1. Chapter 11: Models of Film Theory

2. Basic Models of Film Theory ä Realist ä Auteurist ä Psychoanalytic ä Ideological ä Feminist ä Cognitive

3. Realist Theory ä Looks for correspondences between film images and the realities before the camera ä Restrictions on stylistic manipulation ä Andre Bazin ä Ethical formulation ä Deep-focus cinematography ä The long take ä Jean Renoir, Orson Welles

4. ä Bazin’s approach ä Strength ä Stress on ethical contract between filmmaker and viewer ä Weakness ä Typifies few films ä Deep focus, long takes, and montage may co-exist in a given film

5. Other Realist Models ä Documentary Realism ä Italian neo-realism ä Perceptual realism ä Basis for realism at perceptual level ä Three-dimensional visual/acoustic information ä Cinema conveys same information as found in everyday life ä Constrained by cinema’s transformative elements

6. Auteurist Theory ä The film director as author and artist ä A recognizable stylistic signature ä Consistencies of theme and visual design ä Alfred Hitchcock ä Strength: ä Helps legitimize the medium as an art ä Weakness: ä Attributional errors ä Filmmaking is collaborative

7. Psychoanalytic Models ä Derived from the writings of Freud and Jacques Lacan ä Cinema activates unconscious, non-rational pleasures and anxieties ä Voyeurism ä Fetish and taboo imagery

8. ä Strength ä Emphasis on the emotional power of cinema ä Emphasis on its ability to arouse desire and pleasure ä Weakness ä Based on ambiguous clinical data ä Tendency to over-extend its claims

9. Ideological Models ä Ideology – set of beliefs about society and the world ä Emphasizes how film portrays society and expresses ideologies ä Levels of ideological expression ä First order ä Rambo: First Blood Part II ä Second order ä Back to the Future

10. ä Ideological point of view: ä Support for established social values ä Critique of established values ä Conglomeration ä Mixed set of appeals and outlooks ä Enhances marketing to large, heterogeneous audiences

11. ä Strength ä Emphasizes relationship of film and society ä Exposes distorted portraits of social issues ä Weakness ä Tends to over-extend its claims ä Reduces films to ideological symptoms

12. Feminist Models ä Depiction of gender in film ä Connects this to social ideologies and practices ä Images of women (and men) in films made by men ä Alternative forms of feminist filmmaking ä May blend psychoanalytic and ideological elements

13. ä Strength ä Emphasis on the ways gender influences the production of images ä Weakness ä Gender is one of many filters on human experience

14. Cognitive Models ä Viewer perception of visual and auditory information ä Perceptual processing ä How viewers organize these perceptions and derive meaning from them ä Interpretive processing ä Schemas (frameworks of interpretation) ä Bases for a viewer’s understanding of cinema ä Perceptual correspondences ä Social correspondences

15. ä Strengths ä The theory is research-based, supported by empirical data ä By accounting for the intelligibility of cinema, the theory also accounts, in part, for the medium’s popularity ä Weakness ä Relative lack of attention to emotion ä Lack of attention to cinema’s transformative functions