Film Theory Outline Essay

From the very beginning of engage, theorists have tried to dissect or at a lower placestand the nature of the new medium of art. As a accompaniment various theories of film have emerged, such as feminist, auteur, psychoanalytical, Marxist, alter and Structuralist. This strain attempts to give an turn outline of these various theories. One of the original theories to emerge is Editing scheme, coming from the linguistic context of early Russian cinema. A key event in this regard is the experiment carried out by the film- hastenr Lev Kuleshov in 1918, in which he demonstrated that what the spectator perceives depends on how images be position with severally other finished inter-cutting.See more essay apa human bodyatThus, when a human close-up is juxtaposed with a bowl of soup, the perception is of hunger, and when juxtaposed with a shot of a coffin the same close-up is perceived to distil grief. Kuleshov concluded that juxtaposition was crucial towards the effect, and thus advocated the map montage in film-making. Other film-makers like Sergei Eisenstein played close attention to these findings, and made use of them in his masterpieces of montage, such as Battleship Potemkin and October. He also spelled out a comprehensive film surmisal based on redact in a highly influential essay from the late twenties.In it he outlined he various categories of editing, such as metric, rhythmic, tonal, overtonal, and skilful. For example, with intellectual montage a scene may be inter-cut with something immediately unrelated, but which nevertheless works as metaphor is a more intelligent sense. The above came to constitute soviet montage guess, which was in contrast to the Hollywood system of continuity editing. Montage is a very visible region of film, whereas continuity editing aims to make inter-cutting invisible, so that the watcher may keep down on the flow of the narrative in an easy way.Since the fifties a parallel conjecture of editing has eme rged in the West which embodies the Hollywood ethos. In the same essay Eisenstein proposed a Hegelian interpretation of film montage, and which came to urinate the basis of Marxist film scheme. He suggested that montage worked by the prescript of the Hegelian dialectic, where thesis is said to beget antithesis, and are resolved in the end through synthesis. For example, when human close up is inter-cut with a wish-wash of water, the viewer interprets this as thirst. If the face is the subject, then its antithesis is the object of vision, i.e. the glass of water. hunger is merely the synthesis of the two. It is present in neither of the two shots in consideration, yet emerges form the inter-cutting of the two. Of course, it was through the Hegelian dialectic that Marx had derived his famous judgment of the proletariat revolution, and Marxism was the avowed principle of the Bolshevists. Therefore, it is not surprising that Eisensteins theories frame a favorable audience in the Soviet Union. Indeed, it was implemental in forming of Socialist realism, which became the state sponsored ideology in art.Marxist film system soon found itself as defined in opposition to individualistic and bourgeoisie art, in which the narrative of the patron finds prominence. Eisensteins films attempt to use up the presence of the protagonist, concentrating instead on the clash of images towards creating a larger ideological narrative. Even then he was accused by the authorities for not championing the workers, and for indulging in the internal mechanics of film, which was deemed to be a potpourri of formalism. Marxist theory held that the purpose of art is to overcome all forms towards dialectic purification.Formalism was felt to be a bourgeoisie component. Marxist theory, as it has flourished both in the East and the West, concerns itself with dissecting films in order discredit bourgeoisie forms, unremarkably those emerging from the Hollywood system. A native wester n theory of film was late in developing, and a crucial starting draw a bead on was the theories developed by Andre Bazin, as editor of the French film clipping Cahiers du cinema. Up to that point films were catch outn as merely moneymaking(prenominal) vehicles, and Hollywood had evolved into a mighty and well groomed machine that churned films for the pleasure of the masses.Analyzing these films Bazin came to the conclusion that it was the film director who left the most characteristic stamp, and as illustration he held up the work of directors like Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks. He advocated that directors infuse their personal vision into the films under their charge, in order that they become the complete authors, which is the ideal state. This came to be cognize as the Auteur theory of film, which was given a more formal video display by Francois Truffaut. Directors were described as using the camera as a pen towards composing their films.Another significant idea of B azins was that film should aim for objective reality. This was in opposition to prevalent theory based on montage, which said that object of film is to manipulate reality. This instrumental approach led to the formulation of Structuralist film theory, which examines the structure of the components of film as they come together meaningfully. Instead of the dialectical approach of Eisenstein, the analysis takes into card conventional devices that have come to acquire meaning. The components that come into play are camera angle, lighting, juxtaposition, shot duration, cultural context etc.Meaning is usually accounted for by convention, and conventions change according to social and economic circumstances. For example, the highly commercial nature of Hollywood films has created the Institutional Mode of Representation, in which cinematic devices are used that make film viewing easy and exciting. For this reason it incorporates the open up ideology with little departure from the norm. Other interpretations overlook the mechanics of achievement and instead considered the viewer as the guidance of study. Psychoanalytic film theory offers such an interpretation.It is largely influenced by the views of the French philosopher Jacques Lacan regarding the childs reverberate stage of development. According to this theory the developing child endeavors to see a reflection of itself in all the objects it encounters. Psychoanalytic film theory replicates this situation with the viewer of film. The viewer is always looking for self- identification in the subprogram of watching a film, and in this sense uses the medium as a mirror. It is usually the male protagonist who provides the focus of this identification, and functions as a conduit by which the appetencys of the viewer are played out.The film is said to have constructed a compliments for the benefit of the viewer. Sometimes the gaze is simply the viewpoint of the protagonist at other times, in the more graphic se quences, the viewer is allowed to gaze directly. Psychoanalytic theory is careful to point out that such identification is merely illusion, and therefore it differs from the identification of the child growing up, whose identifications come to form tangible character. Feminist film theory takes psychoanalytical theory a step further, in that it interprets the gaze as scopophilia, or the relish to exert in secret, which is also known as voyeurism.Such desire is sexual in origin, and feminist theory is framed in the context of the man wanted to gaze at the woman. Such a theory provides a ready explanation of the objectification of woman in film, a phenomena that has been discover from the very beginnings of the medium. As in psychoanalytical theory, the male protagonist provides the focus of identification, but his specific desire is to objectify the women in the film, a desire which is vicariously shared by the viewer. There are three levels of objectification. initial there is th e cameras point of view, then that of the protagonist, and finally that of the viewer himself, who is allowed to gaze at the women directly. Critics of this theory point out that the egg-producing(prenominal) viewer is not taken into account, for women also go to see the same films, and they make love them too. However Laura Mulvey has given convincing arguments to explain female enjoyment. She says that it is either through a masochistic identification, or a transsexual one. In the first the female takes secret pleasure in male domination.In the second, the female identifies with the male protagonist, and thus shares in the pleasure that men take. However, she is also constantly slipping back into her female identity, which is said to be a clothe that she wears. Identification with the male pushes her uncomfortably close to the image of the subjected women, and the masquerade allows her to maintain a distance from it. Feminist film theory is a rough criticism of the norms of cinema, which is also blamed on the patriarchal norms of society. The advocacy is to make films that overcome the norms, and therefore to make films that are free from female objectification.