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470 CHAPTER Film Theory and Criticism

LAMBS (ORION PICTURES, 1991)

The cross-dressing villain in The Silence of the Lombs breaks .1 cultural rules regarding proper gender behavior. The filmmakers count on this violation of a viewer's culturally influenced schemas to generate strong disgust and condemnation of the character. Frame enlargement.

walking into a saloon will order whiskey, but seated around a campfire will prefer cof-

fee. The more audience knowledge a filmmaker can assume, the more efficient is story

presentation. Less needs to be explained.

Filmmakers often count on the existence of specific interpretational schemas in

their target audience and design their films to exploit these schemas. The gender-

bending villain in The Silence of the Lambs, who cross-dresses and makes himself up

to look like a woman, triggers an audience's cultural schemas regarding the accept-

able range of gender displays and sexual behavior. The villain's flagrant violation of

conventional schemas regarding proper gender display provokes, as the filmmakers

intended, anxiety and disapproval from most audience members.

WHY FILM Is COMPREHENSIBLE In addition to studying the ways that audiences apply

schemas to process visual and narrative information, cognitive film theory investigates

the more general question of what makes film so comprehensible, accessible, and enjoy-

able to audiences worldwide. The answers provided by cognitive theory emphasize the

correspondences that exist between film and a viewer's real-world perceptual and social

experience. For the cognitive theorist, film is comprehensible, accessible, and enjoy-

able because it builds many similarities between the means used to represent a world

on-screen and the spectator's familiar habits of perception and social understanding.

Cognitive theory takes the viewer as a rational agent, whereas the psychoanalytic ap-

proach emphasizes irrational elements in the viewer's responses. The two approaches

differ considerably from one another in this respect.

Perceptual Correspondences The viewer sees a three-dimensional world on the flat surface of the screen because the photographic images reproduce important real- world sources of information about spatial depth, about the location and distribution of objects in space, about volume, texture, and movement. Just as this information tells viewers where objects are located in the real, three-dimensional world, it pro- vides the same information in the represented reality of a screen world. Today, many film images are created not with a camera but in the computer. Software programs routinely create this information to make the computer-created image look convinc- ingly three-dimensional. Second, the codes of continuity editing used to build scenes

Cognitive Models 471

create a consistent projective geometry within the represented three-dimensional world on screen that is analogous to the viewer's own visual and physical experience. Throughout a scene edited using continuity principles, the screen coordinates of up, down, front, back, right, and left remain consistent, regardless of changes in camera position and angle.

Third, point-of-view editing establishes, for the viewer, easy narrative comprehen- sion because the judicious use of long shot and close-up clarifies important narrative information and emphasizes characters' emotions. Viewers see everything they need to know and are given all the information they need in order to understand the nar- rative. Fourth, in the film image the viewer reads and understands the significance of characters' facial and gestural expressions, just as the viewer does with real people in daily life. Viewers are extremely good at decoding the meaning expressed on people's faces and through gestures, and they use these skills when watching a movie. Actors are professionals trained to mimic the range of gestural and facial cues significant within their culture so as to evoke the emotions typically associated with those ex- pressions and gestures.

Pointing to these complex correspondences between the information contained in film images and the viewer's real-world perceptual habits and skills, cognitive film theo- rists persuasively explain why films are so easily understood by large numbers of people.

Social Correspondences A second set of correspondences connects the screen world to viewers' experiential skills and knowledge. Viewers apply to the screen world many

assumptions and judgments about people and proper role-based behavior that are

derived from social experience. These assumptions co-exist with, and are modified

by, others that the viewer derives from narrative formula and genre. Characters in a

horror film, for example, behave like viewers expect characters in a horror film to

behave—they always go down into that dark basement where a monster is lurking!—

but these behaviors also must correlate with dimensions of human experience that the

viewer finds credible or valid.

NOTORIOUS (RKO, 1946) The three-dimensional informa- tion contained in this shot from Hitchcock's Notorious includes the relative sizes of the men, the con- verging parallel lines on the floor, and the diminishing size and spacing of the floor tiles. These cues—which derive from every-

day visual experience—establish the illusion of depth and distance

in the image. Frame enlargement.

472 CHAPTER 11 Film Theory and Criticism

Research involving preschool children and adolescents indicates that a close re-

lationship prevails between a child's developing stock of moral and ethical concepts and his or her abilities to use these concepts to interpret character behavior in mov- ies. Very young children are likely to judge a character as good or bad depending on whether the character looks attractive or ugly. Older children override such appear- ance stereotyping with more complex evaluations based on the moral or ethical con- tent of the character's behavior.

Person perception, then, is a process that commonly underlies nonfilmic interper-

sonal and social experience and the inferences and evaluations viewers make about

characters in movie narratives. Filmmakers draw from this important source of corre-

spondence in creative ways. The presentation of Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the

Lambs, the film's stress on his wit, intelligence, and compassion for the heroine Clarice

Starling, as well as his sadistic cruelty, complicates the viewer's desire to establish a sta-

ble moral and ethical evaluation of that character. Viewers are attracted by his positive

qualities and charisma yet repulsed by his violation Of normative human behavior.

Summary The strengths of cognitive film theory are twofold. First, this model, unlike many of the others, is research-based. The assumptions and principles of the theory are

supported by empirical data, which make the theory directly testable, and, accord-

ingly, give it a great deal of explanatory power. Because of its empirical dimension, cognitive theory provides a strong foundation

for understanding how viewers make sense of film images and narratives. Rather than relying on critical speculations that may or may not be applicable to real viewers, the cognitive theorist studies the perceptions and interpretations of actual viewers and is able to help clarify the factors that make film an intelligible medium for its audience.

Second, by providing explanations for the intelligibility of motion pictures, cognitive film theory provides an understanding of why the cinema has become so popular across cultures. Cinema provides viewers with an easily understood spectacle, and this helps ensure its enormous popularity throughout the world. If the motion picture medium was difficult to understand, it would never have become so popular.

Because the cognitive model stresses perception and cognition, one might think that it has had little to say about the emotional components of the viewer's experience. In fact, cognitive scholars have devoted great attention to this area and have published numerous studies about the ways in which film elicits emotional responses from viewers. At the same time, cognitive film theory has had relatively little to say about the transfor- mative functions of cinema, the way films go beyond and imaginatively transform the boundaries of the viewer's experience. Films are not mere copies or mirrors of that expe- rience; they re-organize and reconfigure it in complex ways. Moreover, the determinants of meaning in film are manifold. How a filmmaker manipulates structure, what a viewer brings to a film, and the visual and narrative traditions and genres in which a given film is located, all these are part of the elaborate mixture that produces meaning in film.

WRITING A CRITICAL PAPER Film criticism does not mean that one criticizes a movie in the sense of pointing upits flaws or its failed ambitions. Neither does it involve reaching a decision about whether a film is "good" or "bad." Few films are such unconditional achievements

Writing a Critical Paper 473

THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY (20TH CENTURY FOX, 1 998) Cognitive theory helps explain why and how viewers readily understand cinema, and agreat deal of research from a cognitive perspective has been conducted on emotionalresponses and appeals. There's Something About Mary was a huge popular hit with audi-ences who delighted in its humor. Cognitive theory explores the manner in which filmselicit emotion and the ways that filmic technique, such as facial close-ups, work to identifycharacter emotions and solicit a viewer responses including empathy, laughter, and disgust. Frame enlargement.

that they can be described as good or bad. Most movies are a mixture of things that work and some that don't, ambitions attained and those that eluded the filmmaker, and nearly all films contain levels and layers of meaning that skillful criticism can uncover and clarify.

Criticism is not a negative act. A critic's interpretations add meaning to a film, enrich its context, and enrich a viewer's appreciation for context and for aesthetic design and accomplishment.

As a student writing a critical paper, you explore the multidimensional meanings of a given film and/or its stylistic, structural design. Often, this means clarifying implicit or subtle meanings, identifying and exploring seemingly contradictory messages or

values in a given film, describing and illuminating significant elements of design, and,

ultimately, creating a new and interesting way of interpreting or understanding a film.

This last function is the central act of criticism: the creation of a new interpretation that

extends or deepens a viewer's appreciation of a film.

The approach you take will depend on the kind of analysis that you have been

asked to undertake. Analyzing a genre involves searching for and clarifying pat-

terns—the narratives, themes, and images that typify the genre. Genre patterns can be

explained by comparing various films that are part of the genre. Analysis that aims

to explore how an individual film connects with a genre would specify how such pat-

terns are present within the film and what variations on them may be present as well.

TOO much variation takes a film outside of a genre it might otherwise belong to, but

insufficient variation is often the mark of lesser genre films. Interesting variations of-

ten are introduced by individual filmmakers. In such cases, genre and director studies

may intersect. John Ford's Westerns are very different from those of Budd Boetticher

474 CHAPTER 11 Film Theory and Criticism

and Anthony Mann, and some of these differences can be attributed to the ways that directorial style and sensibility rework generic material.

Moreover, certain theoretical models lend themselves to particular genres. Psychoanalysis has been especially useful in clarifying the workings of horror films and of avant-garde cinema, many of whose filmmakers were quite influenced by Freud's writings.

Analyses that aim to explore issues of film and society often seek to explicate the ideological material found in given films and to connect this with social forces and dynamics, or the critic might be interested to investigate the representations of gender or race found in particular films. The critic should be attentive to how a film defines what is "natural" or "true" and how these representations necessarily omit, deny or repress alternative constructions. By reading against the grain, by doing a deconstruc- tive reading, the critic often can uncover repressed meanings surrounding gender and race that structure the discourse presented by a film.

A formal film analysis typically is concerned with examining the details of a film's audiovisual design, with identifying and interpreting how lighting, color, editing, and other elements of structure convey meaning. This type of analysis can be an end in itself, providing students with training in looking at and analyzing the audiovisual features of film. Alternatively, formal analysis may be a compo- nent of ideological or auteur criticism and, in fact, should play some role in those approaches. Analyzing Hitchcock's work from a purely thematic point of view, omitting the remarkable structural designs in his work, may produce less convinc- ing interpretations than ones that use formal analysis to advance thematic ideas by showing connections between the two, the ways that Hitchcock's themes are grounded in particular cinematic designs.

An auteur analysis investigates questions of authorship, which usually are posed in terms of the director, although cinematographers and screenwriters might also be studied as auteurs. Like genre analysis, auteur study involves a search for patterns, for signature narratives, themes and image designs that seem to identify a cohesive artistic profile in a director's work.

Begin your paper with a clear understanding of the kind of analysis you have been asked to produce. The objectives of a genre paper will differ, for example, from those of a purely formal analysis.

Once you have a clear understanding of the objectives of the assignment, you should view the film or films you will analyze at least two or three times. Search for material in the film—key scenes, character interactions, aspects of narrative structure, and elements of audiovisual design—that you find striking and interesting and can identify as a potential fit with the objectives of your task. Having found such material, be sure to carefully describe it. You needn't describe everything in a shot or scene, only what is relevant to the interpretation you are developing. If a detail doesn't fit, don't force it. The people reading the criticism will know if your interpretations are well-supported by the evidence you cite.

Precisely label all aspects of visual design, quote dialogue accurately, and spell character names correctly.

Learning to identify what you see on screen is a very important task. The cam- era doesn't "swoop"—it moves on a crane or boom, on tracks, on a dolly, or as a Steadicam mounted to the operator's body. A fade and a dissolve are distinctly different transitions. A critic who loses track of these distinctions will lose credibility.

Writing a Critical Paper 475

Be careful about imposing personal prejudices and value judgments on films thatare old and/or are produced from other cultures and societies. Old films may reflectsocial worlds that no longer exist and differ from the contemporary one that youinhabit, and other cultures and societies may have different rules governing behaviorand emotional displays. But being careful does not mean avoiding a contemporaryfilter—the racism and sexism that was taken for granted in earlier generations of film-making can only be clarified from a point of view that is outside the cultural prismsthat operated in earlier periods. It often is essential to further research the subjects or issues addressed by the filmthat you are analyzing so that you can develop a basis for evaluating how the filmtreats them. It also may be helpful to view other films produced by the same directoror movies by other filmmakers that deal with the same topic or genre. This will enableyou to become familiar with a body of work that you can use to contextualize thefilm that you are critiquing. You might also read what scholars and critics have said about the film because thiswill stimulate your own thinking and help you generate ideas. It will also allow you tosee how other writers have constructed their critical arguments. Remember, though, thatthe goal of criticism is to produce a novel or original interpretation, not to recycle some-one else's ideas. Any material that you borrow or use from a published source needs to

be identified as such and attributed to that source. Failing to do so is plagiarism. Pursue your ideas and their implications as far as you reasonably can. A flaw in

the work produced by beginning writers, or by beginning film critics, is the failure to explore the implications of one's ideas or of the issues one raises in building a critical argument. Experienced writers are sensitive to the productive implications of a good idea and skilled at exploring them, at going down the intellectual pathways they open up. Beginning writers often fail to see and consider the implications raised by their ideas and arguments. Taking an idea as far as it can reasonably go is the hallmark of good writing, good analysis, and good film criticism. A novice critic often will have an interesting insight and then fail to consider where it can take the writer. As you exam- ine your paper—and all serious writers do this, no one ever turns in a first draft be- cause nobody is so good or brilliant as to produce polished and crafted work in a first draft—reflect upon the issues raised by your ideas. Have you fully explored them? During the time spent away from your early draft, new ideas often present themselves. Follow them where they take you, and integrate them into your argument.

There is no single formula or method for constructing a critical argument. However, all the rules normally associated with good writing also apply to film criti- cism. You want to persuade the reader that your interpretation of the film reveals im- portant patterns and layers of meaning that are not immediately apparent or explicitly conveyed during a casual viewing.

Be careful, therefore, to build your argument by clearly guiding the reader

through all of the steps and stages in your critical thought, from describing your ini-

tial premises to the citation of evidence and the statement of conclusions. Good writ-

ing is clear, connected, and forceful. Because criticism is a rhetorical act, the quality

Of the writing is as important as the quality of the ideas in swaying the reader to your

Positions. Finally, remember that good criticism is provocative. If your ideas are chal-

lenging, if the connections that you draw across the images and narrative episodes are

novel and insightful, you will enrich the readers' understanding of the film and may

send them back for another and wiser viewing.

476 CHAPTER Film Theory and Criticism

SUMMARY Because cinenm is such a rich and powerful medium of communication, because it

affects viewers' lives and their thinking about the world in so many ways, it is impor-

tant to reach an understanding of what the medium is, independently of its existence

in any given film. Film theories are systernatic attempts to think about, and explain,

the nature of cinema, how it works as a medium, and embodies meaning for viewers.

Because the cinema is multidimensional, no one theory has all the answers. Each

theory is best suited to answering certain kinds of questions. Realist theory empha-

sizes the cinema's recording and documenting functions and the ability of filmmakers to use photographic images and naturalistic sounds to capture social realities existing

before the camera. Theories of realism tend to define a threshold beyond which the

cinema's transformation of social realities is regarded as fictitious, duplicitous, styl-

ized, or distorted. To this extent, realist theories stress the ethical contract that exists

between filmmaker and audience. Realist models aim to establish difficult distinctions between the cinema's re-

cording and documenting functions and its transformative abilities. It is often very

hard, though, to know where these distinctions lie. Every camera position implies a

viewpoint, and some degree of stylistic transformation of the raw material before the camera is inevitable. It is the job of realist theories to say how much transformation is too much.

Auteur theory stresses the human qualities of cinema and emphasizes that me- chanically produced sights and sounds can be organized by artists into an aesthetically satisfying design. Auteurism insists that this mechanical, twentieth-century medium is capable, in the right hands, of producing art.

Psychoanalytic theory emphasizes the enormous potential of cinema to provoke emotional responses in its viewers that may be unconscious, primitive, nonrational, and even contrary to the behaviors polite society demands. Psychoanalytic theory is drawn to explain the highly charged poetic and emotional power of certain images and why they seem to exert such a hold over viewers.

As a medium seen by millions, cinema inevitably has a social impact, and its images and stories construct politically and socially charged views of the world. Ideological film theory uncovers the often subtle terms by which cinema codes its views of reality and, by revealing them, can give viewers control over them.

Feminist film theory reveals the gender biases at work inside the views of social reality offered by films made by men within an industry where power is still largely wielded by men. Images of women in film frequently have been defined by male film- makers, and feminist theory looks for the alternative artistic and social voices of female filmmakers. Feminist theory reminds viewers that gender is one of the mostpowerful screens through which film images and stories pass and that male filmmak-ers may tend to organize those images and stories differently than female filmmakers.Cognitive theories aim to provide answers to some of the most basic questionsabout cinema. Why is it intelligible to viewers? Why are many films so easily under-stood? How can a filmmaker facilitate an audience's understanding of shots, scenes,and stories? How do viewers base their interpretations of films on analogies with theirown perceptual and social experience? Cognitive theory points to the ways in whichcinema works as a medium of communication.