Authors: David Bordwell,Kristin Thompson
B0041VYHGW EBOK (3 page)
CHAPTER 8
Summary: Style as a Formal System
Step 4: Propose Functions for the Salient Techniques and the Patterns They Form
A CLOSER LOOK:
Film Style in
Shadow of a Doubt
A CLOSER LOOK:
A Contemporary Genre: The Crime Thriller
CHAPTER 10
Documentary, Experimental, and Animated Films
PART FIVE • Critical Analysis of Films
CHAPTER 11
Film Criticism: Critical Analyses
The Classical Narrative Cinema
Narrative Alternatives to Classical Filmmaking
APPENDIX
Writing a Critical Analysis of a Film
Step 1: Develop a Thesis That Your Essay Will Explain and Support
Sample Essay: Fantasy and Reality in
The King of Comedy
CHAPTER 12
Film Art and Film History
The Development of the Classical Hollywood Cinema (1908–1927)
German Expressionism (1919–1926)
French Impressionism and Surrealism (1918–1930)
The Classical Hollywood Cinema After the Coming of Sound
Italian Neorealism (1942–1951)
The French New Wave (1959–1964)
The New Hollywood and Independent Filmmaking
PREFACE
We started to write
Film Art: An Introduction
in 1977, when film had just become a regular subject of study in colleges and universities. There were a few introductory film textbooks available, but they seemed to us oversimplified and lacking a clear sense of organization. After studying film since the 1960s and after teaching an introductory course at the University of Wisconsin– Madison, we tried to pull together what we’d learned.
We had two purposes. First, we wanted to describe the basic techniques of cinema—mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing, and sound—clearly and thoroughly. Beyond that, we wanted to do something that earlier books hadn’t tried to do. We wanted to show students how to understand the overall form, or structure, of a film. The goal was to analyze whole films, not just isolated scenes. We wanted to show how the separate techniques of the film medium functioned in the film’s larger context.
To achieve these aims, we tried to go beyond summarizing what critics and theorists before us had said. Of course we couldn’t neglect important thinkers. But the more we studied films, the more we realized that there were many crucial aspects of film that had long gone unnoticed. We had to do more than synthesize; we had to innovate.
Sometimes the survey books that appear early in the history of a discipline produce original work, and
Film Art
wound up doing that. For instance, we found that film editing harbored a range of possibilities that had never been systematically presented. Similarly, no one had tried to survey the various sorts of overall form that a film can utilize. At almost every turn, we tried to fill gaps in understanding and come up with fresh insights into the creative choices that filmmakers had made.
In the thirty-plus years since we began the project,
Film Art
has undergone several revisions. We’ve adjusted it to the needs of the educators who have found it useful, and we’ve tried to accommodate changes in the ways in which films are made and seen. When the first edition came out in 1979, Betamax videotape was just emerging as a consumer item. Today, people are watching films on their iPods. Over all these years, though, the art of cinema hasn’t fundamentally changed. Internet and digital films use the same basic techniques and formal strategies that filmmakers have always employed. Likewise, the goal of
Film Art
has remained the same: to introduce the reader to the fundamental features of cinema as an art form.
We envision readers of three sorts. First is the interested general reader who likes movies and wants to know more about them. Second is the student in an introductory film course, for whom
Film Art
functions as a textbook. Third is the more advanced student of film, who can find here a convenient outline on film aesthetics and suggestions for more specialized work.
Since
Film Art
first appeared, a number of other introductory texts have been published. We believe that our book still offers the most comprehensive and systematic layout of the art of film. It also offers discussions of creative possibilities that aren’t considered elsewhere. It’s gratifying to us that scholarly works on cinema often cite
Film Art
as an authoritative and original source on film aesthetics.
Film Art
One way to organize a book like this would be to survey all contemporary approaches to film studies, and there’s no shortage of books following that approach. But we believe that the student wants to know the core features of the film medium before he or she is introduced to different academic approaches. So
Film Art
pioneered an approach that leads the reader in logical steps through the techniques and structures that make up the whole film.
Moviegoers become absorbed by films as complete experiences, not fragments. The approach we’ve chosen emphasizes the film as a whole—made in particular ways, displaying overall coherence, using concrete techniques of expression, and existing in history. Our approach breaks down into a series of questions.