COMM2930
Understanding Movies
Week1: introduction: Film style
Carol Chow
Copyright reserved. Please don’t circulate the course ppts.
FORM/STYLE
How a subject matter is told?
Addresses the nature of cinematographic images, the relation of
film to reality, the credibility of images, and the role cinema plays
in the organization and understanding of the world
Cinema as extension of photography
Photography as window Vs photography as mirror
Napalm Girl, 1972
Nick Ut © Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin
Afterlife 1, 2009
The Two Ideologies of Film Theory
REALISM
Film literally photographs reality. Impossible for film to be
a "pure" expression of the artist's intentions.
FORMALISM
Film is indeed art and not reproduction of reality.
Classification
Of style and types of Film
分手的決心 film styles
Realism Classicism Formalism
Documentary Fiction Avant-Garde
Film types
天水圍的日與夜 濁水漂流 Ashes of time
（東邪西毒) Derek Jarman
Blue
明日戰記 Limbo (智齒）
花樣年華
2046
Realism Formalism
The Arrival of a Train (1895) A Trip to the Moon (1902)
[Link] [Link]
centred on the importance of mise en scène in the construction
of fantasy
Realism
• first applied to painting and literature in the 1830s to describe new forms of art that developed in
parallel with the rise of nineteenth-century democracies and claimed a privileged relation to material
reality
• emphasized description and luxuriate in the details of everyday life
• focused on new subject matter, in particular the everyday existence of ordinary people
• Realism in film
• begins with the very first cinématographes of the Lumière brother
• To film theorist Bazin, realist film is a more democratic form of film as it did not manipulate
audiences
Gustave Courbet, The Stonebreakers, 1849
Realism
• Emphasizes on subject matter rather than how it is presented
• Stresses content instead of form
• Reproduce the reality with a minimum of distortion
• Camera as an Objective window
• Stress simplicity, spontaneity, and directness
• Conservation use of camera, long shots, lengthy takes
• Natural lighting
• Locating shooting
• Non professional actors
• Little commentary
• Minimum editing
• Music tends to be diegetic
Formalism
• A style of filmmaking that emphasizes aesthetic elements with a
consciously evident style in the delivery of narrative.
• A movie is unlike everyday reality
• Movie can be manipulated to express subjective experience of reality
• Concerned with psychological and spiritual truths
• Divergence exists between the camera’s image of reality and what the
human eyes see
• High degree of distortion and manipulation
• Commentary, emphasis
• E.g. Derek Jarman’s Blue (1993)
Van Gogh Starry Night
Characteristics of Formalism
• Camera angles can move toward higher or lower angles.
• A moving camera can be used to emphasize subjective states or create energy and or mood.
• Lighting can move to more extreme use of color, light and shadow in the creation of subjective
states and visual metaphors.
• Sets and backgrounds stand out or draw attention to themselves.
• Composition within the mise en scéne can more obviously draw on the elements of formality and
organization.
• Scoring is more often used and is extra-diegetic, or combines the diegetic with it to create
movement between subjective and objective states.
• Shots can tend to be subjective; This can include Point of View (POV) shots where the camera in a
sense becomes the character and we see what the character sees, but more often are composed
and designed in such a way that we gain access to the character’s subjective experience through
theses means.
Characteristics of Formalism
• Formalist films. The beauty or power of the image is primary, displacing a sense of reality.
• The visual presentation is stylized.
• The story expresses the director’s personal vision or passion, which may even be an obsession.
• The film usually presents extraordinary characters and events.
• Formalism explores ideas, e.g., political, religious, and philosophical ideas. For this reason it is the
preferred approach for propaganda.
• The perceptive viewer is aware that the narrative is being manipulated for an effect.
• Formalist narratives may manipulate the time sequence or use an obvious pattern. There may be a
disconcerting change of tone, e.g., a lyrical interlude intruding in a grim domestic drama.
• Genres almost always formalist are musicals, science fiction, horror/supernatural, and fantasy
Film text
(form and content)
Social context
How to appreciate movies?
Film as an art form:
• Form: a unified set of related, interdependent elements that constitute a
patterned relationships in an artwork
Film as social practice
• The elements of movies are interrelated with contextual factors and shaped
by ideologies
• Studying theories exterior to cinema studies will help understand the
meaning of movies better
Structure of the course
• Film style and film language
• (narrative/cinematography/mise-en-scene/sound and editing)
• Two different categories of movies
• genres/ avant-garde/ studio system/ auteur theory
• Other perspectives of film appreciation/critique
• Gender and sexuality/ethnic/nationalism/globalization
• Synthesis: Citizen Kane