedded in cinematic form.
1900–1920s: Adaptations,
Scriptwriters, and Screenplays
Although the first movies usually showed only simple moving
images (such as a train arriving at a station), these images o�en
referred to a story behind them. As film form developed,
adaptations of well-known stories were a popular choice of
filmmakers, much like today’s adaptations of comic books and
remakes of previous movies. Audiences’ familiarity with the
characters and plot helped them to follow emerging motion-picture
narrative techniques. As early as 1896, the actor Joseph Jefferson
represented Rip van Winkle in a brief short. By 1903, a variety of
similar film tableaux — a story told through a single image —
assumed that audiences would know the larger story behind what
was shown on the screen, including Shakespeare’s King John (1899),
Cinderella (1900), Robinson Crusoe (1902), and Ali Baba and the Forty

Thieves (1905) [Figure 7.2]. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the most popular novel
and stage play of the nineteenth century, was adapted for the screen
numerous times in the silent film era, once by Edwin S. Porter in
1903 [Figure 7.3]. Porter’s films were among the first to use editing
to tell stories, and by 1906 the movies were becoming a
predominantly narrative medium.

A still from the movie, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, shows
several female characters on a dazzling set filled with various
designs on a starlit sky background.
7.2 Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1905). The tableaux of early films rely on imagery that
assumes the audience knows the larger story behind the image.

A still from the movie, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, shows a man, two
women, and a child standing outside a cabin in falling snow.
7.3 Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1903). Edwin S. Porter directed one of numerous silent film
adaptations of the most popular nineteenth-century novel and stage play.

These early historical bonds between movies and stories served the
development of what we can call the economics of leisure time. In
the first decades of the twentieth century, the budding movie
industry recognized that stories take time to tell and that an
audience’s willingness to spend time watching stories makes money
for the industry. In these early years, most individuals went to the
movies to experience the novelty of “going to the movies” and
spending an a�ernoon with friends or an hour away from work. By
1913, moviemakers recognized that by developing more complex
stories they could attract larger audiences, keep them in their seats
for longer periods, and charge more than a nickel for admission.
Along with the growing cultural prestige of attending films that told
serious stories, movies could now sell more time for more money
through longer narratives. Cinema quickly established itself among
the leading sources of cultural pleasures that included museums, art
galleries, and traditional and vaudeville theaters. At the same time,
cinema’s own history came to be governed by the forms and aims of
storytelling.
For the film you recently watched in class, describe as much of the story as you
can. What are the main events, the implied events, and the significant and
insignificant details of the film’s story?

As narrative film developed, two important industrial events stand
out — the introduction of screenplays and the advancement of
narrative dialogue through sound. Whereas many early silent
movies were produced with little advance preparation, the growing
number and increasing length of movies from 1907 onward required
the use of screenwriters (also called scriptwriters), who created the
film’s screenplay, either by beginning with an original treatment and
developing the plot structure and dialogue over the span of several
versions or by adapting short stories, novels, or other sources. As
part of this historical shi�, movies’ narratives quickly became
dependent on a screenplay (or script), the text from which a movie is
made, including dialogue and information about action, settings,
shots, and transitions. This shi� standardized the elements and
structures of movie narratives. A copyright lawsuit regarding an
early movie version of Ben-Hur (1907) immediately underlined the
importance of screenwriters who could develop original narratives.
1927–1950: The Coming of Sound and
Classical Hollywood Narrative
The introduction of sound technology and, consequently, dialogue
in the late 1920s proved to be one of the most significant advances in
the history of film narrative. An industry that needed more verbally
driven narratives, Hollywood looked increasingly to New York and
other places where literary figures like F. Scott Fitzgerald (who wrote

the screenplay for the 1938 film Three Comrades) could be lured into
writing new stories and scripts.
Sound affected the cinema in numerous ways, but perhaps most
important was that it enabled film narratives to create and develop
more intricate characters whose dialogue and vocal intonations
added new psychological and social dimensions to film. More
intricate characters were used to propel more complex movie plots.
In many ways a product of the new narrative possibilities offered by
sound, screwball comedies such as Bringing Up Baby (1938) feature
fast-talking women and men whose verbal dexterity is a measure of
their independence and wit [Figure 7.4]. Other films of this period
use sound devices, such as a whistled tune in Alfred Hitchcock’s The
Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), to make oblique connections
between characters and events and to build more subtle kinds of
suspense within the narrative.

A still from the movie, Bringing Up Baby, shows Susan Vance
driving a car with a man in the passenger’s seat and a leopard in
the backseat.
7.4 Bringing Up Baby (1938). The coming of sound showcased the witty dialogue of the fast-
talking, independent heroines of screwball comedies. Such characters are epitomized by
Susan Vance (played by Katharine Hepburn), whose “baby” in this film is a pet leopard.

The continuing evolution of the relation between sound and
narrative helped to solidify and fine-tune the fundamental shape of
classical Hollywood narrative in the 1930s and 1940s. During this
period, the structure of this increasingly dominant narrative form
became firmly established according to three basic features: (1) the
narrative focuses on one or two central characters, (2) these
characters move a linear plot forward, and (3) the action develops
according to a realistic cause-and-effect logic. A trio of movies
produced in 1939, o�en heralded as Hollywood’s golden year — Gone
with the Wind, Stagecoach, and The Wizard of Oz — illustrate sound-
era movie narratives as modern-age myths and, despite their many
differences, describe narrative variations on this classical
Hollywood structure. During these years, the Hollywood studio
system grew in size and power, and it provided a labor force, a
central producer system, and a global market that created an
extraordinarily efficient industrial system for storytelling. This
system favored the development of narrative genres, such as
musicals and westerns, that met audience expectations for
repetition and variation (see Chapter 10).
Also during this period, the introduction and advancement of
specific movie technologies — for example, deep-focus
cinematography and Technicolor processes — offered ways to
convey and complicate the narrative information provided by
specific images. Although the plot structure of the classical narrative

remained fully intact, these technologies allowed movies to explore
new variations on narrative in the atmosphere of a scene or in the
dramatic tensions among characters.
In 1930, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America
(headed by Will H. Hays from 1922 to 1945) adopted the strict
Production Code, a set of guidelines for what was considered
morally acceptable to depict in films, including prescribing that
villains be punished in the end. Film narratives during the 1930s
turned more conspicuously to literary classics for stories that could
provide adult plots acceptable to censors. These classics included
Pride and Prejudice (1940) and Wuthering Heights (1939).
World War II (1939–1945) significantly jolted classical Hollywood
narratives. The stark and o�en horrific events that occurred during
the war raised questions about whether the classic narrative
formulas of linear plots, clear-headed characters, and neat and
logical endings could adequately capture the period’s far messier
and more confusing realities. If the narrative of The Wizard of Oz
followed the yellow brick road that led a character home, the war-
scarred narrative of The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) poignantly
questioned what path to follow and even doubted whether one could
ever go home again [Figure 7.5].

A still from the movie, The Best Years of Our Lives, shows a
veteran holding a glass of milk with prosthetic limbs while a
young girl standing beside him, looks up at him.
7.5 The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). This postwar narrative questions the assumption that
a return home will bring a happy ending.

1950–1980: Art Cinema
The global trauma of World War II not only challenged the
formulaic Hollywood storytelling style but also gave rise to an
innovative art cinema that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s in
Europe, Japan, India, Latin America, and elsewhere. This new form
of cinema questioned many of the cultural perspectives and values
that existed before the war. Produced by such directors as Ingmar
Bergman, Federico Fellini, and Agnès Varda, European art cinema
experimented with new narrative structures that typically subverted
or overturned classical narrative models by featuring characters
without direction, seemingly illogical actions, and sometimes
surreal events. In Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), for instance, Varda restricts
the narrative to two hours in the day of a singer, capturing the real-
time details of her life. Although the protagonist fears a cancer
diagnosis, the narrative eschews melodrama for the joys of
wandering through the everyday [Figure 7.6].

A still from the movie, Cleo from 5 to 7, shows a young woman
walking amid the crowd of a street lined with stores.
7.6 Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962). Agnès Varda’s narrative restricts itself to two hours of real time as
it documents an a�ernoon in the life of a young woman in Paris.

Influencing later new wave cinemas such as the New German
Cinema of the 1970s and the New Hollywood cinema of the 1970s
and 1980s, these films intentionally subverted traditional narrative
forms such as linear progression of the plot and the centrality of a
specific protagonist. In addition, these narratives o�en turned away
from the objective point of view of realist narratives to create more
individual styles and tell stories that were more personal than
public. Fellini’s 8½ (1963), for instance, has an unmistakable
autobiographical dimension as it recounts the struggles of a movie
director wrestling with his anxieties about work and the memories
that haunt him.
1980s–Present: Franchises, Narrative
Reflexivity, and Games
Contemporary movies represent a wide variety of narrative
practices, but three can be identified as particularly significant and
widespread in recent decades. Reflecting different technological,
artistic, and industrial influences, these three narrative forms create
worlds in which multiple stories unfold, reflect back on the process
of making films, or mimic the interactivity of video games.
With the success of Star Wars (1977) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981),
blockbuster franchises made their mark on Hollywood movie
culture, coming to dominate the market from the late twentieth
century to the present. O�en set in fantastical worlds or among

branded superhero characters, franchises involve viewers with a
succession of interrelated stories while immersing them in a
fictional universe that extends to other media, product tie-ins, and
related experiences. Many have roller coaster–like narratives with
spectacular effects, evoking the physical and psychological thrills
associated with amusement park rides. The Pirates of the Caribbean
movie series (2006–2017) is actually based on a Disneyland ride.
Even the Harry Potter films (2001–2011), based on J. K. Rowling’s
bestselling book series, at times seem to aspire to the narrative-ride
model, complete with elaborate action sequences and IMAX-ready
spectacle that became the basis for a theme park experience at
Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida. Superhero films, which
became ubiquitous in the 2000s as computer-generated visual effects
became more sophisticated, similarly depend on extensive action
sequences and enthusiastic fan involvement based on knowledge of
characters’ traits, backstories, and relationships within their
branded worlds. The Star Wars franchise and the Marvel Cinematic
Universe, both acquired by Disney near the beginning of the 2010s,
became the most expansive film franchises of that decade, each with
more than a dozen films and countless tie-in toys, books, games, TV
series, and virtual-reality experiences at Disney World.
In the practice of narrative reflexivity, filmmakers both tell stories
and call attention to how they are telling those stories or how these
stories are a product of certain narrative techniques and
perspectives. Adaptation (2002) is thus a film about a screenwriter’s

struggles to adapt a New Yorker essay on orchids to the formulas of a
Hollywood narrative. Meanwhile, replete with references to earlier
films and narrative conventions, Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious
Basterds (2009) is a self-conscious film fantasy about the killing of
Nazi leaders during the screening of a film [Figure 7.7].

A still shows Adolph Hitler posing for an artist painting a huge
portrait of him in the movie, Inglourious Basterds.
7.7 Inglourious Basterds (2009). Contemporary narratives like this film are highly self-
conscious and reflexive about the historical sources and materials that construct their
stories.

As films moved into the digital age, a third tendency arose:
structuring stories with the cues and options of video gaming,
making films and their marketing campaigns a kind of interactive
game for audiences. Some movies have increasingly implicitly or
explicitly constructed stories as interactive explorations of space. In
Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow (2014), the hero dies combating an
alien invasion over and over, waking to attempt his mission again,
similar to a video game character who may die and then reattempt a
challenging level many times. The excitement of Steven Spielberg’s
Ready Player One (2018) takes place within a virtual-reality game
[Figure 7.8]. The escalating convergences and exchanges among
games, virtual-reality experiences, and films have the potential to
challenge cinema’s narrative conventions.

A close up of a man wearing virtual reality headgear, which
mirrors an image of a hand reaching for a glowing blue pyramid
with the text “PARZIVAL” at the top center.
7.8 Ready Player One (2018). Just as the film’s characters spend much of their time within
the virtual-reality space OASIS, viewers interact with the film’s narrative like a game.

H I STO R Y C LO S E U P
Salt of the Earth (1954)

A still from the movie, Salt of the Earth, shows Esperanza Quintero standing
amidst a group of people and speaking. The people around her sit and look on.
Turning actual events into a narrative o�en makes them more compelling.
Characters with whom we can identify, sharply drawn conflict, and suspense

about the outcome make Salt of the Earth (1954, right), based on a 1951 miners’
strike in New Mexico, a gripping and deeply moving story. But despite these
traditional narrative elements, the film broke with Hollywood convention in many
ways. Shot on location with a mix of actors and Chicano/a community members,
the story is told through the eyes of Esperanza, a young mother married to a
striking miner. Initially meek, Esperanza learns to voice her concerns about issues
affecting women in their company town, built on land that formerly belonged to
Mexico. When the men are banned from picketing, the women walk the line
instead. The story proceeds on both personal and political levels, as Esperanza
and her husband, Juan, negotiate their roles and Esperanza takes a public role in
the labor struggle. Both narrative threads rely on heroic acts by ordinary
Americans about whom few Hollywood movies are made. Because the script was
dra�ed in collaboration with the participants and directed by Herbert J. Biberman,
one of the “Hollywood Ten” who were jailed for refusing to testify in congressional
hearings into whether film industry professionals were current or former members
of the American Communist Party, the film plays a role in another fraught narrative
about American life — the history of censorship. The set was threatened while the
film was in production, and anti-Communist unions blocked laboratories from
printing it and projectionists from showing it. Not until many years a�er the film
was made did it become recognized as a deeply American narrative.

The Elements of Narrative Film
Narrative is universal, but it also is infinitely variable. The origins of
cinema storytelling in other narrative forms and texts, the evolution
of narrative strategies across film history, and the distinct narrative
traditions across cultures give a sense of this variety. However, we
can identify the common elements of narrative and some of the
characteristic ways the film medium deploys them.
Stories and Plots
The main features of any kind of narrative are the story, characters,
plot, and narration. A story is the subject matter or raw material of
a narrative. In a story, actions and events — usually perceived in
terms of a beginning, a middle, and an end — are ordered
chronologically and focus on one or more characters, the
individuals who motivate the events and perform the actions of the
story. Stories tend to be summarized easily, as in “the tale of a man’s
frontier life on the Nebraska prairie” or “the story of a woman
confronting the violence of her past in Pakistan.” In the next
section, we discuss characters in detail.
The plot is the narrative ordering of the events of the story as they
appear in the actual work, selected and arranged according to
particular temporal, spatial, generic, causal, or other patterns. In

one story, the plot may include the smallest details in the life of a
character; in another story, it may highlight only major, cataclysmic
events. One plot may present a story as progressing forward step-by-
step from the beginning to the end, and another may present the
same story by moving backward in time. One plot may describe a
story as the product of the desires and drives of a character, whereas
another might suggest that events take place outside the control of
that character. Although the story of John F. Kennedy’s life and
death are well known, movies depicting these events feature very
different plots. Oliver Stone’s JFK (1991) focuses on New Orleans
district attorney Jim Garrison’s investigation of conspiracy theories
around the death, using a bewildering array of footage to unsettle
our historical certainties. Thirteen Days (2001) is a telescopic
narrative covering the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, creating drama by
focusing on a president’s character under pressure, even though the
outcome is already known to viewers. Finally, Jackie (2016) shi�s
emphasis to the first lady, covering her life in the days a�er the
assassination.
From early films like Edwin S. Porter’s Life of an American Fireman
(1903), regarded as one of the first significant narrative films, to
modern movies like Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000), with its
reverse chronology, movies have relied on the viewer’s involvement
in the narrative tension between story and plot to create suspense,
mystery, and interest. Even in the short and simple rescue narrative
of Porter’s film [Figures 7.9a–7.9d], some incidental details are

omitted, such as the actual raising of ladders to rescue the people
inside the burning building. To add to the urgency and energy of the
narrative, the rescue is shown sequentially from two different
camera setups, a device that confused later audiences. In Memento,
the tension between plot and story is more obvious and dramatic.
This unusual plot, about a man without a short-term memory,
begins with a murder and proceeds backward in time through a
series of short episodes that unveil fragments of information about
who the man is and why he committed the murder. In other films,
we know the story; what interests us is discovering the particular
ways the plot constructs that story.

A sequence of four stills, (a), (b), (c), and (d) from the movie,
Life of an American Fireman.
7.9a–7.9d Life of an American Fireman (1903). This story proceeds from a fire alarm being
sounded to firefighters racing through the streets, to the rescue, with one event — the rescue
of a woman via ladder — shown from two different perspectives.

Description
Still (a) shows a few firefighters rushing from their beds to slide down a
pole at the fire station.
Still (b) shows firefighters racing through the streets in horse-drawn
carriages with steam pumper fire engines.
Still (c) shows a firefighter carrying a woman from a bedroom of a burning
building.
Still (d) shows a firefighter climbing down a ladder with the woman
draped over his back with her arms wrapped around him. The ladder is
held by two other firefighters below, and two more firefighters spray water
into the other windows of the burning house.
Characters
The first characters portrayed in films were principally bodies on
display or in motion — a famous actor posing, a person running, a
figure performing a menial task. When movies began to tell stories,
however, characters became the central vehicle for the actions, and
with the advent of the Hollywood star system around 1910,
distinctions among characters developed rapidly. From the 1896
Lone Fisherman to the 1920 Pollyanna (featuring Mary Pickford), film
characters evolved from amusing moving bodies to figures that had
specific narrative functions and were portrayed by adored actors
whose popularity made them nearly mythic figures. With the

introduction of sound films in 1927, characters and their
relationships were increasingly drawn according to traditions of
literary realism and psychological complexity. Today the evolution
of character presentation continues as the voices of real actors are
adapted to animated figures and plots. Throughout all these
historical incarnations, characters have remained one of the most
immediate yet under analyzed dimensions of the movies.
Character Roles
Characters are either central or minor figures who anchor the
events in a film. They can propel the plot by fulfilling a particular
character function, such as protagonist, antagonist, or helper —
roles that recur across many plots. More complex characters
motivate narrative events through specific situations or traits.
Characters are commonly identified and understood through
aspects of their appearance, gestures, actions, and dialogue; the
comments of other characters; as well as such incidental but
important features as their names or clothes.
In many narrative films, a character’s inferred emotional and
intellectual make-up motivates specific actions that consequently
define that character. His or her stated or implied wishes and fears
produce events that cause certain effects or other events to take
place. Thus, the actions, behaviors, and desires of characters create
the causal logic favored in classical film narrative, Hollywood’s

dominant style of narrative filmmaking in which characters’ goals
propel a linear plot toward closure. In The Wizard of Oz (1939),
Dorothy’s desire to “go home” — to find her way back to Kansas —
leads her through various encounters and dangers that create
friendships and fears, and these events, in turn, lead to others, such
as Dorothy’s fight to retrieve the witch’s broom. In the end, she
returns home joyfully. The character of Dorothy is thus defined first
by her emotional desire and will to go home and then by the
persistence and resourcefulness that eventually allow her to achieve
that goal [Figure 7.10].

A still from the movie, The Wizard of Oz, shows the rear view of
the protagonist Dorothy walking through a meadow along with
the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion toward the
Emerald City.
7.10 The Wizard of Oz (1939). Narrative cause-and-effect logic finds Dorothy and her new
companions on the yellow brick road, heading toward the Emerald City.

Most film characters are a combination of both ordinary and
extraordinary features. This blend of fantasy and realism has always
been an important movie formula: it creates characters that are
recognizable in terms of our experiences and exceptional in ways
that make them interesting to us. The complexities of certain film
characters can be attributed to this blending and balancing. For
example, the title characters of the biographical Queen of Katwe
(2016), Milk (2008), and Lincoln (2012) — Phiona Mutesi, a young girl
from a slum in Kampala, Uganda, who became a chess champion;
Harvey Milk, the activist politician who fought for gay rights in San
Francisco; and the American president attempting to broker an
antislavery legislation deal — all combine extraordinary and
ordinary characteristics [Figures 7.11a–7.11c]. Even when film
characters belong to fantasy genres, as with the tough but
vulnerable heroine of Alien (1979), understanding them means
appreciating how that balance between the ordinary and the
extraordinary is achieved.

A sequence of three stills, labeled (a), (b), and (c) shows scenes
from three biographical movies.
7.11a–7.11c Biographical film characters. These characters based on actual people — from
(a) Queen of Katwe (2016), (b) Milk (2008), and (c) Lincoln (2012) — represent a balance of the
ordinary and the extraordinary.

Description
Still (a) from movie, Queen of Katwe, shows an African woman admiring
a trophy.
Still (b) from the movie, Milk, shows Sean Penn giving a passionate
speech.
Still (c) from the movie, Lincoln, shows the actor portraying Abraham
Lincoln sitting on the porch of a cabin.
Character Coherence, Depth, and
Grouping
No matter how ordinary or extraordinary, unique or typical a
character is, narrative traditions tend to require character
coherence — consistency and coherence in a character’s behaviors,
emotions, and thoughts. Character coherence is the product of
psychological, historical, or other expectations that see people (and
thus characters in fictional narratives) as fundamentally consistent
and unique. We usually evaluate a character’s coherence according
to one or more of the following three assumptions or models:
Values. The character coheres in terms of one or more abstract
values, such as when a character becomes defined through his
or her overwhelming determination or treachery.

Actions. The character acts out a logical relation between his or
her implied inner or mental life and visible actions, as when a
sensitive character acts in a remarkably generous way.
Behaviors. The character reflects social and historical
assumptions about normal or abnormal behavior, as when a
fi�eenth-century Chinese peasant woman acts submissively
before a man with social power.
Defined within a realist tradition, the character Sergeant William
James in Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker (2008) is part of a
specialist bomb squad group in the Iraq War. His reckless behavior
as he toys with mortal danger and death contrasts with his obsessive
countdown of the days until he can return home. Questions about
what drives and explains this character become part of the film’s
powerful depiction of war. When he finally returns home, only to
quickly reenlist to return to Iraq, this complicated character seems
revealed as one who coheres around a death wish of sorts or at least
around the addictive excitement of risking death [Figure 7.12].

A still from the movie, “The Hurt Locker, shows Sergeant
William James in the passenger seat of a military truck.
7.12 The Hurt Locker (2008). The contradictory behavior of Sergeant William James coheres
around his addiction to danger.

Inconsistent, contradictory, or divided characters subvert one or
more patterns of coherence. Although inconsistent characters
occasionally may be the result of poor characterization, some films
intentionally create an inconsistent or contradictory character as a
way of challenging our sympathies and understanding. In films like
Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) — about a bored suburban
housewife, Roberta, who switches identities with an offbeat and
mysterious New Yorker — characters complicate or subvert the
expectation of coherence by taking on contradictory personalities.
Mulholland Drive (2001) dramatizes this instability when its two
characters become mirror images of each other. In its tale of an
amnesiac woman and a young actress who become entangled in a
mysterious plot, fundamental notions about character coherence
and stability are undermined [Figure 7.13].

A still from the movie, Mulholland Drive, shows two women
sitting on a couch. One of them is talking to the other while the
other looks into the distance with tears welling up in her eyes.
7.13 Mulholland Drive (2001). The double characters of the amnesiac and the young actress
complicate character coherence.

Film characterization inevitably reflects historical and cultural
values. Historically, the preponderance of stories considered
universal have featured male heroes. Hollywood has also
traditionally tended to marginalize stories about women and girls.
In 2018, thirty-nine of the one hundred most successful Hollywood
films had female leads or co-leads. While still a minority of leading
roles, this number represents a significant increase over 2015, when
only seventeen top-grossing films featured women in leading roles
— a sign of increasing pressure on Hollywood regarding diversity
and inclusion. The success of The Hunger Games films (2012–2015),
starring Jennifer Lawrence as heroine Katniss Everdeen, helped
prove that female leads could carry the kind of franchise action
films that Hollywood increasingly relies on. Rey, the protagonist of
the Star Wars sequel trilogy (2015–2019) played by Daisy Ridley,
continued this trend.
In Western cultures, movies tend to promote the concept of the
singular character, a unique individual distinguished by specific
features and isolated from a social group. For example, the unique
character of Jason Bourne in the series of Bourne films (2002–2016) is
a product of a complex mixture of traits that reflect a modern notion
of the advanced individual as one who is emotionally and
intellectually complex and one of a kind. Character depth is the
pattern of psychological and social features that distinguish a
character as rounded and complex in a way that approximates
realistic human personalities. It becomes a way of referring to

personal mysteries and intricacies that deepen and layer the
dimensions of a complicated personality. For example, the surface
actions of Louise in Thelma & Louise (1991) — she refuses to drive
through Texas to travel to Mexico — clearly hide a deep trauma (a
presumed sexual assault) that she tries unsuccessfully to repress.
The uniqueness of a character may be a product of one or two
attributes — such as exceptional bravery, massive wealth, or
superpowers — that separate him or her from all the other
characters in the film. Sometimes we are led to question the value
placed on singularity as a product of a social system that prizes
individuality and psychological depth. A�er all, Hannibal Lecter in
The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and in its prequel and sequel is one of
the most singular and exceptional characters in film history. Our
troubling identification with him (at least in part) goes to the social
heart of our admiration for such uniqueness.
Character grouping refers to the social arrangements of characters
in relation to one another. Traditional narratives usually feature one
or two protagonists (characters identified as the positive forces in a
film) and one or two prominent antagonists (characters who oppose
the protagonists as negative forces in a film). For example, the
women drawn together by their husbands’ deaths in Widows (2018)
are forced to take action by unexpected antagonists [Figure 7.14]. As
with the sympathetic relationship between a German officer and a
French prisoner in Grand Illusion (1937), this oppositional grouping
of characters can sometimes be complicated or blurred.

A still from the movie, Widows, shows a group of four women
looking at each other intently.
7.14 Widows (2018). The unlikely protagonists of this heist film do not immediately know
whom they are up against.

In the film you are watching for class, select a character that you might define
as singular. Does that singularity indicate something about the values of the
film? Does the character seem coherent? How?
In a film featuring an ensemble cast, such as The Breakfast Club
(1985), the conflicting relationships and competing interests among
a group of interrelated characters o�en provide much of the film’s
drama. Surrounding, contrasting with, and supporting the
protagonists and antagonists, minor characters (also called
secondary characters) are usually associated with specific character
groups. In Do the Right Thing (1989), Da Mayor wanders around the
edges of the central action throughout most of the film. Although he
barely affects the events of the story, Da Mayor represents an older
generation whose idealistic hopes have been dashed but whose
fundamental compassion and wisdom stand out amid racial anger
and strife.
Social hierarchies of class, gender, race, age, and geography, among
other determinants, also come into play in the arrangements of film
characters. Traditional movie narratives have focused on male
protagonists and on heterosexual pairings in which males have
claimed more power and activity than females. Another traditional
character hierarchy places children and elderly individuals in
subordinate positions. Especially in older mainstream films,

characters from racial minorities have existed on the fringes of the
action and have occupied social ranks markedly below those of the
white protagonists. In Gone with the Wind (1939), for example,
character hierarchy subordinates African Americans to whites.
When social groupings are more important than individual
characters, the collective character of the individuals in the group is
defined primarily in terms of the group’s action and personality.
Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925) fashions a drama of
collective characters, cra�ing a political showdown among czarist
oppressors, rebellious sailors, and sympathetic civilians in Odessa.
Modern films may shuffle those hierarchies noticeably so that
groups like women, children, and the poor assume new power and
position, as in Winter’s Bone (2010), a story about a young woman
determined to find her lost father in a destitute Ozark Mountain
region ravaged by a methamphetamine drug culture [Figure 7.15].

A still from the movie, Winter’s Bone, shows a young woman
walking with two kids and two dogs along a dirt road.
7.15 Winter’s Bone (2010). The remarkable grit and determination of a young woman defy
both class and gender expectations.

Character Types
Character types share distinguishing features with other similar
characters and are prominent within particular narrative traditions
such as fairy tales, genre films, and comic books. A single trait or
multiple traits may define character types. These may be physical,
psychological, or social traits. Tattoos and a shaved head may
identify a character as a “skinhead” or punk, and another character’s
use of big words and a nasal accent may represent a New England
snob.
What kinds of social hierarchies are suggested by the character groupings in a film
you have recently viewed?
We might recognize the singularity of Warren Beatty’s performance
as Clyde in Bonnie and Clyde (1967), yet as we watch more movies
and compare different protagonists, we can recognize him as a
character type who — like James Cagney as gangster Tom Powers in
The Public Enemy (1931) and Bruce Willis as John McClane in the Die
Hard series (1988–2013) — can be described as a “tough yet sensitive
outsider.” By offering various emotional, intellectual, social, and
psychological points of entry into a movie, character types include
such figures as “the innocent,” such as Elizabeth Taylor’s Velvet
Brown in National Velvet (1944); “the villain,” such as Robert De

Niro’s Max Cady in Martin Scorsese’s remake of Cape Fear (1991); and
the “heartless career woman,” such as the imperious fashion editor
played by Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada (2006) [Figure 7.16].
These and other character types can o�en be subclassified in even
more specific terms — such as “the damsel in distress” or “the
psychotic killer.”

A still from the movie, The Devil Wears Prada, shows Miranda
Priestly giving a stern look to someone beyond the frame while a
man and a woman next to her look surprised.
7.16 The Devil Wears Prada (2006). The “heartless career woman” character type is depicted
by Meryl Streep in her role as imperious fashion editor Miranda Priestly.

Character types usually convey clear psychological or social
connotations and imply cultural values about gender, race, social
class, or age that a film engages and manipulates. Tina Turner is
portrayed as a strong black woman by Angela Bassett in What’s Love
Got to Do with It? (1993). In Life Is Beautiful (1997), the father (played
by director Roberto Benigni) jokes and pirouettes in the tradition of
comic clowns like Charlie Chaplin or Jacques Tati, outsiders whose
physical games undermine the social and intellectual pretensions
around them. In Life Is Beautiful, however, this comic type must live
through the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp with his son, and
in this context the character type becomes transformed into a
different figure — a heroic type who physically and spiritually saves
his child [Figure 7.17].

A still from the movie, Life is Beautiful, shows a man in striped
prison clothes lean forward to eye level with a young boy over.
Despite being streaked with sweat, the man smiles as he speaks to
the boy.
7.17 Life Is Beautiful (1997). The “comic” character type, depicted by Roberto Benigni in his
role as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp, is transformed into the “hero” type.

The relationship between film stars and character types has been a
central part of film history and practice. For over a hundred years,
the construction of character in film has interacted with the
personae of recognizable movie stars. Rudolph Valentino played
exotic romantic heroes in The Sheik (1921) and Son of the Sheik (1926),
and his offscreen image was similarly molded to make him appear
more exotic, with his enthusiastic female fans differentiating little
between character and star. In Meet the Parents (2000) and its
sequels, Robert De Niro’s character draws on familiar aspects of the
actor’s tough-guy persona — for example, his role as a young Vito
Corleone in The Godfather: Part II (1974) or as Travis Bickle in Taxi
Driver (1976) — to humorous effect. Our experience of stars —
garnered through publicity and promotion, television, social media,
and media criticism — resembles the process by which characters
are positioned in narratives. Elements of characterization —
clothing, personal relationships, perceptions of coherence or
development — factor into our interest in stars and, in turn, into the
ways that aspects of stars’ offscreen images affect their film
portrayals. One way to contemplate the effects of star image on
character types is to imagine a familiar film cast differently. Would
Cast Away’s (2000) story of everyman encountering his environment
be the same if, instead of Tom Hanks, Jack Nicholson or Beyoncé
Knowles played the lead?
Archetypes

Film characters are also presented as figurative types, characters so
exaggerated or reduced that they no longer seem at all realistic and
instead seem more like abstractions or emblems, like the White
Witch in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the
Wardrobe (2006). In some movies, a figurative character appears as
an archetype, a spiritual, psychological, or cultural model
expressing certain virtues, values, or timeless realities — such as
when a character represents evil or oppression. In Battleship
Potemkin (1925), a military commander unmistakably represents
social oppression, and a baby in a carriage becomes the emblem of
innocence oppressed. In different ways, figurative types present
characters as intentionally flat, without the traditional depth and
complexity of realistically drawn characters, and o�en for a specific
purpose — to create a comic effect, as with the absentminded
professor in Back to the Future (1985); to make an intellectual
argument, as in Battleship Potemkin; or to populate a world of
superheroes, as in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016).
Stereotypes
Sometimes a film reduces an otherwise realistic character to a set of
static traits that identify him or her in terms of a social, physical, or
cultural category — such as the “mammy” character in Imitation of
Life (1934) [Figure 7.18] or the vicious and inhuman Vietnamese in
The Deer Hunter (1978). This figurative type becomes a stereotype —
a character type that simplifies and standardizes perceptions that

one group holds about another, o�en less numerous, powerful, or
privileged group. Stereotypes are ahistorical, resistant to change,
and offensive because marginalized social groups are not
represented in other ways. Louise Beavers’s performance as Delilah
Johnson in Imitation of Life is substantive enough to complicate the
way the role is written, but the actress nevertheless found herself
fighting the “mammy” stereotype through her entire career. The
wise karate master played by Pat Morita in The Karate Kid (1984) and
the menacing Arab brandishing a scimitar in Raiders of the Lost Ark
(1981) have both been criticized for drawing on stereotypes. But
stereotypes persist as cultural and ideological shorthand in
contemporary cinema. Stereotypes like the demanding immigrant
parent and the gay male best friend may be deployed in comedy for
their immediacy of reference, implicating viewers in their
assumptions about others. Because stereotypes communicate
histories of inequality in immediately recognizable ways, they can
raise questions that carefully drawn positive characterizations o�en
cover over. The shouting match staged among the ethnic occupants
of the same Brooklyn neighborhood in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing
(1989) addresses the difficulty of thinking outside these
formulations. Diversity of stories and storytellers is key to displacing
stereotypes.

A still from the movie, Imitation of Life, shows a white couple
sitting at a table and talking to their African American
housekeeper wearing a long dress and apron.
7.18 Imitation of Life (1934). The “mammy” stereotype is identified by the black
housekeeper’s subservient role and dowdy costumes.

Character Development
Finally, film characters usually change over the course of a realist
film and thus require us to evaluate and revise our understanding of
them as they develop. In a conventional story, characters are o�en
understood or measured by the degree to which they change and
learn from their experiences. Both the changes and a character’s
reaction to them determine much about the character and the
narrative as a whole. We follow characters through this process of
character development, which is shown in the patterns through
which characters in a film move from one mental, physical, or social
state to another. In Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954), the beautiful
Lisa changes from a seemingly passive socialite to an active
detective under the stress of investigating a murder mystery. In Juno
(2007), the drama of a bright, sardonic sixteen-year-old’s newly
discovered pregnancy becomes less about a social or moral crisis in
the community and more about her own self-discovery of the
meaning of love, family, and friendship. The out-of-wedlock son of
champion boxer Apollo Creed, Donnie Johnson, trains with and
becomes a key support for his father’s former rival Rocky Balboa,
making a legacy for himself even as he is persuaded to take on his
father’s name [Figure 7.19].

A still from the movie, Creed, shows Rocky Balboa patting
Adonis Johnson’s shoulder inside a boxing ring.
7.19 Creed (2015). With a familiar plot about an underdog boxer, this new take on the Rocky
series (1976–2018) engages the viewer through character development.

Character development follows four general schemes — external
and internal changes and progressive and regressive development.
External Change
External change is typically a physical alteration, as when we watch
a character grow taller or gray with age. Commonly overlooked as
merely a realistic description of a character’s growth, exterior
change can signal other key changes in the meaning of a character.
Similar to the female protagonist in Pygmalion (1938) and My Fair
Lady (1964), the main character in The Devil Wears Prada (2006),
Andy, is a naive recent college graduate who struggles with her first
job at a fashion magazine, and her personal and social growth and
maturation can be measured by her increasingly fashionable outfits.
Internal Change
Internal change measures the character’s internal transformation,
such as when a character slowly becomes bitter a�er experiencing
numerous hardships or becomes less materially ambitious a�er
gaining more of a spiritual sense of the world. In Mildred Pierce
(1945), there is minimal external change in the appearance of the
main character besides her costumes, but her consciousness about
her identity dramatically changes — from a submissive housewife
and doting mother to a bold businesswoman, to a confused, if not
contrite, socialite.

Progressive and Regressive Development
As part of these external and internal developments, progressive
character development occurs with an improvement or
advancement in some quality of the character. Regressive character
development indicates a loss of or return to some previous state or a
deterioration from the present state. For most viewers of The Devil
Wears Prada, Andy grows into a more complex and more admirable
woman. Mildred Pierce’s path resembles for many a return to her
originally submissive role.
Using these four schemes to understand character development can
be a complex and sometimes even contradictory process. Some
characters may seem to progress materially but regress spiritually,
for instance. Other characters may not develop at all or may resist
development throughout a film. Character development is
frequently symptomatic of the larger society in which characters
live. When the boy Oskar in Volker Schlöndorff ’s The Tin Drum
(1979) suddenly refuses to grow at all, his distorted physical and
mental development reflects the new Nazi society that then was
developing in Germany [Figure 7.20].

A still from the movie, The Tin Drum, shows a little boy sitting
by a railing and playing a drum.
7.20 The Tin Drum (1979). Oskar’s arrested character development is a symptom of the new
Nazi society.

Diegetic and Nondiegetic Elements
Most narratives involve two kinds of materials — those related to the
story and those not related to the story. The film’s diegesis is the
world of the film’s story (its characters, places, and events),
including what is shown and what is implied to have taken place.
The diegesis of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln (2012) includes characters
and events explicitly revealed in the narrative, such as Abraham
Lincoln’s negotiations with lawmakers to pass an antislavery bill.
However, the film’s diegesis also includes viewers’ knowledge of
other unseen figures and events from American history, including
the final battles of the Civil War and Lincoln’s impending
assassination. The extent to which we find the film realistic or
convincing, creative or manipulative, depends on our recognition of
the richness and coherence of the diegetic world surrounding the
story.
Describe the diegesis of the film you just watched in class. Which events are
excluded or merely implied when that diegesis becomes presented as a narrative?
The notion of diegesis is critical to our understanding of film
narrative because it forces us to consider those elements of the story
that the narration chooses to include or not include in the plot —
and to consider why these elements are included or excluded.

Despite the similarity of information in a plot and a story, plot
selection and omission describe the exchange by which plot
constructs and shapes a story from its diegesis. Consider a film
about social unrest and revolution in Russia at the beginning of the
twentieth century. Because the diegesis of that event includes a
number of events and many characters, what should be selected,
and what should be omitted? Faced with this question for his film on
the 1905 revolution, Sergei Eisenstein reduced the diegesis to a
single uprising on a battleship near the Odessa steps and called the
film Battleship Potemkin (1925).
Information in the narrative can be nondiegetic. A nondiegetic
insert is an insert that depicts an action, an object, or a title
originating outside the space and time of the narrative world.
Material used to tell the story that does not relate to the diegesis and
its world includes background music and credits. These dimensions
of a narrative indirectly add to a story and affect how viewers
participate in or understand it. With silent films, nondiegetic
information is sometimes part of the intertitles — frames that print
the dialogue of the characters and occasionally comment on the
action — as when D. W. Griffith repeatedly inserts a line from Walt
Whitman (“Out of the cradle endlessly rocking”) into his complex
narrative Intolerance (1916).
Diegetic soundtracks include sound sources that can be located in
the story, whereas nondiegetic soundtracks are commonly musical

scores or other arrangements of noise and sound whose source is
not found in the story. Most moviegoers are familiar with the
ominously thumping soundtrack of Jaws (1975) that announces the
unseen presence of the great white shark. In this way, the story
punctuates its development to quicken our attention and create
suspenseful anticipation of the next event [Figure 7.21].

A still shows a silhouette of a person swimming during night.
7.21 Jaws (1975). In the opening sequence, Chrissie goes swimming during a late-night
beach party. At first, all is tranquil, but the ominous thumping in the soundtrack

foreshadows her violent death. This sound is used throughout the film to signal the
presence of the shark.
As you view the next film for class, identify the most important nondiegetic
materials, and analyze how they might emphasize certain key themes or ideas.
Credits — a list at the end of a film of all the personnel involved in a
film production, including cast, crew, and executives — are another
nondiegetic element of the narrative. Sometimes seen at the
beginning and sometimes at the end of a movie, credits introduce
the actors, producers, technicians, and other individuals who have
worked on the film. Hollywood movies today open with the names
of famous stars, the director, and the producers, and their closing
credits identify the secondary players and technicians. How this
information is presented, especially in the opening credits, can
suggest ways of looking at the story and its themes. In Se7en (1995),
for instance, the celebrated opening credits graphically anticipate a
dark story about the efforts of two detectives to track down a
diabolical serial killer. Filmed in a suitably grainy and fragmented
style and set to the sounds of a pulsating industrial soundtrack, the
opening credits depict the obsessive mind of a maniac as he cra�s
morbid scrapbooks, providing both atmosphere and expository
narrative information [Figure 7.22].

A still shows the grainy opening credits from the movie, Seven
(the v is replaced with the number 7), shows the bright white title
is highlighted against a shiny black background.
7.22 Se7en (1995). The presentation of the credits in a film can suggest ways for viewing its
story and its unfolding themes.

Narrative Patterns of Time
Individuals and societies create patterns of time as ways of
measuring and valuing experience. Repeating holidays once a year,
marking births and deaths with symbolic rituals, and rewarding
work for time invested are some of the ways we organize and value
time. Similarly, narrative films develop a variety of temporal
patterns as a way of creating meaning and value in the stories and
experiences they recount.
One of the first narrative films, Edwin S. Porter’s The Great Train
Robbery (1903), manipulated time and place by shi�ing from one
action to another and coordinated different spaces by jumping
between exterior and interior scenes. Since then, movie narratives
have contracted and expanded times and places according to ever-
varying patterns and formulas, spanning centuries and traveling the
world in Cloud Atlas (2012) or confining the tale to two hours in one
town in Agnès Varda’s Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962).
Linear Chronology
Most commonly, plots follow a linear chronology — the
arrangement of plot events and actions that follow each other in
time. The logic and direction of the plot commonly follow a central
character’s motivation — the ideas or emotions that make that
person tick. In these cases, a character pursues an object, a belief,

or a goal, and the events in the plot show how that character’s
motivating desire affects or creates new situations or actions. Past
actions generate present situations, and decisions made in the
present create future events. The narrative of Little Miss Sunshine
(2006) has a linear structure. A family of offbeat and dysfunctional
characters travels from New Mexico to California to participate in a
beauty pageant, and on their drive toward this single goal, over the
course of several days, they must overcome many, sometimes
hilarious, predicaments, obstacles, and personalities in order to
complete their narrative journey and ultimately discover themselves
anew. Although journeys are obvious examples of linear plots, many
film genres rely on this chronology. In a romantic comedy like
Trainwreck (2015), the bad behavior of the heroine and the mistrust
of her love interest lead to complications and misunderstandings,
but these only delay the obvious resolution of the couple getting
together [Figure 7.23].

A still from the movie, Trainwreck, shows an over the should
shot of a woman talking to a man in front of her
7.23 Trainwreck (2015). The poor choices of Amy Schumer’s character may seem to lead
away from the desired goal but ultimately prove that the romantic pair are right for each
other.

Linear narratives most commonly structure their stories in terms of
beginnings, middles, and ends. As a product of this structure, the
relationship between the narrative opening and closing is central to
the temporal logic of a plot. How a movie begins and ends and what
relationship exists between those two poles explain much about a
film. Sometimes this relation can create a sense of closure or
completion, as happens when a romance ends with a couple united
or with a journey finally concluded. Other plots provide less certain
relations between openings and closings. In Ang Lee’s Life of Pi
(2012), Pi Patel’s story begins with his childhood in a zoo and a
dramatic shipwreck that leaves him dri�ing the seas in a lifeboat
with a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena, and a male Bengal tiger
nicknamed Richard Parker. At the conclusion, the reality of what
actually happened (and what was fantasy) is brought into question
[Figure 7.24].

A still from the movie, Life of Pi, shows the protagonist of
standing on his tattered lifeboat with a bewildered expression as
he stares into the distance beyond the frame.
7.24 Life of Pi (2012). In Ang Lee’s magical film, the protagonist’s fantastic adventure
concludes with dramatic ambiguity.

Plot Chronologies: Flashback and
Flashforward
How is time shaped in this clip from Shutter Island (2010)? What especially
important elements of narrative’s time scheme can you point to?

A video is pause mode shows a scene from the movie, Shutter Island. It shows
the close-up of protagonist Teddy Daniels’s face. The background shows
branches of trees.
Description

The blurred branches in the background are separated by the close-up on
Teddy. The branches on the left appear to be from pine trees and are skewed
upward and to the left. The branches on the right have leaves and spots of
sky can be seen in gaps between foliage.
Despite the dominance of linear chronologies in movie narratives,
many films deviate, to some extent, to create different perspectives
on events. Such deviations may lead viewers toward an
understanding of what is or is not important in a story or disrupt or
challenge notions of the film as a realistic re-creation of events. Plot
order describes how events and actions are arranged in relation to
each other. Actions may appear out of chronological order, as when
a later event precedes an earlier one in the plot.
One of the most common nonlinear plot devices is the narrative
flashback, whereby a story shi�s dramatically to an earlier time in
the story. When a flashback describes the whole story, it creates a
retrospective plot that tells of past events from the perspective of the
present or future. In The Godfather: Part II (1974), the modern story
of mobster Michael Corleone periodically alternates with the
flashback story of his father, Vito, many decades earlier. This
comparison of two different histories draws parallels and suggests
differences between the father’s formation of his Mafia family and
the son’s later destruction of that family in the name of the Mafia
business. Likewise, in Pedro Almodóvar’s Pain and Glory (2019), a
despondent filmmaker experiencing chronic pain relives key

moments of his past. The onset, style, and mood of these encounters
parallel the crisis of creativity he is experiencing in the present
[Figures 7.25a and 7.25b].

Two stills, (a) and (b) depict scenes from the movie, Pain and
Glory.
7.25a and 7.25b Pain and Glory (2019). The temporal structure of this film about an aging
filmmaker’s inner life evokes the unbidden nature of memory and the creative process.

Description
Still (a) shows a close up of a man, with his eye closed, underwater in a
pool.
Still (b) shows four women washing clothes on the bank of a river, one
with a young boy standing behind her.
Conversely but less frequently, a film may employ a narrative
flashforward, leaping ahead of the normal cause-and-effect order to
a future incident. A film narrative may show a man in an office and
then flash forward to his plane leaving an airport before returning to
the moment in the plot when he sits at his desk. In They Shoot Horses,
Don’t They? (1969), the plot flashes forward to a time when Robert,
an unsuccessful Hollywood director during the Great Depression, is
on trial. The unexplained scene creates a mysterious suspense that
is not resolved until much later in the film.
Other nonlinear chronological orders might interweave past,
present, and future events in less predictable or logical patterns. In
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), the two main characters,
Joel and Clementine, struggle to resurrect a romantic past that has
been intentionally erased from their memories. The flashbacks here
appear not as natural remembrances but as dramatic struggles to re-
create a part of the personal narrative they have lost [Figure 7.26].
Hiroshima mon amour (1959) mixes documentary photos of the
nuclear destruction of Hiroshima at the end of World War II, a
modern story of a love affair between a French actress and a

Japanese architect, and flashback images of the woman growing up
in France during the war, when she had a relationship with a
German soldier [Figure 7.27]. Gradually, and not in chronological
order, the story of her past is revealed. Conversations with her lover
and images of Japan during World War II seem to provoke leaps in
her memory. As the film narrative follows these flashbacks, we
become involved in the difficulty of memory as it attempts to
reconstruct an identity across a historical trauma. When a narrative
violates linear chronology in these ways, the film may be
demonstrating how subjective memories interact with the real
world. At other times, as with Hiroshima mon amour, these violations
may be ways of questioning the very notion of linear progress in life
and civilization.

A still from the movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,
shows Joel Barish and Clementine Kruczynski lying next to each
other on ice.
7.26 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). The film’s chronology attempts to recover
what has been lost from the couple’s story.

A still from the movie, Hiroshima mon amour, shows an
anxious young woman looking at herself in the bathroom mirror.
7.27 Hiroshima mon amour (1959). The nonlinear mix of past and present engages us in the
main character’s attempt to reconstruct an identity across a historical trauma.

Description
Hiroshima mon amour (1959). The nonlinear mix of past and present
engages
us in the main character’s attempt to reconstruct an identity across a
historical trauma.
The Deadline Structure
One of the most common temporal schemes in narrative films is the
deadline structure — a narrative structured around a central event
or action that must be accomplished by a certain time. This
structure adds to the tension and excitement of a plot by
accelerating the action toward that certain moment, hour, day, or
year. These narrative rhythms can create suspense and anticipation
that define the entire narrative and the characters who motivate it.
In The Graduate (1967), Benjamin must race to the church in time to
declare his love for Elaine and stop her from marrying his rival. In
the German film Run Lola Run (1998), Lola has twenty minutes to
find 100,000 deutsche marks to save her boyfriend. This tight
deadline results in three different versions of the same race across
town in which, like a game, Lola’s rapid-fire choices result in three
different conclusions [Figure 7.28]. In another variation on the
deadline structure, high school graduation signifies incipient
adulthood in countless youth comedies. In Booksmart (2019), for

example, two A students seek to have four years of fun in one night
[Figure 7.29].

A still from the movie, Run Lola Run, shows the protagonist of
the movie running on a sidewalk toward the viewer.
7.28 Run Lola Run (1998). In three different versions of the same race against time, Lola is
forced to make different choices.

A still from the movie, Booksmart, shows two teenaged girls
standing in the doorway of a room in their school.
7.29 Booksmart (2019). A common high school graduation “deadline” plot is revitalized in
this film, featuring female protagonists who are academically serious and mutually
supportive.

Description
A poster on the door has an image of chicks with graduation caps and
text that reads, “Too cool to stay in school?”
Parallel Plots
The deadline structure points to another common temporal pattern
in film narrative — the doubled or parallel plotline. In parallel plots,
there is an implied simultaneity of or connection between two
different plotlines, usually with their intersection at one or more
points. Many movies alternate between actions or subplots that take
place at roughly the same time and that may be bound together in
some way, such as by the relationship of two or more characters.
One standard formula in a parallel plot is to intertwine a private
story with a public story. Jerry Maguire (1996) develops the story of
Jerry’s efforts to succeed as an agent in the cutthroat world of
professional sports, and concurrently it follows the ups and downs
of his romance with Dorothy, a single mother, and his bond with her
son, Ray. In some crime or caper films, such as Ocean’s Eleven (2001),
a murder or heist plot (in this case, involving a complicated casino
robbery) parallels and entwines with an equally complicated love
story (here between Danny and Tess Ocean). In addition to
recognizing parallel plots, we need to consider the relationship
between them.

Narrative Duration and Frequency
Movie narratives also rely on temporal patterns through which
events in a story are constructed according to different time
schemes. Not surprisingly, these narrative temporalities overlap
with and rely on similar temporal patterns developed as editing
strategies. Narrative duration refers to the length of time used to
present an event or action in a plot. Die Hard: With a Vengeance
(1995) features a now-standard digital countdown on a bomb that
threatens to blow up New York City. The narrative suspense is, in
large part, due to the amount of time the plot spends on this scene,
dwelling on the bomb mechanism. The drawn-out time devoted to
defusing the bomb, much longer than thirty real seconds, shows
how the temporal duration can represent an extended psychological
time.
At the other end of the spectrum, a plot may include only a temporal
flash of an action that really endures for a much longer period. In
Secretariat (2010), a rapid montage of images condenses many
months of victories during which the renowned racehorse of the
title rises to fame. Instead of representing the many details that
extend an actual duration of one or more events, the plot condenses
these actions into a much shorter temporal sequence. Both
examples call attention to the difference between story time and
plot time. Story events that take years — such as a character growing
up — may be condensed into a brief montage in a film’s plot.

In a linear plot, each event occurs once. But narrative frequency —
the number of times a plot element is repeated throughout a
narrative — can be manipulated as an important storytelling tool.
For example, in the narrative of an investigation, a crime may be
depicted many times as more pieces of the story are put together. In
The Handmaiden (2016), events are depicted from the perspective of
the two female protagonists in turn, revealing significant narrative
information [Figures 7.30a and 7.30b].

Two stills, (a) and (b), depict scenes from the movie, The
Handmaiden.
7.30a and 7.30b The Handmaiden (2016). A scene that the handmaiden Sook-hee witnesses
from outside the window in the film’s first part (a) is repeated indoors as the narration shi�s

to her mistress Hideko’s story (b). The viewer struggles to follow a twisting plot full of
characters who are not what they appear to be.
Description
Still (a) shows a man and a woman sitting in chairs in front of a hearth.
The man sips from a teacup and the woman plays with her hair.
Still (b) shows a man and a woman sitting in chairs looking at each other
while another woman observes them through glass windows in the
background.
Narrative Space
Along with narrative patterns of time, plot constructions also
involve a variety of spatial schemes through the course of the
narrative. These narrative locations — indoors, outdoors, natural
spaces, artificial spaces, outer space — define more than just the
background for stories. Stories and their characters explore these
spaces, contrast them, conquer them, inhabit them, leave them,
build on them, and transform them. As a consequence, both the
characters and the stories usually change and develop not only as
part of the formal shape of these places but also as part of their
cultural and social significance and connotations. Michael Haneke’s
Amour (2012) takes place almost exclusively in the apartment where
a couple in their eighties have spent their married life [Figure 7.31].
A�er Anne suffers a stroke, the drama of this single mise-en-scène
generates layers and layers of shared emotions and memories as the

husband and wife struggle with the climactic crisis they now face. In
contrast, the complex temporality of Interstellar’s (2014) science
fiction plot — involving wormholes and characters traveling in space
who age at different rates than people on earth — is stabilized to
some extent by its narrative spaces, which depict vivid planetary
environments. A fundamental narrative of betrayal is set on a frozen
planet with a toxic atmosphere.

A still from the movie, Amour, shows an aged couple at their
dining table with only two chairs in their kitchen.
7.31 Amour (2012). The film takes place in an apartment where the confined space
intensifies the residents’ memories, experiences, emotions, and decisions.

In conjunction with narrative action and characters, the cultural
and social resonances of narrative spaces may be developed in four
different ways — historically, ideologically, psychologically, and
symbolically. Whether actual or constructed, the historical location —
the recognized marker of a historical setting that can carry
meanings and connotations important to the narrative — abounds in
film narratives. For example, in Roman Holiday (1953), a character
visits the monuments of Rome, where she discovers a sense of
human history and a romantic glory missing from her own life
[Figure 7.32]. Films from Ben-Hur (1925) to Gladiator (2000) use the
historical connotations of Rome to infuse the narrative with
grandeur and wonder.

A still from the movie, Roman Holiday, shows a man walking
down the Spanish steps toward a woman eating an ice-cream
cone.
7.32 Roman Holiday (1953). During a character’s exploration of Rome, a sense of human
history emerges.

An ideological location is a space or place inscribed with distinctive
social values or ideologies in a narrative. Sometimes these narrative
spaces have unmistakable political or philosophical significance,
such as Folsom State Prison, where Johnny Cash bonds with
prisoners in Walk the Line (2005), or the oppressive grandeur of the
czar’s palace in Eisenstein’s October (1927). The politics of gender
also can underpin the locations of a film narrative in crucial
ideological ways. In 9 to 5 (1980), the plot focuses on the ways that
three working women transform the patriarchal office space of their
jobs into a place where the needs of women are met [Figure 7.33].

A still from the movie, 9 to 5, shows three women in an office
room, chatting and laughing over drinks.
7.33 9 to 5 (1980). Three women transform the gendered politics of office space.

Psychological location in a film narrative suggests an important
correlation between a character’s state of mind and the physical
place he or she inhabits in the story. In Sofia Coppola’s Lost in
Translation (2003), an American actor (played by Bill Murray)
experiences confusion and communication difficulties while visiting
contemporary Tokyo. These, along with his isolation in an expensive
hotel, connect to deeper feelings of disaffection and disillusionment
with his life back home [Figure 7.34]. Less common, symbolic
space is a space transformed through spiritual or other abstract
means related to the narrative. In different versions of the Robinson
Crusoe story — from Luis Buñuel’s The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
(1954) to Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) and Cast Away (2000) — the
space of an island might become emblematic of the providential
ways of life or of the absurdity of the human condition [Figure 7.35].

A still from the movie, Lost in Translation, shows a man sitting
alone at a bar with his head hung. A glass of liquor sits on the bar
before him and he holds a lit cigar in his lips.
7.34 Lost in Translation (2003). The isolation of an American actor in Tokyo suggests a
disaffected psychological space.

A still from the movie, Cast Away, shows a man sitting on a log
by a fire near an island coast.
7.35 Cast Away (2000). The island as symbolic space becomes emblematic of the absurdity
of the human condition.

Description
The man’s hair is long and wild and he’s nearly nude but for the cloth
around his waist. A soccer ball with grass attached as hair sits on a
nearby tree stump.
Complex narratives o�en develop and transform the significance of
one or more locations, making this transformation of specific places
central to the meaning of the movie. In Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of
New York (2002), the Five Points neighborhood of New York City in
1863 becomes a site of historical realism as an infamous gangland
territory, a psychological place of terror and violence, the
ideological location of emerging American social classes, and a
symbol of American culture. In Jim Jarmusch’s three-part film
Mystery Train (1989), the narrative interweaves the stories of two
Japanese tourists, an Italian woman on her way home to bury her
husband, and three dri�ers who hold up a liquor store [Figure 7.36].
All happen to seek refuge in a run-down Memphis hotel. Although
they never meet, they infuse the narrative location of the hotel with
the meanings of their individual dramas. For the Japanese couple,
the hotel becomes a place of historical nostalgia for 1950s America
and blues music; for the Italian woman, a comically ritualistic and
spiritual location where she eventually meets Elvis Presley’s ghost;
and for the three dri�ers, a weird debating hall where they discuss
contemporary social violence.

A still from the movie, Mystery Train, shows two Japanese
tourists talking to a hotel receptionist.
7.36 Mystery Train (1989). Japanese tourists, the ghost of Elvis, and bungling dri�ers
transform the space of a run-down Memphis hotel into an offbeat carnival of loss and desire.

Narrative Perspectives
From what point of view is the narration of this clip from The Royal
Tenenbaums (2001)? If not controlled by an individual, how might the narration
reveal certain attitudes about the story’s logic?

A screenshot of a paused video shows a scene from the movie, Royal
Tenenbaums.
Description

The scene shows a woman talking on a phone call and a young boy
wearing a sweatband sits on woman’s lap with elbows resting on an open
book while staring beyond the frame. A young girl, seated on the left,
reads a book. A play button is present at the center of the screenshot.
Plots are organized by the perspectives that inform them. Whether
this perspective is explicit or implicit, we refer to this dimension of
narrative as narration — the telling of a story or description of a
situation. It is the emotional, physical, or intellectual perspective
through which the characters, events, and action of the plot are
conveyed. It shapes how plot materials appear and what is or is not
revealed about them. Narration carries and creates attitudes, values,
and aims that are central to understanding any movie. A narrator is
a character or other person whose voice and perspective describe
the action of a film, either in voiceover or through a particular point
of view. It may be clearly designated in a film by direct address to
the viewer. However, the term narration is not restricted to a single
character or to verbalization within a movie about the plot but also
can refer to how movies organize plot elements. The most common
narrative perspectives are first-person, omniscient, and restricted.
One tactic for drawing us into a story is a narrative frame. Frames
and other devices direct the arrangement of the plot and indicate
certain cultural, social, or psychological perspectives on the events
of the story.

First-Person Narrative and Narrative
Frames
Signaled by the pronoun I in written or spoken texts, a first-person
narration in film may be attributed to a single character using
voiceover commentary or to camera techniques and optical effects
that mark an individual’s perspective. However, movie images can
usually only approximate a subjective point of view, in which the
film frame re-creates what a single character sees, for a limited
period without appearing contrived. Lady in the Lake (1947), filmed
from the point of view of detective Philip Marlowe, is a famous
instance of cinematic first person and is considered by many to be a
failed experiment. Video games and virtual reality have greatly
extended the immersive capacity of first-person perspective (see
Technology in Action: Immersive Film Narrative).
T E C H N O LO G Y I N A C T I O N

Immersive Film Narrative
Cinema’s distinction as a narrative medium lies in its immersive potential. Across
film history, technologies have been developed to stimulate viewers’ senses and to
give them the illusion of direct participation in the film’s world. The introduction of
synchronized sound in the late 1920s was a major step in this direction; the
perfection of color processes was another. But new technologies also have the
potential to draw too much attention to themselves, thus disrupting the
experience for viewers and distracting from a film’s narrative.
3-D technology was developed in the 1950s to emulate human stereoscopic vision,
filming with two cameras or lenses to mimic what is seen by both the right and le�
eyes and combining both images in projection. Audiences wore special glasses
that created a tangible experience of dimensional space. In House of Wax (1953),
the first major studio release in the format, 3-D technology worked with color and
directional sound to deliver a memorable horror film experience [Figure 7.37a].
But the New York Times dismissed its “cheap and obvious” story as “a bundle of
horrifying claptrap.”

A still from the movie, House of Wax, shows a man with extensive scarring on
his facial features threatening a woman.
7.37a House of Wax (1953). This thriller combined 3-D technology with color and
stereophonic sound to create a new type of immersive experience.

In the 1990s, computer-generated imagery (CGI), whether of entire environments
like the Toy Story franchise (1995–2019) or special effects sequences as in Twister
(1995), sparked wonder in audiences, involving them viscerally in film narrative.
Perhaps the most ambitious attempt to combine CGI technology with an
engrossing narrative was the science fiction epic Avatar (2009), set in the richly
imagined, lush environment of the moon Pandora. Director James Cameron
claimed he waited to make the film until technology could fully support his vision
for it. Sophisticated camera systems, which Cameron helped develop, enabled
him to direct actors on a motion-capture stage as he viewed them in CGI
environments. The finished film integrates actors’ performances with a fully
realized fictional world that audiences experienced with sensory immediacy
[Figure 7.37b]. Some viewers reportedly became so engrossed in the world of
Pandora that they experienced depression a�er leaving the theater. Avatar’s
success reinvigorated 3-D technology, sparking upgrades in theaters all over the
world.

A still from the movie, Avatar, shows a close up of a blue man, with a flat nose
and extensive face paint, drawing an arrow with a bow.
7.37b Avatar (2009). This science fiction 3-D epic entranced audiences with its lush
digital environments and influenced the worldwide conversion to digital projection.

Other modern films take less computer-reliant approaches to audience immersion.
Emmanuel Luzbecki’s virtuosic cinematography in The Revenant (2015)
inextricably places the viewer in the harsh frontier environment of 1823 [Figure
7.37c]. As the beleaguered protagonist faces the elements and his enemies — and
does battle with a bear — the viewer suffers with him. With minimal use of CGI (the
bear isn’t real, but almost all other story elements are), the film was shot in
sequence using only natural light in cold and forbidding conditions. The Revenant
takes a different path to immersive storytelling than Avatar but is no less
successful.

A still from the movie, The Revenant, shows two men wading through water
in dark woods.
7.37c The Revenant (2015). Director Alejandro González Iñárritu sought authenticity in
shooting this award-winning film in sequence and using only natural light.

Appearing at the beginning and end of a film, a narrative frame
designates a context or person positioned outside the principal
narrative of a film, such as bracketing scenes in which a character in
the story’s present begins to relate events of the past and later
concludes her or his tale. This kind of narrative frame can help
define a film’s terms and meaning. Sometimes signaled by a
voiceover, this frame may indicate the story’s audience, the social
context, or the period from which the story is understood. The
frame may, for instance, indicate that the story is a tale for children,
as in The Blue Bird (1940); that it is being told to a detective in a
police station, as in The Usual Suspects (1995); or that it is the
memory of an elderly woman, as in Titanic (1997). In each case, the
film’s frame indicates the crucial perspective and logic that define
the narration.
In Sunset Boulevard (1950), the presence of the narrator is announced
through the voiceover of the screenwriter-protagonist who
introduces the setting and circumstances of the story. His voice and
death become the frame for the story. Throughout the course of the
film, his voiceover disappears and reappears, but we are aware from
the start that the story is a product of his perspective.
Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm (1997) also uses a narrative frame. In this
case, the perspective of the frame is that of a young man whose
commuter train has stopped en route to his home because of a

heavy ice storm [Figure 7.38]. The film begins as he waits in the
night for the tracks to be cleared of ice and debris and reflects on his
family. This isolated moment and compartment frame the flashback
that follows. Although he, too, disappears as a narrator until we
return to the train and his voice at the end of the movie, his role
makes clear that this tale of a dysfunctional family in the 1970s is
about this young man at a turning point in his life. Indeed, both
these examples suggest a question to ask about narrators: does it
make a difference if they are seen as part of the story?

A still from the movie, The Ice Storm, shows a young man
huddled in his train seat.
7.38 The Ice Storm (1997). When a storm stops his train, a young man’s thoughts on his past
become the film’s narrative frame.

Third-Person Narrative: Omniscient and
Restricted
The perspective of a film may adopt third-person narration — a
narration that assumes an objective and detached stance toward the
plot and characters by describing events from outside the story.
With third-person narratives like Gravity (2013), it still may be
possible to describe a specific kind of attitude or point of view. Far
from being staid and detached, the organizing perspective of this
film is forceful and dynamic, with camera movements that observe
the main character’s plight [Figure 7.39].
7.39 Gravity (2013). Although third-person narratives maintain objectivity, they also can
create dynamic characters and action.
The standard form of classical movies is omniscient narration —
narration that presents all elements of the plot, exceeding the
perspective of any one character (a version of third-person

narration). All elements of the plot are presented from many or all
potential angles. An omniscient perspective knows all, knows what
is important, and knows how to arrange events to reveal the truth
about a life or a history. Although the four films in the Bourne series
(2002–2016) employ omniscient perspectives that follow Jason
Bourne’s flight through multiple cities around the world, the story
itself contrasts the attempt of a covert American agency’s
surveillance mechanism to approximate that omniscient perspective
in its pursuit of Bourne, while he constantly attempts to escape it.
A limited third-person perspective, or restricted narration — a
narrative in which our knowledge is limited to that of a particular
character — organizes stories by focusing on one or two characters.
Even though this perspective on a story also assumes objectivity and
is able to present events and characters outside the range of those
primary characters, it confines itself largely to the experiences and
thoughts of the major characters.
The historical source of restricted narration is the novel and short
story. Its emphasis on one or two individuals reflects a relatively
modern view of the world that is concerned mostly with the
progress of individuals. Limiting the narration in this way allows the
movie to attend to large historical events and actions (battles or
family meetings, for instance) while also prioritizing the main
character’s problems and desires. Buster Keaton’s The General (1927),
set in Georgia and Tennessee during the Civil War, follows this

pattern. Johnny Gray’s ingenuity becomes apparent and seems
much more honorable, and funny, than the grand epic of war that
stays in the background of the narrative. The unusual premise of
Jojo Rabbit (2019) is a young German boy’s imaginary friendship with
Adolph Hitler, a narrative point of view that the film manipulates
through absurdist comedy as the child’s perspective on oppression
widens [Figure 7.40]. With these and other restricted narratives,
some characters receive more or less attention from the limited
narrative point of view.
7.40 Jojo Rabbit (2019). Restricted to a child’s point of view, this film takes on hateful
ideology through satire.
Reflexive, Unreliable, and Multiple
Narration

Omniscient narration and restricted narration are the most
common kinds of classical narration, but some films use variations
on these models. Reflexive narration is a mode of narration that
calls attention to the narrative point of view of the story in order to
complicate or subvert the movie’s narrative authority as an objective
perspective on the world. Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
(1920) is a well-known early example of reflexive narration that
fractures the veracity and reliability of its point of view when, at the
film’s conclusion, we discover that the narrator is a madman. In
About a Boy (2002), the main character o�en comments reflexively
on his own behavior as he pretends to be a father in order to meet
women.
Contemporary and experimental films commonly question the very
process of narration at the same time that they construct the
narrative. Unreliable narration is a type of narration that raises
questions about the truth of the story being told (it is sometimes
called manipulative narration). In Fight Club (1999), the bottom falls
out of the narration when, toward the conclusion of the film, it
becomes clear that the first-person narrator has been hallucinating
the entire existence of a central character around whom the plot
develops [Figure 7.41].

7.41 Fight Club (1999). This is a dramatic example of a film whose narration suddenly
appears to be the questionable fantasy of the film’s narrator.
Multiple narrations are found in films that use several different
narrative perspectives for a single story or for different stories in a
movie that loosely fits these perspectives together. D. W. Griffith’s
1916 movie Intolerance famously links four stories about prejudice
and hate from different historical periods (“the modern story,” “the
Judean story,” “the French story,” and “the Babylonian story”), a
precursor to the tradition of multiple narration. Woody Allen’s
comedy Zelig (1983) parodies the objectivity proposed by many
narratives by presenting the life of Leonard Zelig in the 1920s and
1930s through the onscreen narrations of numerous fictional and
real persons (such as Saul Bellow and Susan Sontag). Contemporary
films like Crash (2004) and Babel (2006) weave together different
stories from around a city or even the world, coincidentally linked
by major events in the characters’ lives [Figure 7.42].

7.42 Babel (2006). Overlapping multiple narratives are woven together in a film about the
search for a common humanity.
What narrative perspective features most prominently in the film you just viewed?
If the narration is omniscient or restricted, how does it determine the meaning of
the story?
Anthology films are composed of various segments, o�en by
different filmmakers — such as Germany in Autumn (1978), Two Evil
Eyes (1990), Four Rooms (1995), and Paris, je t’aime (2006). They are
more extreme versions of multiple narratives. Although the stories
may share a common theme or issue — a political crisis in Germany,
adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe stories, or zany guests staying in a

decaying hotel — they intentionally replace a singular narrative
perspective with smaller narratives that establish their own
distinctive perspectives. In the case of the film celebrating the
seventieth anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, My
Country, My People (2019), seven stories by seven directors — each set
in a different decade — reflect the film’s theme of individual
connection to a larger whole in form as well as content.
FILM IN FOCUS Narration and Gender in Gone Girl (2014)
See also: Double Indemnity (1944); Fight
Club (1999)
To watch a clip from Gone Girl (2014), go to LaunchPad for the Film Experience
at launchpadworks.com
Adapted by novelist Gillian Flynn from her bestselling thriller of the same name,
Gone Girl (2014) follows attractive, affable Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) as he discovers
his beautiful wife’s disappearance on their fi�h wedding anniversary and falls
under suspicion as her murderer. As nondiegetic captions mark the time that has
elapsed since Amy (Rosamund Pike) went missing, the investigation alternates
between the progress of the detective on the case and Nick’s increasingly
suspicious movements. Both narrative threads are interwoven with flashbacks of
events leading up to the day of Amy’s disappearance: although the plot covers less
than three months, the story covers more than five years. The viewer is given a
range of narrative perspectives and caught up in a series of narrative snares: What

http://launchpadworks.com/

happened on July 5? What went wrong in this seemingly perfect marriage? And
crucially, whose version of events is to be believed?
Nick’s behavior is gradually accounted for in a series of conversations with his
sympathetic twin sister, and Amy’s perspective is supplied through her first-person
narration of the flashbacks. At first, we see Amy writing in her diary as we hear her
voice on the soundtrack [Figure 7.43] relating happy memories of meeting and
courting Nick. However, soon the diary-writing frame gives way to her restricted
narration of scenes from the marriage that are less rosy. Her voiceover takes on
added poignancy because she is, precisely, gone: “I feel like I could disappear,” she
narrates, recounting her life a�er moving with Nick to small-town Missouri.
7.43 Gone Girl (2014). Amy’s narration starts with her diary entries.
The puzzle-like quality of the film’s storytelling is emphasized by a puzzle within
the story. Amy has traditionally led Nick on an annual scavenger hunt for his
anniversary present, and in the movie’s present-day timeline, the clues she has le�
behind take on a sinister cast as they double as clues to her own fate. Through her
voice delivering clues, Amy remains a present absence as concerns over her
whereabouts escalate into a national media event. The relationship between fact
and fiction (in the sense both of falsehood and of storytelling) is a ubiquitous
theme of Gone Girl. As the detective cautiously proceeds to formulate her own
version of events, a television news personality leads the rush to judgment

regarding Nick’s guilt. The distortions of the news media are prefigured in an early
flashback in which Nick proposes to Amy while posing as a reporter. This scene of
media manipulation cuts to a thematically linked present-day press conference
called around Amy’s disappearance. Orchestrated by her parents, the press
conference reminds us that Amy grew up in the shadow of “Amazing Amy,” the
heroine of a series of children’s books in which her mother embellished her own
daughter’s character.
The fact that these three jugglers of fact and fiction — author, detective, and news
anchor — are women underscore the story’s primary concern with gender roles in
narrative, especially the conventions that assign men the role of hero and women
the role of victim or reward. Amy’s life narrative is already scripted for her, and she
does not find life as a stay-at-home wife to be all that “amazing.” In the noir-like
tale of crime and deceit that she constructs instead, Amy plays the role of femme
fatale, whose alluring appearance hides pathology and danger. But she is also the
narrator, a role usually preserved for the male investigator. If she is an unreliable
narrator, it is because her outward perfection is spectacularly deceptive and the
story of her agency is also one of her victimization.
At the midpoint of the film, we are led, in the words of Nick’s lawyer, to “realign our
view of Amy.” Over a black screen, Amy states, in a line that reveals some but not
all of the film’s twists: “I am so much happier now that I’m dead.” The plot thickens
as the details of her getaway are filled in and cross-cut with the ongoing search
[Figure 7.44]. The movie, like the book on which it is based, turns on tricks of
narration and on our assumptions about narrative progression and gender roles.
But unlike the book, which is written in alternating first-person narration from
Nick’s and Amy’s separate perspectives in “he said, she said” fashion, the film uses
a wealth of sensory information, both images and sounds, to direct and deflect our
narrative comprehension. The camera is not obtrusively subjective, the score by
Trent Rezor and Atticus Ross is unsettled and ominous, and the editing confuses
spatial and temporal and thus cause-and-effect relations. But narration through
images rather than language introduces a specific history of gendered relations of
power in looking that privileges the male point of view.

7.44 Gone Girl (2014). Amy’s narration catches up with her present whereabouts.
A trace of Nick’s first-person perspective, given weight within the film’s opening
credits sequence, links the film’s narrative enigmas to desire and violence
embedded in the gaze. “When I think of my wife,” a male voice confides over the
black screen, “I always think of her head.” The back of a woman’s head resting on a
pillow [Figure 7.45a] recalls Hitchcock’s many elusive blonde heroines, as the
voice continues: “I imagine cracking opening her lovely skull, unspooling her
brains, trying to get answers,” and the woman turns to meet our gaze [Figure
7.45b]. The virtuosic filmmaking of David Fincher, whose Fight Club (1999) uses
unreliable narration similarly in a male-centered narrative puzzle of murderous
rivalry, unspools images and sounds that complicate Gillian Flynn’s language with
another perspective.

7.45 Gone Girl (2014). The male voiceover opens the film by casting doubt on the
female image.
Description
Still (a) shows a hand caressing a woman’s head resting on a pillow.
Still (b) shows the woman turning and looking up at the man stroking her
head.

Thinking about Film Narrative
From historical dramas like Dunkirk (2017) to the less plot-driven
story of teenage life on the run in American Honey (2016), movies
have been prized as both public and private histories — as records of
celebrated events, personal memories, and daily routines. Film
narratives both shape the temporal experiences of individuals and
reflect and reveal the patterns of larger social histories of nations,
communities, and cultures.
Film narratives never function independently of historical, cultural,
and industrial issues. Many narratives in Western cultures turn
inward, centering on individuals, their fates, and their self-
knowledge. Historically, individual heroes are predominantly male,
with female characters participating in their quest or growth
primarily through marriage, which functions as a pervasive form of
narrative resolution. Moreover, Western narrative models, such as
the Judeo-Christian one that assumes a progressive movement from
a fall to redemption, reflect a basic cultural belief in individual and
social development.
Certainly, cultural alternatives to this popular logic of progression
and forward movement exist, and in some cultures, individual
characters may be less central to the story than the give-and-take
movements of the community or the passing of the seasons. In Xala

(1975), for instance, by Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène,
the narrative is influenced by oral tradition, and the central
character’s plight — he has been placed under a curse of impotence
— is linked to a whole community. This tradition is associated with
the griot, the storyteller in some West African cultures who recounts
at public gatherings the many tales that bind the community
together.
Shaping Memory, Making History
Film narratives shape memory by describing individual temporal
experiences. In other words, they commonly portray the changes in
a day, a year, or the life of a character or community. These
narratives are not necessarily actual real-time experiences, as is
partly the case in the single-shot film Russian Ark (2002). However,
they do aim to approximate the patterns through which different
individuals experience and shape time — time as endurance, time as
growth, time as loss. In Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2013), the narrative
describes the life of Cecil Gaines, the butler for eight U.S. presidents,
and intertwines his personal struggles and achievements as a White
House servant and the major historical events surrounding him,
such as the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. The o�en
strained interactions between his personal experiences and public
events celebrate how individual memory participates in the shape of
history. In the virtually dialogue-free Italian film Le Quattro Volte

(The Four Times) (2010), time is refracted in four episodes showing
interrelated cycles of human, plant, and animal life [Figure 7.46].
7.46 Le Quattro Volte (The Four Times) (2010). One narrative told in this contemplative and
o�en funny film is shaped by the observations of a baby goat.
Through their reflections on and revelations of social history, film
narratives also make history. Narratives order the various
dimensions of time — past, present, and future events — in ways
that are similar to models of history used by nations or other
communities. Consequently, narratives create public perceptions of
and ways of understanding those histories. The extent to which
narratives and public histories are bound together can be seen by
noting how many historical events — such as the U.S. civil rights
movement or the first landing on the moon — become the subject
for narrative films. But narrative films also can reveal public history

in smaller events, where personal crisis or success becomes
representative of a larger national or world history. The tale of a
heroic African American Union army regiment, Glory (1989) [Figure
7.47] tells a history of the Civil War le� out of narratives like The
Birth of a Nation (1915) and Gone with the Wind (1939). By
concentrating on the personal life of Mark Zuckerberg during his
college years, The Social Network (2010) also reveals key dimensions
of the social networking site Facebook and the cultural history of
the social media revolution [Figure 7.48]. In these cases, film
narratives are about cultural origins, historical losses, and national
myths.
7.47 Glory (1989) A narrative of the heroic African American Union army regiment that
fought during the Civil War tells a different history of that war.

7.48 The Social Network (2010). Here the personal history of the founder of Facebook
reflects a much broader transformation in the social history of technology.
Narrative Traditions
Based on how movies can both shape memory and make history,
two prominent styles of film narrative have emerged. The classical
film narrative usually presents a close relationship between
individual lives and social history, whereas the alternative film
narrative o�en dramatizes the disjunction between how individuals
live their lives according to personal temporal patterns and how
those patterns conflict with those of the social history that intersects
with their lives.
Classical Film Narrative
Three primary features characterize the classical film narrative:

It centers on one or more central characters who propel the plot
with a cause-and-effect logic, whereby an action generates a
reaction.
Its plots develop with linear chronologies directed at certain
goals, even when flashbacks are integrated into that linearity.
It employs an omniscient or a restricted narration that suggests
some degree of realism.
For the film you will watch next in class, what type of history is being depicted?
What does the narrative say about the meaning of time and change in the lives of
the characters? What events are presented as most important, and why?
Classical narrative o�en appears as a three-part structure in which a
situation or circumstance is presented; the situation is disrupted,
o�en with a crisis or confrontation; and the disruption is resolved.
Its narrative point of view is usually objective and realistic,
including most information necessary to understand the characters
and their world.
Dominating from the end of the 1910s to the end of the studio
system in the 1950s, the classical Hollywood narrative still
influences mainstream storytelling. But there have been many
historical and cultural variations on this narrative model. Both the
1925 and 1959 films of Ben-Hur develop their plots around the heroic
motivations of the title character and follow his struggles and

triumphs as a former citizen who becomes a slave, rebel, and
gladiator, fighting against the cruelties of the Roman empire. Both
movies spent great amounts of money on large casts of characters
and on details and locations that attempt to seem as realistic as
possible. Yet even if both these Hollywood films can be classified as
classical narratives, they also can be distinguished by their
variations on this narrative formula. Besides some differences in the
details of the story, the first version attends more to grand
spectacles (such as sea battles) and places greater emphasis on the
plight of the Jews as a social group. The second version concentrates
significantly more on the individual drama of Charlton Heston as
Ben-Hur, on his search to find his lost family, and on Christian
salvation through personal faith [Figure 7.49].
7.49 Ben-Hur (1959). As the different versions of this film demonstrate, classical Hollywood
narrative can vary significantly through history — even when the story is fundamentally the
same.

View the clip of the opening of Midnight Cowboy (1969), and consider how it
refers to the classical narrative tradition. What features signal that this film is a
postclassical narrative?
Description
The scene shows the protagonist two men in a conversation as they walk
along a city sidewalk. A play button is present at the center of the
screenshot.
An important variation on the classical narrative tradition is the
postclassical narrative — the form and content of films a�er the
decline of the Hollywood studio system around 1960, including
formerly taboo subject matter and narratives and formal techniques
influenced by European cinema. This global body of films began to
appear in the decades a�er World War II and remains visible to the
present day. The postclassical model frequently undermines the
power of a protagonist to control and drive the narrative forward in

a clear direction. As a postclassical narrative, Martin Scorsese’s Taxi
Driver (1976) works with a plot much like that of The Searchers (1956),
in which an alienated and troubled Civil War veteran searches the
frontier for a lost girl, but in Travis Bickle’s strange quest to rescue a
New York City prostitute from her pimp, he wanders with even less
direction, identity, and control than his predecessor, Ethan. Bickle, a
dark hero, becomes lost in his own fantasies [Figure 7.50].
7.50 Taxi Driver (1976). Robert De Niro’s character erupts into senseless violence and seems
bent on his own destruction, significantly challenging classical narrative codes.
Alternative Film Narrative
Foreign-language and independent films may reveal information or
perspectives traditionally excluded from classical narratives in order

to unsettle audience expectations, provoke new thinking, or
differentiate themselves from more common narrative structures.
Generally, the alternative film narrative deviates from or
challenges the linearity of classical film narrative, o�en
undermining the centrality of the main character, the continuity of
the plot, or the verisimilitude of the narration.
Both the predominance and motivational control of characters in
moving a plot come into question with alternative films. Instead of
the one or two central characters we see in classical narratives,
alternative films may put a multitude of characters into play, and
their stories may not even be connected. In Jean-Luc Godard’s La
Chinoise (1967), the narrative shi�s among three young people — a
student, an economist, a philosopher — whose tales appear like a
series of debates about politics and revolution in the streets of Paris.
A visually stunning film from Iran, Abbas Kiarostami’s Taste of
Cherry (1997) contains only the shadow of a story and plot: the
middle-aged Mr. Badii wishes to commit suicide for no clear reason.
A�er witnessing a series of random encounters and requests, we
remain uncertain about his fate at the conclusion. Freed of the
determining motivations of classical characters, the plots of
alternative film narratives tend to break apart, omit links in a cause-
and-effect logic, or proliferate plotlines well beyond the classical
parallel plot.

Many alternative film narratives question, in various ways, the
classical narrative assumptions about an objective narrative point of
view and about the power of a narrative to reflect universally true
experiences. In Rashomon (1950), four people, including the ghost of
a dead man, recount a tale of robbery, murder, and rape in four
different ways, as four different narratives [Figure 7.51]. Ultimately,
the group that hears these tales (as the frame of the narrative)
realizes that it is impossible to know the true story.
7.51 Rashomon (1950). Four different narrative perspectives tell a grisly tale that brings into
question the possibility of narrative objectivity, especially when recounted by people
deeply, and differently, affected by events.

Other narratives swerve from classical Western narratives by
drawing on indigenous forms of storytelling with culturally
distinctive themes, characters, plots, and narrative points of view.
Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray, for example, adapts a famous work of
Bengali fiction for his 1955 Pather Panchali and its sequels, Aparajito
(1956) and The World of Apu (1959), to render the story of Apu and his
impoverished family as he grows from child to adult. Although Ray
was influenced by European filmmakers — he served as assistant to
Jean Renoir on The River (1951), filmed in India — his work is
suffused with the symbols and slow-paced plot of the original novel
and of village life, as it rediscovers Indian history from inside India
[Figures 7.52a and 7.52b].
7.52 Alternative film narratives. (a) Jean Renoir’s The River (1951) influenced the work of
Satyajit Ray, but (b) Ray’s Pather Panchali (1955), an adaptation of a famous Bengali novel,
is suffused with the symbols and slow-paced plot that are indicative of the original work and
Indian culture.
Description

Still (a) from the movie, The River, shows three young women standing
together against a railing by a river.
Still (b) from the movie, Pather Panchali, shows a young girl talking to a
smiling old man.
Art cinema is an alternative narrative form that emerged around the
world beginning in the 1950s. O�en experimental and disorienting,
these narratives interrogate the political assumptions of classical
narratives by overturning their formal assumptions. Italian New
Wave director Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970) creates a
sensually vague and dreamy landscape where reality and
nightmares overlap. Through the mixed-up motivations of its central
character, Marcello Clerici, the film explores the historical roots of
Italian fascism, a viciously decadent world of sex and politics rarely
depicted in the histories of classical narrative [Figure 7.53].

7.53 The Conformist (1970). In this film by Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci, the historical
roots of Italian fascism are imagined in an alternative narrative set within a dreamy
landscape where reality and nightmares overlap.
Alternative narrative practices suggest not an opposition to classical
narrative as much as a dialogue with that tradition. Of course,
Indian film narratives are very different from African film
narratives, and the art cinema of Jean-Luc Godard from France and
Hou Hsiao-hsien from Taiwan engage divergent issues and narrative
strategies. All, however, might be said to confront, in one way or
another, the classical narrative paradigm.
FILM IN FOCUS Classical and Alternative Traditions in Mildred Pierce (1945) and Daughters of the Dust (1991)
See also: Rebecca (1940); All About Eve
(1950); Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du

Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975);
Vagabond (1985)
To watch clips from Mildred Pierce (1945) and Daughters of the Dust (1991), go
to LaunchPad for The Film Experience at launchpadworks.com
Very much a part of the classical movie tradition, the narrative of Michael Curtiz’s
Mildred Pierce (1945) is an extended flashback covering many years — from
Mildred’s troubled marriage and divorce, to her rise as a self-sufficient and
enterprising businesswoman, and finally to her disastrous affair with the playboy
Monty. A�er the opening murder and the accusation of Mildred, the narrative
returns to her humble beginnings with two daughters and an irritating husband
who soon divorces her. Le� on her own, Mildred works determinedly to become a
financial success and support her daughters. Despite her material triumphs, her
youngest daughter, Kay, dies tragically, and her other daughter, Veda, rejects her
and falls in love with Mildred’s lover, Monty. The temporal and linear progressions
in Mildred’s material life are thus ironically offset in the narrative by the loss of her
emotional and spiritual life.
In Mildred Pierce, we find all three cornerstones of classical film form. The title
character, through her need and determination to survive and succeed, drives the
main story. The narrative uses a flashback frame that, a�er the opening murder,
proceeds linearly — from Mildred’s life as a dutiful housewife and then a wealthy
and vivacious socialite to her awareness of her tragic family life. Finally, the
restricted narration follows her development as an objective record of those past
events.

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Set in the 1940s with little mention of World War II, Mildred Pierce is not a narrative
located explicitly in public history, yet it is a historical tale that visibly embraces a
crisis in the public narrative of America. While focused on Mildred’s personal
confusion, the film delineates a critical period in U.S. history. In the years a�er
World War II, the U.S. nuclear family came under intense pressure as independent
women with more freedom and power faced changing social structures. Mildred
Pierce describes this public history in terms of personal experience; but like other
classical narratives, the events, people, and logic of Mildred’s story reflect a
national story in which a new politics of gender, once admitted, must be
incorporated into a tradition centered on the patriarchal family. Mildred Pierce
aims directly at the incorporation of the private life (of Mildred) into a patriarchal
public history (of the law, the community, and the nation). Mildred presumably
recognizes the error of her independence and ambition and, through the guidance
of the police, is restored to her former husband, strikingly and perhaps ironically
summarized in the final image of the film in which two laboring working women
visually counterpoint the reunited couple [Figure 7.54].

7.54 Mildred Pierce (1945). Mildred’s story reflects a larger national story about gender
and labor.
As a very different kind of narrative, Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust (1991)
recounts a period of a few days in 1902 when members of an African American
community prepare to move north from Ibo Landing, an island off the coast of
South Carolina. The members of the Peazant family meld into a community whose
place in time oscillates between their memories of their African heritage (as a kind
of cyclical history) and their anticipation of a future on the U.S. mainland (where
time progresses in a linear fashion) [Figure 7.55].

7.55 Daughters of the Dust (1991). Like this mysterious floating statue that appears
and reappears throughout the film, the narrative dri�s between past and present,
merging history, memory, and mythology.
Daughters of the Dust avoids concentrating on the motivations of a single
character. Instead, it dri�s among the perspectives of many members of the
Peazant family — grandmother Nana, Haagar, Viola, Yellow Mary, the troubled
married couple Eula and Eli, and even their unborn child.
For many viewers, the difficulty of following this film is related to its nontraditional
narrative, which does not move its characters forward in the usual sense but
instead depicts individuals who live in a time that seems more about communal
rhythms than personal progress, where the distinctions between private and
public life make little sense [Figure 7.56].

7.56 Daughters of the Dust (1991). Rather than focus on a single character, the
narrative incorporates the perspectives of several Peazant family members.
A fundamental question or problem appears quietly at the beginning of the film:
will the Peazant family’s move to the U.S. mainland remove them from their roots
and African heritage? Yet the film is more about presentation and reflection than
about any drama or crisis emerging from that question. Eventually, that question
may be answered when some of the characters move to the mainland, where they
presumably will be recast in a narrative more like that of Mildred Pierce. But for
now, in this narrative, they and the film embrace different temporal values.
In Daughters of the Dust, the shi�ing voices and perspectives of the narration have
little interest in a unified or objective perspective on events [Figure 7.57]. Besides
voiceovers by Nana and Eula, the narrative point of view appears through Unborn
Child, a mysterious figure who is usually invisible to the other characters and who
narrates as the voice of the future. Interweaving different subjective voices and
experiences, the film’s narration disperses time into the communal space of its
island world, an orchestration of nonlinear rhythms. A public history is being
mapped in this alternative film, one commonly ignored by other American

narratives and classical films. Especially with its explicit reflections on the slave
trade that once passed through Ibo, Daughters of the Dust maps a part of African
American history perhaps best told through the wandering narrative patterns
inherited from the traditions and styles of African storytellers.
7.57 Daughters of the Dust (1991). As a story narrated in many voices, the film resists a
unified perspective on events.

Chapter 7 Review
SUMMARY
Movies thrive on narrative, the art and cra� of constructing a
story with a particular plot and point of view. Many film
narratives follow a three-part structure with a beginning, a
middle, and an ending.
Film narrative has continually evolved over time and draws on
earlier narrative traditions, like oral and operatic narratives.
Two important industrial events shaped early film narrative:
the advancement of dialogue through sound; and the
introduction of film scripts, or screenplays, written by
screenwriters. Both of these developments allowed for more
intricate narratives with more developed characters.
During the 1930s and 1940s, Hollywood established its
dominant narrative form with three basic features: (1) a
focus on one or two central characters, (2) a linear plot
driven by the central characters, and (3) action developed
according to cause-and-effect logic.
World War II disrupted the classical Hollywood narrative and
gave rise to new cinemas that subverted traditional narrative
form.
Film narratives today represent a diverse set of practices, but
three are particularly significant: (1) massive film franchises,

including associated tie-ins and narrative continuity across
multiple films; (2) narrative reflexivity, or attention to the
narrative techniques employed by the filmmaker in the plot;
and (3) elements from video games and other digital
technologies.
The main features of film narrative are story, plot, character,
diegetic and nondiegetic elements, temporal and spatial
organizations, and narrative perspective or narration.
Story refers to the actions and events in a narrative. The plot
orders those actions and events according to particular
temporal and spatial patterns.
Characters are the figures that focus or motivate the events
of the story.
Character coherence is the product of expectations that
view people, and thus fictional characters, as
fundamentally consistent and unique. A film may uphold
or subvert audience expectations about character
coherence.
Character depth refers to the layers of traits that
comprise a character as a unique individual.
Traditional narratives usually feature protagonists, whom
the audience identifies as the positive forces in a film, and
antagonists, who oppose the protagonists.
Character types are conventional characters (such as the
hard-boiled detective) who share distinguishing features
with other, similar characters and are prominent within
particular narrative traditions. Some conventional

characters are archetypes, who reflect certain spiritual or
abstract states or ideas.
When a film reduces a character to a set of static traits
that identify him or her restrictively in terms of a social,
physical, or cultural category, that character becomes a
stereotype.
Characters usually change over the course of a realist film
in the process known as character development.
The entire world that a story describes or that the viewer
infers is called its diegesis. Nondiegetic inserts include
material used to tell the story that are not part of its world,
such as background music and credits.
Most commonly, plots follow a linear chronology in which
actions proceed one a�er another through a forward
movement in time.
Some films use flashbacks or flashforwards, subverting
audience expectations about linear chronology.
Narrative duration refers to the length of time an event or
action is presented in a plot, whereas narrative frequency
describes how o�en those plot elements are repeated.
The organizing perspective through which plots are
constructed is referred to as narration.
First-person narration refers to a story told from the
perspective of a character in the film.
A narrative frame is a context or character positioned
outside the story that brackets the film’s narrative in a way
that helps define its terms and meaning.

Most films use third-person narration, which depicts
events objectively.
There are two prominent types of narrative traditions in film:
classical Hollywood narrative, which usually centers on one or
two main characters who move the plot along with cause-and-
effect logic; and alternative film narrative, which o�en
deviates from or challenges linear narratives.
KEY TERMS
narrative
screenwriter
screenplay
story
character
plot
classical film narrative
character coherence
character depth
protagonist
antagonist
minor character
archetype
stereotype
character development
diegesis
nondiegetic insert
credits

linear chronology
flashback
flashforward
deadline structure
narrative duration
narrative frequency
psychological location
symbolic space
narration
narrator
first-person narration
narrative frame
third-person narration
omniscient narration
restricted narration
reflexive narration
unreliable narration
multiple narrations
anthology film
classical Hollywood narrative
postclassical narrative
alternative film narrative
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adaptive quizzes
Film clips with critical thinking questions
Supplemental readings, including Film in Focus features and more

CHAPTER 8 DOCUMENTARY FILMS
Representing the Real
Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s Free Solo (2018) is a subtle
and powerful example of the many critical and provocative topics and
strategies available to documentary cinema. Since John Grierson first
described documentaries in 1926 as “the creative treatment of actuality,”
this particular film practice has continually explored those different
actualities and realities in new and imaginative ways. Free Solo focuses
on Alex Honnold, a rock climber intent on scaling the magnificent El

Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park in June 2017 — without
the assistance of fellow climbers or safety lines. Free Solo is part personal
documentary that follows one man’s quest to achieve a sensational
human feat, part thriller that records Honnold suspended from sheer
cliffs and harrowing heights, part a celebration of stunning natural vistas,
and part reflexive documentary that devotes considerable time to the
complex relationship between the climber and a film crew determined
not to be a distraction as part of this dangerous event. O�en terrifying
and o�en exhilarating, Free Solo is at first glance a simple film about a
rock climber, but on closer examination its many layers and
reverberations encapsulate many of the creative powers of
documentaries over the past hundred years.
can help you review. Go to launchpadworks.com
For most of us, the film experience is primarily about elements like
suspense, humor, or intense emotions. Yet that experience also can
include the desire to be better informed about a person or an event,
to engage with new and challenging ideas, or to learn more about
what happens in other parts of the world. A nonfiction film that
presents real objects, people, and events is commonly referred to as
a documentary. John Grierson first used the term to describe a
Robert Flaherty picture called Moana (1926) and its “visual account
of events in the daily life of a Polynesian youth and his family.”
Broadly speaking, a documentary film is a visual and auditory

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representation of the presumed facts, real experiences, and actual
events of the world. Documentary films usually employ strategies
and organizations that differ from those that define narrative
cinema, such as plot and narration. Later Flaherty teamed up with
German filmmaker F. W. Murnau to integrate the documentary
world of Moana into the narrative film Tabu: A Story of the South Seas
(1931) [Figure 8.1], and this hybrid film raises key questions: How
are documentary films different from narrative ones? What attracts
us to them? How do they organize their material? What makes them
popular, useful, and uniquely illuminating?
8.1 Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931). Following the documentary breakthrough of
Robert Flaherty’s earlier Moana (1926), Flaherty and F. W. Murnau’s new project combines a

tragic love story with documentary images of Polynesian life.
Narrative films are about memory and the shaping of time, but
documentary movies are about insight and learning — expanding
what we can know, feel, and see. Narratives can enlarge and
intensify the world for us in these ways as well, but because
documentary movies do not have the primary task of telling a story,
they can concentrate on leading our intellectual activities down new
paths — in newsreels, theatrical films, PBS television broadcasts,
and specials on cable TV or internet streaming services.
Entertainment and artistry are not excluded from documentary
films. Apollo 11 (2019), for instance, follows Neil Armstrong, Buzz
Aldrin, and Michael Collins on their historic trip to the moon in
1969. Consisting of archival footage (some of which had not
previously been shown to the public), the film weaves the details of
this monumental space adventure with moments of suspense (and
even a bit of comedy). The mesmerizing soundtrack by Matt Morton
underpins and supplements the combination of factual images and
gripping entertainment [Figure 8.2].

8.2 Apollo 11 (2019). Entertainment and artistry intermingle in this historic documentary
about the 1969 moon landing.
Although narrative films are at the heart of commercial
entertainment, documentary movies operate according to an
“economics of information” and usually rely on different sources of
funding and different venues for exhibition for delivering their ideas
and information. Many of the first films made in the 1890s and early
1900s, such as the traveling exhibitions and shows of Lyman H.
Howe in America and Walter Haggar in England, were part of
lectures, scientific presentations, or visual illustrations of the art of
motion. Churches, schools, and cultural institutions supported and

financially subsidized these presentations, usually in the name of
intellectual, spiritual, or cultural development. Since then,
documentaries have remained, to some extent, tied to and o�en
financially dependent on the private and public sponsorship of
organizations such as museums, government agencies, local social
activists, and cultural foundations. The Works Progress
Administration (WPA) funded U.S. documentaries in the 1930s, and
grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
support some nonfiction films today. In addition, many
documentaries are made for television, a phenomenon that has
increased since the 1980s, when the deregulation of the broadcast
industry encouraged the proliferation of cable networks such as
Discovery Channel and History. For these channels, documentary
programming has become a mainstay.
Although documentary films o�en claim and sometimes deserve the
title “independent films,” their survival has depended on a public
culture that promotes learning as a crucial part of the film
experience. Outside or on the fringes of commercial cinema, this
“other” culture of films has endured and o�en triumphed through
every period of film history and in virtually every world culture. In
the following sections, we explore the many ways these films have
expanded how we observe, listen, and think.
KEY OBJECTIVES

Recognize that documentary films are best distinguished as cultural
practices.
Describe how documentary films employ nonfictional and non-narrative
images and forms.
Identify how documentary movies make and draw on specific historical
heritages.
Explain the common formal strategies and organizations used in
documentary films.
Summarize how documentary films have become associated with cultural
values and traditions from which we develop filmic meaning.

A Short History of Documentary
Cinema
From ancient government records and charts mapping new
territories to family home movies and school textbooks, we explain
and learn about the world in ways that stories cannot fully explore.
For example, the thirteenth-century journals describing Marco
Polo’s travels through China or the early nineteenth-century treatise
by Sir Humphry Davy on the discovery of electricity have, in their
own ways, recorded lost worlds, offered new ideas, or changed how
we see society.
At the end of the nineteenth century, the search for empirical and
spiritual truths produced new educational practices, technological
tools, colonial expeditions, and secret societies. These were vehicles
to new experiences, pragmatic thought, and better worlds. In the
midst of these trends, film was introduced in 1895 and used to
illustrate lectures, offer cinematic portraits of famous people, and
guide audiences through short movie travelogues. For many, film
was not an art but a tool for investigating and explaining the physical
and social worlds. The Edison Company stunned viewers in 1901
with a series of short films documenting the activities of President
William McKinley on the day of his assassination, his funeral, and
the transition of power to President Theodore Roosevelt [Figure
8.3]. Just as narrative films are rooted in cultural foundations and

histories that preceded the cinema by centuries, so too are
documentary films.
8.3 President McKinley’s Funeral Cortege at Buffalo, New York (1901). Compelling images of
events surrounding President William McKinley’s assassination were recorded by motion-
picture cameras.
A Prehistory of Documentaries
For centuries, documentary cinema was anticipated by oral
practices (such as sermons, political speeches, and academic
lectures), visual practices (such as maps, photographs, and
paintings), musical practices (such as folk songs and symphonies),
and written practices (such as letters, diaries, poems, scientific

treatises, and newspaper reports). The essay form, in particular, is
considered to have had a great influence on documentary cinema.
Spearheaded by Michel de Montaigne, the essay form first appeared
in the late sixteenth century and centered on personal and everyday
subjects as a fragmented commentary on life and ideas.
Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, journalism
developed as a public forum for expressing ideas, announcing
events, and recording daily happenings around town. Around 1800,
Mary Wollstonecra� and Thomas Malthus wrote books, pamphlets,
and lengthy essays describing the current state of society and
insisting on practical ways that social science could improve
people’s lives. As the middle class moved to the center of Western
societies in the nineteenth century, people demanded more
information about the world.
Photography and photojournalism, evolving from new printing and
lithographic technologies, became widespread and popular ways to
record and comment on events. Unlike narrative practices, such as
realistic novels or short stories, photojournalism presented virtually
instantaneous and seemingly uncontestable records — factual
representations of people and events frozen in time. One of the most
dramatic combinations of social science and photography is Jacob
Riis’s book How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of
New York (1890) [Figure 8.4], which is part lecture and part photo

essay. Its pseudoscientific sermon exposes and condemns living
conditions in New York City’s tenement housing.

8.4 “Bandit’s Roost,” in How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York
(1890). Jacob Riis’s book documents the squalor and dangers of tenement life in nineteenth-
century New York.
Description
Overhead clotheslines are strung between buildings. Residents standing
in the alleys wear suits, waistcoats, and a hats such as bowlers and stare
at the photographer. A few residents peek through their windows.
1895–1905: Early Actualities, Scenics,
and Topicals
The very first movies were frequently called actualities — nonfiction
films introduced in the 1890s depicting real people and events
through continuous footage, with the most famous being Louis and
Auguste Lumière’s Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory (1895). This
film captivated audiences with its recording and presentation of a
simple everyday activity without explanation or story line. A
variation of these early nonfiction films called scenics offered
remarkable images of nature or foreign lands. In Birt Acres’s Rough
Sea at Dover (1896), an immobile image shows waves crashing
against a seawall, while other short scenics present views of
Jerusalem or Niagara Falls. When these early films captured or
sometimes re-created historical or newsworthy events, they were
referred to as topicals, suggesting the kind of cultural, historical, or

political relevance usually found in newspapers. Around 1898, for
example, the ongoing Spanish-American War figured in a number of
topicals, o�en with battle scenes depicting the sinking in that year
of the American ship USS Maine, which was re-created through
miniatures. These factual and fabricated images of the war attracted
large audiences.
The 1920s: Robert Flaherty and the
Soviet Documentaries
Footage of distant lands continued to interest moviemakers and
audiences even a�er narrative film became the norm around 1910.
American adventurers Martin and Osa Johnson documented their
travels in Africa and the South Seas in such popular films as Jungle
Adventures (1921) and Simba (1928) [Figure 8.5]. But it was Robert
Flaherty, o�en referred to as “the father of documentary cinema,”
who significantly expanded the powers and popularity of nonfiction
film in the 1920s, most famously with his early works Nanook of the
North (1922) and Moana (1926). Blending a romantic fascination with
nature and an anthropological desire to document and record other
civilizations, Flaherty identified new possibilities for funding these
noncommercial films (largely through corporations) and, with the
success of Nanook, identified new audiences interested in realistic
films that were exciting even without stories and stars.

8.5 Simba (1928). Early documentaries took the shape of explorations of foreign lands and
cultures, frequently transforming those worlds into objects of exotic fascination for
audiences in Europe and in the United States. Here American adventurers Martin and Osa
Johnson documented their travels in Africa and the South Seas.
At the same time, a very different kind of documentary was taking
shape in Soviet cinema. Filmmakers such as Dziga Vertov and Esfir
Shub saw timely political potential in creating documentary films
with strong ideological messages conveyed through the formal
technique of montage. In The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (1927),
Shub compiles and edits existing footage to show the historical
conflicts between the aristocracy and the workers. In Man with a
Movie Camera (1929), which became one of the most renowned “city

symphony” documentaries, Vertov re-creates and celebrates the
energy of the everyday people and the activities of a modern city.
1930–1945: The Politics and
Propaganda of Documentary
Perhaps more so than for other film practices, the introduction of
optical sound recording — the process that converts sound waves
into electrical impulses (which then control how a light beam is
projected onto film) and that enables a soundtrack to be recorded
alongside the image for simultaneous projection — catapulted
documentary films forward in 1927. It made possible the addition of
educational or social commentary to accompany images in
newsreels, documentaries, and propaganda films. In the 1930s and
1940s, public institutions (such as the General Post Office in
England, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Resettlement
Administration, and the National Film Board of Canada) as well as
private groups (such as New York City’s Film and Photo League)
unhesitatingly supported documentary practices. These institutions
prefigure the more contemporary supporters of documentary film,
including the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the United States,
the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and Zweites Deutsches
Fernsehen (ZDF) in Germany.
Documentary film history can never really be divorced from these
critical sources of funding and distribution. Perhaps the most

prominent figure to forge and develop a relationship between
documentary filmmakers and those institutions that eventually
funded them was British filmmaker John Grierson. From the late
1920s through the 1940s, as the first head of the National Film Board
of Canada, Grierson promoted documentaries that dealt with social
issues and established the institutional foundations that for years
funded and distributed them. Government and institutional support
for documentary cinema proceeded in a more troubling direction in
the 1930s and 1940s in the form of propaganda films — political
documentaries that visibly support and intend to sway viewers
toward a particular social or political issue or group. Two famous
examples are Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935),
commemorating the 1934 annual Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg, and
Japanese Relocation (1943), a U.S. film justifying the internment of
Japanese Americans on the West Coast [Figures 8.6a and 8.6b].
8.6 Propaganda films. Films like these — (a) Triumph of the Will (1935) and (b) Japanese
Relocation (1943) — represent the disturbing propagandistic power of documentaries that
are controlled and supported by governments and other institutional agents. Photofest, Inc.

Description
The first still from the movie, Triumph of the Will, shows a Nazi rally on
the street of German city. The second still from the movie, Japanese
Relocation, shows two passengers looking out from inside a bus.
1950s–1970s: New Technologies and
the Arrival of Television
In the 1950s, changes in documentary practices followed the
technological development of lightweight 16mm cameras, which
allowed filmmakers a new kind of spontaneity and inventiveness
when capturing reality. Most dramatic was cinéma vérité (a French
term meaning “cinema truth”) — a style of documentary filmmaking
first practiced in France in the late 1950s and early 1960s that used
unobtrusive, lightweight cameras and sound equipment to capture
real-life situations. Documentary filmmakers like Jean Rouch, with
films like Moi un noir (I, a Black) (1958), could now participate more
directly and provocatively in the reality they filmed. This new
mobile and independent method of documentary filmmaking
advanced again in the late 1950s with the development of portable
magnetic sync-sound recorders and then again in 1968 with the
introduction of Portapak video equipment. Armed with a
lightweight camera and the ability to record direct sound,
filmmakers could now document actions and events that previously
remained hidden or at a distance. Rouch’s later film, Chronicle of a

Summer (1961), has become a classic example of these new cinéma
vérité possibilities, featuring random encounters with people on the
streets of Paris, who answer questions and give their opinions on
happiness, war, politics, love, and work.
Sometimes referred to as the golden age of television documentary,
this period also brought a rapid expansion of documentaries aimed
at a new television audience. Merging older documentary traditions
with television news reportage, these programs o�en were noted for
their tough honesty and social commitment. The work of television
journalist Edward R. Murrow, who critiqued Senator Joseph
McCarthy’s unfair accusations of treason against people working in
government, entertainment, education, and unions, set a new
benchmark for news reporting.
Perhaps the best-known example of the convergence of new
technology, a more mobile style, and television reportage is Robert
Drew’s Primary, a 1960 film about the Democratic presidential
primary election in Wisconsin between John F. Kennedy and Hubert
H. Humphrey [Figure 8.7]. This documentary was produced for the
series ABC Close-Up! (1960–1985) by Drew Associates, the
organization that trained many of the documentary filmmakers
associated with direct cinema — a documentary style originating in
the United States in the 1960s that aims to capture unfolding events
as unobtrusively as possible.

8.7 Primary (1960). This documentary about John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign took
advantage of the mobility and immediacy produced by new camera and sound equipment.
1980s–Present: Digital Cinema, Cable,
and Reality TV
In the 1980s, the consumer video camera was taken up by artists and
activists, such as the AIDS collective called Testing the Limits, which
used activist videos — confrontational political documentaries that
use low-cost video equipment — as part of the democratization of
the documentary that continued with the rapid shi� to digital
formats. A�er the introduction in the late 1980s of Avid’s nonlinear

digital editing process, which made editing much easier and less
expensive, the documentary shooting ratio — the relationship
between the overall amount or length of film shot and the amount
used in the finished project — increased exponentially. This led to
the growth of personal documentaries, which eventually achieved
theatrical exposure in such films as Morgan Spurlock’s quirky tale of
his fast-food consumption quest, Super Size Me (2004) [Figure 8.8].
During this period, changes in the distribution and exhibition of
documentaries significantly affected the availability and popularity
of these films.
8.8 Super Size Me (2004). Morgan Spurlock had regular medical checkups in this personal
documentary on fast-food diets and their effects on American obesity.
In addition to increased festival and theatrical exposure and the
expanding video rental market, cable and satellite television

networks provide more and more opportunities for documentary
projects. Under Sheila Nevins, HBO’s documentary division
sponsored numerous powerful and acclaimed films, including Born
into Brothels (2004) and If God Is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise (2010).
By contrast, the nature documentary Penguins (2019) was produced
by Disneynature, a division of Walt Disney Studios. The film
garnered critical praise and wide audiences for its state-of-the-art,
high-definition cinematography and conservation message [Figure
8.9]. Meanwhile, public television and cable networks provide more
venues for independently produced documentaries that otherwise
may have limited distribution.
8.9 Penguins (2019). Although relatively few documentaries receive wide national releases,
Disney has seen success in recent years with its series of nature films.

The Elements of Documentary
Films
The documentary film shares elements of cinematic form with
narrative and experimental films, but it organizes its material,
constitutes its authority, and engages the audience in a distinct
fashion. The following section outlines the modes of discourse,
organizational patterns, and methods of presenting a point of view
typical of the documentary film.
Nonfiction and Non-Narrative
Two cornerstones of documentary films — nonfiction and non-
narrative — are key concepts that are o�en debated. Although
documentary films and experimental films (see Chapter 9) can both
be described as non-narrative, nonfiction has primarily been
associated with documentary films. Nonfiction films are films
presenting factual descriptions of actual events, persons, or places
rather than their fictional or invented re-creation. Attempts to make
a hard-and-fast distinction between “factual descriptions” and
“fictional re-creations” have provoked heated debates throughout
film history because facts are arguably malleable. Nonetheless, a
fundamental distinction can be made between, say, a PBS
documentary about the life of Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom

and Stephen Frears’s feature film The Queen (2006) about the same
person. The first film uses the accounts of journalists, news media,
and historians to show the facts and complex issues in the life of one
of the great women of history. The second film uses some of the
same information about the same woman but focuses on events
immediately following the death of Princess Diana and the queen’s
relationship with Prime Minister Tony Blair in order to re-create a
dramatic and entertaining episode in her life.
Nonfiction can be used in a variety of creative ways. In The Inventor:
Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (2019), Alex Gibney pursues a
nonfictional, behind-the-scenes investigation of Elizabeth Holmes
and her company Theranos, which promised a revolutionary blood
testing technology but which ultimately collapsed when it was
revealed that the technology did not actually exist [Figure 8.10]. In
contrast, in Of Great Events and Ordinary People (1979), Raoul Ruiz
turns an assignment to conduct nonfictional interviews in a Paris
neighborhood into a complex and humorous reflection on the
impossibility of revealing any truth or honesty through the interview
process.

8.10 The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (2019). This film from the prolific Alex
Gibney is a nonfiction investigation of the rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes and her false
claims about her company Theranos.
Non-narrative films — films organized in a variety of ways besides
storytelling — eschew or deemphasize stories and narratives and
instead employ other forms (like lists, repetition, or contrasts) as
their organizational structure. For example, a non-narrative film
might create a visual list (of objects found in an old house, for
instance), repeat a single image as an organizing pattern (returning
to an ancient carving on the front door of the house), or alternate
between objects in a way that suggests fundamental differences
(contrasting the rooms, clothing, and tools used by the men and the
women in a house).
A non-narrative movie may embed stories within its organization,
but those stories usually become secondary to the non-narrative

pattern. In Koyaanisqatsi (1983), slow-motion and time-lapse
photography capture the open vistas of an American landscape and
their destruction — pristine fields and mountains, rusty towns, and
garbage-strewn highways — set against the dri�ing tones of Philip
Glass’s music [Figure 8.11]. Through these images, one may detect
traces of a story about the collapse of America in what the Hopi
Indian title declares is “a life out of balance,” but that simple and
vague narrative is not nearly as powerful as the emotional force of
the film’s accumulating visual repetitions and contrasts. Diane
Keaton’s Heaven (1987) intersperses clips from old movies with
angels and other images of heaven and presents a litany of faces and
voices to answer such questions as “Does heaven exist?” and “Is
there sex in heaven?” Although we may sense a religious mystery
tale behind these questions and answers, this movie is better
understood as a playful list of unpredictable reactions to the
possibility of a life herea�er.

8.11 Koyaanisqatsi (1983). A non-narrative catalog of images contrasts America’s beauty and
decay.
Is the film you have just seen in class best described as nonfiction or non-
narrative? What elements helped you decide which categorization was more
appropriate?
Nonfiction and non-narrative approaches suggest distinctive ways of
seeing the world. Although they o�en overlap in documentary films,
one form of presentation does not necessarily imply the other. A
non-narrative film may be entirely or partly fictional; conversely, a
nonfiction film can be constructed as a narrative. Complicating
these distinctions is the fact that both kinds of practices can become

less a function of the intentions of the film than of viewers’
perception. What may seem nonfictional or non-narrative in one
context may not seem so in another. For example, audiences in the
1920s mostly assumed that Nanook of the North (1922) was a
nonfictional account of an Inuit tribesman and his family. Now,
most viewers recognize that some of the central events and actions
were fabricated for the documentary. Similarly, for some viewers,
The Cove (2009) is a non-narrative exposé of the capture and
slaughter of dolphins by Japanese fishermen, while for others it is a
dramatic narrative about a group of activists on a rescue mission.
The different meanings of nonfiction and non-narrative can shi�
historically and perceptually, however, which makes the categories
useful in judging the strategies of a particular documentary as part
of changing cultural contexts and as a reflection of an audience’s
point of view.
Expositions: Organizations That Show
or Describe
Although narrative film relies on specific patterns to shape the
material realities of life into imaginative histories, the documentary
employs strategies and forms that resemble scientific and
educational methods. For example, the 2015 feature film The Walk is
a narrative about Phillippe Petit, a French high-wire artist who in
1974 walked between the tops of the two World Trade Center
buildings on a thin wire. Replete with chronological suspense,

intrigue, special effects, and even romance, this narrative moves
crisply forward to culminate in a heroic conclusion, cheered on by
the New Yorkers who watch the walk [Figure 8.12]. The 2008
documentary Man on Wire, conversely, develops in a nonlinear
fashion, presents actual footage of the walk, has Petit himself
explain much of his planning, interjects commentary by other
participants in the event, and inserts home movies of his training.
8.12 The Walk (2015). This narrative feature film tells the same story as the 2008
documentary Man on Wire, with cutting-edge 3-D cinematography in place of Man on Wire’s
actual footage.
The formal expositional strategies used in documentary movies are
known as documentary organizations. These organizations show or
describe experiences in a way that differs from narrative films —
that is, without the temporal logic of narrative and without a
presiding focus on how a central character motivates and moves
events forward. Traditional documentaries tend to observe the facts

of life from a distance and organize their observations as objectively
as possible to suggest some definition of the subject through the
exposition itself.
Here we discuss three distinctive organizations of documentary
films — cumulative, contrastive, and developmental. These
organizations may appear in different films or may be used in some
combination in the same film. Then we explore how the use of these
organizational patterns is o�en governed by the perspective — or
rhetorical position — from which a film’s observations are made.
Cumulative Organizations
Cumulative organizations present a catalog of images or sounds
throughout the course of the film. It may be a simple series with no
recognizable logic connecting the images. Joris Ivens’s Rain (1929)
presents images from a rainstorm in Amsterdam, showing the rain
falling in a multitude of different ways and from many different
angles [Figure 8.13]. We do not sense that we are watching this
downpour from beginning to end but instead see this rain as the
accumulation of its seemingly infinite variety of shapes,
movements, and textures. Another example of cumulative
organization is Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (1993).
Although some viewers may expect a biography of the renowned
pianist Gould, the film intentionally fragments his life into
numerical episodes focused on his playing, on his acquaintances

discussing him, and on reenactments of moments in his life [Figure
8.14].
8.13 Rain (1929). The accumulation of images of different kinds of rain showers gradually
creates a poetic documentary of various shapes and textures.

8.14 Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (1993). As an expositional organization, the
film offers a glimpse into the life of the notoriously elusive genius through snippets of
performance footage intermixed with reenactments of moments in his life.
Contrastive Organizations
Examine carefully the organization of this clip from The Cove (2009). Does it follow
a clear formal strategy? Explain.

As a variation on cumulative organization, contrastive organizations
present a series of contrasts or oppositions that indicate different
points of view on its subject. Thus, a film may alternate between
images of war and peace or between contrasting skylines of
different cities. Sometimes these contrasts may be evaluative,
distinguishing positive and negative events. At other times,
contrastive exposition may suggest a more complicated relationship
between objects or individuals. Among the most ambitious versions
of this technique is a group of films by Michael Apted, beginning
with his documentary 7 Up (1964) and followed by successive films
made every seven years. The nine films in the Up series (1964–2019)
track the changing attitudes and social situations of a group of
children as they grow into the adults of 63 Up (2019). With a new film
appearing every seven years, these films contrast the differences

among developing individuals in terms of class, gender, and family
life and in their changing outlooks as they grow older. This
emphasis on the contrasting shapes of these developments differs
significantly from the fiction film Boyhood (2014), where the use of
the same actor as he matures over a decade emphasizes the
coherence of the development.
Developmental Organizations
With developmental organizations, places, objects, individuals, or
experiences are presented through a pattern that has a non-
narrative logic or structure but still follows a logic of change or
progression. For example, an individual may be presented as
growing from small to large, as changing from a passive to an active
personality, or as moving from the physical to the spiritual. In Faces
Places (2017), filmmaker Agnes Varda and photographer-muralist JR
travel around the villages and towns of rural France interviewing a
spectrum of individuals, while JR creates large photographs of
people that are then displayed on buildings. On one hand, the
documentary develops as an expanding map of French society; on
the other, a parallel development follows the emerging friendship
between the two artists as they share visions and histories [Figure
8.16]. A year later, the 2018 RBG documents Supreme Court justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s life through her personal relationships and
through her landmark social and legal accomplishments,

transforming a quiet and intellectual woman into a popular icon and
heroine [Figure 8.17].
8.16 Faces Places (2017). Against the journey of a filmmaker and a photographer through
France, the encounter with new faces maps the development of a new relationship between
the two image makers.

8.17 RBG (2018). An intimate chronicle of Ruth Bader Ginsburg progresses through her
private life and loves to her powerful interventions in the causes of social justice and
women’s rights.
FILM IN FOCUS Nonfiction and Non-Narrative in Stories We Tell (2013)
See also: Daughter Rite (1980); Bright
Leaves (2003); Capturing the Friedmans
(2003)
To watch a video about Stories We Tell (2013), go to LaunchPad for The Film
Experience at launchpadworks.com

http://launchpadworks.com/

Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell (2013) is an example of the organizational and
rhetorical possibilities that have made contemporary documentaries so exciting
and o�en surprising. Years earlier, Polley had established an active acting career
and had directed two powerful narrative feature films, Away from Her (2006) and
Take this Waltz (2012), both subtle and sensitive depictions of the difficult
dynamics of adult relationships. Her first documentary, Stories We Tell, explores
her own family history, as Polley questions other family members, views old home
movies, investigates newspapers and other documents, and eventually turns to
DNA testing to determine if her presumed father is in fact her biological father. This
complex film is aligned with the traditions of both the personal documentary and
the essay film.
In one sense, the film de�ly employs all three major documentary expositional
strategies. The early part of the film introduces various family members (including
siblings Mark, John, Joanna, Susy) and an array of friends of Polley’s mother,
Diane, as “talking head” figures who comment on Diane’s life, their experiences
with this dynamic woman, and her early death from cancer. Woven within these
commentaries and remembrances is a series of old photographs and clips of
home-movie sequences in which Diane frolicks around the house, plays at the
beach, and at one point sings “Ain’t Misbehavin” on an audition tape. Gradually,
this oblique portrait begins to reveal various contrasts in Diane’s personality that
suggest an increasingly complex history of a person who, for all her extroversion
and exuberance, was “a woman with secrets.” Indeed, the central secret that the
film gradually uncovers is the nature and source of a pregnancy that produced
Sarah herself.
The accumulation of those different perspectives eventually focuses on a specific
question about Sarah’s true biological father. Sarah, who is visually and audibly
prominent throughout the film, pursues this central question and related
questions about her parents’ relationship and her own birth. She contrasts three
possible fathers: Michael, the father whom she knows and loves despite some
professed difficulties in his marriage with Diane; Geoffrey Bowes, an actor in a
Montreal production where Diane worked decades earlier; and Harry Gulkin, a

well-known film producer who was also in Montreal at the time. These contrasting
father figures become a version of the larger philosophical contrasts that organize
this documentary around the different “stories we tell” about our experiences and
lives.
The film’s title indicates a focus on individual tales about Diane, and the
expositional organization develops through these little narratives. The “stories” of
the title have been shaded and shaped by the limits and prejudices of memory.
Ultimately, they demonstrate that no overarching narrative can fully explain
Diane’s character, personality, and history. One of the possible fathers, Harry
Gulkin, claims, toward the conclusion of the film, that only two people have the
“right” to tell the story of Diane’s affair because only she and he were there.
Otherwise, he says, “you can’t ever touch bottom.” Indeed, for Sarah Polley, that
elusive “bottom” of any experience or personality can never be touched or
documented, which is perhaps the fundamental truth of this film. While there may
be a verifiable reality or truth enmeshed within these different perspectives, its
status as truth remains a protean and elusive notion that can never be fully
secured.
Early on, Polley describes the interviews that organize the film as part of an
“interrogation process,” the primary rhetorical position of the film. Yet just as it
contrasts and complicates the truth of its talking-head interviews and anecdotes,
Stories We Tell twists that interrogation process in particularly contemporary ways,
making it is as much an interrogation of Polley as subject and identity as it is of the
other players and family members in this drama. The film engages and
undermines the narrative interrogation that supports most memories and, at the
same time, calls attention to its own work as a personal film that uses theatrical
and reflexive reenactments to undermine the reliable objectivity of any
perspective.
For example, the film begins with a dramatically reflexive sequence in which Polley
brings her father, Michael, to a recording booth where he hesitantly reads and
reenacts the narration that we later learn he wrote for the film. At different points,
Michael reads voiceover narration that, we later learn, he was inspired to write

because of the film’s climactic revelation and because of his subsequently
renewed bond with Sarah. As Michael moves in and out of his own narrative, he
appears sometimes as part of a third-person perspective on his history, while, at
other times, he expresses himself through a first-person testimony about his
experiences with Diane. In other words, he reenacts as performance the story that
he wrote of his own life. Throughout this narration, Sarah regularly interrupts
Michael to have him reread lines (“take that line back”) and so calls attention to
the construction of narration itself. As a related strategy, past events in the film are
o�en presented through what seems to be authentic found footage and home
movies, but in the second half of the film, many of these clips are revealed as
reenactments with scenes reconstructed and actors playing the roles of the main
characters. Like the deconstruction of Michael’s narrative, these reenactments
transform what at first seems like traditional documentary footage into a
dramatization that may or may not be fully accurate [Figure 8.15].
8.15 Stories We Tell (2013). An inventive mixture of nonfiction and fiction, the film
moves between Michael’s narration, Sarah’s investigation, and dramatization as a
reenactment.

Although the many stories and personal testimonies about Diane seem to make
her the heart of the film, the reflexive frame and the use of reenactments gradually
and surprisingly repositions the film’s perspective and meaning, implying that
what happened in Diane’s history may not be the most important truth. When,
near the conclusion, Sarah reveals to Michael that he is in fact not her biological
father, she hugs him in a way that, according to him, “made the revelation worth
it,” so that for both him and Sarah, the search through Diane’s past and the truth
that it revealed through DNA “doesn’t make any difference.” Rather than just a
documentary about a mother who will never be completely known, Stories We Tell
becomes a film about the love, affection, and loyalty of a daughter for the father
who raised her — and the status of that love and affection as a truth that requires a
dramatically different kind of documentary to represent it.
Rhetorical Positions
Just as narrative cinema uses different types of narrators and
narration to tell stories from a certain angle, documentary and
experimental films employ their own rhetorical positions — or
organizational points of view — that shape their formal practices
according to certain perspectives and attitudes. Sometimes these
films might assume the neutral stance of the uninvolved observer —
referred to as the “voice of God” because of its assumed authority
and objectivity. At other times, the point of view of the documentary
assumes a more limited or even personal perspective. Whether
clearly visible and heard, omniscient or personal, or merely implied
by the film’s organization, the rhetorical positions of documentary

films generally articulate their attitudes and positions according to
four principal frameworks:
to explore the world and its peoples
to interrogate or analyze an event or a problem
to persuade the audience of a certain truth or point of view
to reflect the presence and activity of the filmmaking process or
the filmmaker
Sometimes these frameworks overlap in a single film. For example,
the voice of Peter Davis’s Hearts and Minds (1974) is both explorative
and polemical as it uses strategically placed interviews and newsreel
footage to tear apart the myths supporting the Vietnam War. Where
to Invade Next (2015), a film that centers on director Michael Moore’s
perspective on how other countries compare to the United States,
offers an o�en exaggerated performance as a clearly argumentative
perspective meant to incite and arouse audiences and to sway
opinion on social and economic programs [Figure 8.18].

8.18 Where to Invade Next (2015). This documentary explores cultures outside the United
States, from Finland to Tunisia, as part of filmmaker Michael Moore’s argument about where
America lags behind other countries in the areas of healthcare, women’s leadership, and
decriminalized drugs.
Explorative Positions
Explorative positions announce or suggest that the film’s driving
perspective is a scientific search into particular social,
psychological, or physical phenomena. Informed by this position, a
documentary assumes the perspective of a traveler, an explorer, or
an investigator who encounters new worlds, facts, or experiences
and aims to present and describe these straightforwardly, o�en as a
witness. Travel films have existed since the first days of cinema,
when filmmakers offered short records of awe-inspiring locations
such as Niagara Falls or the Great Wall of China. The first feature-

length documentaries extended that explorative curiosity,
positioning the travel film somewhere between the anthropologist’s
urge to show different civilizations and peoples, as in Flaherty’s
Nanook of the North (1922) [Figure 8.19], and the tourist’s pleasure of
visiting novel sites and locations, as in Jean Vigo’s tongue-in-cheek
wanderings through a French resort town in Apropos of Nice (1930).
More recently, Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010)
mobilizes 3-D technology to explore the Chauvet cave drawings in
southern France, offering a stunning commentary on these
prehistoric paintings and their anticipation of cinematic movement
[Figure 8.20].

8.19 Nanook of the North (1922). Many documentaries mimic the anthropologist’s project of
exploring other cultures — in this case, the rituals and daily routines of an Inuit family.
8.20 Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010). Werner Herzog’s 3-D images of the Chauvet cave in
southern France allow him to explore this space in ways never before possible.
Interrogative Positions
Interrogative or analytical positions rhetorically structure a movie
in a way that identifies the subject as being under investigation —
either through an implicit or explicit question-and-answer format or
by other, more subtle techniques. Commonly condensed in the
interview format found in many documentary films, interrogative
techniques also can employ a voiceover or an on-camera voice that
asks questions of individuals or objects that may or may not respond

to the questioning. Frank Capra’s Why We Fight series (1943–1945)
explicitly formulates itself as an inquisition into the motivations for
the U.S. involvement in World War II, whereas in Trinh T. Minh-ha’s
Surname Viet Given Name Nam (1989), a question or problem may
only be implied, and succeeding images may either resolve the
problem or not. Errol Morris’s Fog of War (2003) creates a visually
and musically complex forum, filmed with an innovative camera
device he called the “Interrotron,” through which he elicits strained
explanations about the catastrophe of the Vietnam War from Robert
McNamara, the former secretary of defense. One of the most
profound and subtlest examples of the interrogative or analytical
form is Alain Resnais’s Night and Fog (1955), which offers images
without answers [Figures 8.21a and 8.21b]. In short, interrogative
and analytical forms may lead to more knowledge or may simply
raise more questions than they answer.
8.21a and 8.21b Night and Fog (1955). As images of liberated survivors of the Nazi
concentration camps alternate with contemporary images of the same empty camps, the
complex organizational refrain of the film becomes, “Who is responsible?”

Description
The first still shows men laying, crowded together, in barracks beds. The
second still shows the barracks empty.
Persuasive Positions
Watch this clip from He Named Me Malala (2015). Describe the presiding voice or
attitude with as much detail as possible. How does the dominant rhetorical
argument position the subject it addresses? Can you imagine another way of
filming this subject? Explain.
The use of interrogation and analysis in a documentary film o�en
(but not always) is intended to convince or persuade a viewer about

certain facts or truths. Persuasive positions articulate a perspective
that expresses a personal or social position using emotions or
beliefs and aim to persuade viewers to feel and see in a certain way.
Some films do so through voices and interviews that attempt to
convince viewers of a particular cause. In An Inconvenient Sequel:
Truth to Power (2017), a follow up to his 2006 documentary An
Inconvenient Truth, former vice president Al Gore presents film clips
demonstrating the continuing need to address global warming
[Figure 8.22]. Other movies may downplay the presence of the
personal perspective and instead use images and sounds to
influence viewers through argument or emotional appeal, as in
propagandistic movies that urge certain political or social views.
Leni Riefenstahl’s infamous Triumph of the Will (1935) allows
grandiose compositions of images to convince viewers of the
glorious powers of the Nazi party. Meanwhile, in Pussy Riot: A Punk
Prayer (2013), the dramatic protests of three young Russian women
against the repressions in Russian society are presented, as are their
subsequent three-year prison sentences, and the energetic rhythms
of the music and the absurdities of the trial persuasively expose the
Russian church’s support of a repressive government.

8.22 An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power (2017). With sometimes shocking images, Al
Gore aims to persuade his audience not only about the dangers of global warming but also
about the way global activism can change the world.
Persuasive forms also can rely solely on the power of documentary
images themselves. Erroll Morris’s The Unknown Known (2013), for
example, allows former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to
speak for himself, through interviews and news clips, with very little
critical examination. However, through this transparent frame,
Rumsfeld reveals a rather uninformed and twisted perspective that
led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq [Figure 8.23]. With such movies,
what we are being persuaded to do or think may not be immediately
evident, yet it usually is obvious that we are engaged in a rhetorical
argument that involves visual facts, intellectual statements, and
sometimes emotional manipulation.

8.23 The Unknown Known (2013). Allowing clips and interviews to speak for themselves, this
film is a searing critique of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Reflexive and Performative Positions
Reflexive and performative positions call attention to the
filmmaking process or perspective of the filmmaker in determining
or shaping the documentary material being presented. O�en this
means calling attention to the making of the documentary or the
process of watching a film itself. Certain films — like Laleen
Jayamanne’s A Song of Ceylon (1985), which references the classical
documentary Song of Ceylon (1934) through its meditation on
colonialism and gender in Sri Lanka — aim to remind viewers that
documentary reality and history are always mediated by the film
image and that documentary films do not necessarily offer an easy
access to truth. This focus can shi� from the filmmaking process to

the filmmaker, thus emphasizing the participation of that individual
as a kind of performer of reality.
A classic example of a reflexive and performative documentary,
Orson Welles’s F for Fake (1974) wittily meditates on powers of
illusion that bind filmmaking, art forgery, fraud, and the illusions of
magicians. In Ross McElwee’s Sherman’s March (1986), the filmmaker
sets out on a journey to document General William Tecumseh
Sherman’s conquest of the South during the Civil War. Along the
way, however, this witty film becomes more about the filmmaker’s
own failed attempts to start or maintain a romantic relationship
with the many women he meets [Figure 8.24].

8.24 Sherman’s March (1986). A personal documentary about the filmmaker’s attempt to
make a historical film that becomes a reflexive performance about love, women, and
making movies.

Thinking about Documentary Films
Although moviegoers have always been attracted to a film’s
entertainment value, audiences also appreciated the cultural and
educational values of nonfiction movies produced as early as the
1890s. These films presented sporting events, political speeches, and
dramatic presentations of Shakespeare. In 1896, for instance, the
Lumière brothers took audiences on an educational railway trip
with the “phantom ride” of Leaving Jerusalem by Railway [Figure
8.25]. According to these practices, the documentary presumably
could offer unmediated truths or factual insights that were
unavailable through strictly narrative experiences. Regardless of
how this basic view of the documentary may have changed since
then, presenting presumed social, historical, or cultural truths or
facts remains the foundation on which documentary films are built.

8.25 Leaving Jerusalem by Railway (1896). Early films allowed audiences to experience the
pleasure and education of visiting new lands and vistas.
Perhaps more than narrative cinema, documentary films expand
and complicate how we understand the world. The relationship
between documentary films and the cultural and historical
expectations of viewers thus plays a large part in how these movies
are understood. Luis Buñuel’s Land Without Bread (1933) might seem
to be a kind of travelogue about a remote region of Spain — Las
Hurdes — but its bitingly ironic soundtrack commentary, which
flatly understates the brutal misery, poverty, and degradation in the
region, makes the film a searing political commentary on the failure

of the state and church to care adequately for the people who live
there. So unmistakable was the message of this film, in fact, that the
Spanish government repressed it. Without its cultural context, this
film might seem odd or confusing to some viewers today, reminding
us that in order to locate the significance of a film, we o�en must
understand the historical, social, and cultural contexts in which it
was made.
What makes a documentary film you have recently seen meaningful? How does it
achieve its aims and make its values apparent?
Throughout the history of documentaries, viewers have found these
films most significant in their ability to reveal new or ignored
realities not typically seen in narrative films and to confront
assumptions and alter opinions.
Confronting Assumptions
Because narrative movies dominate the cinematic scene,
documentary films commonly have a differential value: that is,
successful documentary films offer different kinds of truth from
narrative movies. O�en this means revealing new or ignored
realities by showing people, events, or levels of reality we have not
seen before because they have been excluded either from our social

experience or from our experiences of narrative films. To achieve
these kinds of fresh insights, documentaries o�en question the
basic terms of narratives — such as the centrality of characters, the
importance of a cause-and-effect chronology, or the necessity of a
narrative point of view — or they draw on perspectives or techniques
that would seem out of place in a narrative movie.
By showing us an object or a place from angles and points of view
beyond the realistic range of human vision, such films place us
closer to a newly discovered reality. We might see the bottom of a
deep ocean through the power of an underwater camera or the flight
of migrating birds from their perspectives in the skies. Perhaps an
object will be presented for an inordinately long amount of time,
showing minute changes that we rarely see in our usual
experiences. One hypothetical movie might condense the gestation
of a child in the womb, and another might show the dread and
boredom that a homeless person experiences over one long night in
Miami. David and Albert Maysles’s Grey Gardens (1975) portrays the
quirky extremes of a mother and daughter, relatives of Jacqueline
Kennedy Onassis, who live in a dilapidated mansion in East
Hampton, Long Island. Slowly, by following their daily routines and
dwelling on the incidentals in their lives, the film develops our
capacity to see two individuals whose unique personalities and
habits become less and less strange [Figure 8.26].

8.26 Grey Gardens (1975). The relationship between two quirky and unusual women
becomes a touching and entertaining documentary about individualism and humanity.
Altering Opinions
Documentary films may present a familiar or well-known subject
and attempt to make us comprehend it in a new way. Some
documentaries are openly polemical when presenting a subject. As
an obvious example, documentaries about a political figure or a
controversial event may confront viewers’ assumptions or attempt to
alter currently held opinions about the person or event. Other films

may ask us to rethink a moment in history or our feelings about
what once seemed like a simple exercise, as in Honeyland (2019), a
documentary about the art and ecopolitics of beekeeping in
Macedonia [Figure 8.27].
8.27 Honeyland (2019). This documentary offers viewers new perspectives on the culture
and poetry of beekeeping in an isolated mountain community.
With any and all of the formal and organizational tools available to a
documentary, these films attempt to persuade viewers of certain
facts, attack other points of view, argue with other films, or motivate
viewers to act on social problems or concerns. An especially explicit
example is Michael Moore’s Sicko (2007), which visibly and
tendentiously argues that the healthcare system in the United States
is antiquated and destructive and needs to be changed. Released the

same year, the documentary Manufacturing Dissent: Uncovering
Michael Moore (2007) takes Moore and his many films to task for
fudging or misrepresenting facts. Such polemic is central to this
tradition of documentary cinema, which is always about which
reality we wish to accept.
Interpretive Contexts and Traditions
From the two primary agendas discussed above come four traditions
of documentary cinema — the social documentary, the historical
documentary, the ethnographic film, and the personal or subjective
documentary. These four traditions encompass some of the main
frameworks for understanding many documentary films throughout
the twentieth century.
The Social Documentary Tradition
Social documentaries examine issues, people, and cultures in a
social context. Using a variety of organizational practices, this
tradition emphasizes one or both of the following goals: authenticity
(in representing how people live and interact) and discovery (in
representing unknown environments and cultures). John Grierson,
considered by some scholars and filmmakers as the father of
documentary, made his first film, Dri�ers (1929), about North Sea
herring fishermen. Another early British filmmaker, Humphrey
Jennings, continued this tradition with Listen to Britain (1942), a

twenty-minute panorama of British society at war — from soldiers in
the fields to women in factories. Indeed, the social documentary
tradition is long and varied, stretching from Pare Lorentz’s The River
(1937) — made for the U.S. Department of Agriculture about the
importance of the Mississippi River — to Waste Land (2010), about
artist Vik Muniz’s encounter with a community of people who live in
and off the world’s largest landfill on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro.
An important spin-off from the social documentary tradition is the
political documentary. Another subcategory of social documentary
that has proliferated in recent decades is indigenous cinema.
The Political Documentary
Partially as a result of the social crisis of the Great Depression in the
United States and the more general economic crises that occurred in
most other countries a�er World War I, early political
documentaries aimed to investigate and to celebrate the political
activities of men and women as they appear within the struggles of
small and large social spheres. Contrasting themselves with the
lavish Hollywood films of the times, these early documentary films
sought to balance aesthetic objectivity and political purpose.
Preceded by the films of Dziga Vertov and the Soviet cinema of the
1920s, such as Man with a Movie Camera (1929), political
documentaries from the mid-twentieth century tend to take
analytical or persuasive positions, hoping to provoke or move
viewers with the will to reform social systems. Narrated by Ernest

Hemingway, Joris Ivens’s The Spanish Earth (1937) presents, for
example, the Republican faction of the Second Spanish Republic as
heroes fighting against fascist Nationalist rebels. Although political
documentaries such as these can sometimes be labeled propaganda
films because of their visible efforts to support a particular social or
political issue or group, they frequently use more complex
arguments and more subtle tactics than bluntly manipulative
documentaries.
Since World War II, political documentaries have grown more varied
and occasionally more militant. In 1968, Argentine filmmakers
Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino produced The Hour of the
Furnaces, a three-hour-long examination of the colonial exploitation
of Argentina’s culture and resources that inspired heated political
discussions and even demonstrations in the street. In recent
decades, feminist documentaries, gay and lesbian documentaries,
and documentaries about race have explored political issues and
identities that traditionally have not been addressed. The variety of
these films indicates the power and purpose of this tradition.
American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs (2013)
examines the life and work of a Detroit activist who continued, at
age ninety-seven, to work for social change at a grassroots level.
Robert Epstein and Richard Schmiechen’s The Times of Harvey Milk
(1984) describes the assassinations of San Francisco mayor George
Moscone and Harvey Milk, an activist who was the first gay
supervisor elected in the city, and Jennie Livingston’s Paris Is

Burning (1990) documents the Harlem drag ball scene [Figure 8.28].
Spike Lee’s HBO documentary When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in
Four Acts (2006), about the U.S. government’s mishandling of the
2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster, is a worthy heir to a long tradition
of documentaries that make the politics of race the centerpiece of
the politics of the nation [Figure 8.29].
8.28 Paris Is Burning (1990). A sympathetic and witty portrayal of the subculture of drag
balls in New York City.

8.29 When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006). Spike Lee’s HBO documentary
uses the medium as a powerful tool for political statements.
Indigenous Cinema
Indigenous cinema involves direct representation of native cultures
and their ability to assert power through the control of the image.
The relatively recent introduction of video technology to indigenous
people, such as the Kayapo and Waipai people in the Amazon Basin
of Brazil, has resulted in considerable output that has several
empowering social uses [Figure 8.30]. These include the
preservation of traditional culture for future generations, activism
for land rights and the environment, and a new form of visual
expression in a culture that has traditionally relied on pictorial
communication. Although the Kayapo are entering a new historical

moment by employing this technology, the primary purpose of their
films is to preserve the past.
8.30 The Spirit of TV (1990). Native peoples of the Amazon, such as the Waipai, have used
video to record their culture and assert their rights.
H I STO R Y C LO S E U P
Indigenous Media

Like the Kayapo and Waipai people (see Indigenous Cinema, above), the
indigenous people of Canada also le� behind their legacy as objects of
ethnographic film and campaigned for self-representation. Organized activism
resulted in the licensing of the Inuit Broadcasting Network in 1982, featuring
programming by, for, and about native Canadians. Years later, a new phase of
indigenous media making was marked by the historic release of Atanarjuat: The
Fast Runner (2001, right). Shot in digital video, this extraordinary film, directed by
Inuit filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk, deploys the genre of epic to explore a people’s
past. But it portrays a cultural legend, not a factual past. Although at first it
resembles an ethnographic film, Atanarjuat is set a millennium ago. By setting its
depiction of the traditional way of life in the mythic past, the film represents an
Inuit claim to self-representation on several levels. The film’s use of amateur
actors lends an “authenticity” to the scripted scenes, and its script represents the
longest text ever written in the Inuit language. Its images also implicitly
acknowledge and respond to the beauty as well as the problems of ethnographic
documentaries by nonindigenous filmmakers like Nanook of the North (1922). Two
subsequent films made in 2006 and 2009 complete the Fast Runner trilogy.

The Historical Documentary Tradition
Another form related to social documentary is the historical
documentary, a type of film that concentrates largely on recovering
and representing events or figures in history. Depending on the
topic, these films are o�en compilations of materials, relying on old
film footage or other materials such as letters, testimonials by
historians, or photographs. Whatever the materials and tactics,
however, historical documentaries have moved in two broad
directions.
Conventional documentary histories assume that the facts and
realities of a past history can be more or less recovered and
accurately represented. The Atomic Cafe (1982), although a rather
satirical documentary, uses media and government footage to
describe the paranoia and hysteria of the nuclear arms race during
the Cold War. The films of Ken Burns — including the PBS series The
Civil War (1990), Baseball (1996), and The War (2007) — use a range of
materials, techniques, and voices to re-create the layered dynamics
of major historical and cultural events [Figure 8.31].

8.31 The Civil War (1990). By employing archival footage, including letters written by
soldiers, Ken Burns’s epic film unveils the human pathos and triumphs of the American Civil
War.
Reflexive documentary histories, in contrast, adopt a dual point of
view. Alongside the work to describe an event (such as a historical
trauma like the Holocaust or the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima) is
the awareness that film or other discourses and materials will never
be able to retrieve the full reality of that lost history. Despite their
vastly different topics (the Nazi death camps and the racist murder
of a Chinese American automotive engineer), Claude Lanzmann’s
Shoah (1985) and Christine Choy and Renee Tajima’s Who Killed
Vincent Chin? (1987) engage specific historical and cultural atrocities

and simultaneously reflect on the difficulty, if not impossibility, of
fully and accurately documenting the truth of those events and
experiences [Figure 8.32].
8.32 Who Killed Vincent Chin? (1987). This film documents a local hate crime that resonates
in larger historical terms. At the same time, it reflects on the difficulty of communicating the
full historical truth.
The Ethnographic Documentary Tradition
Ethnographic films, which record the practices, rituals, and people
of a culture, have roots in early cinema and are a third major
tradition in documentary film. Ethnographic films are typically
about cultural revelations and present specific peoples, rituals, or

communities that may have been marginalized by or invisible to the
mainstream culture.
Anthropological films are a type of ethnographic film that explore
different global cultures and peoples, both living and extinct. In the
first part of the twentieth century, these films o�en sought out
communities that were endangered or little known to contemporary
U.S. and European audiences. Such documentaries generally aim to
reveal cultures and peoples authentically, but in fact they o�en are
implicitly shaped by the perspectives of the filmmakers and o�en
impose filmmakers’ interpretations. One such film is Robert
Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922), widely considered the first
feature-length documentary film and one of the most influential
films of all time. This film is a record of the lives and customs of the
Inuit people of the Canadian Arctic. While Flaherty’s portrayal of
the indigenous people is generally sympathetic, he staged or
fictionalized some scenes for the film, blurring the boundaries
between truth and fiction. Shortly a�erward, Ernest B. Schoedsack
and Merian C. Cooper made Grass (1925), a record of an Iranian
migration (and in 1933, they made the not unrelated feature film
King Kong). In the 1940s and 1950s, such works as Jean Rouch’s The
Magicians of Wanzerbe (1949) transformed film into an extension of
anthropology, searching out the social rituals and cultural habits
that distinguish the people of particular societies. Robert Gardner’s
Dead Birds (1965) examines the war rituals of the Dani tribe in New
Guinea, maintaining a scientific distance as the filmmaker attempts

to draw out what he believes to be unique and different about the
people [Figure 8.33].
8.33 Dead Birds (1965). This remarkable ethnographic film provides audiences with a
glimpse of life in the Dani tribe in New Guinea, focusing on Weyak, a farmer and warrior, and
Pua, a young swineherd.
Nowhere do claims of film as an impartial record become more
loaded than in the filming of indigenous people by outside
observers. Deploying a technology like the movies means claiming
the power to represent others and their history. The camera conveys
a profound feeling of presence that also puts the viewer in the place
of the observer or “expert.” Yet throughout film history, the vast
majority of anthropological films have been made by filmmakers

who come from outside the culture that is being filmed. Therefore,
even when filmmakers have good intentions, the portrayal of
indigenous people in such films is o�en misleading, inaccurate, or
unrepresentative of the culture’s actual customs, traditions, and
values.
The scope and subject matter of anthropological films have
expanded considerably over the years. This contemporary revision
of anthropological cinema investigates the rituals, values, and social
patterns of families or subcultures, such as the skateboard clan of
Dogtown and Z-Boys (2001). Using found footage and archival prints
of home movies made before 1950, Karen Shopsowitz’s My Father’s
Camera (2001) argues that reality is sometimes best revealed by
amateur filmmakers capturing everyday life though home movies
and snapshots. One of the most ambitious films in movie history,
Chris Marker’s Sans soleil (Sunless) (1983) shuffles and experiments
with many of the structures and tropes of ethnographic
documentaries, following a cameraman’s letters as he travels
between Japan and Africa or, as the film puts it, between “the two
extreme poles of survival.”
Another important documentary school that is deeply connected
with ethnographic cinema is cinéma vérité (French for “cinema
truth”), as well as its North American equivalent, direct cinema. For
more information about these interconnected traditions, see 1950s–

1970s: New Technologies and the Arrival of Television earlier in this
chapter.
The Personal Documentary Tradition
As the line between social documentaries and ethnographic films
has wavered and as filmmaking equipment becomes more widely
available, personal documentaries (also known as subjective
documentaries) — documentary formats that emphasize the personal
perspective or involvement of the filmmaker, o�en making the films
resemble autobiographies or diaries — have become more common.
This subgenre has roots in earlier films. In Lost, Lost, Lost (1976),
Jonas Mekas portrays his fears and hopes in a diary film about his
growing up as an immigrant in New York and uses home movies,
journal entries, and a fragmented style that resembles a diary. The
rhythmic interjections of the commentator-poet express feelings
ranging from angst to delight. In A Healthy Baby Girl (1996),
filmmaker Judith Helfland explores the causes of her cancer
diagnosis in her mother’s use during pregnancy of the drug
diethylstilbestrol (DES), which was prescribed to prevent
miscarriage. Although the film exposes and indicts this breach of
medical ethics and its effects on women’s health, its primary focus is
on the personal journey of the filmmaker and her family [Figure
8.34].

8.34 A Healthy Baby Girl (1996). Some documentaries, such as this one about the filmmaker
and her mother, entwine a personal story with larger issues — here a breach of medical
ethics.
Questions about truth and honesty have shadowed documentaries
since Flaherty’s reconstruction of “typical” events for the camera in
Nanook of the North (1922) and his other films in the 1920s.
Documentary reenactments, which re-create presumably real

events within the context of a documentary, are o�en found in
personal documentaries, too. For example, Errol Morris’s The Thin
Blue Line (1988) is a documentary about Randall Adams, a man
wrongly convicted of killing a Dallas police officer in 1976, but it also
becomes a mystery drama about discovering the real murderer.
Although it uses the many expository techniques of documentary
film, such as close-ups of evidence and talking-head interviews, The
Thin Blue Line alternates these with staged reenactments of the
murder evening, invented dialogue, an eerie Philip Glass
soundtrack, courtroom drawings, and even clips from old movies
[Figure 8.35]. The debates and questions surrounding the practice
of reenactment are explored in Manufacturing Dissent: Uncovering
Michael Moore (2007), Rick Caine and Debbie Melnyk’s documentary
on Michael Moore’s use of reenactments in his films.

8.35 The Thin Blue Line (1988). Reenacting a crime as a part of a documentary investigation,
Errol Morris’s film set the stage for more experimental documentary formats.
At the other end of the spectrum, mockumentaries — films that use
a documentary style and structure to present and stage fictional
(sometimes ludicrous) subjects — take a humorous approach to the
question of truth and fact. The mockumentary is an extreme
example of how documentaries can generate different experiences
and responses depending on viewing context and one’s knowledge
of the traditions and aims of such films. For example, with the initial
release of This Is Spinal Tap (1984), some viewers saw and understood
it as a straightforward rock-music documentary (or
“rockumentary”), while most recognized it as a spoof on that
documentary tradition [Figure 8.36]. The popular and controversial

Borat (2006) integrates a similar mockumentary style by following a
fictional Kazakh television talking head as he travels “the greatest
country in the world” in search of celebrities, cowboys, and the
“cultural learning” found on the streets of America. Actor Sacha
Baron Cohen mixes his impersonation of the character Borat with
interviews of people who accept his persona as genuine. As such,
the film raises questions about the boundary between a parody of
viewers’ assumptions about the truth and a dangerous distortion of
the integrity of documentary values [Figure 8.37].
8.36 This Is Spinal Tap (1984). Mockumentaries like this cult film remind us that the
authenticity of cinematic documentaries relies on the experiences and expectations of their
audiences.

8.37 Borat (2006). Some of the most important assumptions about documentary integrity
are violated in this film, perhaps as a way to satirize the pretensions of those assumptions.
Closely related to the mockumentary but with more serious aims is
the fake documentary, a tradition that includes Luis Buñuel’s Land
Without Bread (1933) and Orson Welles’s F for Fake (1974), a movie
that looks at real charlatans and forgers while itself questioning the
possibilities of documentary truth. A more recent film, Cheryl
Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman (1996), is a fictional account of an
African American lesbian documentary filmmaker researching a
black actress from the 1930s. The archive of photos and film footage
she assembles for the fake documentary within the film represents a
lovingly fabricated work by the film’s creative team — an imagining
of a history that has not survived [Figure 8.38].

8.38 The Watermelon Woman (1996). As a serious use of a mockumentary tradition, this film
suggests a history that has not survived — or perhaps not yet arrived.
As we have seen, documentary films create movie experiences
markedly different from those of narrative cinema. Although some
of these experiences are non-narrative portraits that envision
individuals in ways quite unlike the narrative histories of the same
people, others are about the truth of events. Narrative movies
encourage us to enjoy, imagine, and think about our temporal and
historical relationships with the world and to consider when those
plots and narratives seem adequate according to our experiences.
Documentary movies remind us, however, that we have many other

kinds of relationships with the world that involve us in many other
insightful ways — through debate, exploration, and analysis.
T E C H N O LO G Y I N A C T I O N
Documentary Sound
The interaction of technology and documentary cinema parallels and differs from
that interaction in narrative cinema, nowhere more clearly than in how
documentaries have mobilized sound technology. While synchronized, optical
sound recording led to immediate changes in the formation of character and plot
in narrative film, this technology had a more indirect but no less transformative
impact on documentary film. Before 1927 (and to some extent a�er),
documentaries relied on intertitles to describe locations, people, and actions.
Synchronized sound recording, with its burdensome equipment, offered few
advantages when filming outside the studio. Instead, most documentaries in the
1930s and 1940s would postdub soundtracks over images, providing commentary,
music, or sound effects to accompany those images. The result was a tendency to
infuse commentary with an authority frequently referred to as the “voice of God”
that could explain and interpret unfamiliar cultures or impart a political message.
A rare example of a documentary during this period that used postdubbed
synchronization to counterpoint the images ironically, rather than simply to locate
and explain them, was Luis Bunuel’s Land Without Bread (1933). Here the flat,
observational voiceover becomes disturbingly incapable of understanding and
sympathizing with the brutal realities of an impoverished region of Spain [Figure
8.39a].

8.39a Land Without Bread (1933). This early documentary offers a rare use of
contrapuntal voiceover that satirizes the “voice of God” narration in other
documentaries.
The sound technology that altered documentary practices most obviously in the
1950s and 1960s was the introduction of the lightweight Nagra magnetic recording
system. With this system, filmmakers could record sounds directly while filming,
producing new directions associated with cinéma vérité in France and direct
cinema in North America. In keeping with the principles of these movements,
sound and images could create an interactive, unscripted immediacy, as famously
evidenced in Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin’s Chronicle of a Summer (1961) where
interviews on the streets of Paris foreground the Nagra recorders as a critical part
of the documentary action [Figure 8.39b].

8.39b Chronicle of a Summer (1961). The visible presence of Nagra sound recorders
becomes a central part of what is being documented in interviews on the streets of
Paris.
Contemporary digital technology has likewise introduced new options for sound in
documentary cinema. In 2012, Dolby offered an upgraded version of Dolby
surround sound called Dolby Atmos, and while this technology has been mostly
aimed at 3-D narrative cinema, it has significant creative possibilities for
documentaries experimenting with virtual reality (VR) filmmaking. For example,
Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel’s Leviathan (2012), made through the
Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard, dramatically explored life on a large fishing
vessel at sea, using sound technology to record noises and sounds under the water
and on the surfaces, resulting in strange, immersive melodies and sensual audio
compositions [Figure 8.39c].

8.39c Leviathan (2012). The immersive possibilities of digital sound, alongside the
visual images, can viscerally absorb the viewer.

Chapter 8 Review
SUMMARY
A documentary film is a visual and auditory representation of
presumed facts, real experiences, and actual events in the world.
Documentary films usually use different strategies and
organizations than narrative films.
The very first movies were nonfiction films, frequently called
actualities: moving presentations of real people and events.
Also popular during this period were other scenics, which
depicted exotic and foreign locations, and topicals, which
presented current events.
Nanook of the North (1922) and other anthropological films
proved the commercial possibilities of the documentary
format. Around the same time, Soviet filmmakers pioneered
the documentary form for political purposes.
The introduction of optical sound recording in 1927 greatly
affected documentary films by allowing the addition of
educational or social commentary to accompany images.
In the 1950s, lightweight 16mm cameras and portable
magnetic sound-recording equipment gave filmmakers new
ways to capture reality, as exemplified by the cinéma vérité
movement in France and direct cinema in North America.

From the 2000s on, digital video cameras and editing systems
have made documentary filmmaking less expensive and
technologically streamlined.
Nonfiction films present presumed factual descriptions of
actual events, people, or places. Non-narrative films are
organized in a variety of ways that deemphasize stories while
employing other organizational structures.
Primary documentary traditions include the social
documentary, the historical documentary, the ethnographic
film, and the personal documentary.
Social documentaries examine and present peoples and
cultures from a perspective that focuses on a particular
problem or social issue. They include political documentaries.
Historical documentaries concentrate on recovering and
representing events or figures in history.
Ethnographic films are cultural explorations aimed at
presenting specific peoples, rituals, or communities that may
have been marginalized by or are invisible to the mainstream
culture. They include anthropological films.
Personal documentaries emphasize the personal perspective or
involvement of the filmmaker. A related tradition is the
mockumentary, which takes a humorous approach to
questions of truth or fact.
Various types of documentaries use reenactments to re-
create real or presumably true events.

KEY TERMS
documentary
actuality
scenic
topical
optical sound recording
propaganda film
cinéma vérité
direct cinema
activist video
shooting ratio
nonfiction film
non-narrative film
social documentary
historical documentary
ethnographic film
personal documentary
reenactment
mockumentary
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CHAPTER 9 ANIMATION AND
EXPERIMENTAL MEDIA
Challenging Form

The story of a gender-nonconforming East German performer touring the
American heartland, Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001) is a film
adaptation of the exuberant rock musical created by director and star
John Cameron Mitchell with Stephen Trask. It is also a film of ideas: the
intersections of identity, desire, pop culture, and creativity are explored
through experimental elements including direct address to the camera,
fanciful montages, and animation. The protagonist, Hedwig, has been
betrayed by an American soldier, whose proposal of marriage and escape
from life behind the Berlin Wall was contingent on sex reassignment
surgery. The failure of the operation leaves Hedwig between sexes; her
abandonment by the soldier leaves her between cultures. But Hedwig
shakes off these problems in songs like “Wig in a Box.” “The Origin of
Love” puts her struggles in perspective by retelling the famous
mythological story from Plato’s Symposium about how the god Zeus
prevented humans from becoming too powerful by splitting them down
the middle, condemning them to search for their other halves. A
captivating animated sequence depicts the original human forms —
fused couples that are severed into two men, two women, or one of each
— acting out the origins of love. Constantly morphing line drawings by
Emily Hubley — whose parents John and Faith Hubley were also
prominent animators — convey the poignance of the story and the
yearning of the song. Taking off from the predictable patterns of realist
narrative film, Hedwig and the Angry Inch uses music, color, and narration
to achieve a fable-like quality. Intimacy with the audience is enhanced by
the use of animation to represent the richness of the imagination.

can help you review. Go to launchpadworks.com
The word cinema is derived from kinema, the Greek word for
“movement.” Arguably, neither the storytelling ability of the
medium nor its capacity to reveal the world is as basic to cinema as
is the simple rendering of movement. Narrative film defines the
commercial industry and much of viewers’ experience of the
movies; documentary film builds on viewers’ assumptions about the
camera’s truth-telling function; and animation and experimental
film focus on the basic properties of film as images in motion.
Animation is the use of cinema technology to give the illusion of
movement to successive drawings, paintings, figures, or computer-
generated images. Experimental media include noncommercial,
o�en non-narrative films, analog and digital video, installations, and
computer-based media that use elements of form and structure for
aesthetic expression. Experimental films are also referred to as
avant-garde films; the term avant-garde is derived from the military
term for the group that goes in advance of the rest. This text uses the
more general term experimental to encompass uses of film and
media form for aesthetic expression or technical innovation that
may not be tied to specific avant-garde movements.
Throughout film history, filmmakers have used the medium to go
outside the bounds of traditional narrative and documentary forms,
creating and combining images and sounds of the mundane, the

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unusual, and even the bizarre in order to address and challenge
their audiences in fascinating ways. O�en these experiments engage
with medium and form in ways that comment on and bridge
technological changes. For example, beginning in the late 1960s,
artists used the new format of video to create video art for
installations and gallery exhibitions. Over the last several decades,
new media technologies — including the internet, video games,
mobile media, and virtual and augmented reality — have supported
the imaginative creations of artists. This chapter explores animation
and experimental audiovisual media from the origins of cinema to
the present day, giving you the tools to watch and discuss some of
screen history’s most beloved — and some of its most challenging —
endeavors.
Animation builds on a basic element of film form: the combination
of a series of still images to produce the illusion of movement. The
delightful transformations of the line figures in Émile Cohl’s 1908
Fantasmagorie, one of the earliest animated films, illustrate this
principle [Figure 9.1]. Meanwhile, experimental films intentionally
reflect on the properties of the medium and the conditions in which
it is experienced by audiences. These include basic elements like
film stock, light, duration, editing patterns, and projection before an
audience. Paul Sharits’s 1966 Ray Gun Virus makes the mechanism
behind the illusion of motion visible through the strobing effect of
an irregular sequence of color fields. Changes in technology bring
changes in the forms and objects of these reflections. Video artist

Joan Jonas sets a video monitor to display a rolling image as an
exploration of the medium of television in Vertical Roll (1972)
[Figure 9.2]. All three works are based on the way discrete images
combine in moving image media.
9.1 Fantasmagorie (1908). One of the earliest cartoons, made for Gaumont Studios by Émile
Cohl, animates the negative images of hundreds of drawings on paper. The title alludes to
precinematic optical entertainment and reveries in which figures undergo unexpected
transformation.

9.2 Vertical Roll (1972). Video artist Joan Jonas’s piece takes its name from a television
malfunction in which the unstable video image appears to roll. Here her face appears as if
trapped in the monitor.
Animation and experimental media are two distinct alternatives to
live-action mainstream film that also have significant points of
convergence. As this chapter highlights, many experimental
filmmakers and new media artists throughout film history have used
animation in their explorations. And animation and experimental
media are also linked theoretically. New media theorist Lev
Manovich argues that the advent of digital cinema challenges the
long-standing assumption that recording reality is the primary aim
of cinema, restoring the primacy of animation and its experimental

possibilities to film history. But animation and experimental media
can differ widely in relation to the commercial film industry and to
narrative form. Animated narrative films represent a significant
share of the global film market, and the digital techniques used in
contemporary computer animation pervade almost all studio-
produced cinema. Experimental media is o�en non-narrative and
made by individual artists rather than by large crews or studios to
circulate outside the commercial entertainment sector. This chapter
combines discussion of these forms where it is illuminating and
considers them separately when indicated.
KEY OBJECTIVES
Describe animation and experimental film and media as cultural practices.
Explain how animated and experimental works draw on broader aesthetic
histories.
Point out how these works explore the formal properties of their media.
Discuss how animated and experimental media can both challenge and
become part of dominant film forms and institutions.
Explain various modes of traditional and computer animation.
Examine some of the common organizations, styles, and perspectives in
experimental media.
Prepare viewers to watch and appreciate experimental works.
Explain dimensions of the film experience made possible by animation and
experimental media.

A Short History of Animation and
Experimental Media
Animated and experimental media and the vision they express have
roots in the wider technological and social changes associated with
modernity, a term designating the period of history from the end of
the medieval era to the present as well as the period’s attitude of
confidence in progress and science centered on the human capacity
to shape history.
As modern society embraced progress and knowledge, some
individuals rejected the scientific and utilitarian bias of the quest for
facts. In “A Defence of Poetry” (1819), Romantic poet Percy Bysshe
Shelley proclaimed that poets were the unacknowledged legislators
of the world. Walter Pater, in The Renaissance (1873), argued for the
power of art to reveal the importance of the human imagination and
create experiences unavailable in commerce and science. Pre-
Raphaelite paintings like those of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the
glimmering Impressionist paintings of Claude Monet expressed
aesthetic commitments to sensibility, creativity, and perception over
factual observation [Figure 9.3]. Romantic aesthetic traditions later
influenced the emphasis on individual expressivity that is central to
much experimental film practice [Figure 9.4].

9.3 Claude Monet, Water Lilies (c. 1916–1920). This panel from Monet’s triptych anticipated
experimental film in its energetic depiction of light.

9.4 The Garden of Earthly Delights (1981). The work of prolific experimental filmmaker Stan
Brakhage is indebted to nineteenth-century Romanticism and its conception of artistic
insight. This two-minute film was made by pressing flowers and leaves between strips of
film and optically printing the images.
At the same time, the rapid industrial and cultural changes of the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were mirrored and
questioned in developments in the arts. Printing processes in the
nineteenth century expanded the use of illustration, both graphic
and photographic. Modernist forms of painting, music, graphic and
industrial design, and architecture captured new experiences of
time, space, and fragmentation enabled by technologies like the

railroad, the telegraph, and electricity. Cubist and Futurist painting
broke down shapes and movements into constituent parts, modes
reflected in animation techniques. Cinema attracted experimental
artists from other media and was considered a central art of
modernism.
1910s–1920s: Early Avant-Garde
Movements
In the silent film era, animation contributed to the showmanship of
early filmmakers like Georges Méliès and Windsor McCay. McCay’s
endearing animated figure Gertie the Dinosaur performed tricks in
his vaudeville act before being featured in a 1914 cartoon.
Meanwhile, experimental film practices and movements linked to
other innovations in art emerged in a number of countries. In
Germany in the 1920s, Dada artists Hans Richter and Viking
Eggeling began animated experiments in abstraction that they called
absolute film [Figure 9.5], and expressionist painters in the group
Der Sturm worked on the set designs of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
(1920). In 1920s France, avant-garde filmmakers such as Jean Epstein
and Germaine Dulac drew on impressionism in painting as well as
new musical forms in their work. At the same time, film artists
explored cinematography and editing to develop the cinema as a
unique art form. In Ballet mécanique (1924), French cubist painter
Fernand Léger collaborated with American director Dudley Murphy
in a celebration of machine-age aesthetics originally intended as a

visual accompaniment to American composer George Antheil’s
musical piece of the same name. This influential film blurs the
distinction between animation and live action, combining drawing
(an animated Charlie Chaplin, for example) and rhythmic editing
that animates photographed objects, like the legs of a mannikin that
seem to dance [Figure 9.6].

A still from the experimental film, Rhythmus, shows an abstract
footage of horizontal and vertical white bars against a dark
background.
9.5 Rhythmus 21 (1921). German artist Hans Richter claimed that this exploration of shapes
in motion was the first abstract film.

A still from the film, Ballet mécanique, shows an animated
image of Charlie Chaplin.
9.6 Ballet mécanique (1924). Charlie Chaplin’s iconic image is animated by Fernand Léger.

What historical precedents in the arts might have shaped the strategies used in the
film you just viewed? Does aligning the film with a historical precedent shed light
on its aims? Explain.
Animated and avant-garde filmmaking in the silent era were
international in spirit, with filmmakers paying tribute to the
modern metropolis in the “city symphony” genre. Charles Sheeler
and photographer Paul Strand document New York City scenes in
Manhatta (1921). Filmic impressions of Berlin are orchestrated in
Walter Ruttmann’s Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927), and Dziga
Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929) shows the dynamism of
modern Soviet life. In Britain, internationalism was advocated by
writers and artists Kenneth Macpherson, Bryher, and the American
poet H.D. through their translation of writings by Soviet filmmaker
Sergei Eisenstein in their journal Close Up and in their strange and
unique film, Borderline (1930). Featuring the politically outspoken
African American actor Paul Robeson and his wife, Eslanda,
Borderline engaged themes of race, sexuality, and Freudian
psychoanalysis [Figure 9.7]. Lotte Reiniger completed one of the
first feature-length animated films, The Adventures of Prince Achmed,
in 1926, using a frame-by-frame technique manipulating intricate
silhouetted cut-outs [Figure 9.8].

A still from the experimental narrative, Borderline, shows Paul
Robeson decorating himself with flowers and leaves.
9.7 Borderline (1930). The editors of the British film journal Close Up put their modernist
ideas into practice in this experimental narrative featuring the American actor Paul Robeson.

A silhouette used for the film, The Adventures of Prince
Achmed, shows an elaborately dressed pair of people playing
chess and an attendant fanning them.
9.8 The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926). German animator Lotte Reiniger’s distinctive
hand-cut paper silhouettes were used expressively in an adaptation of stories from One
Thousand and One Nights.

1930s–1940s: Sound and Vision
The international spirit of avant-garde cinema was challenged in the
1930s by the language barriers accompanying the introduction of
sound and by the rise of fascism in Europe. Although many
experimental filmmakers resisted the incorporation of synchronized
sound and continued to produce silent films long a�er sound’s
introduction at the end of the 1920s, some were immediately
attracted to the formal possibilities of the soundtrack. Dziga Vertov’s
interest in radio and industrial sounds was explored in Enthusiasm
(1931). German animator Oskar Fischinger composed abstract visual
music in films such as Allegretto (1936), which he produced in the
United States [Figure 9.9]. American ethnomusicologist Harry Smith
produced dozens of short films to be accompanied by musical
performances, records, or radio, and artist Joseph Cornell reedited a
Hollywood B movie to make Rose Hobart (1936) and played a samba
record to accompany its projection. Playwright Jean Cocteau began
making his influential poetic, surrealist films in 1930 with The Blood
of a Poet, which combines lyric imagery with music by French
composer Georges Auric.

A still from the film, Allegretto, shows a multi-colored pattern
of diamond shapes.
9.9 Allegretto (1936). The films of animator Oskar Fischinger are designed as visual music.

Most historians consider Meshes of the A�ernoon (1943) by Russian-
born Maya Deren and her Czech husband, Alexander Hammid, the
beginning of the American avant-garde’s historical prominence (see
the Film in Focus feature about this film later in this chapter).
Lightweight 16mm cameras, introduced as an amateur format and
widely used during World War II for reportage, appealed to Deren
and other mid-century artists seeking more personal film
expression. The striking imagery and structure of Deren’s films and
her tireless advocacy for experimental film as a writer and lecturer
shaped the conditions for, and aesthetics of, American “visionary
film,” the term coined by scholar P. Adams Sitney for this
experimental film movement.
Animation had already been incorporated in commercial
advertising and theatrical exhibition during the silent era. But in
Walt Disney’s Steamboat Willie (1928), animated by Ub Iwerks,
Mickey Mouse came alive with the addition of sound [Figure 9.10].
The studio went on to use music as a defining element of its
Technicolor Silly Symphony series and the experimental feature
Fantasia (1940), which featured the work of more than one thousand
artists and technicians. Most major studios also had animation
divisions that produced thousands of cartoons throughout the
golden age of Hollywood. Warner Bros. was particularly well known
for its Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes series, which o�en
mocked the conventions of live-action movies (film using
photographic images). Japanese animation, known as anime, was

also well established by this period; Kenzō Masaoka’s short film
Chikara to Onna no Yo no Naka (1933) was the first anime to feature
audio voiceover.

A still from the animated film, Steamboat Willie, shows the
cartoon character Micky Mouse steering a steamboat.
9.10 Steamboat Willie (1928). This sound cartoon’s critical and commercial success
established Walt Disney Productions as a powerful force in animated filmmaking.

FILM IN FOCUS Avant-Garde Visions in Meshes of the A�ernoon (1943)
See also: Un chien andalou (An
Andalusian Dog) (1929); Scorpio Rising
(1964)
To watch a clip from Meshes of the A�ernoon (1943), go to LaunchPad for The
Film Experience at launchpadworks.com
Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid’s experimental film Meshes of the A�ernoon
(1943) forged a new American avant-garde cinema, drawing from Hammid’s
filmmaking experiences in Europe and Deren’s wide interests in poetry, dance and
choreography, ritual, and psychoanalysis. Introspective and mysterious in its
explorations of one woman’s dream world, the film evokes symbolic associations,
and its sequences invite narrative speculations.
Meshes of the A�ernoon opens by juxtaposing a brightly lit exterior with an interior
reality of fantasies, fears, and unarticulated feelings when a hand holding a flower
reaches into a frame and abruptly disappears. A woman, played by Deren, enters a
house, with some difficulty, and then falls asleep in a chair. A�er images of her
sleeping eyes alternate with a window to the outside world, we see symbolic
objects — a key, a knife — begin to take on a life of their own. A figure cloaked in
black turns, revealing a mirror where a face should be, suggesting a figure of death
and duality [Figure 9.12]. A man enters the house: a phone is off the hook,
another mirror breaks into shards on a bed. Are these images external or
imagined? Is the broken mirror a symbol of violence or of insight? The woman sits
down at a table and is joined by two other figures of herself. Following the laws of

http://launchpadworks.com/

the imagination rather than of reality, Meshes of the A�ernoon is a visionary
exploration of a woman’s consciousness that deploys symbols of the unconscious
— a puzzle that never completely comes together as a clear picture.

A still from the film, Meshes of the A�ernoon, shows a cloaked figure with a
mirror face, holding a bunch of flowers and standing on a stone pathway.
9.12 Meshes of the A�ernoon (1943). A cloaked figure seems to beckon and then
recedes around the corner. The figure’s face is a mirror, adding to its ambiguity.

The challenge of the film lies in the fact that narrative is not its primary
organizational feature. Instead, images accumulate, repeat, and contrast in
associative chains that create internal patterns. The key to the door is dropped,
reappears in the woman’s hand, then disappears [Figure 9.13]. The key suggests
interpretation, but no interpretation is definitive. The knife is associated with
domesticity when used to cut bread, but it also may perpetrate domestic violence
when the woman appears to be dead on a bed, and it may be the instrument of
self-inflicted violence when she approaches her double with knife in hand.

A still from the film, Meshes of the A�ernoon, shows an open palm holding a
key.
9.13 Meshes of the A�ernoon (1943). The central image of the key suggests the viewer’s
search for the key that will unlock the film’s meaning.

The window, which represents the border between inside and outside, functions
as a metaphor for the film frame [Figure 9.14]. As the woman who looks out of the
window is played by Deren herself, Meshes of the A�ernoon could be said to enact a
woman’s desires, fears, and struggles to escape domestic confinement. When the
woman approaches her sleeping double with the dagger in her hand, each of the
five different steps she takes is placed in a space that moves from outside to inside
— one step by the ocean, another on the earth, the next on grass, the fourth on the
pavement outside the house, and the last on the rug inside the room. Interior and
exterior are explored psychologically — drawing on women’s association with the
home and on film genres such as gothic melodramas that render the domestic
sphere threatening.

A still from the film, Meshes of the A�ernoon, shows Maya Deren looking out
from a glass window.
9.14 Meshes of the A�ernoon (1943). Maya Deren looking out from the window has
become an iconic image of this avant-garde exploration of women’s subjectivity.

Meshes of the A�ernoon infuses the emerging American avant-garde cinema with a
deeply personal passion that Deren brought to her filmmaking, teaching, and
writing. Like William Blake’s illustrated poems about the dark side of the
imagination or Odilon Redon’s pictorial voyages into the subconscious, Deren’s
film aims to transform reality through the power of the imagination. As
individually expressive as the film is, however, it also subtly shows a critical
perspective on conventional film traditions. A�er the film’s title appear the words
“Hollywood 1943.” Made within miles of the film studios o�en referred to as the
“dream factory,” Meshes of the A�ernoon le� the industrial tradition behind to
pursue a dream of film as art.
1950s–1960s: International Animation
and the Postwar American Avant-
Garde
World War II and the postwar decades saw a proliferation of
animation and experimental filmmaking across the globe. During
the war, the National Film Board of Canada set up its animation
studio under the direction of Norman McLaren, who made the
country a legendary force in postwar animation. Japan continued to
innovate, releasing its first anime feature in color, Hakujaden (1958).
Czech animation received worldwide acclaim with the puppet films
of Jiří Trnka, including 1959’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream [Figure
9.11]. Disney began expanding into live-action film, television, and
theme parks, but it remained the dominant studio in the production
of animated features, including Sleeping Beauty (1959).

9.11 A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1959). Director, illustrator, and puppetmaster Jiří Trnka
used intricately cra�ed puppets and backgrounds to re-create the fantastical characters of
Shakespeare’s comedy.
H I STO R Y C LO S E U P
Floyd Norman
Animator Floyd Norman has worked in Hollywood since the 1950s, on films from
Disney classics like Sleeping Beauty (1959) to Pixar computer-animated films like
Monsters, Inc. (2001). He has also worked on well-known TV cartoons like Hanna-
Barbera’s The Smurfs (1981–1990) and Alvin and the Chipmunks (1983–1990). His
numerous and varied credits attest to the vast teams and talents that go into
traditional and digital animation processes: he has worked as what is called an
“inbetweener,” a layout artist, a storyboard artist, and a story editor.

Norman’s work behind the scenes is important to Hollywood history in another
way: he was the first African American animator on staff at Disney, a pioneer in an
industry that was and remains lacking in diversity. Born in 1935 in Santa Barbara,
California, Norman grew up passionate about drawing and did not regard race as a
barrier to entering his chosen profession. He came to Disney in 1956 with a diverse
group of young artists and worked alongside Walt Disney himself on the latter’s
final film, The Jungle Book (1967). Interested in creating images for and about
African American children, he and a partner founded an animation studio, working
on the animated special Hey, Hey, Hey, It’s Fat Albert (1969) and later establishing
the website Afrokids.com. Norman found a place in the new world of computer
animation on Toy Story 2 (1999) and, valuing the camaraderie of the studio
production process, remains a fixture at Walt Disney Studios even a�er retirement.

http://afrokids.com/

Recent documentaries — like Floyd Norman: An Animated Life (Michael Fiore and
Erik Sharkey, 2016) and Tyrus (Pamela Tom, 2015) on Chinese American artist Tyrus
Wong, an unsung background artist on Disney’s Bambi (1942) — encourage viewers
to look beyond the onscreen image to mine the richness of buried Hollywood
histories.
The postwar period also saw the flourishing of the American avant-
garde movement. Stan Brakhage was its most significant
contributor, making four hundred 16mm and 8mm films, mostly
silent, in a career spanning almost half a century. Although most of
his films arrange imagery in sensual, abstract patterns, they also
include very personal subject matter. Intimate images of his wife
Jane giving birth are featured in Window Water Baby Moving (1959).
Working with the film stock itself — painting, scratching, and even
taping moth wings to celluloid in Mothlight (1963), techniques
sometimes called direct or cameraless animation — Brakhage
emphasized the materiality of film and the direct creative process of
the filmmaker.
The American experimental film community established its own
alternative exhibition circuit, including New York’s Cinema 16 and
the Anthology Film Archives (cofounded in 1969 by filmmaker Jonas
Mekas), as well as distribution cooperatives such as the FilmMakers’
Cooperative and Canyon Cinema. The exchanges fostered among
artists and audiences profoundly influenced later generations of
filmmakers working with film as personal expression. The
countercultural impulses of many post–World War II U.S.

filmmakers were reflected in their preferred term underground film
— nonmainstream film associated particularly with the
experimental film culture of 1960s and 1970s New York and San
Francisco. In New York, pop artist Andy Warhol definitively shaped
the underground film movement. He explored the properties of
cinema as a time-based medium in his eight-hour view of the
Empire State Building, Empire (1964), the five-hour Sleep (1963), and
other films. He also created his own version of the Hollywood studio
system at the Factory, whose “superstars” — underground male and
female devotees of glamour such as Viva, Mario Montez, and Holly
Woodlawn — were featured in films he either directed or produced,
including Chelsea Girls (1966) and Flesh (1968), respectively [Figure
9.15]. A legendary figure in this gay underground film scene, New
York filmmaker Jack Smith incorporated his sublime and campy
films and slides into erratically timed live performances in his
downtown lo�. In one notorious incident, a screening of Smith’s
Flaming Creatures (1963) was shut down by the police for the film’s
provocative content [Figure 9.16].

9.15 Chelsea Girls (1966). The singer and Warhol “superstar” Nico appears in this Andy
Warhol and Paul Morrissey film. Composed of vignettes filmed in New York’s Chelsea Hotel,
the film was projected on two screens arranged side by side.

9.16 Flaming Creatures (1963). Perhaps the most famous (and most notorious) of Jack
Smith’s works, this film, which featured several surreal and disturbing sex scenes, was seized
by the police during its premiere and banned for being “obscene.”
Maya Deren’s role in the New York avant-garde also opened up space
for women filmmakers. Shirley Clarke made abstract films like
Bridges-Go-Round (1958) and the remarkable interview film Portrait
of Jason (1967) and cofounded the influential FilmMakers’
Cooperative. Yoko Ono pursued filmmaking in addition to music and
other areas of artistic expression, producing the humorous Film No.
4 (Bottoms) (1966) and the harrowing Rape (1969). By the late 1960s
and early 1970s, an explicitly feminist avant-garde movement

emerged with artists and filmmakers like Carolee Schneemann, who
filmed herself and her husband making love in Fuses (1967), and
Yvonne Rainer, who incorporated her work as an avant-garde dancer
and choreographer, as well as experiments with language and text,
in the feature-length Film about a Woman Who … (1974).
The underground film movement frankly explored gender and
sexual politics, and the political radicalism of the late 1960s was
addressed at the border between documentary and experimental
practice. African American actor, independent filmmaker, and
documentarian William Greaves investigated the power relations
observed on a film shoot in his feature-length Symbiopsychotaxiplasm
(1968) made in Central Park [Figure 9.17].

9.17 Symbiopsychotaxiplasm (1968). A hybrid of fiction and documentary, William Greaves’s
film about making a film in Central Park in 1968 is a fascinating record of the counterculture.
Experimental filmmaking also flourished outside New York. San
Francisco, the heart of the counterculture and gay and lesbian rights
movements, hosted its own vibrant avant-garde film scene,
exemplified in the work of poet and filmmaker James Broughton
and the prolific lesbian experimental filmmaker Barbara Hammer.
Hammer began her career in the Bay Area with short explorations of
nature and the female body, such as Multiple Orgasm (1976), and
continued to use experimental film language to explore lesbian
identity, eroticism, and modes of perception in more than eighty

short films before her death in 2019. Canadian filmmaker Michael
Snow explores space, time, and the capacity of the camera to
transcend human perception in works identified as structural film
— an experimental film movement that emerged in North America
in the 1960s, in which films were organized around formal
principles. In Snow’s La région centrale (1971), a camera mounted on
a specially built apparatus pans, swoops, and swings to provide an
unprecedented view of the mountainous Quebec region named in
the film’s title [Figure 9.18]. Other significant avant-garde
practitioners in Canada include Joyce Wieland, notable for films
such as Rat Life and Diet in North America (1968), and in the next
generation, Bruce Elder, whose forty-two-hour cycle of films
collectively titled The Book of All the Dead was completed in
installments from 1975 to 1994.

9.18 La région centrale (1971). Michael Snow’s 16mm camera moves wildly on a special
mount, rendering the landscape abstractly through mechanized vision.
1968–1980: Beyond North America
Outside North America, experimental film impulses have o�en been
incorporated into narrative filmmaking and theatrical exhibition
rather than confined exclusively to autonomous avant-garde circles.
During the postwar period in Europe, Asia, and Latin America,
innovative new wave cinemas challenged and energized commercial
cinemas with their visions and techniques. Such experimentation
was spurred by student unrest, decolonialization and independence
movements, and opposition to the American war in Vietnam.

Radical content and formal rigor characterized the films of Jean-Luc
Godard and Chris Marker in France, Alexander Kluge in Germany,
and Peter Wollen and Laura Mulvey in Britain. The massive traffic
jam depicted in Weekend (1967) foregrounds Godard’s revolutionary
critique of consumerist culture through the consistent use of lateral
tracking shots intended to hold viewers at a distance [Figure 9.19].
Kluge, a central figure in the New German Cinema, addressed the
Nazi legacy through experimental means in films like The Patriot
(1979), in which a history teacher literally digs for the past with a
spade. Meanwhile, in Riddles of the Sphinx, Mulvey and Wollen
developed camera techniques to avoid objectification of the female
body. Other filmmakers including Chantal Akerman in Belgium,
Sally Potter in England, and Marguerite Duras in France also used
experimental language to explore feminist modes of expression.

9.19 Weekend (1967). Jean-Luc Godard’s blistering critique of middle-class values is a
famous example of the European avant-garde or counter cinema.
The postrevolutionary and postcolonial cinema of countries like
Algeria, Cuba, and Senegal had limited means and populist
intentions, prompting the use of experimental techniques in
conjunction with realist filmmaking strategies. Argentine
filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino called for a Third
Cinema (see also p. 59 in Chapter 2) in opposition to commercial
and auteurist cinemas and engaged audiences directly in the
ongoing revolutionary struggles in Latin America in The Hour of the
Furnaces (1968). Cuban filmmaker Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s Memories
of Underdevelopment (1968) uses experimental techniques such as the
incorporation of documentary footage and self-reflexive voiceover
in its narrative of a European-identified intellectual’s sense of
displacement in the a�ermath of the Cuban revolution [Figure 9.20].

9.20 Memories of Underdevelopment (1968). Documentary footage interrupts the musings of
an alienated intellectual in postrevolutionary Cuba.
The first feature film made in sub-Saharan Africa — Ousmane
Sembène’s Black Girl (1966), about an African domestic worker’s
alienation in France — makes an aesthetic virtue of economic
necessity, notably in its use of postsynchronized sound, which adds
to our perception of the heroine’s isolation. In Perfumed Nightmare
(1978), Filipino filmmaker Kidlat Tahimik creates a witty parable of
the clash between the “developed” world and the village of his birth
by using a home movie aesthetic that incorporates cheap props and
found footage, material shot for other purposes and turned to
documentary or poetic use.

Global contributions to animation culture were also decisive during
this period. The director of The Great Adventure of Horus, Prince of the
Sun (1968), Isao Takahata, was recognized as an anime auteur.
Hayao Miyazaki also worked as an animator on the film; the two
would later found the hugely influential Studio Ghibli. The most
ambitious Japanese animated production of the period was
Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira (1988) [Figure 9.21]. Based on Otomo’s own
manga series, the film was a landmark in animation for adult
audiences and introduced audiences worldwide to Japanese anime.
In Italy, Bruno Bozzetto’s Allegro Non Troppo (1976) was a parodic
answer to Fantasia, setting classical music to a range of animated
styles and responding to Disney’s international dominance in the
field.

9.21 Akira (1988). The most expensive anime of its era, the postapocalyptic Akira was
enormously influential for its visuals and cyberpunk themes, opening a global market for
Japanese anime.
1989–Present: New Technologies and
New Media
Traditional studio animation reached perhaps its highest influence
with the Disney “renaissance” of Broadway-style musicals based on
well-known stories, starting with 1989’s The Little Mermaid and
continuing through to Tarzan (1999) a decade later. Disney partnered
with Pixar Studios for its first computer-animated film, Toy Story, in
1995 and eventually purchased the company in 2006. With
computer-generated imagery (CGI) offering unprecedented
creative options and becoming more economical, traditional
animation was largely displaced in studio filmmaking. The Best
Animated Feature category was instituted at the Academy Awards in
2002, with the award going to DreamWorks’ Shrek (2001), in
recognition of animation’s new centrality to the industry. However,
the creation of a separate award category also highlights the
continued struggle of animated films with being perceived — o�en
inaccurately — as childish or culturally lesser than live-action films.
With Disney, Pixar, and DreamWorks dominating the market,
smaller studios and filmmakers have also continued to innovate
with animated features like Sylvain Chomet’s The Triplets of Belleville

(2003) and Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud’s adaptation of
Satrapi’s graphic novel of growing up in Iran, Persepolis (2007).
In experimental media, technology was also a major force for
change during this period. Although filmmakers continued to
experiment using Super 8 and 16mm (and Super 16) formats, a
radical shi� to use and interrogate new technologies was driven by
the introduction of consumer video formats. With the Sony Portapak
in the late 1960s, electronic video technology became available to
artists for the first time. Video art pioneer Nam June Paik brought
television into confrontation with the art world in video works that
also were o�en works of installation art. During the 1980s, the
advent of inexpensive consumer video formats spurred growth in
activist videos and video art. Exemplary of both is Marlon Riggs’s
Tongues Untied (1989), a personal and poetic depiction of black gay
men and HIV [Figure 9.22].

9.22 Tongues Untied (1989). Poet Essex Hemphill appears in Marlon Riggs’s Tongues Untied,
one of the best known of the many experimental video works exploring issues of politics and
identity that were facilitated by the availability of camcorders in the 1980s.
On the other end of the commercial spectrum, the launch of the
MTV cable television channel in 1981 brought many previously
experimental techniques — such as rapid montage, use of handheld
cameras, breaking of continuity rules, and juxtaposition of different
film stocks — into the mainstream, where they were quickly
incorporated into commercials, television shows, and movies. Spike
Jonze, for instance, developed the nonlinear narratives and

inventive visuals of his commercial and music video work in his
feature film Being John Malkovich (1999).
In the 2000s and 2010s, music videos continued to push the
boundaries between experimental and commercial filmmaking,
with Beyoncé Knowles’s visual album accompanying the release of
Lemonade (2016) featuring collaborations with seven directors,
poets, artists, and influencers in a sweeping statement on African
American feminist politics and aesthetics.
The integration of computers and digital video in the 1990s blurred
the lines between capturing on video and on film. In the
independent and experimental sector of filmmaking, these media
had distinct histories, cultures, and aesthetics. Commercial
filmmakers used digital effects, like the credit sequence of Se7en
(1995) that paid homage to Stan Brakhage, and video artists found
new theatrical audiences for grassroots and gallery-based work by
transferring it to film. At the same time, new media artists drew on
mass media in computer-based work like machinima, which
modifies videogame engines to create computer animation. The
development of the internet revolutionized the potential for
interactive art, allowing users to participate actively and determine
their experience of the artwork. Web series became a platform for
artists to explore serial form, and virtual-reality technologies
allowed artist Laurie Anderson to develop the simple effect of white
words on black into a many-faceted sensory and intellectual

experience in Chalkroom (2017, made with Hsin-Chien Huang).
Perhaps most important, widespread access to computer technology
has blurred the boundaries between artists and viewers,
democratizing experiments with media forms and technologies.

Principles of Experimental Media
and Animation
A common understanding of the origins of cinema is that the
Lumière brothers’ short scenes of everyday life and scenic views
represent the beginnings of the documentary tradition and that
Georges Méliès’s trick films represent the beginnings of narrative
film. But as film scholar Tom Gunning has pointed out, both types of
film had a common objective — to solicit the viewer’s desire simply
to see something. Gunning suggests that early cinema’s “Look at me!”
quality not only shapes key components of mainstream film (such as
special effects, musical numbers, and comedy skits) but also
prefigures avant-garde cinema, which demands that viewers see
with fresh eyes. Gunning’s framework also implies that
documentary and narrative, live-action and animated elements can
all be combined in experimental practice. From Émile Cohl’s The
Automatic Moving Company (1910), which uses animation to show
spoons and other household items magically packing themselves
away, to Douglas Gordon’s 24-Hour Psycho (1993), which slows down
Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film Psycho to play around the clock in a
museum installation, experimental media have challenged viewers
to think about form while experiencing a sense of wonder.
Abstraction and Figuration

Animation and experimental media range from abstract
explorations of shape, color, line, and volume in motion to
photographed, drawn, or modeled figures and scenes arranged in
patterns or integrated into stories. As we have suggested, animation
is one of many modes of experimental media making. Although
much animation is used for conventional storytelling, it can also be
considered experimental in the ways that it defies the rules of
physics and the boundaries between the sentient and nonsentient.
Abstraction
Consider how abstraction is achieved and used in a film screened for class. How do
repetition and variation contribute to the film’s shape?
Abstract films are formal experiments that are also
nonrepresentational — that is, human or other figures are not
recognizable in them. Abstract films use color, shape, and line to
create patterns, rhythms, and impressions in the viewer, and
animation figures prominently as an approach. Just as an abstract
painting might foreground the texture of paint and the shape of the
canvas, an abstract film might explore the specificities of film as a
time-based medium by alternating forms rhythmically. Tony
Conrad’s The Flicker (1965) rigorously edits black-and-white frames to
emphasize a phenomenological experience — the flicker effect that

the audience is subjected to when a film is projected. Animator Len
Lye was a pioneer in direct or cameraless animation, scratching
patterns and lines directly on film stock in films including Free
Radicals, started in 1958 but not released until 1979. Abstraction has
been embraced by a range of movements: the 1920s absolute cinema
of Richter and Eggeling, 1960s psychedelic films including Storm De
Hirsch’s Third Eye Butterfly (1968) [Figure 9.23], and present-day
motion graphics. Whether designed for aesthetic, kinetic, or
emotional effect, abstract moving image works draw on
nonrepresentational traditions and distill cinema to its most basic
principles.

9.23 Third Eye Butterfly (1968). Patterns emerge from natural and spiritual imagery in a film
by Storm De Hirsch, one of the few women working in abstract film.
Figuration
Most photographically based (rather than animated) film is
automatically figurative — that is, it features recognizable aspects of
the real world, including the human form. While many
experimental films are non-narrative in that they lack well-defined
characters or logical plots (see Chapter 7), it is hard to avoid
narrative in a time-based medium because its basics are implied in
the sequence of beginning, middle, and end. But experimental films
vary in how they use figuration. For some viewers, Alain Resnais’s
Last Year at Marienbad (1961) is a non-narrative study in the
structural repetition and geometry of the rooms, hallways, and
gardens of a baroque estate. For others, the film’s formalism
obscures a disturbing narrative of a man’s sinister pursuit of a
woman [Figure 9.24]. Chantal Akerman’s minimalist compositions
make humans stand out as forms in space rather than characters
with psychological depth. In her most widely praised film, Jeanne
Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), Akerman’s
consistent use of a stationary long take to frame images as flat
planes makes the viewer’s attention oscillate between narrative and
formal figures of space and time.

9.24 Last Year at Marienbad (1961). Characters and mise-en-scène suggest a narrative, but
formal patterns disrupt linear time and coherent space.
O�en new technological capabilities encourage speculation on the
relationship between figure and form. A dreamlike, collage aesthetic
builds on a simple narrative premise in Terence Nance’s inventive
An Oversimplification of Her Beauty (2012). A voiceover sets up a
scenario: you have come home from work and found that the
woman you planned to spend the evening with has canceled, and
then asks, “How would you feel?” Possible responses are played out
through animated sequences, narrative asides, voiceover variations,
and replays with different camera formats and effects [Figure 9.25].

Narrative becomes a vehicle for experimenting through gamelike
play and a way of anchoring more fanciful sounds and images for
the viewer. Immersive experiences designed for virtual-reality
technologies also explore figuration and narrative as both universal
hook and individual perspective. In Milica Sec’s Giant (2016), a
family is trapped in a war zone, and the parents distract their young
daughter by making up a story in which bomb blasts are the
footsteps of a giant. In animation, character design o�en plays with
the elasticity of figuration — quite literally in the case of Elastigirl
from The Incredibles (2004) and The Incredibles 2 (2018), who can
stretch her limbs as far as Pixar’s animators’ imagination permits.
9.25 An Oversimplification of Her Beauty (2012). Animated interludes punctuate live-action
sequences in a recursive tale of romance narrated in the second person.

Experimental Organizations:
Associative, Structural, and
Participatory
Mainstream narrative films have predictable patterns of enigma and
resolution, and documentaries follow one of a number of expository
practices. Experimental works may organize experiences in ways
that defy realism and rational logic or in patterns that follow strict
formal principles. Whether experimental forms are abstract or
representational and whether or not they draw on narrative, we can
think of their organizations in the following ways — associative,
structural, or participatory.
Associative Organizations
Sigmund Freud used free association with his patients to uncover
the unconscious logic of their symptoms and dreams. Associative
organizations create psychological or formal resonances, giving
these films a dreamlike quality that engages viewers’ emotions and
curiosity. Associative organizations can be abstract, such as in
musicologist Harry Smith’s films that animate shapes in succession
or create resonances between objects and shapes or colors [Figure
9.26]. They also can be representational, like in music videos, whose
narratives may follow a dreamlike logic of psychological patterns or
violent juxtaposition.

9.26 Film Number 7 (1951). Famous for his collections of American folk music, Harry Smith
also made inventive animations in which found objects are organized in abstract associative
patterns.
What is the principle of organization of the next experimental film you see in class?
Identify the most representative shot or sequence, and discuss its meaning.
A film might establish a metaphorical association between two
objects or figures by a cut or a compositional association or by
creating metaphors in the voiceover commentary as it responds to

and anticipates images in the film. Juxtaposing images of workers
being shot and a slaughtered bull, as Sergei Eisenstein does in Strike
(1925), evokes the brutal dehumanization of the workers. Derek
Jarman’s Blue (1993) is an experimental autobiography meditating on
the color blue and its chain of associations in the life of the
filmmaker, who went blind as he was dying of AIDS. Accompanying
one single blue image, a voice associates the “blue funk” created by
a doctor’s news, the “slow blue love on a delphinium day,” and “the
universal love in which all men bathe.” Bill Morrison’s Decasia (2002)
edits together old films whose nitrate stock has deteriorated so that
recognizable images and spaces blend into abstract splotches and
blobs [Figure 9.27]. Associations emerge in the dance of fleeting
shapes, edited juxtapositions, and imagery called forth by Michael
Gordon’s symphonic soundtrack.

9.27 Decasia (2002). Patterns created by decaying nitrate film stock emerge on the surface of
found footage, the layering suggesting impermanence and loss.
The association may be a more obviously symbolic one. In Czech
filmmaker Jiˇrí Trnka’s experimental film The Hand (1965), a puppet
struggles against the domination of a single, live-action hand that
demands he make only other hands and not flowerpots. The hand is
a chillingly effective symbol of totalitarian regimes in eastern
Europe at that time.
Structural Organizations

Experimental films that employ structural organizations engage the
audience through a formal principle rather than a narrative or chain
of associations. Such films may focus on the material of the film
itself, such as its grain, sprockets, and passage through a projector.
This organization, which may follow a particular editing logic or
image content, informs a wide variety of media artworks, including
the stationary camera films of Andy Warhol, the video works of
artist Bruce Nauman, the use of repetitions in the music videos of
Michel Gondry, or digital artworks generated by algorithms.
Artist Christian Marclay’s The Clock (2010) is a widely acclaimed
example of a structural film. This twenty-four-hour film is compiled
entirely of clips from films and television shows that include clocks
or other timepieces referencing the real time of viewing. The
museum installation is both conceptual and experiential. The
viewer can tell the time from the artwork itself and also engage in
the pleasure of an extended “mash-up” of thousands of time-related
scenes.
The structural film movement of the 1960s and 1970s included works
that weave images, framings, camera movements, or other formal
dimensions into patterns and structures that engage the viewer
perceptually and o�en intellectually. Michael Snow’s Wavelength
(1967) is a forty-five-minute image that slowly moves across a room
in an extended zoom-in and ends with a close-up of a picture of
ocean waves pinned to the wall [Figure 9.28]. Punctuated with vague

references to a murder mystery and accompanied by a high-pitched
sound that explores another meaning of “wavelength,” this movie is
an almost pure investigation of the vibrant textures of space — as
flat, as colored, as empty, and most of all, as geometrically tense. In
a sly nod to the altered temporal capacities of digital media, Snow
superimposed the film on itself to make a new version: WVLNT (or
Wavelength for Those Who Don’t Have the Time) (2003).
9.28 Filmstrip showing frames of Wavelength (1967). An extended zoom-in for the duration
of the film creates suspense through its formal structure.
Other films central to the structural film movement in the United
States include Ernie Gehr’s Serene Velocity (1970) and Hollis

Frampton’s Zorns Lemma (1970). Serene Velocity consists of images of
the same hallway taken with structured variations in the camera’s
focal length, creating a hypnotic, rhythmic experience of lines and
squares. In Zorns Lemma, a repeated sequence of one-second images
of words on signs and storefronts arranged in alphabetical order
creates a fascinating puzzle as letters are replaced one by one with a
set of consistent, though arbitrary, images [Figure 9.29]. The viewer
learns to associate the images with their place in the cycle, in a
sense relearning a picture alphabet. Such structural principles are
fascinating intellectually, but Frampton’s films, like the most
effective structural films, also work on the viewer’s senses.

9.29 Zorns Lemma (1970). Hollis Frampton’s films are o�en organized around structural
principles, as in this film’s central sequence of images corresponding to cycles of the
alphabet.
Participatory Experiences
A third experimental approach emphasizes participatory
experiences — the centrality of the viewer and the time and place of
exhibition to the media phenomenon. Nervous System (1994), a film
performance by underground filmmaker Ken Jacobs, uses two
projectors, a propeller, and filters through which audiences view the
work. In 1970, Gene Youngblood coined the term expanded cinema
for installation or performance-based experimental film practices
and predicted that video and computer technology would allow
moving-image media to extend consciousness. Nam June Paik
delivered on this prediction in conceptual video art pieces like Video
Fish (1975), which combined video monitors displaying images of
fish and aquariums containing real fish.
Many filmmakers working in the art world design their pieces
around the audience’s experience. Rapture (1999), an installation by
Iranian-born Shirin Neshat, projects 16mm film footage of men and
women on opposite gallery walls to signify their separation in
Iranian society under Islamic law, with the viewer both mediating
and separating these worlds [Figure 9.30]. A leading figure in
experimental film since the 1950s, Chris Marker created the island

Ouvrir as an art installation in the online environment Second Life in
the 2000s, affording visitors a unique navigable experience.
9.30 Rapture (1999). Shirin Neshat is one of many contemporary fine artists who use film
and video in gallery contexts to generate meaning through audience interaction.
In recent years, fan art, video blogs, and the vast range of user-
generated content on YouTube have redefined participatory media.
Multimedia artists today design experiences using digital tools for
entertainment media, museum installations, or individual use that
rely on users’ selections, the sense of touch, and interface design as
crucial artistic components. Artists and animators may design
virtual-reality experiences for users wearing headsets that block out
external stimuli, or augmented reality (AR) environments that
combine design elements with a live view of the space with which
the user is interacting. From game design to socially conscious

immersive art, computer animation techniques are breaking down
distinctions between commercial and experimental media.

Animation Modes: 2-D, 3-D, Stop-
Motion
Throughout film history, animators have experimented with myriad
techniques to create the illusion of movement, many of which were
incorporated into the commercial film industry. Although we cannot
discuss every animation mode that has been developed over the
years, this section discusses some of the most widespread modes.
In traditional animation, each image is hand drawn or painted and
photographed in sequence onto single frames of film using an
animation camera. The components of the image are o�en
produced on transparent sheets of celluloid known as cels, which
are layered and photographed against a painted background. In such
2-D animation, only the moving elements of characters and props
need to be changed every frame. To enhance the sense of depth in
Disney’s first feature animation in color, Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs (1937), a multiplane camera was devised to move different
layers of the image past the camera at different speeds.
Another traditional animation technique is stop-motion
photography, recording figures in different positions in separate
frames, creating the illusion of motion when projected. A
sophisticated version of the technique is used in Henry Selick’s

Coraline (2009), with the dimensionality of the figures highlighted by
shooting in 3-D [Figure 9.31]. A form of stop-motion photography
popular in mid-twentieth-century cartoons like Gumby, claymation
was revived to great acclaim by Aardman Animations’ Nick Park in
British films including Chicken Run (2000). Claymation accomplishes
the effect of movement with clay or plasticine figures, while
pixilation employs stop-motion photography to transform the
movement of human figures into rapid, jerky gestures. Czech
filmmaker Jan Švankmajer’s Alice (1988) combines live action,
pixilation, and puppets to re-create the dizzying events of Lewis
Carroll’s story.
9.31 Coraline (2009). Henry Selick’s distinctive stop-motion animation blurs the line
between the heroine’s real world and the alternative world where the characters have
button eyes.

Most mainstream animated films today use computer-generated
imagery (CGI). Under the direction of John Lasseter, Pixar Studios
pioneered computer animation, the process of digitally generating
moving images, with short films like Luxo Jr. (1986), which endowed
an inanimate object with human qualities. Lasseter directed Toy
Story, the first feature-length CGI-animated film, in 1995. In contrast
to earlier 2-D techniques, characters and objects in this type of 3-D
animation are modeled in three dimensions, and animators move
features, limbs, and props through keyframes that mark the
important points and transitions between movements. The
computer generates the images in between in the rendering
process. Striking technological advances and bold aesthetic visions
have contributed to the resurgence of animation as a medium in the
digital era. Pixar, DreamWorks, and Illumination continue to
produce CGI blockbusters for all ages in franchises like Cars (2006–
2017), Madagascar (2005–2018), and Despicable Me (2010–2017), using
vast teams of animators, with global success.
In films like Disney’s The Lion King (2019) — which uses real
environments but an entirely computer-generated cast of animal
characters — the lines between animation and live-action
filmmaking have increasingly blurred. As CGI has become
pervasive, animation frequently is used without calling attention to
itself, with technological development focusing on ever greater
photorealism — the reproduction in animation of the details
obtained in photography. But animation’s long history in the fine

arts, where filmmakers have used color, line, and rhythm for
abstract, lyrical, or fantastic effect, values pictorial quality over
photorealism. For example, the 2-D animation of The Secret of Kells
(2009) emulates the medieval illuminated manuscript known as the
Book of Kells [Figures 9.32a and 9.32b].
9.32a and 9.32b The Secret of Kells (2009). The Oscar-nominated animated feature The
Secret of Kells uses traditional 2-D animation to reproduce the style of a medieval
illuminated manuscript.
Description
Still (b) shows trees and a swarm of butterflies around an animated
character, in the elaborate style of the manuscript.
Independent and experimental filmmakers continue to engage with
animation in ways that push beyond realism. Richard Linklater’s
Waking Life (2001) and A Scanner Darkly (2006) employ rotoscoping,

an animation technique using recorded real figures and action as a
basis for painting individual frames [Figure 9.33]. Waltz with Bashir
(2008), an Israeli film about the horrors of the 1982 Lebanon war,
contributed to the emerging genre of documentary animation,
which tells true stories using animation images to emphasize
subjective states or to avoid sensationalizing the subject matter.
9.33 A Scanner Darkly (2006). For this Philip K. Dick adaptation, Richard Linklater had his
actors filmed digitally and then animated using a rotoscope technique.
TECHNOLOGY IN ACTION
Animation through the Decades
At the end of the nineteenth century, Eadweard Muybridge and other cinematic
pioneers employed new technologies to animate still photographs that, when
seen through devices such as the phenakistocope, praxinoscope, and zoetrope,

created illusions of movement in human and animal figures. These devices are
precursors to animated film. By 1911, Windsor McCay extended these
technological experiments by hand-illustrating single frames of film stock that,
when projected, offered short cinematic adventures, like his first film about his
celebrated cartoon character Little Nemo [Figure 9.34a]. His early animated films
explored fantasy worlds far different from the realism pursued in most Hollywood
movies.
9.34a Little Nemo (1911). Audiences were already familiar with Little Nemo from
Windsor McCay’s popular cartoons. Here, the character makes his transition to film.
In the late 1920s through the 1940s, Walt Disney and his studio developed
animation technology that became widely commercially successful. Beginning
with Steamboat Willie in 1928 and through Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
and the experimental Fantasia (1940), Disney combined animation with emerging
sound technology and Technicolor processes to bring animation to mainstream

audiences. Modeled a�er the Hollywood studio production system, Disney’s plots
and characters were first carefully storyboarded and then handed over to a team
of animators, who traced individual frames onto transparent acetate sheets called
cels, which were then colored and photographed by a rostrum camera and
converted to film stock [Figure 9.34b]. By the end of the twentieth century, the
o�en laborious cel animation process gave way to computer-generated imagery
(CGI) as the dominant animation technology. Some more recent movies, such as
Cartoon Saloon’s The Secret of Kells (2009) and The Breadwinner (2017), are
digitally animated yet intentionally emulate the 2-D look of cel animation.
9.34b Fantasia (1940). Disney’s ambitious experiment paired animation styles with
classical music.
Although cel animation and CGI animation are the most prevalent technologies of
their respective eras, other styles continue to flourish. One such style is stop-
motion animation, which involves techniques developed in the first years of movie

history, most notably seen in the early films of Émile Cohl, such as The Automatic
Moving Company (1910). Here, objects are photographed in separate frames with
slight changes in their position, shape, or arrangement, which then come to life
when projected as a film. In recent years, stop-motion animation has reached new
creative, experimental, and commercial heights through the work of Jan
Švankmajer, Stephen and Timothy Quay, and Tim Burton. A variation of stop-
motion animation is clay animation or claymation, which uses carefully cra�ed
clay figures and has produced several popular films, including Chicken Run (2000)
[Figure 9.34c].
9.34c Chicken Run (2000). This family-oriented film from Aardman Animations proved
that claymation can be both critically and commercially successful.

Thinking about Experimental
Media and Animation
Experimental media asks viewers to reflect actively on the viewing
experience, contemplating the way human senses and
consciousness function. Whether they challenge us to figure out the
meaning of symbolism or to relate a film to an artist’s wider body of
work or to a social context, experimental works require us to engage
in some way. Animation’s appeal is generally more direct, but it also
engages our perception in novel ways. Both organize the viewer
experience around film form. Experimental media and animation
use a number of styles and approaches to expand the boundaries of
human perception.
Expanding Perception
Experimental and animated works make meaning through
challenging and expanding how viewers see, feel, and hear. For
example, Hollis Frampton’s Lemon (1969) presents only a single
piece of fruit in changing light. For those who see this film, a lemon
will never look the same. An experimental movie might use unusual
filmic techniques or materials, such as abstract graphic designs and
animation, as vehicles for seeing and thinking in fresh ways. Shirley
Clarke’s Bridges-Go-Round (1958) uses unexpected camera angles and

zooms to turn the massive structures of various bridges into an
ethereal dance [Figure 9.35]. The animation of Satoshi Kon’s science
fiction anime film Paprika (2006) is as visually arresting as the film’s
premise of a new technology for entering others’ dreams.
9.35 Bridges-Go-Round (1958). Shirley Clark used rhythmic editing, graphic patterns, and
color tinting to make le�over footage of New York bridges dance in her experimental short.
Each new medium and technology brings new perceptual
possibilities. Dziga Vertov celebrated the camera’s capacity to see
more, and differently, than the human eye in Man with a Movie
Camera (1929). Decades later, television’s ways of seeing became the

object of similar reflections in video art. In
Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978–1979), Dara
Birnbaum scrutinized the TV heroine’s gestures as she transforms
into her superhero persona by slowing and repeating them in a
ritualistic fashion [Figure 9.36]. Such defamiliarization through
appropriation of mass-media images is a key part of the visual
culture of the digital age.
9.36 Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978–1979). Dara Birnbaum was one of
the first artists to explore the video medium’s relationship with television by appropriating
pop culture imagery.

Interactive media deliver new perceptual experiences through
avatars and haptic controls. While its narrative is easy for audiences
of all ages to understand, the Pixar film Inside Out (2015) provides a
tangible example of how screen media expand our perception in its
visualization of the emotions residing within its young protagonist.
Experimental Film Styles and
Approaches
In its early decades, cinema was heralded as the “seventh art,” and
its practitioners and theorists were proud of incorporating practices
from all the other arts and over the course of media history these
aesthetic goals have remained central. The ways in which
experimental and animated works engage and challenge their
viewers can be categorized into two distinct traditions: expressive
and confrontational.
Expressive Styles and Forms
Watch the clip of Gently Down the Stream (1981) online. What specific images or
words solicit your attention? What devices remind you of the elements of
cinema? Are there any elements that bring to mind influences outside film?

Description
The scene shows inky black words overlaid on images of a man wearing
eye glasses. A play button is present at the center of the screenshot.
Expressive styles emphasize personal expression and
communication with an audience and are tied to long-standing
notions of artistic originality, authenticity, and interiority.
Impressionist painters used new techniques to render color and
light as they were perceived, not as academic painting traditions
prescribed. Cubist painters attempted to integrate spatial perception
and temporal duration into their canvasses. These ways of seeing
had a significant influence on the experiments with film art and
animation in Paris and Berlin in the 1920s.

Expressive forms generally are rooted in lyrical and poetic
traditions. Lyrical styles express emotions, beliefs, or some other
personal position in film, much like the voice of a lyric poet does in
literature. In an example of the intimacy film can achieve, Su
Friedrich’s Gently Down the Stream (1981) offsets black-and-white
quotidian images with descriptions of the filmmaker’s dreams
scratched onto the surface of the film. Lyrical films may emphasize
a personal voice or vision through the singularity of the imagery or
through such techniques as voiceovers or handheld camera
movements — using stories as the skeletons on which to elaborate
and explore novel cinematic techniques and special effects. Stan
Brakhage is perhaps the most poetic and most prolific filmmaker of
a lyrical tradition. Themes of insight and blindness run through
many of his films, which range in length from the nine-second Eye
Myth (1967) to the five-hour The Art of Vision (1965). Another key
figure in the American avant-garde, Kenneth Anger fuses
homoeroticism, ritual, popular culture, and esoterica in lyrical
works from his landmark Fireworks (1947) [Figure 9.37] (made when
he was seventeen) to Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969).

9.37 Fireworks (1947). Kenneth Anger’s lyrical homoerotic reverie is one of the key early
works of the American avant-garde.
Another expressive form takes cues from the surrealist movement.
Surrealist cinema, which manipulated time, space, and material
objects according to a dreamlike logic, was a driving force in Europe
a�er World War I, especially in France. Early works include René
Clair’s Entr’acte (1924) and Germaine Dulac’s The Seashell and the
Clergyman (1928), based on a script by Antonin Artaud. The best-
known surrealist film, however, is Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí’s
Un chien andalou (An Andalusian Dog) (1929). Beginning with a
shocking assault on a woman’s eye [Figure 9.38], the film teases

viewers with the possibility of a story about a woman and her
relationship with one or more men, dri�s among unexplained
objects (like a recurring striped box), and never emerges from its
dream state. Through the powers of film to manipulate time, space,
and material objects, surrealist filmmakers confronted middle-class
assumptions about normalcy and created a dream world driven by
dark desires.
9.38 Un chien andalou (An Andalusian Dog) (1929). The opening scene simulating a woman’s
eye slit by a razor — arguably the most famous moment in experimental film — exemplifies
surrealism’s use of shock.

Surrealism has o�en found expressive form in animation — both
directly, as in Dalí’s collaboration with Walt Disney, Destino (1945,
2003) [Figure 9.39], and more indirectly, as in Japanese master
Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (2001). Both films create utterly
unique, surreal worlds. Stephen and Timothy Quay’s Street of
Crocodiles (1986), constructed through stop-motion photography and
based on the memoirs of Polish author Bruno Schulz, is a dark tale
of a porcelain doll trapped in a sinister, nightmarish environment of
animate screws and threads. Here the remarkable life of thread and
other objects — and not the thread of a story — shapes and organizes
the film.

9.39 Destino (1945, 2003). Salvador Dalí’s unlikely collaboration with Walt Disney remained
unfinished until its release in 2003.
An expressive impulse is also at the heart of the American
underground film. During the 1960s and 1970s, the American
counterculture of “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” broke free of the
perceived repressive social values, barriers, and gender roles of the
1950s. The San Francisco–based twin brothers George and Mike
Kuchar made campy films like Hold Me While I’m Naked (1966)
[Figure 9.40], while Marie Menken discovered a more painterly film
language in such works as Glimpse of the Garden (1957). A network of
alternative cinemas and university screenings brought these works
and their makers into contact with what became devoted audiences
of filmmakers, critics, students, and other artists.

9.40 Hold Me While I’m Naked (1966). Filmmaker George Kuchar stars as a director frustrated
by his failure to create the highly artistic film he envisions. The campiness and comic nature
of the film are compounded by his odd clothing.
Description
George Kuchar wears a thick robe, thick-rimmed glasses, a scarf, and a
cloth wrapped around his head.
Expressive traditions also emerge from specific technologies and
properties of the medium. For example, the small-gauge formats of
16mm and 8mm and, later, portable video equipment developed for
amateur use were taken up very early for artistic purposes. Artists
exploited the intimacies of these media, such as the diary-like
formula used by Jonas Mekas in the 1950s and adopted by video
artists in the 1970s and web video artists today. The nonprofit site
Rhizome (https://rhizome.org/) hosts and preserves work by new
media artists that otherwise would have limited chances of
exposure. Although the vast majority of the user-generated work
posted online would not be associated with experimental film by
their makers or viewers, the technology that is being used and the
expressive impulse fit very much into this tradition.
Confrontational Approaches
The shock of the modern — beautiful machines capable of brutal
destruction, juxtapositions of commerce and art, time sped up, and

http://rhizome.org/

distances eliminated — manifested in a confrontational modernist
impulse across the arts. Sometimes the urge was to shock the
middle class — as in Olympia (1863), the frank painting of a
prostitute by Édouard Manet, or the eyeball slicing of Un chien
andalou (An Andalusian Dog) (1929; see Figure 9.38). Sometimes it
was to document the democratization of art in a changing world,
such as in Eugène Atget’s photographs of Paris storefronts. As
German cultural theorist Walter Benjamin argued in his famous
1936 essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological
Reproducibility,” the very notion of artistic originality was
challenged by the photograph and taken even further by film, which
courted a mass, public audience.
The avant-garde artists and filmmakers of the 1920s saw their role as
vitally linked to the times, whether in embracing a machine
aesthetic in their work or in making films suitable to the proletarian
revolution in the Soviet Union. Such an attitude goes against
Romantic traditions of artistic expressivity and shapes the impulse
toward confrontation — of conventions, audiences, or expectations
and associations — in the context of a wider social, political, or
aesthetic critique.
The European avant-gardes of the 1920s became a model for
filmmakers like Jean-Luc Godard. His films in the 1960s were partly
experimental, challenging commercial film conventions through
unusual sound and image juxtapositions or by having actors go in

and out of character. But as the critical and political environment of
this period became more intense, the confrontational impulse of
what became known as counter cinema went deeper. Godard and
his collaborators started making consciously noncommercial films
like British Sounds (1970) under the name Dziga Vertov Group. In
1972, Godard and his partner, Jean-Pierre Gorin, made a film called
Letter to Jane that scrutinizes a still photograph of liberal American
actress Jane Fonda listening sympathetically on a visit to Vietnam.
In voiceover, Godard and Gorin critique this image for its political
naiveté [Figure 9.41]. The radicalism of this period was hard to
sustain, but the confrontational impulse informs all of Godard’s
work. For example, the intricate image and sound montages of the
multipart Histoire(s) du cinéma (1988–1998) ask viewers to look at all
the meanings that images accumulate over time.

9.41 Letter to Jane (1972). Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin critique a photograph of
American actress Jane Fonda for the liberal — rather than radical — politics it represents.
Although prescient in its scrutiny of celebrity culture, the film can be seen as misogynist and
even cruel in its confrontational style.
Many critical and confrontational techniques are associated with
political or theoretical positions that dismantle the assumed
relationship between a word or an image and the thing it represents,
encouraging audiences to participate in the experiments at hand.
Such modernist aesthetic strategies are rooted in the social critiques
of the late 1960s. One of the most interesting and influential
approaches to the image-oriented society of consumer capitalism

was advanced by Guy Debord in a book and film called The Society of
the Spectacle (1967 and 1973, respectively). Debord argued that
images themselves — taken out of context through a process called
détournement or diversion — were the only way to transform the
image-oriented society. Trinh T. Minh-ha’s Surname Viet Given Name
Nam (1989) is an experimental documentary about Vietnamese
women that does not use footage shot in Vietnam. Vietnamese
American women act the roles of interviewees living in Vietnam
who narrate their wartime experiences. The filmmaker’s poetic
voiceover, snatches of song, found footage, and unusual framings
complicate the identities of these women and any effort to portray
their experiences completely. Ultimately, the film raises more
questions than it answers.
In the 1980s, video artists extended this critical function toward
mainstream media, and new media works today o�en demand that
viewers question how they are looking at something as well as what
they are looking at.
Watch a clip from The Future (2011) online. What aspects of the clip employ a
traditional narrative style? What aspects of this narrative film bring to mind
experimental film techniques?

Filmmakers of color have embraced experimental strategies to
respond to dominant perspectives and imagine histories that have
not been documented. From Britain, the Black Audio Film
Collective’s Handsworth Songs (1986) juxtaposes footage of rioting
and West Indian carnival traditions with a voiceover that analyzes
colonial history and the reasons for current racial unrest. In Night
Cries: A Rural Tragedy (1989), Australian Aboriginal artist Tracey
Moffatt uses stylized sets and sounds and disjunctive editing to tell a
story about the mid-twentieth-century assimilation policies that
forced single Aboriginal mothers to have their babies adopted by
married white couples. Inspired by the recovery of parts of the film
Lime Kiln Club Field Day (1914) — believed to be the oldest surviving
film with an all-black cast — Garrett Bradley’s short film America
(2019) imagines a missing archive of films documenting African

American life in the 1910s in poetic images of quotidian life with an
otherworldly soundtrack [Figure 9.42].
9.42 America (2019). The recovery of footage from a silent feature film with an all-black cast
inspired this reverie on the lost image archive of African American life in the early twentieth
century.
In the 1980s, activist videos — particularly those inspired by
government indifference to the AIDS crisis — employed a
confrontational style. Although based in documentary in its
presentation of information, activist media also used experimental
techniques of editing, design elements drawn from advertising and
propaganda, and self-conscious voiceover and personal reflection.
Tom Kalin’s They Are Lost to Vision Altogether (1989) combines elegiac

imagery with footage of marches, portraying strategies of mourning
and militancy employed by AIDS activists [Figure 9.43]. Activist
media in the digital era takes many different forms, from deflecting
the messages of mainstream media through reediting to citizen
journalism. For example, Firdaus Kharas is known for creating
animated public service announcements and short videos to raise
awareness of a range of humanitarian issues worldwide, reaching a
vast audience through the confrontational power of media.
9.43 They Are Lost to Vision Altogether (1989). Artist Tom Kalin conveyed competing
impulses of mourning and militancy in response to the AIDS crisis in the elegiac imagery of
this videotape.

FILM IN FOCUS Webs of Style in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
See also: Perfect Blue (1997); Waking
Life (2001)
To watch a clip from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), go to
LaunchPad for The Film Experience at launchpadworks.com
Avant-garde films and blockbuster franchises represent the extreme poles of
cinema as an economic endeavor. The former make no money as they push the
boundaries of style and even understanding, while the latter gross billions by
aiming for universal comprehension as they push the boundaries of technique and
technology. But in the context of a widely familiar premise, blockbuster resources
can bring stylistic experimentation and complex ideas to broad audiences. Spider-
Man: Into the Spider-Verse, executive produced by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, is just
such an endeavor, as it invites longtime fans of Spider-Man comics, cartoons, and
live-action films into the depths and reaches of a transmedia world and guides
other interested viewers through a mind-bending experience.
Into the Spider-Verse is an animated feature with a typical action-adventure plot
involving saving the world(s) from a big bad guy. But as a visual experience, the
film o�en resembles abstract cinema in its use of shape, color, and pattern. The
decision to foreground style was a conscious one. The film employs a range of
animation styles to correspond with its narrative premise: the primary villain,
Kingpin, has invented a so-called “Super Collider,” which opens portals to a
multiverse of alternative realities and threatens them all with destruction.
However, each world has its own Spider-Man avatar, all of whom team up to defeat
the villains and restore the laws of physics (however speculative they are in this
context).

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Spider-Man features prominently and in fact proliferates in this film, but the Sony-
produced Into the Spider-Verse is not part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)
in which Tom Holland stars as the live-action Spider-Man. The film also looks and
feels different than the blockbuster aesthetics of the MCU films. In fact, comic-
book movies, one of the dominant genres of the twenty-first century (three Spider-
Man movies are among the twenty-five top-grossing films of the 2000s) o�en do
not utilize the aesthetics and stylistic possibilities of the comic book medium. Into
the Spider-Verse, adapted from a 2014 comic-book arc titled Spider-Verse, sets out
to change this by experimenting with technology to serve an artistic vision rather
than realism. The film overlays computer-generated 3-D imagery with 2-D
elements, and its production design incorporates graphic elements from comics
like panels, onscreen typography mimicking sound effects, misaligned color
separation, and the occasional thought box [Figure 9.44]. Ben-Day dots — the
dots used to produce color in an ink-saving printing process developed by
Benjamin Henry Day Jr. for mid-twentieth-century comic books — are even visible
onscreen as part of the filmmakers’ conscious effort to replicate the look and feel
of comics [Figure 9.45]. Into the Spider-Verse reminds us that comic books are a
personal genre that elicits our creativity and imagination as readers and
collectors.
9.44 Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018). The film’s innovative animation
techniques combine graphic and cinematic 2-D and 3-D elements.

Description
Comic book-style sound effect text to the left of Spider-Man’s hand as it
shoots webbing reads,”Thwap!”
9.45 Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018). Thought-boxes and Ben-Day dots evoke
comic box storytelling and printing techniques.
Description
A comic book-style text box in the background of the scene reads,”everyone
knows.”
This approach complements the film’s thematic emphasis on questions of identity.
The film’s soon-to-be-super hero is Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), an Afro-Latino
high school student and aspiring graffiti artist from Brooklyn. He reads about
Spider-Man in comic books, but in his world, Spider-Man exists, and these are true
tales. When Peter Parker (the original Spider-Man, here voiced by Jake Johnson)
dies in the line of duty, Miles shows up at a rally in a hoodie and a Spider-Man
costume, his clothing invoking his membership in communities formed around
both fandom and activism [Figure 9.46]. A�er his inevitable encounter with a
radioactive spider, Miles begins to cra� an identity from a stack of comic books,
and devices from their pages proliferate onscreen. The idea that superpowers can
and should be distributed to people of all races, genders, and socioeconomic

classes is developed throughout the narrative and is reinforced when Miles meets
his counterparts from other dimensions. These include a young woman named
Gwen Stacey, a little girl called Peni Parker, and a pig known as Peter Porker.
Different animation styles of the past and present are evoked when rendering
these figures [Figure 9.47]. Peni Parker is drawn in the style of Japanese anime,
with its lower frame rate and jerkier feel, and she is accompanied by a robot whose
visual design evokes “mecha” anime like Mobile Suit Gundam (1979–1981) and
Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995–1996). Meanwhile, Peter Porker evokes the madcap
imagery of classic Warner Bros. cartoons and the beloved Porky Pig. Spider-Man
Noir rounds out the superteam. His name, black-and-white aesthetic, and attire —
a trench coat and a fedora, like a protagonist of a classic detective movie — evoke
film noir (see p. 364 in Chapter 10).
9.46 Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018). Anyone can wear the mask: Miles wears
a store-bought costume to Peter Parker’s memorial. His hoodie may also recall slain
youth Trayvon Martin.

9.47 Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018). Spider-Man avatars each evoke a
different graphic, anime, or cartoon style.
Detaching the superhero’s persona from a secret identity that is predictably white
and adult male, the film invites the genre’s diverse fan base to imagine themselves
in the starring role. As Miles says directly to the audience at the end of the film,
“Anyone can wear the mask. You can wear the mask! If you didn’t know that
before, I hope you do now.” Complementing this democratization of superhero
identity and the representation of female and nonwhite figures onscreen are the
nonfigural design elements that the film uses to realize its inclusive imagination as
gravity-defying and interconnected. While Miles’s reality is rendered with depth
perception, many frames use the flatness of the screen for pictorial effect, like the
panels of comics (and pop art inspired by comics). The sequence at the film’s
climax, as the heroic team of Spider-people battle the villains in a psychedelic
dimensional space, is an extravaganza of color and pattern [Figure 9.48].

9.48 Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018). Nonfigural elements of color and
pattern link the film’s animation style to abstract films.
In its focus on exploring the kinetic possibilities of comics, Spider-Man: Into the
Spider-Verse shares a great deal with formalist and medium-specific film
experiments. At the same time, it diverges sharply from the aims of avant-garde
cinema; it is story driven, cra�ed by an immense team of animators and artists,
and inhabits a coherent — though multiple — world. By drawing on specific
elements of cultural identity, like Miles’s interest in graffiti art and its animation,
the film engages audiences in the synthesis of two kinds of film experiences.

Chapter 9 Review
SUMMARY
Animation is the use of cinema technology to give the illusion
of movement to drawings, paintings, figures, or computer-
generated images. Experimental media include
noncommercial, non-narrative films known as avant-garde
films, as well as video art and new media technologies.
The ideas and technology in animated and experimental media
stem from the artistic responses to rapid industrial and cultural
changes associated with modernism.
During the silent film era, the European avant-garde
flourished and included impressionism, cubism, and
animated experiments in abstraction known as absolute
film.
In the 1930s and 1940s, language barriers introduced by film
sound and the rise of fascism challenged the European
avant-garde, and the American avant-garde became more
prominent.
During this period, Disney’s animated films found
widespread commercial success, and Japanese anime was
established.
The decades a�er World War II saw a revitalization of
experimental film.

Underground film arose as part of the counterculture in
New York and San Francisco.
Structural film was another experimental movement, in
which films were organized around formal principles.
From 1968 to 1980, experimental and animated film
proliferated in many countries across the world.
Third Cinema, characterized by realist strategies and
populist intentions, emerged in countries like Argentina,
Cuba, and the Philippines.
In the 1980s and 1990s, rapid technological changes
transformed animated and experimental film.
Inexpensive consumer video formats spurred growth in
activist videos and video art, while MTV brought
experimental techniques into the mainstream.
In animated film, computer-generated imagery (CGI)
became the dominant technology.
Today, media artists use platforms like YouTube and
technologies like machinima, virtual reality, and
augmented reality (AR) to blur the line between artists
and viewers.
Experimental film and narrative film both aim to solicit viewers’
desire to see something. Avant-garde cinema, in particular,
demands that viewers see with fresh eyes.
Animated and experimental films range from abstraction —
explorations of shape, color, line, and volume in motion — to

figuration, the arrangement of human or other figures in
patterns or into stories.
Three primary ways of thinking about the organization of
animated and experimental film are associative, structural,
and participatory.
Filmmakers have experimented with many modes of animation
throughout film history.
Traditional animation (also called 2-D animation) involves
layering images on transparent sheets called cels.
Stop-motion photography involves recording figures in
different positions in separate frames. Claymation and
pixilation are two types of stop-motion photography.
Most mainstream animated films today use computer
animation (also called 3-D animation), o�en with the goal of
achieving photorealism. Other filmmakers push beyond
realism with techniques like rotoscoping and innovative
genres like documentary animation.
More than other forms of cinema, experimental media o�en
ask viewers to reflect actively on the experience of watching and
listening.
Within experimental film, we identify two historical
traditions: expressive and confrontational.
Films in the expressive tradition are o�en poetic or
lyrical, emphasizing aesthetics and imagination.
Films in the confrontational tradition seek to shock or
disturb an audience, o�en with an underlying political or

social purpose.
KEY TERMS
animation
experimental media
avant-garde films
video art
new media
modernity
absolute film
live-action movie
anime
underground film
structural film
Third Cinema
found footage
computer-generated imagery (CGI)
machinima
expanded cinema
augmented reality (AR)
traditional animation
cels
2-D animation
multiplane camera
stop-motion photography
claymation
pixilation

computer animation
3-D animation
keyframe
photorealism
rotoscoping
documentary animation
surrealist cinema
counter cinema
Visit launchpadworks.com to access LaunchPad for The Film Experience, which
includes:
adaptive quizzes
Film clips with critical thinking questions
Supplemental readings, including Film in Focus features and more

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CHAPTER 10 MOVIE GENRES
Conventions, Formulas, and Audience
Expectations

Description

The blackboard shows a chalk drawing of many stick figures holding
hands from the left side of the frame to the right side. The woman is
cutting out red stick figures holding hands.
The T-shirts worn by the kids in Jordan Peele’s Us (2019) tip off the viewer
that something scary may be lurking beneath the film’s sunny California
setting. In the film’s first scene, set in 1986, a little girl chooses a T-shirt
featuring Michael Jackson’s Thriller as a boardwalk carnival prize. In a
later scene, a young boy plays on the beach in a T-shirt emblazoned with
the logo from the movie Jaws. When his mom momentarily loses sight of
him, her frantic gaze around the crowded beach calls back to a set of
point-of-view shots from that famous summer blockbuster. In this way,
Us advertises itself as a horror film, offering viewers the pleasure of
familiarity and the thrill of novelty, precisely the balance that many genre
films seek to achieve.
The longer a genre remains popular, the more awareness of conventions
of iconography, character, plot, and setting viewers bring with them to an
individual film, allowing for an element of comedy that Peele exploits. Us
isolates a family in a cabin in the woods and features plenty of jump
scares and a bloody denouement. But as a follow-up to Peele’s break-out
hit Get Out (2017), which depicts suburbia as a nightmare for African
Americans, Us also exploits horror’s capacity for social critique and
philosophical speculation. With its doppelgänger plot and its ad
campaign featuring motifs of masking and mirroring, the film turns back
on the viewer, a quality that most genre films share. While we know what
to expect, we never know what we’ll come away with.

can help you review. Go to launchpadworks.com
A genre is a category or classification of works that share similar
subject matter, settings, iconography, and narrative and stylistic
patterns. Genres exist across media or modes, from literature to film
to television. Grounded in audience expectations about characters,
narrative, and visual style, a film genre is a set of formulas and
conventions repeated and developed throughout film history.
Movies rely on variations of genres to allow audiences to share in
expectations and routines. As viewers, we may choose to see a
movie because we identify with its character types. We return to
science fiction films — from the 1927 Metropolis to the 1979 Alien or
its 2017 prequel Alien: Covenant — because we recognize and
appreciate some version of a “mad scientist” who works in a
mysterious laboratory in which new technology leads to strange and
dangerous discoveries. One viewer may rush out to see Godzilla
(2014) for the same reason that another viewer resolutely chooses
not to see it — because it revives a sixty-year-old monster movie
whose formulas and images are designed to appeal to viewers’
awareness of these conventions [Figure 10.1]. Our different
responses to particular genres help define the film community to
which we belong.

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10.1 Godzilla (2014). The genre formulas of the classic monster movies are recognizable but
updated in this film.
As we will learn in this chapter, film genres carry their own specific
cultural values. Narrative, documentary, and experimental films
have each created particular genres associated with their respective
organizations, but in this chapter we focus on six narrative film
genres — comedy, western, melodrama, musical, horror, and crime.
For each genre, we identify its primary formulas and conventions
and consider how it evolves over time, reflecting and regulating
specific social, cultural, and historical experiences.
KEY OBJECTIVES
Understand why film genres attract audiences.
Describe the historical origins of film genres, and explain how they can
change over time.

Define the conventions, formulas, and expectations that are seen in genre
films.
Identify six major genres — comedies, westerns, melodramas, musicals,
horror films, crime films — and their subgenres.
Address how social organizations of race, class, gender, and national
belonging inform different genres and their evolution.
Summarize how audiences understand certain film genres as a way of
making meaning.

A Short History of Film Genre
More explicitly and inventively than filmmakers before him, Mel
Brooks has made a career of recycling and parodying the history of
genre films. Blazing Saddles (1974) toys with the history of the
western, brilliantly turned upside down with a protagonist who is an
African American sheriff. Young Frankenstein (1974) transforms the
monster movie, specifically the 1931 Frankenstein, when the
traditionally passive female assistant jilts the usually neurotic
scientist for the sexy monster he creates. High Anxiety (1977) mashes
together the generic formulas of the thriller and exact iconic scenes
from various Hitchcock films to comically expose the nervous
anxiety that has always propelled the genre. Spaceballs (1987) pokes
fun at the excessive merchandising of the Star Wars (1977–present)
series [Figure 10.2]. The transparent and ironic relationship that
Brooks cultivates with the history of the genres that precede his
films has become a pervasive aspect of contemporary culture, from
internet memes to television shows like The Simpsons (1989–present)
to franchise movies like Men in Black: International (2019). Yet
virtually all genre films implicitly or explicitly carry the marks and
traces of a long generic history.

10.2 Spaceballs (1987). The film playfully and ironically spoofs the history of the science
fiction genre, poking fun at well-known series such as Star Wars, Star Trek, and Alien.
Historical Origins of Genres
Well before the advent of the movies, genres were used to classify
works of literature, theater, music, painting, and other art forms.
Tragedy was considered the most important genre in Aristotle’s
Poetics in 350 BC E, and more specific literary genres like poetic
ballads, pastoral and epic poems, and dime novels were identified
and refined in subsequent historical periods. Musical genres
included classical sonatas and symphonies, popular love songs, and
children’s lullabies. The seventeenth-century Dutch painter Pieter
de Hooch created genre paintings that depicted scenes of domestic
life and daily social encounters. In the eighteenth-century and early-

nineteenth-century paintings of David Wilkie, William Hogarth, and
others, genre continued to suggest a “slice of life,” or scenes aimed
at familiarity, recognition, and shared (if heightened) human
emotions [Figure 10.3]. This combination of domestic realism and
theatricality linked genres to the stage, particularly to the staging of
melodramas, the most popular genre of the nineteenth century
[Figure 10.4]. In these different forms, three functions for genre
began to take shape:
to provide models for producing other works
to direct audience expectations
to create categories for judging or evaluating a work

10.3 Shortly A�er Marriage (1743). Prominent English genre painter William Hogarth painted
satirical views of everyday life and contemporary mores.

10.4 Honest Hearts. Nineteenth-century stage melodramas, like this one by William L.
Roberts, were forerunners of a central film genre.
Description
Text at the top reads,”A story of old Kentucky.” Text over the hearts
reads,”Honest hearts by W m L Roberts.” Text at the bottom reads,”Klimt
and Gazzolo, owners.”
For painters in the eighteenth century, for example, historical
paintings needed to follow certain generic rules about what objects
to include in a painting about a naval victory. Classical audiences
learned to expect that all epic poems would begin with a generic
invocation to the gods or a muse.
1890s–1910s: Early Film Genres
Early cinema immediately employed genres, building on the lessons
of its predecessors in photography, literature, art, the popular press,
and music halls. Even when films of the 1890s searched out new
subject matter, objects, and events, rough generic patterns quickly
developed. Common formulas for short films included scenics such
as Panoramic View of Niagara Falls in Winter (1899), historical events
as in Carrie Nation Smashing a Saloon (1901), and, less o�en
acknowledged, semi-pornographic scenes in “blue movies,” such as
From Show Girl to Burlesque Queen (1903) [Figure 10.5]. As the film
industry and its audiences expanded through the 1900s, other types

of films filled the catalog of early genres — scenes from the theater,
sporting events, and slapstick comedies. As outdoor filming
increased, westerns, a popular dime novel genre, became common.
10.5 From Show Girl to Burlesque Queen (1903). Erotic “blue movies” emerged as an early
film genre.
1920s–1940s: Genre and the Studio
System
Since the beginning of film history, the importance of genre and the
popularity of specific genres have waxed and waned depending on
context and culture. Although films used repeated subjects and

formulas (such as Shakespearean plays and chase scenes,
respectively) from their beginnings, the rise of the studio system in
the 1920s and 1930s provided ideal conditions for producing movie
genres. In this context, the movie industry’s model for genre
parallels the industrial model for the Ford Motor Company. Fordism,
the economic model that defined U.S. industry throughout much of
the twentieth century, used the division of labor and the mass
production of parts to improve quality and increase the numbers of
cars manufactured. These efficiencies decreased consumer costs
and increased consumption.
Tied to a studio system that adapted the industrial system of mass
production, film genres enabled movie producers to reuse script
formulas, actors, sets, and costumes to re-create, again and again,
different versions of a popular movie. In the same way that a
consumer might buy a Ford automobile in a new color or different
style every seven years, a viewer might keep coming back to see the
latest swashbuckler adventure film starring Douglas Fairbanks, like
The Thief of Baghdad (1924).
The most famous Hollywood studios differed in size, strategies, and
styles — from the smaller United Artists to the massive MGM — but
each used a production system based on the efficient recycling of
formulas and conventions, stars, and sets. Each studio was headed
by a mogul who assigned a producer to each film, who in turn
oversaw those many moveable parts that a studio had at its disposal.

In this environment, individual studios refined their production line
techniques, established their association with specific genres, and
used and refined that expertise to develop those genres. By the
1930s, Warner Bros. was identified with gangster films, Paramount
with sophisticated comedies, MGM with musicals and melodramas,
RKO with literary adaptations, Columbia Pictures with westerns, and
Universal with horror films.
1948–1970s: Postwar Film Genres
The United States v. Paramount decision of 1948 — in which the U.S.
Supreme Court ruled that the major studios violated antitrust laws
by owning both studios and movie theaters and thereby
monopolizing the film business — weakened the studio system and
thus a cornerstone of movie genres. Without control of a
distribution network of theaters to ensure the profitability of its
production decisions, the studio system gradually began its decline,
and with it waned the golden years of American film genres. Genre
movies certainly continued to be made and film noir (literally
“black film” in French) emerged in Hollywood films of the 1940s,
shot using stylized black-and-white cinematography in nighttime
urban settings and featuring morally ambiguous protagonists,
corrupt institutions, dangerous women, and convoluted plots. The
genre reflected the cultural stresses and instabilities that followed
World War II. Blaxploitation — a genre of low-budget films made in
the early 1970s targeting urban, African American audiences and

featuring streetwise African American protagonists — developed
against the background of turbulent race relations.
The popularity of many other genre films in the 1960s and 1970s
depended on a recycling of formulas through other cultures and
American social movements of the time. These revisionist genre
films — like Robert Altman’s western McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971),
in which the myth of the heroic western becomes violently
redefined against the backdrop of the Vietnam War [Figure 10.6],
and Wim Wenders’s German film noir The American Friend (1977), in
which the Hollywood thriller becomes a lens through which to
examine postwar Germany — o�en returned to the earlier
conventions and icons with an ironic and self-conscious perspective
on those formulas and their relation to a changing world.
10.6 McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971). Robert Altman and other New Hollywood filmmakers
offered revisionist takes on Hollywood genres like the western.

1970s–Present: New Hollywood,
Sequels, and Global Genres
Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977) came in the middle of the era
known as New Hollywood, with film-school-trained directors
drawing on established genres, special effects, and large advertising
budgets to create blockbusters. Video and foreign sales helped such
movies generate worldwide business, and the new corporate entities
that owned the studios relied heavily on sequels and franchises, like
the Star Wars films, to guarantee repeat successes. The Godfather:
Part II (1974), for example, deepened the saga of the Corleone Mafia
family and was hailed as a masterpiece, and contemporary sequels
like The Fate of the Furious (2017) and Star Trek Beyond (2016) combine
characters and plot elements with new situations to deliver familiar
entertainment [Figure 10.7]. Franchises such as the superhero films
of the Marvel Cinematic Universe spread genre elements into other
platforms, such as video games and virtual-reality themed
experiences.

10.7 Star Trek Beyond (2016). Sequels and franchises cash in on the repetitive pleasures of
genre formulas.
Increasingly, the commercial movie business centered not only on
Hollywood. Hong Kong action films like John Woo’s The Killer (1989)
established a worldwide fan base by combining the successful
national and regional genre of martial arts films with formulas of
Hollywood action films, and they proved that films made outside
Hollywood could be globally profitable. Bollywood films,
characterized by their extravagant song-and-dance sequences and
megastars, deepened their popularity beyond the Indian
subcontinent and South Asian communities abroad by relying on
the internet and DVD distribution. Devdas (2002), a spectacular
romance about two young soulmates separated when young and
doomed to live lives of unfulfilled love, became widely distributed
and popular, especially in the United Kingdom and the United States
[Figure 10.8].

10.8 Devdas (2002). Internationally successful, this version of the frequently remade classic
Devdas illustrates the successful globalization of national genres.
History renews some genres but also demands the invention of new
ones. Because genre is always a historical negotiation, an awareness
of the vicissitudes of cultural history makes movie genres more vital
and meaningful. Recognizing those vicissitudes, however, also
requires an understanding of the formal elements that define a
particular genre.

The Elements of Film Genre
For a movie you have recently watched, identify the genre, and describe three
conventions typically associated with this genre.
Genres identify group, social, or community activities that can be
seen as in tension with the values of individual creativity and
autonomy we associate with many art forms, including prestige and
experimental films. A film may work creatively and individually
within its genre, but the work must begin within the framework of
acknowledged conventions and formulas that audiences expect. Our
recognition of these formulas represents a bond between film
producers and audiences, determining in large part how we see and
understand a film. Film genres thus describe a kind of social
contract that allows us to see a film as part of both a historical
evolution and a cultural community. For instance, the western,
recognizable by scenes of open plains and lone cowboys, engages a
version of U.S. history and “how the West was won” that is
understood and contested by audiences in different ways and to
different ends over time [Figures 10.9a and 10.9b].

10.9 The western film genre: (a) My Darling Clementine (1946) and (b) Johnny Guitar (1954).
Genres represent a bond between filmmakers and audiences that must be renegotiated by
each genre film. One western may meet expectations about cowboys in gunfights, and
another may realign those expectations by placing women at the center of the story’s
action.
Description
The first still from the movie, My Darling Clementine, shows a cowboy
with a pistol in-hand walking on a dirt road. The second still, from the
movie Johnny Guitar, shows two cowgirls with two male companions at a
counter.
Conventions
The most conspicuous dimensions of film genres are the
conventions, formulas, and expectations through which we identify
certain genres and distinguish them from others. Generic
conventions are properties or features that identify a genre, such as
character types, settings, props, or events that are repeated from

film to film. In westerns, cowboys o�en travel alone; in crime films,
a seductive woman o�en foils the hard-boiled detective. Generic
conventions also include iconography — images or image patterns
with specific connotations or meanings. Dark alleys and smoky bars
are staple images in crime movies. The world of the theater and
entertainment industry is frequently the setting for musicals, from
Lullaby of Broadway (1951) to Rock of Ages (2012), which revolves
around a sleazy 1980s rock club.
These conventions and iconographies sometimes contain larger
meanings and connotations that align them with social and cultural
archetypes — that is, spiritual, psychological, or cultural models
expressing certain virtues, values, or timeless realities. For example,
a flood is an archetype used in some disaster films to represent the
end of a corrupt life and the beginning of a new spiritual life, such
as in Peter Weir’s The Last Wave (1977), with its ominous visions of a
tidal wave that, according to the Aboriginal people who predict it,
will destroy Australia as part of a spiritual process [Figure 10.10].

10.10 The Last Wave (1977). Archetypal imagery, such as the tidal wave shown here,
underpins generic conventions.
T E C H N O LO G Y I N A C T I O N
Special Effects and Iconography in
Science Fiction
Visual iconography is crucial to distinguishing any genre film: think of the isolated
cabin in a horror flick or the lone cowboy riding into the desert in a western.
Special effects are central elements in the iconography of science fiction, in which
spaceships, alien creatures, and futuristic technologies cue viewers that the
physical and even moral laws of our own world are temporarily suspended.
Georges Méliès, one of the earliest filmmakers, pioneered both special effects and
the science fiction genre itself in Trip to the Moon (1902) and numerous other films
[Figure 10.11a]. To create effects like the famous image of a rocket landing in the
moon’s eye, Méliès stopped the camera, rearranged the mise-en-scène, and
resumed filming to make things disappear or change shape. His repertoire also

included mechanical props, background paintings, and pyrotechnics, which
became staples of the genre.
10.11a The Astronomer’s Dream (1898). George Méliès’s films helped establish both
the science fiction genre and cinematic special effects.
Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), with its futuristic sets and stark narrative of class
conflict, is o�en considered the most influential science fiction film of all time.
Cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan made the film’s scale seem even greater by
using mirrors to project actors into miniature sets in what became known as the
Schüfftan effect. In the plot, the scientist Rotwang — in order to make the workers
mistrust the woman who is urging their rebellion — designs a robot that takes on
her features. While the scene of transformation is visually impressive, Brigitte
Helm, who played the robot, complained that the iconic plaster suit was
cumbersome and hard to move in [Figure 10.11b].

10.11b Metropolis (1927). The iconic robot, called the Maschinenmensch, is a classic
example of a common science fiction character type: the deceptive female android.
Since Metropolis, other science fiction films have explored the boundary between
human and machine by associating the deceptions of technology with femininity.
The iconography of the female human-machine hybrid has become ever more
lifelike with advances in technology. In Alex Gardner’s Ex Machina (2014), a tech
visionary creates a robot named Ava who can pass the Turing test (designed by
mathematician Alan Turing to tell if an intelligent machine is distinguishable from
a human). Rather than using state-of the-art motion capture to generate a
performance, visual effects supervisor Andrew Whitehurst digitally “painted” the
robot design onto takes of Alicia Vikander acting. Ava appears metallic and
translucent, but she has a human face [Figure 10.11c]. This portrayal is complex,
not only in terms of visual effects, but also as a challenge to viewers, who may be
unsure whether to fear Ava or root for her as she rebels against her male human
creator. Through special effects, Ex Machina and other science fiction films

continue to explore the human encounter with the wonders of the machine that is
at the heart of the movie experience.
10.11c Ex Machina (2014). This recent take on the female android uses special effects
and a thought-provoking narrative to challenge viewers.
Formulas and Myths
When generic conventions are put in motion as part of a plot, they
become generic formulas, the patterns for developing stories in a
particular genre. Generic formulas used in a particular film can be
arranged in a standard way or in a variation on the standard. With
such horror films as Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), we
immediately recognize the beginning of one of these formulas: a
couple decides to live alone with their child in a large, mysterious
hotel in the mountains of Colorado and is snowed in during the long
winter [Figure 10.12]. The rest of the formula proceeds as follows:

strange and disturbing events indicate that the house/hotel is
haunted, and the haunting possesses the husband/father, leads to
frightening visions, and begins to destroy the characters, who flee
into the night.
10.12 The Shining (1980). Jack Nicholson plays a writer who suffers a mental breakdown
within the walls of a deceptively peaceful Colorado hotel.
In some cases, these generic formulas also become associated with
myths — spiritual and cultural stories that describe a defining action
or event for a group of people or an entire community. All cultures
have important myths that help secure a shared cultural identity.

One culture may celebrate a national event associated with a
particular holiday, such as the Fourth of July in the United States,
and another may see the birth and rise of a great hero from the past
as the key to its cultural history. From Patton (1970) to Malcolm X
(1992), historical epics o�en re-create an actual historical figure as a
cultural myth in which the character’s actions determine a national
identity. In these cases, a U.S. army commander turns the tide of
World War II, and an American Muslim minister serves as a central
figure in the black power movement in the United States [Figures
10.13a and 10.13b].

10.13 Historical epics: (a) Patton (1970) and (b) Malcolm X (1992). Historical epics o�en use
a heroic figure to build a national myth.
Description

The first still shows a close-up of the main protagonists from the movie
Patton, giving a military salute. The second shows Malcolm X.
Meanwhile, science fiction films, such as Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A
Space Odyssey (1968), frequently recount explorations or inventions
that violate the laws of nature or the spiritual world. The genre’s
narrative formulas o�en relate to broader myths, such as the
Faustian myth of selling one’s soul for knowledge and power or the
story of Adam and Eve’s eating from the tree of knowledge and their
subsequent punishment.
Audience Expectations
Triggered by a film’s promotion or by the film itself, generic
expectations inform viewers’ experiences while watching a film,
helping them anticipate the meaning of the movie’s conventions and
formulas. Thus a narrative’s beginning, characters, or setting can
cue certain expectations about the genre that the film then satisfies
or frustrates. The beginning of Jaws (1975), in which an unidentified
young woman swims alone at night in a dark and ominous ocean,
leads viewers to anticipate shock and danger, participate in the
unfolding of the genre, and respond to any surprises this particular
film may offer. In Jaws, much of the ensuing plot takes place on a
sunny beach and open ocean, rather than in the darkened, confined
houses of the usual horror film, which is a clever variation that
keeps the formula fresh and viewers’ expectations attentive. The

opening scene of Dark Waters (2019), a story of the environmental
consequences of corporate malfeasance, opens with trespassing
teens swimming at night. The allusion to Jaws links the drama of a
lawyer’s dogged efforts to prove wrongdoing to the horror genre.
Reflect on a film trailer you have seen recently. Based on the generic expectations
triggered by the trailer, what conventions or narrative formulas could you expect in
the film itself?
Generic expectations underscore the important role played by
viewers in determining a genre and the ways that this role connects
genres to a specific social, cultural, or national environment. Partly
because of Hollywood’s global reach and the extensive group of
genre films it has produced, most audiences around the world will,
for instance, quickly recognize the cues for a western. Non-
Hollywood genres may not generate such clear expectations outside
their native culture. Generic expectations triggered by a martial arts
film were long familiar in China when Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Dragon introduced the flying battles of the wuxia genre to a wide
American audience in 2000. Likewise, the religious films, or cine de
sacerdotes, familiar to Spanish audiences of the 1940s and 1950s, are
likely to go unrecognized by viewers from other cultures [Figure
10.14].

10.14 Viridiana (1961). Reactions to Luis Buñuel’s film, which satirizes the Catholic Church,
vary according to audience members’ familiarity with the particular genre of religious films it

attacks.
Even within a culture, the popularity of certain genres depends on
shi�ing audience tastes and expectations over time. Movie
producers’ beliefs about which films audiences will pay to see reflect
historical and social conditions and also a genre’s ability to
assimilate those conditions. For example, musicals proliferated in
the 1930s because they offered audiences an easy escape from the
anxieties of the Depression through the new technologies of
synchronous sound. Film noir crime films flourished in the 1940s
and early 1950s during and in the wake of the social upheavals of
World War II. U.S. science fiction films had their heyday in the
1950s, when films like The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) packaged
and mythologized fears about political and other invasions as
concrete aliens and monsters that could be confronted and
understood [Figure 10.15]. Audience expectations signal the social
vitality of a particular genre, but that vitality changes as genres
move from culture to culture or evolve across historical periods
within a single culture. In this sense, genres can tell us a great deal
about community or national identity.

10.15 The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). Science fiction films were popular in the Cold War
era.
Film genres represent, in short, a social contract between
filmmakers and their audiences, a contract in which each side
recognizes a common language of conventions, formulas, and
expectations. Because genres typically reflect historical and cultural
contexts, these contracts give rise to different genres at different
times and in different places. From comedies to crime films, film
genres act out, mediate, and elaborate the pertinent myths and
rituals that inform our lives.

Six Movie Genres
From their first days, movies were organized as genres according to
subject matter — films about a famous person, panoramic views,
and so on. As movies became more sophisticated, however, genres
grew into more complex narrative organizations with recognizable
formal conventions.
Assembling a list of movie genres can be more daunting and
uncertain than it appears. Genres are a product of a perspective that
groups together individual movies, sometimes in many different
ways. For some scholars or viewers, for instance, film noir is an
important movie genre that surfaced in the 1940s, whereas for
others, it is less a film genre than a style that appears in multiple
genres of the period. Moreover, a particular genre designation may
encompass too much or too little: comedies might appear too grand
a category for some critics, and screwball comedies may seem too
limited a group to be termed a genre. Two terms are helpful when
trying to understand the multiple combinations and subdivisions of
genres. Hybrid genres are mixed forms created through the
interaction of different genres to produce fusions, such as musical
horror films like The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) [Figure 10.16].
Subgenres are specific versions of a genre denoted by an adjective —
for example, the spaghetti western (produced in Italy) or the
slapstick comedy. Genres can be understood as constellations in

which individual examples can overlap and shi� their shape
depending on their relation to other genres. In some contexts,
understanding The Rocky Horror Picture Show in the context of other
cult films may be more illuminating than relating it to comedic or
horror conventions.
10.16 The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). A hybrid of horror film and musical comedy
genres, this film also shares characteristics with other cult films.
Think back to a film you saw recently. Can you identify it as a particular hybrid or
subgenre?

Hybrid genres and subgenres show the complexity of genres as
constellations, building on distinctions among major genres. Here
we focus on six important groupings of films that are generally
talked about as genres — comedies, westerns, melodramas,
musicals, horror films, and crime films. We aim to define each genre
as it has appeared in different cultures and at different points in
history and as its social contract changes with different audiences.
We also highlight a selection of defining characteristics for each
genre, including the following:
the distinguishing features of the characters, narrative, and
visual style
the reflection of social rituals in the genre
the production of certain historical hybrids or subgenres out of
the generic paradigm
Although these generic blueprints inevitably will be reductive and at
times overlap, mapping each of these paradigms can guide our
explorations of specific films and how they engage their audiences.
Comedies
Film comedies have flourished since the invention of cinema in
1895, as comic actors took their talents to the screen where they
could be appreciated even without synchronized sound. This film
genre celebrates the harmony and resiliency of social life, typically
with a narrative that ends happily and an emphasis on episodes or

“gags” over plot continuity. Rooted in the commedia dell’arte, Punch
and Judy, and the vaudeville stage acts that produced Buster Keaton
and a host of other early comedians, film comedy is one of the first
and most enduring of film genres. Its many variations can be
condensed into these main traits:
central characters who o�en are defined by distinctive physical
features, such as body shape and size, costuming, or manner of
speaking
narratives that emphasize episodes or “gags” more than plot
continuity or progression and that usually conclude happily
theatrical acting styles in which characters physically and
playfully interact with the mise-en-scène that surrounds them
From the 1920s comedies of producer Mack Sennett to the awkward
and stumbling Woody Allen as Alvy Singer in Annie Hall (1977),
comic figures stand out physically because of their body type, facial
expressions, and characteristic gestures. Although comedies can
develop intricate plots, their focus is usually on individual vignettes.
In Sennett’s Saturday A�ernoon (1926), Harry Langdon balances
between moving cars and hangs from telephone poles [Figure
10.17]. In Annie Hall, Alvy jumps around a kitchen chasing lobsters
and later squirms at a family dinner table where he imagines
himself perceived by others as a Hasidic Jew. In these episodic
encounters, the comic world becomes a stage full of unpredictable
gags and theatrical possibilities.

10.17 Saturday A�ernoon (1926). Classic silent comedies, such as this Mack Sennett film,
depend on physical gags.
Comedies celebrate the harmony and resiliency of social life.
Although many viewers associate comedies with laughs and humor,
comedy is more fundamentally about social reconciliation and the
triumph of the physical over the intellectual. In comic narratives,
obstacles or antagonists — in homes, marriages, communities, and
nations — are overcome or dismissed by the physical dexterity or
verbal wit of a character or perhaps by luck, good timing, or magic.
In Bringing Up Baby (1938), Katharine Hepburn is a flighty socialite
who moves and talks so fast that she bewilders the verbally and

physically bumbling paleontologist Cary Grant, who forsakes his
scientific priorities for the joys of an improbable romance with her.
In Groundhog Day (1993), Bill Murray plays a weatherman with many
social and professional flaws who falls into a magical world where
he relives the day again and again, with the ability to correct his
previous errors and romantic blunders. In Bridesmaids (2011),
anxieties and conflicts between two women friends erupt around
the impending marriage of one of them, but a�er a series of
slapstick misunderstandings and fallouts, they rediscover their bond
[Figure 10.18].
10.18 Bridesmaids (2011). Within the tensions and transitions of an upcoming wedding,
Annie and Lillian remake themselves and their relationship as a comedic reconciliation.
Perhaps the most obvious convention in comedies is the happy
ending, in which couples or individuals are united in the form of a
family unit or the promise of one to come. Traditional comedies
o�en begin with some discord or disruption in social life or in the

relationship between two people (lovers are separated or angry, for
instance), but a�er various trials or misunderstandings, harmony is
restored and individuals are united. In the romantic comedy The
Proposal (2009), for example, a demanding boss asks her male
assistant to marry her so she can avoid deportation back to Canada.
Despite their mutual annoyance with the arrangement, they
comically struggle to maintain the sham engagement at a visit to his
family home in Alaska, only to fall in love in the end [Figure 10.19].
10.19 The Proposal (2009). Comic resiliency ultimately brings a seemingly mismatched
couple together.
Historically, as the Hollywood film comedy responded to audience
expectations in changing contexts, the genre itself endured
numerous permutations and structural changes. Three salient
subgenres emerged as a result — slapstick comedies, screwball
comedies, and romantic comedies.

Slapstick Comedies
Slapstick comedies, marked by their physical humor and stunts,
comprised some of the first narrative films. In the 1910s, the initial
versions of this subgenre used printed intertitles rather than spoken
dialogue and ran from a few minutes to about fi�een minutes in
length. Early films like those of Mack Sennett’s Keystone Kops
revolved around physical stunts set within fairly restricted social
spaces.
By the 1920s, comedy had integrated its gags and physical actions
into feature-length films with more elaborate narratives. Still, the
slapstick moments stand out, like the scene in The General (1927)
when Buster Keaton misfires a cannon vertically into the air. The
cannonball fortuitously misses him and just happens to destroy an
enemy bridge. Slapstick comedies reemerged in the 1980s with films
such as Porky’s (1982) and Police Academy (1984). The ingenuity of
physical comedy combined with scatological and sexual jokes in
these films targeted at young male audiences. In Monty Python’s The
Meaning of Life (1983) and Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975),
slapstick becomes an ingredient of nonstop social satire. Today the
genre is popular again, featuring comic stars such as Will Ferrell in
Daddy’s Home (2015) and Melissa McCarthy in Spy (2015) [Figure
10.20] and The Boss (2016). For female stars in particular — from
Mabel Normand in the silent-era comedy to Lucille Ball’s success on

television — the unruly physicality of slapstick allowed them to
break out of confined social roles.
10.20 Spy (2015). Slapstick comedy has reinvented itself for new audiences, o�en through
exaggerated physical humor, bizarre dialogue, and unconventional protagonists.
Screwball Comedies
In the 1930s and 1940s, screwball comedies transformed the humor
of the physical into fast-talking verbal gymnastics and unpredictable
action, arguably displacing sexual energy to barbed verbal
exchanges between men and women when the Production Code
barred more direct expression. In effect, these films usually
redirected the comic focus from the individual clown to the
confused heterosexual couple. It Happened One Night (1934), Bringing
Up Baby (1938), His Girl Friday (1940), and The Philadelphia Story
(1940) are among the best-known examples of screwball comedies.
Each features independent women who resist, mock, and challenge

the crusty rules of their social worlds. When the right man arrives or
returns — one who can match these women in charm and physical
and verbal skills — confrontation leads to love. Focused on the
nonstop chatter and quirkiness of its heroine, Miss Pettigrew Lives for
a Day (2008) revives some elements of this formula and its pleasures.
Romantic Comedies
In romantic comedies, humor takes second place to the happy
ending. Popular since the 1930s and 1940s, romantic comedies like
Small Town Girl (1936), The Shop Around the Corner (1940), and Adam’s
Rib (1949) concentrate on the emotional attraction of a heterosexual
couple in a consistently lighthearted manner. This subgenre draws
attention to a peculiar or awkward social predicament (in Adam’s
Rib, for example, the husband and wife lawyers oppose each other in
the courtroom) that eventually will be overcome by romance on the
way to a happy ending. More recent examples of the “rom-com,” as
the genre has come to be known, include Nora Ephron’s You’ve Got
Mail (a 1998 remake of Ernst Lubitsch’s The Shop Around the Corner),
where the comic predicaments have contemporary twists — email
and instant messaging replace the letters of the first version — but
the formula and conventions remain fairly consistent. Stephen
Frears’s romantic comedy My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), however,
suggests the range of possibilities in the creative and even political
reworking of genre. In this case, the social complications include a
wildly dysfunctional Pakistani family in London and the romance

that blossoms between the entrepreneurial son and a white man
who is his childhood friend and a former right-wing punk [Figure
10.21].
10.21 My Beautiful Laundrette (1985). Director Stephen Frears and writer Hanif Kureishi
update the romantic comedy genre to tell an interracial gay love story against a backdrop of
violence aimed at immigrants in 1980s Britain.
Westerns
Westerns are a staple of Hollywood and perhaps its most distinctive
genre, associated by audiences around the world with America
through its distinctive landscape and settler colonial history. Their
popularity has waxed and waned in different historical periods,
o�en tied to anxieties about national identity and legitimacy. Set in

the American West, these films typically feature rugged individualist
white male characters on a quest or dramas of frontier life and
justify the historical treatment of Native Americans through hostile
representations. The genre grew out of late-nineteenth-century
dime novels, journalistic accounts, and performances that
mythologized manifest destiny and the wild American West [Figure
10.22]. The depiction of a range of Native American cultures, the
history of the region before white settlers, the appropriation of
native lands, and the role of immigrant and female labor in western
expansion is typically subordinated to stories of white male
heroism.
10.22 Buffalo Bill’s Wild West (1899). At the end of the nineteenth century, William Cody’s
adventures as an army scout were reenacted in dime novels, stage melodramas, and his

wildly popular show, establishing cowboy iconography for movie westerns to build on.
Description
The poster title reads:”Buffalo Bill’s Wild West – And Congress of Rough
Riders of the World. A Company of Wild West Cowboys.”
The film western began to take shape in the first years of the movie
industry as a kind of travelogue of a recent but now-lost historical
period. From The Great Train Robbery (1903) to The Revenant (2015),
the western has grown into a surprisingly complex genre while also
retaining its fundamental elements:
characters, almost always male, whose physical and mental
toughness separate them from the crowds of modern
civilization
narratives that follow some version of a quest into the natural
world
a stylistic emphasis on open, natural spaces and settings, such
as the western frontier regions of the United States
John Wayne as the Ringo Kid in Stagecoach (1939) has a physical
energy and determination that is echoed by Paul Newman and
Robert Redford as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) [Figure
10.23]. Never at ease with the law or the restrictions of civilization,
these men find themselves on vague searches for justice, peace,
adventure, freedom, and perhaps treasure, which would offer them

all these rewards. Quests through wide-open canyons and deserts
seem at once to threaten, inspire, and humble these western heroes.
10.23 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). Paul Newman and Robert Redford
incarnate western heroes for audiences in the 1960s.
In the prototypical western, through the trials of a lone protagonist,
rugged individualism becomes the measure of any social
relationship and of the values of most western communities. Even
when they are part of a gang, as in The Magnificent Seven (1960),
these individuals are usually loners or mavericks rather than
representative leaders. More than in historical epics, violent
confrontations are central to these narratives. This violence, even
when it is directed against Native Americans, is measured primarily
by the ability and will of the individual rather than the systemic
violence of the mass, nation, or community. In High Plains Dri�er
(1973), the moody Clint Eastwood must protect a frightened town
from the vengeance of outlaws. When a violent showdown concerns

two groups — as in the gunfight at the O.K. Corral between the Earps
and the Clantons in John Ford’s My Darling Clementine (1946) — the
battle is o�en about individual justice or revenge (of sons and
brothers) or about who has the rightful claims to the frontier.
However, the western can also reflect ambivalence and even
challenges toward individualism and the use of violence. In John
Ford’s The Searchers (1956), the racism of the central character played
by John Wayne is portrayed as pathological, and in the same
director’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), the heroic myth
of the American West is exposed as a lie. In addition, like most film
genres, westerns have responded to changing audiences. During the
early twentieth century, they were popular among the mass
audiences of early cinema and associated with popular forms such
as Wild West shows. With a few exceptions, westerns were not a
particularly respected genre in the 1920s and early 1930s, but they
returned to popularity during the 1950s, with widescreen color
technologies and the Cold War’s redrawn opposition of good and
evil. Over time, three hybrids or subgenres have distinguished the
western — the epic western, the existential western, and the
revisionist western.
Epic Westerns
The epic western concentrates on action and movement and
develops a heroic character whose quests and battles serve to define

the nation and its myths of origin. With its roots in literature and
epic paintings, this genre appears early and o�en in film history,
foregrounding the spectacle of open land and beautiful scenery. An
early instance of the epic, The Covered Wagon (1923), follows a wagon
train of settlers into the harsh but breathtaking frontier, where their
fortitude and determination establish the expanding spirit of
America. Years later, Dances with Wolves (1990) describes a more
complex struggle for national identity as a traumatized Civil War
veteran allies himself with Native Americans [Figure 10.24].
10.24 Dances with Wolves (1990). Kevin Costner plays a sympathetic Civil War veteran who
aligns himself with Native Americans in this epic western.
Existential Westerns
In the 1950s, one of the most interesting decades for westerns, the
existential western took shape. In this introspective subgenre, the
traditional western hero is troubled by his changing social status

and his self-doubts, o�en as the frontier becomes more populated
and civilized. The Furies (1950), Shane (1953), Johnny Guitar (1954),
and The Le�-Handed Gun (1958) are existential westerns with
protagonists who are troubled in their sense of purpose. The
traditionally male domain of the West is now contested by women,
evil is harder to locate and usually more insidious, and the
encroachment of society complicates life and suggests the end of the
cowboy lifestyle. In a notable return to the questions raised by this
subgenre, Unforgiven (1992), the formerly unbendable Clint
Eastwood is now financially strapped, somewhat hypocritical, and
disturbingly aware that killing is an ugly business. With striking
realism, the independent film The Rider (2017) hints at the
existential questions confronting an injured rodeo cowboy who is no
longer able to ride [Figure 10.25]. Brady Jandreau, a member of the
Lakota Sioux tribe, plays a character based on himself.

10.25 The Rider (2017). Shot on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and with nonprofessional
cast members playing characters based on themselves, Chloé Zhao’s film poses the
existential question of a cowboy who can no longer ride.
Revisionist Westerns
By the 1960s and 1970s, the introspection of the existential western
was overshadowed by foregrounding ideology and politics.
Revisionist westerns look at the most basic assumptions of the
western, sometimes undermining assumptions of heroism and
historical justice and sometimes depicting people and realities
marginalized in the mythologies. With only communities rather
than frontiers to conquer in The Wild Bunch (1969), aging cowboys
are less interested in justice and freedom than in indiscriminate and
grotesque killing. In more recent films such as There Will Be Blood
(2007), No Country for Old Men (2007), and Once Upon a Time … in
Hollywood (2019), contemporary directors invoke conventional
motifs and icons of violence and conquest in more horrifying and
exaggerated forms than ever before. In Posse (1993), Mario Van
Peebles directs and stars as the leader of a band of African American
soldiers seeking justice. Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff (2010)
portrays the potentially epic subject matter of settlers traveling the
Oregon trail as exhausting and monotonous, showing a pioneer
woman’s conflicts as the small party she is with loses its way [Figure
10.26].

10.26 Meek’s Cutoff (2010). Revisionist westerns have highlighted the experiences of Native
Americans, immigrants, and women in the actual history of the American West. This one
also challenges the western’s narrative form and iconography.
Melodramas
Movie melodramas have clearly identifiable moral types and feature
coincidences and reversals of fortune, using music to underscore
the action. Melodrama is one of the more difficult genres to define
because melodramatic characters and actions can be part of many
other kinds of movies. The word itself indicates a combination of
the intensities of music (melos) and the interaction of human
conflicts (drama). Indebted to a nineteenth-century theatrical
heritage portraying social and domestic oppression in the form of
heightened emotional dramas, melodramas arrived virtually
simultaneously with the first developments in film narrative. The
definition developed by film scholars includes these fundamental
formulas and conventions:
Watch a clip from The Searchers (1956) online. Which characteristics of this genre
are most apparent in its iconography? How does this sequence use these generic
elements in its own way?

characters who are defined by their situation or basic traits
rather than by their deeds or complexity and who struggle,
o�en desperately, to express their feelings or emotions
narratives that rely on coincidences and reversals and build
toward emotional or physical climaxes
a visual style that emphasizes emotion or elemental struggles,
whether in interior scenes and close-ups or in action tableaux
From D. W. Griffith’s Way Down East (1920) to Kimberly Peirce’s Boys
Don’t Cry (1999), the central character is restrained, repressed, or
victimized by more powerful forces of society. These forces may pit
a dominating masculinity against a weaker femininity. In Griffith’s
film, a city villain threatens an innocent virgin, and in Boys Don’t
Cry, Nebraska youth assault and murder Brandon Teena when they
discover that he was assigned female at birth (named Teena

Brandon). In the first film, claustrophobic rooms dramatize this
victimization [Figure 10.27], until a climactic chase over a frozen
river brings the conflict between good and evil outside for the world
to witness. In the second, medium shots and close-ups of the
protagonist emphasize the strains and contradictions of identity
[Figure 10.28]. In each of these films, true to the conventions of
melodrama, the story reaches a breaking point with the threat of
death: one character almost dri�s away on ice floes, and the other is
sexually assaulted and killed.
10.27 Way Down East (1920). Claustrophobic interiors represent the melodramatic heroine’s
victimization.

10.28 Boys Don’t Cry (1999). Melodrama relies on close-ups to tell stories of contested
identity — here the protagonist’s expression of gender.
As with westerns, individualism and private life anchor this genre,
but the drama is not about conquering a frontier and finding a home
but rather about feeling emotional strains and o�en failing to act or
speak out within an already established home, family, or
community. Melodramas thus develop a conflict between interior
emotions and exterior restrictions, between yearning or loss and
satisfaction or renewal. Women are typically at the center of
melodrama, illustrating how women historically have been excluded
from or limited in their access to public powers of expression.
Mise-en-scène and narrative space also play a major stylistic role in
melodrama. For example, in Griffith’s films, individuals, usually
female, retreat into smaller and smaller private spaces while some

obvious or implied hostile force, o�en male, threatens and drives
them further into a desperate internal sanctuary. These rituals are
o�en graphically acted out. In Elia Kazan’s film version of A Streetcar
Named Desire (1951), Blanche and Stella, confined in a run-down,
claustrophobic apartment in New Orleans, also confine and repress
their memories of a lost family history; their desires to escape are
channeled through their sexuality. For Stella, that means accepting
her husband Stanley’s violent control of her; for Blanche, it means
becoming a victim of Stanley’s power and, a�er he rapes her,
madness.
Early melodramas depicted female distress and entrapment in time
and space, but those formulas have grown subtler, or at least more
realistic, over the years. Three subgenres of melodramas that
usually overlap and rarely appear in complete isolation from one
another can be distinguished — physical, family, and social
melodramas.
Physical Melodramas
Physical melodramas focus on the material conditions that control
the protagonist’s desires and emotions. These physical restrictions
may be related to the places and people that surround that person or
may be a product of the person’s size or other bodily attribute. One
of the first great film melodramas, D. W. Griffith’s Broken Blossoms
(1919), is also one of the most grisly. In an atmosphere of drugs,

violence, and poverty, a brutal boxer, Battling Burrows, hounds and
physically terrifies his unwanted and frail daughter, Lucy, until a
kind Chinese man shelters her and falls in love with her, with fatal
consequences. Although most melodramas do not definitively
emphasize the physical plight of the heroine, viewers can recognize
this generic focus on bodily or material strain in melodramas such
as Dark Victory (1939), about a woman with a terminal brain illness,
and Magnificent Obsession (1954), about a blind woman whose vision
is ultimately restored. Black Swan (2010) might be best understood as
a contemporary variation on physical melodrama concerned with
female identity, bodily control, and the eruption of violence [Figure
10.29].
10.29 Black Swan (2010). Set in the world of ballet, this film is a melodrama about physical
and sexual repression, as Nina battles pressures from her mother, her director, and herself to
become the “perfect” Swan Queen.
Family Melodramas

Although physical arrangements play a part in them, family
melodramas focus on the psychological and gendered forces
restricting individuals within the family. For many viewers, this is
the quintessential form of melodrama, in which women and young
people, especially, must struggle against patriarchal authority,
economic dependency, and confining gender roles. In Douglas Sirk’s
Written on the Wind (1956), a Texas millionaire marries a beautiful
but naive secretary and then tortures himself wondering whether
the baby they are expecting is his or his best friend’s — the man she
should have married. The corruption and confusion of this
household grow more intense and manic through the constant
baiting and manipulations of a sister whose restlessness is
expressed as sexual promiscuity.
The family melodrama came to prominence in the 1950s as gender
and familial roles were being redefined, and later examples o�en
speak to similar social shi�s. In Ordinary People (1980), an outwardly
prosperous family is emotionally crippled by the loss of one son, the
mother’s withdrawal of affection from the other, and the father’s
powerlessness. In Matt Ross’s Captain Fantastic (2016), the
melodrama occurs at the intersections of a survivalist family whose
father must deal with the death of the children’s mother and the
crisis of the family adapting to a world outside the Oregon woods
[Figure 10.30].

10.30 Captain Fantastic (2016). A family of extraordinary outsiders must reshape itself under
the pressures of a different “normal” world.
Social Melodramas
Social melodramas extend the crises of the family to include larger
historical, community, and economic issues. In these films, the
losses, sufferings, and frustrations of the protagonist are visibly part
of social or national politics. Earlier melodramas fit this subgenre.
For example, John Stahl’s Imitation of Life (1934), remade by Douglas
Sirk in 1959, makes the family melodrama inseparable from larger
issues of racism as a black daughter passes for white. Contemporary
melodramas also commonly explore social and political dimensions
of personal conflicts. When a father is kidnapped in Steve
McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave (2013), the harmony and happiness of an
African American family from Saratoga, New York, are shattered by
and intimately linked to the brutality and horrors of slavery in mid-
nineteenth-century America [Figure 10.31]. In Brokeback Mountain

(2005), male lovers are kept apart by social conventions as well as
possibly generic ones, as cowboys are not usually shown falling in
love with each other [Figure 10.32].
10.31 12 Years a Slave (2013). This searing melodrama about a father snatched from his
family becomes an emotional and personal depiction of the brutalities of slavery in the
nineteenth century.

10.32 Brokeback Mountain (2005). This political melodrama depicts male lovers kept apart
by social and generic conventions.
Musicals
As noted in Chapter 6, when synchronous sound came to the cinema
in 1927, the film industry quickly embraced the new technology and
moved to integrate music and song into the stories. Precedents for
film musicals range from traditional opera to vaudeville and
musical theater, in which songs either supported or punctuated the
story. Since the first musicals, the following have been their most
common components:
characters who act out and express their emotions and thoughts
through song and dance
plots interrupted or moved forward by musical numbers
spectacular sets and settings (such as Broadway theaters, fairs,
and dramatic social or grand natural backgrounds) or animated
environments
In Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) and The Sound of Music (1965), groups
of characters escape the complexities of Depression-era society and
Nazi encroachment into Austria, respectively, by breaking into song
[Figure 10.33]. Whether on a Broadway stage or against the beauty
of an Alpine setting, characters in musicals speak their hearts and
minds most articulately through music and dance.

10.33 The Sound of Music (1965). The Nazi threat cannot dampen the spirit expressed
through song.
As social markers, musicals are the flip side of melodramas,
highlighting the joy of expression rather than the pain of repression.
With musicals, the tearful cries of melodrama give way to the
beautiful articulations of music. Both focus on personal emotions,
but in musicals, song and dance become the longed-for vehicles for
the repressed and inexpressible emotions of the melodrama. There
are romantic crises, social problems, and physical dangers in the
narrative, but in most cases, difficulties can be remedied or at least
put into perspective by the immediacy of song, music, and dance.
With more plot than most musicals, West Side Story (1961) features
all the tragedy and violence found in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet
(on which it is based) and a social commentary on Puerto Rican and
white relationships in New York: gangs fight, lovers are separated,
and horrible deaths happen. But even during the most troubling

situations, song and dance transform battle cries into gaiety (“The
Jet Song”) [Figure 10.34], patriotic idealism into comic satire
(“America”), and even a tragic death into a peaceful vision
(“Somewhere”). Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe (2007) [Figure
10.35], similarly rich with narrative, weaves together the stories of
several characters living in New York City during the turbulent
1960s. Musical enactments of Beatles songs express the “free love”
spirit and the darker, politically charged moments of the decade.
10.34 West Side Story (1961). Social antagonisms are expressed through song and dance.

10.35 Across the Universe (2007). Beatles songs are reimagined as wild production numbers
with a music-video influence.
A�er the first feature-length musical, The Jazz Singer (1927),
musicals adapted to reflect different cultural predicaments. Of the
many types of musicals, we can identify three subgenres —
theatrical, integrated, and animated musicals. Many examples of
each subgenre are adaptations of Broadway musicals or other
theatrical sources.
Theatrical Musicals
No doubt the best-known films of the musical genre are theatrical
musicals, which situate the musical convention onstage or
“backstage.” Here it is unmistakable that the fantasy and art of the
theater supersede the reality of the street. One of the finest early
musicals is 42nd Street (1933), which is partly about the complicated
love lives of its characters — a Broadway director who wants one last

hit play; the starlet Dorothy Brock, who juggles lovers offstage; and
the chorus girl Peggy Sawyer, who substitutes for the star and saves
the show. What ultimately gathers together all these hopes and
conflicts is the musical show itself. Through the remarkable
choreography of Busby Berkeley and hit tunes like “Shuffle Off to
Buffalo,” jealousies and doubts turn into a spectacular celebration of
life on Broadway [Figure 10.36].
10.36 42nd Street (1933). The “Shuffle Off to Buffalo” number is presented as part of a
Broadway show, which acts as the central mise-en-scène of the narrative.

Although theatrical musicals later waned in popularity, All That Jazz
(1979) resurrected this subgenre as an exaggerated and even self-
indulgent staging of the autobiography of choreographer Bob Fosse.
Dreamgirls (2006) dramatizes the story of Motown, while smaller-
scale musicals like God Help the Girl (2014) [Figure 10.37] and Sing
Street (2016) apply theatrical techniques to stories about young
people in rock bands, blurring the line between theatrical musicals
and more everyday settings.
10.37 God Help the Girl (2014). This modern musical is set in the indie music scene rather
than backstage, and instead of production numbers, the musical sections more closely
resemble homemade music videos, fading in and out of fantasy.
Integrated Musicals

Musicals that incorporate musical numbers into the film’s narrative
are known as integrated musicals. Here the idyllic and redemptive
moments of song and dance are part of the common situations and
realistic actions of the characters’ everyday lives. In My Fair Lady
(1964), the grueling transformation of a street girl into a glamorous
aristocrat is described by song, and with numbers like “The Rain in
Spain,” songs actually assist that transformation. Pennies from
Heaven (1981) and Dancer in the Dark (2000) are more ironic versions
of this subgenre. In both films, musical interludes allow the
characters (a sheet-music salesman during the Depression and a
blind woman accused of murder, respectively) to transcend the
tragedies and traumas of life. Similarly, Les Misérables (2012) [Figure
10.38] weaves its operatic songs of love and rebellion into its famous
tale of Jean Valjean in nineteenth-century France.

10.38 Les Misérables (2012). The long-running Broadway hit was finally translated into a
movie musical that integrated song and dramatic action in 2012.
Animated Musicals
Watch a clip of a musical number from the musical La La Land (2016). Does this
appear to be an integrated musical, a theatrical/backstage musical, or something
else entirely? What cues hint at its musical subgenre?
Description
The scene shows several young men and women singing and dancing on the
roofs of cars. A play button is present at the center of the screenshot.
Beginning with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), animated
musicals use cartoon figures and stories to present songs and

music. Moving in the opposite direction of integrated musicals,
these films transport the everyday into fantasy worlds, fully
embracing the fantastic and utopian possibilities of music to make
animals human, nature magical, or human life, as Mary Poppins
says, “practically perfect in every way.” Films like Tim Burton’s The
Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and Sylvain Chomet’s The Triplets of
Belleville (2003) take audiences’ imaginations in offbeat directions.
Walt Disney recaptured the great popular and artistic success of its
animated musicals Pinocchio (1940) and Fantasia (1940) with a string
of hits starting with The Little Mermaid (1989) [Figure 10.39] and has
continued to generate cultural touchstones in the era of computer
animation with films like Frozen (2013) and Frozen II (2019).
10.39 The Little Mermaid (1989). The resurgence of the animated musical highlights the
genre’s utopian impulse, through which songs link the characters to fantasies and fantasy
worlds.

Horror Films
Horror has been a popular literary and artistic theme at least since
Sophocles’s account of Oedipus’s terrifying realization of his fate, the
horrifying suicide of his mother, and his ghastly self-blinding. The
supernatural mysteries of Gothic novels such as The Monk (1796)
were followed in the nineteenth century by tales of monsters and
murder, such as Frankenstein (1818) and Dracula (1897). Occasionally
overlapping with science fiction, horror films have crossed cultures
and appeared in various forms throughout film history. The
fundamental elements of horror films include
characters with physical, psychological, or spiritual deformities
narratives built on suspense, surprise, and shock
visual compositions that move between the dread of not seeing
and the horror of seeing
In Carl Boese and Paul Wegener’s The Golem (1920) [Figure 10.40]
and Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979), monstrous characters terrify the
humans around them with their grotesque shapes and actions,
lurking on the fringes of the visible world. Each film is infused with
a nervous tension at the mere prospect of seeing a horror that exists
just out of sight, a suspense that explodes when the creatures
suddenly appear.

10.40 The Golem (1920). Horror takes monstrous physical form in this German expressionist
film.
Horror films are about fear — physical fear, psychological fear, and
sexual and political anxiety. The social repercussions of dramatizing
what we fear can be debated, but the genre’s widespread popularity
suggests that it is a central cultural ritual. Like scary stories around
a campfire, horror films dramatize our personal and social terrors in
their different forms, in effect allowing us to admit them and
attempt to deal with them in an imaginary way and as part of a
communal experience. Horror films make terror visible and,
potentially, manageable. An eerie tale about alien invaders taking

over human bodies in an American town, Invasion of the Body
Snatchers (1956) acts out the prevalent fears in the 1950s about
military and ideological invasions. The frightening story of a high
school misfit with telekinetic powers, the 1976 Carrie and its 2013
remake unveil all the anxiety and anger of female adolescence, and
28 Days Later (2002) unleashes hordes of zombies, the product of a
scientific experiment on a dangerous virus [Figure 10.41]. Anxieties
around the history of race and racism have long informed horror
films, from White Zombie (1932) and Night of the Living Dead (1968) to
Get Out (2017), Jordan Peele’s tale of a white suburban town that
ensures African American acquiescence to the status quo in a
diabolical manner.
10.41 28 Days Later (2002). The social and physical world crumbles in a horror film about a
zombie-creating virus.

Within this genre, horror and fear have taken many shapes in
different cultures over the past century, addressing audiences in
specific historical terms. Here we call attention to three subgenres
characterized by dominant elements — supernatural, psychological,
and physical horror films.
Supernatural Horror Films
In supernatural horror films, a spiritual evil erupts in the human
realm, perhaps to avenge a wrong or perhaps for no known reason.
This subgenre includes movies such as the aforementioned The
Golem (1920); the Japanese film Kwaidan (1964), which features four
tales based on the writings of Lafcadio Hearn about samurai,
monks, and spirits; and The Sixth Sense (1999), about a boy able to see
the dead. In The Exorcist (1973), Satan possesses a young girl’s body,
deforming it into a twisted, obscenity-spewing nightmare [Figure
10.42]. The Exorcist is typical of supernatural horror in that how and
why this evil has invaded the life of a modern and affluent family are
never made entirely clear. Japanese horror films made in the
a�ermath of nuclear destruction featured ostensibly supernatural
figures like Godzilla, while the more recent Korean horror film The
Host (2006) taps into political relations with the United States as well
as into environmental issues. Alongside more mainstream
supernatural horror hits like the Conjuring series (2013–2020),
smaller movies like It Follows (2015) use supernatural horror to
evoke a variety of contemporary anxieties [Figure 10.43].

10.42 The Exorcist (1973). Satan possesses a young girl in this 1970s masterpiece of
supernatural horror.
10.43 It Follows (2015). This acclaimed horror film uses a mysterious supernatural force to
represent teenage anxieties about sex, aging, and death.
Psychological Horror Films

Another variation on the threat to modern life, psychological
horror films locate the dangers that threaten normal life in the
minds of bizarre and deranged individuals. German expressionist
films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) dealt with psychological
themes, and many modern films — including Psycho (1960), Whatever
Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), Don’t Look Now (1973), The Stepfather
(1987), The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992), and Funny Games (2007)
— participate in this subgenre. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) is
characteristic: although it features scenes of nauseating physical
violence, Hannibal Lecter’s diabolically brilliant mind and his
empathetic bond with the protagonist, Clarice Starling, make this
film horrifying on a mental rather than a physical level.
Physical Horror Films
Films in which the psychology of the characters takes second place
to the depiction of graphic violence are examples of physical horror
films, a subgenre with a long pedigree and a consistent place in
every cycle of horror film. Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932) testifies to
both the longevity and the more intelligent potential of physical
horror. Cut and banned in many countries, Freaks tells a morality
tale of rejection and revenge. It features performers from actual
carnival sideshows who, despite their shocking appearance and the
repulsive revenge they perpetrate, ultimately act in more generous
and humane ways than the physically “normal” villains.

Psycho (1960) is an originator of the contemporary horror films
known as slasher films, which depict serial killers. Other grisly
films that belong in this subgenre include The Texas Chain Saw
Massacre (1974) [Figure 10.44], the story of a cannibalistic Texas
family that attacks lost travelers; and Halloween (1978), the first of a
sequence of films about ghastly serial killings that spawned many
sequels and imitators, including Saw (2004), which creates a
gruesome mise-en-scène fashioned by a twisted mind to test and
torture two captives competing to survive.
10.44 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). This classic slasher film goes to extremes —
cannibalism.
FILM IN FOCUS Genre and Gender in Jennifer’s Body (2009)

See also: The Babadook (2014), Get Out
(2017), Sorry to Bother You (2018)
To watch a clip from Jennifer’s Body (2009), go to LaunchPad for The Film
Experience at launchpadworks.com
In Jennifer’s Body, screenwriter Diablo Cody and director Karyn Kusama set out to
explore young women’s fraught experiences of agency, friendship, and sexuality
through a genre mash-up. “Hell is a teenage girl,” begins the film’s voiceover
narration, immediately establishing the movie’s ironic tone and verbal wit. Generic
elements of both horror and comedy have been used effectively to heighten teen
films’ portrayals of shared adolescent experiences of insecurity and
transformation, from Scream (1996) to American Pie (1999) and their collective
sequels. Jennifer’s Body is a campy horror film with elements of the teen comedy,
featuring boys who are Satanic and girls who blur the lines between virgins and
vamps. The tension arising from exaggerated blood and gore, fear and betrayal, is
offset by snappy dialogue and absurd situations. Between the clashing codes and
heightened gestures, the emotional truths of female relationships shine through.
Bookish Needy (Amanda Seyfried) and beautiful Jennifer (Megan Fox) have been
best friends since their sandbox days [Figure 10.45]. But a�er Jennifer is
transformed into a man-eating succubus, her behavior drives them apart. Through
their relationship, the film comments on socially reinforced competition among
women, from “mean girl” behavior to eating disorders. In a climactic showdown at
an abandoned swimming pool, Needy attempts to save her boyfriend from
Jennifer [Figures 10.46a and 10.46b]. The betrayal of their friendship lends
poignance to the scene’s improbability and gross-out humor.

http://launchpadworks.com/

10.45 Jennifer’s Body (2009). Popular Jennifer and average Needy are best friends.

10.46a and 10.46b Jennifer’s Body (2009). When a Satanic ritual drives Jennifer to
attack Needy’s boyfriend, the emotional intensity of the absurd scene lies in the
betrayal of their friendship.
Description

The first still labeled (a) shows Megan Fox straddling a young man with her
fanged mouth wide open and bloody towards the viewer. A large amount of
blood pours from the young man’s neck. The second still labeled (b) shows
Amanda Seyfried soaked, wearing torn clothes, and streaked with mud.
Jennifer’s Body received negative reviews and online hostility on its initial release,
in part because of its genre hybridity. Audiences’ discomfort with the film might
have had as much to do with gender expectations as with genre expectations.
Women are conventionally portrayed as victims in horror films, and their roles are
o�en linked to their sexuality: female characters who are portrayed as sexually
promiscuous are typically killed, whereas the “final girl” who survives to the end of
the movie is usually presented as morally and sexually pure. Jennifer’s Body
deliberately reworks these genre conventions to engage female viewers, starting
from the premise that young women are as preoccupied by myths and anxieties
about bodies and sexuality — and potentially as attracted by genre films that
address these issues — as boys are. In her earlier films, Karyn Kusama explored
female roles in other genres traditionally associated with men. Her independent
feature debut, Girlfight (2000), centers on a young female boxer, and her next
project was a live-action adaptation of the animated science fiction series Æon
Flux (2005). But 20th Century Fox’s marketing campaign for Jennifer’s Body
targeted male viewers by prominently featuring Megan Fox, a star associated with
her role as “eye candy” in the Transformers franchise (2007–2018) [Figure 10.47].
The film’s title didn’t help; mainstream audiences did not get the reference to a
song of the same name by the riot girl band Hole. Jennifer’s Body — on the levels of
production, content, and reception — shows how closely gender and genre are
intertwined.

10.47 Jennifer’s Body (2009). The film’s ad campaign targeted male viewers, drawing
on conventional expectations of gender and genre.

Description
Text at the top reads,”From the academy award-winning writer of”Juno.”
Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried.” Text at the bottom reads,”She’s evil…
and not just high school evil.” Details about the movie follow in small text
below.
Other viewers objected to the filmmakers’ claim that the film is a feminist
subversion of the horror genre, given that Needy is forced to destroy her best
friend and that much of Diablo Cody’s witty dialogue heightens their conflict.
Moreover, Jennifer’s so-called power comes at the cost of her stylization as the
object of the viewer’s gaze and from her enactment of the misogynist myth of the
vagina dentata, the toothed vagina that threatens masculine wholeness. Such
critiques foreground genre’s role as an expression of unresolved social issues.
Individual genre films, no matter how self-conscious about their subversive intent,
cannot fully stabilize real conflicts around changing gender roles.
Horror films stage encounters with ideas that a society attempts to regulate or
repress, such as difference, death, and sexuality. Comedies let the repressed into
the open. Both can be cathartic and critically useful. For example, female
reproductive capacity erupts as a threat to the status quo in such horror classics as
Carrie (1976) and the Alien franchise (1979–2017). Jennifer’s Body sets out to
reclaim the power that this fear of female sexuality implicitly grants femininity. For
example, Jennifer’s attractiveness makes it comically easy for her to find victims.
The film exaggerates both the threat of women’s difference from men and the
ways in which women’s bodies are controlled by patriarchal social norms.
Jennifer’s transformation into a demon occurs a�er she is assaulted by the
members of a rock band who hope to gain power by ritual virgin sacrifice; the
ritual goes awry because Jennifer is not “pure.” Her resulting monstrousness can
be seen either as further punishment for breaking the rules of female behavior or
as an empowering revenge fantasy: she literally eats boys for breakfast.
Where the horror genre typically heightens sexual anxiety, the teen comedy
exaggerates it as farce. Jennifer’s Body combines tropes of both genres to take

these issues seriously. Diablo Cody previously used humor to defray the difficulty
of facing an unplanned pregnancy in her first film as screenwriter, Juno (2007).
Jennifer’s Body is also about a young woman’s struggle for control over her own
body, treating weighty matters with a light touch. When Jennifer is vanquished at
the end of the film, Needy becomes the unruly one. The film opens with Needy in
solitary confinement in a mental institution and ends with her avenging the fate of
her childhood friend. Both hero and monster are women, and they reflect on each
other. The film’s complex exploration of relationships among women extends to its
makers’ collaboration and its viewers’ interpretation. Ten years a�er its initial
release, the film has found the audience it was looking for.
Crime Films
Like other genres, crime films represent a large category that
describes a wide variety of films. These films typically feature
criminals and individuals dedicated to crime detection and plots
that involve criminal acts. Crime novels and short stories — from the
mysteries of Edgar Allan Poe and the tales of Sherlock Holmes to the
pulp fiction of the 1920s, such as Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest
(1929), and Walter Mosley’s ongoing Easy Rawlins series — have been
a staple of modern culture. When early movies searched for good
plots, criminal dramas that contained physical action and relied on
keen observation were recognized as a genre made for the cinema,
where movement and vision are central. A crime film’s chief
characteristics include

characters who live on the edge of a mysterious or violent
society, either criminals or individuals dedicated to crime
detection
plots of crime, increasing mystery, and o�en ambiguous
resolution
urban, o�en dark and shadowy, settings
From Underworld (1927) to The French Connection (1971), the principal
characters of crime movies are usually either criminals or
individuals pursuing criminals. In Underworld, gangster Bull Weed
flees and then faces his relentless police pursuers in the mean
streets of Chicago. In The French Connection, detective Popeye Doyle
becomes entangled in New York’s narcotics underworld. In the first
film, the law triumphs, but the tantalizing attraction of underworld
life remains. In the second, legal victory is only partial, and the
glamour of the international drug market far outshines the tattered
life of a New York cop [Figure 10.48].

10.48 The French Connection (1971). Within the complex web of an international drug cartel,
a determined New York detective relentlessly pursues its multiple and mysterious agents.
If the outsider characters in horror films represent what we as a
society most physically and psychologically fear and repress, then
the outsider characters in crime films describe what we as
upholders of the status quo socially reject. Perhaps the foundation
for this fascination with illegal behaviors is that most people are
capable of both social and antisocial inclinations at one time or
another. Two of the most gripping and socially complex crime
movies in film history, The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather: Part II
(1974), offer a picture of twentieth-century America that culminates
in the transformation of Michael Corleone from a respectable son
and war hero into a ruthless mob boss willing and able to destroy
any enemies or competitors. The films reveal both sides of the Mafia
cult — its familial dedication and loyalty and its vicious thirst for

power at any cost. Echoing this duality, these films suggest that U.S.
society has grown from a struggling immigrant community into a
rich and intimidating nation. O�en criminal activity is shown as an
understandable option for characters who aren’t given a fair chance
to succeed through legitimate channels because of race, class, or
gender. We may feel exhilaration when the band of strip club
workers in Hustlers (2019) take advantage of Wall Street traders who
have not only objectified them but also taken advantage of ordinary
investors [Figure 10.49].
10.49 Hustlers (2019). Strong bonds of friendship and tough life stories encourage our
identification with women who shake down strip club patrons to make a living.
The different incarnations of crime films, from the 1920s to the
present, include three prominent and popular subgenres — the
gangster film, the detective film, and the stylistically distinctive film
noir.

Gangster Films
Gangster films are set in the world of organized crime and its
violent criminals. Scarface (1932) depicts a vicious mob war in which
rivals coolly manipulate and shoot each other [Figure 10.50a], and
The Public Enemy (1931) follows Tom Powers’s rise from a juvenile
delinquent to a bootlegging killer who terrorizes Chicago. Both films
were made and set in the 1930s, when crime thrived in defiance of
Prohibition. More recent versions of gangster films — the remake
Scarface (1983) [Figure 10.50b], Goodfellas (1990), Road to Perdition
(2002), and The Departed (2006), for example — tend to escalate the
violence and explore the peculiar personalities of the criminals or
the strained rituals that define them as a subculture. Several of these
films are directed by Martin Scorsese, who continues in The Irishman
(2019) to explore how these codes and rituals are reflected in his
filmmaking choices.

10.50a and 10.50b Scarface (1932 and 1983). A classic gangster film from the genre’s heyday
in the 1930s was later remade with Al Pacino.
Description

The first still labeled (a) from the original movie shows two men
discussing something at a desk. The second still labeled (b) from the
remake shows Al Pacino relaxing in a bubble bath and smoking a cigar.
The gangster formula finds distinct features across cultural contexts.
The urban milieu of hip-hop and so-called gangsta rap characterizes
a cycle of African American crime films of the early 1990s, including
Boyz N the Hood (1991), New Jack City (1991), and Juice (1992), in
which the codes of loyalty and family are strained by the lure of
fame, drugs, and cash. Japanese actor-director Takeshi Kitano has
received wide acclaim for his reworking of the traditional Japanese
gangster, or yakuza, film in Hana-bi (1997) and other films, while two
Hong Kong films — Johnnie To’s Exiled (2006) [Figure 10.51] and
Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s Infernal Affairs (2002; remade in 2006 as
Scorsese’s The Departed) — demonstrate both the global reach of this
genre and how it has returned from abroad to reshape Hollywood
films.

10.51 Exiled (2006). Hong Kong gangster films such as this one have influenced recent
Hollywood genre films.
Detective Films
On the other side of this generic crime coin, detective films focus
on a protagonist who represents the law or someone related to it —
perhaps ambiguously — such as a private investigator. Usually these
individuals must battle a criminal element (and sometimes the
police) to solve a mystery or resolve a crime. Hard-boiled detectives
were introduced in crime fiction, and television police procedural
expands the genre across media. In one of the most renowned films
of this type, The Maltese Falcon (1941), detective Sam Spade pursues
both a mysterious treasure (the falcon statue) and the murderers of
his partner (killed for the statue). Suspected by the police, Spade
embarks on a personal quest not so much for the treasure but,
through his loyalty to his partner, for truth and integrity.
Reinterpreted and reinvented in different cultures and with
protagonists other than white males, this subgenre remains visible
in unusual movies such as Jean-Luc Godard’s meditation on crime
detection, Détective (1985), and Lizzie Borden’s feminist story of a sex
crimes investigation in Georgia, Love Crimes (1992).
Film Noir

Although regularly discussed as a film style of shades and shadows,
film noir can be considered a subgenre of crime films that emerged
in the 1940s and that distinctly elevates the legal, moral, and
atmospheric ambiguity and confusion found in early examples of
the genre. No longer simply about law versus crime or the ethical
toughness of a detective, these films, such as the 1944 Double
Indemnity, uncover darkness and corruption in virtually all their
characters that never seem fully resolved. Film noir suggests a visual
style that emphasizes darkness and shadows that, in turn, reflect the
shady moral universes common in these films. Protagonists waver
between the law and lawlessness, and relationships commonly
appear determined by violence and sexuality, characterized notably
in the femmes fatales who tempt and o�en betray the male
protagonist. Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil (1958) is one of the most
powerful examples of film noir. Arriving in a Mexico-U.S. border
zone wild with drugs, prostitution, and murders, Mexican lawman
Mike Vargas searches the dark alleys and nightclubs to solve a
murder and expose a cover-up. He discovers that at the heart of the
corruption is the American assigned to the case, Hank Quinlan, “a
good detective but a lousy cop” [Figure 10.52]. Although the original
film noir cycle came to an end around the time Touch of Evil was
made, such neo-noir films as Body Heat (1981) and Sin City (2005)
represent a self-conscious awareness of the generic conventions of
film noir and o�en create characters and crimes far more confused
and corrupt than their historical prototypes.

10.52 Touch of Evil (1958). Orson Welles plays Hank Quinlan, rotten with corruption in this
classic example of film noir.

Thinking about Film Genre
Specific film genres vary and evolve in different ways, and viewers
make sense of those genres according to their developing and
expanding experience of genre. As viewers see and think about how
genre films are enjoyed and understood, certain conceptual
frameworks shape the experience. Two broad frameworks for
understanding film genres are a prescriptive approach and a
descriptive approach. Within these frameworks, viewers can see
genres as part of a classical tradition (which might emphasize the
historical origin or structural ideal of a genre) or as part of a
revisionist tradition (which might understand genres as adapting to
different cultures and different historical periods). Finally, genres
can be considered in spatial terms as local and global.
Prescriptive and Descriptive
Approaches
Viewers and filmmakers alike classify a movie according to their
experience and understanding of a genre. A viewer who has seen
and considers Touch of Evil (1958) the gold standard of film noir may
have less patience accepting Drive (2011) in the same category,
whereas a different viewer may have a more flexible view of the
genre. The first viewer would hold a prescriptive approach that

assumes a preexisting model for any particular film in the same
category. In the case of Drive, a viewer with a prescriptive approach
might ask “Is this protagonist the classically conflicted hero?,” “Is
Hollywood a seedy underworld?,” and “Is there an adequately dark,
traumatic crime in this film?” This viewer believes that a successful
genre film deviates as little as possible from the prescribed model
and that a viewer can and should be objective in determining a
genre.
A second viewer might respond with a descriptive approach, one
that assumes a genre changes over time by building on older films
and developing in new ways. This viewer prizes genres for different
reasons and accepts that subjectivity can help determine a genre
classification. In the case of a film like Black Swan (2010), such a
viewer might find elements of film noir as important as the
characteristics of melodrama. The heroine Nina (played by Natalie
Portman) walks a precarious line between sanity and madness and
between darkness and light in the competitive world of professional
ballet. Nina’s uncertain hold on reality lends to the ambiguous
atmosphere, and the fact that she may or may not have been
seduced by her rival, Lily (played by Mila Kunis), serves as a
contemporary twist on the film noir themes of sexuality,
masculinity, and the femme fatale.
A filmgoer looking at genre descriptively might survey the history of
melodrama and deduce how its chief characteristics have altered

through time. Admitting that such an exercise will necessarily
depend on a person’s particular perspective, knowledge, and access,
this viewer will value specific films for how they develop, change,
and innovate within a generic pattern.
From this perspective, a film like Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Ali:
Fear Eats the Soul (1974), about the social prejudices that hound the
relationship between a young Arab migrant worker and an older
German woman, is a remarkable variation on the melodramatic
formula, which in the different cultural context of the 1950s
produced Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows (1955). In this earlier
version of Ali’s story, a wealthy socialite falls in love with her
younger gardener. With Fassbinder’s “remake” in mind, Todd
Haynes’s Far from Heaven (2002) reshapes and develops that same
basic story and generic formula into a contemporary film in which
the melodramatic crisis turns on a married man’s discovery of his
gay identity and his wife’s interracial intimacy with their gardener
[Figures 10.53a–10.53c].

10.53a–10.53c Approaches to melodrama: (a) All That Heaven Allows (1955), (b) Ali: Fear
Eats the Soul (1974), (c) Far from Heaven (2002). Melodrama’s generic characteristics are
both foregrounded and modified in loose remakes of Douglas Sirk’s original by filmmakers
Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Todd Haynes.
Description
Still (a) shows a man holding a ladder as he speaks to a woman standing
on the walkway in front of a home. Still (b) shows a man and woman
dancing in an otherwise empty restaurant. Still (c) shows a man and
woman conversing in a forested area.
Both prescriptive and descriptive approaches can point viewers to
particular readings of films. A studio or journalist may, for instance,
reference a particular genre as the framework for how a specific
movie should be seen and evaluated. A studio may promote Nebraska
(2013), a film about an aging father’s stressful relationship with his
family, as an offbeat melodrama, whereas a journalist may urge
audiences to see it as a road movie. Following one or the other of
those prescribed genres will most likely result in different
understandings of the film.
Conversely, a movie historian may examine a number of similar
films in order to describe the basic formulas of a genre (say, science
fiction), but if the films that generate her description are limited to
Hollywood movies since 1950, the model will emphasize and
overlook generic features that a wider survey, one including silent or
Asian films, for example, might not. In both instances, the resulting

model of a film genre reflects the prescriptive or descriptive
approach used and generates meanings that limit, expand, or focus
a viewer’s understanding accordingly.
Classical and Revisionist Traditions
Watch a sequence from Unforgiven (1992) online, and identify those features
that align it with a classical western and those features that suggest a
revisionist perspective.
The significance of a particular film’s engagement with genre
conventions also is shaped by its situation within classical or
revisionist traditions. Classical genre traditions are aligned with
prescriptive approaches that place a film in relation to a paradigm
that a genre film either successfully follows or does not. Classical

traditions establish relatively fixed sets of formulas and conventions,
associated with certain films or with a specific place in history.
Stemming from descriptive approaches, revisionist genre traditions
see a film as a function of changing historical and cultural contexts
that modify the conventions and formulas of its genre. A particular
western, for example, will be understood differently from a classical
perspective than from a revisionist one. Together these two
traditions identify one of the central paradoxes of any genre — that
genres can appear to be at once timeless and time bound and can
both create patterns that transcend history and be extremely
sensitive measures of history.
Historical Paradigms
Classical traditions can be viewed as both historical and structural
paradigms. A historical paradigm presumes that a genre evolved to a
point of perfection at some point in history and that one or more
films at that point describe the generic ideal. For film critic André
Bazin, John Ford’s Stagecoach is the historical paradigm for the
western that reached its pinnacle in the United States in 1939. For
others, F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) is the historical paradigm for
the horror film, achieving its essential qualities in the climate of
1920s Germany [Figure 10.54].

10.54 Nosferatu (1922). This film is a historical paradigm for horror films.
Structural Paradigms
A structural paradigm relies less on historical precedent than on a
formal or structural ideal that may or may not be actually seen, in a
complete or pure form, in any specific film. For example, regardless
of the many variations on science fiction films, a viewer familiar
with the genre may develop a structural paradigm for the classic
science fiction film. A�er viewing a wide spectrum of films — from
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) to The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)

and Pacific Rim (2013) — a viewer may understand that the paradigm
for the genre requires a visual and dramatic conflict between earth
and outer space, the centrality of special effects, and a deadline plot
structure. Some films fit this paradigm easily, whereas others — such
as the frolicking Repo Man (1984), about teenage angst, the
repossessing of cars, and a mad scientist — may seem less
convincing participants in the genre.
H I STO R Y C LO S E U P
John Waters and Midnight Movies

A still from a midnight movie shows a person in a short dress walking on a
sidewalk. Graffiti on the building beside her reads, “Free Tex Watso.”
The term midnight movies describes a somewhat peculiar version of a film genre.
Less a product of certain generic conventions and formulas, it refers to movies that

historically were featured in the late-night screenings of small art or local cinemas.
O�en low-budget films, like Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), or cult classics from
lost eras, like Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932), they share offbeat styles and stories,
sometimes with uncensored sex or exaggerated violence, and they implicitly
celebrate their position outside mainstream cinema. Their lack of Hollywood
polish helps them appeal to audiences that o�en have been ignored or
marginalized in the past.
The films of John Waters have become especially popular versions of this practice.
His frequent star, the physically extravagant Divine, appears in Pink Flamingos
(1972, right) and Female Trouble (1974), forming, with Desperate Living (1977),
what Waters has referred to as his Trash Trilogy. In these and other films, Waters
gleefully embraces campy humor, excessive characters, subversive sexuality, and
o�en grotesque actions. Later Waters films like Hairspray (1988) and Cecil B.
Demented (2000), no longer associated with late-night screenings, moved him
closer to the mainstream of cinema culture. But they represent a genre that thrives
on challenging and overturning traditional expectations.
Generic Revisionism
In contrast, generic revisionism assumes that a genre is subject to
historical and cultural flux, continually changing as part of a
dialogue with films of the same genre. Films within a genre adapt
their conventions and formulas to reflect different times and places.
From this perspective, Fred Schepisi’s Barbarosa (1982) is as much a
western as Stagecoach (1939), but it is adapted to a contemporary
climate that sees outlaws and their myths in a more fantastic light.

More modern films may demonstrate generic reflexivity — unusual
self-consciousness about generic identity. These films clearly and
visibly comment on the generic paradigms. Young Frankenstein
(1974) and L.A. Confidential (1997) fit this model — the first a goofy
look at one of the most famous models for a horror film and the
second a serious, self-conscious reworking of the crime film. Less
obviously, perhaps, Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)
does not simply re-create the original Nosferatu (1922) but also
returns to many of its conventions and icons as a way of
commenting on the continuing relevance of the vampire myth and
the ways that it still reveals much about contemporary society
[Figure 10.55].

A still from the movie, Nosferatu the Vampyre, shows a pale,
hairless man biting a the neck of a pale woman lying in bed.
10.55 Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979). As an example of generic reflexivity, Werner Herzog’s
film re-creates and manipulates the conventions and formulas of a horror film classic,
specifically referencing images and themes from F. W. Murnau’s 1922 Nosferatu.

Local and Global Genres
Generic patterns frequently emerge in specific times, places, events,
and cultures — these are what we might call “local” genres. Modern
American teen films — such as The Breakfast Club (1985), Heathers
(1988), Clueless (1995), Bring It On (2000), and Easy A (2010) — can be
considered examples of a genre that relates in very particular ways
to the characters, crises, and rituals of contemporary American
youth [Figure 10.56].

A still from the movie, Easy A, shows a seductively dressed
young woman walking through a crowd of gaping teens.
10.56 Easy A (2010). This film about a teenage girl using rumors about her promiscuity to
elevate her social standing is part of the cycle of teen films prevalent since the 1980s.

In a sense, all genres are local because they first take shape to reflect
the interests and traditions of a particular community or nation.
Westerns are essentially an American genre, although they have
traveled successfully around the world to Australia, Italy, Spain, and
many other countries. Although horror is now a global genre, horror
films have their roots in the expressionist cinema of Germany
around 1920.
Of the many local genres that have appeared around the world, two
examples that clearly stress the connection between genre and a
particular culture are the Japanese jidai-geki films and the Austrian
and German Heimat films. Popular since the 1920s, the Japanese
jidai-geki films are period films or costume dramas set before 1868,
when feudal Japan entered the modern Meiji period. Movies such as
Revere the Emperor (1927) and A Diary of Chuji’s Travels (1927) work as
historical travelogues to resurrect the customs and glory of times
long past. As is the case with most nations’ relationship to their
preindustrial past, many Japanese people view this period with
curiosity, nostalgia, and pride, o�en seeing in these early films a
kind of cultural purity that was lost in the twentieth century.
Through the years, however, this genre, like all successful genres,
has assimilated current affairs into its conventions and formulas.
Besides feudal courts and sword battles, jidai-geki films develop plots
about class unrest and social rebellion. Akira Kurosawa’s Ran (1985)
is an interesting engagement with this essentially Japanese genre.
This feudal costume drama is replete with many of the jidai-geki

conventions. It is adapted from Shakespeare’s King Lear and,
ultimately, describes the end of an ancient world [Figure 10.57].

A still from the movie, Ran, shows an older man standing
among six other men sitting, clad in bright traditional outfits, in a
meadow.
10.57 Ran (1985). The Shakespearean story of King Lear is retold in this essentially Japanese
genre film.

Set in idyllic countryside locales, Austrian and German Heimat
films depict a world of traditional folk values in which love and
family triumph over virtually any social evil, communities gather
around maypoles, and townspeople sing traditional German folk
songs celebrating the “home” country. Enjoyed by Austrian and
German audiences throughout the first half of the twentieth century,
this genre thrived in those countries with films such as The Priest
from Kirchfeld (1914), Heimat (1938), and The Trapp Family (1956). As
German filmmakers became more self-conscious about the Nazi era
and the connection between this political history and the movies,
modern films resurrected the Heimat genre, now reinterpreted as
complicit in the social history of Germany. Peter Fleischmann’s
Hunting Scenes from Bavaria (1969), Volker Schlöndorff ’s The Sudden
Wealth of the Poor People of Kombach (1971), Edgar Reitz’s sixteen-
hour Heimat (1984) [Figure 10.58], and Stefan Ruzowitzky’s The
Inheritors (1998) are all explicit attacks on the mythology of this
genre or reexaminations of its social meaning and power.

A still from the movie, Heimat, shows a large family packing
and entering cars.
10.58 Heimat (1984). The traditional values of German home life are subjected to the
conditions of postwar occupation.

Recognizing film genres is a key part of the film experience, and
understanding and evaluating those genres as part of larger
historical, cultural, and conceptual frameworks enriches and
broadens both our pleasure in and knowledge of what a specific film
achieves. Identifying the prescriptive or descriptive model that
informs your point of view and placing a film in a classical or
revisionist generic tradition gives that film additional layers and
resonances.

Chapter 10 Review
SUMMARY
A genre is a set of conventions and formulas that organize and
categorize films according to repeated subjects, icons, and
styles.
Genres have an extensive history in film and before film.
Before film, genres were used to classify works of literature,
theater, painting, music, and other arts.
Starting in the 1920s, genre became an important way in
which the Hollywood studio system efficiently produced,
distributed, and marketed films.
Since the studio system’s decline, genres have continued to
play a major role in shaping audience expectations,
including in today’s massive film franchises.
Generic conventions identify a genre through such features as
character types, settings, props, or events that are repeated
from film to film.
Recurring images or image patterns in a genre are called
iconography.
Generic formulas determine how generic conventions are
organized in a plot.

Hybrid genres, such as romantic comedies, are created
through the fusion of different genres.
Subgenres are specific forms of a genre denoted by an
adjective, such as the epic western or slapstick comedy.
Six major film genres are comedies, westerns, melodramas,
musicals, horror films, and crime films.
Two broad frameworks for thinking about film genre are
descriptive and prescriptive.
A prescriptive approach assumes that a successful genre film
deviates as little as possible from a prescribed model.
Related to prescriptive approaches, classical generic
traditions establish relatively fixed sets of genre formulas
and conventions.
A descriptive approach assumes that genres change over time
and that a successful genre film builds on older films and
develops in new ways.
Related to descriptive approaches, revisionist generic
traditions see films as functions of changing historical and
cultural contexts that modify genre conventions.
Films may demonstrate generic reflexivity: unusual self-
consciousness about genre identity.
Generic patterns can be connected to specific times, places,
events, and cultures. These local genres include Japanese
jidai-geki films and Austrian and German Heimat films.

KEY TERMS
genre
film noir
blaxploitation
iconography
archetype
hybrid genre
subgenre
comedy
slapstick comedy
screwball comedy
romantic comedy
western
epic western
existential western
revisionist western
melodrama
physical melodrama
family melodrama
social melodrama
musical
theatrical musical
integrated musical
animated musical
horror film
supernatural horror film
psychological horror film
physical horror film

slasher film
crime film
gangster film
detective film
generic reflexivity
jidai-geki film
Heimat film
Visit launchpadworks.com to access LaunchPad for The Film Experience, which
includes:
adaptive quizzes
Film clips with critical thinking questions
Supplemental readings, including Film in Focus features and more

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PART FOUR CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES
reading and writing about film

A still from the movie, Little Women, that shows four young
women in dresses and straw hats standing side-by-side on a beach.
CHAPTER 11

Reading about Film: Critical Theories and Methods
Early and classical film theory
Postwar film criticism and culture
Contemporary film theory
New directions in film theory
CHAPTER 12
Writing a Film Essay: Observations, Arguments, Research, and
Analysis
Analytical film essays
Preparing to write
Elements of a film essay
Researching the movies
O�en our feelings and thoughts about a particular film linger well a�er
we leave the theater or turn off our TV or computer. We may puzzle over a
film’s meanings or over how it has managed to move us so deeply. We
may then seek out reviews, essays, or books about the film, its director,
or the country where it was made. Our immediate response to the images
and sounds in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women (2019) might prompt thinking
about the film’s framing, color, and score or perhaps doing some
research into Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 novel and its five earlier movie
adaptations. As we become more interested in film history, criticism,
theory, and analysis through our reading, we can also be inspired to write
about the film — in the case of Little Women, perhaps, as a reflection of a
contemporary feminist perspective — or even to produce our own video
essay about the movie.

In the final two chapters, we explore and explain how knowledge of film
criticism and theory as well as the act of researching and writing about
film deepen and enrich our experience of the movies. Chapter 11
introduces theoretical approaches to film and examines different critical
methods that have evolved over the course of film history, while Chapter
12 maps the steps and procedures for turning our initial perceptions
about a movie into a sophisticated essay that may be supported by stills
or clips from the film. Through an understanding of theoretical
speculation and critical analysis, our film experience grows and develops
in as many directions as we are willing to take it.

CHAPTER 11 READING ABOUT FILM
Critical Theories and Methods

A still from the movie, Sherlock, Junior, where Buster Keaton
examines a strip of film.

Buster Keaton’s 1924 film Sherlock, Jr. opens with a warning never to do
two things at once. Keaton plays a motion-picture projectionist who
takes on the role of detective in order to prove his romantic rival is a thief.
Soon he becomes literally split in two, as he falls asleep in the projection
booth and his dreaming self enters the fictional film on screen. His
surrogate solves the crime and gets the girl, but not before the film
explores other, non-narrative characteristics of the cinematic illusion. As
Keaton begins to sit on a bench, the film breaks verisimilitude, cutting
with a graphic match to a street scene where the actor completes his
action, only to fall down in traffic. Several additional cuts match his
pratfalls with changing backgrounds — a mountaintop, a lion-infested
jungle, a desert where he narrowly avoids being struck by a freight train.
Such bodily vulnerability to the speed and machinery of the early
twentieth century is explored in many of Keaton’s films, while viewers
remain safe in their seats. The film touches on many preoccupations of
film theory, including asking what characteristics are specific to the
medium, the place of realism, the syntax of storytelling, and the way the
movie viewer is always doing two things at once — believing in an illusion
and appreciating its cra�.
can help you review. Go to launchpadworks.com
Audiovisual technologies are now more prevalent and more
integrated with our lives than ever before. Each time a new
technology is introduced — television, home video, the internet,

http://launchpadworks.com/

mobile platforms — predictions abound that moviegoing will be
eclipsed by the new leisure forms. However, these pronouncements
on the death of cinema have been premature. What is it about the
film experience that resonates meaningfully with modern life? This
question, which emerged with the first projected moving images,
continues to drive our thinking about mediated experiences today.
Such reflection on the nature and significance of the medium is the
province of film theory. The many books, essays, and online writing
produced by theorists in this field explore the specificity of the
medium, the features of individual films or categories of films, and
the interactions between viewers and films, among other topics. In
this chapter, we introduce the theoretical study of film through
selected terms, histories, and positions. The field is ever-expanding,
so this introduction aims to orient readers toward questions rather
than to provide an exhaustive account.
Because cinema is accessible and familiar, some viewers are
skeptical about the need to theorize the medium. Yet the knowledge
that comes with avid moviegoing can itself be the foundation of a
theoretical position. Every time we go to the movies, we evaluate
elements about the film beforehand. When we choose drama or
comedy, we invoke genre; if we buy a ticket for the new Wes
Anderson film, we draw on auteur theory; and if we elect, while
acknowledging the dismissive quality of the term, a “chick flick,” we
invoke some understanding of reception theory, which focuses on
how different kinds of audiences relate to different kinds of films.

When we speak of the fictional world of The Irishman (2019) [Figure
11.1] as if it were real, we invoke the concept of verisimilitude
(having the quality of truth), and when we discuss the
improbabilities of a comic book movie, we recognize the “willing
suspension of disbelief ” required of consumers of fictional stories,
plays, and movies. Even when we select a seat at the movie theater,
implicit in our choice is an ideal vantage point from which the film
illusion will be most complete.

A still shows two men eating at a café, in a scene from the
movie, The Irishman.
11.1 The Irishman (2019). When audiences evaluate the verisimilitude of the world of
organized crime in Philadelphia, they are deploying a theoretical concept in an experiential
way.

As these examples suggest, every theoretical approach to cinema
foregrounds some elements and relegates others to the background.
Besides looking at different aspects of the experience, film theories
vary in their level of analysis and in the features that they address.
Some theories regard the cinema as a mass phenomenon that needs
to be approached on the institutional level (from the industry to the
broad-based reception of films), and others are concerned only with
formal principles. It may be helpful to think of each theory
introduced in this chapter as part of the tool kit of the cultural critic.
The tool kit metaphor implies that different theories are needed to
address different questions and that theoretical inquiry helps us not
only to take something apart but also to build models and
connections. We encourage you to read these thinkers’ own words
so that you can share in their perspectives on the field’s major
debates.
KEY OBJECTIVES
Explain the concept of cinematic specificity, and introduce the method of
formal analysis.
Describe the interdisciplinary nature of film and media studies.
Outline the major positions in classical film theory, from Soviet montage
theory to realism.
Connect auteur theory and genre criticism to postwar film culture and its
journals.
Demonstrate knowledge about the key schools of thought within
contemporary film theory, including semiotics and structuralism;
psychoanalysis and apparatus theory; feminist and queer theory; cultural

studies, including race and representation; film philosophy; postmodernism
and media convergence.
Relate new forms of film commentary including blogs, podcasts, and video
essays to the history of film theory.

The Evolution of Film Theory
Before we present an overview of the history and key debates of film
theory, we address two issues that are at the heart of the discipline
and yet seemingly at odds with each other. First, the medium of film
has elements that make it a distinct aesthetic form or mode of
communication that demands its own analytical approach. Second,
because film combines elements of other art forms and represents
various commercial, artistic, and social interests, it must also be
considered from an interdisciplinary perspective by drawing on art
history, literary theory, sociology, and other disciplines. The
excitement of studying film theory lies in the challenge of
illuminating these two seemingly contradictory dimensions.
Sustained critical interrogations — such as the writings by
filmmakers, philosophers, and academics examined here — help us
see cinema both as a distinct aesthetic form and as a social
institution that shares commonalities with other arts and cultural
experiences.
Theories of an artistic medium o�en begin by trying to define their
object — the nature of its being or ontology. How does cinema differ
from painting or photography, for example? All use pictorial
imagery, but film differs from painting because it is composed of
photographic images captured with a camera. It differs from
photography in that its images are displayed to give the illusion of

motion. As a storytelling medium, cinema borrows from the novel,
yet the way it associates images with emotions resembles poetry.
Like music, film is a time-based performance. Television borrows
audiovisual and narrative language from film, yet its consumption is
driven by different patterns of flow and interruption, contexts of
space and time, and serial storytelling. Each of these comparisons
can and has been extended. Theorists hope that from ever more
precise statements of the properties of cinema, they can develop
shared terms and inquiries.
Compare a scene from a film you have viewed either in class or on your own
with a passage from the book from which it was adapted. What elements are
specific to the film?
Questions of cinema’s medium specificity — its properties that are
unique to the medium — and its interdisciplinary links are
especially pertinent in light of today’s film technologies. Computer-
generated imagery (CGI) and new forms of distribution and display
raise interesting ontological questions about cinema. No longer is
the film image a trace of the physical contact between light and an
object that is chemically registered on film stock. Instead, the
properties of the digital image are digitally coded and thus mutable.
A computer-generated image does not have a real-world referent; in
a sense the image is the thing [Figure 11.2]. Past work in the fields of

film theory and history can help us make sense of the unique
properties of digital media, and new approaches like cognitive
science, data analysis, and game theory can contribute to the study
of contemporary film and media.

A still shows a young boy and a panther standing on a rocky
outcropping and tree branch respectively among cliffs, in a scene
from the movie, The Jungle Book.
11.2 The Jungle Book (2016). Is the nature or ontology of the film challenged by the
combination of computer-generated imagery (CGI) and photography?

While there are no clear chronological or intellectual boundaries to
the field of film theory, we can contextualize important thinkers and
understand how key principles and terms have been defined and
debated over time. Film theory and the related theories that address
new and emerging audiovisual media undoubtedly will take on
different questions in the future, and concerns will be shaped by a
long and complex intellectual history.

Early and Classical Film Theory
In this section, we begin with the earliest reflections on film that
occurred not long a�er the first public exhibitions by Thomas
Edison and the Lumière brothers. We then consider the body of
work designated as classical film theory — writing on the
fundamental questions of cinema produced in the first half of the
twentieth century. This body of commentary emerged with the
maturity of the medium in the 1920s and finds a convenient
endpoint with the publication of Siegfried Kracauer’s major work
Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality in 1960.
Early Film Theory
“Last night I was in the Kingdom of Shadows. If you only knew how
strange it is to be there,” wrote the Russian novelist Maxim Gorky
a�er attending a film screening in 1896 [Figure 11.3]. When movies
were new, observers searched for metaphors to describe the
experience of seeing them. Struck by movies’ magical properties,
viewers attempted to pinpoint what was distinctive about the
medium. Some early critics approached moviegoing as a social
phenomenon, a new form of urban entertainment characteristic of
the dawning twentieth century. Others viewed the cinema in
aesthetic terms, heralding it as the “seventh art.”

A poster titled, Cinematographe Lumiere, features a gathering
of a few men and women at a movie screening. Men are well
dressed in overcoats and hats while the women carry elegant
hairstyles.
11.3 Advertisement for the Lumière Brothers’ invention. Visitors to the first film showings
were prompted to speculate about the new form.

Although today film theory is now considered part of an academic
discipline, earlier writers on the topic came from many contexts and
traditions outside the university, making any overview of the history
of film theory a disjunctive one. A few early theorists wrote books,
yet equally important theoretical contributions were made in
journals, essays, and lectures. Some early writers on film were
critics of other art forms or scholars in other disciplines, and many
were filmmakers who shared their ideas and excitement about the
developing medium with one another in specialized publications.
Film theorists since the inception of the medium have examined the
following questions:
Is cinema an art form? How does it relate to photography,
painting, theater, music, and other art forms?
Does film resemble language or have a language of its own?
Is film’s primary responsibility to tell a story?
Is film by nature a realist medium?
What is the place of film in the modern world that fostered its
development?
Two noteworthy books on movies appeared in the United States as
early as the 1910s. Poet Vachel Lindsay’s The Art of the Moving Picture
(1915) responded enthusiastically to the novelty and the
democratizing potential of the medium. “I am the one poet who has
a right to claim for his muses Blanche Sweet, Mary Pickford, and
Mae Marsh,” he stated, invoking the popular movie stars of the day.
In his idiosyncratic but suggestive book, Lindsay likened film

language to hieroglyphics. This metaphor of picture writing
reflected cinema’s promise of universality, which excited many early
observers.
A more systematic elaboration of ideas about cinema was
contributed by Harvard University psychologist Hugo Münsterberg
in The Photoplay: A Psychological Study (1916). For Münsterberg,
viewing films was linked to the subjective process of thinking. The
properties of cinema that distinguished it from the physical reality
to which its images referred made it interesting aesthetically and
psychologically. Unlike watching a play, watching movies requires
specific mental activities to make sense of cues of movement and
depth. “The photoplay tells us the human story by overcoming the
forms of the outer world, namely, space, time, and causality, and by
adjusting the events to the forms of the inner world, namely,
attention, memory, imagination, and emotion,” wrote Münsterberg.
His ideas thus emphasize the viewer’s mental interaction with the
medium. Decades later, theories of spectatorship did the same.
Lindsay’s work praised specific films, but Münsterberg referred to
the photoplay in general. In a sense, their works mark the division
between criticism, which reflects on a given aesthetic object, and
theory, which is broader and more abstract.
Outside the United States, much early writing about cinema came
from filmmakers themselves. Although movies immediately became
commercialized, they emerged and flourished in the context of

modernist experimentation in the arts — music, writing, theater,
painting, architecture, and photography. Because film was based on
new technology, many considered it an exemplary art for the
machine age. Film influenced new approaches to established media,
such as cubism in painting and the “automatic writing” of the
surrealists. In turn, filmmakers adopted avant-garde practices, and
painters like Hans Richter took up filmmaking to explore graphic
and rhythmic possibilities. Modernist intellectuals debated cinema’s
aesthetic status and its relationship to the other arts.
French impressionist cinema was an avant-garde film movement of
the late 1910s and 1920s that aimed to destabilize familiar or
objective ways of seeing through cinema. The movement was
fostered by groups known as ciné clubs and by journals dedicated to
the new medium. In Cinéma, Louis Delluc coined the term
photogénie to refer to a particular quality that distinguishes the
filmed object from its everyday reality. Jean Epstein elaborated on
this elusive concept in poetic writings such as “Bonjour Cinéma” and
in his film adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s story The Fall of the House
of Usher (1928). Another key filmmaker of the period, Germaine
Dulac, compared film to music in her extensive writings and
lectures. Film theory and practice began to flourish jointly during
this time and continued to develop in tandem in the period between
the world wars [Figure 11.4].

The cover of a magazine, Mon Ciné, features Germaine Dulac.
Figure 11.4 Mon Ciné. Filmmaker, theorist, and feminist writer Germaine Dulac (pictured
here on the cover of Mon Ciné magazine on October 25, 1923) was a key figure in French
avant-garde cinema of the 1920s.

Classical Film Theories: Formalism
and Realism
Intellectual interest in the medium of film and its relation to
contemporary times intensified as its technological and industrial
organization, social role, and dominant styles solidified in the 1920s.
Art historians like Rudolf Arnheim and Erwin Panofsky and film
practitioners produced significant essays and full-length books on
film theory. Although many film theorists sought to define the
formal elements of film and their effects, both for practical reasons
and to enter into debate with traditional theories of aesthetics,
others held that the medium’s appeal to realism was fundamental.
Traditionally these positions are opposed to each other as
formalism, a critical approach to cinema that emphasizes formal
properties of the text or medium over content or context, and
realism, which emphasizes the connection or quality of
resemblance to the natural world.
Stories about the presentation of the Lumière brothers’ film at the
Grand Café in Paris invariably describe audiences that shrank from
the arriving train or feared they would be splashed by ocean waves
[Figure 11.5]. Such stories characterize cinema as realist and lacking
the aesthetic distance of the other arts.

A still from the black-and-white movie, Arrival of a Train at La
Ciotat, shows a train pulling into a station where a crowd waits.
11.5 Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1896). The account of audiences running from the moving
train at the first public film screening is a foundational myth of film history.

As we shall see, for realist theorists such as André Bazin and
Siegfried Kracauer, film, like photography, was distinct because of
its referential quality — its ability to refer to the world through
images that resemble and record the presence of objects and
sources of sounds. For formalists like Sergei Eisenstein and Béla
Balázs, cinema is an art. Editing and close-ups are the basis of film’s
meanings and effects; realism is only a style that uses form in a
particular way. Another approach to form can be found in the work
of Walter Benjamin, who was interested in the way that film affects
the sensory perception of the viewer. Although the debates between
these positions became quite polemical, neither one prevailed. The
tension between the formal and realist properties of the medium
remains at the heart of film theory.
Formalist Theories
Although some theorists might postulate that cinema is defined by
some ineffable essence, most would characterize it by its form. In
classical film theory, formalists looked to unique capabilities of
cinema — such as camera movement and distance and shot duration
and rhythm — to find meaning in the work itself. Some correlated
aspects of film, like editing, to the fragmented experiences of
modern life. Much of this work is indebted to influential theorist-
filmmakers like Sergei Eisenstein.
Soviet Montage Theory

As is detailed in the discussion of editing in Chapter 5, the montage
theory of Eisenstein and other Soviet filmmakers of the 1920s has
shaped both film practice and film theory. The 1917 Russian
Revolution catalyzed a group of artist-intellectuals to develop formal
means to express a new social order. Stylistic innovations in graphic
and set design, painting, and sculpture were synthesized in the new
medium of cinema, which, with its technological base and populist
reach, was celebrated as a perfect expression of communist
modernization. Lev Kuleshov’s teaching at the state film school,
where Vsevolod Pudovkin and Sergei Eisenstein were his students,
put the theory of montage at the center of Soviet filmmaking. In
Mother (1926) [Figure 11.6] and other films, Pudovkin used montage
to break down a scene to direct the spectator’s look and
understanding. In contrast, Eisenstein’s theory of montage, outlined
in one of the most significant bodies of writing in film theory,
emphasized the effects of collision between shots. Soviet filmmaker
Dziga Vertov also contributed to film theory in the form of
manifestos signed by the Kinoki, or “cinema-eye” group. Vertov’s
avant-garde writings emphasized the new way of seeing made
possible by the movie camera’s ability to overcome the limitations of
the human eye. He rejected the fiction film in favor of “life caught
unawares” and was an early experimenter with the possibilities of
sound.

A still from the black-and-white movie, Mother, shows a woman
holding a flag.
11.6 Mother (1926). Like other Soviet filmmakers, Vsevolod Pudovkin emphasized the power
of montage. But although Eisenstein favored dissonant effects, Pudovkin pioneered the

orchestration of emotion through cutting, as in this powerful adaptation of Maxim Gorky’s
novel.
Film Aesthetics
Like the Soviet montage theorists, Béla Balázs and Rudolf Arnheim
championed formalist theories of film. Balázs, best known for his
book Theory of the Film (1952), was a Hungarian screenwriter and
film critic who also worked in the Soviet Union and published his
first book of film theory in 1924. Balázs argues that film broke with
the theater and the other arts by allowing for viewer identification.
In watching a movie, he writes, “we look up to Juliet’s balcony with
Romeo’s eyes and look down on Romeo with Juliet’s.” In particular,
Balázs wrote eloquently on the power of the close-up, an element of
film art impossible to approximate onstage: “by means of the close-
up the camera in the days of the silent film revealed also the hidden
main-springs of a life which we had thought we already knew so
well” [Figure 11.7].

A still from the movie, Hamlet, shows a close-up of Asta Neilsen
looking to the side.
11.7 Asta Nielsen as Hamlet (1921). Theorist Béla Balázs believed the close-up could reveal
the soul onscreen and wrote eloquently about Danish silent film star Asta Nielsen’s face in
close-up.

German art historian Rudolf Arnheim argued even more strongly for
a formalist position in his 1933 study Film, which was later revised
for English publication as Film as Art (1957). For Arnheim, the quest
for film realism is a betrayal of the unique aesthetic properties of
the medium that allow it to transcend the imitation of nature. He set
out to “refute the assertion that film is nothing but the feeble
mechanical reproduction of real life.” For example, his assertation
that “film pictures are at once plane and solid” was not a limitation
but an aesthetic parameter to be exploited by filmmakers and
recognized by theorists. Like Münsterberg, Arnheim was interested
in the psychology of perception and did not value the quality of
resemblance above other responses to images.
Film and Modernity
The theorist Walter Benjamin was particularly interested in how
cinema participated in the transformation of human perception.
Benjamin wrote about cinema as well as photography in his famous
1935 essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological
Reproducibility.” For Benjamin, the comparison of photography and
film with painting does not hinge on their relative artistic value.
Rather, they differ because these new art forms do not produce
unique objects with the “aura” of an original artwork. Instead, film
captures, in multiple widely circulating copies, the sense of
accelerated time and effortlessly traversed space typical of

contemporary urban life. Benjamin regarded the distracted state of
the film viewer as both a response to its formal properties and
characteristic of the historical moment.
Realism
Formalist positions dominated in the 1920s, but the question of
realism emerged soon a�er as the central debate of classical film
theory. The momentous technical development of synchronized
sound was accompanied by new speculation on the nature of the
medium: does sound allow film to fulfill a mission to reproduce the
world as it is, or does sound hinder cinema’s visual expression?
Realism, generally speaking, serves the aim of mimesis, or
imitation of reality, in the arts. The mimetic quality has been valued
in the Western artistic tradition since ancient Greece. If the
formalists saw the film screen as akin to a picture frame, the realists
saw it as a window.
During and a�er World War II, a reconsideration of realism was
prompted by political events as well as by technical innovations and
new filmmaking movements. One of the most prominent film critics
and theorists of the 1950s and 1960s, André Bazin, saw film as
quintessentially realist, a medium “in which the image is evaluated
not according to what it adds to reality but what it reveals of it.”
Bazin responded directly to the formalists who preceded him, and
he serves as an important predecessor of contemporary film studies

in turn (Bazin’s influence through Cahiers du cinéma is discussed
later in this chapter).
In his essay “The Evolution of the Language of Cinema” (1950–1955),
Bazin expresses the view that cinema’s essence lies in its ability to
capture a space and event in real time. Montage interferes with this
vocation, he argues, by altering spatial and temporal relationships.
He advocates instead for scenes conveyed through composition in
depth, made possible by deep-focus cinematography using wide-
angle lenses. If all planes of the image can be kept in view, cutting
between shots taken from different distances is less necessary. For
Bazin, a filmmaker like Jean Renoir, who staged scenes in depth
using long takes, conveys “respect for the continuity of dramatic
space and, of course, of its duration.” Bazin sees the image as a
reference to both reality and the viewer’s presence — and ultimately
as a means of transcending time.
Another formidable thinker on film, Siegfried Kracauer, is, like
Bazin, best known for his strong advocacy of realism, although
Kracauer’s position evolved over time. In the 1920s, he began writing
newspaper essays in Weimar Germany amid modernist
experimentation with film form. In “The Mass Ornament” (1927),
Kracauer explores the aesthetics of mass culture and the new
rhythms of life it inspired [Figure 11.8], and in 1947 he published
From Caligari to Hitler, an influential study subtitled “a psychological
history of the German film.” In 1960, he elaborated his views on

film’s capacity for realism in his major work, Theory of Film: The
Redemption of Physical Reality. In this work, Kracauer argues that the
cinematic medium “is uniquely equipped to record and reveal
physical reality.” Not only does film provide a window on the
phenomenal world, but more important for Kracauer, film also
preserves what otherwise would be destroyed — the momentary, the
everyday, the random.

A still from the black-and-white movie, Footlight Parade, shows
numerous chorus girls performing on a conical series of raised
platforms on stage.
11.8 Footlight Parade (1933). In his writings of the 1920s and early 1930s, Siegfried Kracauer
cites the almost abstract patterns of chorus girls in performance as examples of what he
calls “mass ornament.”

Postwar Film Culture and Criticism
Film theorists’ renewed interest in cinematic realism was shaped by
the devastating events of World War II and its a�ermath. Kracauer’s
experience as a German Jewish refugee influenced his views on
cinema as a kind of historical evidence. Bazin, an activist Roman
Catholic and member of the French Resistance, invested film with
similar redemptive properties. For example, Bazin valued the
postwar Italian neorealist movement — exemplified in films like
Germany Year Zero (1948) with its amateur actors showing the
hardships of postwar existence in actual locations [Figure 11.9] —
because it demonstrates what Bazin calls “faith in reality.”

A still shows a man crossing a railway track next to a bombed
building in a scene from the black-and-white movie, Germany
Year Zero.
11.9 Germany Year Zero (1948). For André Bazin, Roberto Rossellini’s film, set on location in
postwar Berlin, puts its “faith in reality.”

In the period of recovery from the trauma and destruction of the
war, neorealism led a vigorous resurgence of international film
culture. The new art cinema was supported by a network of film
festivals and journals. Film theory could not have taken hold
without the flurry of filmmaking and lively debates of this period.
Film Journals
Analyze a recent film you viewed from a realist position. Can you identify a
scene that might support André Bazin’s ideas about the long take or Siegfried
Kracauer’s ideas about photography’s power to capture the everyday?
Perhaps the most famous postwar film journal, Cahiers du cinéma,
was cofounded by Bazin in 1951 [Figure 11.10]. Under Bazin’s
mentorship, the magazine published the criticism of the young
cineastes — François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer,
Jacques Rivette, and Claude Chabrol — who shaped the French New
Wave (see Chapter 2). These writers were getting much of their film
education at the Cinémathèque Française, where Henri Langlois
screened an eclectic menu of world film — including the hundreds
of American studio films that could not be released in France during
the Vichy period. The writings of the Cahiers critics and the films
that they made energized world film culture and lay the groundwork
for the emergence of the discipline of film studies in universities.

11.10 Polyester (1981). In cinephile John Waters’s film, Divine reads an issue of the French
film journal that introduced auteur theory in the 1950s.
Rival journals in France, Positif and Cinéthique, also flourished, and
the polemics among them catalyzed film enthusiasts. Publications
like Movie in England and the English-language Cahiers du cinéma,
edited by Andrew Sarris in New York, disseminated French criticism
and the auteur theory. In the United States, Film Culture was at the
heart of the avant-garde New American cinema movement in the
1950s and 1960s, and the University of California’s Film Quarterly,
published under that title since 1958, introduced many key ideas of
film theory.
A�er the cultural upheavals provoked by general strikes in France in
May 1968, Cahiers du cinéma became both more political and more
theoretical, with collectively written editorials and in-depth analyses

of ideology and form in films like Young Mr. Lincoln (1939). In the
1970s, writers for the British journal Screen introduced the Marxist,
semiotic, and psychoanalytic language and ideas from France that
permeated Anglo-American cinema studies for more than a decade.
Writing on film was not limited to periodicals. Monographs and
series on individual directors, national cinemas, and genres
proliferated. Many of these low-cost, portable “little books”
combined the popular and the scholarly and encouraged the
development of academic publishing in the field.
Auteur Theory
The ideas cultivated in these publications informed both popular
criticism and academic theory. Auteur theory is an approach to
cinema first proposed in Cahiers du cinéma that emphasizes the
director as the expressive force behind a film and sees a director’s
body of work as united by common themes or formal strategies. It
emerged in the 1950s when specific directors were vocally
championed by the French critics. The retention of the French word
auteur in English marks this origin. Cahiers du cinéma promoted
what its writers called la politique des auteurs — a “policy” (or
doctrine) of authors — singling out for praise such filmmakers as
Orson Welles, Fritz Lang, Samuel Fuller, and Robert Bresson, whose
distinct styles made their films immediately identifiable. European
art cinema was in its ascendance, with figures like Ingmar Bergman
and Michelangelo Antonioni fitting the definition of an auteur as an

autonomous writer-director. Yet Cahiers du cinéma’s concept of
authorship was also applied to a group of filmmakers for whom the
idea of such conscious and consistent creative artistry seemed less
appropriate — directors working in the heyday of the Hollywood
studio system.
Critics argued that Hollywood auteurs such as Raoul Walsh and
Howard Hawks le� their signature on their films in the form of
characteristic motifs or striking compositions, defying studio
constraints on artistic autonomy in favor of market considerations.
Debates arose over whether a particular director should be classified
a true auteur or a mere metteur-en-scène, the French term for
director that here denotes a mere “stager” or stylist whose technical
competence is not marked by the strong individual vision of the
auteur. In America, auteur theory was popularized by Andrew Sarris
in Film Culture, the Village Voice, and his 1968 collection The
American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929–1968. Sarris includes
Hawks, Charlie Chaplin, Welles, and John Ford in what he calls the
“pantheon,” while deflating the reputations of Academy Award–
winners like William Wyler. In Sarris’s hierarchy of Hollywood
talent, the judgment of the critic prevails in assigning relative status
to directors. Like that of the French critics, Sarris’s work depends on
a deep cinephilia, or love of cinema, and an almost exhaustive
knowledge of the major and minor films released throughout the
previous several decades. Sarris’s rendering of the phrase la politique
des auteurs as “auteur theory” in English is somewhat misleading. It

is less a fully worked-out theory than a critical method, and its
political connotation is lost in translation.
The auteurist approach tends to minimize the fact that cinema is a
collaborative, commercial, and highly technologically mediated
form. Making a film is not as personal as authoring a poem, and
because many individuals contribute to a film, it can be hard to
assign credit to a single authorial vision, especially in studio-
produced work. Critic Pauline Kael spoke out against Sarris’s ideas
and argued that writer Herman Mankiewicz rather than Orson
Welles should be credited for coming up with Citizen Kane’s (1941)
original structure and that cinematographer Gregg Toland’s work
distinguishes the film’s look. In commercial cinema, a producer,
studio, or franchise may be more important than a director. Today a
director credit such as “a J. J. Abrams film” may be a matter of
contractual obligations and financial arrangements. Film theorist
(and coauthor of this book) Timothy Corrigan discusses the
contemporary use of the director as brand as “the commerce of
auteurism.” Perhaps the biggest challenge to auteurism is that it
recounts film history through the contributions of white male
creators. Women and people of color were excluded from the
director’s chair during the heyday of the Hollywood studio system,
and the numbers remain very imbalanced in the industry today. For
this reason, the concept of authorship, when applied to
underrepresented groups, becomes about more than individual
vision. It points to historical exclusions and conditions of labor and

to the important relationship between filmmakers and the
audiences they represent and address.
Genre Theory
In film, genre criticism, like auteur theory, was invigorated by the
film culture of post–World War II France when American films that
had not been released during that country’s occupation by Germany
were finally exhibited all at once, and usually without subtitles,
making commonalities easy to identify. Like auteur criticism, genre
criticism depends on cinephilia. Making critical judgments based on
only a few films would be imprudent, genre critics argue.
Because different genres work out different cultural questions or
problems, they tend to emerge and decline in particular periods.
Critic Thomas Schatz, in his 1981 book Hollywood Genres: Formulas,
Filmmaking, and the Studio System, for example, sees musicals as
celebrating cultural integration, o�en symbolized by the couple
coming together, whereas westerns move toward the establishment
of a home, one that the wandering hero cannot himself enjoy.
American philosopher Stanley Cavell uses genre to frame his
arguments about film as a form of thinking. In Pursuits of Happiness:
The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage, he understands the remarriage
plot common in screwball comedies as a way of posing central
questions about what it means to be human; in Contesting Tears: The

Hollywood Melodrama of the Unknown Woman, he argues that similar
questions posed by melodrama receive different answers in the
figure of the “unknown woman.”

Contemporary Film Theory
By the 1970s, film studies had become an established discipline,
with strong footholds in English and art history programs as well as
its own academic departments, societies, and journals. During this
time, the vocabulary of film theory became very specialized.
Although the terminology can initially be intimidating, it was
developed to offer a more systematic approach to cinema than the
o�en subjective and impressionistic legacy of film criticism.
The following overview of contemporary film theory is organized
according to major critical schools within the discipline. There are
important interrelationships among these schools, and o�en one set
of questions grows out of another. For example, when feminist film
theory looks at our unconscious identification with characters
onscreen, it overlaps with psychoanalytic theory. When it looks at
how some genres are associated with female viewers, it overlaps
with cultural studies. However, establishing the evolution of and
broad outlines for each area of contemporary film theory is a useful
way to raise questions for further study.
Structuralism and Semiotics
Structuralism and semiotics were extremely important to the
emergence of the field of film studies. These two schools of thought

sought to understand film as an important social force as well as a
specifically audiovisual form of communication. In a 1968 essay,
French literary critic Roland Barthes declared “the death of the
author,” arguing that the artist’s conscious intention and biography
should be set aside in favor of an encounter with the qualities of the
text itself. Just when auteur theory had extended the cultural
prestige of the literary author to filmmakers, literary critics were
calling into question the traditional notion of authorial genius.
These new perspectives had their roots in structuralism, an
approach to linguistics and anthropology that, when extended to
literary and filmic narratives, looks for common structures rather
than artistic originality.
The origins of structuralism lie in the structural linguistics of
Ferdinand de Saussure in the early part of the twentieth century,
and the approach was widely influential in French thought in the
1960s. Because of this linguistic influence, film theorists compared
the medium to language. For Saussure, linguistics was the most
exemplary case of a new science of signs he called semiology, which
included pictures, gestures, and many other systems of
communication. Semiology or semiotics is the study of signs and
signification. It posits that meaning is constructed and
communicated through the selection, ordering, and interpretation
of signs. A sign is something that signifies something else, whether
the connection is causal, conventional, or based on resemblance.
For Saussure, a sign is composed of a signifier (a spoken or written
word, picture, or gesture) and a signified (the mental concept

evoked by a signifier). Together, the signifier c-a-t and the signified
mental image of a domesticated feline form a sign, and the two parts
cannot be imagined without each other. In a particular instance, the
sign cat might refer to a specific feline, which would be its referent,
the thing for which a sign stands. The analyst looks at the gap
between the referent and the sign and the distinction between the
signifier and the signified in order to isolate general rules or codes
that apply to specific instances of communication or messages. The
code of language, for example, allows English speakers and listeners
to share the meaning of the word winter as one of four seasons, its
denotation (the literal meaning of a word). Cultural codes, however,
are responsible for the connotations of cold and snow, the
associations connected with a word or sign.
For C. S. Peirce, the American philosopher who in the late
nineteenth century coined the term semiotics, there are three
varieties of signs — symbol, icon, and index. A symbolic sign (such
as a word) has an arbitrary relationship to its referent that is
assigned by language, which originates in culture. An iconic sign
(such as a photograph or film) signifies its referents through a
relationship of resemblance. Finally, an indexical sign (such as a
footprint that indicates a person walked on a path or a weathervane
that points in the direction the wind blows) has a direct causal
relationship with the object depicted. This relationship can be
likened to pointing or indicating, which is implied by the word
index. An indexical sign like a photographic image is a product of a

process in which light is reflected from an object and produces an
image that is fixed by the chemical emulsion on film.
Pictures, especially photographs and film or video images (which
are iconic and indexical signs), are o�en identified more strongly
with their referents than are words (symbolic signs), which are
connected to what they designate by convention only. In his famous
painting The Treachery of Images (1929), René Magritte painted the
words “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (“This is not a pipe”) under the image
of a pipe. At first glance, the words seem absurd because they seem
to refer to what is unmistakably a picture of a pipe. But a picture of a
pipe is not a real pipe you would hold and use to smoke tobacco; it is
merely its iconic sign. No essential nature of an object is captured in
a sign, of whatever kind. Semiotics stresses language as a human
invention and social convention, and the ways that these
conventions have been described by linguistics’ scientific
methodology have allowed theorists to approach cinema
systematically rather than subjectively and evaluatively. Semiotic
methods of formal analysis are based on these systematic attempts
at understanding. Theorists identify how cinematic codes (such as
camera movements and lighting) create meaningful patterns in
specific films and across genres.
The legacy of linguistics has also been felt in theories of film
narrative. Building on Ferdinand de Saussure’s structural linguistics,
French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss titled his important 1957

work Structural Anthropology. Lévi-Strauss studied thousands of
myths and discovered that they share basic structures that help
shape cultural life. Russian folklorist Vladimir Propp noticed a
similar unity in his study of hundreds of folktales. He found that
many different plots had in common a limited number of characters
performing a limited number of functions in the same order. These
basic elements are echoed in many other narrative forms.
Narratology — the study of narrative forms — is a branch of
structuralism that encompasses stories of all kinds, including films.
Are there a limited number of basic plot elements available to
filmmakers? Are genres like myths? Because movies are so
formulaic and so strikingly similar to myths and folktales even when
not explicitly based on them, narratological studies had fruitful
results. The characters in the Star Wars series (1977–2019), for
example, closely match the heroes, antiheroes, magical helpers,
princesses, and witches of the folktales Propp studied [Figure
11.11].

11.11 Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope (1977). George Lucas acknowledged that
mythologist Joseph Campbell influenced him in creating the plot of the first Star Wars (1977)
movie. Narratologists would recognize the dramatis personae of the hero, the helper, and
the princess in the film’s main characters.
Watch the online clip of The Wizard of Oz (1939), and consider how its plot
resembles a fairy tale.

The linguists known as the Russian formalists, contemporaries of
Sergei Eisenstein and Vladimir Propp, contributed the important
distinction between plot and story (addressed in Chapter 7) to the
study of narrative. In their terms, syuzhet (plot) refers to the way
events are selected and arranged in the actual tale or film, and
fabula (story) refers to the chronologically ordered sequence of
events as we rationally reconstruct it. For example, a detective
story’s syuzhet follows the detective’s progress through the
investigation. Its fabula commences with the circumstances leading
up to the committing of the crime.
Structuralist theorists reduce narrative to its most basic form: an
opening situation is disrupted, a hero takes action as a result, and a
new equilibrium is reached at the end. The novel, the distinctive
middle-class cultural form of the nineteenth century, gave the hero

psychological depth within a realistic field of action. These
novelistic qualities were adopted by motion pictures, whose realist
capacity reinforced them as norms. Film theorists drew on
structuralism, semiotics, and the formalist positions of classical film
theory to identify the conventions of classical narrative form and
realism as a dominant, but not inevitable, form of cinema.
Ideological Critique
Influenced by Marxist theory, contemporary film theory used
structuralism and semiotics as tools to critique ideologies seen to be
underlying both the content and the dominant form of motion
pictures. For example, a structuralist reading of the musical Singin’
in the Rain (1952) that is critical of its ideological message would
show that the technology and labor involved in making a Hollywood
film are subordinated to the film’s romance plot. Marxism is most
immediately understood as a political and economic discourse that
looks at history and society in terms of unequal class relations. But
French thought — catalyzed by the radical social disruptions,
political protests, and intellectual currents of the late 1960s —
brought Marxism to bear on cultural forms like film.
Louis Althusser approached the traditional Marxist question of the
nature of ideology — a systematic set of beliefs that are not
necessarily conscious or acknowledged — with a new explanation of
how people come to accept ideas and conditions that are contrary to

their interests. Althusser defined ideology as “the imaginary
representation of the real relations in which we live.” According to
him, real relations (such as paid work that contributes to the profits
of others) disempower working people in the interests of the ruling
class, and our imaginary representations (that this is the way things
are supposed to be, according to narratives such as the evening
news and Hollywood genre films) make this powerlessness seem
inevitable and tolerable.
For the critics at Cahiers du cinéma, film became an important test of
Althusser’s theories about ideology because it affects viewers’ beliefs
on an unconscious level. In their 1969 editorial for the journal, Jean-
Louis Comolli and Jean Narboni examined varieties of film practice
and classified films in seven categories (from a to g) according to
their relationship with the “dominant ideology.” “Category a” films
are those Comolli and Narboni perceived as most politically and
formally consistent with the dominant ideology. “Category b” films
include those that break with the dominant ideology on the level of
content (for example, films that portrayed decolonization and the
conflict over U.S. involvement in Vietnam) and on the level of form
(for example, experimental films that disturb easy viewing
processes).
Does the film you are watching put forth a clear ideological position? Are there
ways to see conflicting positions in it?

But Comolli and Narboni’s editorial set an even more lasting agenda
for film theory in their practice of ideological critique. They used
“category e” to designate Hollywood films that seem to uphold the
status quo but that present formal excesses or internal
contradictions that register the stresses and strains of trying to
make the dominant ideology seem inevitable. Careful viewers can
read these codes and see the film as a representation of or argument
about the social world rather than as an unchangeable reality. Soon,
other critics followed Comolli and Narboni’s lead in reading films in
this way. In these readings, critics found the films of studio-era
auteur Douglas Sirk’s 1950s melodramas — All That Heaven Allows
(1955), for example — to be too color-coordinated, his characters too
hysterical, and their environments too crammed with artificial
commodities to be taken at face value [Figure 11.12]. These glossy
surfaces were seen to be cracking under the brittle hypocrisies —
anti-Communist hysteria, repression of the civil rights of African
Americans, and the enforcement of restrictive gender roles and
sexual codes that had been challenged during the war — of the
prosperous, Eisenhower-era America they depicted. Sirk’s films are
what these critics called “progressive texts.” They leave us with an
uneasy feeling that can be taken as a critique of dominant ideology.
This subtle and sometimes wishful approach is known as
“symptomatic reading” and is a fruitful legacy of Althusser’s
ideological critique in contemporary film theory.

11.12 All That Heaven Allows (1955). Critics regarded Douglas Sirk’s melodramas as
“progressive texts” whose formal excesses and improbable situations showed the cracks in
Eisenhower-era America’s facade of prosperity and social consensus.
Poststructuralism
As the term implies, poststructuralism was an intellectual
development that challenged the methodology and fixed definitions
of structuralism. It did so by emphasizing the place of subjectivity,
the unreliability of language, and the role of social power in cultural
forms. It included many distinct areas of thought, including
psychoanalytic, postcolonial, and feminist theory. Poststructuralism
asked us to reconsider truths and hierarchies normally taken for
granted. For example, our implicit standard that a satisfying film ties
up all its loose ends is a structuralist position that posits closure as a

basic narrative element. Poststructuralism countered that closure is
a relative quality and stresses the open-endedness of stories. What
happens if we daydream about the characters we have been
introduced to or pick up on the relationship between a film and
topical events?
As an intellectual movement, poststructuralism was a great deal
messier than structuralism. Whereas structuralism attempted to be
systematic by looking for transhistorical common patterns into
which specific data could fit, poststructuralism questioned
structuralism’s assumption of objectivity and its disregard for
cultural and historical context. A shorthand definition might be
“structuralism + subjectivity = poststructuralism.” Much of
contemporary film theory remains poststructuralist in orientation
because it explores the intersection of subjectivity with film
structures. This is primarily done through drawing on the insights of
psychoanalytic theory.
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalytic theory comes into play in describing the psychic
processes we undergo when experiencing the film illusion. When
we watch films in a movie theater, we are immobile and surrounded
in darkness and become absorbed in a larger-than-life image.
Identification, desire, and disavowal of the illusory quality of the

image are some of the processes that are activated as we watch a
film.
Film theory was greatly affected by the ways French psychoanalyst
Jacques Lacan described human subjectivity. Images were central to
his account. In his teachings from the 1950s through his death in
1981, Lacan spoke of three domains of psychic experience: the
“imaginary realm” deals in images, the “symbolic realm” is the
domain of language, and the “real” is experienced as a trauma that
cannot be directly represented. For Lacanian film theorists, people
relate to pictures (the imaginary) in a powerful way that is rooted in
one of the earliest images to leave an impression on us — our own
reflection in the mirror. In the mirror stage, the infant comes to
recognize himself or herself as a human individual, but this
recognition is also a “misrecognition” because it is routed through
an image that is an illusion.
Lacanian film theorists like Jean-Louis Baudry and Christian Metz
likened this early sense of self, which is both powerful and illusory,
to the experience of viewing a film and “believing” in its world. This
sense of power in enhanced by the way that films portray stars and
characters with physical powers superior to ours and with whom we
identify [Figure 11.13]. Although the symbolic and the real also
come into play in our encounters with movies, the imaginary
accounts for their power. This dimension of the film experience was
elaborated by analogy with the viewing process itself.

11.13 Captain Marvel (2019). The transformation from human to superhero facilitates the
audience’s identification with movie characters who are idealized versions of themselves.
Apparatus Theory
In Plato’s parable of the cave, people are chained underground
watching shadows on the wall and do not know that what they see is
not real. Film theorist Jean-Louis Baudry saw the cinema as similar
to the cave — as an ideological mechanism that is based in a physical
set of technologies that has the power to convince us that an illusion
is real. He uses the term apparatus to argue that the arrangement of
movie equipment (such as the hidden projector and the illuminated
screen) influences our unconscious receptivity to the image and to
ideology — as if we, too, are trapped in Plato’s cave.
Apparatus theory argues that the very mechanics on which film is
based — including cameras, projectors, and screens — were
developed according to certain ideologies that then are reproduced

in the viewing experience. It explores the values built into film
technologies through the context of the medium’s historical
development. The camera’s monocular (single-eyed) perspective is
based on the values of human-scaled Renaissance art, in which the
viewer stands at the point where perspective lines converge.
Apparatus theory asserts that this position is not neutral but
embodies Western cultural values — like anthropocentrism (human-
centeredness), individualism, possessiveness, and the elevation of
the visual over other senses. A culture that did not put the
possessive individual at the center of representation — a culture that
equally valued animals and people, for example, or senses other
than sight in the arts — might never have developed the technology
of photography.
The film viewer is in the same perspectival position as the camera
that filmed the image and can thus imagine himself or herself as the
originator or possessor of the illusion on the screen. This sense of
one’s self is double-edged. According to poststructuralism, an
individual who stands in front of a Renaissance painting or watches
a classical Hollywood movie is “subjected” to the apparatus’s
positioning and is granted his or her “subjectivity” or sense of self
only in these predetermined conditions.
Theorists argue that subjects are constituted through language or
through other acts of signification (meaning making), such as film.
For example, the word I has no definite meaning until it is used by

someone in a conversation, and its meaning shi�s as each speaker
in the conversation uses I to refer to himself or herself. In turn,
because viewers cannot “talk back” when they watch a movie (as
they can with video games, websites, and interactive films), they can
be said to be constituted only as the object of the film’s address: they
are meant to laugh, cry, or put together clues as the film unfolds.
Spectatorship
How audiences interact with films and with the cinematic apparatus
is addressed through the theory of spectatorship — the process of
film viewing. Spectatorship has been a concern in film theory since
Münsterberg, who used psychology to explain the mind’s role in
making sense of movies. In the poststructuralist theory of the 1970s,
spectatorship stood at the convergence of theories of language,
subjectivity, psychoanalysis, and ideology.
Consider your experience as a spectator of the film screened most recently for
class. Did you relate to the point of view of a particular character, or was your
perspective more omniscient? Were you aware of the apparatus (camera,
projector, screen)?
Christian Metz was one of the most prolific and influential
contemporary promoters of spectatorship theory. In his book The

Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema (1977), he argues
that film’s strong perceptual presence — giant images projected in a
dark room with immersive sound — makes it an almost
hallucinatory experience. Going to the movies gratifies our
voyeurism (looking without being seen ourselves) and plays to our
unconscious self-image of power. It is as if what is shown on the
screen is made possible by our presence. The work of Metz and
other French theorists appeared in translation in the influential
English journal Screen in the early 1970s, and the great influence of
what is sometimes known as screen theory on the field led to the
specialized use of the term spectatorship to indicate these
psychoanalytically informed theories.
Theories of Gender and Sexuality
The poststructuralist account of spectatorship and subjectivity
remains abstract if given only in general terms. In psychoanalytic
theory, subjectivity is understood as constructed by familial models
and wider cultural influences, even when normative gender roles
are resisted. Theories of gender and sexuality have been integral to
film theory’s exploration of how subjectivity is engaged by and
constructed in cinema.
Feminist Film Theory

As feminism began to have wide social and intellectual currency in
the 1970s, commentators noted ways that female and male images
were treated differently in film. In advertising, pornography, and
painting, the objectification of the female image seemed to solicit a
possessive, implicitly male gaze. In film, feminist critics noted, the
spectator was envisioned in a similarly gendered way. “Is the gaze
male?” asked E. Ann Kaplan in a 1983 essay of the same title, noting
that vision in our culture is o�en associated with traits of ownership
and power that are typically seen as male.
British theorist and filmmaker Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and
Narrative Cinema,” published in Screen in 1975, is considered by
many to be the most important essay in contemporary film theory.
Arguing that psychoanalysis offers a compelling account of how the
differences between the sexes are culturally determined, Mulvey
applied this account to cinema as a cultural institution enforcing
such differences. She observes that the glamorous and desirable
female image in film is also a potentially threatening vision of
difference, or otherness, for male viewers [Figure 11.14]. Hollywood
films repeat a pattern of visual mastery of the woman as “other” by
attributing the onscreen gaze to a male character who can cover for
the camera’s voyeurism — its capacity for looking without being
seen — and stand in for the male viewer. Film narratives also tend to
domesticate or otherwise tame the woman, Mulvey showed, offering
analyses of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) and Rear Window (1954),
whose stories are driven by voyeurism and involve makeovers of

their central female characters. Essentially, Mulvey argues that the
standard dichotomy in Hollywood film is “woman as image/man as
bearer of the look.”
11.14 And God Created Woman (1956). Brigitte Bardot’s character exemplifies what Laura
Mulvey calls woman’s “to-be-looked-at-ness.”
In her essay, Mulvey championed “a political use of psychoanalysis”
and a style of filmmaking that would “free the look of the camera
into its materiality in time and space” so that it cannot be ignored
through assimilation to a character’s perspective. In their film
Riddles of the Sphinx (1977), Mulvey and Peter Wollen used 360-
degree pans, with the camera positioned at about waist level, to
emulate the circularity of a young mother’s rhythms of work and to
avoid objectifying her body in a centered, still image [Figure 11.15].
The film deliberately set out to destroy conventional visual pleasure
and narrative satisfaction. Like many theorists of this period,
Mulvey and Wollen believed that making spectators think about

what they were seeing would lead them to critique the dominant
ideology.
11.15 Riddles of the Sphinx (1977). Laura Mulvey puts her own theories about images of
women into practice in a film made with Peter Wollen.
Building on Mulvey’s provocative argument, other feminist critics
have raised the question of female spectatorship. If narrative
cinema successfully positions the viewer to take up a male gaze, why
are women historically o�en the most enthusiastic film viewers?
One way to approach this question is to consider films produced
with a female audience in mind. During Hollywood’s heyday,

“women’s pictures” featured female stars like Bette Davis and Joan
Crawford, who had a strong appeal to women. At first glance,
women’s pleasure in these films seems self-defeating: what these
heroines seem to do best is suffer. In the maternal melodrama, for
example, a mother suffers by being separated from or rejected by
her children. However, feminists argued that a film like Now,
Voyager (1942) enables female spectators to explore their own
dissatisfaction with their lives by fantasizing a more fulfilling
version of that existence. The movie shows Davis as a dowdy
spinster taking control of her life — through psychoanalytic
treatment, romance, and new clothes.
Today’s commercial films aimed at women are not that different
from those of the 1940s. Many feminist critics argue that women’s
pleasure in these complicated, mixed-message movies should be
taken seriously. Because film is a mass medium, it will never
radically challenge existing power relations, but if it speaks to
women’s dilemmas, it is doing more than much official culture does.
Sometimes filmmakers succeed in evoking these emotions and mass
cultural traditions in more reflexive and satisfying ways, such as in
Pedro Almodóvar’s revisiting of maternal melodramas in All About
My Mother (1999) and Volver (2006) [Figure 11.16].

11.16 Volver (2006). Pedro Almodóvar revisits the Hollywood genre of the maternal
melodrama in this family story, empowering his female characters.
Overall, feminism has affected the relatively young discipline of film
theory more than it has affected more established ones. Arguably,
gender in film cannot be ignored. As Mulvey’s work suggests,
cinema — certainly entertainment film but also the avant-garde —
depends on stylized images of women for its appeal. Moreover, the
cinema, because it is part of the fabric of daily life, necessarily
comments on the everyday, private sphere of gender relations.
Feminism’s significant inroads in film theory have laid the
groundwork for related, though not always parallel, critiques of
cinema’s deployment of sexuality, race, and national identity.
Queer Theory
Feminist theory and psychoanalytic theory stress that unconscious
processes (such as desire and identification) are at play when we go

to the movies. Like cinema itself, however, psychoanalysis
historically concentrates on heterosexual scenarios (such as the
Oedipus complex) and pathologizes gays and lesbians (as cases of
“arrested development,” for example). Queer film theory critiques
and supplements feminist and psychoanalytic approaches, allowing
for more flexible ways of seeing and experiencing visual pleasure
than are accounted for by the binary opposites — of male versus
female, seeing versus seen, and being versus desiring — that are the
basis of Mulvey’s influential model of spectatorship.
Queer theory challenges Mulvey’s assumption that the desiring
position is male and the desired one is female, which essentially
equates gender difference with sexual desire. The gender of a
member of the audience need not correspond with that of the
character he or she finds most absorbing or most alluring. Mulvey
cites Marlene Dietrich as an example of a “fetish” or mask for the
male spectator’s desire, but Mulvey does not remark on the lesbian
connotations of the star’s image. Dietrich cross-dressed for songs in
many films and even kissed a woman on the lips in her first
American movie, Morocco (1930) [Figure 11.17]. Dietrich’s gender
bending needs to be confronted in terms that go beyond
psychoanalytic theory. Her onscreen style borrowed directly from
the fashions of the lesbian and gay subculture of Weimar-era
Germany, where her career began. Dietrich thus appealed on many
different levels to lesbian and gay viewers, as well as to heterosexual
women and men. In fact, this multiplicity could be seen more

generally as a key to cinema’s mass appeal. The theory of gender
performativity — the idea that there is no essential content to
gender, only a set of cues and codes that must be repeatedly enacted
and are then open to change — is illustrated in Dietrich’s persona.
11.17 Morocco (1930). In her influential essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,”
feminist theorist Laura Mulvey uses Marlene Dietrich’s image as an example of a male fetish.
Later, queer theorists claimed Dietrich kissing a woman in the nightclub audience as
empowering.
Although movies tend to conform to the dominant values of a
society (in this case, to heterosexuality as the norm), they also make
unconscious appeals to our fantasies, which may not be as

conformist, and the term queer captures this antinormative
potential. Moreover, films leave room for viewers’ own
interpretations and appropriations, such as when fan writers
continue the adventures of particular mainstream characters or
celebrities and share them on the internet. Spectators positioned at
the margins, such as gay men and lesbians, o�en “read against the
grain” for cues of performance or mise-en-scène that suggest a story
that is different from the one onscreen and has more relevance to
their lives. An interest in stars may extend beyond any particular
film they are cast in and ignore the film’s required romantic
outcomes. Queer theory allows for interpretations that value style
over content and ambiguity over certainty.
Cultural Studies
Cultural studies is a set of approaches drawn from the humanities
and social sciences that considers cultural phenomena in
conjunction with processes of production and consumption. This
approach scrutinizes aspects of cinema embedded in the everyday
lives of individuals or groups at particular historical junctures and in
particular social contexts. It does not analyze individual texts in
isolation or theorize about spectatorship in the abstract. An interest
in audience members’ experience of cultural forms builds on
Marxist approaches like that of Theodor Adorno and Max
Horkheimer, whose essay “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as
Mass Deception” (1944) argues that mass culture dupes its viewers

by churning out movies in the same manner as new cars or brands
of toothpaste, with only superficial differences among the products.
A useful way of understanding the fresh approach that cultural
studies takes lies in a shi� in the definition of “culture.” Instead of
defining culture as great works produced by transcendent artists and
appreciated by knowledgeable patrons, cultural studies defines the
term anthropologically as “a way of life, including social structures
and habits.” In other words, cultural studies scholars are interested
in how movies are encountered, understood, and “used” in daily
experience. We look at a few key approaches within cultural studies
— reception theory, star studies, and race and representation.
Reception Theory
Reception theory studies the ways different kinds of audiences
regard different kinds of films, focusing on how a film is received by
audiences rather than on who made a film or what its thematic
content or formal features are. This implies a theory of audiences as
active rather than passive. One obvious example is participatory
viewing practices, including the costumes and call-and-response of
fans in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) viewings [Figure 11.18].
Reception theory also recognizes that films from the past may be
received by today’s audiences in entirely new ways. They might root
for Native Americans rather than cowboys or might enjoy a

supporting character’s subversive wit more than the romance of a
pair of bland leads.
11.18 The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). Scholars of reception theory study
participatory audiences and repeat viewers.
Beyond the idiosyncrasies of personal history and circumstances,
aspects of each viewer’s cultural identity (for instance, age, ethnicity,
and educational background) can predispose us toward particular
kinds of reception. The homoerotic subtext of Rebel Without a Cause
(1955) may be more salient to an audience knowledgeable about gay
subcultural interest in actors James Dean and Sal Mineo [Figure
11.19]. Such an audience can be understood as an interpretive

community — group members who share particular knowledge or
cultural competence through which a film could be experienced and
interpreted. Such responses are sometimes called “situated
responses.”
11.19 Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Subcultural knowledge about actor Sal Mineo’s gay
identity reinforces the film’s homoerotic subtext about Plato’s feelings for Jim Stark, played
by James Dean.
The distinctive West African–derived hairstyles in Daughters of the
Dust (1991) are more likely to be recognized and enjoyed by black
women than by other audience members. Filmmaker Julie Dash
intended this special gratification as part of the movie’s address, its
vision of its ideal audience. The citation of these images in Lemonade
(2016) addresses audience members who are familiar with the
classic independent film as well as black female viewers more
generally. Theorists see these multiple ways of interacting with a

text as confirmation that individuals actively make meaning even in
response to otherwise homogeneous mass media.
The methodologies associated with reception theory include
comparing and contrasting reviews drawn from different
periodicals, countries, or decades; conducting detailed interviews
with viewers; tracking commodity tie-ins (the goods that are
marketed with the “brand name” of a particular film or characters);
and studying fan activity on the internet. Given the multitude of
possible approaches, reception studies has a wide scope.
Conduct a reception study of the film you just viewed by surveying your
classmates about which characters and situations they responded to most
favorably. Compare and contrast their opinions with those of film reviewers.
Reception studies differs from theories of spectatorship in that it
deals with actual audiences rather than a hypothetical subject
constructed by the text. Unlike spectatorship, which is concerned
with the unconscious patterns evoked by a particular text or by the
process of film viewing in the abstract, reception studies addresses
actual responses to movies and the behavior of groups. British
cultural studies scholar Stuart Hall argues that groups respond to
mass culture from their different positions of social empowerment
— with a dominant reading, by reacting from the position that the

text slots them into; with a negotiated reading, by accommodating
different realities; or with an oppositional reading, by rejecting the
framework within which a dominant message is conveyed. African
American feminist theorists have developed Hall’s concept to
account for black women’s spectatorship. Jacqueline Bobo studies
how viewers who have read Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple
respond more favorably to the 1985 film adaptation, whereas bell
hooks posits that black women have gone so long without adequate
representation of their lives that they necessarily wield an
oppositional gaze when watching mainstream media. Reception
studies thus suggests that social identity considerably complicates
the picture of subjectivity offered in poststructuralist film theory.
Star Studies
An important component of reception is our response to stars —
performers who become recognizable through their films or who
bring celebrity to their roles. In addition to analyzing how a star’s
image is composed, theorists are interested in how audience
reception helps define a star’s cultural meaning. Although they are
one of the most pervasive aspects of cinema, stars may seem like
unlikely topics to be considered in a theoretical approach. A�er all,
stars are the province of entertainment news, tabloid journalism,
fan websites, and online chats. But these familiar and ephemeral
sources have an important place in cultural studies. Viewers
understand a film in relationship to what they know of its stars

outside the world of the film’s fiction. From Judy Garland to Lindsay
Lohan, stars’ troubled offscreen lives inform reception of their
wholesome onscreen roles. Joaquin Phoenix’s idiosyncrasies as a
public figure — he is notoriously cryptic and publicity-shy — echo in
a series of intense characters he has portrayed, including Johnny
Cash in Walk the Line (2005), a traumatized veteran in You Were Never
Really Here (2017) [Figure 11.20], and an Oscar-winning
performance in Joker (2019).
11.20 You Were Never Really Here (2017). Joaquin Phoenix’s star image is constructed by
marketing, publicity, and a series of volatile film roles that play off his offscreen persona.
Richard Dyer details how multiple discourses about stars —
including promotion (studio-arranged exposure such as websites
and television appearances), publicity (romances, scandals, and
political involvement), commentary (critical evaluations and
awards), and their appearances in films — help construct their
images. Star images become texts that can be read in their own

right. Even when a particular star is billed as an “ordinary guy,” like
Tom Hanks, or “the girl next door,” like Doris Day was in the 1950s,
this image is carefully orchestrated. In the social media era, stars
themselves contribute to the discourses that audiences encounter in
understanding a star’s image.
Analysis of a star image enriches understanding of a particular film
as well as film culture. Viola Davis became a star later in her career,
appearing in mass-market fantasy/action movies like Suicide Squad
(2016) and Ender’s Game (2013); receiving Academy Award
nominations for her work in prestigious films like Doubt (2008) and
The Help (2011) and an Oscar for Fences (2016); and crossing media by
starring in the television series How to Get Away with Murder (2014–
2020). She tends to play serious, formidable characters and has
complemented her work with a series of awards-show speeches that
acknowledge her own struggles and those of women of color in
Hollywood. Her performances and public appearances combine to
create a persona that carries connotations of authenticity and moral
authority [Figure 11.21].

11.21 Viola Davis. The actress quoted Sojourner Truth in her 2015 Emmy Award acceptance
speech for outstanding lead actress in a drama series, the first to be won by a woman of
color. The unethical character she plays on the television show How to Get Away with Murder
(2014–2017) adds complexity to her star image. She also won an Oscar for a very different
role in the film version of Fences (2016).
Audiences will never have access to the star as a real person.
Instead, we experience his or her constructed image in relation to

cultural codes (including age, race, class, gender, religion, fashion,
and more) and according to filmic codes (genre, acting, and even
lighting). For example, the silent film star Lillian Gish was
sometimes lit from above as she stood on a white sheet. The
reflected light enhanced her pallor and the radiance of her blond
hair, connoting a virginal whiteness that was an important
component of her star image in films directed by the white
supremacist D. W. Griffith. Stars are o�en considered the
embodiment of types. For example, John Wayne connotes rugged
individualism; Sandra Bullock, spunky decency; Morgan Freeman,
quiet dignity; Will Ferrell, naive mayhem. Heath Ledger’s star image
gained new dimensions from his performance as the Joker in The
Dark Knight (2008) and his tragic premature death before that film’s
release.
We also construct our own identities and communities through stars
whom we will never know, and this is not necessarily a negative
aspect of the phenomenon. Young girls who patterned themselves
a�er plucky singing star Deanna Durbin in the 1940s, Madonna in
the 1980s, or Idina Menzel’s characters in the 2000s incorporated the
quality of independence these stars embodied and identified
themselves in solidarity, rather than in competition, with other girls
who shared their appreciation. According to Dyer, a basic tension
between the ordinary and the extraordinary is at the root of the star
phenomenon. Stars are not better people than the rest of us, which

facilitates our identification with them. And yet they remain a breed
apart.
Star discourse is a particularly revealing and useful critical approach
to cinema because it is based in our everyday experience as fans. We
have many immediate and unexamined responses to stars, from
crushes to antipathies. But we also appreciate stars in nuanced ways
that yield considerable critical understanding. Cultural studies of
stars o�en begin with viewer testimonials, not taking them at face
value but using them as a starting point for a sociological analysis.
What ethnic groups are represented in a nation’s most popular stars?
Do popular female stars transgress the boundaries of what is
considered proper female behavior? Are people of color limited to
supporting roles? Stars are powerful forces for understanding what
is important to a culture at any given moment.
Race and Representation
The concept of race — taken not as an objective fact but as a socially
constructed category based on historical power divisions and
valuations of perceived difference — intersects with the film
experience on many different levels, including questions of
representation and reception. Many different theoretical
approaches can illuminate these issues. Cultural studies models
address topics such as how stereotypes circulate and how they are
received by diverse audiences and how discourses of imperialism,

colonialism, and nationalism are embedded in film stories, genres,
and star images. In this area, it is helpful to distinguish two senses
of the term representation — (1) the aesthetic sense (for example,
how African American characters are depicted visually and
narratively in the films of Spike Lee [Figure 11.22] versus those in
Gone with the Wind, 1939) and (2) the political sense of standing for a
group of people (for example, as an elected representative to the U.S.
Congress does). Both senses are at play in the cinematic
representation of race. In addition, theories of exile and migration,
cultural hybridity and diaspora, the global and the intercultural have
added to the store of explanatory frames we use to look at race and
representation in cinema.
11.22 Bamboozled (2000). Spike Lee’s film about a TV show that exploits the history of racist
stereotypes explores representation as a political as well as an aesthetic issue.

Identification across race is a fraught and o�en obligatory process
for nonwhite viewers because of the historical lack of racial diversity
onscreen. Cinematic history reinforces the assumption of a white,
Western spectator-subject. In classical Hollywood films, nonwhite
characters are relegated to the periphery of the action as villainous,
comic, sometimes noble — but always secondary — characters.
Colonialism — the assumed primacy and historical domination of
Western values, peoples, and power over people from other parts of
the globe — pervades genres such as the western and the adventure
film. In the musical The King and I (1956), one white Englishwoman
proves to be a match for the Siamese king and his entire court
[Figure 11.23]. In Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the
Media (1994), theorists Robert Stam and Ella Shohat show how a
Western gaze and voice are reproduced in popular films such as the
Indiana Jones series (1981–2008), in which non-Western cultures
provide colorful backgrounds for the exploits of a Western hero.
They also discuss how nondominant cultures are marginalized by
casting when white actors play other races [Figure 11.24] and even
by sound, when everyone speaks English in films set in another
country or when jazz scores are used in films in which all the
characters are white.

11.23 The King and I (1956). This film depicts colonialism filtered through a charming
musical romance told from a white Englishwoman’s perspective.
11.24 Gandhi (1982). White British actor Ben Kingsley plays the Indian populist leader.
Research the star of the film you are about to watch for class. What does your
previous knowledge of this star bring to your viewing? Is the role at odds with
his or her established image?

But by looking at discourses like music and mise-en-scène, Stam and
Shohat show how American cinema o�en reflects a multicultural
society in other ways besides direct visual representation. The
importance of the western as a genre or of the plantation as a setting
gives evidence of a cultural preoccupation with racial difference and
conflicts at the origin of national identity. Although o�en
stereotyped in such film representations, people of color stand at
the center of the nation’s definition of itself. Stam and Shohat’s
approach to discourses of difference in mainstream cinema also
allows for critiques of Hollywood films, from dramas like Crash
(2004) to animated films like Zootopia (2016), that embrace America’s
multiculturalism only on a surface level.
The work of independent filmmakers of color in the United States
has paralleled theoretical explorations of alternative aesthetics. The
trickster figure of West African tradition, which appears in To Sleep
with Anger (1990) by Charles Burnett and in Zajota and the Boogie
Spirit (1989) by Ayoka Chenzira, is an expression of the identification
of these African American filmmakers with African and African
diasporan traditions and motifs. The Africanist aesthetic is realized
on a much grander scale in Black Panther (2018), a studio film that
reached global audiences.
Cultural studies approaches illuminate the hybrid aesthetics of films
by diasporan artists whose work depicts journeys between ancestral
and current homes. Monsoon Wedding (2001) is a realist family film

that incorporates Bollywood-style song-and-dance, and The Farewell
(2019) depicts a Chinese American woman’s conflicted feelings
about her U.S.-based family’s choice to keep her Chinese
grandmother in the dark about a cancer diagnosis [Figure 11.25].
The films shi� between languages and complicate definitions of
belonging as well as national cinema traditions.
11.25 The Farewell (2019). This American independent film about an independent Chinese
American granddaughter also belongs to the transnational movement of Chinese diaspora
cinema.
Questions of national identity are at the heart of explorations of the
aesthetics of political liberation in anticolonial and postcolonial
cinemas around the world. Third Cinema (discussed in Chapter 2)
began as a Latin American movement to address cinema’s popular
audience with revolutionary ideas. These works o�en use narrative
forms more in keeping with specific cultural traditions or political
ideas than with the linear cause-and-effect structures of Hollywood

films. Humberto Solás’s Lucía (1968), for instance, uses a three-part
structure to link the fates of three Cuban women in different
historical moments [Figure 11.26].
11.26 Lucía (1968). Humberto Solás’s film uses formal innovation to reflect on Cuban history
through the stories of three women.
Critics associated with cultural studies argue that there is room for
agency and divergence in our reception experiences and that the
kinds of films and related cinematic phenomena that are deemed
worthy of theoretical attention should be multiplied. By so doing,
they take apart the unity and predictability that characterized earlier

poststructuralist film theory. With roots in sociology, cultural studies
o�en embraces a broader definition of contemporary media than
film studies based in the humanities. This wider scope has opened
up space for addressing the distinctiveness of television and internet
media as well as the many social and economic transactions that
surround cinema today — from the viewing of works on multiple
platforms to the incorporation of movie franchises into our daily
lives.
FILM IN FOCUS Clueless about Contemporary Film Theory? (1995)
See also: Eternal Sunshine of the
Spotless Mind (2004); Scott Pilgrim vs.
the World (2010)
To watch a clip from Clueless (1995), go to LaunchPad for The Film Experience
at launchpadworks.com
Theory will be present in all the sites that a culture uses for debate and
conversation, including popular films. Although the title of the 1995 film Clueless
would seem to disclaim any form of knowledge whatsoever, many theoretical
issues are raised by the film. Clueless helps “clue us in” to the concerns of
postmodern cinema, adaptation studies, and genre criticism, and it is of particular
interest to feminist and cultural studies critics.

http://launchpadworks.com/

Clueless takes place in Los Angeles, a city whose freeways, location, cultural
diversity, entertainment industry, commercial and artistic gems of pastiche
architecture, and rampant consumerism have made it exemplary for theorists of
postmodernism. The film’s main character, played by Alicia Silverstone, is a high
school student and thus relatively marginal in terms of social power [Figure
11.27]. But as a rich, blonde, white girl, she wields the power of consumerism
within a bubble of privilege. A “remake” or update of Jane Austen’s novel Emma,
the film could be considered to be a nostalgic but inauthentic citation of the
culture of another era. The main character’s name, Cher, is another citation, this
time of the “inauthentic” culture of the recent past (pop star Cher is known for her
costumes and physical transformations).
11.27 Clueless (1995). Postmodern style and attitude characterize a film that found a
welcome reception among young audiences, especially young women.
The multiculturalism of postmodern Los Angeles is signaled by Cher’s group of
school friends. Yet this is a tongue-in-cheek depiction because Cher’s African
American best friend, Dionne, is as fabulously wealthy as she is. The girls are
worlds apart in socioeconomic terms from Cher’s Latina housekeeper, for
example.

The film opens with a montage of fresh-faced teenagers, and with postmodern
irony Cher’s voiceover compares what we have just seen to an acne-product
commercial, addressing us directly with postmodern reflexivity. The definition of
identity as a matter of surface appearance is underscored in the next set of images:
Cher “tries on” different outfits using a computer program containing simulations
of the ample contents of her closet. Although Cher undergoes a transformation in
character during the course of the film, she nevertheless continues to understand
social problems in commodity-culture terms: she donates her skis to the
homeless. And it is while window shopping that Cher finally realizes what it is she
truly wants. As she wanders around gazing at merchandise, bits of the film’s action
replay in her mind. This thorough confusion of “real” and cinematic perception
illustrates the postmodern “mobilized virtual gaze” that Anne Friedberg connects
to women’s history of consumerism [Figure 11.28].
11.28 Clueless (1995). Cher’s subjective flashbacks and window shopping blur in what
Anne Friedberg calls postmodernism’s “mobilized virtual gaze.”
The description thus far might make the film seem as if it is concerned only with
the trivial. But feminist theorists point out that women’s consignment to the
domestic sphere with its “trivial” concerns of shopping, caregiving, and romance

has a direct effect on the public sphere, which was as true in Jane Austen’s day as
it is in our own. Cher’s ostensibly minor concerns have important consequences in
her world, and by portraying her subjectivity through her voiceover and her optical
point of view, the film gives her perspective validity. Clueless was directed by a
woman, Amy Heckerling, who has specialized in youth genre films that pay special
attention to young women’s perspectives. Austen, too, was consigned to a
circumscribed genre within which she made enduring works of art.
Viewers might find Clueless’s romantic ending predictable, even disappointing, in
that it undermines what was the film’s most important relationship — the one
between Cher and Dionne and the other girls — by conflating plot closure with
heterosexual coupling. But in fact, the film winks at the happily-ever-a�er
convention, ending with a wedding—which the viewer for a moment believes
might be Cher’s. “As if!” her voiceover interjects, and it is revealed that two
schoolteachers she helped fix up are getting married. Thus her character escapes
the strictures of the marriage plot with postmodern irony.
One of the most remarkable aspects of Clueless is its reception. At the time of its
release, it successfully addressed a teenage interpretive community, both in and
outside the United States, which quickly adopted the film’s styles in fashion and
slang, using its signifiers to produce new meanings. Clueless validated and
enabled (coded) communication among girls, who, far from being treated yet
again as know-nothings, were now the only ones fully “clued in.” Multiple viewings
made for an open-ended text that over the years has invited new viewers and
reissues, confusing origins and effects. Clueless sums up the complexity of
postmodern simulation in a succinct “As if!”
Film and Philosophy

Even as cultural studies critics reject the overt formalism and
abstractions of 1970s film theory, film philosophers critique cultural
studies for its lack of a unifying approach with clearly defined
questions and terms. To some extent, all film theory is related to
philosophy and characterized by a search for underlying principles
and a logical argument. However, some film theorists identify more
strongly than others with philosophical questions and methods.
Analytic philosophy, an approach that emphasizes the logical
clarification of argument, approaches concepts differently than
poststructuralist theories interested in the instability of signs and
meaning. For example, in Mystifying Movies: Fads and Fallacies in
Contemporary Film Theory (1991), Noël Carroll carefully and gleefully
debunks the analogy of film to dreams.
David Bordwell, one of the most prolific and well-respected
contemporary film scholars, advocates a cognitivist approach that
understands our response to film in terms of rational evaluation of
visual and narrative cues that characterize film styles prevalent in
particular places at particular historical junctures. Cognitivism
draws on psychology and neuroscience to understand how the mind
responds to narrative and aesthetic information in film. Rejecting
analysis that invokes unconscious fantasy or employs idiosyncratic
interpretation, cognitivism claims that we respond to the moving
image with the same perceptual processes we use to respond to
visual stimuli in the world — by adjusting film images for lack of
depth and perceiving the identity of objects that are moving and

changing in time. Not simply a backlash against the obscure
terminology and French-influenced syntax of poststructuralist
theory, analytic philosophy and cognitivist film theory argue for a
less metaphorical, more scientific, and more historically verifiable
definition and practice of film studies.
Another influential philosophical approach in film theory is
phenomenology — which postulates that any act of perception
involves a mutuality of the viewer and what is viewed. Jacques Lacan
and Christian Metz derived their emphasis on the gaze from
phenomenologists, but their emphasis on the psychoanalytic
concept of the unconscious diverged from the more embodied
consciousness that phenomenology described. Vivian Sobchack
uses the phenomenology of perception to account for the film
experience as a reciprocal relationship between viewer and screen,
also distinguishing between the different phenomenologies of film
and television viewing, which require different kinds of attention
and presence. The emphasis on the viewer’s embodiment opens up
approaches to the role of affect — feelings, attitudes, and sensations
— in the encounter with media. Affect is more fleeting and variable
than identification and cognition, making it a useful approach for
disability studies, which rejects normative models of embodiment
that presuppose operations of reflection or optimization.
French philosopher Gilles Deleuze has influenced work on affect in
film and has made a distinctive contribution to contemporary film
theory in two books dedicated to elaborating cinema as field of signs

that can offer a direct image of time. Rejecting the linguistic
foundation of Ferdinand de Saussure’s thought, Deleuze builds on
the semiotics of C. S. Peirce and the work of philosopher Henri
Bergson on the importance of time as duration. More than the
writings of almost any other film theorist, Deleuze’s work must be
studied on its own terms because of the way he develops concepts
across specific terminology. In his two books on cinema, Deleuze
distinguishes between two types of cinema that correspond roughly
to two historical periods.
In Deleuze’s terminology, the movement image — prevalent in the
cinema of the first half of the twentieth century — offers an indirect
image of time through conventional ways of representing
movement, such as editing that creates causal links between shots.
The physical comedy of Buster Keaton and the collision at the heart
of Sergei Eisenstein’s montage move the viewer though a sequence
of images. In contrast, the time image — an open-ended image or
film that lacks clear signals of spatial connection or logical sequence
— is displayed in postwar films. The neorealist works of Roberto
Rossellini and the more metaphorical studies of Michelangelo
Antonioni, both made in the context of the disillusionment and
uncertainty of postwar Italy, do not orient the viewer to a particular
expectation or response from shot to shot. Instead of imposing an
interpretation on time by representing it through sequence or
movement, such films offer a “direct image of time” as the
intersection of the potentiality of both past and future [Figure
11.29].

11.29 L’Avventura (1960). According to philosopher Gilles Deleuze, this classic art film
presents “a direct image of time,” in part through its unpredictable editing patterns.
Deleuze’s philosophy of film goes beyond the specific films and
directors he uses as examples to suggest new ways of imagining the
relationship between images and thought. Referentiality — the idea
that filmic images refer to actual objects, events, or phenomena — is
no longer a basic tenet of film theory. For Deleuze, the film image is
not a representation of the world; it is an experience of movement
or time itself. For other thinkers, referentiality is no longer a tenet of
film theory because neither film nor the world is what it used to be.
Postmodernism
Film is not the only medium that organizes our audiovisual
experience. Since the photographic basis of film has been largely

replaced by digital capture and generation, film today is harder to
distinguish from other modes of communication. At least since the
late 1940s, when television was rapidly adopted into U.S. homes,
other moving-image media have challenged cinema’s dominance.
However, film has so thoroughly transformed our overall experience
that it has prepared us for the integration of successive forms,
including digital imaging, in our lives. Rather than defining film
more narrowly in the digital era, we can think of it more broadly.
This predominance of media is characteristic of the culture of
postmodernism. As we have mentioned, the term modernism refers
both to a group of artistic movements (including atonal music,
cubist painting, and montage filmmaking) and to the period in
which those movements emerged and to which they responded
(generally, the first half of the twentieth century). Postmodernism
also has two primary definitions:
In architecture, art, music, and film, postmodernism
incorporates many other styles through fragments or references
in a practice known as pastiche.
Historically postmodernism is the cultural period in which
political, cultural, and economic shi�s challenged the tenets of
modernism, including its belief in the possibility of critiquing
the world through art, the division of high and low culture, and
the genius and independent identity of the artist.

The most important thinkers on postmodernism have addressed
both aspects of this definition. Fredric Jameson defines
postmodernism historically as “the cultural logic of late capitalism”
— referring to the period in post–World War II economic history
when advertising and consumerism, multinational conglomerates,
and globalization of financing and services took over from industrial
production and circulation of goods. Stylistically, postmodern
cinema represents history as nostalgia, as if the past were nothing
more than a movie style.
For Jean Baudrillard, the triumph of the image in our cultural age is
so complete that we live in a simulacrum, a copy without an
original, of which Disneyland is one of his most illuminating
examples. In The Matrix and its sequels (1999–2003), the characters’
belief that they live in the “real world” is mistaken: the city, food,
intimate relationships, and physical struggles are all computer-
generated [Figure 11.30]. This lack of referentiality is frightening in
that it represents the absence of any overarching certainty to ground
postmodern fragmentation. But on the hopeful side, the “real” is
now open to change. When The Matrix shows a (fake) book written
by Jean Baudrillard, the film is both making an in-joke and
illustrating postmodernism’s tenet that there is nothing new in the
world.

11.30 The Matrix (1999). “What is the matrix?” the film’s ad campaign asked. Postmodern
theorist Jean Baudrillard is quoted in the film.
It is no accident that the postmodern world is vividly presented in a
movie because movies themselves are simulations. Film theorist
Anne Friedberg notes that the way we consume film images can be
generalized to a society characterized by image consumption and
mobility. The variety of “looks” one finds by window shopping,
internet surfing, or identifying with other characters at the movies
has a positive side. The postmodern breakdown of singular identity
has as its corollary a recognition of identities formerly relegated to
the margins. Postmodernism also recognizes the changes wrought
by globalization. New technologies make the flow of images even
easier — not only from Hollywood to the rest of the world but also
from formerly peripheral sources to U.S. audiences and between
local cultures. The acceleration of media convergence in the digital
era allows access to these flows through different technological

means and according to different habits of organizing time and
experiencing both space and interface.
Our survey of the history of contemporary film theory evokes the
auspicious institutional climate of the academic discipline of film
studies in Anglo-American universities, which has consolidated and
developed ideas from France and elsewhere since the late 1960s. As
we have noted, cultural studies and cognitivism have challenged the
orthodoxies that began to emerge in film theory, and their pluralism
and skepticism add a welcome perspective on ideas that might
otherwise become rote and ossified and simply “applied” to new
cases. But bodies of theoretical writing of cinema from places
outside this tradition, such as Japan, are less well known, and efforts
to globalize the discipline are underway. Moreover, fields of
knowledge advance by active questioning and dissent. In the twenty-
first century, digital culture has not only challenged the definition of
film but has also opened new directions in film theory.
Film Theory and Digital Culture
The challenges posed by the digital image to film since the 1990s go
beyond technological and economic ones: they are also intellectual.
Cinematic specificity is no longer defined by the photographic
image, and the interdisciplinarity of cinema studies has accordingly
expanded to include computer science, engineering, and design.
Although in some ways new technology can be seen as merely

enhancing the film experience as we have known it (for example,
the return of 3-D technologies in the 2000s), in other ways
technology alters both the medium and our experience of it (for
example, the puzzles, interactivity, and spatial innovations of video
games). Scholars continue to draw on the legacies of previous
inquiries in film theory in order to identify the salient questions our
contemporary audiovisual experience raises and to develop tools
with which to address those questions.
Digital culture has also provided much greater access to writing
about moving images, as well as to a host of films and film traditions
that inspire viewers to contribute their own writing. Reading about
film takes place in a broader public context, recalling the film
journals of the avant-garde film movements of the 1920s, the post–
World War II climate of cinephilia found in Cahiers du Cinéma, or the
cultural influence of Latin American film critics outside the
university. The internet has created communities around
appreciation for contemporary film movements such as slow
cinema, a type of art cinema made and circulating around the world
that uses long takes and wide framing to allow viewers meaningful
observation of other spaces, in contrast with dematerialized and
accelerated media experiences [Figure 11.31].

11.31 Vitalina Varela (2019). The minimalist films of Portuguese director Pedro Costa
imprint the lives of Cape Verdean residents of Lisbon, like this film’s eponymous character,
on viewers’ perception. Online commentators share strategies for engaging with and valuing
“slow cinema.”
Film theorist Girish Shambu argues that the proliferation of online
film blogs and podcasts that dive deeply into film cra� and culture,
as well as the success of specialty film companies like Criterion,
foster a “new cinephilia.” Online journals like Senses of Cinema
provide readers with access to auteurist film criticism, philosophical
essays on film, and participatory film culture. The emergence of
video essays as a form of critical commentary drawing on digital
editing and internet circulation is a key marker of a new
democratization of film theory. For example, the Nerdwriter offers
regular video essays on YouTube, while the scholarly online journal
[in]Transition pairs videographic criticism with verbal commentary

by both the creators of video essays and scholars who serve as peer
reviewers. While not all of this discourse is as sustained and focused
as film theory, it brings the historical contribution of theorists into
circulation alongside the many facets of film culture that initially
sparked their thinking. In this context, reading and viewing, writing
and making, are inextricably linked. One important clearinghouse
encapsulates the potential: Film Studies for Free. In this open-
source website, film scholar Catherine Grant consolidates resources
such as podcasts, video essays, links to online writing and blog posts
to bring scholarship outside the walls of the academy.
This chapter has aimed to demystify the field of film theory. In
reading and picking apart theorists’ work, it is important to recall
that on some level theory always relates to practice. Thus, in
reviewing Stuart Hall’s approach to reception theory or Fredric
Jameson’s definition of postmodernism, we look at concrete
responses to intellectual challenges. The term theory is a useful,
shorthand way to refer to a body of knowledge and a set of
questions. We study this corpus to gain historical perspective, to
acquire tools for decoding our experiences of particular films, and
above all to comprehend the hold that movies have on our
imaginations and our social lives.

Chapter 11 Review
SUMMARY
Today, film theory is a sustained inquiry into the nature and
scope of film and film culture conducted mainly in the
academy. But earlier film theorists came from many contexts.
Early writings examined cinema’s relationship to language, to
the changes of modern culture, and to other art forms.
One of the organizing debates of classical film theory centers
around the cinema’s appeal to realism versus its formal
characteristics.
For theorists like André Bazin and Siegfried Kracauer,
film’s ability to refer to the world through images that
resemble and are captured from real objects sets it apart
as a realist medium.
Other theorists, including Béla Balázs and Rudolf
Arnheim, championed formalist theories and were
interested in how film became an art form by
transcending its referential qualities.
Walter Benjamin emphasized cinema’s integral role in the
experience of modernity, including mechanization,
changes in time and space due to communication and
transportation technologies, and urbanization.

A�er World War II, film journals like Cahiers du cinéma
proliferated, and a vibrant film culture formed around them.
Auteur theory, which emerged in the 1950s, asserts that a
film bears the creative imprint of one individual, usually the
director, and allows for the study of a group of films.
Genre criticism is another influential way to group films for
study, which can also inform auteur theory by associating a
director with a particular genre.
The academic discipline of film studies, formulated as
contemporary film theory, has been heavily influenced by
currents of thought converging in postwar France, including
semiotics, structuralism, and Marxism.
Semiotics is the study of signs, which include words,
pictures, gestures, and a wide range of other coded
messages.
Narratology is the study of narrative forms and a branch
of structuralism, which looks for common structures
across examples of a phenomenon rather than looking for
a shared essence.
Marxist thinkers looked at ideology — a systematic set of
beliefs that is not necessarily conscious — in order to
explain how people come to accept ideas and conditions
contrary to their interests.
Poststructuralism questions structuralists’ fixed definitions,
assumption of objectivity, and disregard for cultural and
historical context.

Psychoanalytic theory can be used to describe the psychic
processes through which we interact with film.
According to apparatus theory, ideological assumptions
are reproduced through the impression of reality
conveyed by film technology and the viewing situation.
The study of how subjects interact with films is known as
spectatorship.
Theories of gender and sexuality are integral to the study of
narrative and spectatorship in film.
Feminist film theory gained prominence in the 1970s,
especially with Laura Mulvey’s definition of “woman as
image/man as bearer of the look.”
LGBT film theorists look at the centrality of
heterosexuality to narrative and at assumption about how
gender determines identification and desire in film
viewing.
Cultural studies scrutinizes aspects of cinema embedded in
the everyday lives of individuals or groups in particular
social contexts or at certain historical junctures.
Reception theory focuses on how a film is received by
audiences and o�en examines audience response to stars.
Cultural studies addresses issues of race and
representation as well as how concepts of imperialism,
colonialism, and nationalism are embedded in film.
Philosophy also addresses the nature of film and the film
experience.

Cognitivism draws on psychology to understand how the
mind responds to film.
Phenomenology postulates that any act of perception
involves a mutuality of the viewer and what is viewed.
Philosopher Gilles Deleuze offers a distinctive theory of
film, positing that the movement image prevalent in
cinema in the first half of the twentieth century depends
on cause and effect. By contrast, many post–World War II
films display the time image, an open-ended image that
lacks spatial connection or logical sequence.
Postmodernism has two primary definitions: (1) an artistic
style that incorporates fragments of or references to other
styles and (2) the period in which political, cultural, and
economic shi�s have engendered challenges to modernism.
Globalization and new technology have made media
convergence a distinct feature of postmodern culture.
KEY TERMS
film theory
verisimilitude
ontology
medium specificity
classical film theory
French impressionist cinema
photogénie
formalism

realism
mimesis
auteur theory
metteur-en-scène
cinephilia
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adaptive quizzes
Film clips with critical thinking questions
Supplemental readings, including Film in Focus features and more

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CHAPTER 12 WRITING A FILM ESSAY
Observations, Arguments, Research, and
Analysis

In Spike Jonze’s 2002 Adaptation, Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) is a
writer in crisis. Faced with the challenge of adapting Susan Orlean’s

nonfiction book The Orchid Thief for the screen, he finds himself
paralyzed by extreme writer’s block. While his twin brother Donald
blithely forges ahead with his own screenplay, Charlie can only stare in
dismay at a blank page, unable to begin to write. A�er a series of
hilarious, strange, and tragic encounters in Hollywood, New York, and the
Florida Everglades, Charlie discovers that “change is not a choice” and
that a writer must first and foremost follow his passion by writing about
what he loves. Writing is o�en complex and difficult, with many stages
and strategies, but Charlie’s lesson for writers of films may also be good
advice for writers about film: find a passion to propel your writing.
can help you review. Go to launchpadworks.com
Writers can be found everywhere in films and film history. Famous
and not-so-famous writers populate and drive many kinds of stories
about many kinds of experiences. Mishima (1985) describes the
intense blend of radically conservative politics and restless
creativity in the life of Japanese author Yukio Mishima. In Central
Station (1998), a middle-aged woman, Dora, sets up a stand in the
middle of a crowded railroad station where illiterate people pay her
to write letters to their friends and loved ones. And Jim Jarmusch’s
Paterson (2016) wryly and rhythmically weaves the daily life and
family romance of a bus driver (who happens to be named Paterson)
in Paterson, New Jersey, with his patient efforts to write poetry
modeled a�er William Carlos Williams, the famous American

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poet/physician who lived in Rutherford, New Jersey, and wrote an
epic poem titled Paterson [Figure 12.1]. As with other arts and
cultural activities, movies describe and inspire a common and
fundamental human need to explain one’s feelings about and
responses to a significant experience. In this chapter, we see how
writing about film develops from these needs and inspirations, and
we show how it can become a rich extension of our fundamental
film experiences.
12.1 Paterson (2016). The power of writing can define your world.
Writing about film has been a significant part of film culture since
the beginning of movies. Almost simultaneously with the arrival of
the cinema, writers debated the function and value of this new art
form. In the first few decades of film history, film critics such as

Vachel Lindsay in his 1915 book The Art of the Moving Picture and
Dorothy Richardson in the 1920s art magazine Close Up wrote
passionately about movies. Since then, movie reviews, scholarly
essays, and philosophical books — by writers including James Agee,
Umberto Eco, Pauline Kael, and Trinh T. Minh-ha — have debated
the achievements of individual films and the cultural importance of
movies in general.
KEY OBJECTIVES
Describe the differences between reviews and critical essays.
Practice taking notes on films and organizing those notes.
Choose a topic, and develop it into a thesis and argument for a paper.
Conduct research and integrate sources.
Acquire the skills to turn your work into a polished essay.
Learn to refer to images and clips in your essay and potentially produce an
essay in video form.

Writing an Analytical Film Essay
Writing extends the complex relationship we have with films by
challenging us to articulate our feelings and ideas and to
communicate our responses convincingly. In 1915, early reviewers
and critics o�en focused on the dangerous or upli�ing effects that
movies might have on women or children. In the 1960s, film was
frequently discussed in terms of its political impact or social
meaning. Today’s writers focus on a range of topics — including
characters, stars, stories, new film technologies, and historical
questions, such as how 1930s censorship influenced film content or
how 1950s teenage audiences encouraged the making of certain
kinds of films.
Personal Opinion and Objectivity
Writing about a film usually involves a play between subject matter
and meaning. The subject matter of a film is the material that
directly or indirectly comprises the film, whereas the meaning is the
interpretation a writer discovers within that material. In Alejandro
González Iñárritu’s Birdman (2014), for instance, the subject matter
describes the crisis of an aging former superhero, Riggan Thomson,
who attempts to redeem his career as a serious Broadway actor. As
he struggles to produce his theatrical version of a Raymond Carver
short story, he must confront a surreal, superhero alter ego

(Birdman), a testy stage actor in the play, a nasty theater critic, and
an estranged and troubled daughter (Sam). The film’s meaning,
however, is more complicated than a description of the characters
and plot. It depends on the film’s luxurious style and intricate
organization — as multiple framings and camera movements shi�
between the streets of New York, a theater stage, and fantastic
hallucinations and as viewers experience and respond to the film.
Other films have used similar subject matter about staging a play on
film, but for some writers, Birdman’s tale of loss and hope weaves
subtle and o�en complex points about passion, fantasy, and
redemption [Figure 12.2]. For other writers, the film becomes a
difficult and confused tale that never clearly answers the many
questions it raises.
12.2 Birdman (2014). Discovering complex meanings behind a film’s subject matter requires
viewers to interpret the style and narrative form of the film.

Useful and insightful writing always balances personal opinion with
critical objectivity — writing with a detached response that offers
judgments based on facts and evidence with which others would, or
could, agree. An essay that hides behind too many opinions (by
constantly stating “I feel” or “In my opinion”) seems unreliable and
too personal to have any value for others. Writing about Birdman, for
example, a writer may attempt to hide behind a lack of certainty
about the ending of the film and its meaning: “In my opinion,
Riggan’s relation to his Birdman character is, to the end, ambiguous.
It is never clear, for me, why he is haunted and doomed by his lost
persona, and the last scene seems to suggest a suicide in despair”
[Figure 12.3]. Conversely, flat descriptive statements fail to interest
readers in an essay’s argument and o�en miss the subtleties of a
film: “The meanings of Riggan’s final actions are unclear and
confusing.” Balancing opinion and critical objectivity, as in the
following student passage, results in writing that engages and
convinces the reader that your insights could be useful revelations
for most viewers of the film:

12.3 Birdman (2014). Is the interpretation of the film’s final moments a matter of opinion or
part of the film’s complex vision?
In Birdman, the concluding disappearance of Riggans is unexpected, dramatic,
and powerful, a combination that disturbs and confuses me, as it probably does
most viewers. This confusion about his actions and motives is, however, part of
the strange and mysterious beauty of the film because it asks us to recognize a
central theme. As his daughter, Sam, searches through the open window frame,
first below her and then in the skies above, her slight smile confirms the
possibility that our fantasies and passions can li� us above the dark gravity of the
world below us.
Identifying Your Readers

Watch the clip of Birdman (2014) online. What subjective claims might a writer
make about this section of the film? What objective claims might a writer
make?
Description
The scene shows Riggan Thomson walking down a street while a man
dressed as a bird walks behind him.
Knowing or anticipating your readers can guide a writer in
balancing opinion and objectivity. If we think of writing about film
as an extension of conversations or arguments we have with friends
about a film, we realize that the terms and tone of these discussions
change with different people. A conversation between two
knowledgeable fans of World War II films would likely presume that
they have both seen many of the same films and know a great deal
about special effects. Their discussion might thus get quickly to the

finer points about how the famous battle between the Japanese and
the Americans was portrayed in Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) [Figure
12.4]. In talking about The Killing of the Sacred Deer (2017) with a fan
of Greek director Yorgos Lanthmos, a student of classical literature
might discuss the mythic tale of Iphigenia and Agamemnon, the
mythic backdrop for this surreal modern tragedy.
12.4 Letters from Iwo Jima (2006). Director Clint Eastwood portrays one of World War II’s
fiercest battles from the perspective of the Japanese.
Understanding your readers is like knowing the person you are
talking with: it helps determine the amount of basic information you
need to provide, the level of complexity of the discussion, and the
kind of language you should use. The following four questions are
useful guidelines for gearing your essay to certain readers:
How familiar are your readers with the film being discussed?
What is your readers’ level of interest in the film?

What do your readers know about the film’s historical and
cultural contexts?
How familiar are your readers with the terminology of film
criticism and theory?
For most critical essays, anticipating your readers’ familiarity with
and interest in the film means assuming they have seen the film at
least once and thus do not require an extensive plot summary. Such
readers are not concerned primarily with whether a movie is good
or bad or with other general observations. Rather, they want to be
enlightened about a specific dimension of the film (such as the
opening shot) or about a complicated or puzzling issue in the film.
For instance, the blocking of different characters/actors in different
scenes in Spotlight (2015) creates different kinds of tension and
carries specific meanings in the film — which some viewers may
have noticed but few would have thought about [Figures 12.5a and
12.5b]. An effective writer works to convince readers that their
interests can be deepened and enriched by following the writer’s
argument about a film.

12.5a and 12.5b Spotlight (2015). Spotting a consistent pattern of blocking, such as the
arrangement of individuals in doorways or their dramatic separation by furniture, can
potentially suggest a dramatic tension that leads to an eye-opening argument.

Description
Still (a) shows a small group of four men and a woman seated around an
office desk. Still (b) shows a woman and three men engaged in
discussion in an office. One of the men sits on the table. In both scenes,
the desks are crowded with piles of papers and files and each person sits
hunched forward.
Knowledge of “the film’s historical and cultural contexts” refers to
how much your readers know about the place and time of the film’s
appearance. If the film was made in the United States in the 1920s,
would information about that period help your readers better
understand the film?
Finally, determining your readers’ level of familiarity with the
terminology of film criticism and theory allows you to choose
language that can efficiently and clearly communicate your
argument. Can you assume that a term like continuity editing will be
easily understood, or do you need to define it? In making these
decisions, keep in mind that both overly simplistic language and
dense jargon can equally undermine your analysis.
In most college-level film courses, your audience will be not only
your professor but also your peers — intelligent individuals who
have seen the film, share information and knowledge about film
criticism, but are not necessarily experts. For this audience, you can
concentrate on a particular theme or sequence that may have been
overlooked by a critical viewer. Note that your writing style and

choice of words should be more rigorous and academic than in the
typical movie review.
Elements of the Analytical Film Essay
Two common forms of film writing are film reviews and analytical
essays. Aimed at a general audience that has not seen the film, a
film review tends to be a short essay that describes the plot of a
movie, provides useful background information (about the actors
and the director, for example), and pronounces a clear evaluation of
the film to guide its readers. In contrast, the analytical essay,
distinguished by its intended audience and the level of its critical
language, is the most common kind of writing done by film students
and scholars. It typically focuses on a particular feature or theme of
a film, provides an interpretation of that material, and then gives a
careful analysis to prove or demonstrate that interpretation. Unlike
the writer of a movie review for a magazine, the writer of an
analytical essay presumes that readers know the film and do not
require an extensive plot summary or background information.
Although a clear and engaging style is the goal of any kind of writing
about film, the writer of an analytical essay o�en chooses words and
terms that can effectively communicate complex ideas.

As you prepare to write an analytical essay about a film you have seen in class,
consider your readers. What defines them? What are their interests? What do they
need or want to know about the film?
Consider this passage from a hypothetical essay about O Brother,
Where Art Thou? (2000), written for a college film course [Figure
12.6]. Whereas a newspaper review might summarize the plot, offer
some background information, and employ more casual language,
note how this analytical essay concentrates on a specific and
perhaps less obvious argument:
12.6 O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000). Three escaped convicts are the focus for a precise
analysis.
Joel and Ethan Coen’s O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) is much more than a
musical comedy loosely structured around The Odyssey. A sharp ideological
critique of race and class in modern America is woven throughout the distinctive
soundtrack, the plot set in Depression-era America, and the comic exaggerations
of its characters. Regularly mistaken to be African Americans, the three escaped

convicts (Everett, Pete, and Delmar) learn quickly that their lower-class white
status binds them to the fate of the black men and women they encounter, and
from this predicament, the film explores the economic and political power
structures that then and now make poverty color-blind. Two sequences that
dramatize this provocative dimension of the film are the arrival of the prisoners at
a church to see a movie — which is a reference to Preston Sturges’s film Sullivan’s
Travels (1941), in which the Coens found the title for their movie — and the Ku
Klux Klan rally where the fugitives rescue their black comrade, Tommy.
Here the essay’s focus is relatively refined and sophisticated. It
assumes its readers have seen and know the film, and it
concentrates not on general information but on a specific thesis
about race and class [Figure 12.7]. Along with its choice of a
polemical thesis, this critical essay employs terms (such as
“ideological critique”) that are suited to academic writing.
12.7 O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000). An analytical paper on race and class in this comic
film can be shaped around two specific sequences — the first about the arrival of the
prisoners in a black church and the second about their witnessing of a Ku Klux Klan rally.

Preparing to Write about a Film
Despite sharing some common ground with them, an effective film
essay differs from casual conversations and debates about a movie.
Few writers can dash off a perceptive commentary on a film with
little preparation or revision. Instead, most writers gain considerably
from anticipating what they will write about and later reviewing
carefully what they have written. Few could watch The Sorrow and the
Pity (1972), a powerful documentary about fascism in France during
World War II, and then immediately type a brilliant paper on Marcel
Ophüls’s use of documentary strategies to expose certain myths
about French history or the French Resistance. Like all good writers,
you must follow certain steps in preparing to write an essay: ask
questions, take notes, and select a topic.
Asking Questions
First, try to identify your own interests before you view the film. Ask
yourself:
How does the film relate to my own background and
experiences?
What have I heard about the film?
Am I drawn to technology or to questions about gender? To a
particular filmmaker or period in movie history? To a certain

national cinema?
In what direction of inquiry does my interest point?
In Howard Hawks’s 1938 Bringing Up Baby, Katharine Hepburn plays
an audacious heiress (Susan) whose pet leopard (Baby) becomes the
foil in her zany relationship with a bumbling paleontologist (David),
played by Cary Grant [Figure 12.8]. Perhaps you have seen other
films by Hawks, like His Girl Friday (1940), or other films with
Hepburn, like The Philadelphia Story (1940). Might you consider
comparing the two Hawks films or Hepburn’s two different roles?
12.8 Bringing Up Baby (1938). Katharine Hepburn’s role as an audacious heiress involved
with a blundering paleontologist could start a writer’s critical thinking about the film.

This sort of preparation is not meant to preclude your being drawn to
new ideas and in unexpected directions when you view the film.
Surprising discoveries are certainly one of the bonuses of
approaching films with an open mind. While watching In the Bedroom
(2001), one viewer might become puzzled by how the film seems
suddenly to change direction. A�er depicting the excruciating pain
of two parents who have lost a son, the movie then becomes a
revenge tale in which the father seeks out and murders his son’s
killer. For the viewer, what seems at first a slow meditation on
inexpressible grief becomes a tense thriller. How do the two parts
work together? Does loss always require retribution? Does violence
always beget violence? By asking these kinds of questions, you can
intellectually interact with a film, sharpening your responses and
shaping the direction of your essay.
Taking Notes
Note taking, an essential part of writing about film, stimulates
critical thinking and generates precise and productive observations.
Whereas most students find it natural to take notes on a biology
experiment or on their reading of a Shakespeare play, annotating a
film is both awkward and unnatural. It is difficult to write while
watching a movie in a darkened room, and most films ask that we
constantly attend to them so that we do not miss information that
passes quickly. Note taking, however, is absolutely necessary to

writing about film because a good analytical essay must include
concrete evidence to support its argument — and precise notes
provide that support. The three general rules for annotating a film
are as follows:
Take notes on the unusual (events or formal elements that stand
out in the film).
Take notes on events or techniques that recur with regularity.
Take notes on oppositions that appear in the film.
Before viewing your next film, jot down three or four questions you want to direct at
the film. During the film, write down three or four more about specific shots or
scenes. Later, attempt to answer all of your questions as precisely as possible.
For instance, most viewers of Bringing Up Baby would agree that the
sequence involving David and Susan at the local jail, with Hepburn
pretending to be a hardened gangster’s moll, stands out as one of the
funniest and most unusual moments in the film. Equally important,
however, are those actions or images whose repetitions suggest a
recurring theme or pattern, such as David’s repeatedly losing his
clothes or glasses. Oppositions can be equally illuminating, such as
the contrast between the rival women — the goofy Susan and David’s
staid fiancée, his scientific assistant.

Which events, sounds, or shots in the film you just viewed stand out as unusual?
As most important? As examples of a pattern of repetition? Describe clearly and
concretely one or two events, sounds, or shots from the film.
Each writer develops his or her own shorthand for taking notes on
films. The trick is to jot down information about the story or
characters that seems significant while also recording visual, audio,
or other formal details. Some common abbreviations for visual
compositions include the following:
ct: cut
cu: close-up
ds: diegetic sound
es: establishing shot
ha: high angle
la: low angle
ls: long shot
mcu: medium close-up
mls: medium long shot
nds: nondiegetic sound
ps: pan shot
trs: tracking shot
vo: voiceover
More specific camera movements and directions can o�en be re-
created with arrows and lines that graph the actions or directions.
The following drawings suggest the movements of the camera:
Description

The camera movements and directions respectively are as follows: low
camera angle, with an arrow that points upward; high camera angle, with
an arrow that points downward; tracking shot, with a squiggly arrow.
For example, part of the jailhouse sequence in Bringing Up Baby
[Figures 12.9 and 12.10] might be annotated as follows to indicate
cuts, camera movements, or angles:
mcu of constable and Susan through bars
ct mcu David
12.9 Bringing Up Baby (1938). “Swinging Door Susie” engages the sheriff …

12.10 Bringing Up Baby (1938) … and baffles her cellmate, David.
Later, these notes would be filled in, perhaps by again reviewing the
sequence for more details — for example, pieces of the hilarious
monologue of “Swinging Door Susie.” Drawings of shots can
supplement such details. Critical comments or observations might
also be added — for instance, about how the organization of the shot
composition and editing provides the contrast between the officious
and tongue-tied sheriff and the zany and loquacious Susan.
Selecting a Topic

A�er taking and reviewing your notes on the film, you need to
choose the topic for the paper. Because there are many dimensions
of a film to write about — character, story, music, editing — selecting
a manageable topic can prove daunting. Even a lengthy essay will
suffer if it attempts to address too many issues. Narrowing your topic
will allow you to investigate the issues fully and carefully, resulting in
better writing. In a five-or six-page essay, a topic such as “fast-talking
comedy in Bringing Up Baby” would probably need to rely on
generalities and large claims, whereas “gender, order, and disorder in
the jailhouse” would be a more focused and manageable topic.
Although good critical analysis usually considers different features of
a film, we can distinguish two sets of topics for writing about film —
formal and contextual. Formal topics concentrate on forms and ideas
within a film, including character analysis, narrative analysis, and
stylistic analysis. Contextual topics, which relate a film to other films
or to surrounding issues, include comparative analysis and historical
or cultural analysis.
Formal Topics
In general, there are three types of formal topics: a character
analysis focuses its argument on a single character or on the
interactions between two or more characters, a narrative analysis
concentrates on the story and its construction, and a stylistic
analysis focuses on form (such as shot composition, editing, and the
use of sound).

Although writing a character analysis may appear easier to do than
other kinds of analyses, a good essay about a character requires
subtlety and eloquence. Rather than write about a central character,
like Susan in Bringing Up Baby or Mildred Hayes, the tough and
determined mother at the center of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing,
Missouri (2017) [Figure 12.11], an essay might concentrate on a
minor character, such as Susan’s aristocratic aunt or the sheriff
deputy Dixon, the troubled target of Mildred’s anger.
12.11 Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017). Character analysis of a primary role,
the tormented mother (played by Francis McDormand), risks describing the obvious.
Similarly, a narrative analysis usually should be refined so that the
paper addresses, for instance, the relationship between the
beginning and the end of a film or the way a voiceover comments on
and directs the story. In The Shawshank Redemption (1994), the
narrative concentrates largely on Andy Dufresne, condemned to
prison for murdering his wife and her lover, but the complexity of his

story becomes richer and more nuanced as it is filtered through the
voiceover commentary of his prison comrade “Red” Redding. The
relationship of the two creates, in effect, a second narrative line that
interacts with the prison story.
A paper that deals with a stylistic topic will be more controllable and
incisive if, for instance, it isolates a particular group of shots or
identifies a single sound motif that recurs in the film. One student
may find a topic for a paper by examining the role of the various
narrators in Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line (1998). Another
student may choose to look carefully at repeated editing patterns in
Battleship Potemkin (1925) or at the use of framing in Yasujiro Ozu’s
Tokyo Story (1953). Any one of these topics will grow more interesting
and insightful if you continue to ask questions during the writing
process: How is the character David in Bringing Up Baby shaped by
costuming or shot composition? How do the various narrators in The
Thin Red Line reflect different attitudes about war?
FILM IN FOCUS Analysis, Audience, and Minority Report (2002)
See also: A.I. (2001); Blade Runner
(1982); Inception (2010)

To watch a clip from Minority Report (2002), go to LaunchPad for The Film
Experience at launchpadworks.com
Minority Report (2002) initially attracted audiences through the reputation of one of
the most prolific and acclaimed directors in the world, Steven Spielberg, and one of
the most popular stars in the world, Tom Cruise. Some viewers may enjoy the film
because it recalls and elaborates on themes from other Spielberg films or because
it features a successful and complex performance by Cruise. Others may be
intrigued by its variations on the sci-fi thriller genre. Any of these pathways could be
developed into a provocative essay about the film but only if those perspectives
and ideas can be substantiated or proven useful, true, and important — that is, only
if they can be shown to have objective accuracy.
One student decides to write a review of Minority Report for his college newspaper
in anticipation of the film’s upcoming appearance at the college art house. Because
the film is more than ten years old, the writer presumes that many of his potential
readers have not yet seen it and need both information and balanced opinions. He
proceeds with a clear sense of what his readers already know, do not know, and
need to know about the film.
Background information on the director and film helps provide
context for readers.
Minority Report (2002) probably is not one of the best-known or most commonly
discussed films by celebrity director Steven Spielberg. Most of us likely associate
Spielberg with well-known popular thrillers like Jaws (1975) and Jurassic Park (1993) or
historical blockbusters such as Saving Private Ryan (1998) and Lincoln (2012). Although
Minority Report features megastar Tom Cruise, it is a quirkier and edgier movie than
most of Spielberg’s other films. Based on a novel by Philip K. Dick and part of a sci-fi
heritage that extends from Blade Runner (1982) through Inception (2010), this futuristic
story, set in 2054, is perhaps Spielberg’s darkest and most complex effort.

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Reviews should have a point of view.
Here the writer argues that the film engages viewers through the
drama of its futuristic technology.
Although some of you may dash out to see this 2002 movie for the big-screen
projection of Cruise as John Anderton, the real star of the film is the depiction of future
technology and the ways that it may change our world. Anderton is a police officer
whose unit oversees three human “precogs” linked to advanced computer
technologies that allow the Pre-Crime Division to foresee and stop future murders.
Everyone assumes this technological surveillance system is flawless and foolproof
because it has kept Washington, D.C., free of all crime for several years. With an
ingenious variation on the wrongly accused protagonist, however, Anderton discovers
that he has himself been identified as a future murderer, which is when the plot
suddenly takes off. Pursued by and pursuing the technological forces that define this
future world (including mechanical spiders that invade any space and identify people
by reading their eyes), Anderton weaves his way through a society that moves at
incredible technological speeds and leaves no place to hide from its new powers to see
into seemingly every corner of the world and individual minds.
A review usually features more plot summary than an analytical
essay.
Like the Bourne movies of this same period, Minority Report is a fast-paced thriller in
which Cruise as Anderton is both criminal and detective. More than portraying his
flight to discover the truth about a crime and to redeem himself, however, the film
provides a timely reflection on new technologies and our perhaps misguided trust of
them. The danger in this Spielberg world is not sharks, German soldiers, or stubborn
congressmen but the powerful technologies that can control our lives today.
The same writer later chooses to compose the following critical essay about
Minority Report for a film history course. In this case, his readers are his professor

and the other students in the class, readers who are familiar with the film and have
read other material about it. Note this student’s inclusion of images from the film.
These images do not serve merely as a visual embellishment for the paper but as
concrete and precise evidence that supports his argument.
The writer concentrates on one or two scenes to analyze in detail.
In the critical essays and reviews about Minority Report, viewers regularly praise the
ingenious and elaborate plot and stunning cinematography that captures the blue
tints of futuristic film noir. John Anderton, an officer in the Pre-Crime Division of
Washington, D.C., in the year 2054, orchestrates the visions of three “precogs” through
a complex computer system that foresees murders and thereby allows the police to
stop them. When this seemingly infallible network accuses Anderton of a future crime,
the system splits open, launching Anderton on a mission to save himself and to find
the truth about lost “minority reports” that can expose the fallibility of the system. A
surveillance film about sight and seeing with cutting-edge technologies and new
media velocities [Figure MR.1], Minority Report remains nonetheless Spielberg’s
typical family melodrama with its narrative of finding a way back home.
MR.1 Minority Report (2002). A thesis identifies an argument about sight, new
technologies, and lost families.
At the heart of the film is an anxious and o�en excruciating drama about sight and
seeing. The “precogs” threesome foresees the future as a dramatic indication of how

sight can now overcome conventional boundaries of time, and the surveillance
technologies that suffuse the society describe astonishing ways that boundaries of
space dissolve before the new technologies for seeing. In the midst of his flight, for
example, Anderton hides in a decrepit apartment building, where the pursuing police
release mechanical “identification spiders.” At the start of the sequence, a precisely
edited series of images reveals the various private spaces in the building, the release of
the spiders, and their eerily rapid invasion of the different apartments. A�er they are
inside, they open the most sensitive human interior, methodically li�ing eyelids and
taking electronic snapshots of the eyes as a way to identify the individuals [Figure
MR.2]. Although Anderton escapes this onslaught by remaining submerged in a tub of
water, he realizes that he must transplant his eyes as a way to remain unseen.
Temporarily blind and carrying his own eyes in his pocket, Anderton searches for a
truth that, despite the wonders of so much visionary technology and speed, can be
discovered, as a drug dealer points out, only in the “world of the blind.” Indeed, in this
film, to see with insight into a world of visual deception becomes the critical challenge
of survival.
MR.2 Minority Report (2002). Identification spiders eerily portray a way that
futuristic technologies see into the most private spaces.
The writer’s careful analysis of the details shows how they lead to a
complex and subtle interpretation that some viewers may have
missed.

Even as seeing grows more difficult and layered across many different visions and
technologies, Minority Report remains, as most Spielberg films are, essentially about
family — overcoming bad families and reestablishing good families. From the start,
Anderton is a man traumatized by the mysterious abduction of his son and a
separation from his wife. As a displacement of that trauma, he passionately immerses
himself in the Pre-Crime Division, where he reinvents his lost family through a new
father figure, Director Lamar Burgess. At the climactic conclusion of the film, however,
Anderton — with the help of his pre-cog companion, Agatha — must confront this
father figure. He projects a blurry montage that reveals a lost visual sequence that
exposes Burgess’s murder of Agatha’s mother. Cutting between a dinner honoring
Burgess, Agatha’s struggle to mentally project those images, and the shocking display
of those images on a screen at the banquet, the sequence recovers a lost past and
creates an alternative film within the master surveillance film. In one sense, one
cinematic vision of events replaces another, transforming the good father into the evil
father who murdered a caring mother. Anderton’s original devotion to the visual
wonders of the Pre-Crime Division can be viewed, in large part, as a response to the
traumatic loss of his family, and his discovery of new eyes and a new way of seeing
through a blinded futuristic landscape leads directly to the dissolution of the myth of
his spurious father and Pre-Crime Division family.
The writer expands his interpretation to show how it resonates
through the entire film.
In the coda that concludes the film, the family units lost to technology have been
restored. A rainy blue-tinted image slowly tracks across John’s glassy apartment and
moves in to show John and his now-pregnant wife reunited. The image then cuts to the
three precogs intensely absorbed in books: the camera tracks through and out of a
cabin on a bucolic lake where the precogs now “find relief from their gi�s,” an earlier
world where high-tech visuals have been replaced with a rustic simplicity [Figure
MR.3]. As with most Spielberg films, all the social, political, and technological threats
to a traditional family have, apparently, been successfully dismissed as that family is
reprojected into the past.

MR.3 Minority Report (2002). In the end, the film reestablishes the image of a
peaceful family in a prelapsarian world.
Contextual Topics
Contextual topics usually focus on comparative analysis or cultural
analysis. A comparative analysis evaluates features or elements of
two or more different films or perhaps a film and its literary source.
A comparative analysis might thus contrast Susan in Bringing Up
Baby (1938) with one or more heroines in more recent films, such as
Julia Child in Julie & Julia (2009) [Figure 12.12]. A comparative
analysis always calls for some common ground in order to link what
you are comparing and contrasting.

12.12 Julie & Julia (2009). The endearing and high-spirited Julia Child, as played by Meryl
Streep, becomes a rich subject of a comparative analysis.
Conversely, cultural analysis interprets the relationship of a film to
its place in history, society, or culture. Such a topic might examine
historical contexts or debates that surround the film and help explain
it — for example, in Bringing Up Baby, the social status of women or
the importance of class in 1938 America. With historical or cultural
analysis, the pertinence of the topic to understanding the film is
crucial. In Bringing Up Baby, the role of women is important; the
historical status of leopards probably is not.
A�er a topic has been selected (the more specific, the better), the
writer should view the film again to refine and build on his or her
initial notes. The writer who comes to Bringing Up Baby with a vague
interest in how it portrays the battle of the sexes might, a�er seeing

the film again, wish to refocus the topic on how the leopard becomes
a metaphor for that battle.

Elements of a Film Essay
Sketch an argument for your essay. What is the logic of its development? What
conclusions do you foresee making?
Whether your chosen topic is a formal analysis of a sequence of
shots or a comparison of a novel with its filmic adaptation, it will
need to include a clear thesis statement, argument, and evidence
(concrete details that convince readers of the validity of a writer’s
interpretation) to support your claims. Although different audiences
may interpret all or part of a movie somewhat differently, a valid
and interesting argument distinguishes itself by how well the
analysis of evidence supports the thesis statement. Without good
evidence, precise analysis, and logical argument, an essay will
appear to be simply one viewer’s impression or opinion.
Thesis Statement
Perhaps the most important element in a good analytical essay is the
thesis statement — a short statement (o�en a single sentence) that
succinctly describes and anticipates each stage of an essay’s
argument. The remainder of the essay should prove and support

that thesis with evidence. As a significantly refined version of the
topic, the thesis statement articulates clearly the writer’s critical
perspective as an insightful argument about the film. It should
indicate what is at stake in the argument and perhaps how that
argument is important to understanding the film. A weak thesis
statement introduces the essay vaguely and generally: “The Coen
brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) describes a search for an
identity.” A strong thesis anticipates each stage of the argument that
will follow in the paper: “The Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis
(2013) describes a search for an identity lost in 1961 New York City,
with a cat named Ulysses signaling the path of that search as a
circular odyssey about getting home to one’s own self.” A thesis
statement o�en appears in the first paragraph of the essay and
usually undergoes various revisions during the writing process.
Having a working thesis (a rough version of a thesis) in mind as you
begin your first dra�, however, will help anchor your argument. In
its final form, a precise and assertive thesis statement is likely to
engage readers’ interest in the essay.
Write a precise thesis statement. Is your thesis specific enough, or does it need
refinement? Is it sufficiently interesting to encourage readers to continue
reading your essay?

As with most films, both David Mackenzie’s Hell or High Water (2016)
and Stephen Frears’s My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) offer a wide
variety of topics that could be developed into specific arguments and
thesis statements. A writer might analyze Hell or High Water — a film
about two brothers desperately driven to rob a series of banks in
Texas — as either an allegory of the impoverished economics that
underpin the narrative or as a mixture of the western and “road
movie” genres [Figure 12.13].
12.13 Hell or High Water (2016). Two brothers on a violent road reflect the hard times of a
contemporary economic crisis.
For My Beautiful Laundrette, a contemporary romance between a
young Pakistani man and a male friend involved with right-wing
British gangs, a writer might weigh the advantages of two possible
topics — the developing sexual relationship of the two main
characters or the mise-en-scène of the coin-operated laundry where
the climactic scenes take place [Figure 12.14]. A�er reflecting on

these topics and seeing the two films again, one student writer opts
for the second film and develops a thesis statement that
demonstrates a clear and specific direction: “My Beautiful Laundrette
looks at contemporary British politics from numerous angles —
family politics, sexual politics, racial politics, and economic politics.
In the end, these various motifs coalesce and climax in a single
space that is both practical and fantastic, the mise-en-scène of the
laundrette.” As clear and intelligent as it is, this proposed thesis
statement probably will be revised for the final dra� of the paper
because the writing will generate new insights and possibly new
issues. The student might decide to concentrate on only three of the
various political angles or perhaps to argue that the politics of
family, sex, and race in the film are all related to economics.

12.14 My Beautiful Laundrette (1985). The climactic mise-en-scène of the laundrette
suggests an argument about politics in the United Kingdom.
Outline and Topic Sentences
Preparing an outline results in a valuable blueprint of an essay,
allowing the writer to see and examine the different parts and
overall development of the argument as it proceeds out of a strong
thesis. An outline can consist of a simple list of ideas to address or
shots and scenes to highlight (such as “weak father figures,” “house
squatting as metaphor for identity,” and “description of the
laundrette”) or a more complete (and more useful) list that includes
subheadings and perhaps full sentences, which can be used as topic
sentences in the essay.
Here is an excerpt from the detailed outline prepared by the student
working on the essay about My Beautiful Laundrette.
The Politics of Laundry in My Beautiful Laundrette
Working Thesis: My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) looks at contemporary British
politics from numerous angles — family politics, sexual politics, racial politics,
and economic politics. In the end, these various motifs coalesce and climax in a
single space that is both practical and fantastic — the mise-en-scène of the coin-
operated laundry.
I. Family politics is the most immediate and complicated type.
A. Fathers and authority
B. Family traditions and repression

II. Sexual politics underpins family situations in a way that exposes hypocrisy.
A. Heterosexual politics: Nasser, his wife, and his mistress Rachel
B. Feminist politics: Tania, Nasser’s daughter
C. Gay politics: Johnny and Omar
III. Racial politics permeates all other relationships, in a way that can be
overlooked in this drama.
A. Johnny, race, and right-wing politics (National Front)
B. Papa, race, and le�-wing politics
IV. Economic politics is where the other confrontations are — presumably and
ironically — resolved.
A. Papa as businessman
B. Salim as drug dealer
C. Johnny and Omar as laundry entrepreneurs
V. Political motifs coalesce and climax in a single space that is both practical
and fantastic — the mise-en-scène of the launderette.
A. Detailed description of mise-en-scène of launderette
B. Pragmatic meets fantasy
C. Analysis of climactic gathering
Create a detailed outline of your essay. Does your outline include subsections that
later can be developed with details and evidence from the film?
As this example illustrates, a detailed outline allows the writer to
review the structure of the essay and note any problems with the
scope or logic of the argument or with the transitions from one
section to another. At this stage, the topic should be focused on a
specific thesis whose parts develop as logical steps in the body of the
paper — with each of the five topic sentences reflecting the working
thesis and its development from one point to the next.

Whether or not you work from an outline, a clear organization and
structure — most notably, coherent paragraphs introduced and
linked by topic sentences — are essential for an effective essay. Well-
developed paragraphs, which tend to consist of several sentences,
demand coherence and evidence. Critical to a good paragraph is the
topic sentence — a sentence (usually the first in a paragraph) that
announces the central idea to which all other sentences within the
paragraph are related. The remainder of the paragraph develops the
idea stated in the topic sentence and provides evidence from the
film as support.
In this excerpt from the essay on My Beautiful Laundrette, note how
the strong and lucid topic sentence opening the paragraph is then
supported by evidence:
In My Beautiful Laundrette, the drama of the characters is invariably about space,
territory, and most important, the idea of home. Although most of the characters
are driven by the idea that, as one character puts it, “people should make up their
minds where they want to live,” places and homes are never more than shi�ing
locations, foreign territory where one lives uncomfortably. In the first sequence,
Salim and a henchman evict Johnny and another squatter from an abandoned
tenement, and for the rest of the film the metaphor of squatting describes the
characters’ unstable and temporary relations to the places in which they live and
with which they interact. In this sense, “home” is at best a dream and usually just
a temporary convenience. Nasser’s daughter Tania wants to be anywhere but with
her family, and she is willing to have either Johnny or Omar as a lover, depending
on who will take her away from her home. In the end, Nasser watches from a
window as a medium shot shows Tania being visually swept off the platform by a
series of trains that rush off the screen, on her way to another home that she will
define for herself.

Following the topic of home as a key space in the film, the
paragraph cogently traces its repetition through the experiences of
the different characters, illustrating how it anchors and
differentiates their lives and works as a central metaphor in the film.
Revising, Formatting, and
Proofreading
A completed first dra� of an essay is not a completed essay. The final
stage in writing about film requires at least one revision of the
paper, with special attention to manuscript format and
proofreading. Last-minute corrections should be kept to a minimum
and should be clear and simple.
A good revision begins by reading the essay with fresh eyes,
achieved best by allowing time away from the first dra� — at least a
few hours and at best a few days — before returning to work on the
revision. A revision should examine, clarify, and rewrite word
choices, sentence structures, paragraphs, the logic and
organization, and the coherence of the ideas. It should improve the
presentation and the efficiency of the argument and analysis. In
addition, carefully check the manuscript format, including margins,
title position, footnotes, and other mechanics. Typically, the format
for a film essay should follow guidelines published by the Modern
Language Association (MLA).

A�er your final revision is completed, proofreading — checking the
revision for grammatical and structural errors, typos, or omissions
that can be easily corrected — is essential. With any kind of writing,
the presentation helps determine how your reader views your work,
and an accurate, professional look will promote an accurate,
professional reading of it. Typographical mistakes and other small
errors do not ruin a good essay, but they undermine it by creating an
impression of carelessness. Keeping a checklist of these mechanics
in mind can alleviate much of the anxiety about writing, providing a
working framework that leads to stronger and more interesting
essays.
Writer’s Checklist
A�er writing your first dra�, revise your thesis statement to reflect changes in your
thinking. Be sure to sharpen your thesis statement to describe your argument
more accurately.
As you grow more confident as a writer, you will be able to write
about films in a fluid motion as you watch the film, take some notes,
sketch an outline, and write the first dra� and final essay. Even the
most competent writers, however, pause to reflect on their work by
consulting a checklist like this one:

1. Review your notes, filling in details where you can. Ideally, view
the film one more time.
2. Try to summarize the most important themes or motifs in the
film.
3. Formulate a working thesis and an argument for the essay.
4. Outline the argument. If possible, use full sentences for
headings because they can then become your topic sentences.
5. Develop the central idea of each paragraph by using details
from the film that support that paragraph’s topic sentence.
6. Rewrite your thesis statement to reflect any changes or
refinements in your thinking that occurred while you were
writing your first dra�.
7. If you are writing a research essay, be sure to use the correct
documentation format for in-text citations and the Works Cited
list (see the Documentation Format section later in this
chapter).
8. Revise your essay, checking for problems such as vague or
illogical organization, and proofread for surface errors in
spelling and grammar.
9. Select a title that reflects the main argument of your paper.
10. Print out the essay, and correct any remaining typographical
errors.

Researching the Movies
Although in some critical film essays writers aim to convey a simple
personal response to a film based on critical distance and careful
reflection, in other essays they might use research to sharpen and
develop their interpretation of a film. Research enables writers to
identify significant issues surrounding a film and to contribute their
opinions and ideas to the ongoing critical dialogue about it. A
student intending to write about Denzel Washington’s Fences (2016),
for example, may be intrigued by the film but uncertain about his or
her specific argument. With some reading and research about
August Wilson’s 1985 play on which the film is based, about the
performances of Washington and Viola Davis in adapting Wilson’s
characters, and about some other prominent discussions of
adapting literature to film, the student might discover a specific
argument about the complications of adapting a theatrical plot and
characters to the cinema [Figure 12.15].

12.15 Fences (2016). Researching this film also may mean researching the original Pulitzer
Prize–winning play on which it is based.
Distinguishing Research Materials
Whether limited or extensive, research helps determine why your
essay is important and what critical questions are at stake in writing
it. Research is also a dialogue with other opinions and writings that
help distinguish or support your ideas about a film or group of films.
Various kinds of materials qualify as research sources for a film
essay, including primary, secondary, and internet resources.
Whatever the source of the research, it is imperative, especially
when researching film and media, to distinguish scholarly books
and journals from popular books and magazines. Good information
or insights can sometimes be discovered in popular magazines, such
as Entertainment Weekly, that write about movies, stars, and industry
events, but a strong analytical essay will build and support its

positions with sources from scholarly books, journals or sites, such
as Film Quarterly or Sight and Sound. While the former tends to rely
on personal observations or even hearsay and gossip, the latter
publishes material only a�er it has been peer-reviewed and vetted
by experts in the field in order to be certain the argument is sound
and original. Always prioritize scholarly sources for your research.
Primary Research
Primary research sources — original sources in formats such as
16mm films, videotapes, DVDs, and film scripts; documents from
the time of the film’s production; and new research data — have a
direct relationship with the original film. Some of these materials
are readily available in libraries, including the many classic scripts
now published as books. Others, such as 16mm films, can be
difficult to locate except in film archives. A student planning to write
a research essay on Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
might first view a 16mm or DVD projection of that film and then
access other primary sources (such as a script) as follow-ups to the
first screening [Figure 12.16]. Primary sources may approximate but
not duplicate exactly the look of a film that is seen in a theater. The
format used in streaming sites and DVDs may be different from the
format used in theatrical screenings, and scripts may represent a
simple blueprint from which the actual film dialogue deviates.

12.16 Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). Watching a film closely and following its script
allows you to analyze it with precision and depth.
Secondary Research
Secondary research sources — including books, critical articles,
websites, supplementary DVD materials, and newspaper reviews —
contain ideas or information from outside sources such as film
critics or scholars. The student researching Invasion of the Body
Snatchers might include film reviews published at the time of
release, scholarly essays on Siegel’s work, and perhaps a book on
1950s American cinema. Libraries and their databases are the most
reliable places to find solid secondary materials. Check databases
such as the Humanities International Index and LexisNexis for
essays and books on your subject. Annual bibliographic indexes —
especially the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature, the MLA

International Bibliography, and the Film & Television Literature Index
with Full Text — identify journals and books that may support and
broaden your thinking. A�er you have a topic and a working thesis,
you can search for sources relevant to your topic and argument.
Rather than checking general categories like “film,” “cinema,” and
“movies,” a more precise topic (such as “contemporary Australian
cinema” or “sound technology and the movies”) will lead you more
quickly to pertinent research materials.
In addition to databases and bibliographic indexes, specialized
encyclopedias, which identify important topics and figures in film
studies, are useful resources for initiating research on a film. These
sources provide factual information about and short introductions
to a subject. The entries typically do not offer the detailed analysis
or arguments required for a good research paper, but they can
suggest pertinent information and issues that can lead you to more
research and a refined argument.
Internet Sources
The internet offers access to various library and media catalogs and
numerous other information sites. However, with so many websites
available, the writer must be careful to consult the three kinds of
reputable internet sources for film studies:
sites and databases that provide basic facts about a film and the
individuals involved with that film, including biographical facts

about the director, the running time of a film, and its year of
release
sites that offer reviews or essays from academic film journals,
such as Film Comment, Jump Cut, and Sight and Sound
film-specific sites that provide information ranging from
production facts to reviews and interviews; most major films
have websites, as do the studios and distributors
Although the internet is an important source of information of all
kinds, film researchers and writers must be cautious about the
quality of the material found there. For one thing, it can be difficult
to determine the authenticity of some internet-based information.
Unlike material published in academic journals or books, internet
essays and articles may not have been through a review process to
determine their value. Virtually anyone can post on a website any
opinion or “facts,” o�en without substantial evidence. When using
the internet for research, therefore, writers need to differentiate
substantial and useful material from chat and frivolous
commentary. Especially with internet sources, there are three
important rules to follow:
Determine the quality of the source. Does it provide reliable
information and a carefully evaluated argument supported by
research? Is the source a refereed publication (one whose
material is evaluated by experts) or a reputable institution? Is its
information supported by references to other research? What
are the credentials of the authors?

Define your search as precisely as possible. Instead of just the
title of a film, focus your search on, for example, “lighting in
Double Indemnity” or “politics and Iranian cinema.” Pursue your
topic through the advanced search option.
Explore links to other sites. Does your research link you to sites
on other films by the same director or to related issues such as
the film genre or the country in which the film was made?
Here is a short list of websites useful for film research:
American Film Institute (www.afi.com): recent industry news,
events, educational seminars, and reviews
Berkeley Media Resources Center
(www.lib.berkeley.edu/libraries/media-resources-center): a
collection of online bibliographies and sources for film and
media studies
Columbia Film Language Glossary
(filmglossary.ccnmtl.columbia.edu): a teaching tool from
Columbia University featuring clips and visual annotations of
key terms in film studies
The Criterion Collection (www.criterion.com): distributor of well-
known masterpieces of international art cinema, Hollywood
classics, and o�en overlooked gems from film history
Fandor (www.fandor.com): features video essays and articles on
current world film culture and a subscription service of curated
films
Film & Television Literature Index with Full Text
(https://www.ebsco.com/products/research-databases/film-

Home page

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/libraries/media-resources-center

http://filmglossary.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/

http://www.criterion.com/

http://www.fandor.com/

https://www.ebsco.com/products/research-databases/film-television-literature-index-full-text

television-literature-index-full-text): an index, with more than
two thousand subject heads, of the publications in 150 film and
media journals
FilmSound.org (www.filmsound.org): covers all topics related to
film sound — including definitions of terms, links to scholarly
articles, and interviews with sound designers — and is useful
for students and practitioners
Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com): complete credits, plot
summaries, links to reviews, and background information on
individual films
[in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image
Studies (mediacommons.org/intransition/): online, peer-
reviewed journal of video essays with commentary, including
an extensive resources page with valuable information on how
to create film scholarship in this format
Media History Digital Library (mediahistoryproject.org): award-
winning, extensive free collection of easily searchable digitized
publications from the history of film, broadcasting, and
recorded sound; includes data visualization tools
Moving Image Research Center (www.loc.gov/rr/mopic): the
Library of Congress catalog that includes the National Film
Registry preservation list, the American Memory Collection of
online early films, and other materials
Oxford Bibliographies Online
(www.oxfordbibliographiesonline.com): annotated and
regularly updated bibliographies on a wide variety of topics in
film and media studies

https://www.ebsco.com/products/research-databases/film-television-literature-index-full-text

http://filmsound.org/

http://www.filmsound.org/

http://www.imdb.com/

http://mediacommons.org/intransition/

http://mediahistoryproject.org/

http://www.loc.gov/rr/mopic

http://www.oxfordbibliographiesonline.com/

Society for Cinema and Media Studies (www.cmstudies.org):
academic society dedicated to the scholarly study of film,
television, and new media
UbuWeb (www.ubu.com): allows users to download rare and
remarkable documents from literary, film, video, and music
history, such as a Dadaist magazine from 1917 or a documentary
on Andy Warhol
Women Film Pioneers Project (wfpp.cdrs.columbia.edu): freely
accessible, collaborative online database on the hundreds of
women who worked behind the scenes in the silent film
industry worldwide, as directors, producers, editors, and more
Search the internet for information about your film and topic, and locate at least
one useful source. What distinguishes this source from other online information
about your topic?
FILM IN FOCUS Interpretation, Argument, and Evidence in Rashomon (1950)
See also: Citizen Kane (1941); The Usual
Suspects (1995); Inception (2010)
To watch a clip from Rashomon (1950), go to LaunchPad for The Film
Experience at launchpadworks.com

http://www.cmstudies.org/

http://www.ubu.com/

http://wfpp.cdrs.columbia.edu/

http://launchpadworks.com/

A�er reviewing his notes on Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950), a student writer
considers some possible topics. He begins by thinking about the film’s unusual
narrative structure. Three men, including a priest, seek shelter from a rainstorm
under an ancient city gate, where they hear the tale of a murder and rape through
four different points of view — those of a bandit, the woman, the ghost of the dead
man, and a woodcutter. The narrative tension in the film, the writer realizes,
develops around the discrepancies in these competing points of view, which result
in a dark ambiguity about the truth of this violent and tragic event. A�er seeing the
film again and trying to refine his thinking about it, the writer develops the
following thesis:
In Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950), three men hear four different versions of the
truth about a violent attack. A�er audience members see and hear these various
perspectives and are presented with the evidence, they share in the opening
confusion of the three men, setting the stage for the only possible response to a world
defined by egotism and uncertainty — compassion.
The student’s next step is to sketch an outline in which he uses topic sentences to
mark the development of the argument and the places where key evidence will
appear.
Rashomon: Beyond Understanding and Evidence
Thesis statement: Rashomon is a drama of evidence and interpretation.
I. Central to this film is the drama of interpretation and evidence.
A. Four accounts of same horrifying event
B. The opening focus on evidence
II. Although more evidence appears through the perspectives of the four
witnesses, that evidence does not always agree and seems to befuddle a clear
interpretation.
A. Overlaps and inconsistencies in describing the facts
B. The dagger as key piece of evidence
III. The heart of the fragmented narratives of Rashomon is the egotism that
fashions the various perspectives.
A. The bandit’s violent sexual desire and the crime

B. His story of conquest and surrender
IV. Both the wife’s and the husband’s perspectives are likewise mostly about
themselves.
A. The wife’s tale of a helpless woman
B. The husband’s tale of honor and self-sacrifice
V. The woodcutter’s narrative is more problematic but equally locked into his own
needs for self-justification and protection.
A. His revised vision: a base and cowardly world
B. His acknowledgment that he took the evidence of the dagger
VI. Each of these perspectives is distorted by the ethical failures of the individuals
telling them, indicating the horrifying indeterminacy of a world determined by
isolated egos, as well as the corruption of these perspectives by human
egotism.
A. Natural disaster and moral depravity
B. Editing and shot compositions that add to confusion, disorientation, and
failure to see facts and events clearly
VII. Although the humane conclusion of the film seems unexpected (and somewhat
sentimental), its unexpectedness makes the film engage with modern times.
A�er writing his first dra�, the writer sets aside the paper for three days before
undertaking a careful revision. He proofreads a printed version of the essay and
then submits his final copy, which follows.
Fred Stillman
Professor White
Film 101
10 Feb. 2020
Beyond Understanding and Evidence:
The Surprise of Compassion in Rashomon
A brief summary of the film is followed by a concise thesis that maps
out the main points of the paper’s argument.

The setting that opens and closes Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950) is the collapsed
Rashomon gate in the ancient city of Kyoto. Amidst a torrential rainstorm, a
woodcutter, a commoner, and a priest huddle together, and the first recounts a
horrifying tale of rape, murder, and possibly suicide told through four different
perspectives that structure the narrative of the film. Seen through the eyes of a
criminal, the female victim, the dead husband, and a woodcutter, each perspective
offers a contrasting version of events and the truth of what happened, and each
introduces pieces of evidence to support that particular version. Despite having heard
these witnesses, however, the priest can only murmur, “I don’t understand.” At the
film’s conclusion, moreover, the uncertainty of the men is more pervasive than ever,
setting the stage for the only possible response to a world defined by egotism and
uncertainty — compassion.
The initial topic sentence introduces the first part of the argument.
Rashomon is a drama of evidence and interpretation. As the priest and woodcutter
explain to the commoner, the original staging of the different testimonies was a police
court trying to gather evidence about a horrible crime in which a noblewoman and
her husband were attacked in the wilderness: she was raped and he was killed.
Appropriately, the first point of view presented is that of the woodcutter, who follows
a trail of evidence through the woods — a woman’s hat, a man’s hat, a belt, and an
amulet case — to the sudden discovery of the dead body of the samurai nobleman,
his stiffened arms and hands stretched grotesquely toward the horrified woodcutter
in a low-angle shot [Figure R.1]. Shortly therea�er, a man describes how he captured
the bandit Tajomaru, emphasizing the discovered evidence of the samurai’s horse as
well as “seventeen arrows” and a “Korean sword” found on the criminal. Yet this
seemingly incontestable claim and evidence become subject to doubt when the
bandit suddenly denounces and denies the man’s interpretation of certain details.

R.1 Rashomon (1950). The woodcutter’s perspective sheds light on the mystery of
a horrifying death.
Although more evidence is given through the perspective of the other witnesses, that
evidence does not always agree, and it seems to befuddle a clear interpretation. Most
important, the significance of a pearl-handled dagger, the weapon that supposedly
killed the husband, changes dramatically in the different narratives, acting as an
evidential marker to distinguish the interpretations of events.
Focused on the shi�ing place of the dagger, the center of the fragmented narratives of
Rashomon becomes the egotism that informs each perspective. Or more exactly, each
version becomes more about the personal desire and greed of the person explaining
what happened than about the factual events and evidence. What initiates the
horrendous crime is the violent sexual desire of the bandit, who happens to witness
— in a sharp-shot/reverse-shot exchange beginning with his awakening eyes — the
exposed face and feet of the wife. A�er that, his entire account emphasizes greed and
desire: he deceives and entraps the nobleman by suggesting he will sell him riches
from an old tomb, and his leering gaze at the young woman turns quickly to a brutal
sexual attack. Not surprisingly, in the bandit’s version, his desires and demands fulfill
the woman, and she becomes the mirror image of his greed and lust when she

ecstatically surrenders to his assault. At this moment, the critical object, the dagger,
drops passively from her hand, according to the bandit, who claims to then kill the
husband “honestly.”
Both the wife’s and the husband’s perspectives are likewise mostly about themselves.
From the beginning, she appears discreet and demure, partly hidden by veils and
white makeup and barely moving as she rides her horse through the forest. In her
account, she becomes a “poor helpless woman” whose husband turns viciously on
her a�er the assault. Unable to bear his hateful stare, she claims to have fainted —
only to later discover her dagger in her husband’s chest. The husband’s narrative, in
contrast, paints a picture of his suffering devotion and lost honor, weeping from the
grave as he recounts killing himself with the controversial dagger. Light and shadow
fill the images of this account, suggesting an ambiguity and lack of certainty even in
this testimony by a dead man.
Excellent visual detail indicates that the writer’s interpretation is
grounded in film form and not just content.
Finally, the woodcutter’s narrative is more problematic but equally locked into his
own needs for self-justification and protection. A�er introducing the story at the
beginning of the film, he returns to offer a final version that reveals deceptions and
lies in his first account. Now he admits to having witnessed the entire scene. His
subsequent description of the partly clownish, partly terrified fighting of the two men
shows a world that is fundamentally base and cowardly, a reflection of his own base
and cowardly position in failing to intervene or fully disclose the truth of what he saw.
Most disturbing perhaps, he tacitly acknowledges stealing the crucial piece of
evidence, the dagger, in order to sell it for personal gain.
That each of these perspectives is distorted by different degrees of ethical failure on
the part of the individual indicates the source of the horrifying indeterminacy and
chaos of this world [Figure R.2]. This is a world described by the priest in the opening
as full of “war, earthquake, wind, fire, famine, plague … each year full of disaster …
hundreds of men dying like animals.” Stylistically, the stunning editing and shot
compositions of Rashomon dramatize this world of confusion and disorientation, in
which seeing and understanding seem to constantly combat each other. Witnesses
are introduced with a wipe that crosses the screen in one direction or the other,

almost violently wiping out the perspective of the preceding account. Within the
different accounts, rapid tracks and flash pans re-create the desperately unsettled
struggle to discover facts through perspectives that dart across surfaces blocked by
branches and leaves.
R.2 Rashomon (1950). The listeners are le� trying to make meaning in a chaotic
world.
Within all this moral darkness and despair, however, the conclusion of Rashomon
suggests a possible way out of the terror and blindness that results from so much
visual and narrative ambiguity. In this final sequence, the threesome who tell and
hear that tale of violence discover an abandoned baby in the ruins of the gate. The
commoner urges them to steal the baby’s blankets and clothing because “you can’t
live unless you’re what you call selfish.” At this point, a dramatic turn occurs: in a
head-to-head confrontation in the rain, the commoner accuses the woodcutter of
hiding his the� of that crucial piece of evidence, the dagger. In dazed silence, the
priest and the woodcutter stand against a wall. As the rain stops, the commoner
suddenly insists on taking the child home with him to his already crowded family.
Despite his shame about his selfishness and despite the missing evidence of the
stolen dagger, a glimmer of human value returns to the world. Compassion

overcomes the evidence of mistakes, and as they all depart, the sun gleams through
the clouds, and the saved child becomes the emblem of a new future. During this
sequence, the priest shouts the fundamental truth so o�en lost in this violent
courtroom: “If men don’t trust each other, then the world becomes a hell.”
The conclusion recalls the main points of the argument and expands it
to claim a broader meaning for the film.
Although this conclusion seems unexpected (and somewhat sentimental), its
unexpectedness engages the film with modern times. Danish philosopher and
theologian Søren Kierkegaard uses the term “leap of faith” to describe the only
possibility for a spiritual faith in modern times. His term implies that both spiritual
and human faith — the grounds for ethical behavior — o�en occur despite the
evidence before our eyes and despite the failure of human reason to understand it. As
in Rashomon, truth and morality may need to leap over the confusion of facts and
logic simply to do what is right.
Using Film Images in Your Paper
With computer and internet technologies, writers can now easily
capture film images from a DVD or streaming video and incorporate
them in a critical essay to illustrate a part of an argument and
analysis. “Quoting” from a film to support an interpretation or
insight can provide the evidence that underpins a strong argument.
Many instructors prefer that students avoid using images because
these images o�en function simply as ornaments and distract from
the real work of the writing. Therefore, if film images are used in an

essay, they should be used sparingly to support a key point in the
argument. As with the example from the paper on Minority Report
(2002) (see the Film in Focus feature earlier in this chapter), a
specific image or series of images can illustrate important visual
information (about image composition or editing, for example) that
your text discusses. If useful, provide a short caption that
encapsulates what you wish your reader to see in the images.
Using and Documenting Sources
Writers gather research material in a variety of ways: some record
paragraphs and phrases on handwritten note cards, while others
prefer to type that material directly into their computers, allowing
them to sort, move, and insert text easily. In either case, the
bibliographic information for quotations should be double-checked
for accuracy. It should include all of the publication data required
for the Works Cited list (and sometimes the Works Consulted
section) of your research paper. Just as sloppy technical errors (such
as a boom microphone appearing in a frame) can undermine a film’s
look and effect, inaccurate or careless source documentation can
make a research paper look amateurish and unreliable.
Integrating research material into the text of your paper requires
both logic and rhetoric. Sometimes research can be used to describe
how your argument differs from prevailing positions on a film or an
issue. In this case, the writer frequently identifies one or more

opposing positions to highlight how the essay will distinguish itself:
“Although Annette Michelson has claimed that Lev Kuleshov’s films
are best understood as part of a debate with Sergei Eisenstein, this
paper argues that the French films of Jean Epstein are equally
important to Kuleshov’s development.” Conversely, research can be
used to support and validate a point or a part of the overall
argument: “Both Patrice Petro and Judith Mayne have produced
complex feminist readings of silent-era German films that support
my interpretation of Mädchen in Uniform (1931).” Yet another
possibility is to use research sources to back up the validity of facts
or critical frameworks necessary for introducing an argument: “In
The Zero Hour: Glasnost and Soviet Cinema in Transition, Andrew
Horton and Michael Brashinsky convincingly show that Russian
cinema a�er 1985 returned to the center of the world stage, an
argument that will provide the background for my claims about the
importance of Little Vera (1989) in Europe and America.”
Direct Quotations and Paraphrasing
As you prepare to integrate research into your essay, think about a particular quote
or critical position you will argue against. What factual or historical material will
support your argument? Note passages you can use to bolster a central part of
your essay.

A�er research material has been gathered, selected, and integrated
into an essay, all of the sources used must be properly documented.
Two kinds of research material require documentation — (1) a direct
quotation from a secondary source and (2) a paraphrase, in which
the writer puts the idea or observation from another source into his
or her own words. When information is considered common
knowledge and is well known to most people, there is no need to
document where you found it. If, however, there is any doubt about
whether the observation is common knowledge, always document
the source to avoid any suspicion of plagiarism. For example, a
critic’s remark that Ousmane Sembène is one of Africa’s premier
filmmakers and that his films work in a realist tradition would be
considered common knowledge by many seasoned filmgoers. But a
writer new to Sembène’s work may feel more comfortable
documenting the source of that information and, like all writers,
should never risk the charge of plagiarism. Quotations of dialogue
from a film usually do not require documentation.
T E C H N O LO G Y I N A C T I O N

Creating a Video Essay
Media scholarship is increasingly produced using media tools, allowing critics and
scholars to use moving images and sound to develop an audiovisual argument
suited to an audiovisual medium. Many students are “digital natives” who are
familiar with video capturing and editing tools and techniques. They may think
about film differently than previous generations because of their experiences with
remixed and excerpted work and combined images and texts (in memes, gifs, and
platforms like Snapchat and Instagram). Video essays make arguments about a
film or films by combining language with moving or still images, sounds, and
graphic elements through editing and recording. They may be analytical, personal,
or poetic, and because they are examples of “transformative works,” video essays
may legally make limited fair use of copyrighted material. One online, peer-
reviewed journal of videographic criticism is [in]Transition, and many less scholarly
examples of the format can be found online.
The following summary of the steps you might follow to create a video essay uses
Touch of Evil (1958) as an example. More detailed information about this process
can be found on the Resources page of [in]Transition.
1. State your argument simply: “His role as the corrupt police detective Quinlan
in the film noir Touch of Evil provides ironic commentary on director Orson
Welles’s status in Hollywood at the end of the 1950s.”
2. Select evidence — in this case, four short clips that show the film’s opening
shot, the introduction to Quinlan, the tarot card reader’s pronouncement
that Quinlan’s future is “all used up,” and Quinlan falling dead into the river
at the end of the film [Figures TE.1–TE.4].
3. Write a short script, basing your argument on the evidence.
4. Import or digitize the clips and compile them using iMovie or an equivalent
editing program.
5. Write and record your script, and add it to the timeline.
6. Edit sound levels, and add onscreen text or graphics, credits, and citations.
7. Apply for a Creative Commons license so you can share your work.

TE.1 Touch of Evil (1958). The film’s opening shot is an elaborately choreographed long
take, lasting three and a half minutes.
TE.2 Touch of Evil (1958). Corrupt detective Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles) arrives at the
crime scene.

TE.3 Touch of Evil (1958). A fortune teller (Marlene Dietrich) tells Quinlan that he has no
future.
TE.4 Touch of Evil (1958). Quinlan, shot dead, falls into a lake at the film’s climax.

To watch the sample video essay described here, go to LaunchPad for The
Film Experience at launchpadworks.com
Documentation Format
There are various documentation formats for listing authors, titles,
and publication data. Here we describe the format advocated by the
Modern Language Association (MLA) and widely used in the
humanities. See MLA Handbook, 8th ed. (2016). The primary
components of the MLA format are in-text citations and the Works
Cited list. An in-text citation is required wherever the writer refers
to or quotes from a research source within the essay’s text. The in-
text citation includes the author’s name and the page number,
enclosed in parentheses. Note that “p.” and “pp.” are not used for in-
text citations but are used in the list of Works Cited.
Filmmakers such as Stan Brakhage and Jonas Mekas “appropriated home-movie
style as a formal manifestation of a spontaneous, untampered form of
filmmaking” (Zimmerman 146).
When the author’s name appears in the discussion that introduces
the quotation, only the page number or numbers are given.
As Patricia Zimmerman has noted, filmmakers such as Stan Brakhage and Jonas
Mekas “appropriated home-movie style as a formal manifestation of a
spontaneous, untampered form of filmmaking” (146).

http://launchpadworks.com/

The same citation formats are used whether the material is quoted
directly or paraphrased.
Much of the American avant-garde movement experimented not so much with the
techniques of modern art but with the spontaneous actions associated with
home movies (Zimmerman 146).
When you use two or more sources by the same author in your
essay, you must distinguish among them by including an
abbreviated version of the title. The title can be part of the
introductory text, as in “Zimmerman writes in Reel Families … ” or in
the parenthetical citation: “(Zimmerman, Reel Families 146).” Each
source cited in the text must also appear in the Works Cited section
with full bibliographic detail.
Another type of annotation is the content note or explanatory note,
which may or may not include secondary sources. These notes offer
background information on the topic being discussed or on related
issues, suggest related readings, or offer an aside. They should be
placed on a separate page a�er the text (but before the Works Cited
list) or as footnotes at the bottom of the page. Thus a writer
discussing horror films and Brian De Palma’s Carrie (1976) might
include this text and content note:
Although Carrie focuses on female anxiety and violence, it is difficult to pinpoint a
specific audience for this film.1

Especially since Psycho (1960), horror films seem fixated on violence against
women, but there is good reason to consider how both female and male
audiences identify with these films. An important discussion of this issue is Carol
Clover’s Men, Women, and Chain Saws (3–21).
Full documentation for every source cited in your essay should be
included in the Works Cited section, positioned on a separate page
immediately a�er the last page of the essay text. Sources that have
been consulted but not cited in the text or notes of the essay can be
included in an optional Works Consulted section, which follows on
a separate page a�er the Works Cited list. (Note that for reasons of
space, we do not show the Works Cited and Works Consulted
sections as separate pages in the essay reproduced below.)
Punctuation of the different entries must be absolutely correct.
Titles of books and films should be typed in italics. Examples of
some of the most common types of Works Cited entries follow.
Book by One Author
Zimmerman, Patricia. Reel Families: A Social History of Amateur Film.
Indiana UP, 1995.
Book by More Than One Author
Bordwell, David, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson. The Classical
Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960.
Columbia UP, 1985.
1

Edited Book
Cook, Pam, and Mieke Bernink, eds. The Cinema Book. 2nd ed.
British Film Institute, 1999.
Article in an Anthology of Film Criticism
Gaines, Jane. “Dream/Factory.” Reinventing Film Studies, edited by
Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams. Arnold, 2000, pp. 100–13.
Journal Article
Spivak, Gayatri. “In Praise of Sammy and Rosie Get Laid.” Critical
Quarterly vol. 31, no. 2, 1989, pp. 80–88.
Article in a Daily or Weekly Periodical
Corliss, Richard. “Suddenly Shakespeare.” Time, 4 Nov. 1996, pp. 88–
90.
Interview (Printed)
Seberg, Jean. Interview by Mark Rappaport. “I, Jean Seberg.” Film
Quarterly vol. 55, no. 1, 2001, pp. 2–13.
Article in an Online Journal
Include the URL a�er the access date only if your instructor requires
it or readers would need it to find the website.

Firshing, Robert. “Italian Horror in the Seventies.” Images Journal, 8
Nov. 2001.
Information from a Website
“Magnolia (1999).” Internet Movie Database, Amazon,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0175880/.
A DVD or Blu-Ray
Include the director, main performers, and original release date of
the film, followed by the distributor and year of release.
Fearless. Directed by Peter Weir, performances by Jeff Bridges,
Isabella Rossellini, and Rosie Perez. 1993. Warner Home Video,
1999.
Keep in mind that plagiarism — using sources without giving the
proper credit to them — is one of the most serious offenses in
writing and research. For more information on attribution
formats for other types of sources, consult the MLA Handbook,
8th ed. (2016).
FILM IN FOCUS From Research to Writing about The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
See also: Spellbound (1945); Eyes
Without a Face (1960); The Silence of the
Lambs (1991)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0175880/

To watch a clip from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), go to LaunchPad for
The Film Experience at launchpadworks.com
A student writer who is responding to the strange look and feel of this silent film
from Germany and looking for some basic information might start her research by
examining the introductory material in David A. Cook’s History of Narrative Film
(5th ed., 2016). In the index, she checks various headings (such as “German
cinema” and “Weimar cinema”), the title of the film, and the name of its director
(Robert Wiene). Next, she searches the internet by entering the title of the film in a
search engine, which results in dozens of different websites. Although much of the
internet information is too general, she keeps a list of her web sources and their
bibliographic details, noting one site that provides early reviews of the film. Even
this preliminary research starts to shape her thinking about a topic involving the
period known as the Weimar era.
Following this preliminary work, the writer then checks the databases at her
college library for more substantial critical books and essays on the Weimar period
in German history. This initial search leads her to dozens of books and critical
articles, but she decides to concentrate on books that deal with films made during
the Weimar period. She discovers numerous scholarly studies devoted to this
particular film culture and even whole books devoted to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
She reads and takes notes on appropriate sections of well-known books, such as
Siegfried Kracauer’s From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German
Film (2004) and Lotte H. Eisner’s The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German
Cinema and the Influence of Max Reinhardt (2008). She also consults two scholarly
books — Mike Budd’s edited collection The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Texts, Contexts,
Histories (1990) and Thomas Elsaesser’s Weimar Cinema and A�er: Germany’s
Historical Imaginary (2000).

http://launchpadworks.com/

Armed with information about how the Weimar era became the prelude to fascism
and the rise of Adolf Hitler, the writer realizes she needs to refine her topic so that
she has a more focused thesis. She reviews the film on DVD and realizes that the
violence and horror seem connected to the social context of a prefascist Germany.
As her thesis about social violence begins to take shape, she returns to the library,
where she finds a good study of film violence — Stephen Prince’s edited collection,
Screening Violence (2000).
With each step, the writer makes notes, double-checks quotations for accuracy,
and records accurate bibliographic information on all the sources she consults. As
she formulates her thesis statement and constructs an outline, she tries to indicate
where the different parts of her research would be most effective in directing and
supporting her argument. Her final essay, reproduced here, demonstrates the
important contribution that careful research makes to writing about film.
Mia Thompson
Professor Corrigan
Film Criticism 101
10 Dec. 2019
History, Violence, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Background research clearly sets up the writer’s argument.
In his detailed study of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Mike Budd identifies the
complex cultural history of the film’s arrival in the United States. When the film
premiered in New York on April 3, 1921, it followed a well-cra�ed promotion and
distribution campaign that stressed Dr. Caligari’s novelty, global appeal, and generic
formulas. One 1921 poster identifies the film as “a mystery story that holds the public
in suspense every minute,” while another describes it as “thrilling, fantastic, bizarre,
gripping.” However accurate these descriptions may be, these promotions, as Budd
notes, intentionally present the film “out of context, [with] its origins both cultural
and national deliberately obscured” (56–58).

The thesis statement announces the argument.
That obfuscation has continued to dog The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in the many
decades since its initial release, so that American and other viewers have remained
less attuned to the specific historical and social realities dramatized in the film than
to the psychological mysteries played out in its thrills, fantasies, and horror. Exploring
the social drama of Dr. Caligari reconnects the film more concretely to its original
German context and makes clear that this film is about national unrest and violence,
both of which are far more historically tangible than the usually acknowledged
fantasy of the film’s madmen and monsters.
This summary paragraph assumes readers know the film but refreshes
their memory of its story and plot.
The film’s story tells of the hypnotist Dr. Caligari, who comes to a town with a carnival
[Figure CDC.1]. In his sideshow act, Caligari presents Cesare, a somnambulist who
can supposedly see the future. At the same time, a series of murders occurs in the
town. Francis, a student who discovers that Caligari and Cesare are behind the
killings, pursues Caligari to an insane asylum. The final twist occurs when the
narrative shi�s its perspective and we discover the truth: Francis has been the
narrator of the tale, he is in fact the mad patient in the asylum, and Caligari is the kind
director of the hospital allowing Francis to tell his delusional tale.1

CDC.1 The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). The malevolence or benevolence of
Caligari is le� to the viewer to determine.
A content note provides additional information about a point raised in
the text.
This overview of a major scholarly position establishes the writer’s
authority and prepares readers for what will distinguish her argument.
When first watching this film, most viewers understandably fixate on the exaggerated
sets and backdrop paintings. These factors, together with the twisted narrative that
turns the story into the vision of a madman, place this film squarely in the cultural
and aesthetic tradition of expressionism — a movement in which unconscious or
unseen forces create a world distorted by personal fears, desires, and anxieties.
According to this position, Cesare acts out the evil unconscious of Caligari, while the
violence and chaos associated with that unconscious spread through the entire
community.

This image shows a main character, followed by a caption that identifies
a key question in the film and the student’s argument about that
character.
Many critics have, in fact, made intelligent connections between the psychological
underpinnings of expressionism and the German society that, bere� of so many
fathers a�er the devastation of World War I, gravitated toward malevolent authority
figures. Most famously, Siegfried Kracauer’s From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological
Study of the German Film offers the most direct statement of Dr. Caligari as the
unconscious of a social history predicting the imminent arrival of fascism [Figure
CDC.2]. He writes that Caligari becomes “a premonition of Hitler” (72):
CDC.2 The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). Is the doctor’s persona a premonition of
Hitler?

A succinct quotation sums up a complex critical viewpoint. Because
it is more than four lines in length, the quotation is presented
without quotation marks in an indented block format.
Whether intentionally or not, Caligari exposes the soul wavering between
tyranny and chaos, and facing a desperate situation: any escape from tyranny
seems to throw it into a state of utter confusion. Quite logically, the film
spreads an all-pervading atmosphere of horror. Like the Nazi world, that of
Caligari overflows with sinister portents, acts of terror and outbursts of panic.
(74)
Against the backdrop of these other critical positions, the writer
reasserts and develops her thesis.
Although Dr. Caligari certainly responds to readings like this, which see the film as
part of an expressionist aesthetic or a projection of the unconscious of the German
masses around 1920, the more concrete social realities informing the film frequently
get overlooked. In The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, and
Edward Dimendberg have assembled a compendium of documents on this period in
German history, and many of the topics for this cultural history of Germany from 1918
to 1930 could act as a social blueprint for the thematic history that permeates Dr.
Caligari. Three topics stand out as especially pertinent — the traumatic legacy of war
(creating a fatherless generation), economic upheaval and social instabilities (that
rattled almost every social institution at the time), and the rise of fascism (through
repressive authority figures). With traces of each of these three motifs throughout the
film, Dr. Caligari becomes, from one angle, a study of social violence within the
interpersonal relationships and the cultural institutions of Weimar Germany.
The writer refines and focuses her thesis as three motifs in the film.
A strong topic sentence presents the first motif, supported by a
secondary source.

At the heart of Dr. Caligari is a social melodrama concentrated on conscious sexual
activities that quickly turn violent. According to Thomas Elsaesser, “It is essentially
the tale of a suitor who is ignored or turned down” (184). The threesome at the center
of the story — Francis, Alan, and Jane — suggests both male bonds and a
heterosexual romance that moves toward the conventional outcome of marriage.
However, like Jane’s anxious worry over “her father’s long absence,” each member of
this standard social group seems physically and emotionally handicapped by a
missing parental or patriarchal figure.
An exact quotation from the film’s dialogue provides supporting
evidence for the writer’s claim.
Essential to the plot is the rivalry that creates a tension among the three characters,
with Alan and Francis competing for the affections of Jane. That seemingly normal
and playful tension, however, turns dark when Cesare becomes a standin for the
simmering violence implicit in this group, murdering Francis’s rival Alan and seducing
and abducting Jane. In the midst of these events, the dazed Jane can only mutter
that “we queens may never choose as our hearts dictate,” and Francis goes mad
[Figure CDC.3]. If heterosexual melodramas take many forms through history and in
different cultures, here a common love triangle suddenly and inexplicitly erupts with
unusual violence, suggesting that the problem may be less about Caligari and Cesare
than about the enormous social stress and strain within this fundamental social
grouping.

CDC.3 The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). A romance gone awry becomes a sign of
simmering violence.
A smooth transition is made from the previous paragraph to the second
motif about “social institutions,” analyzed here as three different “social
spaces.”
The violent stress and strain of this heterosexual drama spreads and appears
throughout every social institution in Dr. Caligari. The home is where the melodrama
explodes, but the film identifies this violence with three other social spaces — the city
government, the carnival, and the mental hospital. With the first, an officious town
clerk is murdered on a whim for enforcing restrictions that annoy Dr. Caligari. With
the second, entertainment turns ominously threatening when a sideshow
amusement tells Alan, “You die at dawn.” With the third, a traditional institution for
healing becomes a prison to subjugate or control human beings who have lost all
ability to interact socially. In each case — and most notably in the hospital, where the

narrative pretends to return to a normal world — the visual disturbances of the
graphically twisted walls and out-of-kilter windows become a measure not merely of
an unbalanced expressionistic mind but, more important, of the social violence that
surrounds all individuals as part of the institutions in which they must live.
Visual details strengthen the argument.
The third motif builds on a more general secondary source on “screen
violence.”
Violence has always been an ingredient and attraction of films, and the brand of
social violence in Dr. Caligari is linked to a specific time and place — a postwar
Weimar Germany from which the Nazi regime would soon spring. In “Graphic Violence
in the Cinema” from Screening Violence, Stephen Prince correctly argues that “screen
violence is deeply embedded in the history and functioning of cinema” and the
“appeal of violence in the cinema — for filmmakers and viewers — is tied to the
medium’s inherently visceral properties” (2).
Although Prince claims that “screen violence in earlier periods was generally more
genteel and indirect” (2), there is nothing genteel about the social violence of Dr.
Caligari, even if it lacks the physical excess of contemporary movies. With the crucial
insights of historical hindsight, this violence should not be relegated merely to the
unconscious and the psychological distortions of dark fantasies but should be
recognized as the shadow of a historical and social reality. In its original historical
context, the melodramatic violence in the relationship of Alan, Francis, and Jane
maps a frustrating and o�en desperate problem with heterosexual romance in a
fatherless Germany, while the troubled, anxious, and repressive interactions at town
halls, carnivals, and hospitals refer to a real political and structural crisis in the social
arenas of post–World War I Germany. If the social violence of Dr. Caligari seems tame
(to modern eyes accustomed to Technicolor bloodbaths), there is no doubt that such
violence reverberates with more extensive, if less intensive, implications for the state
of German society in 1920.
Viewers without a deep understanding of German history and Caligari’s original
cultural context can still appreciate its dark tale, striking visual effects, and unsettling
frame tale. The psychological dimension that permeates this murder mystery is,

moreover, an undeniable and critical component to its disturbing plot and
expressionistic mise-en-scène. Yet in the wake of World War I, the nightmarish
violence of the film resonates with particular historical and social meanings that
cannot be explained as fantasy. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari will always be a specific
cultural space whose violence remains historically tangible.
The assertive conclusion restates the central thesis.

Note
1. In A History of Narrative Film, David A. Cook notes that the great German director
Fritz Lang urged this frame tale: “Lang correctly thought that the reality frame
would heighten the expressionistic elements of the mise-en-scène” (110).
The Works Cited list starts on a new page at the end of the research essay.

Works Cited
Budd, Mike, ed. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Texts, Contexts, Histories. Rutgers UP, 1990.
Cook, David A. A History of Narrative Film. 5th ed. Norton, 2016.
Elsaesser, Thomas. “Social Mobility and the Fantastic: German Silent Cinema.” Budd
171–90.
Kaes, Anton, Martin Jay, and Edward Dimendberg. The Weimar Republic Sourcebook.
U of California P, 1995.
Kracauer, Siegfried. From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological Study of the German Film.
Princeton UP, 1947.
Prince, Stephen. “Graphic Violence in the Cinema: Origins, Aesthetic Design, and
Social Effects.” Screening Violence, edited by Stephen Prince, Rutgers UP, 2000, pp.
1–46.
The Works Consulted list, when included, starts on a new page following
Works Cited.

Works Consulted
Carroll, Noël. “The Cabinet of Dr. Kracauer.” Millennium Film Journal, vol. 1, no. 2,
1978, pp. 77–85.
Eisner, Lotte. The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema and the
Influence of Max Reinhardt. U of California P, 2008.
Elsaesser, Thomas. Weimar Cinema and A�er: Germany’s Historical Imaginary.
Routledge, 2000.

Chapter 12 Review
SUMMARY
Good writing about film balances the writer’s subjective
opinions with critical objectivity, with facts and evidence to
support the writer’s evaluation.
Two of the most common forms of writing about film are
reviews and analytical essays.
A film review is a short essay aimed at a general audience. It
provides plot and background information and gives a clear
evaluation of the film.
An analytical essay typically focuses on particular themes,
provides interpretations, and offers careful analysis of
evidence in support of a central thesis statement.
Many writers first outline an analytical essay to help
establish an organizational structure, including topic
sentences.
When preparing to write an analytical essay, you must first
choose a topic. There are two broad sets of topics: formal topics
and contextual topics.
Formal topics concentrate on the forms and ideas in a film,
and include character analysis, narrative analysis, and
stylistic analysis.

Contextual topics relate a film to other films or to surrounding
issues, and include comparative analysis and cultural
analysis.
O�en, writing about film involves conducting research to locate
sources. There are two main types of sources: primary and
secondary.
Primary research sources have a direct and close
relationship with the original film. They include film scripts
and actual films.
Secondary research sources are sources written or gathered
by outside individuals, such as film critics or scholars. These
sources include books, essays, and websites.
When you use sources in your essay, either in direct
quotations or in paraphrases, you must document the
sources both in the text of your essay and in a Works Cited
section at the end of the essay.
Sometimes you might also include a Works Consulted
section for works that influence your essay but are not
directly quoted or paraphrased in the essay.
Modern Language Association (MLA) citation and
documentation style is typically preferred.
KEY TERMS
critical objectivity
film review

analytical essay
character analysis
narrative analysis
stylistic analysis
comparative analysis
cultural analysis
evidence
thesis statement
topic sentence
primary research sources
secondary research sources
Works Cited
Works Consulted
Visit launchpadworks.com to access LaunchPad for The Film Experience, which
includes:
adaptive quizzes
Film clips with critical thinking questions
Supplemental readings, including Film in Focus features and more

http://launchpadworks.com/

Glossary
above-the-line expenses:
A film’s initial costs of contracting the major personnel, such as directors and
stars, as well as administrative and organizational expenses in setting up a film
production.
absolute film:
A film movement that focused on abstraction in motion in Germany in the 1920s.
abstract film:
A nonrepresentational experimental film.
academy ratio:
An aspect ratio of screen width to height of 1.37:1, the standard adopted by the
Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1932 and used by most films until
the introduction of widescreen in the 1950s; similar to the standard television
ratio of 1.33:1 or 4:3.
activist video:
A confrontational political documentary that uses low-cost video equipment.
actor:
An individual who embodies and performs a film character through speech,
gestures, and movements.
actualities:
Nonfiction films introduced in the 1890s depicting real people and events through
continuous footage. A famous example is Louis and Auguste Lumière’s Workers
Leaving the Lumière Factory (1895).
adaptation:
The process of turning a book, television show, play, or other artistic work into a
film.
affect:

The feelings, emotions, and sensations that arise in the viewer engaging with a
film.
agent:
An individual who represents actors, directors, writers, and other major
personnel employed by a film production by contacting and negotiating with
writers, casting directors, and producers.
alternative film narrative:
Film narratives that deviate from or challenge the linearity of classical film
narrative, o�en undermining the centrality of the main character, the continuity
of the plot, or the verisimilitude of the narration.
analytical essay:
The most common kind of writing done by film students and scholars,
distinguished by its intended audience and the level of its critical language.
analytic philosophy:
A branch of philosophy that emphasizes logical argument.
anamorphic lens:
A camera lens that compresses the horizontal axis of a widescreen image onto a
strip of 35mm film or a projector lens that decompresses such an image.
ancillary market:
A venue other than theatrical release in which a film can make money, such as
foreign sales, airlines, DVD, or on demand.
animated musical:
A subgenre of the musical that uses cartoon figures and stories to present songs
and music.
animation:
The use of cinema technology to give the illusion of movement to individual
drawings, paintings, figures, or computer-generated images. The process
traditionally refers to drawing or painting on individual cels or to manipulating
three-dimensional objects and then photographing the cels or objects onto single
frames of film. Animation now encompasses digital imaging techniques.

anime:
Japanese animation, first launched following World War II.
antagonist:
A character who opposes the protagonist as a negative force in a film. See
protagonist.
anthology films:
Films comprised of segments by different directors.
A picture:
A feature film with a large budget and prestigious source material or actors that
has been historically promoted as a main attraction receiving top billing in a
double feature. See B picture.
apparatus theory:
Jean-Louis Baudry’s theory that ideological assumptions are reproduced through
the impression of reality conveyed by film technology and the viewing situation
itself.
apparent motion:
The psychological process that explains our perception of movement when
watching films, in which the brain actively responds to the visual stimuli of a
rapid sequence of still images exactly as it would in actual motion perception.
archetype:
A spiritual, psychological, or cultural model expressing certain virtues, values, or
timeless realities.
art director:
The individual responsible for supervising the conception and construction of the
physical environment in which the actors appear, including sets, locations, props,
and costumes.
art film:
A film produced primarily for aesthetic rather than commercial or entertainment
purposes, whose intellectual or formal challenges are o�en attributed to the
vision of an auteur.

aspect ratio:
The width-to-height ratio of the film frame as it appears on a movie screen or
television monitor.
asynchronous sound:
Sound that does not have a visible onscreen source; also referred to as offscreen
sound.
augmented reality (AR):
An experience or environment that combines real objects with fabricated design
elements, o�en computer-generated. AR experiences can include video and audio
as well as touch and smell.
auteur:
The French term for “author”; the individual credited with the creative vision
defining a film; implies a director whose unique style is apparent across his or her
body of work. See also auteur theory.
auteur theory:
An approach to cinema first proposed in the French film journal Cahiers du cinéma
that emphasizes the director as the expressive force behind a film and sees a
director’s body of work as united by common themes or formal strategies; also
referred to as auteurism.
automated dialogue replacement (ADR):
A process during which actors watch the film footage and rerecord their lines to
be dubbed into the soundtrack. See looping.
avant-garde films:
Aesthetically challenging, noncommercial films that experiment with film forms.
average shot length:
The average duration of time (usually measured in seconds) of individual shots in
a particular movie.
axis of action:
An imaginary line bisecting a scene corresponding to the 180-degree rule in
continuity editing.

backlighting:
A highlighting technique that illuminates the person or object from behind,
tending to silhouette the subject; sometimes called edgelighting.
below-the-line expenses:
The technical and material costs — costumes, sets, transportation, and so on —
involved in the actual making of a film.
benshi:
Storytellers who narrated and interpreted silent films in Japan.
blaxploitation:
A genre of low-budget films made in the early 1970s targeting urban, African
American audiences and featuring streetwise African American protagonists.
Several black directors made a creative mark in a genre that was primarily
intended to make money for its producers.
block booking:
A practice in which movie theaters had to exhibit whatever a studio/distributor
packaged with its more popular and desirable movies; declared an unfair business
practice in 1948.
blockbuster:
A big-budget film, intended for wide release, whose large investment in stars,
special effects, and advertising attracts large audiences and big profits.
blocking:
The arrangement and movement of actors in relation to one another within the
physical space of the mise-en-scène.
Bollywood:
A commonly used name for the popular Hindi-language film industry based in
Mumbai, India, sometimes used to refer to the entire Indian film industry, the
world’s largest.
boom:
A long pole used to hold a microphone above the actors to capture sound while
remaining outside the frame, handled by a boom operator.

B picture:
A low-budget, nonprestigious movie that usually played on the bottom half of a
double bill. B pictures were o�en produced by the smaller studios referred to as
Hollywood’s Poverty Row. See A picture.
British New Wave:
A movement of British films between 1959 and 1963 that focused on working-class
realism, discontent, and rebellious youth.
camera height:
The level at which the camera is placed.
camera lens:
A piece of curved glass that focuses light rays in order to form an image on film.
camera movement:
See mobile frame.
camera operator:
A member of the film crew in charge of physically manipulating the camera,
overseen by the cinematographer.
canon:
An accepted list of essential great works in a field of study.
canted frame:
Framing that is not level, creating an unbalanced appearance.
casting director:
The individual responsible for identifying and selecting which actors would work
best in particular roles.
cels:
A transparent sheet of celluloid on which individual images are drawn or painted
in traditional animation. These drawings are then photographed onto single
frames of film.
character:

An individual who motivates the events and performs the actions of the story.
character actor:
A recognizable actor associated with particular character types, o�en humorous
or sinister, and o�en cast in minor parts.
character analysis:
An argument focusing on a single character or on the interactions between two or
more characters.
character coherence:
The consistency and coherence of a character.
character depth:
The pattern of psychological and social features that distinguish characters as
rounded and complex in a way that approximates realistic human personalities.
character development:
The patterns through which characters in a film move from one mental, physical,
or social state to another.
characters:
Individuals who motivate the events and perform the actions of the story.
character type:
A conventional character (such as a hard-boiled detective or femme fatale)
typically portrayed by actors cast because of their physical features, their acting
style, or the history of other roles they have played. See stereotype.
chiaroscuro lighting:
Dramatic, high-contrast lighting that emphasizes shadows and the contrast
between light and dark; frequently used in German expressionist cinema and film
noir.
chronology:
The order according to which shots or scenes convey the temporal sequence of
the story’s events.
chronophotography:

A sequence of still photographs that record incremental movement, such as those
depicting human or animal motion produced by Eadweard Muybridge and
Étienne-Jules Marey.
Cinema Novo:
A film movement (1960s–1970s) in Brazil that emphasized social equality and
intellectualism and broke with studio gloss.
cinematographer:
The member of the film crew who selects the cameras, film stock, lighting, and
lenses to be used as well as the camera setup or position; also known as the
director of photography (D.P.).
cinematography:
Motion-picture photography, literally “writing in movement.”
cinéma vérité:
A French term meaning “cinema truth”; a style of documentary filmmaking first
practiced in France in the late 1950s and early 1960s that used unobtrusive,
lightweight cameras and sound equipment to capture real-life situations. See direct
cinema (the parallel U.S. movement).
cinephilia:
A love of cinema. A film lover is a cinephile.
clapperboard:
A slate that is marked to identify each scene and the take and is snapped to
synchronize sound recordings and camera images.
classical film narrative:
A style of narrative filmmaking centered on one or more central characters who
propel the plot with a cause-and-effect logic. Normally plots are developed with
linear chronologies directed at definite goals, and the film employs an omniscient
or a restricted third-person narration that suggests some degree of verisimilitude.
classical film theory:
Writings on the fundamental questions of cinema produced in the first half of the
twentieth century. Important classical film theorists include Sergei Eisenstein,

Rudolf Arnheim, André Bazin, and Siegfried Kracauer.
classical Hollywood narrative:
The dominant form of classical film narrative associated with the Hollywood
studio system from the end of the 1910s to the end of the 1950s.
claymation:
A process that uses stop-motion photography with clay figures to create the
illusion of movement.
close-up:
Framing that shows details of a person or an object, such as a character’s face.
code:
A term used in linguistics and semiotics for conventions governing a
communication act. Senders and receivers must share a code for the message to
be understood (for example, traffic signals use a color code). Film analysts isolate
various codes (including codes of camera movement, framing, lighting, and
acting) that determine the specific form of a particular shot, scene, film, or genre.
cognition:
The aspects of comprehension that make up our rational reactions and thought
processes, also contributing to our pleasure in watching movies.
cognitivism:
An approach to film that draws on psychology and neuroscience to understand
how the mind responds to narrative and aesthetic information.
color balance:
The adjustment of color intensity.
color correction:
In digital processing, adjusting a film’s color levels and exposures for accuracy
and consistency.
color filter:
A device fitted to the camera lens to change the tones of the filmed image.
color grading:

The process of altering the image a�er capture, either digitally or
photochemically.
comedy:
A film genre that celebrates the harmony and resiliency of social life, typically
with a narrative that ends happily and an emphasis on episodes or “gags” over plot
continuity.
comparative analysis:
An analysis evaluating features or elements of two or more different films or
perhaps a film and its literary source.
compilation films:
Films comprised of footage taken from different sources.
computer animation:
A digital version of traditional animation.
computer-generated imagery (CGI):
Still or animated images created through digital computer technology. First
introduced in the 1970s, CGI was used to create feature-length films by the mid-
1990s and is widely used for visual effects.
connotation:
The association connected with a word or sign. See denotation.
continuity editing:
Hollywood editing that uses cuts and other transitions to establish verisimilitude,
to construct a coherent time and space, and to tell stories clearly and efficiently;
sometimes called invisible editing. Continuity editing follows the basic principle
that each shot has a continuous relationship to the next shot.
continuity style:
An approach to filmmaking associated with classical Hollywood cinema that uses
a broad array of technical choices (from continuity editing to scoring) that efface
technique in order to emphasize human agency and narrative clarity.
contrapuntal sound:

Sound that is unexpected considering the image that is displayed onscreen.
costume designer:
An individual who plans and prepares how actors will be dressed for parts.
counter cinema:
Films made in opposition to mainstream cinema, especially in the 1960s and
1970s.
counterpoint:
Using sound to indicate a different meaning or association than the image.
coverage:
Filming many takes, o�en using different setups, in order to have options during
editing.
crane shot:
A shot taken from a camera mounted on a crane that can vary in distance, height,
and angle.
credits:
A list of all the personnel involved in a film production, including cast, crew, and
executives.
crime film:
A film genre that typically features criminals and individuals dedicated to crime
detection and plots that involve criminal acts.
critical objectivity:
Writing with a detached response that offers judgments based on facts and
evidence with which others would or could agree.
crosscutting:
An editing technique that cuts back and forth between actions in separate spaces,
o�en implying simultaneity. See parallel editing.
cue:
A visual or aural signal that indicates the beginning of an action, a line of
dialogue, or a piece of music.

cultural analysis:
An interpretation of the relationship of a film to its place in history, society, or
culture.
cultural studies:
A set of approaches drawn from the humanities and social sciences that considers
cultural phenomena like film in conjunction with processes of production and
consumption and aspects of everyday life.
cut:
In the editing process, the join or splice between two pieces of film; in the
finished film, an editing transition between two separate shots or scenes achieved
without optical effects. Also used to describe a version of the edited film, as in
rough cut or director’s cut. See final cut.
cutaway:
A shot that interrupts an action to “cut away” to another image or action, o�en to
abridge time, before returning to the first shot or scene at a point further along in
time.
Czech New Wave:
A film movement that came to prominence in 1960s Czechoslovakia and used
absurdist humor, nonprofessional actors, and improvised dialogue to express
political dissent. It ended with the Soviet invasion in 1969.
dailies:
The footage shot on a single day of filming.
day-and-date release:
A simultaneous release strategy across different media and venues, such as a
theatrical release and a DVD release.
deadline structure:
A narrative structured around a central event or action that must be accomplished
by a certain time.
deep focus:

A camera technique using a large depth of field in which multiple planes in the
shot are all in focus simultaneously, usually with a special lens. See wide-angle
lens.
denotation:
The literal meaning of a word. See connotation.
depth of field:
The range or distance before and behind the main focus of a shot within which
objects remain relatively sharp and clear.
detective film:
A genre of the crime film focusing on a protagonist who represents the law or an
ambiguous version of it, such as a private investigator.
dialectical montage:
Sergei Eisenstein’s term for the cutting together of conflicting or unrelated images
to generate an idea or emotion in the viewer.
diegesis:
The world of the film’s story (its characters, places, and events), including what is
shown and what is implied to have taken place. It comes from the Greek word
meaning “narration.” See mimesis.
diegetic sound:
Sound that has its source in the narrative world of the film, whose characters are
presumed to be able to hear it.
digital cinema package (DCP):
A collection of digital files that stores and projects audio, image, and data streams.
digital cinematography:
Shooting with a camera that records and stores visual information electronically
as digital code.
digital compositing:
The process of digitally combining images to make a final image.

digital intermediate (DI):
A digitized version of a film that allows it to be manipulated.
digital sound:
Recording and reproducing sound through technologies that encode and decode it
as digital information.
direct cinema:
A documentary style originating in the United States in the 1960s that aims to
observe an unfolding situation as unobtrusively as possible; related to cinéma
vérité.
directional lighting:
Lighting coming from a single direction.
director:
The chief creative presence or the primary manager in film production,
responsible for overseeing virtually all the work of making a movie.
direct sound:
Sound captured directly from its source. See reflected sound.
disability studies:
The academic discipline focusing on the meaning, nature, and consequence of
disability in society.
disjunctive editing:
Editing practices that call attention to the cut through spatial tension, temporal
jumps, or rhythmic or graphic patterns.
dissolve:
An optical effect that briefly superimposes one shot over the next, which takes its
place: one image fades out as another image fades in.
distanciation:
Derived from the work and theories of Bertolt Brecht, an artistic practice intended
to create an intellectual distance between the viewer and work of art in order to
reflect on the work’s production or the various ideas and issues that it raises.

distribution:
The means through which a distributor delivers movies to theaters, video stores,
television and internet networks, and other venues.
distributor:
A company or an agency that acquires the rights to a movie from the filmmakers
or producers (sometimes by contributing to the costs of producing the film) and
makes the movie available to audiences by renting, selling, or licensing it to
theaters or other exhibition outlets.
documentary:
A nonfiction film that presents real objects, people, and events.
documentary animation:
Animation that tells true stories with enhanced moving images.
dolly shot:
A shot in which the camera is moved on a wheeled dolly that follows a determined
course.
dolly zoom:
A shot in which the camera is moved to keep the object the same size.
early cinema:
The period of rapid change in how films were made and seen that stretches from
1895 to the rise of the feature film form in around 1915.
editing:
The process of selecting and joining film footage and shots into a finished film
with a distinctive style and rhythm. The individual responsible for this process is
the editor.
ellipsis:
An abridgment in time in the narrative implied by editing.
epic western:
A subgenre of the western concentrating on action and movement and developing
a heroic character whose quests and battles serve to define the nation and its

origins.
establishing shot:
An initial long shot that establishes the location and setting and that orients the
viewer in space to a clear view of the action.
ethnographic documentaries:
Films that record the practices, rituals, and people of a culture.
evidence:
Concrete details that convince readers of the validity of a writer’s interpretation.
exclusive release:
A movie that premieres in restricted locations initially.
executive producer:
A producer who finances or facilitates a film deal and who usually has little
creative or technical involvement.
exhibition:
The part of the film industry that shows films to a paying public, usually in movie
theaters. See exhibitor.
exhibitor:
The owner of individual theaters or theater chains who makes decisions about
programming and local promotion. See exhibition.
existential western:
A subgenre of the western whose introspective hero is troubled by his changing
social status and his self-doubts, o�en as the frontier becomes more populated
and civilized.
expanded cinema:
Installation or performance-based experimental film practices.
experimental film:
A film that makes expressive use of film form.
experimental media:

Media that makes expressive use of media affordances.
exploitation film:
A cheaply made genre film that exploits sensational or topical subject matter or
genre conventions for profit.
extra:
An actor without speaking parts who appears in the background and in crowd
scenes.
extreme close-up:
A shot that is framed comparatively tighter than a close-up, singling out, for
instance, a person’s eyes.
extreme long shot:
A shot framed from a comparatively greater distance than a long shot, in which
the surrounding space dominates human figures.
eyeline match:
A cut that follows a shot of a character looking offscreen with a shot of a subject
whose screen position matches the gaze of the character in the first shot.
fade-in:
An optical effect in which a black screen gradually brightens to a full picture;
o�en used a�er a fade-out to create a transition between scenes. See fade-out.
fade-out:
An optical effect in which an image gradually darkens to black, o�en ending a
scene or a film. See fade-in.
family melodrama:
A subgenre of the melodrama that focuses on the psychological and gendered
forces restricting individuals within the family.
fast motion:
A special effect that makes the action move at faster-than-normal speeds,
achieved by filming the action at a slow speed and then projecting it at standard
speeds. See slow motion.

feature film:
Running typically ninety to 120 minutes in length, a narrative film that is the
primary attraction for audiences.
fill lighting:
A lighting technique using secondary fill lights to balance the key lighting by
removing shadows or to emphasize other spaces and objects in the scene.
film culture:
The practices, institutions, and communities surrounding film production,
publicity, and appreciation that shape our expectations, ideas, and understanding
of movies.
film gauge:
The width of the film stock — such as 8mm, 16mm, 35mm, and 70mm.
film noir:
The French term for “black film”; a style of Hollywood films of the 1940s and
1950s, generally shot using stylized black and white cinematography in nighttime
urban settings and featuring morally ambiguous protagonists, corrupt
institutions, dangerous women, and convoluted plots.
film review:
A short essay that describes the plot of a movie, provides useful background
information, and pronounces a clear evaluation of the film to guide its readers.
film shoot:
The weeks or months of actual shooting, on set or on location.
film speed:
The rate at which moving images are recorded and later projected, standardized
for 35mm sound film at 24 frames per second (fps); also a measure of film stock’s
sensitivity to light.
film stock:
Unexposed film consisting of a flexible backing or base and a light-sensitive
emulsion.

film studies:
A discipline that reflects critically on the nature and history of movies and the
place of film in culture.
film theory:
Sustained reflection on the form, function, value, or significance of film as
medium, institution, or social practice.
filters:
Transparent sheets of glass or gels placed in front of the lens to create various
effects.
final cut:
The final edited version of a film. See cut.
first-person narration:
Narration that is identified with a single individual, usually a character in the film.
first-run theater:
A theater that shows recently released movies.
flare:
A spot or flash of white light created by directing strong light directly at the lens.
flashback:
A sequence that follows an image set in the present with an image set in the past.
flashforward:
A sequence that connects an image set in the present with one or more future
images.
focal length:
The distance from the center of the lens to the point where light rays meet in
sharp focus.
focus:
The point or area in the image toward which the viewer’s attention is directed; the
point at which light rays refracted through the lens converge.

foley artist:
A member of the sound crew who generates live synchronized sound effects while
watching the projected film; named a�er the inventor, Jack Foley.
following shots:
A pan, tilt, or tracking shot that follows a moving individual or object.
forced perspective:
An optical effect produced in-camera by positioning the camera to create illusions
of scale.
formalism:
A critical approach to cinema that emphasizes formal properties of the text or
medium over content or context.
found footage:
Audiovisual material used outside its original context.
frame:
A still image from a movie.
framing:
The portion of the filmed subject that appears within the borders of the frame. It
correlates with camera distance — such as long shot or medium close-up.
French impressionist cinema:
A 1920s avant-garde film movement that aimed to destabilize familiar or objective
ways of seeing and to revitalize the dynamics of human perception.
French New Wave:
A film movement that came to prominence in the late 1950s and 1960s in France
in opposition to the conventional studio system. The films were o�en made with
low budgets and young actors, were shot on location, used unconventional sound
and editing patterns, and addressed the struggle for personal expression. Also
called Nouvelle Vague.
frontal lighting:
Techniques used to illuminate the subject from the front.

gangster films:
A genre of the crime film about the world of organized crime and its violent
criminals. An early cycle was set in the United States during Prohibition in the
1930s.
generic reflexivity:
The quality of movies displaying unusual self-consciousness about generic
identity.
genre:
A category or classification of films that share similar subject matter, settings,
iconography, and narrative and stylistic patterns.
genre criticism:
An analytical approach that considers a film in relation to the properties or effects
of particular genres or classifications, for example, comedy or horror.
German expressionist cinema:
A German film movement (1918–1929) that veered away from the movies’ realism
by representing irrational forces through lighting, sets, and costume design.
Expressionism (in film, theater, painting, and other arts) turned away from realist
representation and toward the unconscious and irrational sides of human
experience.
graphic match:
An edit in which a dominant shape or line in one shot provides a visual transition
to a similar shape or line in the next shot.
green-screen technology:
A technique for creating visual effects in which actors, objects, or figures are
filmed in front of a green screen and later superimposed onto a computer-
generated or filmed background. See computer-generated imagery (CGI).
grip:
A crew member who installs lighting and dollies.
handheld camera:

A lightweight camera that can be carried by the operator rather than mounted on
a tripod. Small-gauge handheld formats like 8mm and 16mm, as well as many
digital cameras, allow for greater mobility, lower production costs, and encourage
location shooting.
handheld shot:
An o�en unsteady film image produced by an individual carrying the camera.
hard lighting:
A high-contrast lighting style that creates hard edges, distinctive shadows, and a
harsh effect, especially when filming people.
Heimat films:
Films set in idyllic countryside locales of Germany and Austria that depict a world
of traditional folk values.
high angle:
A shot directed at a downward angle on individuals or a scene.
high concept:
A short phrase that attempts to sell a movie by identifying its main marketing
features, such as its stars, genre, or some other easily identifiable connection.
high-key lighting:
Lighting where the main source of light creates little contrast between light and
dark.
highlighting:
The use of different lighting sources to emphasize certain characters or objects.
historical documentary:
A type of documentary that concentrates largely on recovering and representing
events or figures in history.
historiography:
The writing of history; the study of the methods and principles through which the
past is viewed according to certain perspectives and priorities.
horror film:

A film genre with origins in Gothic literature that seeks to frighten the viewer
though supernatural or predator characters.
hue:
Color discerned by detecting light of a particular wavelength.
hybrid genres:
Mixed forms created through the interaction of different genres to produce
fusions, such as musical horror films.
icon:
In semiotics, a sign that that refers to its referent through resemblance, an image.
iconography:
Images or image patterns with specific connotations or meanings.
identification:
The complex process through which we empathize with or project feeling onto a
character or an action.
ideology:
A systematic set of beliefs that are not necessarily conscious or acknowledged.
IMAX:
A large-format film system that is projected horizontally rather than vertically to
produce an image approximately ten times larger than the standard 35mm frame.
independent films:
Films that are produced without initial studio funding. They include low-budget
feature-length theatrical narratives as well as nontheatrical documentaries and
shorts.
index:
A sign that refers to its referent through a direct causal relationship, like a
fingerprint.
insert:
A brief shot, o�en a close-up, that points out details significant to the action or
interpretation.

integrated musical:
A subgenre of the musical that integrates musical numbers into the film’s
narrative, rather than setting them off as performances.
intensity:
Brightness or dullness of color.
intercutting:
Interposing shots of two or more actions or locations.
interpretive community:
Members of an audience who share particular knowledge, or cultural
competence, through which a film is experienced and interpreted.
intertextuality:
A critical approach that holds that a text depends on other, related texts for its full
meaning.
intertitle:
Printed text inserted between film images, typically used in silent films to indicate
dialogue and exposition and in contemporary films to indicate time and place or
other transitions.
invisible editing:
See continuity editing.
iris:
A shot in which the corners of the frame are masked in a black, usually circular,
form. An iris-out is a transition that gradually obscures the image by moving in; an
iris-in expands to reveal the entire image.
Italian neorealism:
A film movement that began in Italy during World War II and lasted until
approximately 1952, depicting everyday social realities using location shooting
and amateur actors, in opposition to glossy studio formulas.
jidai-geki films:

Period films or costume dramas set before 1868, when feudal Japan entered the
modern Meiji period.
jump cut:
An edit that interrupts a particular action and intentionally or unintentionally
creates discontinuities in the spatial or temporal development of shots.
keyframes:
In animation, the images or points on a time line that mark the beginning or end
of a transition.
key light:
The main source of nonnatural lighting in a scene. See high-key lighting and low-
key lighting.
leading actors:
The two or three actors, o�en stars, who represent the central characters in a
narrative.
lead room:
The space in front and in the direction of an object being filmed.
letterbox:
An effect, usually seen on home video or television, where the top and bottom
strips of a frame are blacked out to accommodate a widescreen image.
lighting:
Sources of illumination — both natural light and electrical lamps — used to
present, shade, and accentuate figures, objects, and spaces in the mise-en-scène.
Lighting is primarily the responsibility of the director of photography and the
lighting crew. See key lighting, fill lighting , and highlighting.
limited release:
The practice of initially distributing a film only to major cities and expanding
distribution according to its success or failure.
linear chronology:
The arrangement of plot events and actions that follow one another in time.

line producer:
The individual in charge of the daily business of tracking costs and maintaining
the production schedule of a film.
live-action movie:
A film that uses photographic images.
location scout:
An individual who determines and secures places that provide the most suitable
environment for shooting different movie scenes.
long shot:
A shot that places considerable distance between the camera and the scene,
object, or person being filmed so that the object or person is recognizable but
defined by the large space and background. See establishing shot.
long take:
A shot of relatively long duration.
looping:
Recording an image or sound on a loop of film to be replayed or to replace
previously recorded dialogue.
low angle:
A shot from a position lower than its subject.
low-key lighting:
Lighting where the main source of light creates a stark contrast between light and
dark.
machinima:
A new media form that modifies video game engines to create computer
animation.
magic lantern:
A device developed in the seventeenth century for using a lens and a light source
to project an image from a slide; a precursor of motion pictures.
marketing:

The process of identifying an audience and bringing a product such as a movie to
its attention for consumption.
masks:
Attachments to the camera or devices added optically that cut off portions of the
frame so that part of the image is black.
master shot:
A single shot recording an entire scene from start to finish from an angle and
distance that keep everything in view. It is used for coverage during the editing
process.
match on action:
A cut between two shots continuing a visual action.
matte shot:
A process shot that joins two pieces of film, one with the central action or object
and the other with a painted or digitally produced background that would be
difficult to create physically for the shot.
mechanical effects:
Techniques that are produced on set — o�en with sets, props, costumes, and
make-up — and that include pyrotechnics, weather effects, and scaled models.
media convergence:
The process by which formerly distinct media (such as cinema, television, the
internet, and video games) and viewing platforms (such as television, computers,
and cell phones) become interdependent.
medium close-up:
A shot that frames a person from the shoulders up; typically used during
conversation sequences.
medium long shot:
A shot that increases the distance between the camera and the subject compared
with a medium shot; shows most of an individual’s body.
medium shot:

A middle-ground framing in which we see the body of a person from
approximately the waist up.
medium specificity:
A theory that says that a successful artwork fulfills the promise of its medium’s
unique physical properties.
melodrama:
A sensational narrative mode with clearly identifiable moral types, coincidences,
and reversals of fortune, and music (melos) that underscores the action.
message:
In semiotics, that which is communicated between sender and receiver according
to a shared code.
metteur-en-scène:
French term for “director” (particularly a theater director); in auteur theory, a
director who conveys technical competence without a strong streak of individual
vision, in contrast to an auteur. See auteur.
mickey-mousing:
Overillustrating the action through the musical score, drawn from the
conventions of composing for cartoons.
mimesis:
Imitation of reality in the arts. See diegesis.
miniature:
A small-scale model constructed for use during the filming process to stage
special-effects sequences and complex backgrounds.
minor character:
A character who surrounds, contrasts with, and supports a film’s protagonists and
antagonists and who usually is associated with specific character groups. Also
called secondary character.
mise-en-scène:

All the elements of a movie scene that are organized, o�en by the director, to be
filmed and that are later visible onscreen; includes actors, lighting, sets,
costumes, make-up, and other features of the image that exist independently of
the camera and the processes of filming and editing.
mix:
The combination by the sound mixer of separate soundtracks into a single master
track that will be transferred onto the film print together with the image track to
which it is synchronized.
mobile frame:
A property of a shot in which the camera moves or the borders of the image are
altered by a change in the focal length of the camera lens to follow an action or
explore a space.
mockumentary:
A film that uses a documentary style and structure to present and stage fictional
(sometimes ludicrous) subjects.
modernism:
An artistic movement in painting, music, design, architecture, and literature
beginning in the 1920s that rendered a fragmented vision of human subjectivity
through strategies such as the foregrounding of style, experiments with space and
time, and open-ended narratives.
modernity:
A term designating the period of history stretching from the end of the medieval
era to the present, as well as the period’s attitude of confidence in progress and
science centered on the human capacity to shape history.
montage:
A term for editing most frequently used for a style that emphasizes the dynamic
relationship between images, following Soviet silent-era filmmakers’ use of the
term; also designates rapid sequences in Hollywood films used for descriptive
purposes or to show the rapid passage of time.
montage sequence:

A series of thematically linked shots or shots meant to show the passage of time,
joined by quick cuts or other devices, such as dissolves, wipes, and
superimpositions.
motion-capture technology:
A visual-effects technology used to incorporate an actor’s movements into those of
a computer-generated character. See computer-generated imagery (CGI).
movement image:
Philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s term for filmmaking that reflects a cause-and-effect
view of time.
movie palaces:
Lavish movie theaters built between the 1920s and 1940s with ornate architecture
and sumptuous seating for thousands.
multiplane camera:
In traditional animation, a camera that moves multiple images in front of the lens
at different speeds and depths.
multiple narration:
Several different narrative perspectives for a single story or for different stories in
a movie that loosely fit together.
multiplex:
A movie theater complex with many screens. Initially found in suburbs and
connected to malls, they are now common in cities.
musical:
A genre popular since the introduction of synchronous sound that features
characters who act out and express their emotions through song and dance.
music supervisor:
The individual who selects and secures the rights for songs to be used in films.
narration:
The telling of a story or description of a situation; the emotional, physical, or
intellectual perspective through which the characters, events, and action of the

plot are conveyed. In film, narration is most explicit when provided as
asynchronous verbal commentary on the action or images, but it can also
designate the storytelling function of the camera, the editing, and verbal and
other soundtracks.
narrative:
A story with a particular plot and point of view told by a narrator or conveyed by a
narrational point of view. See plot and story.
narrative analysis:
A critical approach that concentrates on the story and its construction.
narrative cueing:
The ways that sound tells viewers what is happening in the plot.
narrative duration:
The length of time used to present an event or action in a plot.
narrative frame:
A context or person positioned outside the principal narrative of a film, such as
bracketing scenes in which a character in the story’s present begins to relate
events of the past and later concludes her or his tale.
narrative frequency:
The number of times a plot element is repeated throughout a narrative.
narratology:
The study of narrative forms. Russian narratology introduced the distinction
between the terms fabula (story), all the events included in a tale or imagined by
the reader or viewer in the order in which they are assumed to have occurred, and
syuzhet (plot), the ordering of narrative events in the particular narrative.
narrator:
A character or other person whose voice and perspective describe the action of a
film, either in voiceover or through a particular point of view.
native aspect ratio:

The original size and shape of a frame shot by the filmmaker, sometimes altered
for presentation on other platforms.
natural lighting:
Light derived from a natural source in a scene or setting, such as the illumination
of the sun or firelight.
New German Cinema:
A film movement launched in West Germany in 1962 by a group of young
filmmakers known for their confrontation with Germany’s Nazi and postwar past.
new media:
Technologies that include the internet, digital technologies, video game consoles,
cell phones, and wireless devices and the so�ware applications and imaginative
creations they support.
nickelodeons:
Storefront theaters and arcade spaces where short films were shown continuously
for a five-cent admission price to audiences passing in and out. They were
prominent until the rise of the feature film in the 1910s.
nitrate:
The highly flammable chemical base of 35mm film stock in use until the early
1950s.
Nollywood:
The contemporary Nigerian film industry.
nondiegetic insert:
An insert that depicts an action, an object, or a title originating outside the space
and time of the narrative world.
nondiegetic sound:
Sound (such as a musical score) that does not have an identifiable source in the
characters’ world. See diegetic sound and semidiegetic sound.
nonfiction films:

Films presenting factual descriptions of actual events, persons, or places, rather
than their fictional or invented re-creation.
non-narrative films:
Films organized in a variety of ways besides storytelling.
objective point of view:
A point of view that does not associate the perspective of the camera with that of a
specific character.
offscreen space:
The implied space or world that exists outside the film frame.
omniscient narration:
Narration that presents all elements of the plot, exceeding the perspective of any
one character. See third-person narration.
180-degree rule:
A central convention of continuity editing that restricts possible camera setups to
the 180-degree area on one side of an imaginary line (the axis of action) drawn
between the characters or figures of a scene. If the camera were to cross the line
to film from within the 180-degree field on the other side, onscreen figure
positions would be reversed.
onscreen space:
The space visible within the frame of the image.
ontology:
The branch of philosophy that deals with nature of being.
oppositional gaze:
bell hooks’s concept of a perspective on dominant media formed from a viewer’s
experience of social marginalization.
optical effects:
Special effects produced with the use of an optical printer, including visual
transitions between shots such as dissolves, fade-outs, and wipes, or process shots
that combine figures and backgrounds through the use of matte shots.

optical sound recording:
The process that converts sound waves into electrical impulses (which then
control how a light beam is projected onto film) and that enables a soundtrack to
be recorded alongside the image for simultaneous projection.
orphan films:
Films that do not have copyright holders, including amateur films, training films,
documentaries, censored materials, commercials, and newsreels.
overhead shot:
A shot that depicts the action from above, generally looking directly down on the
subject from a crane, helicopter, or drone.
overlapping dialogue:
Mixing characters’ speech to imitate the rhythm of speech; also may refer to
dialogue that overlaps two scenes to effect a transition between them.
overlapping editing:
An edited sequence that presents two or more shots of the same action across
several cuts.
over-the-shoulder shots:
Frame compositions where the camera is positioned slightly behind and over the
shoulder of one character, focusing on another character or object; o�en used
when alternating between speaking characters.
pace:
The tempo at which the film seems to move, influenced by the duration of
individual shots and the style of editing.
package-unit approach:
An approach to film production established in the mid-1950s whereby the agent,
producer, and casting director assembled a script, stars, and other major
personnel as a key first step in a major production.
pan:
A le� or right rotation of the camera, whose tripod or mount remains in a fixed
position; produces a horizontal movement onscreen.

pan-and-scan process:
The process used to transfer a widescreen-format film to the 4:3 television aspect
ratio. A computer-controlled scanner determines the most important action in the
image and then crops peripheral action and space or presents the original frame
as two separate images.
panchromatic stock:
A film stock that responds to a full spectrum of colors, rendering them as shades
of gray, and became the standard for black-and-white movies a�er 1926.
parallel editing:
An editing technique that alternates back and forth between actions in separate
locations, o�en implying simultaneity. See crosscutting.
parallel sound:
Sound that reinforces the image, such as synchronized dialogue or sound effects
or a voiceover that is consistent with what is displayed onscreen. See counterpoint.
performance:
An actor’s use of language, physical expression, and gesture to bring a character to
life and to communicate important dimensions of that character to the audience.
performance-capture technology:
A technique for generating computer models from data gathered from an actor’s
performance.
periodization:
A method of organizing film history by groups of years that are defined by
historical events or that produced movies that share thematic and stylistic
concerns.
personal or subjective documentaries:
Documentary formats that emphasize the personal perspective or involvement of
the filmmaker, o�en making the films resemble autobiographies or diaries.
perspective:
The manner in which the distance and spatial relationships among objects are
represented on a two-dimensional surface. In painting, parallel and converging

lines give the illusion of distance and depth; in film, perspective can also be
manipulated by changes in the focal length of camera lenses.
phenomenology:
A theory that any act of perception involves a mutuality of the viewer and what is
viewed.
photogénie:
A term, coined by Louis Delluc, referring to a particular quality that distinguishes
the filmed object from its everyday reality.
photorealism:
In animation, the attempt to replicate the look of live-action footage.
physical horror films:
A subgenre of the horror film in which the psychology of the characters takes
second place to the depiction of graphic violence.
physical melodrama:
A subgenre of the melodrama that focuses on the material conditions that control
the protagonist’s desires and emotions.
piracy:
The unauthorized duplication and circulation of copyrighted material.
pixilation:
A type of animation that employs stop-motion photography to transform
movement into rapid jerky gestures; the disintegration of the electronic image.
platforming:
The distribution strategy of releasing a film in gradually widening markets to
build its reputation through reviews and word of mouth.
plot:
The narrative ordering of the events of the story as they appear in the actual work,
selected and arranged according to particular temporal, spatial, generic, causal,
or other patterns; in narratology, also known by the Russian word syuzhet.
plot time:

The length of time a movie depicts when telling its story. See narrative duration.
poetic realism:
A film movement in 1930s France that incorporated a lyrical style and a fatalistic
view of life.
point of view:
The position from which a person, an event, or an object is seen or filmed; in
narrative form, the perspective through which events are narrated.
point-of-view (POV) shot:
A subjective shot that reproduces a character’s optical point of view, o�en
preceded or followed by shots of the character looking.
postclassical narrative:
The form and content of films a�er the decline of the Hollywood studio system
around 1960, including formerly taboo subject matter and narratives and formal
techniques influenced by European cinema.
postmodernism:
An artistic style in architecture, art, literature, music, and film that incorporates
fragments of or references to other styles; or the cultural period in which political,
cultural, and economic shi�s engendered challenges to the tenets of modernism,
including its belief in the possibility of critiquing the world through art, the
division of high and low culture, and the genius and independent identity of the
artist.
postproduction:
The period in the filmmaking process that occurs a�er principal photography has
been completed; usually consists of editing, sound, and visual-effects work.
postproduction sound:
Sound recorded and added to a film in the postproduction phase.
poststructuralism:
An intellectual development that challenged the methodology and fixed
definitions of structuralism by emphasizing the place of subjectivity, the
unreliability of language, and the construction of social power.

postsynchronous sound:
Sound recorded a�er the actual filming and then synchronized with onscreen
sources.
premiere:
A red carpet event celebrating the opening night of a film.
preproduction:
The phase when a film project is in development, involving preparing the script,
financing the project, casting, hiring crew, and securing locations.
prerecorded music:
Previously recorded music that is added to a film’s soundtrack.
primary research sources:
Original sources in formats such as 16mm films, videotapes, DVDs, and film
scripts; documents from the time of the film’s production; and new research data.
principal photography:
The majority of footage filmed for a project during the shoot.
process shot:
A special effect that combines two or more images as a single shot, such as filming
an actor in front of a projected background.
producer:
The person or persons who oversee each step of a film project, especially the
financial aspects, from development to postproduction and a distribution deal.
production:
The industrial stages that contribute to the making of a finished movie, from the
financing and scripting of a film to its final edit; more specifically, the actual
shooting of a film a�er preproduction and before postproduction.
production designer:
The person in charge of the film’s overall look.
production sound mixer:
The sound engineer on the production set; also called a sound recordist.

production values:
An evaluative term about the quality of the film images and sounds that reflects
the investment expenses.
promotion:
The aspect of the movie industry through which audiences are exposed to and
encouraged to see a particular film. Promotion includes advertisements, trailers,
publicity appearances, and product tie-ins.
prop:
An object that functions as a part of the set or as a tool used by the actors.
propaganda films:
Political documentaries that visibly support and intend to sway viewers toward a
particular social or political issue or group.
prosthetics:
Artificial facial features or body parts used to alter actors’ appearances.
protagonist:
A character identified as the positive force in a film. See antagonist.
psychoanalysis:
The therapeutic method innovated by Sigmund Freud based on his attribution of
unconscious motives to human actions, desires, and symptoms; theoretical tenets
developed by literary and film critics to facilitate the cultural study of texts and
the interaction between viewers and texts.
psychological horror film:
A subgenre of the horror film that locates the dangers that threaten normal life in
the minds of bizarre and deranged individuals.
race movies:
Early twentieth-century films that featured all–African American casts and were
circulated to African American audiences in the North and South.
rack focus (or pulled focus):
A dramatic change in focus from one object to another.

reaction shot:
A shot that depicts a character’s response to something shown in a previous shot.
realism:
An artwork’s quality of conveying a truthful picture of a society, person, or some
other dimension of everyday life; an artistic movement that aims to achieve
verisimilitude.
rear projection:
A technique that projects an image onto a screen behind the actors.
reception:
The process through which individual viewers or groups make sense of a film.
reception theory:
A theoretical approach to the ways different kinds of audiences regard different
kinds of films.
reenactment:
A re-creation of presumably real events within the context of a documentary.
reestablishing shot:
A shot that reestablishes the space in which an edited sequence unfolds, orienting
the spectator to changes in figure location and restoring an objective view of the
action.
referent:
In semiotics, the object to which a sign refers.
reflected sound:
Recorded sound that is captured as it bounces from the walls and sets. It is usually
used to give a sense of space. See direct sound.
reflexive narration:
A mode of narration that calls attention to the narrative point of view of the story
in order to complicate or subvert its own narrative authority as an objective
perspective on the world.
reflexivity:

Referencing the film’s own process of storytelling or cinematic technique.
reframing:
The process of moving the frame from one position to another within a single
continuous shot.
restricted narration:
A narrative in which our knowledge is limited to that of a particular character.
revisionist westerns:
Films that call into question the underlying values and conventions of the western
genre.
rhythmic editing:
The organization of editing according to different paces or tempos determined by
how quickly cuts are made.
road movie:
A film genre that depicts characters on a journey, usually following a linear
chronology.
romantic comedy:
A subgenre of comedy in which humor takes second place to the happy ending,
typically focusing on the emotional attraction of a couple in a lighthearted way.
room tone:
The aural properties of a location that are recorded and then mixed in with
dialogue and other tracks to achieve a more realistic sound.
rotoscoping:
A technique using recorded real figures and action on video as a basis for painting
individual animation frames digitally.
rule of thirds:
A technique that imagines the frame divided horizontally and vertically into thirds
and places objects along these lines for maximum visual interest.
safety film:

Acetate-based film stock that replaced the highly flammable nitrate film base in
the early 1950s.
saturation booking:
The distribution strategy of releasing a film simultaneously in as many locations
as possible, widely implemented with the advent of the blockbuster in the 1970s.
Also called saturated release.
scale:
The relative size of the image within the frame.
scene:
One or more shots that depict a continuous space and time.
scenic realism:
The physical, cultural, and historical accuracy of the background, objects, and
other figures in a film.
scenics:
Early nonfiction films that offered exotic or remarkable images of nature or
foreign lands.
score:
Music composed to accompany a completed film.
screenplay:
The text from which a movie is made, including dialogue and information about
action, settings, shots, and transitions; developed from a treatment; also known as
a script.
screen time:
The actual length of time that a movie takes to unfold.
screenwriter:
A writer of a film’s screenplay; also called a scriptwriter. The screenwriter may
begin with an original treatment and develop the plot structure and dialogue over
the span of several versions.

screwball comedy:
A comic subgenre of the 1930s and 1940s known for fast talking and unpredictable
action.
script:
A blueprint for the story of a film that includes scene descriptions, dialogue, and
other directions. See screenplay.
script doctor:
An uncredited individual called in to do rewrites on a screenplay.
secondary research sources:
Books and articles conveying information about or interpreting a research topic.
They may draw upon primary research sources.
segmentation:
The process of dividing a film into large narrative units for the purposes of
analysis.
selects:
The director’s chosen takes to use in editing a scene.
semidiegetic sound:
Sound that is neither strictly diegetic nor nondiegetic, such as certain voiceovers
that can be construed as the thoughts of a character and thus as arising from the
story world; also called internal diegetic sound.
semiotics:
The study of signs and signification; also called semiology. Semiotics posits that
meaning is constructed and communicated through the selection, ordering, and
interpretation of signs and sign systems, including words, gestures, images,
symbols, or virtually anything that can be meaningfully codified.
sequence:
Any number of shots or scenes that are unified as a coherent action or an
identifiable motif, regardless of changes in space and time.
sequence shot:

A shot in which an entire scene is played out in one continuous take.
set:
A constructed setting, o�en on a studio soundstage, on which filming takes place;
can combine natural and constructed elements.
set decorator:
The member of the art department who places props and furnishing on set.
set lighting:
The distribution of an evenly diffused illumination through a scene as a kind of
lighting base.
setting:
A fictional or real place where the action and events of the film occur.
shallow focus:
A shot in which only a narrow range of the field is in focus.
shock cut:
A cut that juxtaposes two images whose dramatic difference creates a jarring
visual effect.
shooting ratio:
The relationship between the overall amount or length of film shot and the
amount used in the finished project.
shot:
A continuous point of view (or continuously exposed piece of film) between two
edits.
shot/reverse shot:
An editing pattern that begins with a shot of one character looking offscreen in
one direction, followed by a shot of a second character, who appears to be looking
back; also called shot/countershot. The first shot is taken from an angle at one end
of the axis of action, the second from the “reverse” angle at the other end of the
line; o�en used in conversations.
sidelighting:

Used to illuminate the subject from the side.
sign:
A term used in semiotics for something that signifies something else, whether the
connection is causal, conventional, or based on resemblance. As defined by
Ferdinand de Saussure, a sign is composed of a signifier and a signified.
signified:
The mental concept evoked by a signifier.
signifier:
A spoken or written word, picture, or gesture.
simulacrum:
An imitation; in the work of Jean Baudrillard, a copy without an original or sign
without a referent, like a digital image.
slapstick comedy:
Films known for physical humor and stunts. Some of the first films were slapstick
comedies.
slasher films:
A subgenre of the horror film depicting serial killers, o�en considered to have
originated with Psycho (1960).
slow cinema:
Movies, o�en contemporary international art films, where shots are sustained for
a lengthy time, reinforcing the durational aspect of the medium.
slow motion:
A special effect that makes the action move at slower-than-normal speeds,
achieved by filming the action at a high speed and then projecting it at standard
speeds. See fast motion.
social documentaries:
Documentaries that examine issues, peoples, and cultures in a social context.
social melodrama:

A subgenre of the melodrama that extends the crises of the family to include
larger historical, community, and economic issues.
so� lighting:
Diffused, low-contrast lighting that reduces or eliminates hard edges and shadows
and can be more flattering when filming people.
sound bridge:
Sound that is carried over a picture transition or that belongs to the coming scene
but is played before the image changes.
sound continuity:
The process of furthering the aims of the narrative through scoring, sound
recording, mixing, and playback processes that strive for the unification of
meaning and experience.
sound designer:
The individual responsible for planning and directing the overall sound of a film
through to the final mix.
sound editing:
Combining music, dialogue, and effects tracks to interact with the image track;
performed by a sound editor.
sound mixing:
The process by which all the elements of the soundtrack, including music, effects,
and dialogue, are combined and adjusted to their final levels; also called
rerecording.
sound montage:
The collision or overlapping of disjunctive sounds in a film.
sound perspective:
The apparent location and distance of a sound source.
sound recording:
The recording of dialogue and other sound that may take place simultaneously
with the filming of a scene.

sound reproduction:
Sound playback during a film’s exhibition.
soundstage:
A large soundproofed building designed to house the construction and movement
of sets and props and effectively capture sound and dialogue during filming.
soundtrack:
Audio recorded to synchronize with a moving image, including dialogue, music,
and sound effects; the physical portion of the film used for recorded sound.
source music:
Diegetic music; music whose source is visible onscreen.
special effects:
Techniques that enhance a film’s realism or surpass realism with spectacle. They
may be prepared in preproduction (such as building futuristic sets), generated in
production (with camera filters or setups) or on set (such as pyrotechnics), or
added in postproduction.
spectatorship:
The process of film viewing; the conscious and unconscious interaction of viewers
and films as a topic of interest to film theorists.
spotting:
The process of determining where music and effects will be added to a film.
star system:
The practice of a studio system or a national film industry of promoting films and
organizing audience expectation through the casting and cultivation of distinctive
and well-known performers.
Steadicam:
A camera stabilization system introduced in 1976 that allows a camera operator to
film a continuous and steady shot without a dolly or other device.
stereophonic sound:

The recording, mixing, and playback of sound on multiple channels to create
audio perspective.
stereotype:
A character type that simplifies and standardizes perceptions that one group holds
about another, o�en less numerous, powerful, or privileged group.
stinger:
Sound that forces the audience to notice the significance of something onscreen,
such as the ominous chord struck when the villain’s presence is made known.
stop-motion photography:
A process that records inanimate objects or actual human figures in different
positions in separate frames and then synthesizes them on film to create the
illusion of motion and action.
story:
The raw material of a narrative; fabula.
storyboard:
A shot-by-shot graphic representation of how a film or a film sequence will unfold.
story time:
The sequence of events inferred during the telling of a film story.
structural film:
An experimental film movement that emerged in North America in the 1960s, in
which films followed a predetermined structure.
structuralism:
An approach to linguistics and anthropology that, when extended to literary and
filmic narratives, looks for common structures rather than originality.
studio system:
The industrial practices of the large production companies responsible for
filmmaking in Hollywood or other national film industries. During the Hollywood
studio era extending from the late 1920s through the 1950s, the five major studios
were MGM, Paramount, RKO, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Bros.

stylistic analysis:
A critical approach focusing on form, such as shot composition, editing, and the
use of sound.
subgenre:
A specific version of a genre denoted by an adjective, such as the spaghetti
western or the slapstick comedy.
subjective point of view:
A point of view that re-creates the perspective of a character as seen through the
camera.
supernatural horror film:
A subgenre of the horror film in which a spiritual evil erupts in the human realm
to avenge a wrong or for no explainable reason.
supporting actors:
Actors who play secondary characters in a film, serving as foils or companions to
the central characters.
surrealist cinema:
An influential avant-garde movement of the 1920s that manipulated time, space,
and material objects according to a dreamlike logic.
symbol:
In semiotics, a sign whose relation to its referent is purely based on convention, as
in spoken or written language.
symbolic space:
A space transformed through spiritual or other abstract means related to the
narrative.
synchronous sound:
Sound that is recorded during a scene or is synchronized with the filmed images
and has a visible onscreen source; also referred to as onscreen sound.
take:
A single filmed version of a scene during production or a single shot onscreen.

talking head:
An on-camera interview that typically shows the speaker from the shoulders up.
Technicolor:
Patented color processing that uses three strips of film to transfer red, green, and
blue directly onto a single image; developed between 1926 and 1932 and widely
used until the 1950s.
telephoto lens:
A lens that has a focal length of at least 75mm and is capable of magnifying and
flattening distant objects. See zoom lens.
theatrical musical:
A subgenre of the musical that is set in a theatrical milieu.
theatrical release window:
The period of time before a film’s availability on home video, video on demand, or
television platforms, during which it plays in movie theaters.
theatrical trailer:
A promotional preview of an upcoming release presented before the main feature
or as a television commercial.
thesis statement:
A short statement (o�en a single sentence) that succinctly describes and
anticipates each stage of an essay’s argument. A working thesis is a rough version of
a thesis used to dra� an essay.
Third Cinema:
A term coined in the late 1960s in Latin America to echo the phrase and concept
“Third World,” Third Cinema opposed commercial and auteurist cinemas with a
political, populist aesthetic and united films from a number of countries and
contexts.
third-person narration:
A narration that assumes an objective and detached stance toward the plot and
characters by describing events from outside the story.

30-degree rule:
A cinematography and editing rule that specifies that a shot should be followed by
another shot taken from a position greater than 30 degrees from that of the first.
3D animation:
Computer animation that renders variations in height, width, and depth of a
moving image.
360-degree pan:
A shot in which a camera completes a rotation around a fixed vertical axis.
three-point lighting:
A lighting technique common in Hollywood that combines key lighting,
backlighting, and fill lighting to blend the distribution of light in a scene.
tie-ins:
Ancillary products (such as T-shirts, CD soundtracks, toys, and other gimmicks
made available at stores and restaurants) that advertise and promote a movie.
tilt:
An upward or a downward rotation of the camera, whose tripod or mount remains
in a fixed position, producing a vertical movement onscreen.
time image:
Philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s term for filmmaking that represents the open-
endedness of time without giving clear signals of spatial connection or logical
sequence.
topicals:
Early films that captured or sometimes re-created historical or newsworthy
events.
topic sentence:
A sentence (usually the first sentence of a paragraph) that announces the central
idea to which all other sentences within the paragraph are related.
top lighting:
Used to illuminate the subject from above.

tracking shot:
A shot that changes the position of the point of view by moving forward,
backward, or around the subject, usually on tracks that have been constructed in
advance; also called a traveling shot. See dolly shot.
traditional animation:
Moving images drawn or painted on transparent sheets of celluloid known as cels,
which are then photographed into single frames of film.
trailer:
A form of promotional advertising that previews edited images and scenes from a
film in theaters before the main feature film or on a television commercial or
website.
treatment:
A short prose description of the action of a film and major characters written
before the screenplay or script.
2D animation:
Animation that renders a moving image or object with variation in height and
width.
two-shot:
A shot depicting two characters.
underground film:
Nonmainstream film, associated particularly with the experimental film culture of
1960s and 1970s New York and San Francisco.
underlighting:
Used to illuminate the subject from below.
underscoring:
A film’s background music; contrasts with source music.
unit production manager:
A member of a film’s production team responsible for reporting and managing the
details of receipts and purchases.

unreliable narration:
A type of narration that raises questions about the truth of the story being told;
also called manipulative narration.
value:
The degree of lightness or darkness of a color.
verisimilitude:
The quality of fictional representation that allows readers or viewers to accept a
constructed world — its events, its characters, and their actions — as plausible
(literally, “having the appearance of truth”).
video:
Analog or digital electronic medium that captures, records, stores, displays, and
transmits moving images.
video art:
Artists’ use of the medium of video in installations and gallery exhibitions,
beginning in the late 1960s.
video on demand (VOD):
The distribution of films through cable or online services that allow consumers to
purchase and view movies on computers and home video screens.
viral marketing:
The process of advertising that relies on existing social networks to spread a
marketing message by word of mouth, electronic messaging, or other means.
virtual cinematography:
The process of image capture in a computer environment, which may be
incorporated into live-action cinematography or other computer-generated
imagery.
visual effects (VFX):
Special effects created in postproduction through digital imaging.
voice-off:

A voice that originates from a speaker who can be inferred to be present in the
scene but is not visible onscreen.
voiceover:
A voice whose source is neither visible in the frame nor implied to be offscreen
and typically narrates the film’s images, such as in a flashback or the commentary
in a documentary film.
walla:
A nonsense word spoken by extras in a film to approximate the sound of a crowd
during sound dubbing.
western:
A film genre set in the American West, typically featuring rugged, independent
male characters on a quest or dramatizing frontier life.
wide-angle lens:
A lens with a short focal length (typically less than 35mm) that allows
cinematographers to explore a depth of field that can simultaneously show
foreground and background objects or events in focus.
wide release:
The premiere of a movie at many locations simultaneously.
widescreen processes:
Any of a number of systems introduced in the 1950s that widened the image’s
aspect ratio and the dimensions of the movie screen.
widescreen ratio:
The wider, rectangular aspect ratio of typically 1.85:1 or 2.35:1. See academy ratio.
wipe:
A transition used to join two shots by moving a vertical, horizontal, or sometimes
diagonal line across one image to replace it with a second image that follows the
line across the frame.
women’s picture:

A category of films produced in the 1930s to 1950s, featuring female stars in
romances or melodramas and marketed primarily to women.
Works Cited:
List of sources cited in an essay, positioned on a separate page immediately a�er
the last page of the essay text.
Works Consulted:
Optional list of sources that have been consulted but not cited in the text or notes
of an essay; appears on a separate page a�er the Works Cited list.
zoom-in:
The act of changing the lens’s focal length to narrow the field of view of a distant
object, magnifying and reframing it, o�en in close-up, while the camera remains
stationary. See zoom-out.
zooming:
Rapidly changing focal length of a camera to move the image closer or farther
away.
zoom lens:
A lens with variable focal length. See telephoto lens.
zoom-out:
Reversing the action of a zoom-in by adjusting the lens’s focal length so that
objects that appear close initially are distanced and reframed as small figures. See
zoom-in.

Index
A
A pictures, 23
Aadahl, Erik, 225
Aardman Animations, 322, 324f
ABC Close-Up! 279
Abels, Michael, 218f
About a Boy, 260
above-the-line expenses, 8
absolute film, 306–307
abstraction, 317–318
Academy Awards, 42
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 72
academy ratio, 129
Acres, Birt, 276
Across the Universe, 355, 355f
acting styles, 102
action films, 340
actions, in character coherence, 242
activist videos, 279, 329
actors, 99–104, 246
actualities, 276
Adam, 72
Adams, Randall, 297
Adam’s Rib, 348

Adaptation, 237, 409
adaptations, 233–235
Adorno, Theodor, 394
The Adventures of Prince Achmed, 307, 307f
The Adventures of Robin Hood, 107
The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, 256
advertising, 28–32
Æon Flux, 361
affect, 402
Afolayan, Kunle, 76
African American filmmaking. See also blaxploitation
in 21st century, 73
Burnett and, 24
in early cinema, 45
experimental strategies, 329, 329f
gangster films, 363
Greaves and, 313
independent filmmaking, 399
Lee and, 64–65, 100–101
Micheaux and, 49, 78–79
race movies, 45, 49
African Americans, 51, 198, 216–217, 312, 396, 397–399. See also
Blaxploitation
African cinema, 67–68, 76
The African Queen, 107
The Age of Innocence, 131, 131f
agents, 9–10
Aguirre: The Wrath of God, 67

AIDS crisis, 329, 329f
Akerman, Chantal, 140, 213, 314, 318
Akin, Fatih, 67, 74
Akira, 315, 315f
Alamo Dra�house Theater, 33
Alexander Nevsky, 221, 221f
Alexandria … Why? 67
Alexie, Sherman, 65
Ali, Naushad, 61
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, 234, 234f
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, 41, 365, 365f
Alice, 322
Alice in the Cities, 67
Alice in Wonderland, 87
Alien, 132, 132f, 242, 336, 357, 361
Alien: Covenant, 336
Alita: Battle Angel, 64, 172f
All About My Mother, 393
All Quiet on the Western Front, 109
All That Heaven Allows, 41, 365, 365f, 389, 389f
All That Jazz, 356
Allegretto, 308, 308f
Allegro Non Troppo, 315
Allen, Dede, 186
Allen, Woody, 102, 261, 346
Almendros, Nèstor, 12, 138
Almodóvar, Pedro, 251, 393, 393f

alternative film narrative, 266–267, 267f, 268–269
Althusser, Louis, 389
Altman, Robert, 208, 210, 210f, 339, 339f
Alvin and the Chipmunks, 312
ambiguous sequences, 177–178, 178f
Amélie, 57
America, 329, 329f
The American Cinema (Sarris), 385
American Film Institute, 427
The American Friend, 339
American Graffiti, 217
American Honey, 261
American Hustle, 103
An American in Paris, 89, 105f, 177
American International Pictures, 54
American Pie, 360
American Psycho, 65
American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs, 294
American Sign Language (ASL), 225f
Amour, 74, 255, 255f
Amreeka, 72, 72f
analytic philosophy, 402
analytical essays, elements of, 413–414. See also film essays
analytical positions, 288
anamorphic lens, 123
Anatomy of a Murder, 200f
ancillary markets, 17–21

And God Created Woman, 392f
Anders, Allison, 65
Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others), 47
Anderson, Laurie, 317
Anderson, Paul Thomas, 63, 126
Anderson, Wes, 215
Anger, Kenneth, 326, 326f
animated musicals, 356–357, 357f
animation, 71, 304–305
changing technologies in, 324
history of, 305–317
modes of, 322–323
perspectives on, 325–329
principles of, 317–322
anime, 59, 309, 315, 325, 331
Annie Hall, 346
Anoff, Matiki, 100
antagonists, 244
Antheil, George, 307
Anthology Film Archives, 309
anthology films, 261
anthropological films, 296
Antichrist, 74
Antonioni, Michelangelo, 175, 385, 402–403
Aparajito, 267
Apocalypse Now, 200
Apollo 11, 274, 274f
apparatus theory, 390–391

apparent motion, 119
Applause, 221
The Apple, 70
Apropos of Nice, 288
Apted, Michael, 283
archetypes, 246, 341, 341f, 342, 342f
archives, film preservation and, 77
Aristotle, 337
Arnheim, Rudolf, 380, 381, 382
Arrival, 138
Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, 380f
art cinema, 174–175, 236–237, 267. See also international art cinema
art directors, 10, 88–89
art films, 23
The Art of the Moving Picture (Lindsay), 379, 410
The Art of Vision, 326
Artaud, Antonin, 326
The Artist, 57
Arugbá, 76, 76f
Arzner, Dorothy, 51, 51f, 77, 158
Asian Americans, 51
aspect ratio, 123, 129–131, 130f, 131f
associative organizations, 319–320, 320f
Astaire, Fred, 110
The Astronomer’s Dream, 342f
asynchronous sound, 202–205, 218, 224
Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, 295, 295f
Atget, Eugène, 327

Atmos sound system, 225
atmosphere, mise-en-scène and, 91–92
The Atomic Cafe, 294–295
Attack of the Crab Monsters, 54
attention, 222–223
audience expectations, 343–345
audiences, 17, 54, 394–396, 418–420
audio and visual media, 30
augmented reality (AR), 322
Auric, Georges, 308
Austrian Heimat films, 369
auteur theory, 57, 384–385
auteurs, 11, 126
authenticity, 222–223
automated dialogue replacement (ADR), 208
The Automatic Moving Company, 317, 324
The Automobile Thieves, 87
avant-garde films, 304, 306–307, 379–380, 380f
Avatar, 27, 34, 64, 72, 111, 127, 257, 257f
Avengers: Endgame, 159, 160f
average shot length (ASL), 179
Away from Her, 284
axis of action, 168

B
B pictures, 23
Babel, 138, 261, 261f
Babette’s Feast, 93, 93f
Baby Driver, 161, 161f
Bachchan, Amitabh, 59
Back to the Future, 93, 93f, 246
background music, 214
backlighting, 97, 98f, 101
Baker, Sean, 71
Balázs, Béla, 380, 381–382, 382f
Baldwin, James, 211
Ball, Lucille, 51, 347
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, 168f
Ballet mécanique, 307, 307f
Ballhaus, Michael, 12
Bambi, 312
Bamboozled, 398f
Band of Outsiders, 222
bankable, 9
Barbarosa, 367
Bardot, Brigitte, 392f
Barriga, Cecelia, 191
Barry Lyndon, 99, 99f, 142
Barthes, Roland, 386
Barton Fink, 110, 209

Baseball, 295
Basie, Count, 214, 214f
Bassett, Angela, 245
Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, 246
The Battle of Algiers, 59, 108, 142
The Battle of Manila Bay, 106
The Battle over Citizen Kane, 37
Battleship Potemkin, 48, 157, 159f, 178–179, 245, 246, 249, 417
Baudrillard, Jean, 403–404, 404f
Baudry, Jean-Louis, 390–391
Baum, L. Frank, 231
Baumbach, Noah, 137
Bazin, Andrè, 57, 179, 366, 380, 382–384, 383f
Be Kind Rewind, 20, 20f
Beasts of the Southern Wild, 175, 176f
Beatty, Warren, 55, 187f, 245
Becky Sharp, 139
behaviors, in character coherence, 242
Beijing Film Academy, 68
Being John Malkovich, 111, 316
Bell Laboratories, 203
below-the-line expenses, 8
Beltrami, Marco, 225
Bend It Like Beckham, 129, 129f
Ben-Day dots, 330
Ben-Hur, 235, 255, 265, 265f
Benigni, Roberto, 245, 246f
Benjamin, Walter, 327–328, 380, 382

Benshi, 46
Bergman, Ingmar, 54, 118, 385
Bergson, Henri, 402
Berkeley Media Resources Center, 427
Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, 307
Bernhardt, Sarah, 88
Bernstein, Elmer, 209f
Bernstein, Leonard, 217
Bertolucci, Bernardo, 267, 267f
The Best Years of Our Lives, 53, 136, 136f, 163, 163f, 179, 236, 236f
The Betrayal, 49
Beyond the Lights, 72f
Biberman, Herbert J., 238
bibliographic indexes, 426
Bicycle Thieves, 56, 112–113, 112f, 113f
Bier, Susanne, 74
The Big Chill, 217
“Big Five” studios, 50
The Big Short, 189, 189f
The Big Sleep, 54, 166, 167f, 168, 169, 169f, 221
Bigelow, Kathryn, 27, 72, 242
biographical films, 241–242, 242f
Birdman, 90, 125, 411–412, 411f
The Birds, 110, 162, 173, 173f
Birnbaum, Dara, 325, 325f
The Birth of a Nation, 15, 15f, 45, 78–79, 156, 157f, 214, 264
The Birth of a Nation (2016), 73
Bitzer, Billy, 121

Blachè, Alice Guy, 45, 45f
Black Audio Film Collective, 329
Black Girl, 67–68, 68f, 315
Black God, White Devil, 58
Black Maria studio, 105
Black Panther, 5, 127, 399
Black Swan, 353, 353f, 365
blackface, 398f
BlacKkKlansman, 65, 65f
Blade Runner, 22, 22f, 64, 90, 214, 222
Blair, Tony, 281
The Blair Witch Project, 30, 30f
Blanchett, Cate, 95
blaxploitation, 24, 55, 339
Blazing Saddles, 214, 214f, 336–337
Bleak House (Dickens), 232
The Blind Side, 91–92
The Bling Ring, 217
block booking, 16
blockbuster era, 62–63
blockbusters, 23, 26, 89–90
blocking, 101, 104, 104f, 413f
Blonde Venus, 145
Blood and Sand, 158
The Blood of a Poet, 308
Blue, 201, 320
The Blue Angel, 51, 102, 102f, 199

The Blue Bird, 258
The Blue Danube (Strauss), 184
Blue Jasmine, 177
“blue movies,” 338, 338f
Blue Velvet, 64
Blunt, Emily, 225f
Blu-ray format, 19
Bobo, Jacqueline, 396
bodily movement, 102
Body and Soul, 49
Body Heat, 364
Boese, Carl, 357
Bogart, Humphrey, 103, 104
Bogdanovich, Peter, 37
Bohemian Rhapsody, 153
Bollywood films, 61, 75–76, 340, 340f
Bong Joon-ho, 75
“Bonjour Cinéma” (Epstein), 379
Bonnie and Clyde, 27–28, 28f, 55, 147, 186–187, 186f, 187f, 245
The Book of All the Dead, 314
Booksmart, 253, 253f
Borat, 298, 298f
Border, 86–87, 86f
Borderline, 307, 307f
Bordwell, David, 402
Born into Brothels, 279–280
Born to Dance, 223, 223f

The Boss, 347
Bourne series, 243, 259
Boyhood, 283
Boyle, Anthony Dod, 125
Boyle, Danny, 76
Boys Don’t Cry, 66, 351, 352f
Boyz N the Hood, 363
Bozzetto, Bruno, 315
Bradley, Garrett, 329
Brakhage, Stan, 306f, 309, 316, 326
Brando, Marlon, 102, 102f
Brazil, 106
The Breadwinner, 324
The Breakfast Club, 244, 368
Breathless, 57, 160, 160f, 189
Brecht, Bertolt, 190
Breen, Joseph I., 50
Breil, Joseph Carl, 214
Bresson, Robert, 132, 223, 385
Bride & Prejudice, 76
Bridesmaids, 346, 346f
Bridges-Go-Round, 313, 325, 325f
Bridget Jones series, 212
Bridget Jones’s Baby, 212f
Bring It On, 19, 368
Bringing Up Baby, 235, 235f, 346, 348, 414–416, 415f, 416f, 417, 421
Britell, Nicholas, 215

British New Wave, 57–58
British Sounds, 328
broadcast television distribution, 18–19
Brokeback Mountain, 107, 107f, 354, 354f
Broken Blossoms, 82, 102, 165f, 352–353
Brooks, Mel, 214, 336–337
Broughton, James, 313
Browning, Tod, 359, 367
Brownlow, Kevin, 77
Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, 348f
Bullock, Sandra, 397
Buñuel, Luis, 256, 291, 298, 299, 326, 344f
Burnett, Charles, 24, 399
Burns, Ken, 19, 295, 295f
Burton, Tim, 87, 324, 356
Burtt, Ben, 222
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 149, 349, 349f

C
Cabaret, 102, 102f
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 47, 47f, 260, 306, 359, 436–440, 437f, 439f
Cabiria, 56, 88, 111
cable television distribution, 18–19
Caché, 74
Café Lumière, 75
Cage, Nicolas, 409
Cagney, James, 245
Cahiers du cinèma, 57, 383–385, 384f, 389, 405
Caine, Rick, 297
Call Me by Your Name, 72, 73f
camera angles, 135–136, 135f
camera distance, 132–135
camera height, 135
camera lenses, 122
camera movement, 124
camera operators, 12, 121
Cameron, James, 23, 64, 72, 257
Campbell, Joseph, 388f
Campion, Jane, 135, 195
Canada, Indigenous people of, 295
Cannes Film Festival, 38, 58
canon, 43
canted frame, 129, 129f
cantinflas, 52
Canyon Cinema, 309

Caouette, Jonathan, 16
Cape Fear, 245
Capra, Frank, 50–51, 288
Captain Fantastic, 353, 353f
Captain Marvel, 390f
Cardiff, Jack, 138
Carell, Steve, 189f
Carnè, Marcel, 52
Carol, 66, 171f
Carrie, 128, 128f, 358, 361
Carrie Nation Smashing a Saloon, 338
Carroll, Noël, 402
Cars, 323
Carter, Ruth, 96f, 100
Casablanca, 103, 104, 215
Cash, Johnny, 255
Cassavetes, John, 55
cast, 12–13
Cast Away, 246, 256, 256f
Castaing-Taylor, Lucien, 299
casting directors, 9–10
cause-and-effect logic, 241f, 265
Cave of Forgotten Dreams, 288, 288f
Cavell, Stanley, 386
Cecil B. Demented, 367
The Celebration, 74, 125, 141
celebrity culture, 73
cellulose acetate film, 121

cels, 322, 324
censorship, 236, 238
Central Station, 109, 410
Chabrol, Claude, 384
Chadha, Gurinder, 76
Chahine, Youssef, 67
Chalkroom, 317
Chan, Jackie, 69
Chan Is Missing, 65
Chaplin, Charlie, 28, 28f, 46, 103, 199, 307, 307f, 385
character actors, 103
character analysis, 417, 417f
character coherence, 242–243, 243f
character depth, 243–244
character development, 247–248
character hierarchies, 244–245
character roles, 241–242
character types, 103, 245–247
characterization, 50, 215
characters, 239, 240–248
Chazelle, Damien, 202f
The Cheat, 182
checklist, writer’s, 424–425
Chelsea Girls, 312, 313f
Chen Kaige, 68
Chenzira, Ayoka, 399
Chiaroscuro lighting, 99, 99f
Chicken Run, 322, 324, 324f

Chikara to Onna no Yo no Naka, 309
Child, Julia, 421, 421f
Children of Men, 180–181
The Children’s Hour, 50, 50f
Chin, Jimmy, 273
China, as film market, 71–72
Chinese cinema, 68–69, 75
Chinese diaspora cinema, 399, 399f
Cholodenko, Lisa, 72
Chomet, Sylvain, 316, 356
Choy, Christine, 295
Christopher Strong, 51
Chronicle of a Summer, 279, 299, 299f
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, 246
chronology, 176
chronophotography, 120
Chytilová, Vèra, 58
Cimino, Michael, 14–15
Cinderella, 234
cine de sacerdotes, 344
Cinecittà, 89
Cinéma (Delluc), 379
cinema, prehistory of, 87–88, 119–120
Cinema 16, 309
Cinema Novo movement, 58
cinéma vérité, 278, 279, 297, 299
CinemaScope, 123, 130, 200, 203
Cinémathèque Française, 384

cinematic realism, 89, 158
Cinématographe, 120
cinematographer, 12–13
cinematography, 117–149
elements of, 127–144
history of, 118–127
image as presentation and representation, 145–146
Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, 148–149
traditions of images, 146–147
cinephilia, 385
Cinéthique, 384
The Circle, 70
Cissé, Souleymane, 68
Citizen Kane
Academy Awards and, 42
aspect ratio, 129, 130
auteur theory and, 385
cinematography, 122
exhibition of, 36–37, 36f
flashbacks, 177
lighting in, 97
reframing, 140, 140f
setting of, 90
sound, 199
A City of Sadness, 69
The Civil War, 295, 295f
Clair, René, 52, 202, 221, 326
clapperboards, 208, 208f

Clarke, Shirley, 313, 325, 325f
classical cinema, 50–52
classical film narrative, 241, 265–266, 268–269
classical film theories, 380–383
classical genre traditions, 366–368
classical Hollywood narrative, 235
claymation, 322, 324
Cléo from 5 to 7, 236, 236f, 250
Clerks, 9
The Clock, 320
Clooney, George, 103–104
Close Up, 307, 307f, 410
close-ups (CU), 132–133, 133f
Cloud Atlas, 250
Clueless, 174, 175f, 400–401, 400f, 401f
Cocteau, Jean, 308
codes, 387
Cody, Diablo, 360, 361
cognitivism, 402
Cohen, Sacha Baron, 298
Cohl, Émile, 110, 304, 304f, 317, 324
colonialism, 398, 398f
color, 137–139, 137f–139f, 148f
color correction, 138
color filters, 143
color grading, 138
The Color Purple (Walker), 396
color timing, 138

Columbia Film Language Glossary, 427
Columbia Pictures, 339
comedies, 47, 346–348, 346f, 347f
commercial auteur, 64
Comolli, Jean-Louis, 389
comparative analysis, 417, 421, 421f
composition, 82, 132, 132f
computer animation, 322–323
Computer Chess, 137
computer-generated imagery (CGI), 13, 63, 125, 139, 257, 316, 322–
323, 377–378
The Conformist, 267, 267f
confrontational approaches, 327–329, 328f
Conjuring series, 358
Conner, Bruce, 191
connotations, 387
Conrad, Tony, 317
constructive mise-en-scène, 110–111
contemporary film theory, 386–405
Contempt, 140–141, 232, 233f
Contesting Tears (Cavell), 386
contextual topics, 417, 421
contexualized props, 93–94
continuity editing, 157–159, 160f, 165–175, 188
contrapuntal sound, 204
contrast, 137–138
contrastive organizations, 283
conventions, 341

Coogler, Ryan, 5, 127
Cook, David A., 436
Cooper, Merian C., 296
Coppola, Francis Ford, 55, 160, 200
Coppola, Sofia, 72, 217
Coraline, 322, 322f
Corman, Roger, 54
Cornell, Joseph, 308
Corrigan, Timothy, 385
Costa, Pedro, 405f
Costin, Midge, 200f
Costner, Kevin, 350f
costume designers, 10–11
costumes, 94–96, 95f, 96f, 100, 100f
counter cinema, 328
The Cove, 282
coverage, 127
The Covered Wagon, 158, 350
crane shot, 135
Crash, 261, 398
Cravalho, Auli’l, 210
Crawford, Joan, 393
Crazy Rich Asians, 109, 109f
Creature from the Black Lagoon, 34
credits, 6, 249, 250f
Creed, 5, 247, 247f
Creed II, 145
crime films, 359, 362–364, 362f

Criterion, 405
The Criterion Collection, 427
critical essays, 419–420
critical objectivity, 411
Crooklyn, 162, 162f
crosscutting, 156
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 344
Cruise, Tom, 28–29, 418
Cuarón, Alfonso, 117, 180–181
Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry, 62
cues, 214–215
cultural analysis, 421
cultural promotion, 27
cultural props, 93
Cultural Revolution, 68–69, 94
cultural studies, 394–399
“The Culture Industry” (Horkheimer), 394
cumulative organizations, 282–283
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, 95
Curtiz, Michael, 212
cutaways, 178
cuts, 127, 155, 162–165
cutting, 191
cutting on action, 170
cutting on movement, 172f
Czech New Wave, 58

D
Dabis, Cherien, 72
Daddy’s Home, 347
Daguerre, Louis-Jacques-Mandé, 119
dailies, 12
Daisies, 58
Dali, Salvador, 326, 327f
Damon, Matt, 85
Dance, Girl, Dance, 51
Dancer in the Dark, 192, 356
Dances with Wolves, 350, 350f
Daniels, Lee, 73
Danish filmmaking, 74
The Dark Knight, 397
Dark Victory, 353
Dark Waters, 344
Dash, Julie, 65, 395
Daughters of the Dust, 65, 268–269, 269f, 395
Davis, Bette, 95, 393
Davis, Peter, 287
Davis, Viola, 396–397, 397f, 425
Davy, Sir Humphrey, 275
Day, Benjamin Henry, Jr., 330
Day, Doris, 396
Day for Night, 111
The Day the Earth Stood Still, 344, 344f, 367
day-and-date release, 23

Day-Lewis, Daniel, 12
Days of Heaven, 138
De Hirsch, Storm, 317–318, 318f
De Niro, Robert, 245, 246, 266f
De Sica, Vittorio, 56, 112–113
Dead Birds, 296, 296f
The Dead Don’t Die, 110
deadline structure, 253, 253f
Deakins, Roger, 126
Dean, James, 130, 395, 395f
Death of a Salesman, 70
Debord, Guy, 328
Decasia, 320, 320f
deep focus, 136, 136f
deep-focus cinematography, 122, 235
The Deer Hunter, 62–63, 246
“A Defence of Poetry” (Shelley), 305
The Defiant Ones, 53
Deleuze, Gilles, 402–403, 403f
Delluc, Louis, 379
DeMille, Cecil B., 34, 46–47, 47f
Demy, Jacques, 201, 202f
denotation, 387
The Departed, 12f, 363
Depp, Johnny, 104
depth of field, 122, 136–142, 137f
The Derby, 44, 44f
Deren, Maya, 123, 308, 310–311, 311f, 313

descriptive approaches, 365–366
Desert Hearts, 165f
Desperate Living, 367
Desperately Seeking Susan, 64, 243
Despicable Me, 323
Despicable Me 2, 21
Destino, 326, 327f
Détective, 364
detective films, 363–364
détournement, 328
Detroit, 27, 27f
Devdas, 340, 340f
developmental organizations, 283, 286
The Devil Wears Prada, 96, 245, 245f, 248
dialectical montage, 157
dialogue, 50, 51, 210
Diana, Princess, 280–281
Diary of a Mad Black Women, 73
A Diary of Chuji’s Travels, 369
diaspora cinemas, 399
DiCaprio, Leonardo, 95, 148–149
Dickens, Charles, 232
Dickerson, Ernest R., 100
Dickson, W. K. L., 120, 197, 197f
Dickson Experimental Sound Film, 197f
Die Hard series, 245
Die Hard: With a Vengeance, 254

diegesis, 205, 248–249
diegetic elements of narrative films, 248–250
diegetic sound, 204–205, 224
Dietrich, Marlene, 51, 102, 145, 191, 199, 393–394, 394f
digital cinema package (DCP), 127, 203
digital cinematography, 124–127
digital culture, and film theory, 404–405
digital editing systems, 183
digital era, 71–76, 161, 161f
digital intermediate (DI), 126
“digital natives,” 432
Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (The Big Hearted Will Take the Bride), 75,
185, 185f
direct cinema, 279, 297, 299. See also cinéma vérité
direct quotations, 433–434
direct sound, 208
directional lighting, 97
director, 11–12
director of photography. See Cinematographer
disability studies, 402
disjunctive editing, 188–190
Disneynature, 280
dissolve, 164, 165f, 178
distanciation, 190
distribution, 14–23
ancillary markets, 17–21
day-and-date release, 23
distributors, 14–17

feature films, 15
of Killer of Sheep, 24–25
multiple releases, 22
online, 20–21
release strategies, 16–17
target audiences, 17
timing of, 21–23
Do the Right Thing, 65, 100–101, 100f, 101f, 244, 247
Doctor Strange, 71
documentary animation, 323
documentary films, 273–299
assumptions, confronting, 291–292
elements of, 280–290
history of, 275–280
interpretive contexts and traditions, 293–298
marketing and promotion, 28
opinions, altering, 292–293
documentary organizations, 282–286
documentation format, 434–435
dogme movement, 74, 141
Dogtown and Z-Boys, 296
Dolby Atmos, 299
Dolby Laboratories, 200, 225
Dolby noise-reduction technology, 221
dolly shot, 140
dolly zoom, 143
Don Juan, 198, 203
Donen, Stanley, 206

Donnersmarck, Florian Henckel von, 74
Donovan’s Brain, 107–108
Don’t Look Now, 177, 177f, 359
Dörrie, Doris, 67
Double Indemnity, 364
Doubt, 396
The Downward Path, 88
Doyle, Christopher, 138
Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler, 47
Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,
201, 201f
Dracula, 357
Dreamgirls, 356
DreamWorks, 125, 316, 323
Drew, Robert, 279
Dreyer, Carl Theodor, 49, 174
Dri�ers, 293
Drive, 365
drive-in movie theaters, 54
Dulac, Germaine, 49, 147, 181, 306–307, 326, 380, 380f
Dunaway, Faye, 186f
Dunkirk, 106, 107f, 203, 203f, 261
Dunye, Cheryl, 298
Duras, Marguerite, 177, 223, 314
duration, 178–181
duration, narrative, 254
Durbin, Deanna, 397
DuVernay, Ava, 73

DVD format, 19, 131
Dyer, Richard, 396, 397
Dziga Vertov Group, 57, 328

E
early cinema, 44–45, 155–156, 156f
Early Summer, 174
The Earrings of Madame de …, 140
East Asian cinema, 75
East Palace, West Palace, 69
Eastman Kodak, 120–121, 139
Eastwood, Clint, 349, 350, 412f
Easy A, 368, 368f
Easy Rawlins series, 359
Easy Rider, 187
Eat Pray Love, 147
Ebert, Roger, 37
The Edge of Heaven, 67, 74, 74f
Edge of Tomorrow, 237–238
Edison, Thomas, 105, 120, 197, 203
Edison Company, 275–276
editing, 13
elements of, 162–182
history of, 154–161, 155f
primary traditions for, 188–191
as subjective experience or objective perspective, 184–185
technology in, 183
Eggeling, Viking, 306
8½, 54, 237
Eisenstein, Sergei, 48, 156–157, 159f, 192, 221, 221f, 245, 249, 255,
307, 320, 380, 381, 402

El Mannouni, Ahmed, 77
Elder, Bruce, 314
Elizabeth II, 280–281
Ellington, Duke, 200f
ellipsis, 178
Emanorada, 52
Emma, 216
Emma (Austen), 400
Empire, 312
Ender’s Game, 396
Enoch Arden, 105
ensemble cast, 244
Enthusiasm, 308
Entr’acte, 326
Ephron, Nora, 72, 348
epic westerns, 350, 350f
Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, 216
Epstein, Jean, 49, 306–307, 379
Epstein, Robert, 294
essay form, 276
establishing shots, 166, 167f, 175f
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, 92
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 252, 252f
ethnographic films, 295–297, 296f
European cinema
in 1930s and 1940s, 51–52
film culture in 21st century, 74
Everest, 145, 145f

everyday mise-en-scène, 109
Eve’s Bayou, 213, 213f
evidence, 421
“The Evolution of the Language of Cinema” (Bazin), 382–383
Ex Machina, 342
exclusive release, 17
executive producer, 8
exhibition, 32–38
of Citizen Kane, 36–37
contexts and practices, 33
definition of, 32
technologies and cultures of, 33–35, 35f
timing of, 35–38
exhibitors, 32
Exiled, 363, 363f
existential westerns, 350, 350f
The Exorcist, 358, 358f
expanded cinema, 321
experimental media, 304–305
history of, 305–317
perspectives on, 325–329
principles of, 317–322
styles and approaches to, 325–329
experimental organizations, 319–322
explorative positions, 287–288
expositions, 282–286
expressive mise-en-scène, 110
expressive styles and forms, 326–327

external change, in character development, 248
extras, 103
extreme close-up (ECU), 133, 133f
extreme long shot (ELS), 133, 133f
Eye Myth, 326
eyeline match, 170, 171f, 174
Eyes Wide Shut, 28–29, 29f
Eyre, Chris, 65

F
F for Fake, 298
Face/Off, 69
Faces, 55
Faces Places, 283, 286f
fade-in, 164
fade-out, 164
fades, 178
Fairbanks, Douglas, 103, 339
fake documentaries, 298
The Fall of the House of Usher, 49, 379
The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty, 158, 191, 277
family melodramas, 353, 353f
fan engagement, 31–32
fan magazines, 32
Fandor, 427
Fantasia, 309, 324, 324f, 357
Fantasmagorie, 110, 304, 304f
Fantastic Four series, 17
Fantastic Mr. Fox, 106, 106f
Far from Heaven, 41, 66, 209f, 365, 365f
The Farewell, 399, 399f
Farhadi, Asghar, 70
Fassbinder, Rainer Werner, 41, 66, 365
Fast & Furious 9, 340
The Fast and Furious: Tokyo Dri�, 218

fast motion, 142
The Favourite, 92, 92f
The FBI, 149
feature films, evolution of, 15
Fèlix, Maria, 52
Fellini, Federico, 54, 237
female spectatorship, 393
Female Trouble, 367
feminist film theory, 392–393, 392f, 393f, 396
femme fatale, 54
Fences, 396, 397f, 425, 425f
Fernandez, Emilio “El Indo,” 52
Ferrell, Will, 347, 397
Feuillade, Louis, 49
Field of Dreams, 103
Fi�h Generation, 68–69
Figgis, Mike, 183
Fight Club, 260, 260f, 263
figuration, 318–319
The Figurine: Araromire, 76
fill lighting, 97, 98f
Film & Television Literature Index with Full Text, 427
Film about a Woman Who … , 313
film aesthetics, 381–382
Film as Art (Arnheim), 382
Film Comment, 426
film culture
in 21st century, 74–76

in Africa, 76
in East Asia, 75
global Bollywood, 75–76
in transnational Europe, 74
Film Culture, 384, 385
film essays
analytical, 410–414
elements of, 421–425
example of, 418–420, 428–431, 436–440
preparation for writing, 414–421
research for, 425–435
Film Foundation, 43, 77
film gauge, 121, 121f
film genres
classical and revisionist traditions, 366–368
examples of, 345–364
gender and, 360–361
history of, 336–340
local and global, 368–369
perspectives on, 364–369
prescriptive and descriptive approaches, 365–366
film journals, 383–384
Film No. 4 (Bottoms), 313
film noir, 54, 339, 345, 364, 364f
Film Number 7, 319f
film preservation, 77
Film Quarterly, 384
film reviews, 413, 418–419

film shoot, 11
film stock, 121
Film Studies for Free, 405
film theory, 376
classical, 380–383
contemporary, 386–405
early, 378–380
evolution of, 377–378
postwar film culture and criticism, 383–386
Film-Makers’ Cooperative, 309, 313
FilmSound.org, 427
filters, 123
financing of film production, 9
Fincher, David, 12, 209, 216, 263
Finding Nemo, 231
Fireworks, 326, 326f
First Name: Carmen, 222
first-person narrative, 258
first-run theaters, 16
Fischinger, Oskar, 308, 308f
Fish Tank, 141, 141f
Fitzcarraldo, 67
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 235
Flaherty, Robert, 274, 277, 287, 296, 297
Flaming Creatures, 313, 313f
flares, 123
flashbacks, 176–177, 251–253, 258
flashforwards, 176–177, 177f, 252–253

http://filmsound.org/

Fleischmann, Peter, 369
Flesh, 312
The Flicker, 182, 317
Flowers and Trees, 122, 139, 139f
Flowers of Shanghai, 179–180
Floyd Norman: An Animated Life, 312
Flynn, Gillian, 262
focal lengths, 122
Fog of War, 288
Foley, Jack, 208
foley artists, 208, 208f
foley effects, 225
foley stage, 208
following shots, 141
Fonda, Jane, 328, 328f
Foote, Shelby, 91
Footlight Parade, 383f
forced perspective, 142–143
Ford, John, 51, 53, 349, 366, 385
Ford Motor Company, 338
Fordism, 338
formal topics, 417
formalism, 380, 381–382
format wars, 19
formatting essays, 424
formulas, 341, 343
40 Acres and a Mule, 65
42nd Street, 355–356, 356f

Fosse, Bob, 356
Foster, Bill, 45
Foster Photoplay Company, 45
found footage, 315
The 400 Blows, 57, 141
Four Rooms, 261
4K resolution, 126
Fox, 198
Fox, Megan, 361
Fox Movietone Magic Carpet series, 198f
framing, 129, 129f
Frampton, Hollis, 321, 321f, 325
Frances Ha, 137, 137f
franchises, 237–238, 340, 340f
Frankenstein, 337, 357
Freaks, 359, 367
Frears, Stephen, 58, 280, 348, 348f, 422
Fred Ott’s Sneeze, 45
Free Radicals, 317
Free Solo, 273
Freeman, Morgan, 397
French cinema, 48–49
The French Connection, 359, 362, 362f
French impressionist cinema, 49, 379–380, 380f
French New Wave, 56–58, 160, 384
frequency, narrative, 254
The Freshman, 131
Freud, Sigmund, 319

Freund, Karl, 121
Friedberg, Anne, 401, 404
Friedrich, Su, 326
From Caligari to Hitler (Kracauer), 383
From Show Girl to Burlesque Queen, 338, 338f
frontal lighting, 97
Frozen, 220, 220f, 357
Frozen II, 357
Fruitville Station, 5
Fuentes, Fernando de, 52
Full Metal Jacket, 130
Fuller, Samuel, 385
Funny Games, 359
The Furies, 350
Furious 7, 164
Fury, 104
Fuses, 313

G
Gaines, Cecil, 264
games, 237–238, 238f
Gance, Abel, 17, 49, 77, 94, 129
Gandhi, 398f
Gangs of New York, 90, 111, 256
gangster films, 363, 363f
Garbo, Greta, 191
The Garden of Earthly Delights, 306f
Gardner, Alex, 342
Gardner, Robert, 296
Garland, Judy, 231
Gas Food Lodging, 65
Gaslight, 89
Gates, Trevor, 218f
Gehr, Ernie, 321
gender
costumes and make-up, 96
film genres, 360–361
film theories, 391–394
narration, 262–263
gender performativity, 394
The General, 259, 347
generic formulas, 50
generic reflexivity, 367, 368f
generic revisionism, 367–368
genre, 336

genre criticism, 385
genre films. See film genres
genre theory, 385–386
Gently Down the Stream, 326
German expressionist cinema, 47–48, 110
German Heimat films, 369, 369f
Germany in Autumn, 261
Germany Year Zero, 383, 383f
Gerwig, Greta, 72, 126, 372
Get Out, 218, 218f, 335, 358
Getino, Octavio, 59, 293, 314–315
A Ghost Story, 147
Ghostbusters (1984), 31, 31f
Ghostbusters (2016), 134, 134f
Giant (2016), 318–319
Gibbons, Cedric, 89
Gibney, Alex, 281, 281f
Gibson, Mel, 27
Gilda, 54, 54f
Gill, David, 77
Ginger & Rosa, 134, 134f
Ginsburg, Ruth Bader, 286, 286f
The Girl Can’t Help It, 139, 139f
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, 106, 216
Girlfight, 361
Gish, Lillian, 102, 165f, 397
Gladiator, 255

Glass, Philip, 281, 297
The Gleaners and I, 57f
Glimpse of the Garden, 327
global genres, 368–369
globalization, cinematic, 62–71, 404
African cinema, 67–68
American independent cinema, 64–66
Chinese cinema, 68–69
commercial auteur, 64
European cinema, 66–67
Iranian cinema, 69–71
New Hollywood and blockbuster era, 62–63
Glory, 91, 91f, 264, 264f
Go Fish, 66
God Help the Girl, 356, 356f
The God: Part II, 246
Godard, Jean-Luc, 57, 140, 144, 160, 189, 190, 222, 233f, 266, 267, 314,
314f, 328, 328f, 364, 384
The Godfather, 55, 55f, 62, 99, 362
The Godfather: Part II, 62, 251, 340, 362
Godzilla, 59, 59f
Godzilla (2014), 336
Gold Diggers, 354
The Gold Diggers of Broadway, 27
The Gold Rush, 108
The Golem, 357, 357f, 358
Gondry, Michel, 20, 320

Gone Girl, 262–263, 262f, 263f
Gone with the Wind, 8, 51, 61, 89, 111, 214, 235, 244, 264, 398
Gong Li, 68
González Iñárritu, Alejandro, 125, 257f, 411
Goodfellas, 142, 142f, 363
Gordon, Douglas, 317
Gordon, Michael, 320
Gore, Al, 289, 289f
Gore, Lesley, 217f
Gorin, Jean-Pierre, 328, 328f
Gorky, Maxim, 378
The Graduate, 187, 253
The Grand Budapest Hotel, 11, 131, 132f
Grand Hotel, 89
Grand Illusion, 129, 244
The Grandmaster, 75
Grant, Catherine, 405
The Grapes of Wrath, 161
graphic blocking, 101, 104
graphic match, 172, 172f, 173f
Grass, 296
Gravity, 117, 259, 259f
The Great Adventure of Horus, Prince of the Sun, 315
Great Britain, rating systems in, 31
The Great Escape, 149
The Great Train Robbery, 155, 156f, 250, 349
Greaves, William, 313, 313f

Green Book, 17, 17f
green-screen technology, 13
Greenwood, Jonny, 215
Grey, Joel, 102, 102f
Grey Gardens, 292, 292f
Grierson, John, 273, 274, 278, 293
Griffith, D. W.
The Birth of a Nation, 15, 15f, 45, 78–79, 156, 157f, 214, 264
Broken Blossoms, 82, 102, 165f, 352–353
crosscutting, 156
Enoch Arden, 105
Intolerance, 87, 87f, 260–261
iris, 165f
The Lonedale Operator, 45
masks, 131
melodramas, 197, 351, 352
music and, 214
nondiegetic inserts, 249
star studies and, 397
Groundhog Day, 346
Guardians of the Galaxy series, 217
Guinness, Alec, 99
Guitry, Sacha, 94–95
Gunning, Tom, 317
Gutiérrez, Tomás Alea, 315
Gutiérrez Alea, Tomás, 62

H
Haggar, Walter, 275
Hairspray, 367
Hakujaden, 309
Hall, Stuart, 396
Hallelujah!, 198, 198f
Halloween, 359
Hamlet, 382f
Hammer, Barbara, 313
Hammett, Dashiell, 359
Hammid, Alexander, 123, 308, 310
Hana-bi, 363
The Hand, 320
The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, 359
handheld cameras, 122–123
handheld shots, 141–142, 141f
The Handmaiden, 254, 254f
Handsworth Songs, 329
Haneke, Michael, 74, 255
Hanks, Tom, 246, 396
character type of, 103
as a star, 103f
Happy Ending, 74
Happy Together, 69, 189, 190f
Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai, 58
Hard, Fast and Beautiful, 54

Hard Boiled, 179, 179f
hard lighting, 97–99
Hark, Tsui, 69
Harron, Mary, 65
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, 145–146
Harry Potter series, 216, 237
The Hateful Eight, 166
Hawks, Howard, 54, 166, 385, 414–415
Haynes, Todd, 16, 41, 66, 209f, 365
Hays, William H., 50, 198, 236
Hayworth, Rita, 54, 113
HBO, 279
A Healthy Baby Girl, 297, 297f
Hearst, William Randolph, 36
Hearts and Minds, 287
Heathers, 368
Heaven, 281
Heaven’s Gate, 14–15
Hedwig and the Angry Inch, 303
Heimat, 67, 369, 369f
Heimat films, 368–369, 369f
The Heiress, 122, 123f
Helfland, Judith, 297
Hell or High Water, 422, 422f
Hellman, Lillian, 50
Helm, Brigitte, 342
The Help, 396

Hemingway, Ernest, 293
Hemphill, Essex, 316f
Hepburn, Katharine, 51, 346, 414–415, 415f, 416f
Hero, 138
Herzog, Werner, 67, 288, 288f, 368, 368f
Heston, Charlton, 265, 265f
Hey, Hey, Hey, It’s Fat Albert, 312
The Hidden Half, 70
high angles, 135, 135f
High Anxiety, 337
High Noon, 215
High Plains Dri�er, 349
high-definition (HD) digital video, 125
high-key lighting, 97, 98f, 101, 101f
highlighting, 97, 98f, 101
High-Rise, 23
Hiroshima mon amour, 57, 177, 252–253, 252f
Hirschfeld, Magnus, 47
His Girl Friday, 348, 415
Histoire(s) du cinéma, 328
historical documentaries, 294–295
historical epics, 343, 343f
historical location, 255
historical mise-en-scène, 109
historical paradigms, 366, 366f
historiography, 42
history, narrative films and, 264
history of film

cinematic globalization, 62–71
cinematography, 118–127
classical cinema, 50–52
digital era, 71–76
periodization, 42–43
postwar cinemas, 53–62
silent cinema period, 44–49
silent features in Hollywood, 46–47
History of Narrative Film (Cook), 436
Hitchcock, Alfred, 11–12, 53, 172, 185, 216, 235, 392
props, use of, 94
Rear Window, 136, 247
Suspicion, 92
Vertigo, 142
Hobbit, 126
The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies, 110
Hogarth, William, 337, 337f
Hold Me While I’m Naked, 327, 327f
Holland, Tom, 330
Hollywood
digital era, 71–72
postwar, 53–55
silent features in, 46–47
Hollywood Genres (Schatz), 386
Hollywood production model, 8
Hollywood star system, 240
“Hollywood Ten,” 53, 238
Holmes, Elizabeth, 281, 281f

Holocaust, 67
home video, 19–21
The Homesteader, 49
Honest Hearts, 338f
Honeyland, 228, 292, 292f
Hong Kong cinema, 69, 75
Honnold, Alex, 273
Hooch Pieter de, 337
Horkheimer, Max, 394
Horne, Lena, 216–217, 217f
horror films, 357–359, 357f, 358f, 361, 366f
The Host, 358
Hou Hsiao-hsien, 179–180
The Hour of the Furnaces, 59, 293, 315
The Hours, 165
House of Wax, 123, 257, 257f
House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), 53
How the Other Half Lives (Riis), 276, 276f
How to Get Away with Murder, 396, 397f
Howe, James Wong, 51, 98f
Howe, Lyman H., 275
Hsiao-hsien, Hou, 69, 267
Huang, Hsin-Chien, 317
Hubley, Emily, 303
Hudson, Rock, 41
hue, 138
Humphrey, Hubert H., 279
The Hunger Games, 32

The Hunger Games series, 243
Hunting Scenes from Bavaria, 369
The Hurt Locker, 90, 231, 242–243, 243f
Hustlers, 362, 362f
hybrid genres, 345, 345f

I
I, Daniel Blake, 58
I Accuse, 49
I Am Mother, 2
I Am Not Your Negro, 211
I Like It Like That, 65
The Ice Storm, 258, 258f
iconography, 341, 342
icons, 387
Ida, 131, 131f
ideological critique, 388–389, 389f
ideological location, 255
ideology, 389
If God Is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise, 280
Illumination, 323
I’m Not There, 16
images, and sound, 201–205
images, traditions of, 146–147, 155f
The Imaginary Signifier (Metz), 391
IMAX format, 124, 145f, 203
The Imitation Game, 104, 104f
Imitation of Life, 246–247, 246f, 353–354
immersive film narrative, 257
In a Better World, 74
In a Lonely Place, 158–159, 159f
In a World, 211, 212f

In the Bedroom, 415
In the Fade, 67
In the Heat of the Night, 53
In the Mood for Love, 69, 69f
In the Realm of the Senses, 31, 58
[in]Transition, 405, 427, 432
Inception, 63, 64f, 143, 143f, 178
An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, 288–289, 289f
An Inconvenient Truth, 289
The Incredibles, 319
The Incredibles 2, 319
Independence Day, 26, 26f
Independence Day: Resurgence, 26
independent films, 399
American independent cinema, 64–66
distribution of, 16
marketing and promotion, 27–28
postwar, 54
preproduction, 8
index, 387
India Song, 223
Indian cinema, 59
global Bollywood, 75–76
Mother India, 60–61, 60f, 61f
Indiana Jones series, 216, 398
Indigenous cinema, 294, 294f, 295
Industrial Light & Magic, 124

Infante, Pedro, 52
Infernal Affairs, 363
Inglourious Basterds, 237, 237f
The Inheritors, 369
Innocents of Paris, 27, 27f
inserts, 166–168
Inside Llewyn David, 421
Inside Out, 325
instrumental props, 92–93, 100–101
integrated musicals, 356
intellectual montage, 157
intensity, 138
intercutting, 157
interest, generating, 23–28
interior decoration, 88–89
internal change, in character development, 248
internal diegetic sound, 205
international art cinema
French New Wave, 56–58
Indian cinema, 59
Italian neorealism, 56
Japanese cinema, 58–59
postwar, 55–62
Third cinema, 59–62
internet, 316–317
marketing and promotion, 30
Internet Movie Database, 427
internet sources, 426–427, 433

interpretive community, 395
interrogative positions, 288
Interstellar, 90, 91f, 255
Intolerance, 46f, 87, 87f, 131, 249, 260–261
Inuit Broadcasting Network, 295
Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 358, 426, 426f
The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, 281, 281f
invisible editing. See continuity editing
Invocation of My Demon Brother, 326
Iranian cinema, 69–71
iris shot, 131, 165f
The Irishman, 228, 363, 376, 376f
iris-out, 131, 131f
Irma Vep, 11f
Islamic Revolution, 70
It Follows, 358, 358f
It Happened One Night, 50–51, 51f, 348
Italian neorealism, 25, 56, 89, 158
It’s a Wonderful Life, 22, 22f
Ivens, Joris, 282–283, 293
Iwerks, Ub, 308

J
J. Edgar, 95
Jackie Brown, 133f
Jackson, Peter, 126, 143
Jackson, Samuel L., 211
Jacobs, Ken, 321
Jameson, Fredric, 403
Jandreau, Brady, 350
Japanese cinema, 46, 58–59, 75, 368–369. See also anime
Japanese Relocation, 278, 278f
Jarman, Derek, 58, 201, 320
Jarmusch, Jim, 110, 256, 410
Jason Bourne, 179
Jaws, 16, 62, 63, 63f, 89, 124, 124f, 220, 249, 249f, 339, 343–344
jazz music, 217
The Jazz Singer, 27, 47, 199, 199f, 203, 355
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, 178, 178f, 318
Jefferson, Joseph, 234
Jenkins, Barry, 215
Jennifer’s Body, 360–361, 360f, 361f
Jennings, Humphrey, 293
Jerry Maguire, 253
Jezebel, 95
JFK, 239
Jia Zhangke, 75
jidai-geki films, 368–369, 369f

John, Elton, 181, 181f
Johnny Guitar, 341f, 350
Johnson, Dwayne, 210, 210f
Johnson, Martin and Osa, 277, 277f
Johnson, Noble, 45
Jojo Rabbit, 259–260, 260f
Joker, 396
Jolie, Angelina, 27
Jolson, Al, 199, 199f
Jonas, Joan, 304, 305f
Jones, James Earl, 103
Jonze, Spike, 316, 409
Jordan, Michael B., 5
The Joyless Street, 47
Ju dou, 68
Juice, 363
Julie & Julia, 72, 421, 421f
Julien, Isaac, 223
Jump Cut, 426
jump cuts, 160, 160f, 188–190, 189f, 190f
Jungle Adventures, 277
The Jungle Book, 312, 378f
Juno, 247, 361
Jurassic Park, 223, 223f
Jurassic World, 21

K
Kael, Pauline, 385
Kalin, Tom, 329, 329f
Kandahar, 70, 70f
Kaplan, E. Ann, 392
The Karate Kid, 247
Kar-wai, Wong, 69, 189
Kayapo people, 294
Kazan, Elia, 352
Keaton, Buster, 46, 259, 347, 375, 402
Keaton, Diane, 281
Kedi, 141
Keith-Albee-Orpheum vaudeville theaters, 199
Kelani, Tunde, 76
Kelly, Gene, 92, 206
Kemble, Fanny and John, 88
Kennedy, John F., 239, 279, 279f
Kettelhut, Erich, 89
key light, 97
keyframes, 322
Keystone Kops, 347
Khan, Mehboob, 59, 60–61
Khan, Shah Rukh, 75
Kharas, Firdaus, 329
Khatami, Mohammad, 70
Kiarostami, Abbas, 70, 266
Kickstarter, 9

The Kid, 28, 28f
Kidman, Nicole, 28–29
The Kids Are All Right, 9, 9f, 72
Kill Bill: Vol. 1, 142
Kill Bill: Vol. 2, 104, 180, 204, 204f
The Killer, 69, 340
Killer Films, 66
Killer of Sheep, 24–25, 25f
The Killers, 109
The Killing of Sacred Deer, 412
Kind Hearts and Coronets, 99
Kindergarten Cop, 103
Kinetograph, 120
Kinetoscope, 203
King, Richard, 203
The King and I, 398, 398f
King John, 234
King Kong, 143, 143f, 199, 220
King Lear, 139, 139f
King Lear (Shakespeare), 369
King Solomon’s Mines, 107
Kingsley, Ben, 398f
The Kiss, 120, 120f
Kiss Me Deadly, 99
Kitano, Takeshi, 58, 363
Kluge, Alexander, 66, 314
Knowles, Beyoncé, 65, 73, 316

Kon, Satoshi, 325
Korean cinema, 75
Kore-Eda, Hirokazu, 58
Koyaanisqatsi, 281, 281f
Kracauer, Siegfried, 202, 378, 380, 383, 383f
Krasinski, John, 225f
Kubrick, Stanley, 28–29, 130, 142, 172, 341, 343
Kuchar, George, 327, 327f
Kuchar, Mike, 327
Kuleshov, Lev, 156, 184, 381
Kunis, Mila, 365
Kunuk, Zacharias, 295
Kuras, Ellen, 125
Kurelshi, Hanif, 348f
Kurosawa, Akira, 58, 369, 428
Kusama, Karyn, 72, 360, 361
Kwaidan, 358

L
La Bamba, 65
La Chambre, 140, 141f
La Ciénaga, 219, 219f
L.A. Confidential, 367
La dame aux camélias, 88
La La Land, 82, 201, 202f
La Negra, 78
Lacan, Jacques, 390, 402
Lady in the Lake, 258
The Lady Vanishes, 107
LaFontaine, Don, 211
Lagaan: Once upon a Time in India, 75
Lancer, 149
Land Without Bread, 291, 298, 299, 299f
Lang, Fritz, 47–48, 89, 211f, 342, 385
Langlois, Henri, 384
Lanthmos, Yorgos, 412
Lanzmann, Claude, 295
L’Argent, 49, 132f, 223
Lasseter, John, 322
The Last Emperor, 109
The Last Laugh, 48
The Last Wave, 341, 341f
Last Year at Marienbad, 189–190, 190f, 318, 318f
Latin Americans, 51, 399, 399f

Lau, Andrew, 363
Laura, 211, 212, 213f
L’Avventura, 175, 403f
Lawrence, Florence, 9, 46
Lawrence, Jennifer, 103, 243
Lawrence of Arabia, 22, 87, 123, 123f
Le Chinoise, 266
Le Million, 202
Le Quattro Volte (The Four Times), 264, 264f
Le région centrale, 314, 314f
lead room, 132
leading actors, 102–103. See also stars
Leave No Trace, 179, 180f
Leaving Jerusalem by Railway, 291, 291f
Ledger, Heath, 397
Lee, Ang, 8, 251, 251f, 258
Lee, Spike, 64–65, 100–101, 100f, 101f, 247, 294, 294f, 397–398, 398f
Lee Daniels’ The Butler, 73, 95–96, 96f, 264
The Le�-Handed Gun, 350
Legally Blonde, 94
Léger, Fernand, 307, 307f
Legrand, Michel, 201
leisure time, 35, 234
Lemon, 325
Lemonade, 65, 73, 316, 395
Leone, Sergio, 149
Letter to Jane, 328, 328f

letterbox format, 131
Letters from Iwo Jima, 412, 412f
Leviathan, 299, 299f
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 387
Levy, Hank, 217
Ley, Len, 317
LGBT film, 47, 66, 72, 313–314
L’Herbier, Marcel, 49
Library of Congress Motion Picture Conservation Center, 79
Life Is Beautiful, 245–246, 246f
Life of an American Fireman, 155, 239, 240f
Life of Pi, 105f, 251, 251f
lighting, 96–99, 101, 101f, 105, 105f
Liman, Doug, 237
Lime Kiln Club Field Day, 329
The Limey, 177–178, 178f
limited release, 16
Lincoln, 241, 242f, 248–249
Lincoln, Abraham, 242
Lincoln Motion Picture Company, 45
Lindsay, Vachel, 379, 410
line producer, 8
linear chronology, 250–251, 265
linguistics, 386–387
Linklater, Richard, 323, 323f
The Lion King, 323
Listen to Britain, 293
Little Big Man, 145, 232

The Little Mermaid, 315, 357, 357f
Little Miss Sunshine, 205, 205f, 250
Little Nemo, 324f
“Little Three” studios, 50
Little Women, 126, 126f, 372
live-action movies, 309
The Lives of Others, 74
Living Playing Cards, 162, 163f
Livingston, Jennie, 294
Llosa, Claudia, 74
Lloyd, Harold, 131
Loach, Ken, 58
local genres, 368–369
location scouts, 10
Lone Fisherman, 240
The Lonedale Operator, 45
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, 57
The Lonely Villa, 156
long shot (LS), 133, 133f
long takes, 179
Looking for Langston, 223
Looney Tunes series, 309
looping, 208
Lord, Phil, 330
The Lord of the Rings, 96, 96f, 143
Lorentz, Pare, 293
Lost, Lost, Lost, 297

Lost in Translation, 256, 256f
Louisiana Story, 109
Love Crimes, 364
low angles, 135, 135f
low-key lighting, 97, 98f
Lubezki, Emmanuel “Chivo,” 117, 125, 128
Lubitsche, Ernst, 348
Lucas, George, 63, 124, 219, 388f
Lucía, 399, 399f
Lullaby of Broadway, 341
Lumière, August and Louis, 44, 89, 120, 183, 276, 378f
Lumière and Company, 183f
Lupino, Ida, 54
Luxo Jr., 322
Luzbecki, Emmanuel, 257
Lynch, David, 64, 183f
lyrical styles, 326, 326f

M
M, 47, 211, 211f
machinima, 316
Mackenzie, David, 422
Macpherson, Kenneth, 307
Mad Max: Fury Road, 128
Madagascar, 323
Madame X: An Absolute Ruler, 219, 219f
Mädchen in Uniform, 51–52, 52f
Madonna, 397
magic lantern, 119
The Magicians of Wanzerbe, 296
The Magnificent Ambersons, 15, 205
Magnificent Obsession, 353
The Magnificent Seven, 349
Magnolia, 63
Magritte, René, 387
Mak, Alan, 363
make-up, 94–96, 100
Makhmalbaf, Mohsen and Samira, 70
Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound, 200f
Malcolm X, 65, 343, 343f
Malick, Terrence, 138, 222, 417
The Maltese Falcon, 363–364
Malthus, Thomas, 276
“mammy” stereotype, 246–247, 246f

Man on Wire, 282, 282f
The Man Who Fell to Earth, 367
The Man Who Knew Too Much, 235
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, 349
Man with a Movie Camera, 48, 48f, 158, 277, 293, 307, 325
Mancini, Henry, 217
Manet, E˙douard, 327
manga, 315
Manhatta, 307
manipulative narration, 260
Mankiewicz, Herman, 385
Manovich, Lev, 305
Manson, Charlie, 148
Manufacturing Dissent: Uncovering Michael Moore, 293, 297
Mao Zedong, 68
Marclay, Christian, 320
Marey, Étienne-Jules, 120
Maria Candelaria, 52
Marie Antoinette, 106
Marker, Chris, 57, 296, 314, 321
marketing and promotion, 23–32
advertising, 28–31
changing technologies in, 30, 30f
definition of, 23
interest, generating, 23–28
The Marriage of Marla Braun, 66, 66f
Martel, Lucrecia, 219, 219f
The Martian, 85

Martin, Darnell, 65
Marvel Cinematic Universe, 71, 95, 95f, 237, 330, 340
Marxism, 388–389
Masaoka, Kenzō, 309
masks, 131, 131f
“The Mass Ornament” (Kracauer), 383
The Master, 139, 139f
master shot, 127
match on action, 170, 172f, 173f
maternal melodramas, 393, 393f
The Matrix, 143, 403–404, 404f
matte shot, 143
Mayer, Louis B., 8
Maysles, Albert, 292
McCabe and Mrs. Miller, 339, 339f
McCarthy, Joseph, 53
McCarthy, Melissa, 347
McCay, Windsor, 306, 324, 324f
McDaniel, Hattie, 51
McKinley, William, 276, 276f
McKinnon, Kate, 134
McLaren, Norman, 309
McNamara, Robert, 288
McQueen, Steve, 31, 73, 354
mechanical effects, 142
media convergence, 29, 71
Media History Digital Library, 427
medium close-up, 134, 134f

medium long shot, 134–135, 134f
medium shot, 134–135, 134f
medium specificity, 377
Meek’s Cutoff, 351, 351f
Meet the Parents, 246
Meeting of Two Queens, 191
megaplexes, 33
Mekas, Jonas, 297, 309, 327
Melancholia, 74, 179
Méliès, George, 48, 88, 142, 155, 156f, 162, 306, 317, 342, 342f
Melnyk, Debbie, 297
melodrama, 196–197, 338, 351–354, 352f, 365, 365f
Memento, 177, 239
Memories of Underdevelopment, 62, 62f, 315, 315f
memory, shaping, 264
Men, 67
Men in Black: International, 337
Menken, Marie, 327
Menzel, Idina, 397
Menzie, William Cameron, 89
Mercury, Freddie, 153
Merrie Melodies series, 309
Meshes of the A�ernoon, 123, 308, 310–311, 310f, 311f
messages, 387
metaphorical props, 93
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), 8
Metropolis, 47, 48, 89, 104, 121, 336, 342, 342f
metter-en-scène, 385

Metz, Christian, 205, 390, 391, 402
Mexican cinema, 52
Meyers, Nancy, 72
MGM, 339
Mi Vida Loca (My Crazy Life), 65
Micheaux, Oscar, 45, 49, 77, 78
mickey-mousing, 215
Midnight Cowboy, 146–147, 147f
midnight movies, 367
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 309, 309f
Midway, 111
Miike, Takashi, 58
Milani, Tahmineh, 70
Mildred Pierce, 92, 212–213, 248, 268–269, 268f
Milestone Films, 24
Milk, 241, 242f
Milk, Harvey, 241–242, 294
The Milk of Sorrow, 74, 74f
Miller, Arthur, 70
Miller, Chris, 330
Miller, Rebecca, 125
mimesis, 382
Mineo, Sal, 395, 395f
Minh-ha, Trinh T., 223, 288, 328
Minions, 26
minor characters, 244
Minority Report, 418–420, 419f, 420f, 433
minstrel shows, 198

Miramax, 65
Mirren, Helen, 103
mise-en-scène, 85–113, 219, 422f
Do the Right Thing, 100–101
elements of, 90–106
as an external condition, 106–107
history of, 87–90
as a measure of character, 107–108
in melodramas, 352
primary traditions for, 108–113
Les Misérables, 57, 356, 356f
Mishima, 410
Mishima, Yukio, 410
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, 348
Mitchell, John Cameron, 303
mix, 209
Miyazaki, Hayao, 315, 326
Mizoguchi, Kenji, 58
MLA Handbook, 434
Moana, 210, 210f
Moana (1926), 274, 277
mobile frame, 129, 129f
Mobile Suit Gundam, 331
mockumentaries, 297–298, 298f
Modern Language Association (MLA), 424, 434–435
modernity, 305–306, 382
Moffatt, Tracey, 329
Moi un noir (I, a Black), 278

Mon Ciné, 380f
Monet, Claude, 306, 306f
Money Monster, 103–104
The Monk, 357
Monroe, Marilyn, 86
Monsoon Wedding, 76, 399
Monsters, Inc., 312
Monsters University, 21
montage, 156, 159f, 190, 191, 191f, 254, 382–383
Montaigne, Michel de, 276
Montez, Mario, 312
Monty Python and the Holy Grail, 347
Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, 347
Moonlight, 97, 97f, 215, 215f
Moore, Michael, 287, 287f, 292–293, 297
Moreno, Mario, 52
Morin, Edgar, 299
Morita, Pat, 247
Morocco, 394, 394f
Morricone, Ennio, 204
Morris, Errol, 288, 290, 290f, 297, 297f
Morrison, Bill, 320
Morrison, Rachel, 126
Morton, Matt, 274
Mosley, Walter, 359
Mother, 381, 381f
Mother India, 59, 60–61, 60f, 61f

Mothersbaugh, Mark, 215
Mothlight, 309
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), 29–31, 53
Motion Picture Herald, 198f
Motion Picture Patents Company, 44
Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association (MPDAA), 50,
236
Motion Picture Production Code, 50
motion studies, 120f
motion-capture technology, 13
movement, 140–142, 140f
movement image, 402
A Movie, 191
Movie, 384
movie palaces, 33, 34
Movietone sound system, 198, 203, 203f
Moving Image Research Center, 427
Mozzhukhin, Ivan, 184
Mr. and Mrs. Smith, 27
Mrs. Dalloway, 57
MTV television channel, 316
Mudbound, 126, 127f
Mulholland Drive, 243, 243f
multimedia artists, 321–322
multimedia plane, 322
multiple narrations, 260–261, 261f
Multiple Orgasm, 313
multiplex, 33

Mulvey, Laura, 314, 392, 392f, 393, 394f
Muniz, Vik, 293
Münsterberg, Hugo, 379, 391
Murch, Walter, 200
Murnau, F. W., 47–48, 137, 203, 274, 274f, 366, 368f
Murphy, Dudley, 307
Murray, Bill, 346
Murrow, Edward R., 279
music in film, 213–218, 214f, 223, 308–309
music supervisor, 217
musicals, 214, 354–357, 354f, 355f
Mussolini, Benito, 89
Mutesi, Phiona, 241
Muybridge, Eadweard, 120f, 324
My Beautiful Laundrette, 348, 348f, 422–424, 422f
My Brother’s Wedding, 25
My Country, My People, 261
My Darling Clementine, 53, 341f, 349
My Fair Lady, 94, 95f, 248, 356
My Father’s Camera, 296
Mystery Train, 256, 256f
Mystifying Movies (Carroll), 402
myths, 341, 343, 343f

N
Nagra magnetic recording system, 299
Nair, Mira, 22, 72, 76
Naked City, 89
The Namesake, 172f
Nance, Terence, 318
Nanook of the North, 277, 281, 287–288, 287f, 295, 296, 297
Napolèon, 17, 49, 77, 94–95, 129
Narboni, Jean, 389
narration, 256, 258
narrative, 7, 232
narrative analysis, 417
narrative constructions, 63
narrative cueing, 215
narrative duration, 178, 254
narrative films, 231–269
elements of, 239–261
gender and, 262–263
history of, 232–238
memory and history, 264
traditions of, 264–269
narrative frames, 258
narrative frequency, 177, 254
narrative music, 214–217
narrative pattern of time, 250–254
narrative perspectives, 256–261
narrative reflexivity, 237

narrative space, 254–256, 352
narrative traditions, 264–269
narratology, 387–388, 388f
narrator, 211, 258
narrowcasting, 66
Nashville, 208, 210, 210f
National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), 275
National Film Board of Canada, 278, 309
National Film Registry, 42
National Velvet, 245
Native Americans, 348–349, 350, 350f
native aspect ratio, 131
natural lighting, 97
naturalistic lighting, 105
naturalistic tradition, 108–109, 109f, 111, 112–113, 112f
Nauman, Bruce, 320
Nebraska, 366
Neon Genesis Evangellon, 331
neorealism, Italian, 56
Nerdwriter, 405
Nervous System, 321
Neshat, Shirin, 321, 321f
Netflix, 20
Nevins, Sheila, 279
New American Cinema, 55
New German Cinema, 66–67, 236
New Hollywood and blockbuster era, 62–63, 339–340
New Hollywood cinema, 236

New Jack City, 363
new media, 304, 305
New Queer Cinema, 66
New Wave cinemas, 56–58
Newman, Paul, 349, 349f
News from Home, 213, 213f
Niagara Falls, 120, 120f
Nicholson, Jack, 343f
nickelodeons, 33, 44, 197f
Nico, 313f
Nielsen, Asta, 382f
Niépce, Joseph Nicéphore, 119
Night and Fog, 288, 289f
Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy, 329
Night Mail, 211
The Night of the Hunter, 77, 77f, 131, 131f
Night of the Living Dead, 110, 358
The Nightmare Before Christmas, 356
Nightmare on Elm Street, 17
9 to 5, 255, 255f
Ninotchka, 203f
nitrate film base, 121
No Country for Old Men, 351
Nolan, Christopher, 23, 63, 126, 203, 239
Nollywood, 76
nondiegetic elements of narrative films, 248–250
nondiegetic inserts, 249

nondiegetic sound, 204–205
nonfiction films, 280–282, 284–285
nonlinear editing, 161
non-narrative films, 281, 281f, 284–285
Norman, Floyd, 312, 312f
Normand, Mabel, 347
North by Northwest, 143f
Nosferatu, 48, 137, 137f, 366, 366f, 368, 368f
Nosferatu the Vampyre, 368, 368f
note taking, 415–416
The Notebook, 166
Notes on Cinematography (Bresson), 223
Notorious, 94
Nouvelle Vague. See French New Wave
Now, Voyager, 223, 393
Nyman, Michael, 195

O
O Brother, Where Art Thou?, 111, 126, 413–414, 413f, 414f
objective point of view, 128
objectivity, 411–412
Ocean’s Eleven, 253
October, 255
The Odyssey (Homer), 232, 233f
Of Great Events and Ordinary People, 281
offscreen sound. See asynchronous sound
offscreen space, 132, 132f
Olympia, 170, 171f
Olympia (Manet), 327
Om Shanti Om, 75
omniscient narration, 259, 265
On the Stage; or, Melodrama from the Bowery, 87
On the Waterfront, 217
Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, 127, 148–149, 148f, 149f, 351
Once Upon a Time in the West, 149
180-degree rule, 169f, 1668
online distribution, 20–21
Only Lovers Le� Alive, 10f
Ono, Yoko, 313
onscreen sound. See synchronous sound
onscreen space, 132
ontology, 377
Ophüls, Max, 140, 414

oppositional gaze, 396
optical effects, 142
optical sound recording, 277, 299
The Orchid Thief (Orleans), 409
Ordinary People, 353
Osborne, John, 57
Oshima, Nagisa, 31, 58
Ossessione, 56
Otomo, Katsuhiro, 315
Ottinger, Ulrike, 219, 219f
Ottman, John, 153
Ouedraogo, Idrissa, 68
outline, 422–423
Outrage, 58
overhead shot, 135, 136f
overlapping dialogue, 210, 210f
overlapping editing, 178–179, 179f
An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, 318, 319f
over-the-shoulder shots, 166
Ovitz, Michael, 10
Oxford Bibliographies Online, 427
Oz the Great and Powerful, 231
Ozu, Yasujiro, 58, 135, 174, 417

P
Pabst, G. W., 47
pace, 179–181, 180f
Pacific Rim, 367
Pacino, Al, 363f
package-unit approach, 10
Paik, Nam June, 316, 321
Pain and Glory, 251–252, 252f
paintings, 306
Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou
(FESPACO), 76
Panahi, Jafar, 70
pan-and-scan process, 131
panchromatic shock, 121
Panofsky, Erwin, 380
Panoramic View of Niagara Falls in Winter, 338
pans, 140
Pan’s Labyrinth, 11, 90, 90f, 145, 146f
Paprika, 325
Parallel Cinema, 59
parallel editing, 156, 157f
parallel plots, 253
parallel sound, 202, 204
parallelism, 204
Paramount, 339
Paranormal Activity, 16
paraphrasing, 433–434

Parasite, 75, 75f, 228
Paravel, Verena, 299
Pariah, 96, 138, 138f
Paris, je t’aime, 261
Paris, Texas, 140
Paris Is Burning, 294, 294f
Park, Nick, 322
Park Chan-wook, 75
Parker, Nate, 73
Parks, Gordon, 55
Paronnaud, Vincent, 70, 316
participatory experiences, 321–322, 321f, 394–395, 395f
The Passion of Joan of Arc, 49, 49f, 174, 176f
pastiche, 403
Pater, Walter, 305–306
Paterson, 410, 410f
Paterson (Williams), 410
Pather Panchali, 59, 267, 267f
The Patriot (1979), 314
Patton, 343, 343f
Paul, Robert W., 44
Pawlikowsky, Pawel, 130–131
The Peanuts Movie, 31
Pearl Harbor, 21
Peck, Gregory, 216f
Peck, Raul, 211
Peele, Jordan, 182, 184f, 335, 358

Peirce, C. S., 387, 402
Peirce, Kimberly, 66, 351
Penguins, 280, 280f
Penn, Arthur, 28, 55, 160, 186
Pennies from Heaven, 356
People’s Republic of China, 68–69. See also Chinese cinema
perception, expansion of, 325
performance, 99–104, 102f
performance-capture technology, 143–144, 144f
Perfumed Nightmare, 315
periodization, 42–43
Perry, Tyler, 73
Persepolis, 70, 70f, 316
Persona, 118
personal documentaries, 297–298, 297f
personal opinion, and objectivity, 411–412
Personal Velocity, 125
persuasive positions, 288–290, 289f, 290f
Petit, Phillippe, 282
phantasmagoria, 119
Phantom Thread, 170, 170f
phenakistoscope, 119
phenomenology, 402
The Philadelphia Story, 348, 415
philosophy, and film, 402–403
Phoenix, Joaquin, 396, 396f
phonograph, 197, 203
photogénie, 379

photography, inventions of, 119–120
photojournalism, 276
The Photoplay (Münsterberg), 379
Photoplay magazine, 30, 30f
photorealism, 323
physical horror films, 359, 359f
physical melodrama, 352–353, 353f
Pi, 99
The Piano, 135, 135f, 136f, 195
Pickford, Mary, 46, 240
Pickpocket, 223
Pink Flamingos, 367
Pinocchio, 357
piracy, 19
The Pirates of the Caribbean series, 104, 237
Pitt, Brad, 27, 95, 148, 148f
Pixar, 17, 125
Pixar Studios, 322, 323
pixilation, 322
PK, 76, 76f
Plainview, Daniel, 215
Plan 9 from Outer Space, 188f, 367
platforming, 16
Plato, 119, 303
Playtime, 201, 201f
Pleasantville, 137–138
plot chronologies, 251–253, 252f
plot time, 175

plots, 239
The Plow That Broke the Plains, 211
Poe, Edgar Allan, 261, 379
poetic realism, 52
Poetics (Aristotle), 337
point of view, 128, 128f
point-of-view (POV) shots, 135–136, 172–174, 173f
Poitier, Sidney, 24, 53
Police Academy, 347
political documentaries, 293–294, 294f
Polley, Sarah, 284–285
Pollyanna, 240
Polo, Marco, 275
Polyester, 384f
Pontecorvo, Gillo, 59
pop music, 217–218
Porky’s, 347
Portapak video equipment, 278, 316
Porter, Edwin S., 45, 88, 155, 234, 234f, 239, 250
Portman, Natalie, 365
Portman, Rachel, 216
Portrait of Jason, 313
Positif, 384
Posse, 351
The Post, 103f
post-classical narrative, 265–266, 266f
postmodernism, 403–404, 404f
postproduction, 8, 13–14

postproduction sound, 208
poststructuralism, 389–391
postsynchronous sound, 219, 219f
postwar cinemas, 53–62
genres, 339
international art cinema, 55–62
postwar Hollywood, 53–55
Potter, Sally, 58, 314
Powell, Eleanor, 223, 223f
practical effects, 142
Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire, 73
premiere, 16
Preminger, Otto, 200f
preproduction, 7–11
prerecorded music, 217
prescriptive approaches, 365–366
presence, image as, 146–147
Pride and Prejudice, 236
The Priest from Kirchfeld, 369
Prieto, Rodrigo, 138
Primary, 279, 279f
primary research sources, 425–426
Prince, Stephen, 436
Prince-Bythewood, Gina, 72
principal photography, 11
print media, 30
process shot, 143
producers, 7–8

production, 6–13
cast, 12–13
cinematographer, 12–13
director, 11–12
preproduction, 7–11
Production Code, 236
Production Code Administration, 50, 53, 348
production designer, 10, 89
production sound mixer, 12, 208
production values, 8
productive time, 35, 38
progressive development, in character development, 248
“progressive texts,” 389
Prometheus, 28
promotion, 23. See also Marketing and promotion
proofreading essays, 424
propaganda films, 277–278, 278f, 293
The Proposal, 347, 347f
Propp, Vladimir, 387
props, 92–94, 100–101, 101f
prosthetics, 95
protagonists, 244
Psycho, 53, 93, 93f, 94, 164, 165f, 180, 196, 359
psychoanalysis, 390, 392
psychological horror films, 359
psychological location, 255–256
The Public Enemy, 245, 363
Pudovkin, Vsevolod, 156, 381, 381f

pulled focus, 136–137
Pulp Fiction, 63, 64, 64f
Pursuits of Happiness (Cavell), 386
Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, 289
Pygmalion, 94, 248

Q
Quay, Stephen, 324, 326–327
Quay, Tiomothy, 324, 326–327
The Queen, 280
Queen Elizabeth, 88
Queen of Katwe, 241, 242f
queer film theory, 393–394
A Quiet Place, 224–225, 224f, 225f
Quo Vadis? 56
quotations, direct, 433–434

R
race, in film theory, 397–399
race and ethnicity, 51, 53–54
race movies, 45, 49
rack focus, 136–137
Radio City Music Hall, 36
Radio Corporation of America, 199
Raiders of the Lost Ark series, 63, 215, 237, 247
Raimi, Sam, 231
Rain, 282–283, 283f
Rainer, Yvonne, 313
Raise the Red Lantern, 68, 68f
Ran, 369, 369f
Rapace, Noomi, 28
Rape, 313
Rapture, 321, 321f
Rashomon, 58, 266, 266f, 428–431, 430f, 431f
Rat Life and Diet in North America, 314
rating systems, 29–31, 53
Ray, Nicholas, 54, 158–159
Ray, Satyajit, 59, 267, 267f
Ray Gun Virus, 304
RBG, 286, 286f
reactions shots, 174, 174f
readers, identifying, for film essays, 412–413
Ready Player One, 238, 238f
realism, 89, 91, 158, 160, 186, 210, 211, 240, 380, 382–383

rear projection, 143, 143f
Rear Window, 136, 164, 247, 392
Rebel Without a Cause, 54, 54f, 130, 130f, 395, 395f
reception, 32
reception theory, 394–396, 395f
recording sales, 217
Red Harvest, 359
Red River, 134f
Red Scare, 53
The Red Shoes, 93, 138
The Red Violin, 93–94, 94f
Redford, Robert, 349, 349f
Reds, 42
reenactments, 297, 297f
Rees, Dee, 126
reestablishing shots, 166, 167f
referent, 387
referentiality, 403f, 404
reflected sound, 208
reflexive documentary histories, 295, 296f
reflexive narration, 260
reframing, 140
regressive development, in character development, 248
Reichardt, Kelly, 351
Reiniger, Lotte, 307, 307f
Reitz, Edgar, 66–67, 369
Reitzell, Brian, 217
release strategies, 16–17

religious films, 344, 344f
The Renaissance, 305–306
Renoir, Jean, 52, 267, 267f
Repo Man, 367
representation, 397–399
The Republic (Plato), 119
rerecording, 209
research, for film essays, 425–435
Resnais, Alain, 57, 177, 189–190, 288, 318
restricted narration, 259, 260f, 265
The Return of the King, 96
The Revenant, 87, 128, 257, 257f, 349
Revere the Emperor, 369
revising essays, 424
revisionist genre traditions, 366–368
revisionist westerns, 351, 351f
Reznor, Trent, 216
rhetorical positions, 286–290
Rhizome, 327
rhythm, 181
rhythmic editing, 181
Rhythmus 21, 306f
Richards, Keith, 104
Richardson, Dorothy, 410
Richardson, Robert, 148
Richter, Hans, 306, 306f, 379
Riddles of the Sphinx, 314, 392, 392f
“Ride of the Valkyries” (Wagner), 214

The Rider, 350, 350f
Ridley, Daisy, 243
Riefenstahl, Leni, 170, 171f, 278, 289
Riggs, Marlon, 316, 316f
Riis, Jacob, 276, 276f
Rio, Dolores del, 52
Rise of the Planet of the Apes, 144
The River, 267, 267f, 293
Rivette, Jacques, 384
RKO Radio Pictures, 199, 339
Road to Perdition, 363
Robbie, Margot, 217f
Roberts, Ètienne-Gaspard, 119
Roberts, Julia, 104
Roberts, William L., 338f
Robeson, Eslanda, 307
Robeson, Paul, 49, 307, 307f
Robinson Crusoe, 234
Robinson Crusoe on Mars, 256
Rocha, Glauber, 58
Rock of Ages, 341
Rocket Man, 181, 181f
Rockwell, Norman, 144
Rocky Balboa, 221, 221f
The Rocky Horror Picture Show, 345, 345f, 395, 395f
Rodriguez, Robert, 125
Roeg, Nicolas, 177
Rohmer, Eric, 384

Roma, 117
Roman Holiday, 255, 255f
romantic comedies, 72, 348, 348f
“rom-com.” See romantic comedies
Rome, Open City, 56, 56f, 105
Romero, George, 110
Ronin, 94
The Room, 34, 34f
Room, 87, 87f
room tone, 208
Roosevelt, Theodore, 276
Rose Hobart, 308
Ross, Atticus, 216
Ross, Matt, 353
Rossellini, Roberto, 56, 383f, 402
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 306
rotoscoping, 323
Rouch, Jean, 278–279, 296, 299
Rough Sea at Dover, 276
Rowling, J. K., 237
The Royal Tanenbaums, 215
Ruiz, Raoul, 281
rule of thirds, 132
The Rules of the Game, 52, 52f
Rumsfeld, Donald, 290, 290f
Run Lola Run, 67, 253, 253f
Russian Ark, 161, 161f, 264

Russian formalists, 388
Ruttmann, Walter, 307
Ruzowitzky, Stefan, 369
Rydstrom, Gary, 200f

S
Saboteur, 185, 185f
safety film, 121
Safety Last, 135f
Sagan, Leontine, 52
Salaam Bombay! 22
The Salesman, 70
Salt of the Earth, 238, 238f
San Francisco, 191, 191f
Sanders-Brahms, Helma, 183f
Sans soleil (Sunless), 296
Sarris, Andrew, 384, 385
Satrapi, Marjane, 70, 316
Saturation booking, 16
Saturday A�ernoon, 346, 346f
Saturday Night Fever, 223
Saussure, Ferdinand de, 386–387, 402
Saving Private Ryan, 118, 119f
Saw, 359
scale, 132
A Scanner Darkly, 323, 323f
Scarface (1932 and 1983), 363, 363f
The Scarlet Empress, 42
scenes, 182
scenic realism, 91–92, 94–95
scenics, 276–277

Schamus, James, 8
Schatz, Thomas, 386
Schepisi, Fred, 367
Schindler’s List, 38
Schlöndorff, Volker, 248f, 369
Schmiechen, Richard, 294
Schneemann, Carolee, 313
Schoedsack, Ernest B., 296
scholarly books and journals, 425
School of Rock, 179
Schüf�an, Eugen, 342
Schüf�an effect, 342
Schulz, Bruno, 327
Schumer, Amy, 251f
Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 103
science fiction genre, 342, 342f, 343, 344, 344f, 367
score, 214
Scorsese, Martin, 23, 43, 77, 90, 131, 245, 256, 266, 363
Scott, Ridley, 22, 28, 64, 85, 222, 357
Scott, Tony, 160–161
Scream, 360
Screen, 384, 391, 392
screen theory, 391
screen time, 175–176
Screening Violence (Prince), 436
screenplays, 7, 234–235
screens, diversification of in digital era, 72–74
screenwriters, 7, 234–235

screwball comedies, 347–348
script doctor, 7
scriptwriters. See screenwriters
Se7en, 249–250, 250f, 316
The Searchers, 42, 53–54, 54f, 221, 266, 349
The Seashell and the Clergyman, 49, 147, 147f, 326
Sec, Milica, 318–319
Second Life, 321
secondary characters, 244
secondary research sources, 426–427, 433
The Secret of Kells, 323, 323f, 324
Secretariat, 254
segmentation, 182
Seidelman, Susan, 64–65
selects, 12
Selick, Henry, 322, 322f
Selma, 42, 43f, 73
Selznick, David O., 8, 89
Sembène, Ousmane, 67–68, 89, 261, 315, 434
semidiegetic sound, 205
semiology, 386–387
semiotics, 386–389
Sennett, Mack, 346, 347
Senses of Cinema, 405
sequels, 71, 340, 340f
sequence shots, 179, 180
sequences, 182
Serene Velocity, 321

Serkis, Andy, 144
set decorators, 10
set design, 106
set designers, 88–89
set lighting, 97
sets, 90
settings, 90
Seven Samurai, 134
7 Up, 283
The Seventh Seal, 54
70 mm film, 121, 121f
sex, lies, and videotape, 24, 65
sexuality, 96, 391–394. See also gender
Seyrig, Delphine, 190f
shading, 99
Sha�, 17, 55
shallow focus, 136
The Shallows, 21, 21f
Shambu, Girish, 405
Shame, 31
Shane, 133, 133f, 350
Shanghai Express, 102
Sharits, Paul, 304
The Shawshank Redemption, 417
Sheeler, Charles, 307
sheet music, 217
The Sheik, 88f, 246
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 305

Sherlock, Jr., 375
Sherlock Holms, 90
She’s Gotta Have It, 64–65
The Shining, 124, 215, 215f, 341, 343, 343f
Shoah, 295
shock cut, 164, 164f
Shohat, Ella, 398
Sholay, 59
shooting ratio, 279
The Shop Around the Corner, 348
The Shop on Main Street, 135
Shopli�ers, 58, 58f
Shopsowitz, Karen, 296
Shortly A�er Marriage (Hogarth), 337f
shot/reverse shots, 169–170, 170f, 174
shots, 127, 128–136
Shrek, 316
Shub, Esfir, 158, 191, 277
Sicko, 292–293
Side by Side, 125
sidelighting, 97
Siegel, Don, 426
Sight and Sound, 426
sign, 387
signified, 387
signifier, 387
The Silence of the Lambs, 244, 359

The Silences of the Palace, 67
silent cinema period, 44–49, 196, 197–198
animation and experimental media, 306–307
early cinema, 44–45
film preservation and, 77
French cinema, 48–49
German expressionist cinema, 47–48
silent features in Hollywood, 46–47
Soviet silent films, 48
star system and, 88–89
Silk Stockings, 110, 203, 203f
Silly Symphonies, 139
Silver Linings Playbook, 26–27
Silverstone, Alicia, 400
Simba, 277, 277f
Simmonds, Millicent, 225
The Simpsons, 337
simulacrum, 403–404
Sin City, 364
Sing Street, 356
Singin’ in the Rain, 42, 92, 92f, 206–207, 206f, 207f, 388
The Singing Detective, 19
Sirk, Douglas, 41, 353, 365, 389, 389f
Sissako, Abderrahmane, 68
Sitney, P. Adams, 308
16 mm film, 121, 121f
Sixth Generation, 69
The Sixth Sense, 90, 358

63 Up, 283
slapstick comedy, 46, 347, 347f
slasher films, 359, 359f
Sleep, 312
Sleeping Beauty, 309, 312
Sleepless in Seattle, 72
slow cinema, 179–180, 405, 405f
slow motion, 142, 281
Slumdog Millionaire, 76, 125
Small Town Girl, 348
Smith, Harry, 308, 319, 319f
Smith, Jack, 312–313, 313f
Smith, Kevin, 9
Smoke Signals, 65
The Smurfs, 312
Snakes on a Plane, 32
Snow, Michael, 314, 314f, 320–321
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 139, 322, 324, 356
Sobchack, Vivian, 402
social blocking, 101, 104, 104f
social documentaries, 293–294
social hierarchies, 244–245
social media, 27, 31–32
social melodramas, 353–354, 354f
The Social Network, 209, 264, 265f
social realism, 58
Society for Cinema and Media Studies, 427
The Society of the Spectacle, 328

Soderbergh, Steven, 24, 65, 177–178
so� lighting, 97–99
Sokurov, Aleksandr, 161
Solanas, Fernando, 59, 293, 314–315
Solás, Humberto, 399, 399f
Solondz, Todd, 65
Some Like It Hot, 86
Son of the Sheik, 246
Sorkin, Aaron, 209
The Sorrow and the Pity, 414
Sorry We Missed You, 58
sound, 195–225
authenticity and attention, 222–223
in documentaries, 299
elements of, 201–220
history of, 196–200
sound continuity and sound montage, 220–222
sound bridge, 208
sound continuity, 220, 221
sound designer, 208
sound editing, 13, 208
sound effects, 218–220
sound mixing, 13, 209
sound montage, 220, 221–222
The Sound of Music, 55, 200, 209, 354, 354f
sound perspective, 210
sound production, 208–209
sound recording, 208

sound reproduction, 209
soundstages, 89
soundtracks, 205, 214f, 249
source music, 205, 205f
sources, using and documenting, 433–435
South Korea, 75
Soviet documentaries, 277, 293
Soviet montage, 156–157, 381, 381f
Soviet silent films, 48
Spaceballs, 337, 337f
spaghetti westerns, 204
The Spanish Earth, 293
spatial continuity, 166, 175f, 176f
spatial unity, 168
special effects, 13, 63, 142–144, 147f, 342
spectatorship, 391, 395
Spellbound, 216, 216f
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, 330–331, 330f, 331f
Spielberg, Steven, 23, 62, 63, 63f, 89, 238, 248, 418
Spirited Away, 326
Spotlight, 412, 413f
spotting, 209
Spurlock, Morgan, 279, 279f
Spy, 347, 347f
Spy Kids, 125
Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams, 125
Stagecoach, 51, 235, 349, 366, 367
Stahl, John, 353–354

Stam, Robert, 398
Stamp, Terence, 177–178, 178f
star studies, 396–397, 396f, 397f
star system, 26, 88–89
Star Trek Beyond, 340, 340f
Star Wars, 63, 124, 131, 339
Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones, 125
Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope, 388f
Star Wars: Episode VIII Star Wars: Episode VIII — The Last Jedi The Last
Jedi, 14f
Star Wars sequel trilogy, 243
Star Wars series, 216, 237, 337, 340, 388
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, 2
stars, 103–104, 103f
Steadicam, 124, 141–142, 142f
Steamboat Willie, 308, 308f, 324
Steenbeck editing table, 183, 183f
Steiner, Max, 199, 214, 223
Step Up 3D, 217
The Stepfather, 359
stereophonic sound, 200
stereotypes, 51, 246–247, 246f, 398f
Still Alice, 137, 137f
stingers, 215, 215f
Stone, Oliver, 239
stop-motion animation, 143f, 322, 322f, 324, 327
Stories We Tell, 284–285, 285f

story, definition of, 239
story time, 175
storyboards, 154, 155f
storytelling, 232
Strand, Paul, 307
Strauss, Johann, 184
Strayhorn, Billy, 200f
Streep, Meryl, 103f, 245, 245f, 421f
Street of Crocodiles, 326–327
A Streetcar Named Desire, 102, 102f, 352
Streisand, Barbara, 174f
Strike, 156, 320
Structural Anthropology (Lévi-Strauss), 387
structural film, 314
structural organizations, 320–321, 320f, 321f
structural paradigms, 366–367
structuralism, 386–389, 390
studio era, 214
Studio Ghibli, 315
studio systems, 8, 89, 157–159, 235, 338–339
Sturges, Preston, 111
stylistic analysis, 417
subgenres, 345
subjective documentaries, 297–298
subjective point of view, 128
subjective voiceover, 212f
The Sudden Wealth of the Poor People of Kombach, 369
Suicide Squad, 9, 217, 217f, 396

Sullivan, John S., 111
Sullivan’s Travels, 111, 111f
Sunrise, 48
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, 203, 203f
Sunset Boulevard, 205, 258
Super 8 format, 124
Super Size Me, 279, 279f
superhero films, 71, 217, 237, 390f
Superman, 125
Superman the Movie, 30
supernatural horror films, 358, 358f
Support the Girls, 130f
supporting actors, 103
Surname Viet Given Name Nam, 223, 223f, 288, 328
surrealist cinema, 326–327
Suspicion, 92
Švankmajer, Jan, 322, 324
Svilova, Elizaveta, 158
Sweet Smell of Success, 97, 98f
Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, 55, 55f
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, 313, 313f
symbolic space, 256
symbols, 387
Symposium (Plato), 303
synchronized dialogue, 51
synchronous sound, 158, 198–199, 202–205, 223f, 299

T
T2 Trainspotting, 17
Tabu: A Story of the South Seas, 274, 274f
Tahimik, Kidlat, 315
Taiwan cinema, 69, 75
Tajima, Renee, 295
Takahata, Isao, 315
Take This Waltz, 284
takes, 12, 127
The Taking of Pelham 123, 107
talk shows, marketing and, 27
Tangerine, 71, 125, 126f
Tarantino, Quentin, 63, 64, 126, 127, 133, 142, 148–149, 180, 237
target audiences, 17
Tarnation, 16
Tarzan (1999), 315
Taste of Cherry, 70, 266
A Taste of Honey, 57
Tate, Sharon, 148
Tati, Jacques, 57, 201, 201f
Taupin, Bernie, 181f
Taxi, 70
Taxi Driver, 62, 105, 246, 266, 266f
Taylor, Elizabeth, 245
Taymor, Julie, 355
technical directors, 88–89
Technicolor, 122, 138, 139, 235

Technicolor Silly Symphony series, 309
technology, 30, 183, 200, 257. See also specific technologies
Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman, 325, 325f
teen films, 368, 368f
telephoto lens, 122, 123
television documentaries, 279
temporality, 175–182
The Ten Commandments, 34, 46–47, 47f, 205
Teriyaki Boyz, 218
The Terminator, 103, 209, 213
Terminator 2: Judgment Day, 213
Terry, Ellen, 88
Testing the Limits, 279
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, 359, 359f
textuality, image as, 147
Thalberg, Irving B., 8
The Spirit of TV, 294f
theaters, 16, 33
theatrical musicals, 355–356, 356f
theatrical release window, 23
theatrical tradition, 109–111, 110f
Their Finest, 7f
Thelma & Louise, 243–244
Theory of Film (Kracauer), 202, 378, 383
Theory of the Film (Balázs), 381
Theranos, 281
There Will Be Blood, 215, 351

These Three, 50
thesis statement, 421–422
They Are Lost to Vision Altogether, 329, 329f
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? 252
The Thief of Baghdad, 339
The Thin Blue Line, 297, 297f
The Thin Red Line, 417
Third Cinema, 59–62, 67, 314–315, 399
Third Eye Butterfly, 318, 318f
The Third Man, 105f, 129, 129f, 223
third-person narration, 259–260, 259f
Thirteen Days, 239
13th, 73
30-degree rule, 168–169
35 mm film, 121, 121f
Thirty-two Short Films About Glenn Gould, 283, 283f
This Is Spinal Tap, 298, 298f
Thomas, Wynn, 100
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, 417, 417f
Three Comrades, 235
360-degree pan, 140
3-D animation, 322
3-D technology, 27, 34, 35f, 127, 257, 257f, 330
three-point lighting, 97, 98f, 105
Thring, F. W., 208f
Thunderbolt: Magun, 76
THX 1138, 219

tie-ins, 26
tilts, 140
time, narrative pattern of, 250–254
time image, 402–403, 403f
Timecode, 183, 183f
time-lapse photography, 281
The Times of Harvey Milk, 294
timing, of exhibition, 35–38
The Tin Drum, 248, 248f
Titanic, 32f, 64, 258
Tlatli, Moufida, 67
To, Johnnie, 363
To Sleep with Anger, 24, 399
Tokyo Story, 58, 135f, 417
Toland, Gregg, 122, 136, 385
Tom Jones, 57
Tongues Untied, 316, 316f
Top Gun, 160–161
Top Hat, 110
top lighting, 97
topic selection, for film essays, 416–417, 421
topic sentences, 423–424
topicals, 277
Total Recall, 103
Touch of Evil, 53, 217, 364, 364f, 365, 432, 432f
Touzani, Maryam, 72
“Towards a Third Cinema” (Solanas and Getino), 59

Toy Story series, 18f, 63, 257, 312, 315, 322
tracking shots, 140–141
traditional animation, 322
trailers, 28–29
Trainwreck, 250, 251f
Trances, 77, 77f
Transformers, 71
Transformers: Age of Extinction, 161
transitions, 162–165
The Trapp Family, 369
Trask, Stephen, 303
travel films, 287–288
The Treachery of Images (Magritte), 387
treatment, 7
The Tree of Life, 222
Trier, Lars von, 74
Trip to the Moon, 155, 156f, 342
The Triplets of Belleville, 316, 356
Triumph of the Will, 278, 278f, 289
Trnka, Jirˇí, 309, 309f, 320
Troche, Rose, 66
Tron, 63
Truffaut, François, 57, 111, 384
Truth, Sojourner, 397f
Tsai Ming-liang, 75
Turbo, 21
Turing, Alan, 342

Turner, Guinevere, 66
Turner, Tina, 245
Turner Classic Movies, 24
12 Years a Slave, 73, 354, 354f
28 Days Later, 358, 358f
24-Hour Psycho, 317
Twister, 257
Two Evil Eyes, 261
Two or Three Things I Know About Her, 190
2001: A Space Odyssey, 106, 111, 172, 173f, 184–185, 211, 343
2-D animation, 322, 323, 323f
two-shots, 166
Tykwer, Tom, 67
Tyrus, 312

U
UbuWeb, 433
Ugetsu, 58
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, 201
Un chien andalou (An Andalusian Dog), 326, 326f, 327
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 45, 88, 234, 234f
underground film, 312–314, 327
underlighting, 97, 98f
underscoring, 214
Underworld, 359, 362
Unforgiven, 350
unit production manager, 8
United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc., 16, 53, 339
Universal Studios, 339
Universum Film AG (UFA), 47
The Unknown Known, 290, 290f
unreliable narration, 260
Unthinking Eurocentrism (Stam and Shohat), 398
Up, 139
Up series, 283
Us, 182, 184f, 228, 335
The Usual Suspects, 258

V
Vachon, Christine, 66
Valdez, Luis, 65
Valentino, Rudolph, 246
value, 138
values, in character coherence, 242
Vamonos con Pancho Villa! (Let’s Go with Pancho Villa), 52
Les Vampires, 49
Van der Ryn, Ethan, 225
Van Peebles, Mario, 351
Van Peebles, Melvin, 55
The Vanishing Lady, 48
Varda, Agnès, 57, 57f, 236, 236f, 250, 283
Vasarhelyi, Elizabeth Chai, 273
vaudeville, 198
Vent d’est (Wind from the East), 57
verisimilitude, 165–166, 188, 205, 376, 376f
vertical montage, 221
Vertical Roll, 304, 305f
Vertigo, 42, 87, 140, 142, 143, 145, 392
Vertov, Dziga, 48, 156, 277, 293, 307, 308, 325, 381
VHS format, 19
video, 124
video art, 304
video essays, 405, 432
Video Fish, 321
video games, 237–238, 238f

video on demand (VOD), 14, 19–21, 23
video stores, 19–20
Vidor, Charles, 54
Vidor, King, 198, 198f
The Vietnam War, 19
viewing forums, 33
Vigo, Jean, 52, 221, 288
Vikander, Alicia, 342
Village Voice, 385
Vinterberg, Thomas, 74
viral marketing, 29
Viridiana, 344f
virtual reality (VR) filmmaking, 299
Visconti, Luchino, 56
The Visit, 164, 164f
visual effects (VFX), 13, 143–144
visual narrative, 232–233
“Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (Mulvey), 392, 394f
Vitalina Varela, 405f
Vitaphone, 198, 199f
Viva, 312
Vivre sa vie, 133f
voice, 102
voice in film, 209–213
“voice of God,” 211, 286, 299
voice-off, 211–213
voiceovers, 205, 211–213, 212f, 213f, 222
Volver, 393, 393f

von Sternberg, Josef, 145
von Trier, Lars, 147, 192
Vorkapich, Slavko, 191

W
Wagner, Richard, 214
Waipai people, 294
Waking Life, 323
The Walk, 282, 282f
Walk the Line, 255, 396
Walker, Alice, 396
Walker, Paul, 218
walla, 208
Wall-E, 222, 222f
Walsh, Raoul, 385
Walt Disney Studios, 125, 308–309, 308f, 312, 315–316, 324, 326, 327f,
357
Waltz with Bashir, 323
Wang, Wayne, 65
The War, 295
War for the Planet of the Apes, 144f
War Horse, 216, 216f
Warhol, Andy, 312, 313f, 320
Warner Brothers, 198, 309, 339
Washington, Denzel, 425
Wasserman, Lew, 9–10
Waste Land, 293
Water Lilies (Monet), 306f
The Watermelon Woman, 298, 298f
Waters, John, 367, 384f
Wavelength, 320–321, 320f

Waxworks, 99
Way Down East, 197, 351–352, 352f
The Way We Were, 174f
Wayne, John, 54, 349, 397
Weber, Lois, 45
Weekend, 314, 314f
Wegener, Paul, 357
Weinstein Company, 16
Weir, Peter, 341
Welcome to the Dollhouse, 65
Welles, Orson, 15, 36–37, 53, 122, 199, 210, 217, 298, 364, 385
Wenders, Wim, 67, 140, 339
West Side Story, 355, 355f
Western Electric, 199, 203
westerns, 51, 53–54, 341f, 348–351, 348f, 368
Westworld, 125
Wet Hot American Summer, 16
Weta Digital, 143, 144
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? 359
What’s Love Got to Do with It? 245
The Wheel, 49
When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, 294, 294f
Where Are My Children? 45, 45f
Where to Invade Next, 287, 287f
Whiplash, 217
Whitaker, Forest, 95–96
White, Walter, 51

The White Balloon, 70
White Zombie, 358
Whitman, Walt, 249
Who Framed Roger Rabbit, 63
Who Killed Vincent Chin? 295, 296f
Why We Fight series, 288
Wicked, 231
wide release, 16
wide-angle lens, 122
widescreen processes, 123
widescreen ratios, 129–130
Widows, 244, 244f
Wieland, Joyce, 314
Wiene, Robert, 47, 260
The Wild Bunch, 351
Wilkie, David, 337
Williams, John, 216, 216f
Williams, William Carlos, 410
Willis, Bruce, 245
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, 111
Wilson, August, 425
Window Water Baby Moving, 309
Winfrey, Oprah, 73, 96, 96f
Wings of Desire, 67
Winsloe, Christa, 52
Winter’s Bone, 109, 168, 245, 245f
wipe, 164

Within Our Gates, 49, 77, 78–79, 78f, 79f
The Wiz, 231
The Wizard of Oz, 122, 204, 204f, 231, 235, 236, 241, 241f
Wollen, Peter, 314, 392, 392f
Wollstonecra�, Mary, 276
The Woman in the Window, 48
women. See also gender
characters for, 243
as directors, 72, 73
in early cinema, 45
in editing, 158
employment of, 51
in German cinema, 51–52
in independent filmmaking, 65–66
in Iranian cinema, 70
as screenwriters, 72
Women Film Pioneers Project, 433
women’s pictures, 212–213
Wonder Woman series, 233f
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Baum), 231
Wong, Kar-wai, 75
Woo, John, 69, 179, 340
Wood, Edward D., Jr., 188f
Wood, Robin, 63
Woodlawn, Holly, 312
word of mouth advertising, 31–32
Words and Music, 217f

“The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility”
(Benjamin), 327–328, 382
Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, 44, 276
Working Girls, 77
Works Cited list, 433, 435
Works Progress Administration (WPA), 275
The World, 75
World Cinema Foundation, 77
The World of Apu, 267
writer’s checklist, 424–425
written narratives, 232
Written on the Wind, 215, 353
Wuthering Heights, 236
WVLNT (or a Wavelength for Those Who Don’t Have the Time), 321
Wyler, William, 95, 122, 136, 163f, 179, 385
Wyman, Jane, 41

X
Xala, 89, 261

Y
Yang, Edward, 69
Yasujiro Ozu, 75
Yellow Earth, 68
The Yellow Rolls-Royce, 93
Yesterday Girl, 66
Yi yi, 69
Yimou, Zhang, 138, 183f
You Can’t Take It with You, 51
You Were Never Really Here, 396, 396f
Young, Bradford, 138
Young Frankenstein, 337, 367
Young Mr. Lincoln, 384
Youngblood, Gene, 321
YouTube, 321
You’ve Got Mail, 348

Z
Zajota and the Boogie Spirit, 399
Zavattini, Cesare, 56
Zelig, 261
Zentropa, 147
Zero Dark Thirty, 118, 119f
Zero for Conduct, 52
Zhang Yimou, 68
Zhang Yuan, 69
Zhao, Chloé, 350f
Zimmer, Hans, 203
zoetrope, 119
zombie films, 110, 110f
zoom lens, 122
zoom-in, 142
zooming, 123
zoom-out, 142
zooms, 142
Zoopraxiscope, 120
Zootopia, 33–34, 34f, 398
Zorns Lemma, 321, 321f
Zuckerberg, Mark, 264

The Next Level: Additional Sources
LaunchPad for The Film Experience (launchpadworks.com) includes
LearningCurve adaptive quizzing, additional Film in Focus readings,
and supplemental video essays and video clips with questions that
go beyond the films referenced in the book, including clips from the
following films:
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Ballet mécanique (1924)
The Battle of Algiers (1966)
Battleship Potemkin (1925)
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Bridges-Go-Round (1958)
The Conversation (1974)
Exit Through the Gi� Shop (2010)
Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
Hugo (2011)
In the Mood for Love (2000)
Man of Aran (1934)
Man of Steel (2013)
Moonlight (2016)
Moulin Rouge! (2001)
Persepolis (2007)
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016)

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Rear Window (1954)
Saturday Night Fever (1977)
Taxi Driver (1976)
True Grit (2010)
Vagabond (1985)
What Happened, Miss Simone? (2015)
Where the Wild Things Are (2009)

Get the full film experience with
videos in
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Go online to find the clips from new and classic films referenced in
the text. Here are the videos you can find in LaunchPad:
Chapter 1: Encountering Film: From Preproduction to Exhibition
FILM IN FOCUS: Killer of Sheep
VIEWING CUE: Suicide Squad
FILM IN FOCUS: Citizen Kane
Chapter 2: History and Historiography: Hollywood and Beyond
VIEWING CUE: Gilda and Rome, Open City
NEW FILM IN FOCUS: Mother India
VIEWING CUE: Beyond the Lights
FILM IN FOCUS: Within Our Gates
Chapter 3: Mise-en-Scène: Exploring a Material World
VIEWING CUE: Life of Pi
VIEWING CUE: Boyhood
FILM IN FOCUS: Do the Right Thing
FILM IN FOCUS: Bicycle Thieves
Chapter 4: Cinematography: Framing What We See
VIEWING CUE: Touch of Evil

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TECHNOLOGY IN ACTION: The Master
NEW FILM IN FOCUS: Roma
NEW FILM IN FOCUS: Fish Tank
NEW FILM IN FOCUS: Barry Lyndon
VIEWING CUE: Vertigo
NEW FILM IN FOCUS: Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood
Chapter 5: Editing: Relating Images
VIEWING CUE: Chinatown
VIEWING CUE: Tangerine
VIEWING CUE: The General
FILM IN FOCUS: Bonnie and Clyde
Chapter 6: Film Sound: Listening to the Cinema
VIEWING CUE: Guardians of the Galaxy
FILM IN FOCUS: Singin’ in the Rain
VIEWING CUE: The Thin Red Line
VIEWING CUE: Winter’s Bone
NEW FILM IN FOCUS: A Quiet Place
Chapter 7: Narrative Films: Telling Stories
VIEWING CUE: Shutter Island
VIEWING CUE: The Royal Tenenbaums
FILM IN FOCUS: Gone Girl
VIEWING CUE: Midnight Cowboy
FILM IN FOCUS: Mildred Pierce and Daughters of the Dust
Chapter 8: Documentary Films: Representing the Real

VIEWING CUE: The Cove
NEW FILM IN FOCUS: Stories We Tell
VIEWING CUE: He Named Me Malala
Chapter 9: Animation and Experimental Media: Challenging Form
FILM IN FOCUS: Meshes in the A�ernoon
VIEWING CUE: Gently Down the Stream
VIEWING CUE: The Future
NEW FILM IN FOCUS: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Chapter 10: Movie Genres: Conventions, Formulas, and Audience
Expectations
VIEWING CUE: The Searchers
VIEWING CUE: La La Land
NEW FILM IN FOCUS: Jennifer’s Body
VIEWING CUE: Unforgiven
Chapter 11: Reading about Film: Critical Theories and Methods
VIEWING CUE: The Wizard of Oz
FILM IN FOCUS: Clueless
Chapter 12: Writing a Film Essay: Observations, Arguments,
Research, and Analysis
VIEWING CUE: Birdman
FILM IN FOCUS: Minority Report
FILM IN FOCUS: Rashomon
TECHNOLOGY IN ACTION: Touch of Evil video essay
FILM IN FOCUS: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

LAUNCHPAD FOR THE FILM
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New! LearningCurve adaptive quizzing, which helps students
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the book for review — and then they get a chance to try again.
A huge collection of film clips and discussion questions,
making it easy to assign analysis of new and classic movies. See
the facing page for a full list. This edition features new clips
from Roma, Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, Spider-Man: Into
the Spider-Verse, and more.
Video Tools that give you the freedom to embed, upload, and
create assignments around the films and videos you want to
discuss.

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Description
Text on the back cover reads as follows.
The full film experience—inclusive, tech-forward, and created for online
and offline classrooms
The Film Experience offers a comprehensive introduction to the art,
language, industry, culture, and experience of the movies. Learn how
formal elements like cinematography, editing, and sound can be used to
analyze and interpret film as a whole. With superior tools for reading and
writing about film, as well as unparalleled coverage of a diverse and
inclusive range of filmmaking traditions, The Film Experience is the most
robust introductory text on the market. The sixth edition brings a strong
focus on film technology through expanded coverage of animation and a
new Technology in Action feature that helps students understand the
business and culture of film in historical context.
A logo of LaunchPad Macmillan Learning.
New! LaunchPad for The Film Experience is Macmillan’s customizable
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About this Book
Cover Page
Inside Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
About the Authors
Preface
Brief Contents
Contents
Halftitle Page
Part 1 Cultural Contexts: Watching, Studying, and Making Movies
Chapter 1 Encountering Film: From Preproduction to Exhibition
Production: How Films Are Made
Preproduction
Production
Postproduction
Distribution: What We Can See
Distributors
Ancillary Markets
Distribution Timing
Marketing and Promotion: What We Want to See
Film in Focus: Distributing Killer of Sheep (1977)
Generating Interest
Advertising
Technology in Action: The Changing Technologies of Film Promotion
Viewing Cue: Suicide Squad (2016)
Word of Mouth and Fan Engagement
Movie Exhibition: The Where, When, and How of Movie Experiences
The Changing Contexts and Practices of Film Exhibition
Technologies and Cultures of Exhibition
The Timing of Exhibition
Film in Focus: Exhibiting Citizen Kane (1941)
Chapter 1 Review
Summary
Key Terms

Chapter 2 History and Historiography: Hollywood and Beyond
Silent Cinema (1895–1929)
Silent Features in Hollywood
German Expressionist Cinema
Soviet Silent Films
French Cinema
History Close Up: Oscar Micheaux
Classical Cinema (1929–1945)
European Cinema in the 1930s and 1940s
Golden Age Mexican Cinema
Postwar Cinemas (1945–1975)
Postwar Hollywood
International Art Cinema
Viewing Cue: Gilda (1946) and Rome, Open City (1945)
Film in Focus: Mother India and Postwar History (1957)
Cinematic Globalization (1975–2000)
New Hollywood in the Blockbuster Era
The Commercial Auteur
American Independent Cinema
From National to Transnational Cinema in Europe
African Cinema
Chinese Cinema
Iranian Cinema
Cinema in the Digital Era (2000–present)
Global Hollywood
Diversifying Screens
Viewing Cue: Beyond the Lights (2014)
Film Culture in the Twenty-First Century
Technology in Action: Film Preservation and Archives
Film in Focus: Rediscovering Within Our Gates (1920)
Chapter 2 Review
Summary
Key Terms

Part 2 Formal Compositions: Film Scenes, Shots, Cuts, and Sounds
Chapter 3 Mise-en-Scène: Exploring a Material World
A Short History of Mise-en-Scène
Theatrical Mise-en-Scène and the Prehistory of Cinema
1900–1912: Early Cinema’s Theatrical Influences
1915–1928: Silent Cinema and the Star System
1930s–1960s: Studio-Era Production
1940–1970: New Cinematic Realism
1975–Present: Mise-en-Scène and the Blockbuster
The Elements of Mise-en-Scène
Settings and Sets
Scenic Realism and Atmosphere
Viewing Cue: Life of Pi (2012)
Props, Costumes, and Lights
Viewing Cue: Boyhood (2014)
Performance: Actors and Stars
Film in Focus: Mise-en-Scène in Do the Right Thing (1989)
Technology in Action: Scenic Lighting
Space and Design
Thinking about Mise-en-Scène
Mise-en-Scène as an External Condition or a Measure of Character
Primary Traditions for Mise-en-Scène
Film in Focus: Naturalistic Mise-en-Scène in Bicycle Thieves (1948)
Chapter 3 Review
Summary
Key Terms

Chapter 4 Cinematography: Framing What We See
A Short History of the Cinematic Image
1820s–1880s: The Invention of Photography and the Prehistory of Cinema
1890s–1920s: The Emergence and Refinement of Cinematography
1930s–1940s: Developments in Color, Wide-Angle, and Small-Gauge Cinematography
1950s–1960s: Widescreen, 3-D, and New Color Processes
1970s–1980s: Cinematography and Exhibition in the Age of the Blockbuster
1990s to the Present: The Digital Era
The Elements of Cinematography
Point of View
Four Attributes of the Shot
Viewing Cue: Touch of Evil (1958)
Depth of Field
Technology in Action: Color in Film
Viewing Cue: Roma (2018)
Viewing Cue: Fish Tank (2009)
Viewing Cue: Barry Lyndon (1975)
From Special Effects to Visual Effects
Thinking about Cinematography
The Image as Presentation and Representation
Viewing Cue: Vertigo (1958)
Traditions of Images
Film in Focus: Recreating History in Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood (2019)
Chapter 4 Review
Summary
Key Terms

Chapter 5 Editing: Relating Images
A Short History of Film Editing
1895–1918: Early Cinema and the Emergence of Editing
1919–1929: Soviet Montage
History Close Up: Women in the Editing Room
1930–1959: Continuity Editing in the Hollywood Studio Era
1960–1989: Modern Editing Styles
1990s–Present: Editing in the Digital Age
The Elements of Editing
The Cut and Other Transitions
Viewing Cue: Chinatown (1974)
Continuity Style
Viewing Cue: Tangerine (2015)
Editing and Temporality
Viewing Cue: The General (1927)
Technology in Action: Editing, Then and Now
Thinking about Film Editing
Film in Focus: Patterns of Editing in Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
Editing as a Subjective Experience or as an Objective Perspective
Primary Traditions in Editing Practices: Continuity, Disjunctions, and Convergences
Converging Editing Styles
Chapter 5 Review
Summary
Key Terms

Chapter 6 Film Sound: Listening to the Cinema
A Short History of Film Sound
Prehistories of Film Sound
1895–1920s: The Sounds of Silent Cinema
1927–1930: Transition to Synchronized Sound
1930s–1940s: Challenges and Innovations in Cinema Sound
1950s–1980s: From Stereophonic to Dolby Sound
1990s–Present: Sound in the Digital Era
The Elements of Film Sound
Sound and Image
Technology in Action: Sound and Image
Viewing Cue: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Film in Focus: Sound and Image in Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
Sound Production
Voice in Film
Music in Film
Sound Effects in Film
Viewing Cue: The Thin Red Line (1998)
Thinking about Film Sound
Sound Continuity and Sound Montage
Viewing Cue: Winter’s Bone (2010)
Authenticity and Attention
Film in Focus: The Sound of Silence in A Quiet Place (2018)
Chapter 6 Review
Summary
Key Terms

Part 3 Organizational Structures: From Stories to Genres
Chapter 7 Narrative Films: Telling Stories
A Short History of Narrative Film
1900–1920s: Adaptations, Scriptwriters, and Screenplays
1927–1950: The Coming of Sound and Classical Hollywood Narrative
1950–1980: Art Cinema
1980s–Present: Franchises, Narrative Reflexivity, and Games
History Close Up: Salt of the Earth (1954)
The Elements of Narrative Film
Stories and Plots
Characters
Diegetic and Nondiegetic Elements
Narrative Patterns of Time
Viewing Cue: Shutter Island (2010)
Narrative Space
Narrative Perspectives
Viewing Cue: The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
Technology in Action: Immersive Film Narrative
Film in Focus: Narration and Gender in Gone Girl (2014)
Thinking about Film Narrative
Shaping Memory, Making History
Narrative Traditions
Viewing Cue: Midnight Cowboy (1969)
Film in Focus: Classical and Alternative Traditions in Mildred Pierce (1945) and Daughters of the Dust (1991)
Chapter 7 Review
Summary
Key Terms

Chapter 8 Documentary Films: Representing the Real
A Short History of Documentary Cinema
A Prehistory of Documentaries
1895–1905: Early Actualities, Scenics, and Topicals
The 1920s: Robert Flaherty and the Soviet Documentaries
1930–1945: The Politics and Propaganda of Documentary
1950s–1970s: New Technologies and the Arrival of Television
1980s–Present: Digital Cinema, Cable, and Reality TV
The Elements of Documentary Films
Nonfiction and Non-Narrative
Expositions: Organizations That Show or Describe
Viewing Cue: The Cove (2009)
Film in Focus: Nonfiction and Non-Narrative in Stories We Tell (2013)
Rhetorical Positions
Viewing Cue: He Named Me Malala (2015)
Thinking about Documentary Films
Confronting Assumptions
Altering Opinions
Interpretive Contexts and Traditions
History Close Up: Indigenous Media
Technology in Action: Documentary Sound
Chapter 8 Review
Summary
Key Terms

Chapter 9 Animation and Experimental Media: Challenging Form
A Short History of Animation and Experimental Media
1910s–1920s: Early Avant-Garde Movements
1930s–1940s: Sound and Vision
Film in Focus: Avant-Garde Visions in Meshes in the Afternoon (1943)
1950s–1960s: International Animation and the Postwar American Avant-Garde
History Close Up: Floyd Norman
1968–1980: Beyond North America
1989–Present: New Technologies and New Media
Principles of Experimental Media and Animation
Abstraction and Figuration
Experimental Organizations: Associative, Structural, and Participatory
Animation Modes: 2-D, 3-D, Stop-Motion
Technology in Action: Animation through the Decades
Thinking about Experimental Media and Animation
Expanding Perception
Experimental Film Styles and Approaches
Viewing Cue: Gently Down the Stream (1981)
Viewing Cue: The Future (2011)
Film in Focus: Webs of Style in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Chapter 9 Review
Summary
Key Terms

Chapter 10 Movie Genres: Conventions, Formulas, and Audience Expectations
A Short History of Film Genre
Historical Origins of Genres
1890s–1910s: Early Film Genres
1920s–1940s: Genre and the Studio System
1948–1970s: Postwar Film Genres
1970s–Present: New Hollywood, Sequels, and Global Genres
The Elements of Film Genre
Conventions
Technology in Action: Special Effects and Iconography in Science Fiction
Formulas and Myths
Audience Expectations
Six Movie Genres
Comedies
Westerns
Melodramas
Viewing Cue: The Searchers (1956)
Musicals
Viewing Cue: La La Land (2016)
Horror Films
Film in Focus: Genre and Gender in Jennifer’s Body (2009)
Crime Films
Thinking about Film Genre
Prescriptive and Descriptive Approaches
Classical and Revisionist Traditions
Viewing Cue: Unforgiven (1992)
History Close Up: John Waters and Midnight Movies
Local and Global Genres
Chapter 10 Review
Summary
Key Terms

Part 4 Critical Perspectives: Reading and Writing About Film
Chapter 11 Reading about Film: Critical Theories and Methods
The Evolution of Film Theory
Early and Classical Film Theory
Early Film Theory
Classical Film Theories: Formalism and Realism
Postwar Film Culture and Criticism
Film Journals
Auteur Theory
Genre Theory
Contemporary Film Theory
Structuralism and Semiotics
Viewing Cue: The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Poststructuralism
Theories of Gender and Sexuality
Cultural Studies
Film in Focus: Clueless about Contemporary Film Theory? (1995)
Film and Philosophy
Postmodernism
Film Theory and Digital Culture
Chapter 11 Review
Summary
Key Terms

Chapter 12 Writing a Film Essay: Observations, Arguments, Research, and Analysis
Writing an Analytical Film Essay
Personal Opinion and Objectivity
Identifying Your Readers
Viewing Cue: Birdman (2014)
Elements of the Analytical Film Essay
Preparing to Write about a Film
Asking Questions
Taking Notes
Selecting a Topic
Film in Focus: Analysis, Audience, and Minority Report (2002)
Elements of a Film Essay
Thesis Statement
Outline and Topic Sentences
Revising, Formatting, and Proofreading
Writer’s Checklist
Researching the Movies
Distinguishing Research Materials
Primary Research
Secondary Research
Film in Focus: Interpretation, Argument, and Evidence in Rashomon (1950)
Using and Documenting Sources
Technology in Action: Creating a Video Essay
Film in Focus: From Research to Writing about The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
Chapter 12 Review
Summary
Key Terms

Glossary
Index
The Next Level: Additional Sources
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