Critique

• What is cinema?
 Critique
• With D.W. Griffith’s
Birth of a Nation, 1915,
came film criticism &
theory
– Realistic Film Theory
– Formalistic Film Theory
– Auteur Theory
– Eclectic Film Theory
– Historiography
 Critique
• Reviewers, Critics &
Theorists
– Critics & Theorists are
concerned w/ the social &
political implications of film
as well as the nature of the
art form
– Theory is a grouping of
aesthetic generalizations
that apply to different films
in different ways
 Critique
• Realist & Formalist
Theories
– The Art
– The Artist
– The Audience
 Critique
• Realist & Formalist
Theories
– The Art
– The Artist
– The Audience
 Critique
• Realism
– Film as attempt to
capture external
reality as accurately
as possible
– Camera records –
not expressive
– Subject over
technique

Grapes of Wrath, 1940 & Dorothea Lange photo

 Critique
• How films reflect external
reality
• Emphasis on ordinary
people – laborers, factory
workers or “real people”
• Compassion – refusal to
pass moral judgments
• Emotions over abstract ideas

Greed & Hotel Rwanda

 Critique
• Formalist film theory
– Cinema is possible
because it is unlike
reality – the camera
is not the human eye

Metropolis & Transformers

 Critique
• Patterns in mise en
scéne
• Visual & aural motifs
 Critique
• Patterns in mise en
scéne
• Visual & aural motifs
 Critique
• Stylized dialogue
• Symbolic sounds

Reservoir Dogs
 Critique
• Too many
exceptions for
theories to be
absolute

Amélie & Nosferatu

 Critique
• Auteur Theory
– Mid-1950’s French
theorists: Andre
Bazin, the “high priest
of realism” begat
Truffaut, Godard &
French New Wave
and the dominance of
the director and his
vision of “reality”
 Critique
• With auteurs, it’s not
the subject or story
but how it’s told
• Still a dominant
theory in film
criticism

Inglorious Basterds
 Critique
• Eclectic:
• 1.selecting what
appears to be best
in various doctrines,
methods, or styles
2 : composed of
elements drawn
from various
sources
Kill Bill
 Critique
• Eclecticism rejects
the notion that one
theory fits all
• All reaction is
personal and thus
subjective
– Pauline Kael vs
Andrew Sarris
 Critique
• Historiography
• There are many film
histories defined by
the historian’s
interests, biases &
prejudices

Birth of a Nation, Ali, Do the

Right Thing, Within Our Gates
 Critique
• Film as Art
– Judged on artistic
richness
• Film & Technology
– Film through
inventions &
machinery

Stalker & Avatar

 Critique
• Film & Economics
– Film is expensive and
development is often
determined by economics
like Hollywood’s Studio
System & Vertical
Integration
 Critique
• Production,
distribution and
exhibition all
consolidated under
one entity - Vertical
Integration
maximized profits
like manufacturing
 Critique
• Block or Blind
booking
• Owned theatres
• Monopoly
• System of
manufacture
• Front office
assigned personnel
 Critique
• The Big 5
– Paramount - 25%
– Warner Bros. - 25%
– Twentieth Century Fox
– MGM
– RKO
• The Remaining 10%
– Columbia
– Universal
– United Artists
 Critique
• Stars were
investments and Greta Garbo
properties for the
major studios
 Critique
• Film as Social History
– Collective sentiment
during a period of time
– Film as reflection of the
audience

Bonnie & Clyde

 Critique
• Different
approaches lead to
different
interpretations of the
same text

Juno
 Critique
• Italian Neo-realism
considered a high
point of realistic film
theory applied
• Post WWII response
to Italy’s Fascist
years and the
hardship and poverty
of the post-war years
 Critique
• Neo-realism
– avoidance of neatly
plotted stories
– documentary visual
style
– the use of actual
locations rather than
studio sets
 Critique
• Neo-realism
– use of non-
professional actors
– conversational
speech
– avoidance of artifice
in editing & camera
work
 Critique
• Open City, I
Vitelloni, La Terra
Trema
 Critique
• Roberto Rossellini,
Federico Fellini,
Luchino Visconti
and Vittorio De Sica
 Critique
• Bicycle Thieves 1948
• with Lamberto Maggiorani
& Enzo Staiola- both non-
professionals
• Honorary Oscar for Best
Foreign Film
• On countless lists as one
of the most influential
films ever made
•
 Critique
• “Although he has again set his drama in the
streets of Rome and has populated it
densely with significant contemporary
types, De Sica is concerned here with
something which is not confined to Rome
nor solely originated by post-war disorder
and distress. He is pondering the piteous
paradoxes of poverty, no matter where, and
the wretched compulsions of sheer self-
interest in man's desperate struggle to
survive. And while he has limited his vista to
a vivid cross-section of Roman life, he
actually is holding a mirror up to millions of
civilized men.”
Bosley Crowther, 1949, NY Times