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Learning Objectives

After reading this chapter, you should be able to do the following:

•Discuss why studying film is important and what it can contribute to an individual's life.

•Evaluate what makes a film "good" and understand how the role of film criticism is changing.

•Define what it means to be media literate.

•Explain the history of where audiences have seen films and the many different options contemporary audiences have for watching film as well as how those options affect the way they see the film.

•Explain how a film's budget and scale of production affects content and expectations.

1.1 Movies and Their Roles in Our Lives

All of us have ample opportunity to see, on an almost daily basis, how much movies mean to people. In a world in which almost every form of entertainment is increasingly available at our fingertips, often from the comfort of our living rooms, and even when the cost of movie tickets soars as the economy struggles, people keep coming to the movies. But why?

It's fun sometimes to watch people as they watch a movie. They're sucked in. It's a cliché to say that "they laugh, they cry," but there's always truth behind clichés—audiences do laugh and cry, and they have a variety of other emotions as they sit and watch. Audiences are moved by films in ways that they rarely are by other forms of art.

Why are movies so important to us? There are many answers to this question, some of which we will explore in this text. We'll also look at how writers, directors, and actors put movies together to create the desired effect upon an audience.

But more than that, we'll discover why studying film matters, and why and how it's possible to get even more enjoyment out of watching movies when we understand the process of making them. Examining movies more fully will help us understand why we care so much about them. And it will also help us understand something about ourselves. To fully evaluate a movie requires the use of tools—critical thinking, discernment, judgment, and perspective chief among them—that serve us well not only in deciding whether a movie is good but in all aspects of our lives. Movies are not, and are not meant to be, blueprints for how to live our lives. This is to say that most of us cannot live our lives like James Bond. If we drive fast, we likely crash. If someone throws us from a building, we likely die. Admirable as we may find Bond's skills and resilience, those talents do not translate to our everyday lives.

Films and their deeper meanings can be, however, reflective of our lives. We may not have license to kill, as Bond does, but we can appreciate the willingness to go it alone in the face of adversity, and even the necessity of doing so in the face of a slow-moving bureaucracy. We may also admire our hero's personal sense of justice, his perseverance in trying to defeat what he knows is evil, and his efforts to do his best for the betterment of others, even if he must disregard official rules and protocol to do so. The careful consideration of a film, then, applying to it the skills that we all have available to us, is an enjoyable, useful addition to a full life, as it is with any art form. Where film is different is in its active assault on our senses, making it a good starting point for any critical evaluation of art.

Studying film is a part of media literacy, or the understanding of how media affects our lives. We're bombarded with a constant stream of messages daily through advertising, art, and entertainment. It is useful to recognize how a movie manipulates our reactions and, by extension, the ways we respond (even if subconsciously). Media literacy can help us see how what we perceive on the surface as simple entertainment may actually be telling us numerous things about its creators, the culture, and the time it was created. And through this, we may learn more about ourselves, the world around us, and the timeless universality of human nature itself.

Armed with this knowledge, the reader will become a more sophisticated filmgoer, which will lead to not only a more sophisticated analysis of the elements behind what we see on screen, but also a richer enjoyment of a movie when he or she sits down in the theater, with popcorn in hand, as the lights go down and the magic begins.

1.2 Film: Looking for Meaning

Still shot of Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert glaring at one another in It Happened One Night.

Courtesy Everett Collection

In the midst of the Great Depression, audiences found much to laugh about in It Happened One Night, a classic "screwball comedy" starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert.

Movies are how we see the world. But how do we see movies? We see them as escape, we see them as meaningful, we see them as windows into our lives and the lives of others. Perhaps we see a comedy to boost our spirits, to put us in a better mood. Maybe we choose a drama in hopes of a deeper feeling, or a science-fiction film to escape. Sometimes that's enough, and sometimes we seek a deeper meaning, a deeper satisfaction. We watch them for simple entertainment, we see them as cues for our behavior and tastes, and we find they are convenient topics of discussion with friends and complete strangers. Film is a uniquely popular medium, or form of communication, that captures both the imagination and the money of millions of people every weekend. A trip to the movies is a traditional first date, a great way to while away a couple of hours, and the only way to stay in the pop-culture loop when a blockbuster such as The Avengers or the latest Iron Man or Star Trek sequel is released.

How We See Movies

Since the beginnings of film technology in the 1890s, and even more so with the rise of feature-length films in the 1910s, audiences have been fascinated, both by the films themselves and by the people who make them. That love affair has not diminished; if anything, it has increased. Some years ago now, in Movie Crazy: Fans, Stars and the Cult of Celebrity, Samantha Barbas wrote:

After nearly 100 years of motion pictures, Americans are still fascinated by the cinema. Although most of us feel quite sure about the way the movies work—that the camera depicts a distorted, constructed version of reality—we still engage in acts of verification. Although most of us accept that we cannot take part directly in the filmmaking process, we still want to feel a part of the movies by learning about the inner workings of film studios and the details of stars' lives. As long as we go to the movies, we will probably always be fascinated by questions of authenticity and involvement. And as twenty-first century technology provides us with more—and more lifelike—forms of entertainment, the more urgent these issues may become. (Barbas, 2001)

Samantha Barbas points out some important aspects of how audiences feel about movies—namely, that we understand that what we see on the screen is an imaginary world, yet we still become wrapped up in the fictional stories as if they are real. Because we feel so affected by what we know is fantasy, we often try to learn more about the people and processes that are able to involve us on such an emotional level.

Still from Django Unchained picturing actors Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz riding horses in the snow.

COLUMBIA PICTURES/SuperStock

An action-adventure film like Django Unchained, even though grounded in reality, may be an escape for many viewers from their own personal realities.

Film is also, of course, a huge industry. While that will not be the focus here, it is still an unavoidable and important fact that colors every aspect of making movies—so we must pay attention to it. Box-office forecasts and scorekeeping have become a business unto themselves, and not just for professionals. Despite dire economic circumstances, in 2013 theater audiences spent more than $10 billion on tickets to the 669 movies whose grosses were tracked by Boxofficemojo.com, nearly $2 billion of that just on the year's five most popular releases, a staggering total for such tough times.

Yet this desire to go to movies, even in a tough economic climate, is understandable. More than most other art forms, movies allow us the ability to escape the world we're living in and enter another, at least for a short while. Although good books can do the same thing, they require a more active participation and imagination on the part of the reader. A movie allows viewers to sit back and relax while they see and hear the movie world unfold on the screen before them. As the audience immerses itself in the pre-Civil War fabric of Django Unchained or the room-to-room search for Osama bin Laden at the climax of Zero Dark Thirty—vastly different experiences, indeed—day-to-day concerns temporarily fade. Depending on the film, we really may laugh, we may cry, we may be frightened or exhilarated, and we often find ourselves in a world completely different from our own.

Still shot of Meryl Streep in Sophie's Choice.

©Universal/courtesy Everett Collection

Meryl Streep has played remarkably diverse roles—a Polish refugee in Sophie's Choice (pictured here), Julia Child in Julie and Julia, a free-spirited single mother in the musical Mamma Mia!, and Linda in The Deer Hunter, a searing Vietnam War film by Michael Cimino.

Certainly there is something to be said for letting entertainment wash over you without thinking much about it. Laughing until you cry while watching The Hangover (2009), What's Up, Doc? (1972), or Hail the Conquering Hero (1944) can be rewarding in its own way. But the more discriminating film fan looks for deeper meaning and, by doing so, can find greater satisfaction. It is, simply, ultimately more enjoyable. No one wants to go to the movies with a checklist of suggested behaviors. But armed with the right tools, specifically the knowledge of the different elements that go into creating a film and how they affect its outcome, you can better enjoy the experience.

As you will learn in this text, the finished product we see on screen is the result of the collaboration of hundreds if not thousands of people. It is a true team effort, as anyone who has ever sat through the lengthy closing credits of a movie can attest. Yet the best films are almost always the product of a singular vision, whether it be that of the writer of the screenplay or the director or the producer (sometimes the same person performs two or more of a film's major creative tasks and may even appear on screen as one of the characters). Ask anyone involved in the making of a movie, and they will tell you that, with all of the obstacles involved, it's amazing a film ever gets made at all. But a good film? That's almost a small miracle.

The Players, in Front of and Behind the Camera

Many people contribute to the creation of a film. Throughout the course of this text, we will discuss who they are and what they do. For now, it will be helpful to understand what role each person plays and how they all come together to create a movie before we go further. See Table 1.1 for additional jobs in filmmaking.

Still shot from Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde picturing actors Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty driving in a car.

Courtesy Everett Collection

Scene from the movie Bonnie and Clyde. Arthur Penn, who died in September 2010, is among America's greatest directors. His most celebrated film, Bonnie and Clyde, marked a turning point in American film culture. It paved the way for the "New American Cinema" of the 1970s—films like Taxi Driver and The Godfather.

a.You: The audience and the critic. These are the end users, the people for whom the film is made, and the people who judge its merits, both by buying tickets and by spreading their opinions by word of mouth.

b.The screenwriter: The man or woman who creates the story on which the film is based. The story can be original or adapted from another medium, such as a book or play.

c.The actor: The face of the film and its best-known participant. (Note: The term "actor" will refer to men and women in this text.)

d.The cinematographer: In simple terms, the person who "shoots," or photographs, the film. He or she is responsible for the visual representation of the story.

e.The editor: The man or woman who puts the pieces of the puzzle together, that is, who takes individual shots and scenes and pieces them together in coherent form.

f.The director: The person with the ultimate responsibility for the overall film. The finished film is a reflection of his or her personal vision, no matter how many collaborators are involved.

g.The producer: The person who brings together all the people and financing necessary to get the film made and oversees the production from development to release, often with varying degrees of creative input.

Table 1.1 Filmmaking jobs

Preproduction or planning stage Producer Arranges for film to be made, finds investors, hires people to make it, oversees production, makes sure it gets done on budget.

Screenwriter Writes script, whether original or adapted from another source.

Production designer Or, on a smaller film, the art director. Oversees the "look" of a film; responsible for keeping the sets, props, and costumes appropriate to the story and characters, and historically accurate if necessary.

Production or shooting stage Director Interprets script into personal vision and decides overall "look" with the production designer and cinematographer; directs actors and the action while shooting.

Cinematographer Directs camera placement, lens, and lighting choices; sometimes operates camera but usually has a camera crew.

Gaffer Head electrician; rigs and places lights according to cinematographer's instructions.

Boom operator Holds microphone just off camera to get clearest recording of dialogue. On a small-scale production, may also be the mixer, responsible for recording the sound.

Grip Moves props as necessary; dolly grip pushes camera dolly.

Script supervisor Makes detailed notes of every take so that actors and props can be repositioned for later retakes and maintain continuity.

Postproduction or assembly stage Editor Arranges the best footage that has been shot into a coherent, effective order.

Sound editor Mixes separate recordings of dialogue, sound effects, and music into final audio track.

What Makes a Film "Good"?

In some respects, as with any art form, quality is in the eye of the beholder. One cannot impose a strict set of standards, as if checking items off of a laundry list, when it comes to evaluating a movie (or a painting, a song, a television show, or any other form of art for that matter). The role of film criticism is to examine a film on various levels, interpret meanings that the filmmakers are conveying, and evaluate their effectiveness before arriving at a conclusion as to whether others will find it worthwhile. A simple film reviewer, on the other hand, rather than analyzing a film to any depth, will more likely rely on personal impressions, opinions, and superficial observations to declare whether a film is "good" or "bad" or somewhere in between.

When critiquing a film, we can establish a loose system of benchmarks, or criteria, that go beyond the film's ability to keep the audience in their seats for two hours. We will work toward identifying that system as we move forward, but its basic components are these: The film must be true to itself and reveal a greater truth about us. This is achieved in many ways: Are the film's messages relatable, not just in terms of the specific story it is telling, but as part of larger themes as well? For instance, in Do the Right Thing, director Spike Lee examines racism in a way that is both entertaining and moving. He uses the racial struggles of one block in one neighborhood to comment on the greater struggles of all people who deal with prejudice. Another aspect to consider is if the emotions that a film portrays are genuine. That is, does the film earn its emotional impact? With the incredible array of tools at his or her disposal, any reasonably competent director can make an audience cry. But the truly moving film makes us feel the emotions we are watching more deeply so that we are not just observing but truly feeling. (Do the Right Thing is again a good example of this experience.)

Still shot from Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront picturing a group of men gathered around a table and staring at a paper.

Courtesy Everett Collection

Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront is a complex film. It asks viewers to make their own "truth test." It's an explicit call for workers to stand up to corrupt unions—to tell the truth—yet it's also a political allegory and a representative film from an "auteur" director's career, as we'll see in later chapters.

Throughout this text, we will refer to this measure as the truth test (see Table 1.2). This test may sound as if it limits good movies to overtly serious fare, such as The Seventh Seal or There Will Be Blood, but it does not. Both are, indeed, great films; however, nothing could be further from the truth. Movies as varied as Animal House, This Is Spinal Tap, Halloween, The Godfather films (at least the first two), Toy Story, and Argo are also great if you measure them with this test. No subject matter, no form, no genre (type) of film disqualifies it from satisfying the truth test. It all lies in the creation and execution of the film, no matter what it is about or how it is presented. Before you use the truth test when you see a movie, ask yourself three simple questions adapted from late 18th/early 19th-century poet and playwright Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's autobiography, which form the basis of virtually all critical reaction to theater, film, literature, or creative art:

•What is the film trying to say?

•How well does the film say it?

•Was it worth saying?

(Adapted from Goethe, 1811/1897)

Then, once you have answered those questions, implement the truth test:

•Was the film true to itself?

•Did the film reveal a greater truth about us as human beings?

Table 1.2 Quick criteria for evaluating a film (or any work of art)

Truth test Is the film true to itself? Does the film explore some deep truth about human nature?

Goethe's questions What is the filmmaker trying to say? How well was it said? Was it worth saying?

It is important to be able to evaluate, now more than ever, what makes a film good. As we will see later, due to easy access to movie-making technology and the ability to share movies online, more people are making more films in more ways than ever before. That doesn't exactly improve the ratio of good to bad films, but it does at least offer more opportunity and variety, both for those who make films and for those who watch and love them. With the onslaught of new product (as movies are referred to in the industry), it is important to remember to focus not only on the method of delivery—how one sees a film, whether it be at a multiplex (a building housing several individual theaters), in a living room, in a home theater, or on a computer or iPhone—but on the film itself. It's not necessarily how we're seeing something that is crucial, in other words, but what we're seeing. This text will help you first know what to look for when you are watching a movie; then, you can apply the truth test to determine for yourself what movies are good.

You Try It: The Truth Test

1.Think of your favorite movie, either current or all-time. Then think about why you like it, and jot down some ideas:

•Is it funny? Is it scary? Did it make you happy to watch it? Could you relate to the characters?

•Now think about why it made you feel those things, and how. What caused you to laugh, or to shriek in terror?

•Did you react primarily to the action in the plot, to issues the story treats, to the characters, to performances of specific actors, to the technical style of the filmmaking, or to some combination of these?

2.Using the same favorite film, apply Goethe's three questions and finally the truth test. Jot down your responses to each of the questions.

•What is the film trying to say?

•How well does the film say it?

•Was it worth saying?

•Was the film true to itself? Is it consistent in how it delivers its message, whatever that message may be? (It need not be a "serious" message.)

•Does the film reveal a bigger truth about us, about the people watching it? Again, this need not be limited to serious dramas; comedies often use humor to reveal deeper truths about us.

1.3 What Did We Just See? Beginning to Evaluate Films

How do we experience movies? We watch them, is the shortest, simplest answer. We watch a series of moving images put together in a way that is designed to entertain us. The first films were such miracles of then-modern technology that they tried to do little else. Audiences who saw The Kiss in 1896—a 47-second movie of a man and woman kissing, as the title promises, in a reenactment of a brief scene from a popular stage comedy called The Widow Jones—were stunned. Why? Because they were seeing something they had never seen before, images moving in a lifelike fashion.

Yet even then, some looked for deeper meaning. One person wrote of The Kiss: "The spectacle of the prolonged pasturing on each other's lips was beastly enough in life size on the stage, but magnified to gargantuan proportions and repeated three times over it is absolutely disgusting" (Hollingshead, 2010). And thus, a film critic was born.

Thinking It Through: Watching on a Deeper Level

Many people simply watch a movie. We work hard, we have pressure in our lives, we seek outlets to help us relax. Certain movies are perfect for this. Turn off your brain as a comedy like Bridesmaids or Ted begins, and you can relax and let life's pressures slip away. While this experience may be enjoyable, it's also the cinematic equivalent of junk food. It's fun every now and then, but a steady diet of it isn't satisfying. What is more satisfying is seeking deeper meaning in the movies we see.

The good news is that finding deeper meaning like this doesn't take an advanced degree, or years of study on the part of a moviegoer. One doesn't pass an entrance exam to join the ranks of film critic. However, it does require effort, effort that is made easier when one knows more about how films are made, what films have influenced today's directors, and, more importantly, how to look for what the movies are trying to say. The best films not only hold up to such increased scrutiny; they are even more enjoyable in light of it. The first and foremost requirement on the part of the people watching is a love of film and a willingness to think about what they are seeing.

"Film criticism requires nothing but an interesting sensibility," John Podhoretz writes in The Weekly Standard in his essay "Thinking on Film." Podhoretz continues:

The more self-consciously educated one is in the field—by which I mean the more obscure the storehouse of cinematic knowledge a critic has—the less likely it is that one will have anything interesting to say to an ordinary person who isn't all that interested in the condition of Finnish cinema. (2009)

Indeed, all that thoughtful consideration of a movie requires, in truth, is the willingness to pay a little bit more attention to what the film is trying to say, the ways it is saying it, and the recognition that film is a unique art form. This is not to say that it is any better or any worse than other expressions of art. It is merely different. And it does require a viewer's devoted attention, or key elements may be missed. To begin evaluating a film you've seen, recall Goethe's three simple questions you should ask yourself about any art, and our truth test for movies.

Books vs. Movies: And the Winner Is . . .

We often hear the complaint, when a well-loved book is made into a movie, that the book was much better. Often this is indeed the case. However, in classic films like The Godfather or Jaws, skilled filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg took lesser novels and turned them into brilliant movies.

Still shot from Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory picturing a dragon-shaped boat rowing down a river of chocolate.

©Warner Brothers/Courtesy Everett Collection

Scene from the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. An over-the top stylist like Tim Burton brings movie magic to the Willy Wonka story in his adaptation of Roald Dahl's children's book of the same name.

In Peter Benchley's novel Jaws, for instance, subplots involving many of the characters distract from what is the heart of the story: the search for the shark. Spielberg eliminated many of these subplots (and allowed a character who dies in the novel to survive in the film), streamlining the action without sacrificing character development, which he establishes in other ways, such as the bonding scene in the boat when the three men drink and tell stories. Most critics consider the film to be much more successful than the novel.

In reality, however, the comparison between books and the movies made from them doesn't matter. It's the proverbial comparison between apples and oranges. A movie is not a book. Nor is it music, even if it is a documentary about music like Woodstock or Martin Scorsese's classic The Last Waltz. It is its own form of art, with its own set of values, rewards, and challenges. It must stand on its own and should be evaluated as a unique entity.

There is something about experiencing a thing visually that makes the impression lasting. This is not to say that a great scene in a novel isn't memorable—it is. But film is a visual medium, unlike a book. With a film we actually see the story presented to us, unfolding in what appears to be real time. And seeing it with an audience gives an added dimension missing from the solitary experience of reading (or watching a movie alone on video). As writer Bret Stalcup observes:

Here we have one of the powerful potentials of film, the ability to stimulate prolonged and varied emotional responses. . . . I may move from humor to fear to poignancy to outrage to sadness within the limits of the duration of the film, and in some cases I may still feel emotional after-effects once the film is through. Studies show that sharing experiences that involve mutual emotional responses can result in an increased sense of bonding—perhaps this is why movies are a staple of traditional dating rituals, by creating effects that would otherwise be had over a much longer span of time. (Stalcup, 2010)

Elements of a Film: More Than Story Content

Indeed, more than any other medium, movies require a combination of many different forms of art to produce a successful whole. The screenwriter provides the story, the director shapes it to his or her own vision, the actors put their imprints on it, the cinematographer captures the work on film (or, increasingly, some digital medium), the composer punctuates what we see on screen with music. Behind the scenes, hundreds more specialists offer their contributions. If any one fails, the film cannot succeed as a whole.

Still shot of Leonardo DiCaprio talking with Martin Scorsese on the set of Shutter Island.

©Paramount/courtesy Everett Collection

Still from the set of Shutter Island. Scorsese's insistence on working within the confines of Medfield State Hospital in Shutter Island inspired Leonardo DiCaprio's memorable performance.

But when they do succeed, they offer a combination of elements that provide a shared satisfaction that no other medium can offer. Often the different pieces work together so seamlessly that we don't even think of them as separate ingredients; this happens in the best films, where we see only the whole and forget the parts.

It's fine and sometimes instructive to know the technical names of all of the things that go into a movie, but it's not essential. On some level, you can enjoy a great performance like that of Sam Rockwell in Moon without knowing how the director managed to put both of the characters he plays in the same scenes together (though it's hard not to wonder). You can marvel at the beauty and sweep of a movie like Shutter Island without knowing how meticulously director Martin Scorsese arranged the lights on the set, or placed the actors just so, to achieve his desired result—giving the film a creepy look that still manages to be gorgeous, albeit in a consistently threatening way. And no one really has to know what it is that the key grip does.

However, when we do become aware of and consider these things—these elements of how a film is made and what the director and cast are trying to impart to us—our enjoyment will grow even richer. The point isn't to define terms so much as it is to simply look at what's going on in a movie—everything that's going on. It's something like tasting a good meal and trying to identify all of the combinations of flavors that make it delicious—or, in the case of a bad meal (or a bad film), why they don't quite add up. True film lovers don't just watch a movie; they try to really see it.

And seeing is the advantage film enjoys over other forms of art—seeing the images and characters move, interact, fight, sing, dance. Film is not a static form. Movement is key (it's why they're called "movies")—seeing that movement is what transfixes us.

The Future of Film Critics

One final aspect of the current film landscape may shape the media literacy surrounding the film medium while offering more opportunity to increase the discussion of it. Thanks to a troubled economy, newspapers and magazines around the country have made cutbacks that include laying off dozens of film critics. Why should a local newspaper, if it is part of a national chain, spend money paying a local critic if it can use the services of a wire-service critic, a critic who reviews the latest blockbuster and whose review runs in every newspaper that is part of the same ownership?

In his blog, the late Roger Ebert, who was perhaps the most famous film critic in the United States, explains:

Why do we need critics? A good friend of mine in a very big city was once told by his editor that the critic should "reflect the taste of the readers." My friend said, "Does that mean the food critic should love McDonald's?" The editor: "Absolutely." I don't believe readers buy a newspaper to read variations on the Ed McMahon line, "You are correct, sir!" A newspaper film critic should encourage critical thinking, introduce new developments, consider the local scene, look beyond the weekend fanboy specials, be a weatherman on social trends, bring in a larger context, teach, inform, amuse, inspire, be heartened, be outraged. (Ebert, 2008)

In other words, the local critic should be part of a community discussion. Think of a review—a professional critic's, yours, your mother's, or your best friend's—not as the final word on the matter, but merely a starting point. Few pursuits are more enjoyable, after all, than arguing the relative merits of the latest release. A review should be what kicks off that conversation.

If there is a positive side to the thinning of the ranks of film critics, it is this: That conversation is now open to more people than ever, thanks to the Internet. Anyone can create a blog, literally in a matter of seconds, and post their thoughts on a movie (or anything else) for all the world to see. Moderated Web forums and unmoderated "usenet" groups provide ongoing online discussions about film and other topics. In a Weekly Standard essay, Podhoretz looks on what he sees as the bright side of this changing critic landscape:

There aren't fewer voices, but many, many more. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of working critics on the Web in all fields. There are book bloggers and film bloggers and dance bloggers and music bloggers. The only difference between them and the professionals is that they don't get paid, except for a few dollars a week from Google ads.

That, he argues, might be a good thing:

This deprofessionalization is probably the best thing that could have happened to the field. . . . Amateurism in the best sense will lead to some very interesting work by people whose primary motivation is simply to express themselves in relation to the work they're seeing—a purer critical impulse than the one that comes with collecting a paycheck along the way. (Podhoretz, 2009)

Podhoretz does not take into account that professional critics must submit their work to editors, that they must adhere to a set of standards, whereas bloggers have more of a free rein. Bloggers, meanwhile, argue that they do have editors—everyone who reads their posts, and comments on them, making their writing more interactive and part of a more authentic back-and-forth conversation. Whether that is true is open to debate. What's not debatable is that the conversation continues to change due to a combination of factors, including a troubled economy that affects traditional media outlets such as newspapers and better, more accessible technology.

The well-informed movie fan can be a big part of this conversation. That is what we will accomplish here—helping you discover the language of film, increase your knowledge, and evaluate what makes a film good—so that you not only enjoy the experience of going to the movies more, but also are able to share that knowledge and enthusiasm. Perhaps you'll even become a film critic, whether professionally or just by blogging.

1.4 Going to the Movies: From Theaters to Netflix to iPhones

Movies are made to be watched, obviously. But they are also usually intended to be watched in certain ways, and seeing a movie in a way other than what it was designed for can greatly affect dramatic impact, enjoyment, and even the understanding of it. Major factors such as uninterrupted presentation vs. serialized viewing (e.g., two parts with an intermission, planned frequent commercial interruptions, or multiple episodes spread over days or weeks), the size of the screen and image resolution (with visibility of fine details or only basic shapes), and the presence or lack of a large audience (with expected group reactions or merely individual responses) are all taken into consideration by filmmakers when planning the story structure, camera techniques, and editing styles (all of which we'll be examining in future chapters).

The Theater Experience

For generations, audiences saw movies in one place: the theater. More than just a place to watch films, the local movie house was also a place for communal gathering, where a group of people could share the experience of what they saw on the screen, talk about it, enjoy it, and debate it. In addition, audiences were able to enjoy concessions as they watched—popcorn, candy, and soft drinks, which would prove so popular with audiences that they would eventually become the biggest source of revenue for theater owners.

Photograph of a boy in front of a silent movie house.

Lewis Wickes Hine/courtesy Everett Collection

Early silent films played to large audiences of immigrants. Escaping from crowded tenements, they could enjoy the stories for a nickel, even if some couldn't read the intertitles.

Imagine for a moment the startling cultural shift this new movie house created in people's lives when it first appeared in the early years of the 20th century. At five cents per ticket, movie houses quickly became known as "nickelodeons." Live theater existed, of course, on Broadway and in smaller regional venues, but costs for production and touring required ticket prices beyond what average working people could afford. Films, however, just had to be produced once, and copies could be sent anywhere, so as movie theaters opened across the country, there was an affordable form of social entertainment that one didn't have to live in New York to enjoy. The movie theater became a destination point that provided not only a sense of community but also a form of entertainment that almost seemed magical when it first arrived. A trip to the movies is something we take for granted today, but when motion pictures first arrived, they instigated a seismic shift in the cultural landscape.

Simply put, movies were a technological advancement that changed lives. This advancement would hardly be the last in the entertainment industry. The death knell has been sounded many times for the live theater, which survived despite films, and then for films in theaters as well as live theatrical productions. In the late 1920s, competition from radio helped hasten the use of sound technology for films, and in the early 1950s television was a major blow against the film industry when it became widely available in homes. Why leave the house for entertainment when it was being beamed into your living room—for free? Indeed, television had some effect on box-office numbers, but film again survived, after introducing new technological enhancements like wide screen, stereo sound, more frequent use of color, and more adult-oriented stories not available on television. The first of several periodic crazes for 3-D (which seems to revive briefly about every 30 years, although the latest trend has survived longer than previous spurts of 3-D movies) was an attempt to draw viewers away from their TV sets and into the theaters for something they could not get at home. The introduction of color TV, uncensored cable, widescreen stereo HDTV, and lately even 3-D televisions has neutralized those aspects as strictly theatrical attractions, however.

Methods of distribution have changed over the history of filmmaking, as we'll discuss soon (see Table 1.3 for current distribution and viewing options). Ease of access to movies at home, too, would threaten the popularity of going to a theater to see movies. Yet despite the fact that a simple click on a computer keyboard will deliver a movie to your laptop instantaneously—and the fact that home-theater systems can rival and sometimes outclass what's available at the local multiplex—people still go to movies. Going to the movies always has been and still is an act of sharing a moment that simply can't be replicated anywhere else.

Stage and Screen: Moving Pictures

By the end of the 1920s, many music venues were converted into cinemas. Silent cinema enjoyed its heyday. See behind the scenes of Shooting Stars.

<span id="w8646" class="werd">&nbsp;</span>

Critical Thinking Questions

1.Why would audience members in the 1920s flock to the theaters to see even low quality moving pictures or those filled with technical mistakes?

2.Why was Director Asquith's film Shooting Stars (1928) so popular with audiences?

Table 1.3 Movie distribution and viewing options

Movie theater (traditional 35mm film and HD digital cinema) Most desirable by filmmakers for dramatic impact of presentation but often least convenient for some viewers.

Cable and satellite/broadcast TV Broadcast and some cable showings. Interrupted by advertisements and/or edited for time or content.

Home video (DVD and Blu-ray) Home theater systems can now rival many multiplex theaters.

Internet/computer monitor Quick and easy video rentals, sometimes streaming direct to TV sets.

Phone and portable media Most convenient for some, but least desired by filmmakers.

The Home Video Revolution

By the late 1940s and 1950s, television allowed people to see events live as they were happening as well as to watch movies from the comfort of their own homes, albeit on very small screens with a low-resolution image. Movies survived the advent of television, as we noted above. Next came videocassette recorders, what Vincent Canby of the New York Times called the "VCR revolution." When the VCR (short for videocassette recorder, a once-popular machine for recording or watching films at home using reels of magnetic tape inside plastic cassettes) appeared in the late 1970s and 1980s, it became a device that would change the game in two important ways. First, it allowed film fans to stay at home and watch the film of their choice whenever they wanted (assuming the title was available). Second, audiences were no longer limited to current releases, or the films playing in theaters at the moment. Instead, the only limits were availability and your memory. Remember how much you liked Bonnie and Clyde but hadn't seen it since it came out? No problem. A quick trip to the video store and you could be watching Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway robbing banks before dinner. In 1985, Canby likened the popularity of VCRs to the arrival of television decades prior. He notes that this jump in cinematic technology "eventually swept away the huge, grandly ornate movie palaces of the 1920s and left in their place small, utterly functional, faceless theaters" (Canby, 1985).

Canby predicted a dire future not only for movie theaters but also for the film industry itself, envisioning and encouraging a VCR-inspired rethinking of the way movies are made. "There must follow not only an alteration in the kinds of movies produced but…an alteration in the way we perceive them…In reality, these alterations are well along—the VCR revolution is simply accelerating the process" (Canby, 1985).

Canby was wrong about VCRs ruining the movie theater industry (they ultimately helped revive and broaden it), but his call to action is still relevant today. Even though VCRs and, later, DVD players, online streaming services, and on-demand cable choices have affected the film business, it clearly remains a thriving industry. If multiplexes are no longer springing up like weeds in every city and town, few are closing their doors. Videotapes, DVDs, and Blu-rays often supplement trips to the theater, instead of replace them, and at the same time increase demand for more movies.

DVDs

Theaters long ago stopped being the only place to go to watch a movie. It's been a long time since anyone thought watching a film at home was anything approaching revolutionary; it is, in fact, a preferred way for many people. This has been especially true since the advanced features, greater convenience, and higher quality of DVDs (digital versatile discs) made VHS tapes obsolete by the early 2000s. Indeed, theatrical releases might even be considered high-profile advance advertising for the studios' home video releases. More recent developments, however, may become somewhat more game changing.

Still shot of a doll's head from Steven Soderbergh's Bubble.

©Magnolia Pictures/courtesy Everett Collection

Scene from the movie Bubble. Steven Soderbergh is an artist whose first hit, Sex, Lies, and Videotape, was a distinctly low-budget personal film. Even as he has gone on to make blockbusters such as the Ocean's series, he continues to experiment with low-budget idiosyncratic films such as Bubble.

Typically there is lag time between when a film is released in theaters and when it appears for purchase and rental on DVD or Blu-ray (which uses a narrower blue laser beam to read data instead of the wider red laser of DVDs, thus allowing more data to be stored in a smaller space). With hugely profitable films, the time between can stretch to months or sometimes years. (By the same token, some cheaply made films, or films that are expected to perform poorly at the box office, are released directly to video, if at all.)

There have been experiments with eliminating the gap in time between when a film is released in theaters and when it is released on video altogether. In 2006, Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh released Bubble, a 73-minute film, in a few theaters, on cable television, and, four days later, on DVD. However, the box-office returns on Bubble were poor, as were DVD sales. While studios continue to discuss the possibilities of shortening the time between a movie's theatrical release and its appearance in home video formats, the concept remains very much a work in progress, with no major studios repeating the experiment. One explanation for this is that a theatrical release always gives a certain legitimacy to any video release; it tends to increase sales and rentals over titles that go directly to video, so major studios have been justifiably wary.

Bringing It All Back Home: How Netflix, iTunes, and Mobile Devices Affect Movies

There are other changes, however, that have taken hold more quickly. At the beginning of the 21st century, technology has improved to the point that it is now possible to watch a blockbuster film on a hand-held electronic device—Transformers on an iPod, for example. (Ironically, this trend toward individual viewing of smaller images harkens back to Thomas Edison's Kinetoscopes of 1894, before the days of movie projectors, when people stuck a penny into an arcade machine that let them watch a movie through a peephole magnifying glass focused on the film itself.)

Through its iTunes platform, Apple offers movies for sale and rent. Internet Movie Database (IMDb), the popular Internet site that lists casts, release dates, and more for movies, also makes movies available for rental. Netflix, which allows customers to rent films by mail, thus avoiding trips to the video store, has moved increasingly toward its streaming service, which makes films and television series available for rental online. Like Netflix, Hulu also offers a streaming service; many episodes of television shows are available the day after they air, making the need to watch them when they are shown (as well as the need to record them) obsolete. Amazon rents movies online and sometimes includes free instant access to a streaming copy for customers who don't want to wait until the higher-quality DVD or Blu-ray they've purchased arrives.

Increasingly, producers and directors are taking distribution matters into their own hands. At the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, Michael Mohan, who wrote and directed the independent film One Too Many Mornings, made his movie available for download for $10 before he'd sold the rights; for $35, he included a poster and a piece of the couch used in the film. He also offered the rights to the film on his website for $100,000. "Forget a bidding war," he told the New York Times. "Whoever gets to their laptop the fastest gets it." Mohan believed that having the film available online wouldn't kill its chances to be seen in theaters. "There's no reason it can't go to theaters after it's already available online," he told the Times. "I know a lot of theater owners aren't into it, but maybe somebody out there is that progressive."

What Mohan discusses is an intriguing possibility, but one that so far has not been put into practice in any meaningful way for audiences.

An interesting question in the filmmaking industry today is whether the availability of films on smaller and smaller screens will affect the way mainstream movies are made. In a theatrical release, a great part of the enjoyment is in the attention to detail on the screen. Skilled directors make use not only of the central images in each frame, but of the surrounding elements as well. When a screen is the size of a matchbox, many of the smaller details are lost. Does this loss of detail decrease the enjoyment of the person watching it? Does the smaller image viewed in an uncontrolled environment increase the potential for distraction by outside sources, thus making the content harder to follow? Some filmmakers, like director David Lynch, whose credits include Eraserhead and Blue Velvet, believe so. In one of the DVD bonus features for his film Inland Empire, Lynch explains:

If you're playing the movie on a telephone you will never in a trillion years experience the film. You'll think you have experienced it. But you'll be cheated. It's such a sadness, that you think you've seen a film on your . . . telephone. Get real. (Lynch, 2006)

But other filmmakers embrace the technique and the possibility of expanding their audience to less traditional platforms. Some television producers for popular shows such as The Office create "webisodes," or episodes of the show that appear online only. Web sites like FunnyOrDie.com create original short films that can be seen only online (and often include big-name actors as well).

Full-length movies created solely for the Internet are more difficult to come by, but it seems inevitable that they, too, will follow. Making full-length movies available online could be a good thing because it is another creative outlet. If these movies are to be effective, though, not just commercially but artistically, the people making them will have to accommodate the smaller screen size and different viewing experiences of the audience that is downloading to mobile devices with small screens. This will be important in the same way that it was important for filmmakers when planning the structure, camera composition, and pacing of movies made for television instead of for theatrical exhibition.

Trends Toward Home Theater Systems and Larger Theater Screens

Just as new technology has allowed people to watch movies piecemeal and at their leisure on hand-held devices such as telephones, iPads, and laptop computers, it has also more or less leveled the playing field between commercial theaters and affordable home theater displays. Television has always had a smaller, lower-quality image than film projected in a theater. High-definition television narrowed that difference in the early 2000s, and the conversion of most American theaters to digital projectors in 2013 meant that owners of medium to high-end home video monitors or projectors could now experience nearly identical picture quality to what their local multiplexes were able to provide. More and more average consumers are installing larger and better home video and audio systems (including high-definition 3-D displays and multi-channel stereo surround sound) in dedicated home theater rooms. This removes presentation quality as a major reason for seeing a movie in a commercial theater, especially when high-quality Blu-ray editions are released for sale within several months of a film's theatrical premiere at roughly the price of a couple of theater tickets. Not only that, but at home the movie can be paused for bathroom or snack breaks, and scenes played over again to clarify confusing sections before continuing, perhaps with optional subtitles turned on to make clear what the actors really said.

Theaters still offer the socialization and large group experience that adds so much to the impact of comedies and action-adventure films, but that may not be enough for all viewers. To draw audiences away from their homes, just as in the 1950s with the competition from television, some theaters are installing ever-larger screens and providing special-format presentations such as the extra-large IMAX film, whose image is about eight to sixteen times sharper than standard 35mm film or the best digital projection systems.

Viewers have more options than ever to see movies. Yet it is essential to remember that, no matter the format in which we watch a movie, the most important thing is the content. However cool it might be to watch Up in the Air on an iPod while actually flying in an airplane, the experience would mean nothing after five minutes if the film wasn't any good, as verified by our truth test.

Movie Viewing Experiences Over the Decades: A Timeline

1.5 The Current Film Landscape

Almost since films have been made, there have been big-budget blockbusters as well as independently made low-budget films. But the majority of films come from a middle ground as far as cost goes. The development of cheaper equipment, coupled with a discovery of non-mainstream niche audiences and self-distribution, has combined to put even more emphasis on the distinction between very expensive movies and those with tiny budgets. Meanwhile, improved technology has given audiences more places to see the films, both large and small.

Blockbuster vs. Do-It-Yourself

Still shot of Abigail Breslin in Little Miss Sunshine.

©Fox Searchlight/courtesy of Everett Collection

Little Miss Sunshine was made for a modest $8 million. This was a first film for the directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards and won for Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor.

With the improvement of technology, which has put better equipment in the hands of more people, it has never been easier to physically make a movie than it is today. Distributing the movie—that is, getting a studio to buy it so that it can be put into theaters—on the other hand, is often more difficult. Financial difficulties have forced the closing of smaller studios that had been the best option for filmmakers with a lot of ideas but little money. This does not mean that smaller films aren't still being made. Woody Allen, for example, continues to make a film each year, but he keeps his production costs low enough that limited releases can satisfy his small niche of devoted fans and still gross enough after foreign and video sales that he can make another film. As a film like (500) Days of Summer proves, by both critical acclaim and a decent showing at the box office (the place where tickets are sold), it is still possible for low-budget films to make an impact.

It does mean, however, that it's harder for worthy movies to be distributed, even at what is known as an art house, a theater that shows low-budget and challenging films (the ones that aren't advertised in commercials during football games). Many studios are simply not spending the money to buy as many films, and this leaves all of us the poorer. Even theater managers must often fight to obtain copies of small-scale limited-release films they would like to play, including critically lauded films such as Jeff Nichols's Mud, Dustin Hoffman's Quartet, and Joss Whedon's 2013 version of Much Ado About Nothing. Most of these independent films may never be shown outside of major cities and must find their audiences in their video releases after gaining recognition by submission to film festivals and accumulating some reviews in print or online. Some independently made films, such as Clay Eide's noir thriller Dead Dogs (1999), shot on 35mm film in black and white, may achieve acclaim at a variety of film festivals yet never get either theatrical or video distribution. Others, like Caspian Tredwell-Owen's police thriller Profile of a Killer (2012) and Sam Fischer's multi-generational war drama Memorial Day (2011), were shot on HD video and intended to be straight-to-video productions, yet a single successful theatrical screening of each led to additional self-distributed city-by-city playdates that grew into unexpected theatrical runs the year after each was made (even if extremely limited by Hollywood standards), before their ultimate video releases. Ramaa Mosley's comic parable The Brass Teapot premiered at a festival in 2012, had additional festival showings and a very limited theatrical release in April of 2013, and by June of 2013 had come out on video, where it would likely receive its greatest audience.

At the same time that small studios are cutting back, the larger studios spend hundreds of millions in the hopes of coming up with a blockbuster (a film that makes a lot of money at the box office). It's a form of high-stakes gambling: The studios risk a lot of money in movies they believe will be blockbusters, in the hopes of getting a lot back in return. (See Table 1.4 for approximate budgets of different types of movies.) There is nothing new about this; in the 1910s D. W. Griffith, one of the most important early film directors, made films whose budgets were huge at the time. Yet they often made that money back and then some, the controversial The Birth of a Nation (1915) being the foremost example.

The Birth of a Nation was the first truly influential event film, a film promoted as something outside of the ordinary, often shown at higher ticket prices, and a movie that people went out of their way to see so they could discuss the experience with all their friends. This practice continues today, with movies like Avatar and Titanic. Studios now bet hundreds of millions of dollars that a film will be so popular, and make so much money, that it will earn a fortune, despite the cost of making it.

Table 1.4 Scales of feature-length movie productions and approximate budget ranges*

"Do-it-yourself"

Independent

Small studio

Major studio

"Blockbuster"

$100–$100,000 $100,000–$15,000,000 $15,000,000–$50,000,000 $50,000,000–$100,000,000 $100,000,000–$300,000,000

Midget Zombie Takeover ($2,000) Spring Breakers ($5 million)

Don Jon ($6 million)

Jobs ($12 million)

Nebraska ($12 million)

The Place Beyond the Pines ($15 million) The Evil Dead ($17 million)

Kick-Ass 2 ($28 million)

Lee Daniels' The Butler ($30 million)

We're the Millers ($37 million)

Grudge Match ($40 million) Captain Phillips ($55 million)

Despicable Me 2 ($76 million)

Grownups 2 ($80 million)

A Good Day to Die Hard ($92 million)

Gravity ($100 million) The Hunger Games: Catching Fire ($130 million)

Star Trek Into Darkness ($190 million)

Iron Man 3 ($200 million)

Oz the Great and Powerful ($215 million)

Man of Steel ($225 million)

*Examples of 2013 releases, figures from Boxofficemojo.com

Big-Budget Films: Avatar and Titanic

A recent example of a big-budget film is Avatar. James Cameron wrote and directed the movie, which is set in a future where humans have gone to the planet Pandora, in hopes of mining a rare mineral that will help solve an energy crisis on Earth. Jake Sully, played by the actor Sam Worthington, is a Marine who has lost the use of his legs. Like others on the planet, with technology he is able to inhabit the bodies, or avatars, of creatures made from the DNA of humans and the native population of Pandora, the Na'vi.

Frogman Courtney Brown towing the 55-foot model of the Titanic on the set of James Cameron's Titanic.

©Associated Film Distribution/courtesy Everett Collection

A big-budget film like Titanic requires hundreds of technicians and years of work. For this film, a complete studio was built from the ground up in Baja California. The entire film was shot there.

During the course of the movie, Jake falls in love with the Na'vi way of life, as well as with a Na'vi woman. He turns his back on the humans, eventually becoming a Na'vi himself. Although the plot was criticized for not being particularly original—films such as The New World and especially Dances With Wolves have told a similar story (and various elements of these are "borrowed" from numerous other films of the past)—the look of the film was remarkable, and Avatar was promoted as an event film that many expected would revolutionize the industry. Cameron created new technology to merge live-action footage with scenes created on computers; seen in 3-D, the effect was especially impressive. Critics swooned, and audiences flocked to theaters to see it, again and again, paying ticket surcharges to see it in 3-D.

Avatar cost somewhere between $250 million and $500 million to make, yet weeks after its release, it had already grossed more than $1 billion worldwide for the Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation (Gray, 2010). While the risk to create such an expensive movie was indeed huge, the risk was also not taken without consideration of the outcome. Cameron had a proven track record; before Avatar was Titanic, the highest-grossing film of all time. Cameron clearly knew how to make popular movies, so the studio felt confident that Avatar would be a blockbuster.

And, as with Titanic, Cameron spent years developing new technology for Avatar, creating special effects that had never been seen in films before. This gave Twentieth Century-Fox more confidence that Cameron could produce a moneymaking film, no matter how much it cost up front. Yet even then, it took a complex series of negotiations to get such an expensive film made.

Small-Budget Films: Paranormal Activity

At the other end of the financial spectrum are do-it-yourself projects, such as Paranormal Activity. A horror film with a budget of only $15,000—truly an absurdly small amount in modern terms, when much more than that is spent on feeding the cast and crew of larger movies—it became a phenomenon more profitable than Avatar, and with success much more surprising.

Paranormal Activity is set in a San Diego home where a young couple lives. Katie, played by Katie Featherston, has been bothered at various times in her life by what seem to be unhappy spirits. Her boyfriend, Micah (Micah Sloat), buys a video camera in an attempt to document the disturbances, which have grown more frequent. Micah taunts both Katie and whatever presence is at work in the home.

Still shot from Paranormal Activity 4 picturing actress Kathryn Newton looking toward the camera, with the silhouette of a young boy in front of an open door in the background.

©Paramount Pictures/courtesy Everett Collection

Scene from the movie Paranormal Activity 4. Paranormal Activity is an example of a film that was successful due to a Web-based viral campaign. Electronic word-of-mouth brought in audiences eager to see what all the buzz was about. The film spawned three sequels, including Paranormal Activity 4, shown here.

The incidents grow increasingly frequent and violent and are captured by Micah's camera. He sets it up in their bedroom, and during the night Katie is seen getting up and standing by the bed for hours, staring at Micah. In the morning, she has no recollection of doing so.

Eventually the camera will capture the tragic end of the story, without comment from the characters. It gives the already scary story an even more frightening conclusion.

In the case of Paranormal Activity, writer and director Oren Peli used his lack of a budget to his advantage. The entire story takes place inside and outside the house in which Micah and Katie live—which was in fact Peli's real home. Instead of giving the movie a cheap feel, it instead makes it claustrophobic, adding to the tension the characters, and the audience, feel. The inclusion of few other characters has the same effect; we feel as if we are stuck in the situation with Micah and Katie.

Peli builds the film completely from the "footage" Micah captures on his camera. Thus, Peli doesn't have to use more expensive cameras; the homemade look of what the audience sees fits perfectly with the story. Indeed, Peli constructs the story as if it were footage found by the San Diego police. He even includes a card on screen at the end of the film detailing what happened to Micah and Katie (and goes so far as to thank their "parents" for allowing them use of the footage).

Despite the film's tiny budget, it grossed more than $107 million at the box office, making it the most profitable movie in history. The Blair Witch Project, Open Water, 28 Days Later, and other small-scale movies have become popular hits despite being shot on consumer video equipment.

Avatar and Paranormal Activity were both released in the same year, 2009, serving as examples of both the blockbuster film and the do-it-yourself movie surviving, and even thriving, at the same time.

Still shot from the film Norma Rae, picturing actress Sally Field holding up a sign that reads "union".

© 20th Century Fox Film Corp. All rights reserved. Courtesy Everett Collection

Scene from the movie Norma Rae. Films about union struggles are rare. Norma Rae, starring Sally Field, is a fictional account of a struggle for workers' rights in a textile mill.

Making Money vs. Making a Statement

Blockbuster movies are designed from the outset to make large profits to justify their large budgets, but every commercial movie is put into production with the intent of making money, so its producers can afford to make more movies. As a result, producers, studios, and investors with the greatest financial risk may force filmmakers to make compromises in order to appeal to the largest number of people and avoid offending target audiences or other influential groups. When budgets are kept low enough, however, filmmakers can try riskier material and still hope to earn back their investments with smaller target audiences. Sometimes directors, cast, and crew will accept lower salaries when they feel strongly about the social issues tackled by a potentially controversial screenplay, just so the film can be made. And in the case of the personally financed "no-budget" independent movies that today's digital technology has made possible (with out-of-pocket expenses equivalent to perhaps a few weeks' vacation), filmmakers can treat any subjects they want in any ways they want. Such filmmakers neither need nor expect to make large profits, and they consider themselves successful merely to break even. They may even post their movies online for free viewing, hoping more people will see them that way. While this sort of movie may be on a smaller scale with less polish and rougher edges than Hollywood or more ambitious independent productions, it can afford an out-of-the-mainstream approach in both content and style that larger budgets tend to inhibit. The lower the budget of a film, the more honest a personal statement its story may be by the filmmaker, and the smaller the niche audience needs to be to cover the costs of production. As we'll see in upcoming chapters, however, larger-budgeted and studio-financed movies can also be made with an intent to influence or comment on society, even while simultaneously attempting to appeal to large audiences.

Summary and Resources

Chapter Summary

Movies have been a popular medium since their invention well over a century ago. They remain so today, with audiences spending more money than ever before on tickets. At the same time, film is also a unique art form that demands a specific set of skills for the viewer to fully appreciate its impact.

It is possible simply to watch a film and enjoy it, but the more satisfying experience is to watch it for meaning. One way to judge the quality of a movie is to apply the truth test, which asks whether a movie is true to itself and whether it tells a greater truth about us. Not all films pass this test, but the ones that do are typically the best.

As we begin to think about films in these terms, we enjoy them more. One need not be a professional critic to seek deeper meaning. One needs only to see movies with an open and inquisitive mind, looking for what the players involved in creating a film are trying to impart to us.

Although the story may be what captures our interest, today's multiple options for viewing films can also affect how well we are able to notice everything the filmmakers are trying to show us. As film has evolved, so have the formats in which we can enjoy this medium. Once a cultural center of a community, the commercial movie theater is now just one option for viewing a movie. Affordable technology has permitted home theater setups that rival or surpass the quality of many theaters. The Internet has made viewing films on personal devices possible. It has also made the evaluation and criticism of them more democratic and widespread.

Technology has also made it easier to make a movie on a minimal budget, allowing more films to be made on a wider variety of subjects, with a wide range of technical resources and competence, designed for a wide range of viewing situations. This in turn requires that we take a film's ambitions and limitations into consideration when deciding how successfully we think it achieved its goals. We must understand that big-budget films can succeed in ways that small-budget films simply cannot compete with, but that small-budget films may succeed in areas that large-budget films often overlook or intentionally avoid.

Questions to Ask Yourself

•Do you more frequently watch films straight through from beginning to end, or do you take pauses from time to time? How does this affect your ability to follow the story and become involved in the characters?

•How often do you watch movies in a theatrical setting, compared with TV, Internet, or portable devices? How does experiencing the same film in a theater, on TV (or computer), or on a small portable device affect how you enjoy it?

•How does the presence of big-name stars and expensive special effects in a film determine your decision to watch it, and your enjoyment of it, compared with a smaller budget film with no major stars or elaborate digital effects?

You Try It

1.Several movies are available for free on online services such as Hulu.com and Movieclips. com. Visit one of these sites and watch at least part of a film that you have also seen in the theater. If you saw Avatar in theaters, you could watch the following brief scene from the film by going to www.movieclips.com (http://www.movieclips.com/) and searching "Avatar":

Hyperlinked photo of actress Zoe Saldana in the film Avatar. (http://www.movieclips.com/)

©20th Century Fox. All rights reserved/Courtesy Everett Collection

"When You Are Ready" (http://www.movieclips.com)

To view this clip with closed captioning, please visit https://www.youtube.com/user/movieclips (https://www.youtube.com/user/movieclips) and use the searchbar to search for "When You Are Ready."

Compare the experience of watching the movie on a computer or laptop with watching it in a theater. Which method of viewing do you find more satisfying? Which one is less satisfying? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each method of viewing?

2.Visit boxofficemojo.com and search the titles for a film that you have seen that cost more than $100 million to make (a film's budget is often listed with the other information available about it). Then find a film that you've seen that cost less than $20 million to make. Compare the two movies, not on the basis of plot, direction, or acting, but in terms of the production values—basically, how elaborate the sets are, how professional the film looks. Which film did you enjoy more? Why? Was the more expensive film or the cheaper one more satisfying?

3.See a film with a friend. Or think about a film you and a friend have seen recently. Email each other with a list of five things you liked about the movie and five things that you didn't like. Compare your lists and see which elements you agree on and which you disagree on. What were your differences? Why?

Key Terms

Click on each key term to see the definition.

art house (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

A movie theater that shows "art" films, including independents, foreign films, revivals of classics, and non-mainstream movies. Art house movies are typically made on small budgets and tend to be serious, thoughtful fare.

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Certain standards and elements that are criteria for measuring something.

blockbuster (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

Sometimes used to describe a film that costs a lot to make; more often it describes a film that makes a lot of money at the box office.

Blu-ray (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

A more advanced technological improvement of the DVD, using a narrower blue laser beam to read data instead of the wider red laser, thus allowing more data to be stored in a smaller space. Blu-ray discs are almost exclusively associated with a high-definition picture that is about six times sharper than standard DVDs and approaches the quality of 35mm film prints.

box office (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

The booth where movie tickets are sold, or the amount of money a film makes through ticket sales, with the gross being the amount people spent on tickets, and the earnings being the share of the ticket sales paid by theaters back to the film distributor. (Typically the earnings are about half the gross by the end of a film's theatrical run.)

DVD (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

Digital versatile disc, sometimes known as digital video disc, an optical storage medium most frequently used for storing movies. DVDs store digital information on a disc that is smaller than a videotape, yet has a higher-quality picture and allows for more flexibility in searching for scenes. They also can provide direct random access through menus, alternate audio tracks, and additional data storage.

event film (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

A film promoted as something outside of the ordinary.

film criticism (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

The practice of critiquing and evaluating a film's quality, usually by writing about it, though some critics use television and radio as well. Serious film criticism deals more with how effectively the filmmakers communicate their ideas (and what those ideas are), whereas a simple film review concentrates on the reviewer's personal impressions, observations, and opinions. Criticism does not just evaluate the film as a stand-alone work but also places it into the larger context of film as a whole, and of society.

media literacy (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

The study and understanding of various forms of media and how they relate to our lives.

medium (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

A form of communication (plural: media).

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A large theater with several screens, allowing many different movies to be shown at the same time with only one staff of employees and the reduced operating costs of a single building.

truth test (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

A way of measuring a film's effectiveness, asking whether it is true to itself and reveals larger truths about us.

VCR (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

Short for videocassette recorder, a once-popular machine for recording or watching films at home using reels of magnetic tape inside plastic cassettes. Sometimes misleadingly simplified to "video," the most popular format was VHS, with Beta, U-matic, and several others also gaining some significant use.

wire-service critic (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

A critic who reviews films for a service such as the Associated Press, which then distributes the review to its member newspapers, radio stations, websites, or other media outlets.

Storytelling

3

Still from Adaptation picturing Nicholas Cage staring at a typewriter.

Still from Adaptation (2002). ©Columbia/courtesy Everett Collection

As a writer, you know, you should have this little voice inside of you saying, "Tell the truth. . . . Reveal a few secrets in here."

—Quentin Tarantino

Learning Objectives

After reading this chapter, you should be able to do the following:

•Recognize the role that story plays in a film and appreciate the job of the writer, who brings the story to life.

•Differentiate between story and plot.

•Identify narrative elements in film.

•Describe the literary devices used to tell stories and how symbolism can enhance content.

•Explain how storytelling elements involve and engage the audience in a film.

3.1 Films Start With Stories

When we think of making movies, we think of directors yelling, "Action!" We think of the "Clack!" of a clapboard, followed by an actor laughing, crying, punching out the bad guy, or leaping from a moving train. What we rarely think of, or at least don't think of enough, is where the movie really begins. And that is in the same place as a novel or short story: with a writer staring at a blank page (or computer screen). Throughout history, when someone came up with a story idea, he or she then had to decide on some way to communicate it to others. In the days of Homer, that meant simply reciting or singing the story, and passing it along to others verbally. Later came the written word and live theatrical performances. Today, a filmmaker can tell stories in any manner of ways to far greater numbers of people, who may experience films as part of a group or privately. Yet if the person who writes the story doesn't have an interesting story to tell, the method and the size of the audience matter little—the story will eventually die.

As we discussed in Chapter 1, film is by definition a visual medium, so we naturally gravitate first toward the look of a movie and then toward the sound and the action. It's why we're in the theater, after all. David Trottier, in his instructional manual The Screenwriter's Bible, explains:

Still from E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial picturing a boy facing an alien.

Courtesy Everett Collection

Scene from the movie E. T. The Extra-Terrestrial. Melissa Mathison, the screenwriter for E.T., first established her reputation for appealing family pictures with her screenplay for The Black Stallion (1979).

A movie is primarily visual. Yes, it will contain dialogue. It may even deal with internal things. But it is primarily a visual medium that requires visual writing. . . . A screenplay will focus on the visual aspects of the scene. (Trottier, 1998)

The screenplay has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is the mind of someone who wants nothing more than to tell a story. After all, without a story, Indiana Jones doesn't recover the Ark of the Covenant, E.T. never phones home, and Batman never catches the Joker. Every movie, from the biggest, loudest, most explosive blockbuster to the most intimate independent film, begins with a story. It can come from almost anywhere. Sometimes the writer dreams it up out of thin air. Other times he or she adapts it from a novel, a play, or even a television show (as with 21 Jump Street or The Flintstones, just to name two), or simply creates a story based on a previous hit film (a remake, a "reboot," a sequel, or a prequel). Hollywood loves presold properties that already have audience name recognition, good will, and successful financial track records. For example, The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is based on a popular ride at Disneyland. Other movies, such as the Resident Evil and Lara Croft Tomb Raider series, are inspired by video games. Still others might be inspired by recent news headlines, current social issues, a famous public figure, a personal experience, or an anecdote overheard in an elevator. There is no requirement for the source of an idea. The only requirement is that it exists and can be developed as a visual story.

Successful Teamwork in Filmmaking: On Screenwriting

William Friedkin, Oliver Stone, George Lucas, Tim Burton, Adrian Lyne, and Barry Levinson offer perspectives on scripts, screenwriting, the role of the actor and the need to tell a story.

<span id="w28063" class="werd">&nbsp;</span>

Critical Thinking Questions

1.How is a movie script different from other pieces of writing, such as a novel or piece of literature? How is it similar?

2.What is director William Friedkin implying when he makes the statement that if 50 directors receive the exact same script, it will result in 50 very different movies?

The story at its simplest level is the idea about what happens, who does it, and all the reasons behind everything. The writer then chooses key characters and events, and arranges them into the order in which the audience will experience them. In other words, the writer turns the story, or sequence of events, into a plot, which retells the story in a certain way. The writer then writes it down in a screenplay format or script that the filmmakers use as a blueprint to make the movie. Sometimes the finished product is a one-man show, directed by the same person who wrote the screenplay. More often, the script tends to be a collaboration among several writers, producers, the director, and even the actors, and the finished movie is heavily shaped by the cinematographer, editor, and other creative individuals.

However the film finally arrives on screen, it starts with the writer. A film always starts with a writer's story, and the story always starts with words on a page. In this chapter, we will look at the different ways those stories are told, the tools their authors use to tell them, and how these tools shape how the audience reacts to a film.

In film, screenwriters are integral to the telling of the story. The chances of success for a film are far greater when it starts with a good story. Good or bad, however, you can't start a movie without one. As Charlie Kaufman, who has written scripts for films such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (for which he won an Academy Award for Best Screenplay), Being John Malkovich, and Adaptation, puts it:

The only person who's the complete inventor of the movie is the writer. The director's interpreting material. Actors are interpreting material. Everybody's interpreting the script. And I'm not saying that the writer is more important than the director or other people, but I'm saying the writer needs to be given his or her due in the process. (Sciretta, 2008a, para. 15)

That's easier said than done. Film can be considered more of a director's medium, whereas television is thought of as being driven by writers, who typically have a producer's credit. (Television shows have directors, too, of course, but they are generally not as well known, nor do they wield as much power.) Writing scripts is not an exact science. There are many movies, such as Slumdog Millionaire, that are almost entirely dependent upon storytelling if they are to be successful. The director of Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle, was doubtful, trusting only in the track record of the screenwriter:

They sent the scripts, . . . they said it's about Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and I said, "Why would I want to make a film about that?" But I saw his name was on it, Simon Beaufoy, who wrote The Full Monty. . . . And seriously, by page 20, I was in. I just knew. (Sciretta, 2008b, para. 9)

Still from Slumdog Millionaire picturing a crowd of boys.

©Fox Searchlight/courtesy Everett Collection

Scene from the movie Slumdog Millionaire, which is set in India. Adaptation is a special case of screenwriting. Translating from television to film and from the United States to India demands cross-cultural sensitivity and a clear understanding of differences in narrative expectations.

In part because of Danny Boyle's trusting in the writer's story, the movie was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won eight, including Best Adapted Screenplay. An eclectic filmmaker, moving easily from drug-fueled drama (Trainspotting) to horror (28 Days Later, arguably the film that reignited the zombie craze) to orchestrating the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremonies, Boyle obviously knows what it is he looks for in a potential film. Each director's process is his or her own, but Boyle clearly was comfortable with what he found in the Slumdog script.

As we noted, the telling of the story is usually a collaborative effort between the screenwriter and numerous other members of the creative team—all of which we will cover in later chapters. And many decisions on how a story is seen on the screen are made for business reasons rather than artistic or creative reasons. But for now we will focus on the screenwriter's words on the page as we discuss the telling of the story. To more fully understand the creative process, it is first necessary to learn more about the tools one uses to tell a story.

3.2 Narrative Elements in Film

Still from The Misfits picturing Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable holding hands.

Courtesy Everett Collection

The first act of The Misfits, written by the playwright Arthur Miller, establishes Reno, Nevada, as the site of an "end-of-an-era" western—and a clash of values as Marilyn Monroe (left) embodies sentiment and Clark Gable (right) personifies the cowboy's code. Such classic films more often than not employ a classic structure. Who is the hero? What is the challenge?

A film is not a book, and vice versa. They are distinct art forms, each with its own language. As with any medium in which writing is used, they share certain elements. These elements are used in different ways, of course, but their function is the same: to tell a story in the most compelling way possible.

It is instructive to look at those elements, the tools that the filmmaker uses, so that we can better understand the effect that he or she is after. Sometimes these are found in the script, the creation of the screenwriter as he or she is coming up with the story. Other times, the director uses cinematic techniques to achieve the desired effect, what might be called "cinematic language" rather than written or spoken language. Often it is a combination of such artists working together to create a powerful image, a moving scene, or a lasting impression that enriches audience enjoyment.

The following list is not meant to be exhaustive—some of the best filmmakers don't just play with existing forms; they create their own, breaking whatever molds exist. But the terms listed are prevalent enough in films that they serve as good examples of the devices that writers and directors have at their disposal to tell an engaging story.

Narrative Structure

Put most simply, a narrative is a story. But in practical terms, that definition is far too limited to encompass the wide variety of styles that are used to tell stories in film. Any screenwriter must consider all the material from his or her story (characters, events, settings, etc.) and select the most significant elements. Then the writer organizes them into a plot, structuring the narrative in a way that will engage the audience without confusing them, and without becoming too predictable. Almost every other literary element is contained within the narrative structure; it is the basic building block of any story. "Classic Hollywood narrative," as it has come to be called, arranges the plot into a standard, easy-to-follow pattern. Films that depart from that pattern can be more challenging and sometimes extremely difficult to follow for audiences accustomed to the traditional Hollywood formulas that have influenced filmmakers around the world for the past century. Audiences like enough plot twists and variations so that stories do not become too predictable, but they may become confused and annoyed if stories are too unpredictable or presented in a manner that is too unfamiliar.

Narrative Elements in Film: Plot Twists

In this video highlighting plot twists, Professor James Meetze discusses the film Psycho; CEO of LightIron Post Production Michael Cioni discusses the film Primal Fear; and director Mark Eaton disucsses the film The Sixth Sense.

Critical Thinking Questions

1.How do the speakers in this video define a plot twist?

2.Why are the plot twists discussed in this video effective? How are directors able to surprise their audiences with plot twists?

Acts

Of the films you've seen most recently, recall the sorts of things that happen at the very beginning and at the very end and how those things differ from what happens throughout the middle section. Virtually any movie can be broken down into a recognizable structure of three to five acts (see Figure 3.1). The basic three-act structure taught in many screenwriting classes can be described simply as beginning–middle–end. Of course, it's a bit more complex than that. The beginning is the "set-up" of the story, often about the first quarter to third of the movie. For instance, in The Sound of Music, during the first act we meet Maria (Julie Andrews) in the convent, where it is established that she does not fit in. The middle depicts the "confrontation" or conflict between the characters, typically half or more of the movie. In The Sound of Music, Maria marries Captain Von Trapp (Christopher Plummer), takes charge of the children, and proves to be a nurturing and inspiring wife and mother. The ending is the "payoff" that resolves the conflict and problems set up at the beginning, usually within the final quarter or less of the movie. Again in The Sound of Music, the Von Trapp family is able to escape Nazi soldiers, thanks to Maria's love and teaching of music to the family. A classic five-act structure may be more formally organized into fairly equally divided sections of exposition–development–crisis–climax–resolution, with varying periods of rising and falling action, tension, and release. The resolution, or end section after the climax, is sometimes referred to as the denouement (pronounced "dey-noo-mahn"). This structure was especially common in the early years of feature-length films, which patterned their dramatic construction after the popular stage plays of the time. Other scripts may rearrange these same elements into a different order or jump back and forth among them, more like a novel might do, but even scripts designed with a three-act structure still contain all the elements of the five-act structure.

Figure 3.1: Basic dramatic plot structure (three-act and five-act)

Exposition typically continues throughout the plot, with small crises and subclimaxes providing additional development as action continues to rise to the main climax, followed by resolution and possibly one or more subclimaxes.

A hypothetical dramatic plot structure plotted as a line graph on a chart that has been divided into three segments: beginning, middle, and end. The plotted line shows rising and falling action in both five-act and three-act structures. The five-act structure includes exposition in the beginning; development, crisis, and climax in the middle; and resolution in the end. The three-act structure includes setup in the beginning, confrontation in the middle, and payoff in the end.

Plot and Story

The story extends far beyond what we see in the plot, and many factors in the characters' lives are merely implied or barely referred to in the plot. The plot consists of carefully chosen elements from the story that the writer feels the viewer needs to know and has arranged into a consciously designed order, leaving out some things and possibly repeating other things more than once. If story is what happens in a movie, the plot is how it happens. Think of the story as a city and plot as the streets that lead you from one point to another; in fact, the process of putting together a script is sometimes called "plotting" the story. But an engagingly plotted narrative is not merely a string of random events. The events must have some sort of cause-and-effect relationship that the viewer can recognize or may be challenged to figure out. We'll discuss the narrative elements of "character" and "theme" shortly, but it's useful to know that some stories are more about the action and the plotting itself, while others emphasize characters or thematic ideas. The most effective have a pleasing balance of emphasis. Many plots begin with some sort of call to action that inspires a character (usually the hero) to take action and by the end of the film come to some sort of self-realization that reinforces the ideas the writer and director want audience members to come away with. Frequently, stories incorporate archetypes that explore themes about human nature or culture that have been treated in similar ways for decades, centuries, or even millennia.

Typically, when we describe what happens in a movie, we are recounting the plot, not the story. If we describe the story in Avatar, for instance, we may say that it is about a man who learns that the ways of the native people on a foreign planet are superior to those of humans, and he comes to adopt them. If we describe the plot, however, we offer much more detail: Avatar is about a man, a former soldier, who has been crippled in battle. He becomes part of a scientific experiment in which he travels to a foreign planet and, by means of technology, is able to put his consciousness into the body of a creature that is part human and part alien. He is meant to get to know the native people, called the Na'vi, and befriend them, so that the humans can mine a rare mineral to sustain life on Earth. However, once he learns the ways of the Na'vi, he falls in love and decides that their peaceful ways are in fact superior to his own. He leads the Na'vi in a resistance fight against the humans in an effort to prevent humans from driving them out of their homes. At the end of the story, through a process with religious overtones, he becomes one of the Na'vi.

Point of View

Black-and-white still from Sunset Boulevard, picturing a group of men.

Courtesy Everett Collection

Sunset Boulevard is told in flashback from the point of view of the dead narrator. This is a perfect device for this film-noir classic.

The plot may be presented from different perspectives, known as the film's point of view. One type is considered a restricted point of view, which is letting the audience see only what one character or group of characters experiences and learn things as the characters do. Classic detective films such as Out of the Past or Lady in the Lake give the audience the viewpoint of the detective. Films such as Deliverance or The Birds follow a small group of characters so that one or more of that group is always in each scene. The plot may also use an omniscient (all-knowing) point of view that jumps back and forth among various actions, letting the audience know more than the characters throughout the film, such as in the Pirates of the Caribbean films. Often a plot uses a mixed point of view, sometimes revealing story information only when a character learns it, and other times giving the audience information before a character learns it. North by Northwest is an excellent example of this. Sometimes a plot has a voice-over narrator who explains something or gives a character's personal opinions to the audience. Sometimes a narrator, especially if it's a character in the story, may be giving the audience false information about the story, leading to a later surprise plot twist (as in Fight Club).

Narrative Elements: Point of View

In this video highlighting point of view, Professor Cy Kuckenbaker discusses the film A Separation; Film Department Head Greg Durbin discusses the film Election; and CEO of LightIron Post Production Michael Cioni discusses the film Courage Under Fire.

Critical Thinking Questions

1.In filmmaking, how is point of view used to tell the story?

2.What can point of view reveal about the characters in a film?

Time: Story Time vs. Plot Time

Of all the ways of telling a story, manipulation of time may be the most popular way to shake things up. In films such as Citizen Kane, regarded by many as the greatest film ever made, filmmakers pay no heed to the order in which events would occur in real time (see Figure 3.2 for the distinction between story time vs. plot time). The plot of Kane begins at the end of the story, essentially; Charles Foster Kane, the subject of the film, dies, uttering the single word "Rosebud." But what does that mean? We will spend the next couple of hours finding out, as friends and acquaintances of Kane recall his life to a reporter. Orson Welles, the director, co-writer, and star, flits back and forth from the present to the past with little regard to the order in which events occurred. Instead, he trusts in both himself and his audience, believing they will piece events together through the course of the film. (We viewers do find out what Rosebud is in the final frames of the film, but the characters in the story do not, and its true meaning is left to the audience's interpretation.)

Chronological Order

Most movies follow a standard chronological order, which means that events in the movie's plot follow the same order (although not necessarily the same duration) in which they would occur in the story, the order of real time. All the President's Men is an example of this: The story begins with reporter Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) of The Washington Post covering a hearing for what seems to be a routine break-in at the Watergate hotel. Director Alan J. Pakula follows the story in roughly the timeline in which it happened: Woodward teams with Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman), and together, under the stern guidance of editor Ben Bradlee (Jason Robards) and with the help of the mysterious source known only as Deep Throat (Hal Holbrook), they uncover a conspiracy tied to the White House, eventually leading to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

Figure 3.2: Understanding story time and plot time

While plot time may span years, and story time decades or centuries, all of these elements must be conveyed within the span of the film time, which is often only one to three hours long.

An illustration of the difference between story time, plot time, and film time. Story time often consists of years, decades, generations, or centuries, and includes everything that ever happened to all of the characters, even if not dramatized on screen. Plot time includes the parts that are dramatized on screen, usually spanning the length of days, weeks, or even years. Film time is the actual run time of a film, typically from one to three hours. However, film time also extends beyond the story and plot with credit titles, and film content usually includes other elements not part of the story world, such as background mood music, superimposed titles, voiceover narrators who are not characters in the story, metaphors, and cutaways.

Still from Waltz With Bashir picturing a man standing at the side of a road, near a car with an open door.

©Sony Pictures Classics/Courtesy Everett Collection

Waltz With Bashir is an animated feature that tells the story of an Israeli soldier lost in dreams and memories of the 1982 war in Lebanon. While history unfolds linearly, in this film our understanding of the past is shown to be a much more complicated temporal experience.

Even though the narrative may be straightforward when it is in chronological order, that doesn't mean the film is in any way uninteresting. On the contrary, Pakula takes what can be boring, routine work—boiled down to its essence, this is basically the story of two young reporters interviewing people and writing stories about what they find—and turns it into a suspenseful, even thrilling tale of intrigue. The storytelling may be conventional, but the film is not constrained by the use of narrative form. Pakula heightens the drama by stressing confrontation between the reporters and their sources, as well as their editors, while constantly reminding the audience of the stakes: The president of the United States may be involved in a massive cover-up.

Non-Linear Order

Perhaps the best-known modern use of an unconventional narrative is found in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, which unfolds in non-linear order. That is, it does not move from one event to the next in chronological order, like All the President's Men in the previous example; instead, it moves from the present to the future to the past, and so on. The film contains three separate but occasionally interrelated stories (with other, shorter segments between), and it jumps back and forth in time. Hit man Vincent Vega (John Travolta), for instance, appears in the first part of the film, is killed in the second, and is alive again in the third.

The time-shifting device was considered both radical and upsetting at the time of Pulp Fiction's release in 1994, and the reappearance of the Vega character was jarring to audiences at first. They asked themselves how a dead man could show up on screen again. However, the headlong manner in which Tarantino launches into each segment, and the pure excitement of his storytelling, proved so compelling that most viewers were willing to simply go where the story took them, enjoying the ride and being willing to sort out the chronological details later (the story ultimately makes the timeline unimportant). Originally, producers feared that the unconventional structure would scare off audiences or that it would make the movie too hard to follow, but the film became a huge hit.

Still from Synecdoche picturing two men and a woman.

©Sony Pictures Classics/Courtesy Everett Collection

Synecdoche, New York is a labyrinthine film—stories within stories. The title is a clue to the complexity. In one sense it is a pun on Schenectady, the setting of the film. The word "synecdoche" (si'nekdə kē) means a part that stands for the whole.

Other films use less traditional narrative forms. A film such as Memento (2000), for instance, flouts conventional narrative flow. The story, about a man (Guy Pearce) who cannot form new memories after a blow to the head and is trying to find out who killed his wife, unfolds in black-and-white sequences that represent chronological order, and color sequences that unfold in reverse chronological order. The main plot (in color) begins with the murder, and soon jumps to a scene that happened shortly before and goes to a point with a very brief overlap of what we've already seen, to establish the backwards pattern. The main character soon starts to relate another story he remembers, bit by bit, and his story within the story plays out in chronological order in black and white. Eventually the timelines meet. Director Christopher Nolan expertly manipulates the two stories, resulting in a film that challenges audience members but also rewards them for their effort. Nolan employed an even more disjointed nonlinear narrative in his first feature, Following (1998), withholding key information from the audience until various moments to keep them unclear about motivations, with a final payoff and bigger revelation at the very end. Nolan's "Batman" films likewise present story information out of order in the plot, but in a more conventional flashback form.

The French "new wave" film Last Year at Marienbad (1961) challenges the audience to construct the story from what they see and hear in the plot. A man describes certain events repeatedly while we watch them play out to his voice-over narration, yet each time the scene is slightly different. Viewers must decipher what is actually happening, what has happened in the past that one character or the other is remembering, what is happening in the future that the characters are planning to do, and what is merely being made up by the main character as he tries to convince a woman that they'd had an affair the previous year. The director's concept of time is that whatever a person is thinking (whether it is past, present, or future) is always in the present, because the act of thinking about it is in the present—a very unconventional and potentially confusing approach to telling a story that tries to recreate the mental process on film for an audience. Charlie Kaufman's screenplays, such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Synecdoche, New York, similarly attempt to imitate the sometimes random or stream-of-consciousness and highly subjective thought process rather than present a conventional (and more predictable) plot. In Tom Tykwer's Run Lola Run (1998), after an opening segment that establishes the premise, we seem to see the same 20-minute plot play over and over again, three times in a row, but each repetition has slight yet significant differences and a different ending. The film also makes use of numerous flashbacks and flash-forwards in time, as well as displaying character thoughts that are more or less "outside" of the plot's time and space.

These films are just a few examples of the different ways in which the narrative format of a film's time can differ, and how filmmakers can use both chronological order, shifting between past and present, and non-linear forms to tell a story. Each method of manipulating time to tell a story shows that following a certain method is not as important as telling the story in the manner best suited to tell it.

Narrative Elements in Film: Non-Linear Sequence

In this video highlighting non-linear sequence, Professor James Meetze and CEO of LightIron Post Production Michael Cioni discuss the film Memento; and Professor Cy Kuckenbaker discusses the film Pulp Fiction.

Critical Thinking Questions

1.Why would a director choose to tell a story in a non-linear way?

2.Recall a film you have watched that used non-linear sequence to tell a story. Would the film have had the same effect had it been told linearly? Why or why not?

Setting (Place and Period)

Still from McCabe and Mrs. Miller picturing a man on a horse.

Courtesy Everett Collection

Scene from the movie McCabe and Mrs. Miller. Vilmos Zsigmond, the cinematographer on McCabe and Mrs. Miller, decided to expose the film to a weak light before filming began. This created a unique palette that reinforced our sense of being in a distinct time and place in this unromantic view of the frontier.

Some stories are universal and could take place in any culture, time period, or location. Other stories are tied closely to the time and place in which they happen, known as the setting. The setting can reinforce various themes the writer and filmmaker want to explore. Stories about emotional isolation, for example, may be set entirely or in part in wilderness locations, in remote or abandoned outposts, or within a single apartment or hotel room. Stories of community support may be set in small towns, and stories of social violence may be set in large cities. Sometimes the setting becomes a key element in the film's conflict and symbolic meaning (both of which will be discussed shortly). In Cast Away (2000), for example, much of the film is set on a deserted island where one man must find ways to survive. The deserted island draws attention to the conflict of the man against his environment while also presenting a symbolic contrast with his once-hectic career in the civilized world. In Walkabout (1971), the beautiful but desolate Australian Outback is simultaneously an antagonist to three main characters struggling to survive, a metaphor for emotional desolation, and a symbolic natural contrast to modern civilization.

Setting is an important part of any story, and it can often be the defining factor, as in films such as Cast Away and Walkabout. Because setting is so important to a story, remakes of movies that change the setting—the location or the era of a story—may need additional heavy modifications to make them work logically in the different setting, even though the basic plot and character elements are nearly identical. Think of the numerous free adaptations of Shakespeare plays, such as Romeo and Juliet into West Side Story, Othello into O, The Taming of the Shrew into Ten Things I Hate About You, Twelfth Night into She's the Man, King Lear into Jean-Luc Godard's King Lear, or Ran, or A Thousand Acres, and the list goes on. Other films may fit quite easily into a variety of settings. Japanese director Akira Kurosawa loved American Westerns and adapted the familiar plot of a good bad man deciding to clean up a corrupt town into a popular samurai film, Yojimbo (1961), starring Toshiro Mifune. The film was such an international hit that Italian director Sergio Leone took the same characters and plot, and even many camera angles, for his hit Western A Fistful of Dollars (1964) with Clint Eastwood. A generation later, Walter Hill remade it as an American gangster film starring Bruce Willis under the title Last Man Standing (1996). In this instance, the transfer of the same plot into multiple settings shows that strong characters, conflict, and action are the keys to a successful story.

Conflict and Character

In almost every case, conflict is essential to the plot of any story. Or, as the writer Robert Penn Warren famously said, "To put it bluntly: No conflict, no story" (1943). And to have conflict, there must be one or more characters trying to overcome obstacles to achieve some goal. A protagonist is the main character, the one the audience is supposed to identify with or at least care for, typically a story's hero. An antagonist is a character whose actions or goals get in the way of the protagonist's actions, typically a story's villain. For example, Luke Skywalker is the protagonist in the original Star Wars trilogy, and Darth Vader is the antagonist. Complex stories, especially in films made after World War II, may blur the differences so that the protagonist is more of an "antihero," much more flawed and perhaps not even likable, such as in stories of alienated, rebellious youth, and especially in crime dramas depicting detectives who are just as ruthless and morally questionable as the criminals they're tracking down. On the other hand, a villain/antagonist may have admirable qualities and even be liked by the audience, as in the Western 3:10 to Yuma (2007 and 1957). Interestingly, in the three Star Wars "prequels," Darth Vader as Anakin Skywalker becomes the somewhat flawed, confused protagonist, growing increasingly more troubled in each episode, until he develops into the antagonist.

Some characters in a story may be predictable, shallow, and flat, often called two-dimensional, familiar types merely going through the actions of the plot. This is especially true in plots that focus on action more than character, sometimes called plot-driven stories. Examples include the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films, most horror films, and most big-budget action blockbusters. Films that focus on characters as much as or more than the action are likely to have a greater number of characters who can be called rounded or three-dimensional, with possibly conflicting character traits that make their actions unpredictable at any given time. Realistic characters may have a certain degree of predictability, yet have a depth to their personalities that might make them react to conflict in different ways at different times. And their reactions may change throughout the plot based on their experiences, showing a growth in their character. This uncertainty makes them interesting to a viewer, partly because unexpected reactions by characters can change the direction of a plot from what at first might have seemed predictable. Strong characters can drive the story's conflict and action, rather than serve as pawns whose moves are preordained by the plot. 3:10 to Yuma, Moonrise Kingdom, Boy, and The Kid With a Bike are a few films whose characters are critical to the direction taken by the action, rather than the other way around. Some films may actually be centered on the characters to such a degree that there is very little physical, external action. The action may be mostly psychological, in the minds of the characters, dealing with their internal struggles, personal issues, and emotional growth. Examples include Quartet (2012), The Way, Tokyo Sonata, Napoleon Dynamite, Girl With a Pearl Earring, Metropolitan, and Persona.

External Conflict

Virtually every film has a protagonist who is at odds with some sort of antagonist, human or otherwise. Indeed, not many people would be interested in seeing a film in which the characters never had to overcome some sort of difficulty or conflict. In films, there are different types of conflict that storytellers use in different ways. An external conflict is the most obvious form: Two sides are in conflict, whether it be the English and the French in Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of William Shakespeare's Henry V, the United States vs. the Germans in Saving Private Ryan, the Sharks vs. the Jets in West Side Story, or the Greeks vs. the Trojans in Troy. In other films, it may be a single protagonist against a single antagonist, whether a police officer vs. a criminal, a young man or woman vs. a serial killer, two rivals in a sport, rivals in love, or countless other combinations. Sometimes nature can be the antagonist, as in films like 127 Hours, Into the Wild, The Perfect Storm, Twister, and The White Hell of Piz Palu, in which the protagonist must struggle to survive a perilous situation in the wilderness or extreme weather conditions. The conflict can also be personal, as with Mr. Fox and the farmers in Fantastic Mr. Fox or the virtuous Eli (Denzel Washington) vs. the evil Carnegie (Gary Oldman) in The Book of Eli.

Internal Conflict

There is also internal conflict, in which a character must choose how to act. In Casablanca, Rick (Humphrey Bogart) decides he must let Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), the true love of his life, escape Casablanca even though he knows that he will never see her again. Despite this, he makes her leave, famously telling her that if she does not, she will regret it, "maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life" (Warren et al., 1942). In Troy, besides the obvious external conflict, various characters struggle with their own senses of personal honor vs. duty, and loyalty to family, friends, or lovers vs. national loyalty. Internal conflicts can become major themes of a film.

Still from Hamlet picturing Hamlet and Ophelia holding one another.

©Sony Pictures/courtesy Everett Collection

Scene from the 1996 version of Hamlet. Who is more conflicted than Hamlet? "To be or not to be . . . ." Kenneth Branagh, pictured here with Kate Winslet in the role of Ophelia, brings a contemporary sensibility to his portrayal of the prince.

While many films may employ both external and internal conflicts, some can shift the focus from one type of conflict to the other, changing viewer expectations and making the outcome less predictable. Götz Spielmann's Revanche (2008) opens with some enigmatic scenes in a rural setting and quickly moves to a plot about Alex, an Austrian ex-con, and Tamara, his Ukrainian prostitute girlfriend, struggling against the oppressive lives they lead in the sordid urban underworld of Vienna and the mobster who runs the brothel where they both work. Alex plans to rob a small bank of just enough money to clear their sizable debts and start a new life in Spain. Meanwhile, a parallel plot thread follows an honest cop struggling to balance pressures from his home life and job. So far it sounds like the makings of a standard crime thriller. However, shortly before the film's halfway mark, there is an abrupt shift in tone, style, and type of conflict. During the bank robbery, things unexpectedly go terribly wrong, and Alex decides to hide out on the remote farm where his grandfather lives alone. The nearest neighbor, Susanne, who often checks in on the grandfather, just happens to be the wife of Robert, the policeman who was on the scene at the bank holdup and who has become traumatized by his experience. The remainder of the film is a gripping double character study of the inner torments of both Alex and Robert, and Susanne's relationship with both, quietly building to a climax that will result in some sense of closure for all of them, either revenge or redemption or an odd combination of both. The film's symbolic shift in settings from urban to rural parallels its shift from external to internal conflict and helps intensify its powerful universal themes of love, loss, guilt, fate, personal responsibility, and human decency.

3.3 Literary Elements in Film

Film as a medium may be noted for how it uses image and sound (which we'll examine in greater detail later), but it is still a form of literature. As such, it often uses many of the same expressive elements that can be found in traditional written literature, even if they are conveyed visually or aurally rather than through words (which films are also fully capable of using). Like a book or a poem, the narrative's actions and characters may have deeper levels of meaning, and we may use some of the same tools used for literary analysis to analyze films.

Themes and Symbolism

Still from Jaws picturing a shark with its mouth open.

Courtesy Everett Collection

Scene from the movie Jaws. When is a shark not just a shark? When it represents all of our fears about the many different kinds of danger that lie just beneath the surface of our lives.

A theme is an idea, subject, or topic of some kind that pervades the plot. It is not so much what "happens," but rather what the movie is "about," part of the meaning you are expected to take away from the work. Films may have more than one theme. When watching, discussing, or writing about films, people often want to tell others what the film means to them. Some people will recognize certain themes easily, but disregard or not even notice themes that other viewers may concentrate on. A symbol is simply something that stands for something else; using symbols is known as symbolism. But, as with most definitions, it has many more meanings when put into practice. Symbolism helps a writer or filmmaker express various themes. In films, that usually means the use of a visual symbol; something that we see on screen may have a literal meaning—a white picket fence is indeed a wooden fence painted white—but may have a more symbolic meaning as well. In the case of the fence, it might suggest the traditional American home, the haven of the nuclear family, and thus safety, security, and stability. On the other hand, it could imply that certain characters are "fenced in" and have limited freedoms. Interpreting symbolic content depends heavily upon context. Characters, settings, props, words, and sounds can all be used symbolically. Even colors, lighting, and camera angles can be used symbolically. When a significant element with symbolic content is repeated throughout a film (or from film to film), it is referred to as a motif. See Table 3.1 for some common types of symbolism used in film.

Table 3.1 Examples of symbolic elements used in film

Black hats or dark clothing, dark lighting, inclement weather Bad characters, dangerous or sad situations

White hats or light clothing, bright lighting, sunny weather Good characters, happy situations

Water Purity, rebirth, spiritual cleansing

Nature and rural settings, small towns Idyllic, peaceful life, innocence

Hectic cities, nightclubs, urban crime Secular and sinful human nature

Guns, cigars, tall or long structures/props Male sexuality, masculinity

Clocks Time deadlines, brevity of human life

Pastel or monochrome costumes Bland, conservative characters

Brightly colored or multicolored costumes Vibrant or flamboyant characters

Black-and-White Symbolism

A simplistic example of black-and-white symbolism can be found in stereotyped old Hollywood westerns, in which a white 10-gallon hat on a cowboy often symbolizes that he is the good guy, as in the case of the Lone Ranger. A black hat means the opposite; the man wearing it is a bad guy. For a more contemporary example, look to the Star Wars films. It is no accident that Darth Vader, the epitome of evil, is dressed completely in black. Nor is it on a whim that Luke Skywalker, who will become a hero, dresses in white. Black and white as symbols of good and evil are here, as in westerns, used as shortcuts, allowing the filmmaker to immediately establish the motives of the characters on first glance.

Why, then, does a heroic figure such as Batman dress all in black, as well? Is Batman not, in the simplest terms, a good guy? Yes—in the simplest terms—he is. But Batman, especially as imagined by Christopher Nolan (the director of Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises) is a much more complex figure than the traditional comic-book hero. Bruce Wayne, Batman's secret identity, is a millionaire tortured by tragedy—he saw his parents killed—and doubt. He is wracked by guilt, over both his parents' death and what he decides to do about it: avenge it. In these films (as in some of the comic-book versions), Batman is torn between the good he is trying to do and the paradox of achieving good by doing evil. He is catching and punishing bad guys, after all, but he goes about it as a lone vigilante working outside the law. He is, in many ways, as crazy as the criminals he's going after (the Joker, Two-Face, and the like). The pitch-black color of his costume, his masked face, and his menacing look are symbolic of that inner torment and internal conflict. His look alone, thanks to the symbolism involved, is enough to set Batman apart as a more intriguing character than we would at first suspect.

Sexual Symbolism

Of course, symbolism goes beyond simple good and bad. Sexual symbolism is frequently prevalent in films, particularly older ones, in which sexuality could not be expressed in explicit ways. In one of the most famous examples, at the end of Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest, as Eve (Eva Marie Saint) joins her new husband, Roger (Cary Grant), in his bed on the train they are taking, Hitchcock immediately cuts to a shot of the train going through a tunnel—an overt allusion to sexual intercourse. While perhaps too obvious, particularly to sophisticated viewers accustomed to recognizing symbolic content, it's also funny, and a clever way to suggest sex at a time when it couldn't be shown on screen.

Modern films, with the permissiveness granted by R-rated and unrated editions, are more likely to include frank discussions and/or depictions of sexual activity than suggest it symbolically. Nevertheless, movies with more artistic sensibilities and those looking for more family-friendly ratings often imply sex in various ways, rather than show it explicitly. In the PG-rated No Reservations (2007), for example, Aaron Eckhart's character comes home with Catherine Zeta-Jones's character after a date, and we cut to the next morning with him having breakfast in her apartment. In Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003), an emotional relationship between the artist Vermeer and his maid, impossible for either to take to a physical level due to their strict morals, is consummated symbolically when, with an almost ritualistic tenderness, he pierces her ear so that she may pose for a painting wearing a specific earring.

Religious, or Faith-Based, Symbolism

Still from Triumph of the Will picturing soldiers marching under flags with swastikas on them.

Mary Evans/Ronald Grant/Everett Collection

Some symbols are freighted with meaning. When Leni Riefenstahl made Triumph of the Will in 1935, the swastika was the symbol of the triumphant rule of the Nazi party in Germany. The meaning of symbols changes over time.

The Star Wars films use a great many forms of symbolism; among them is religious symbolism. The virtuous, or "good" characters, are guided by The Force, which cannot be seen or measured in any quantifiable way. When Luke Skywalker turns off his guidance system while piloting his ship through the nooks and crannies of a planet in the first film, he is placing his trust in The Force, and it is just as clearly present in him. This is a symbolic act of faith that echoes the faith shown in seemingly rash acts such as the biblical Abraham agreeing to sacrifice his son Isaac. As in the biblical tale, things work out for the best in the end. Other science-fiction films, such as The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951 and 2008) and The Matrix (1999), include messianic/savior characters who come to Earth to teach people the truth. These characters are persecuted and die, then rise to new life, which can be seen as a symbol for the Christian Jesus. Religious symbolism serves to illustrate matters of faith more easily than explicit imagery, which can serve to alienate or even offend those who don't practice the faith that is depicted. By using symbolism, the writer or director can get at the message indirectly, and just as powerfully (sometimes more so).

Symbolism may be very subtle, or it may be so obvious that it loses the power a filmmaker is hoping for. Different viewers may have nearly opposite reactions to the effectiveness of various symbols, depending upon their own personal attitudes, while other viewers may miss those very same symbols entirely, because they're concentrating more on the action of the plot.

So, Why Use Symbolism?

In some cases, as with the previous example from North by Northwest, symbolism is used to suggest what the filmmaker cannot explicitly show. It's also a quick and easy way for filmmakers to tell us something about a character, whether he or she is good or bad, or his or her state of mind. For example, scenes where characters are happy are often brightly lit and in open spaces, whereas scenes where characters are sad are often dimly lit in more closed spaces, or may be set during a rainstorm that provides symbolic natural tears. This is even done in animated cartoons such as Despicable Me. But symbolism also serves a more important purpose than simply a wink and nod from director to audience, showing what he or she can get away with. Symbols have long been deeply powerful elements of storytelling.

However, it is also possible to overthink symbolism in film (and in other forms of art), to look for deeper meaning when, in reality, there may be none there. Attaching sexual symbolism to various props or finding significant symbolic meanings in elements that were not intended as symbols by the filmmakers might say more about the critic than about the film. There is the famous quote popularly attributed to Sigmund Freud (though there is no credible documentation that he uttered the exact words), the psychoanalyst who knew a thing or two about symbolism: "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." In other words, sometimes the object may simply be the object as shown, with no greater substance associated with it than what we see on the screen. Sometimes it may not be; sometimes there may be something more. The beauty of film, as with all art forms, is in how it inspires interpretation and analysis. In Conversations With the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood's Golden Age, there is the following exchange between an interviewer and Alfred Hitchcock:

Interviewer: In Sabotage, when somebody suddenly kills Oscar Homolka, there's a film about a bird called Who Killed Cock Robin? being shown. In Psycho, Tony Perkins stuffs birds and also his mother, and in The Birds, in the crosscut shot of the mother grabbing at the son and also the girlfriend grabbing at the son, he's surrounded by all these birds. I'm wondering if there is a connection you make between birds and women.

Hitchcock: I don't know. I think women are referred to as chicks, aren't they? That's the only connection I can think of at the moment. (as cited in Stevens, 2006)

Hitchcock seems to be saying that you need to be careful of reading too much into any symbol. It's a valid point, one that merits consideration. Symbolic content might be intentional, inadvertent, or perhaps unconscious on the part of a filmmaker. But Hitchcock was no stranger to the practice—with Jimmy Stewart's long-lens camera sitting in his lap serving as a phallic symbol in Rear Window, for instance, suggesting sexuality without having to show it. In the same film, the wide rectangular windows of his neighbors that he's constantly looking into from the safety of his apartment serve as an obvious metaphor for the voyeurism of the audience looking into the lives of the film's characters through the movie screen. Symbolism, when used (and interpreted) correctly, is one of the most effective and powerful elements that the storyteller has at his or her disposal.

Metaphor and Allegory

A metaphor is a type of symbol, in which a comparison between two items helps the audience understand one of the items better. As discussed earlier, Hitchcock's train going into a tunnel in North by Northwest is a visual metaphor for the act of sexual intercourse. In The 39 Steps (1935), Hitchcock uses an audio metaphor when we hear a screeching train whistle while we're seeing a woman screaming, and in Psycho (1960) the sound of screeching violins drowns out the shrieks of a woman being stabbed in the shower. A more extreme example of visual or audio metaphors would be inserting shots or sounds that are not even part of the world inhabited by the characters, such as a sudden shot of a flock of sheep as we're watching big-city laborers heading to work in Chaplin's Modern Times (1936). Metaphors differ from symbols in that metaphors use comparisons between two things that appear to be unrelated to illustrate a theme, whereas symbols use one item to stand for something else, telling us the theme simply by its presence.

Still from Apocalypse Now picturing two men with a helicopter in the background.

Courtesy Everett Collection

The ever-present chop-chopping helicopters, as depicted by Francis Coppola in Apocalypse Now, came to stand for the relentless futility of the Vietnam War.

Allegory is a term used for an entire story or a part of a story that is symbolic of something else. Films such as High Noon (1951) and On the Waterfront (1954) appear to be a classic western and a timely exposé of labor union corruption, respectively. Each may be read allegorically, however, as somewhat disguised but highly symbolic personal statements about the struggle by courageous individuals against the aggressive investigations by the House Un-American Activities Committee trying to uncover communists in the film industry during the late 1940s and early 1950s. The fact that both films can still stand on their own as powerful human dramas many decades later without any knowledge of their then-current political undercurrents is a testament to the artistry and skill of their creators. Fantasy and science-fiction films are often allegorical dramatizations of current-day sociopolitical or religious issues, but are set in the future or a fantasy world (such as Avatar, District 9, Robocop, Starship Troopers, The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia). Many other sorts of genre films (which we'll discuss in their own chapter) also serve as allegories, even though they are disguised as typical action-based formula stories. Issues of rampant crime and violence, powerful and ruthless corporate interests, political corruption, and inefficient legal bureaucracies are often portrayed literally in today's gangster films and cop stories, but they are just as likely to show up allegorically in westerns set in the America of 150 years ago or sci-fi films set in the distant future. The 2006 film 300 is purportedly a retelling of the ancient Greek battle against the Persians at Thermopylae, a historical war action-adventure film, but it also can be seen as an allegory of present-day conflict between the free democracies of the United States and Europe against repressive fanatics in the Middle East, especially Iran (Persia). Horror films dealing with serial killers, vampires, werewolves, and the like are often not merely suspense thrillers but allegories about predatory and other addictive behaviors. Good examples include the Swedish film Let the Right One In and its American remake Let Me In. The recent Twilight vampire-romance films have been analyzed as religious allegories. Guillermo del Toro's Cronos also has obvious religious allegorical implications underlying its moody horror story depicting curiosity leading to an increasingly addictive obsession.

Irony

Irony is a frequently used—and frequently misunderstood—literary element. The standard definition applies to a device in which what is presented as reality is different from what is actually true. In film, as in literature, a common representation of irony is achieved by setting the audience up to expect one result and delivering another. Irony is a powerful tool for writers; as with many storytelling devices, it is enhanced on screen, as we see it played out. There are three main types of irony; here we will discuss them and how they're used most often in film.

Dramatic Irony

Dramatic irony exists when the audience understands what is going on in the story to a degree that the characters do not. Dramatic irony is often used in comedies, in which a character cluelessly goes about his business, digging himself deeper and deeper into trouble without understanding why. In The Jerk, for instance, Steve Martin stars as a ridiculously stupid person who does increasingly dumb—and funny—things. Some of the slapstick humor would be funny by itself, but it is funnier because Martin's character doesn't know that he is stupid. He believes he is behaving normally, while the audience knows differently, and filters his actions through that knowledge.

Dramatic irony is also frequently used in horror films. For instance, in Halloween—John Carpenter's classic 1978 horror film—the audience knows that the insane killer, Michael Myers, is on the prowl, slicing up a large portion of the teenage population. For much of the film, however, Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her friends aren't aware of the mortal danger they are in and behave as if they are simply victims of Halloween pranks. The discrepancy between what the kids know and what the audience knows makes the tension all the more unbearable—and because this is a horror film, all the more enjoyable. The use of dramatic irony is so prevalent in horror films, in fact, that the 1996 movie Scream was built on the audience's knowledge of the use of such a device.

Situational Irony

Still from Night at the Opera showing what appears to be the entire cast grappling.

Courtesy Everett Collection

The world of the Marx Brothers is upside down or at least skewed. Nothing is what it seems to be. Take this exchange from Night at the Opera:

Fiorello: Hey, wait, wait. What does this say here, this thing here?

Driftwood: Oh, that? Oh, that's the usual clause that's in every contract. That just says, uh, it says, uh, if any of the parties participating in this contract are shown not to be in their right mind, the entire agreement is automatically nullified.

Fiorello: Well, I don't know . . .

Driftwood: It's all right. That's, that's in every contract. That's, that's what they call a sanity clause.

Fiorello: Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! You can't fool me. There ain't no Sanity Clause!

Situational irony occurs when we expect one thing to happen and something else does. In the football film North Dallas Forty, for instance, aging wide receiver Phil Elliott (Nick Nolte) has struggled with aging and clashes with his coach and team executives. At the end of a big game, after replacing an injured player, Phil catches a pass from quarterback Seth Maxwell (Mac Davis). After kicking the extra point, almost an afterthought, the game will go into overtime. However, the overtly religious back-up quarterback mishandles the snap from center, the kick can't be made, and Phil's team loses the game. This situational irony is effective in several ways. It is the opposite of the ending of most sports movies that we're used to. It puts blame on the type of character most often portrayed as heroic and supports the cynicism in professional sports that the film has established from the start.

Verbal Irony

Verbal irony occurs when a speaker says something that is intentionally the opposite of what is usually intended. There are numerous examples of this; think of any film in which a character says something like, "Oh, I couldn't be happier," when in fact he or she is miserable. Or, consider the character who, upon entering a home or apartment that is a pigsty, says, "Lovely place you've got here." Verbal irony is typically used for comic effect, but it is also used in dramas and horror films. Comedies of the Marx Brothers are loaded with verbal irony (and outrageous puns), as are numerous "pre-code" comedies and musicals. The entire genre of the screwball comedy popular during the later 1930s was built around verbal wit and ironic comments that both skirted and evaded the censorship restrictions of the Hollywood Production Code. A couple of key films include Nothing Sacred and His Girl Friday. Later films, such as Juno, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and most recent comedies, tend to rely heavily on ironic statements by their main characters that offer cynically amusing commentary on their situations or life in general. The film and then the TV series M*A*S*H often used verbal irony for comedy and at the same time to drive home its dramatic points about the tragedy of war.

Additional Examples of Irony

Even though the notion for a character's behavior originates with whoever creates the story and is brought to life by the director, who must bring the behavior to the screen in a believable way (if believable is what the story calls for), it falls to the actor to bring the behavior to life. When irony is especially effective in comedies, for instance, it is almost always because the actor playing the character is taking a ridiculous situation completely seriously.

Brendan Fraser, who has played it straight in such silly comedies as Encino Man, in which he played a frozen caveman who is thawed out and goes to high school, and George of the Jungle, in which he plays the title character (think of a dumber version of Tarzan who often swings face-first into trees and you'll get the idea), says of acting in a comedy: "you're dead in the water if you think you're funny. You have to be deadly serious. . .'I'm doing this because I know it will make you laugh' is just, like, cheap" (as cited in Goodykoontz, 2010a, para. 11).

Irony is often used in more serious films as well. In The Lovely Bones, for instance, the main character, Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) tells us from the start of the film that she is dead, so the audience knows her fate from the beginning. Yet we see Susie before she is killed, and her parents and friends afterwards, and they are unaware of what has happened to her. (Her killer hid her body.) It is wrenching to watch her father (Mark Wahlberg) and mother (Rachel Weisz) at the dinner table when Susie doesn't come home from school, assuming that she stopped by a friend's house or visited the mall and is simply late. As it grows later, they become more and more alarmed, fearing that something bad has happened to her. The audience knows that it has; the desire to somehow inform them of this is overwhelming. In this way, by giving the audience more information than the characters, director Peter Jackson uses irony to more fully involve us in the movie.

In E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, an alien is stranded on Earth. E.T. is found by a lonely boy (Henry Thomas) who hides him while working to get him home, fearing that adults would misunderstand the being's gentle nature. Indeed, the government scientists, instead of being a trusted source of help and understanding, are ironically a source of threat and danger.

Director Stanley Kubrick also uses irony in The Shining, a horror film in which Jack Nicholson plays a writer working as the caretaker of a snowed-in hotel closed for the winter. While the audience has seen him slowly go insane, talking to ghosts that may or may not be real, and behaving erratically, his wife (Shelley Duvall) and son (Danny Lloyd) have not, believing that he has simply been working hard on a book project. Thus, when his wife finds the manuscript he has been writing and sees that it consists only of "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," written over and over for hundreds of pages, it is much scarier than it might otherwise have been. The irony is intensified by the fact that not only has her husband not been working as she believed, but her husband's name, as well as that of the actor playing him, is Jack. Seeing her sudden realization that her husband is crazy, and that she and her son are in grave danger, is horrifying—as well as satisfying.

Satire

Still from Dr. Strangelove picturing a man sitting on top of a nuclear bomb.

Courtesy Everett Collection

Kubrick's tour-de-force Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb skewered the insanity of the Cold War policy of mutually assured destruction (MAD). It slyly asks us to wonder, even still, if our policymakers are all there.

Closely related to irony is satire, or the use of wit and humor to point out the ridiculousness of a situation. Satire is sometimes the reason for making a film, and might be described as its own genre, a subject we'll discuss in the next chapter. It is typically used in comedy, as in Thank You for Smoking. There is a scene in the film in which the main character, Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart), a spokesman for the tobacco industry, has lunch with the spokesman and spokeswoman for the firearms and alcohol industries. Each brags about the number of people his or her product kills. The intent is to illustrate how difficult their jobs are, to try to "spin," or manipulate, news stories to put the best possible face on bad news and unflattering facts. But director and screenwriter Jason Reitman emphasizes humor in the scene (as did Christopher Buckley, upon whose novel the film is based).

Sometimes comedy and drama are mixed to ironic and satiric effect. In director Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, the threat of nuclear war is satirized brilliantly. Kubrick treats a most serious matter—the threat of nuclear annihilation—with satiric comedy. In one memorable scene, as military men and politicians are arguing about how to stop nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States, the American president (played by Peter Sellers, in one of his three roles in the film), says, "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room." Can you see how this scene is both satiric and ironic?

There are times when a filmmaker may go too far. Jean-Luc Godard's Weekend is a bitterly ironic satire about middle-class morals, egotism, and modern civilization, depicting an allegorical traffic jam and terrorists resorting to cannibalism of their self-obsessed victims. Many viewers find it more distasteful than amusing, with the director's sentiments becoming more of an annoying diatribe than a convincing sociopolitical statement.

3.4 How Storytelling Makes the Audience Care About Movies

What we discussed previously are just a few of the elements available to writers. Their purpose is not simply to help the writer tell the story, but also to make the audience care about the story by giving the story meaning.

Empathy, or Making the Audience Relate

TEDTalks: J. J. Abrams: What's in the Mystery Box

Emmy-winning producer, screenwriter, director, actor and composer J. J. Abrams explains film in terms of the mystery box. Mystery upon mystery shapes and drives a story forward. He talks about a number of films and shows several excerpts from Jaws to illustrate the deeper levels of the stories.

<span id="w38603" class="werd">&nbsp;</span>

Critical Thinking Questions

1.What does Abrams mean when he says films are just like a "mystery box"?

2.How can the withholding of information be effective in a film? Abrams gives several examples; can you think of an example from another film you have seen that does this well?

A film, like the telling of any tale, is far more enjoyable if we are invested in what happens. Sometimes that means cheering on the protagonist when he or she wins, as we do when Jimmy Chitwood (Maris Valainis) hits the last-second shot for tiny Hickory High School to win the Indiana state basketball championship in Hoosiers. Or sometimes it's making the audience agonize over what they are seeing. In Conversations With the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood's Golden Age, Alfred Hitchcock gives a famous example of how to manipulate an audience through storytelling:

Let's take a very simple, childish example. Four people are sitting around a table, talking about baseball. Five minutes of it, very dull. Suddenly a bomb goes off, blows the people to smithereens. What does the audience have? Ten seconds of shock. Now take the same scene. Tell the audience there is a bomb under the table and it will go off in five minutes. Well, the emotion of the audience is very different. Now the conversation about baseball becomes very vital because the audience is saying: "Don't be ridiculous. Stop talking about baseball, there's a bomb under there." (Gottlieb, 2003)

Note that Hitchcock not only knows how to tell a story but also pays meticulous attention to how the audience will receive the story. He was famous for carefully plotting out each part of the story, leaving nothing to chance. (He self-admittedly did not allow improvisation on the set.)

Shifting Allegiances Through Conflict

The purpose of conflict is to give the characters a reason to behave in a certain way, whether it be good or bad (or both). Most typically, the conflict exists between a protagonist, or the main character in the story, and an antagonist, or the person who opposes the antagonist. No matter how complex the story becomes, almost all movies boil down to conflict. And in most films, as in most stories, the audience relates more to the protagonist; this is the character in which we are most invested. We root for him or her. For example, in director Guy Ritchie's version of Sherlock Holmes, Holmes (Robert Downey, Jr.), the great detective, is the protagonist. The antagonist is Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong), a killer who uses the occult to strike fear into the heart of London. Downey portrays Holmes as a messy, wild, bare-knuckles-fighting fellow. But he is also a genius, able to deduce meaning from the smallest clues to solve crimes; he is far smarter than anyone in the London police force, or at Scotland Yard. We like watching him work (Ritchie often shows us what Holmes is thinking—for instance, where he will land a blow in a fight before he actually strikes his opponent). Strong, meanwhile, portrays Blackwood as demented, pure evil. Naturally, we want Holmes to catch him, to stop him before his plot to kill all the members of Parliament can succeed. There are subplots involving Holmes's friend Dr. Watson (Jude Law) and a former girlfriend (Rachel McAdams), but the story really boils down to Holmes vs. Blackwood (with the occasional sidelight of Holmes vs. himself).

Still from Jennifer's Body picturing Megan Fox standing chest-deep in water with blood on her.

Doane Gregory/TM and © Fox Atomic. All rights reserved/Courtesy Everett Collection

The film Jennifer's Body, co-starring Megan Fox, is a chance for some audiences to vicariously enjoy the thrill of murderous revenge. The traditional pleasures of a horror film come through a sense of catharsis. We identify with the story and somehow we are relieved to find ourselves alive at the end of the film.

In some films, our feelings about the protagonist may change because of changes in his or her behavior. In Jennifer's Body, Needy (Amanda Seyfried) is horrified when her best friend, Jennifer (Megan Fox), becomes possessed by a demon that must eat living flesh to survive. She tries, unsuccessfully, to protect her boyfriend (Johnny Simmons) from Jennifer and is herself attacked. Later, Needy kills Jennifer, yet no one believes her claims that Jennifer was possessed, so Needy winds up in a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane. As the movie nears its end, we learn that, because she survived the attack by Jennifer, Needy now has some of Jennifer's powers. She escapes the hospital, finds the people responsible for Jennifer's possession, and brutally murders them. Are we still on her side? Do we identify with her? In some respects, yes—she is getting vengeance on the people who caused the death of her friend and for the pain and trouble they have caused her. Yet now she is also a murderer, with demonic powers. Do we still side with her? Or has she crossed a line that will no longer allow us to root for her? Anyone who watches the film must decide for him/herself, but the movie makes it a much more complicated choice than simply pitting good against evil.

Universal Truths

The best and most deeply affecting stories use personal examples to get at universal truths, or experiences we can all relate to. We may not experience the exact same thing the protagonist, or main character in the story, does. But we should be able to recognize what he is going through, to feel empathy for his situation, even if the specifics are foreign to us, because the story contains elements that are universal, or familiar to all of us. We need to root for him, to understand him, to be on his side. Symbolism helps make that happen, by taking specific elements and using symbols as a shortcut to more universal feelings. Many people have not witnessed the death of their parents, as Bruce Wayne does in the Batman stories. And certainly few dress up in a scary costume and roam the city seeking vengeance, even while conflicted about the methods of doing so. However, most of us have experienced some form of tragedy in our lives, and we have done things for which we are not sure whether the ends justify the means. We recognize those universal truths in Bruce Wayne and in Batman. And his suit helps us get to that recognition faster than we would otherwise.

Films such as Peter Pan and the biographical film about author James M. Barrie, Finding Neverland, are on the surface an adventure-fantasy in the case of the former, and a historically based domestic drama in the case of the latter. The family fantasy Bridge to Terabithia seems at first to be concerned mainly with the problem of loneliness and childhood bullying. But all three films deal more fundamentally with such universal truths as the innocence of youth and the fear of growing up, as well as how one might deal with the inevitability of death, especially when loved ones are unexpectedly taken at young ages.

Revealing universal truths by using symbols and allegory, particularly in films, is often a more effective way to reveal the truth than telling it in a straightforward manner. It is certainly a more interesting way to reveal it. Some stories need to be told in a straightforward way. Others allow for more manipulation by the writer and director. But no matter how intricate the plotting, or how impressive the trappings used to surround the audience (all the tricks of lighting, makeup, acting, camerawork, editing, computer-generated imagery), the root of all movies is the story. Without it, nothing else matters. If a story works, if it engages the audiences for two hours, then there is no wrong way to tell it. If the story doesn't work, then the opposite is true.

Summary and Resources

Chapter Summary

People have told stories for centuries; they have used film to tell them visually for more than 100 years. When writing the scripts that filmmakers use to make the movies, screenwriters organize stories into plots, in which characters go through various actions that illustrate certain themes that their creator wants to express. Films may focus primarily on the plot's action, on characterization, or on the themes themselves, or they may have a balanced presentation of all three aspects. Plots are usually structured according to a three- or five-act format that introduces a premise and conflict, develops it to a climax, and resolves things by the end. Narrative techniques may withhold story information from viewers or present it out of order or from a certain point of view. Narrative elements such as character, conflict, and setting reinforce those themes the filmmakers are most interested in, often used symbolically and recurring as motifs. Literary techniques such as allegory and irony can enhance a film's meaning and dramatic power even further. To be effective, filmmakers must find ways to make the audience care about the characters and their situations, expressing universal truths with which they can identify.

Questions to Ask Yourself About Storytelling When Viewing a Film

•What is the narrative structure of the story?

•Is the plot in chronological order or a non-linear form?

•Where does the story take place?

•Is there a conflict? What is it? How is it resolved?

•Do the characters experience an internal or external conflict? What are they conflicted about? Who is the conflict with?

•Does the film contain symbolism? What kind of symbolism? What is the symbol? What concept or message could it stand for?

•Do you see metaphor or allegory in the film? Where?

•Is there irony in the film? What kind of irony (dramatic, situational, verbal)?

•Is there satire in the film?

•Does the film help you relate to the characters or storyline? How?

•Does the film address universal truths?

You Try It

1.Without searching for information online or elsewhere, or discussing it with friends, quickly write down the basic story of three of your favorite movies. Include as much detail as possible. Did the story come back to you quickly and easily? Or was it hard to remember what happened?

2.Do you find that your favorite movies tend to have plots focused more on action, on character, on themes, or on a combination? Why?

3.Consider a movie in which you recognized symbolism being used. Was it used effectively? Did it enhance your enjoyment of the film, distract from it, or confuse the plot and story? Can you think of ways that others could interpret the same symbols differently? Go to www.movieclips.com (http://www.movieclips.com) and search "Rear Window" to watch the following brief scene:

Hyperlinked photo of actor James Stewart in the film Rear Window. (http://www.movieclips.com/)

Mary Evans/Ronald Grant/Everett Collection

"A Closer Look at the Salesman" (http://movieclips.com/)

To view this clip with closed captioning, please visit https://www.youtube.com/user/movieclips (https://www.youtube.com/user/movieclips) and use the searchbar to search for "A Closer Look at the Salesman."

Notice how James Stewart places a large lens on a camera before spying on neighbors across a courtyard from his apartment. How does this represent sexual symbolism? Or does it?

4.Recall the last movie you saw and try to identify the points where something happened that shifted the plot from its set-up phase into its confrontation section, and where something else happened that shifted it to the payoff or resolution section. How far into the movies do these changes occur? Did your movie begin with a confrontation and then backtrack to set up the situations?

5.Think of a movie that you did not like. What did you dislike about it? Try, in a few sentences, to improve the story, possibly by restructuring the plot or refocusing it to bring out more action, character, or theme. Use the elements of a good story that we have discussed, including irony, conflict, and the like.

Key Terms

Click on each key term to see the definition.

allegory (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

A metaphoric, symbolic story or passage in a story that tries to teach the audience a lesson by association, such as a parable, fable, or fairy tale, often with physical things representing abstract ideas. In films, this often means that something in the plot stands for something else in the real world.

antagonist (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

A character who works against the protagonist in a story.

archetype (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

A recognizable type of character, motif, or plot formula that expresses aspects of human nature considered universal and timeless, and that has been used by storytellers over many generations.

chronological order (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

The order in which events would logically occur, from beginning to end.

conflict (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

An essential element of any story, the disagreement or confrontation between characters or between a character and his surrounding or situation. An obstacle to a character's goal.

denouement (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

The resolution or end section after the climax.

dramatic irony (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

When the audience knows something that the character in a film does not.

irony (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

When an actual outcome is contrasted against what appears to be true.

metaphor (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

A figure of speech or a visual or audio symbol in which a comparison between two items helps the audience understand one of the items better.

motif (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

A significant element that is repeated periodically and can be interpreted as symbolic.

narrative (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

A story (when used as a noun) or something related to telling a story (when used as an adjective). A narrative film tells a story, whereas an experimental film may show abstract images, and a documentary presents a series of facts.

non-linear order (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

Telling the story out of chronological order, jumping back and forth between the present, the past, and even the future.

plot (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

How a story unfolds, as opposed to what happens. Those particular elements of the story that the writer and director decide to use in the film, including the order in which they are presented, how many times they are presented, and the point of view from which they are presented. Plots may concentrate on action, character, theme, or all three.

point of view (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

The perspective of the film, which can be the literal view through one of the characters'eyes in a film, or the director's/writer's/producer's attitude and personal point of view about the various character types and issues that are addressed in the film.

protagonist (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

The main character in a story.

satire (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

The use of wit and humor to illustrate the ridiculousness of a situation.

screenwriter (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

The person who writes the movie's script.

script (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

The screen story in written form, normally typed in a specific screenplay format designed for the actors and director to work from.

setting (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

The time and place in a story.

situational irony (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

When the audience expects one thing to happen but another thing happens.

story (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

A narrative; all the elements and events that characters experience, whether before, during, or after the plot that is depicted in a book or a movie.

symbolism (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

Using an object or action to suggest something else; for instance, a snake may be used to symbolize evil.

theme (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

An idea, issue, or concept that a writer wants to express through a story; a message or meaning that the audience is meant to take away from a movie. Movies may often have more than one theme or interpretation.

universal truths (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

Experiences that we all can relate to, even if we have not personally undergone them.

verbal irony (http://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm/books/AUENG225.14.1/sections/fm#)

The difference in what a character says and what he or she actually means.

Criticism and Analysis

10

Photograph of film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert sitting in an empty movie theater.

Photograph of film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. ©Disney-ABC Domestic Television. All rights reserved.

In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.

—Pauline Kael

Learning Objectives

After reading this chapter, you should be able to do the following:

•Define the differences between a film review and a film analysis, and between simple personal opinions and critical analysis.

•Recognize that films have levels of meaning deeper than their obvious referential content, and recognize how they explicitly and implicitly convey attitudes about certain topics in their stories.

•Discuss some basic theories of film analysis and different approaches to criticism, and be able to apply them when appropriate to interpret films.

•Explain how a film can evoke very different, even opposite responses from people who are looking at it for different things, and understand that a successful film analysis will balance a film's good and bad points.

10.1 What Is a Critic?

Still from Ratatouille picturing the character Anton Ego, a food critic, in his office.

©Walt Disney Co./courtesy Everett Collection

Ratatouille's Anton Ego looks the part of a supercilious critic. In the film, he has a large ego and a reputation for asserting his knowledge and expertise.

What is a critic? There are many definitions, some of which are unflattering, including as they do charges of jealousy, mean-spiritedness, and flat-out incompetence. Ironically enough, one of the best definitions comes from a character in a film, and in an animated film at that. In Pixar's film Ratatouille (2007), Peter O'Toole provides the voice of Anton Ego, a famous food critic feared for his discriminating palate and his withering criticism. When he samples food that has secretly been prepared by a rat, everyone fears the worst (particularly the rat). However, Ego begins his review with a spirited defense of the art of criticism, observations that apply just as much to film criticism as to food criticism:

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations; the new needs friends. . . . Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. (Bird & Pinkava, 2007)

This character Ego (and the writers who gave him his words) offers an explanation of one of the most important—and most satisfying—roles the critic plays: as someone who can introduce little-known but worthy work to the public. This requires expertise and confidence—expertise in the understanding of how films are made, as well as confidence that their opinions are correct, or at least rational, legitimate, and worthwhile for other people to consider. Film textbooks such as the one you're now reading, along with simply watching a lot of movies, can help with the former. The latter, a belief in the validity of your opinion, can be practiced but not taught. It requires both technical expertise as well as a belief in yourself and your skills, a belief that your opinion and your evaluation matter.

Most people think of a film critic as someone who goes to a movie, takes notes, comes home, and writes his or her opinion of it. And there is, in fact, a lot of truth to that notion, though it's not quite as easy as that sounds. This definition applies largely to popular critics. With the combination of a faltering economy sapping advertising dollars and the increasing amount of information available for free online, the professional popular critic is becoming more and more an endangered species. As with most jobs in mainstream media, the movie critic once held a lofty outsider's position. Most newspapers, magazines, and wire services employed at least one movie critic (as well as a television critic, a food critic, and perhaps even a book critic). Economic realities have diminished their number, but a few critics remain in mainstream media. However, film criticism has exploded. How can this be?

Perhaps no one has written more passionately about this development than the late Roger Ebert, one of the nation's best-known critics for the past 30 years, who offered this explanation on his blog:

Photograph of the film critic Roger Ebert giving a thumbs up.

Photo by Michael Germana/Everett Collection

Roger Ebert was a critic who appreciated all kinds of films. For him, the best filmmaking was not only popular entertainment, but also art.

This is a golden age for film criticism. Never before have more critics written more or better words for more readers about more films. . . . Film criticism is still a profession, but it's no longer an occupation. You can't make any money at it. This provides an opportunity for those who care about movies and enjoy expressing themselves. Anyone with access to a computer need only to use free blogware and set up in business. Countless others write long and often expert posts on such sites as IMDb, Amazon, Rotten Tomatoes and in the comment threads of blogs. (Ebert, 2010)

We discussed this "new army of critics" briefly at the end of Chapter 1. Ebert also notes, however, that people writing about film must resist a growing trend to ramble on with uninformed personal opinions, to offer immediate reactions to what they've just seen, or to cater to popular celebrity-based fads. A good critic, he says, is a teacher who can help readers broaden their perspectives and discover their own answers:

A newspaper film critic should encourage critical thinking, introduce new developments, consider the local scene, look beyond the weekend fanboy specials, be a weatherman on social trends, bring in a larger context, teach, inform, amuse, inspire, be heartened, be outraged. (Ebert, 2008)

Ebert goes on to bemoan the modern culture's embracing of fame and glamour with no desire to think critically or question what they are told. "It is not about dumbing-down. It is about snuffing out." Ebert's comments are a powerful warning to those who believe that popular critics are too highbrow and scholarly, as well as to scholarly academics who consider much popular culture, not to mention criticism of it, beneath serious consideration. In truth, popular film criticism may be neither better nor worse than scholarly analysis; they simply exist side by side. Moreover, a number of serious academics study pop culture (including but not limited to movies) as a means for understanding American life at a deeper level than they feel is possible by analyzing solely serious literature and historical documents.

Popular Criticism

Still from Catfish picturing a man and a woman, seemingly nude, from the shoulders up.

©Rogue Pictures/courtesy Everett Collection

Still from the "documentary" Catfish, showing the subject "Nev" in a photo with his love interest. A. O. Scott's review of the film cuts to the heart of the "truth test": "It seems either disingenuous or naïve to say that what happens is ‘just true.' . . . [Catfish] is bluntly simple-minded even as it makes a great show of its epistemological sophistication" (Scott, 2010). The critic asks us to carefully consider this question: How do we distinguish between justifiable certainty and mere opinion?

Movie reviews are the most familiar form of popular criticism. A simple movie review may indeed be no more than the reviewer's personal opinions. However, such a review typically will hold little weight with anyone whose own opinions are no less valid. This is not to say that reviewers should avoid opinions, but rather that they should also evaluate the acting, directing, story, and production values in ways that will be useful to readers. Many popular movies, designed primarily to entertain wide audiences, may not lend themselves to deep analysis, but they can still be evaluated on how well they accomplish what they set out to do. Far too many amateur critics look at only the story content and ignore cinematic techniques, while perhaps just as many concentrate only on technical aspects or only on star personalities and completely overlook what the story is about.

A reviewer who is conversant with the principles of mise en scène, cinematography, and editing that we've examined earlier in this book can point out far more effectively (and believably) how well or poorly a film might be made rather than saying, "It's fantastic, a must-see," or "It sucks big time." A reviewer who can recognize narrative techniques (or lack of them) will be able to explain why certain characters come off as strong or weak, why the plot holds together (or doesn't), and how the film may present various themes or explore various issues in a satisfactory way (or not). A good way to start thinking about criticism would be to go back to the truth test introduced in Chapter 1. Is a film true to itself, and does it reveal some truth about human nature? What is it trying to say, how well does it say it, and was its message really worth saying? Once a film, however, can stand up to this test, it deserves deeper scrutiny, carefully considered analysis, and a more scholarly approach—analytical criticism, which we will discuss later.

Professional Critics: Differences Between Criticism and Reviewing

Critics of different types of media discuss the differences between reviewing and criticism.

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Critical Thinking Questions

1. Which would tell you whether or not to go see a particular movie: a film review or a film criticism? Why?

2.Why does Joel Siegel say that a film critic's writing is defined by "space and time"? How is this different from the writing of a review?

The kinds of movie reviews typically printed in newspapers and magazines, or presented verbally on radio or television, are very short in comparison to a scholarly analysis or even a moderately in-depth critique. Professional film critics are limited in page space or air time, so they must become expert at cramming in as much important information, observations, and evaluation into as few words as possible. A review may average between 400 and 1,200 words (the equivalent of one to four double-spaced, typed pages), so it must concentrate only on the elements that most impressed the critic (for better or worse). If a reviewer wants to discuss any serious issues, there is no space to include more than a sentence or two of plot summary, just enough to put critical comments in a context readers (or listeners or viewers) will be able to understand. It is also worth noting that, depending upon publishing deadlines, most published movie reviews must be written very quickly, within a few hours to perhaps a few days after seeing the film, without the luxuries of re-watching portions of the movie or making extensive revisions to the review.

The more space a critic is allotted, the more time can be spent on deeper analysis and interpretation that will give people useful information to influence their interest in the film one way or another. It can be a real challenge for newspaper critics to say what they'd like to say in less than a thousand words. Magazine critics often have double or triple the space available that newspaper or radio/TV critics have. But even though magazine reviews might be able to present more information and a more genuine analysis than a quick newspaper review, they usually contain less depth than an analytical essay written for a critical journal or chapter in a book. Film criticism on personal blogs, because they tend to be self-published, runs the gamut from pure personal reaction to simple plot synopses to informed critical and technical discussion to in-depth critical analysis and interpretation. Let's look now at how even just a little analysis can turn a simple review into a piece of criticism that others are more likely to take seriously. "Criticism," unlike how some may interpret the word, does not mean "pointing out faults." It means discussing something intelligently and being able to recognize a variety of approaches to it.

Analytical Criticism

Still from Federico Fellini's film 8-1/2.

Courtesy Everett Collection

Scene from the movie 8-1/2, directed by Federico Fellini. Fellini is a filmmaker whose elaborate fantasies seemed to overflow the screen. The greatest films and filmmakers, like the greatest novelists, offer rich, dense work. The more we bring to a film, the more we can take away.

Film scholarship is a more academic discipline of analysis than writing popular reviews. Scholarly critics may, instead of reviewing a single film, consider it in the larger context of other films of its type (i.e., a genre study) or of its director (i.e., an auteurist approach, as described in the last chapter on directing and style). They will be certain to place it within its historical and social context as well. Effective critics are able to see through the technology, styles, and attitudes of whatever time a film was made to recognize human truths in the story and characters. They will then be able to relate those human truths to what they can tell us about both the filmmakers and their intended audiences. That is, a critic may genuinely believe in the moment that Goodfellas, for example, is a great film. But how does it compare to other gangster movies? How will it hold up 20 years after its release? How will it hold up 20 years after that? And, perhaps most importantly, what does it say about society, both at the time it was made—the late 20th century—and about humanity on a larger scale? Does the fact that director Martin Scorsese invites us to identify with and even root for sadistic killers, monsters whose solution to almost every problem involves a fist or, worse, a gun, speak to a violent culture in which morality no longer has a firm grip on us? Or is it meant to be enjoyed simply as a thrill ride, falling back on the "it's only a movie" excuse? (Hint: In the case of Scorsese's films, the latter is never the case.)

As you can see, these are weighty issues. What makes the evaluation even trickier is that, at least on a basic measure of competence, films must succeed on a technical level as well. The dialogue and acting may be flawless, but if the director shoots the film in such a way that, for instance, meaningless shots of scenery distract from the actors' performances, it will be less satisfying, both in the short term for popular critics and in the long term for scholarly critics. Another film might be a tour de force showcase for brilliant cinematography and flashy editing, but it is weakened by poor acting or rendered meaningless by an incoherent, pointless story. The director, as we have seen, must perform a balancing act, and any slip-up will be noticed and discussed in detail. Not only that, but different viewers (and critics) will pick up on different aspects differently. What may be distracting, meaningless shots of scenery to one critic may be a powerfully significant directorial comment on the characters' relationship to their environment to another critic. What may come across as poor acting or incoherent story points to one viewer may be regarded as satirically stylized performances and challenging but daringly fresh plot structure to another. What is dismissed as pretentious by some may be hailed as profound by others.

10.2 Digging Deeper: Levels of Meaning

The easiest way to explain a film to someone is to give a simple synopsis, telling all the main things that happened in the story and maybe describing a few memorable special effects, followed by a personal "thumbs-up" or "thumbs-down." But a synopsis, no matter how detailed, is not a film review, and it certainly is not an analysis. It's the equivalent of a typical fourth-grader's first book report—or amateur bloggers and Internet Web forum contributors who simply are incapable of seeing past the obvious. Such people are simply unaccustomed to looking below the surface layers of a film and often may not even recognize the difference between the story they are following and the specific elements of that story that the film's plot is deliberately presenting in a certain order, for a certain length of time, and sometimes more than once, as we learned in our chapter on storytelling.

Some films are conscious, perhaps even self-conscious personal statements by directors who consider themselves artists, who use film as their medium and who are not expected to reach wide audiences. Other films are designed specifically as mass-market entertainment in the hopes of becoming blockbuster hits, made by directors who specialize in fast-paced action-adventure and spectacular visual effects. Although one film may provide richer material for analysis than another, both types can benefit from scratching below the surface. Only in that way can we find a better understanding of them. Next we'll briefly discuss David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986) and Zack Snyder's 300 (2007), looking for meaning by using four progressively deeper levels of interpretation. Both films received widely diverging critical reactions, with Lynch's work more popular with most critics than with moviegoers and Snyder's vastly more popular with moviegoers than with most critics. A large factor in the different responses to each film (or to any film) is what it is that the viewer chooses to focus upon. This depends upon the critical approach(es) and depth of analysis the viewer is able to apply to the film.

Referential Content

The things that happen in the plot and that we understand about the story, even if merely mentioned rather than dramatized, are part of the first and most basic level of understanding. This is sometimes called referential content, as it refers directly to what we see and hear in the film. A one- or two-sentence summary in a TV movie listing or video catalog is a good example of something likely to explain only the referential content. It tells what happens, something that anyone who sees the movie will agree with, but it is unlikely to explain what a movie is about on a deeper level, what it might be trying to tell the viewers. It takes looking below the surface to interpret the film rather than describe it, and there are three deeper levels we can find, with meanings that become increasingly more complex, that reach a point where not every viewer may agree with any given interpretation. A description that uses only referential content to explain David Lynch's Blue Velvet, for example, might mention that it is a crime drama in which a college boy and high school girl investigate a mysterious severed ear, only to discover drug dealers, kidnappers, and police corruption in their own small town. But anyone who has seen the film is likely to realize there is much more to it than that.

Explicit Content

Still from Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps showing actors Shia Labeouf and Michael Douglas as two businessmen facing off over a desk.

Barry Wetcher/TM & Copyright ©20th Century Fox Film Corp. All rights reserved./courtesy Everett Collection

Wall Street, directed by Oliver Stone, is a film that refers to the pre-great recession financial services industry. Its explicit content took on new resonance in its sequel, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, released following the recession in 2010. Main character Gordon Gekko (right) is named after a cold-blooded lizard. He proclaims, "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works."

Below the surface, or the referential content, is some explicit content that lets the viewer know some point the filmmakers are trying to make. This, as the term implies, is explicitly stated in the film, whether by a superimposed title, a voice-over narrator, or dialogue that comes directly from the mouths of characters in the film. This may be a kind of "moral to the story" or social, political, or philosophic commentary the filmmaker wants the audience to be sure to get. One line of dialogue in Blue Velvet that is repeated numerous times at various points is "It's a strange world," something most will agree that film depicts vividly. We see and hear numerous instances of the "ear" motif, from the discovery of a severed ear, to a superimposed ear as a character is walking down the street, to an extreme close-up of Jeffrey's (the protagonist's) ear as he sleeps, to Sandy, his girlfriend mentioning, "I hear things." Additionally, Jeffrey overhears a phone call while hiding in a closet. Jeffrey and the antagonist Frank later listen in on a police radio. All this is obvious (explicit) representation of the film's pervasive theme of voyeurism, particularly hearing things one might be better off not knowing, things that can get one into trouble. We also hear the evil Frank at one point tell the naïve Jeffrey to his face, "You're like me," but such an explicit statement has much deeper implications that take a deeper level of interpretation to uncover—the film's implicit content.

Implicit Content

Beyond explicit content, which is typically stated in so many words, or depicted in visual symbolism so obvious it is difficult to miss, is implicit content, or meanings that are implied rather than revealed directly. We can infer some of the implicit content from dialogue, but it usually takes thinking back on what we've seen to make the connections. In Blue Velvet, we see all the trouble Jeffrey gets himself into from his insatiable curiosity; we see him start to change from a clean-cut all-American college boy to someone driven by obsession to experience a dark world he never realized existed. We see him torn between his decent nature, seemingly ideal life, and beautiful girlfriend, and his increasing attraction to a troubled, sadomasochistic woman with dangerous criminal companions who has irresistibly drawn him into her dark world. The film's opening two-minute scene is implicitly a metaphorical miniature of the entire two-hour film. To the strains of the romantic title song, we see a beautiful small American city, a storybook neighborhood, and a pleasant-looking older man watering a perfectly kept yard. The man looks healthy, but something inside his body suddenly gives way, and he has some sort of stroke. The grass looks nice from a distance, but when the camera moves down for an extreme close-up, we see ominous-looking black insects and hear creepy noises. Things are constantly happening that we'd rather not think about. By implication, the film is telling us that the average American town and the average American person has a darker side, however much it may be hidden or denied. Blue Velvet is packed with much more implicit content that different viewers may well interpret in different ways.

Symptomatic Content

The referential, explicit, and implicit meanings that a critic can identify to explain what a film is about all come from details that can be observed within the film itself, what is called internal evidence. However, a deeper interpretation must look outside the film, using external evidence to explain its symptomatic content. A film's symptomatic meanings are symbolic of something above and beyond the film's plot and even past its explicit or implicit meanings. Interpreting a film symptomatically literally means treating the film as a symptom of a greater influence than its own characters and motivations. The things that happen in the film are a symptom of the time and culture in which it was created, perhaps even of the director's personal life or point of view.

Still from Blue Velvet showing a man lying on a lawn as a toddler runs toward him.

©De Laurentis Group/courtesy Everett Collection

This scene from Blue Velvet ironically contrasts an idealized white-picket-fence suburbia, complete with baby and puppy, with its brightly lit underside of menace and violence—an explicit visualization of its symptomatic content.

Blue Velvet's plot of crime below the surface of small-town America is a symptom of the realization by the 1980s that drug-related crime had spread beyond major urban slums and that police corruption could happen anywhere. The film's unusually frank depiction of sexual perversion (for its time), especially in connection with violence and brutal language, might be seen as symptomatic of declining morals and loosening standards—particularly in America, with implicit symbolism of the film's pervasive motifs of red, white, and blue. It can be interpreted as a powerful statement on the duality of human nature, with good and evil constantly warring within each individual. Despite its dark themes, like other Lynch films, it is also often an affectionate satire, some might say even a campy parody, on the banality of everyday conversation and personal relationships. By looking at the symptomatic content, one might also see the film in relationship to other films and themes treated by director David Lynch: Blue Velvet repeats motifs Lynch had explored earlier and sets up others he would elaborate upon in later films.

Putting It All Together

Not every film will lend itself to examining all four levels of meaning to the same degree, but serious thought and analysis of any film should reveal at least something on each level, even for films not considered to be "arthouse" fare or part of an auteur's canon of work. For example, the historical-action-war film 300 was a huge box-office success and can easily be analyzed for each level of content. On the surface, it's a retelling of the ancient Greek story of 300 heroic Spartan soldiers led by their king, Leonidas, to hold off an overwhelming force of invading Persians at the Thermopylae pass. A referential description would merely recount what happens in the plot, and for many people who saw it, that's all they paid attention to and all they remember.

Analyzing some of the film's explicit content would mention how speeches of characters promote the ideals of fighting for individual freedom against imposed foreign tyranny, of devotion to national duty over personal concerns, and of willingness to stand by one's comrades and fight to the death for something one believes in.

On an implicit level, the film is a rousing celebration of the benefits of military preparedness, of extreme personal self-discipline, of a "Spartan" lifestyle (i.e., simple and utilitarian instead of lavish and ostentatious), and of the inspiration found from heroic deeds, especially martyrdom, for a just cause. The film's implicit content also shows the dangerous (in this case, deadly) resentment that can develop from rejection of a person's honest desires despite that person's lack of ability.

Still from 300 showing an army of men with spears and shields marching to war.

©Warner Bros./courtesy Everett Collection

300 can be read as a commentary on U.S. wars in the Middle East. This image reinforces a belief that discipline and superior technology (in this case, impressive oversized shields) make a mighty fighting force invincible.

To examine 300 on a symptomatic level, we must understand that the film was released in 2007 while the United States (founded on ancient Greek and Roman ideals) was involved in a Middle-East war that was threatening to expand. Ancient Persia was roughly the location of present-day Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and the film's depiction of Spartan soldiers appears to be an idealization of some elite corps of the U.S. Marines. The self-serving, aging, decrepit, and inbred rulers who refuse to give support to the idealistic warrior king thus can be seen as direct parallels to the U.S. Congress, while the invading Persians are depicted as deformed, gigantic beasts rather than as normal fighting men. This may be easily interpreted on the symptomatic level as a not-so-subtle post-September 11 demonization of present-day Middle-Eastern regimes out to conquer the civilized Western world of Europe and America.

The 2007 film 300, then, can be analyzed as a rousing action-adventure set in ancient times but also as a strong modern sociopolitical statement symptomatic of the time and place where it was created. Far from being historically accurate, it is an allegory whose deeper meaning is vastly removed from the time, place, and characters actually depicted on the screen.

10.3 Approaches to Analysis and Interpretation

Analyzing levels of meaning below the surface story can greatly enhance enjoyment as well as understanding of a film. However, different people can approach the process of analysis from different perspectives and with different purposes; it is entirely possible for five different people to come up with five entirely different interpretations of a film that are all equally valid. Long essays and entire books have been written to explain many specific methods of film criticism in great detail. We'll look very briefly at several of these approaches below, some of which may cover mainly the referential, explicit, and implicit levels of meaning, while others try to identify varying types of symptomatic content and ideological meanings to explain what a film is ultimately trying to tell its audience.

Only a few of the many approaches to examining a film will be discussed here. In writing a critical analysis, many of these may overlap or be used together with one or more other approaches, especially the auteurist approach that we discussed in some detail in Chapter 9 on style and directing, and the generic approach that we examined back in Chapter 4 on film genres. Topics and issues that interest particular critics usually determine which approaches they use to interpret films, but it's worth remembering that no one approach should be considered definitive. In fact it can be a worthwhile exercise to try to apply as many approaches as possible to analyzing a film, just to see how looking for different things can color how you understand what the film is really trying to say. Some approaches focus on understanding how a film communicates its ideas, whereas others look more at what the film is saying (whether the filmmaker is conscious of the statement or not). Let's look at these approaches now. (See Tables 10.1a and 10.1b later in this section for examples of each of these approaches and the Behind the Scenes: Examples of Critical Approaches feature box for examples of the approaches discussed in the text.)

A formalist approach to analysis is concerned with film form, or how the basic elements are organized to convey certain meanings. Critics using this approach study the film itself, and possibly its screenplay—the internal evidence we discussed earlier. This includes things such as plot structure, mise en scène, camera techniques, editing, and sound—all the elements that have been discussed in this book. A formalist film analysis that is strictly concerned with narrative elements, however, might ignore most or all of its cinematic techniques to focus on characters, plot development, story structure, motifs, foreshadowing, motivation, and the like. On the contrary, a formalist analysis might instead focus on how the filmmakers use cinematic techniques in specific ways to convey, stress, or enhance the themes of the narrative. This could include, for example, how cinematography and editing draw the viewer's attention to parts of the mise en scène and tell the story in ways that go beyond the mere dialogue and plot actions. Both of these formalist approaches look within the film to analyze its content.

The opposite of a formalist approach would be a contextualist approach, which looks outside the film for meanings or to explain why certain formal elements might be used or why the film's internal content deals with certain issues and themes in certain ways. It includes most of the other approaches mentioned and sets a film within some sort of context using varying types and degrees of external evidence—something completely removed from the world of the film's story and characters and cinematic techniques. A contextualist approach would be looking very much at a film's symptomatic content, and there are numerous different contexts that may be used to analyze any film. Some films may lend themselves more obviously to one approach or another, and some films can yield greater meaning using a combination of approaches. For example, one type of contextualist approach would be a culturalist approach, or seeing the film as symptomatic of the culture in which it was created. This approach can easily be combined with one or more other approaches listed below, which would then be applied specifically to the time and place in which the film was created or is depicting. A culturalist approach is usually a requirement for full appreciation of films made in other countries and in other historical eras. The most effective films are those able to transcend time and culture in their observations of universal human nature, and this is an important aspect that might be explored in a culturalist approach.

Still from Made in Dangenham showing a scene of a women's rally for equal pay.

©Sony Pictures Classics/courtesy Everett Collection

Made in Dangenham, a film about organizing for equal pay for women workers, could be viewed from both feminist and Marxist perspectives. A culturalist approach would focus on the ‘60s setting of the story.

Another type of context, a feminist approach, would look at a film as a statement on women's place in society, how women are treated, and various issues related to gender and equality. Gender and queer theory might take that concept further to examine a film's treatment of sexuality and sexual alternatives, whether explicit or implicit in the story. In some cases, this might also attempt to identify how and where filmmakers have included references to homosexuality in ways that were unnoticed by censors and mainstream audiences when the films came out, yet can now be recognized as key elements of a film's characterizations and overall sociopolitical statement. A Marxist approach would examine how the plot and characters in a film reflect Karl Marx's sociopolitical views on class conflict, labor vs. management, oppressive governments, and more. Typically, a Marxist approach will identify instances of everyday people struggling to survive in the face of some unsympathetic authority. A psychological approach is especially concerned with how a film provides examples of various psychological theories and concepts, particularly those of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung (e.g., sexual symbolism; subconscious repression and dreams; the id, ego, and superego; the collective unconscious). This approach again might be examining sexuality using gender and queer theory. A dualist approach tries to identify pairs of opposites in a film's content and how they're used in the story to express certain attitudes. Such opposites often are character types (good–evil, male–female) but also may be symbolic concepts such as light–dark, open–closed, urban–rural, quiet–noisy, civilization–nature, and the like. In many cases, these opposites may be tied to one or more of the other approaches just mentioned.

Still from Some Like It Hot picturing actors Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon cross-dressed as women posing in fancy dresses.

Courtesy Everett Collection

Writer and director Billy Wilder is an auteur who worked across genres, from a comedy based on cross-dressing and mistaken identity (Some Like It Hot, pictured here) to film noir (Sunset Boulevard). Within the studio system, he was able to create films redolent with his cynical take on modernity.

Two of the most common contextualist approaches to analysis are often used by people who have never even taken a film course but see lots of movies, because those people are likely to have favorite directors and favorite genres. An auteurist approach takes for granted that a film's interpretation goes beyond that individual film and can be better understood by knowing what else the same director has done. It may concentrate on either cinematic techniques or ideological thematic material, or both, but always within the context of the director's other films. Some directors specialize in films that are in specific genres, and an auteurist analysis may easily incorporate a generic analysis. Likewise, the generic approach treats a film as one of many within a genre, trying to interpret meaning by looking at recurring symbolic motifs, character types, plot formulas, visual styles, and anything else common to films with the same genre. As we noted in Chapter 4, genre films are often perceived as simple entertainment, but filmmakers often disguise various ideological themes related to contemporary life in the trappings of some film genre (such as a fantasy or a western). Making genre films may get the filmmakers' ideas out to viewers who would never consider watching a straight drama about social issues or political ideas. Thus, genre films often lend themselves to a variety of approaches for interpretation, as they typically have much ideological and symptomatic content worthy of analysis to place them in cultural context that will give them greater meaning. The psychological, dualist, feminist, queer/gender-theory, and other approaches may be effectively applied to specific genre films within the overall context of the genre.

A structuralist approach is similar in some ways to a formalist approach, as it examines the film's structure and how the constructions of scenes and shots tell the story, but it digs deeper to find meaning. Instead of merely examining how narrative and cinematic techniques enhance our involvement in and understanding of the story, structuralists are more likely to search for hidden symbolism they believe may be present in various elements of the film. They tend to look at filmmaking as another type of language for self-expression and try to determine how and why we respond to what we see, and how particular films illustrate their theories. Structuralist critics often use semiotics as the basis of their analysis, which is a theory for identifying symbolic content encoded in patterns of cinematic elements, including mise en scène, framing, and editing. Semiology and other extreme forms of structuralism get into detailed and highly technical explanations, often with various psychological and ideological interpretations, of how specific elements of a film express meanings—in a manner comparable to how the study of linguistics tries to explain the various ways people use the words and syntax of language to express meaning. This sort of complex, esoteric analysis is a specialized field in itself.

A realist approach tries to describe how a film depicts "reality." Of course, film as a medium is an artificial and artistic reproduction of something real, and always a subjective interpretation of the director. However, most mainstream filmmakers try to make techniques "invisible" so that viewers will be concentrating on the characters and plot rather than on the filmmaking process. A few films, on the other hand, do try experimenting with cinematic techniques, especially the cinematography, sound, and editing, to simulate some sort of reality one of the characters is experiencing—intoxication, love, aging, memory, insanity, stream-of-consciousness thought—and the result may appear confusing at first, until a viewer realizes what is going on and why. This type of film may require multiple viewings to provide an understanding of the way the filmmaker is hoping to communicate. Others, such as Rob Cohen's xXx and The Fast and the Furious, use nontraditional editing for specific sequences to convey the sense of experiencing the action multiple times from multiple angles, rather than simply observing it unfold chronologically in real time. A few examples of films well suited to analyzing from a realist approach include Terrence Malick's Tree of Life and To the Wonder, David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, Ingmar Bergman's Persona, Alain Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad, Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and films written or directed by Charlie Kaufmann, such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Synecdoche, New York, Being John Malkovich, and Adaptation.

A genetic approach to analysis requires much outside research and access to earlier versions of a film and its script. Virtually every film goes through many revisions from script to screen and from first roughcut to final release cut, and sometimes later to other editions. This approach traces a film through the process of its creation and release. It documents and discusses the meaning of various changes made in screenplay drafts or during production, scenes cut or added during editing, the theatrical release version (or versions), alternate endings (if any), and any altered re-release or television/video versions, up through a final and definitive "director's cut." Such a study is not typically a mere chronicle of changes, but a critical evaluation and interpretation of their impact on the film and its meaning. This can be difficult to do for most films without being an insider in the production process, but a few films have been released to DVD or Blu-ray with two or more versions, along with copies of deleted or alternate scenes, and documentaries about the production. Popular films such as the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings series exist in theatrical cuts as well as extended editions prepared for video release. George Lucas famously re-edited his original three Star Wars films (now called episodes 4, 5, and 6) decades after they were filmed to make changes and add new digital effects. Some of the most prominent films that can be studied in multiple versions include Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, Oliver Stone's Alexander, and James Cameron's Avatar. For instance, in Apocalypse Now, Coppola struggled to come up with an ending and shot several different ones. There are bootleg versions that last nearly five hours. And in 2001, Coppola released Apocalypse Now Redux, which restores 49 minutes cut from the original film, much of it taking place at a French plantation. The restored footage and alternate endings do not necessarily change the film's message appreciably, but they do add more context to what Coppola was trying to say and can be analyzed using this approach. Oliver Stone re-edited his 2004 biographical epic Alexander in 2005, adding, rearranging, and deleting footage for a "director's cut" with a slightly shorter overall running time than the theatrical cut, then made a substantially longer two-part "final cut" in 2007, yet continued to make changes for an "ultimate cut" in 2013. Analytical comparison of the various editions may reveal some of the thought process that goes into making a film that will be acceptable to audiences as well as to the director.

Table 10.1a Approaches to film analysis: Rear Window

Still from Rear Window showing a woman posing in her living room.

Courtesy Everett Collection

Approach Possible things to consider

Formalist Focus on plot structure, the limitations of the setting, the use of music from within the setting rather than traditional underscoring, the use of mise en scène to establish character and advance the plot, the camera and editing techniques that heighten viewer involvement.

Feminist Examine the portrayal of Grace Kelly's "Lisa" character for female stereotyping and reversals of stereotyping; contrast her character with other female characters such as Stella the nurse (who might also be examined in detail for reversals of stereotype), Miss Lonelyhearts, Miss Torso, and Mrs. Thorwald.

Psychological Explore various personality and sexual issues inherent in Jimmy Stewart's "Jeff" character, including the phallic symbolism of his camera's telephoto lens, the obsession with voyeurism into his neighbors' private lives, his inability to commit to the prevailing standards of married life vs. Lisa's willingness to adapt—to a point.

Dualist Discuss various pairs of opposites, such as Jeff/Lisa, Jeff/Thorwald, Jeff/detective, Jeff's apartment/the outside world, single people/couples, privacy/socialization, following due legal process/taking law into one's own hands, active life/passive life.

Auteurist Examine the film's relationship to other films by Alfred Hitchcock, in style, subject material, types of characters (e.g., cool blondes, an accused man, a persistent investigator), popularity with audiences and critics.

Generic Compare Rear Window with other murder mysteries, suspense thrillers, and romantic comedies for shared and differing elements and approaches.

Culturalist Look at the film as a metaphor for the public's fascination with watching other people's lives on movie screens (comparing window shape to movie screen shape); see how characters reflect common personalities and attitudes associated with the 1950s; find parallels in Jeff's refusal to settle down with postwar soldiers who preferred the adventurous life away from a cramped apartment (contrasted with unexpected husband of Miss Torso); look at influences of society and fashion-makers on public tastes.

Marxist Focus on Thorwald's character as the overwhelming pressures of capitalist service to meet sales quotas and satisfy demands of a selfish consumerist wife pushing the man to commit murder; note how the common people of the apartment complex can band together in support of each other when needed.

Structuralist Examine the exaggerated long-lens camera that sits on Jeff's lap as a phallic symbol as he spies on neighbors, and as he talks with Lisa. Look at the shape of the various windows Jeff watches as metaphors for the movie screen the audience is watching.

Table 10.1b Approaches to film analysis: The Hunger Games

Still from The Hunger Games: Catching Fire showing actors Josh Hutcherson and Jennifer Lawrence as characters Peeta and Katniss being selected to compete in the games.

Murray Close/©Lionsgate/courtesy Everett Collection

Approach Possible things to consider

Formalist Focus on plot structure, the limitations and significance of the setting, the use of mise en scène to establish character and mood and to advance the plot, the camera, editing, and sound techniques that heighten viewer involvement.

Feminist Examine the portrayal of Jennifer Lawrence's Katniss character for female stereotyping and reversals of stereotyping; contrast her character with other female characters such as Rue, Clove, and Effie Trinket, or with the male characters of Peeta, Gale, Haymitch, Cinna, President Snow, etc.

Psychological Explore the personalities and attitudes that seem to dominate in the various districts, how the personalities of the contestants change or stay the same from their training period to actual combat, how the power struggles and concerns of various people in the Capitol may be related to personal issues.

Dualist Discuss various pairs of opposites, such as Katniss/Gale, Clove/Rue, Katniss/Peeta, Cinna/Snow, Haymitch/Effie, low-tech/high-tech, District 12/Capitol City, Capitol City/the Hunger Games playing area, real life/TV life, participants/audience, adults/young people.

Auteurist Examine the film's relationship to other films written or directed by Gary Ross, in style, subject material, themes, types of characters (e.g., misfit adolescents, athletic competitors, political figures), and popularity with audiences and critics.

Generic Compare The Hunger Games with other dystopian post-apocalyptic science fiction, action-adventures, sociopolitical satires, and teen coming-of-age romances, for shared and differing elements and approaches.

Culturalist Look at the film as a metaphor for the modern public's fascination with reality TV as entertainment, with live sporting events, a trend toward "extreme" sports, and the preoccupation with celebrity; see how characters reflect common personalities and attitudes associated with the 2010s; find parallels in the expanded government control and monitoring of private lives and applications of modern technology; look at influences of society and fashion-makers on public tastes.

Marxist Focus on the extremes of class distinctions and the government's exploitation and oppression of its workers in outlying districts to support the decadent luxuries and technology of the Capitol; note how common people forced to fight each other by the totalitarian system can band together in support of each other when needed, build popular support, and even defy government regulations successfully.

BEHIND THE SCENES

Examples of Critical Approaches

The following links provide examples of the critical approaches discussed in the text.

Essays from noted film professor David Bordwell

Mad Detective (2007) Nov. 2010

Generic and auteurist approach

http://www.davidbordwell.net/essays/maddetective.php (http://www.davidbordwell.net/essays/maddetective.php)

Courtesy Nick Wrigley, used by permission of Professor David Bordwell.

Lady in the Water (2006) Sept. 2006

"Making of" book review that includes auteurist, genetic, and culturalist approaches

http://www.davidbordwell.net/essays/hearing.php (http://www.davidbordwell.net/essays/hearing.php)

Used by permission of Professor David Bordwell.

filmreference.com essays

The Bicycle Thief (1947) by Joel E. Kanoff

Social-historical context

http://www.filmreference.com/Films-Kr-Le/Ladri-di-Biciclette.html (http://www.filmreference.com/Films-Kr-Le/Ladri-di-Biciclette.html)

Blade Runner (1982) by John McCarty

Both generic and genetic context

http://www.filmreference.com/Films-Bh-Bo/Blade-Runner.html (http://www.filmreference.com/Films-Bh-Bo/Blade-Runner.html)

Manhattan (1979) by Doug Tomlinson

Auteurist context

http://www.filmreference.com/Films-Ma-Me/Manhattan.html (http://www.filmreference.com/Films-Ma-Me/Manhattan.html)

Metropolis (1927) by B. Urgosikova

Social and historical context, including audience reception

http://www.filmreference.com/Films-Ma-Me/Metropolis.html (http://www.filmreference.com/Films-Ma-Me/Metropolis.html)

Bluray.com

Quite a few of the reviews on this site (especially those of classic, foreign, and independent films) include concise but surprisingly comprehensive film critiques from one or more contextualist approaches (most often a generic or auteurist approach).

http://www.blu-ray.com (http://www.blu-ray.com)

10.4 Criticism: Weighing the Balance

We have discussed several times the need for all elements of a movie to work in concert if it is to be successful, and that this is, ultimately, the responsibility of the director. However, it is not necessarily essential for each element to work equally well, and this is important to note when you approach a critical analysis of a film. There are many kinds of movies made in many kinds of ways. Thus, it is obvious that no magical formula, no uniform percentage of acting, writing, directing, technical competence, and whatever else goes into making a movie, can be prescribed universally. We will look at two examples to show that it is possible for the scales to be evened, for one element to pick up the slack for another. (We should also acknowledge that it is possible for a rare movie to fire on all cylinders equally well, as with Schindler's List, the first two Godfather movies, or classics such as Casablanca and The Wizard of Oz. It just doesn't happen very often.) We do not need to look only at low-budget or independent productions to find films that have some merits but don't quite succeed at everything they attempt. Apocalypse Now and Avatar both had huge production budgets. Both were even Academy Award nominees for Best Picture and Best Director, but both lost those two most prestigious Oscar categories, winning only technical awards.

Apocalypse Now is regarded by many as one of the finest films ever made, in spite of a number of flaws partly due to its legendarily chaotic, bloated, near-disastrous production. In director Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 film, U.S. Army Capt. Benjamin Willard (Martin Sheen) is dispatched to find Col. Walter Kurtz (Marlon Brando) and terminate his command with extreme prejudice—in other words, to kill him. The film follows Willard's travels through the jungles of Vietnam. Filming in the Philippines, Coppola faced several obstacles during the production of the film, including a typhoon that destroyed sets and added to the ballooning budget. Brando showed up overweight and did not know his lines. Sheen had a heart attack during filming, delaying production further. It seemed that the film would be a spectacular bust.

Photograph of Marlon Brando and Francis Ford Coppola behind the scenes of Apocalypse Now.

Courtesy Everett Collection

Apocalypse Now is a monumental film, but Brando's (left) over-the-top performance and Coppola's (right) extravagant jungle setting could be critiqued as a caricature of the madness they are trying to portray. This image from a behind-the-scenes documentary catches them in the midst of the process.

And yet, somehow, it wasn't. The chaos is reflected in the final film; it actually works to make it seem like a more realistic depiction of Vietnam than it might otherwise have been. This is probably a combination of happy accident and genius, for Coppola is widely considered a uniquely gifted director.

In the case of Apocalypse Now, most of the elements are in place for success, despite the craziness of production. Coppola shot millions of feet of film, making editing a Herculean task, but this gave him plenty to work with. The visuals of the film are spectacular, as are the complexly layered sounds that accompany them in an experimental use of stereo surround effects. Whether the movie is a realistic portrayal of what Vietnam was like during the war (a question that can be debated, and has been, many times), there is no doubt that Coppola achieved the sense of madness for which he was looking. Nevertheless, something had to give, and it did—the acting is somewhat unhinged, with all the main characters seemingly operating at varying levels of insanity. The stress clearly affected Sheen's health; Dennis Hopper shows up as a lunatic photographer loyal to Kurtz. As for Brando, he whispers most of his lines, lying in a darkened room. Whether this is simply an idiosyncratic actor doing what he wants or a savvy portrayal of a man who has lost his grip on reality—even if it is both—it is often remarkably haunting and effective.

Where Apocalypse Now falls even shorter for many viewers is in the story. Based on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, it meanders. Coppola cut out long stretches of the film, some of which he restored in later versions. Many critics find the last half hour to hour the weakest, although some actually prefer the film's final third and dislike the first two-thirds. Coppola famously could not decide on an ending, shooting several variations, and it shows. Whereas chaos actually helped the film in some aspects, in trying to tell a coherent story the chaos betrays the story. To try to follow the narrative is like listening to a crazy person talk. It starts and stops, jumps around, and leads the audience down paths that it leaves hanging, never to be revisited.

Yet most critics and audiences now agree that Apocalypse Now genuinely deserves its status as a great film, a brilliant work of art. How can that be, when the story is such a mess? Because the rest of the film is so superlative, balancing the scales of quality. Some critics hint at this. Writing in The New York Times, Vincent Canby suggests such a balance: "Vittorio Storaro...is responsible for the extraordinary camerawork that almost, but not quite, saves Apocalypse Now from its profoundly anticlimactic intellectual muddle." In fact, the film won the Oscar for its cinematography, as well as for its sound. Yet despite his misgivings, Canby also praises the film as being "as technically complex and masterful as any war film I can remember" (1979).

Avatar, James Cameron's 2009 film, is another example of an inequitable balance of form and function, relying as it does upon the jaw-dropping technological mastery of its director to make up for the banal story (Cameron wrote the film as well) and wooden acting. Set in the year 2154, the film takes place on a moon in outer space called Pandora, where continued mining by humans threatens the ecosystem of the Na'vi, the blue-skinned indigenous beings living there. To more fully interact with the Na'vi, humans have developed avatar technology, which creates a human–Na'vi hybrid that the human host controls with his or her mind.

Still from Avatar picturing actor Sam Worthington as main character Jake Sully next to the alien woman Neytiri.

TM & ©20th Century Fox. All rights reserved/courtesy Everett Collection

Much of the success of Avatar can be credited to the seamless juxtaposition of two literally alien worlds.

Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a Marine recruited for the avatar program, grows increasingly sympathetic to the Na'vi's plight, despite the objections of the corporation doing the mining and the paramilitary security force it employs. Jake will eventually lead the Na'vi in a successful war against the humans and, after his human form is exposed to the poisonous-for-humans Pandora atmosphere, become a full-fledged Na'vi himself.

The film was a stunning success, taking in more than $2 billion at the box office on its way to becoming the highest-grossing film in history. Its Oscar-winning art direction and visual effects are truly stunning, incorporating technology that Cameron himself invented. And beyond the computer-generated settings and characters, its 3-D format both accentuates the visuals beyond anything ever seen in a movie before and serves as a demonstration of how 3-D technology might be used as more than the revisiting of a gimmick. The colors, the textures, the flora and fauna Cameron and his effects team created digitally in three dimensions are genuinely amazing.

Yet some critics argue that Cameron invested too much time in developing the technology at the expense of almost every other aspect of his film. The story is a mishmash of plots and themes found in films such as Dances with Wolves and Pocahontas, among others. Its politics are preachy, predictable, and banal, an oversimplification of the effects unchecked capitalism and industry can have. The acting, meanwhile, is almost as much of an afterthought as the plot and dialogue, despite the presence of many talented actors. Sam Worthington's character Sully is wooden, a disappointment because Worthington is so good in other projects. Sigourney Weaver is given little to do as a scientist in charge of the avatar project, which is actually preferable to the work done by Stephen Lang as the leader of the security force. He is a cigar-chomping cliché, a laughable cartoon instead of a real character. Giovanni Ribisi fares little better as the boss of the mining operator, a greedy villain so stereotyped that he lacks only a top hat and mustache to twirl.

Nevertheless, some critics and many audiences warmed to the film, even while pointing out its deficiencies. Why? For one thing, Cameron's sheer audacity is winning. He creates an entire universe from scratch; years were spent just on the language that the Na'vi speak. That is ambition on a scale not usually found in filmmaking or any other endeavor. It is, quite simply, something audiences had not seen before. The emphasis on effects may sacrifice some of the quality of the other elements of the film, but the finished product is so overwhelming that some never noticed its faults, and for many, it at least evened things out.

Apocalypse Now and Avatar both have elements that impressed numerous critics and moviegoers and elements that disappointed or completely turned off many other critics and moviegoers. There are countless other examples of films that fall into these categories; in fact, most do. Every film, no matter how "good" or "bad," has people who love it, people who hate it, and people who fall somewhere in between. Nitpickers may find fault with the most popular or the most artistically successful films. On the other hand, even the most derided movie disasters will still have their champions or at least people who can find something worthwhile in them. Mind you, an utter failure in a single facet can sink a movie, no matter how strong the others may be. But that failure has to be near complete to merit a wholly negative analysis. In the case of these two particular films, one can also now examine, evaluate, and debate changes made by the directors between each film's original theatrical release and a substantially extended "director's cut" released to home video. And knowing all that goes into making a film, whether a mega-budget studio production or a no-budget independent, makes it easier to appreciate just what the filmmakers were able to accomplish, even if you don't particularly like it.

Summary and Resources

Chapter Summary

Effective film criticism is much more than merely expressing personal opinions or recounting a plot synopsis. Opinions must be supported with specific examples from the film to be convincing, but a critic must also be able to recognize what filmmakers seem to be telling their audience on a deeper level than the basic (and obvious) actions of the plot. Various messages, attitudes, and issues may be discussed by characters explicitly. Implicit themes and ideas may become evident by the way characters change or react to the circumstances they must deal with. The film might also be consciously or unconsciously incorporating material from the real world outside the story being dramatized on the screen, in effect serving as a symptom of general public attitudes, concerns, and fears, or personal issues directly related to the filmmakers.

Numerous approaches may be used when analyzing a film, focusing on the aspect or aspects that most interest the critic and seem to be most apparent in the film. A formalist analysis will explain how the filmmakers use cinematic techniques (such as mise en scène, cinematography, editing, and sound) to convey information about the story and its themes to the viewer. A contextualist analysis looks beyond the film's story and techniques to find meaning, examining how the film fits within the context of the time and place in which it was made, a cultural approach. Such an analysis may incorporate one or more additional approaches, applying principles relating to feminist, Marxist, psychological, auteurist, or any number of other interpretations to place the film in a context that can explain more than a simple summary of what happens.

An effective critic must be confident in his or her opinions and interpretations, and able to support them, yet must also recognize that every film can inspire widely divergent reactions from people who are equally confident and persuasive about their opinions. The same film might be admired for certain aspects but berated for other aspects, appreciated for what it achieves while its flaws are still acknowledged. The things one critic might like about a film might be the very things others dislike, and vice versa. Once a person understands how films are able to manipulate viewers, and how filmmakers incorporate subtexts of meaning beyond the basic plots, it becomes easier to understand why one reacts to a film in a certain way and others react in a different way. This is the application of critical thought.

A Conclusion to the Student

Whether you want to post reviews to a blog, write for a newspaper, publish a scholarly essay on film, or simply earn a good grade on a college paper, there is one primary requirement: Watch and comprehend the movie. This sounds like a simple matter, and on some level it is. However, to analyze a film requires more concentration than simply watching it for fun. It demands that you pay attention not just to the film as a whole—though that you must—but also to its individual parts. It can be difficult to pay attention to all of the details while also paying attention to the overall story; you do not want to miss an important plot point because you are busy scribbling notes about the background lighting. Analyzing an entire film is something of a balancing act, and it requires practice. Eventually, though, it will become easier; it can become almost second nature. But this will take time and patience.

Photograph of a 1954 British movie theater, with the audience wearing smoke-colored glasses to view a 3-D movie.

Courtesy Everett Collection

Whether one is watching a film through 3-D glasses (such as in this 1954 British theater), on a huge theater screen, on a TV monitor, on a tablet, or on a phone, critical viewing demands active, questioning intelligence. Cinema can be much more than popcorn and entertainment.

Analyzing a film also requires knowing what to look for. The chapters of this text outline a variety of topics that can be the focus of a critical analysis, starting with the story itself. The rest of the filmmaking elements we've discussed can be analyzed on their own, in conjunction with others, or simply in terms of how they enhance the meaning of the story. A critique may center on the screenplay, the acting, the mise en scène, the cinematography, the editing, the sound, the special effects, or the directing. It may be more concerned with the film's societal impact, its genre, or any of the theories that give rise to the approaches mentioned in this chapter. A critical analysis may attempt to explain how various techniques are used to make certain scenes or the whole film particularly effective, or it may instead try to interpret the deeper levels of meaning that the critic is able to read into the film.

Applying the truth test and Goethe's three questions about art is a good start: trying to determine whether a film is true to itself and whether it reveals greater truths about us as human beings, what it is trying to say, how well it says it, and whether its message was worth saying. Using these tests, one film may seem to be merely an exercise in flashy cinematic techniques with no dramatic substance, while another may deal with heavy dramatic content in a simple, straightforward way. Still another may have obviously high ambitions but its success at achieving them may be debatable, depending on what a viewer is looking for.

The most important thing to remember about film criticism is that any film can be viewed from a variety of perspectives. It may succeed at some and fail at others, but it cannot be simply dismissed because the viewer does not like (or understand) one aspect of it. A movie review that is a mere personal reaction is all but useless to anyone else. A critique that tries to identify how a film's content, technique, or form communicates meaning and attitude, on the other hand, can help others understand why the critic likes or dislikes a film and get an idea of what their own reactions will be.

In an especially thoughtful essay in MovieMaker Magazine, John W. Whitehead offers the following as advice: "Cinema should be viewed with greater thought than the vast majority of us give it . . . ; the knowledgeable filmgoer should approach the experience with a receptive mind, open to the possibility of not only entertainment, but enlightenment" (Whitehead, 2003).

Questions to Ask Yourself About Criticism and Analysis When Viewing a Film

•What is the referential content in the film?

•What is the implicit content in the film?

•What symptomatic content can you use to analyze the film?

•What approaches to analysis seem most appropriate to use when analyzing the film? (formalist, contextualist, structuralist, auteurist, realist, generic)

You Try It

1.After watching a movie of your choosing, find and read a review of the movie from a professional critic, then use the Internet to find the same film reviewed by a blogger or online-only writer. Compare the two reviews for writing and analytical skill. Try to identify what levels of content they discuss and what approaches they seem to be using. Which review better reflects your feelings about the film? Use the links suggested in the Behind the Scenes: Links to Film Resources feature box to help you find reviews.

2.Again using a movie of your choosing, pay attention to a single formal element from the lists of "Questions to Ask Yourself . . ." throughout this book (e.g., acting, directing, effects, lighting). Evaluate how this element contributed to the movie's success—or failure.

3.With a movie of your choosing, write a popular review. That is, review the film as if your writing would be published in a newspaper or magazine, with attention paid to whether the people reading it should attend the film. Make a case for the film being a success or failure at the truth test. Again, use the links suggested in the Behind the Scenes: Links to Film Resources feature box.

4.Use a contextualist approach to analyze a film. Do not limit yourself to current or even recent releases. Instead, choose a film or films and examine them from the perspective of what they say about the culture in which they were created, as well as how they speak to our culture of today. Your analysis may also include an auteurist, generic, feminist, or psychological perspective, or any other external influence that you believe helps explain your interpretation of the film. Some samples of brief critical essays that incorporate various contextualist approaches (social, historical, auteurist, generic, genetic, psychological, etc.) can be found at http://www.filmreference.com (http://www.filmreference.com) and on noted film professor David Bordwell's blog at http://www.davidbordwell.net/essays/ (http://www.davidbordwell.net/essays/) (note that most of these assume the reader has already seen the film being discussed).