exam review

Exam Review: Film Theory + Criticism 2007
The exam will include 20 questions (multiple choice and/or true-false) and will test your knowledge of the following subjects and terms:

∑ Mise-en-scène: You should know what the term mean, and what the components of cinematic mise-en- scène comprise.

∑ Stylistic Paradigms: You should be able to recognize the plot structures, character types, characteristic shot and editing techniques and types of mise-en-scène found in the following film styles:
o Classical film
o Realist film
o Formalist film
o Counter-cinema
o Postmodern film

∑ Auteur: You should know what the term means, who conceived of the idea, when, where and why. You should also know by what means and measure an auteur judged. (see: http://www.answers.com/topic/auteur; and http://dlibrary.acu.edu.au/staffhome/siryan/Screen/Auteur%20Theory.htm

∑ The Star System: You should know what function a star serves, the difference between and actor and a star, and the meanings of method acting, persona and type-casting. (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_system_(film); http://www.fathom.com/course/21701722/index.html

∑ Genre film: You should be able to choose the visual and audio signifiers associated with a variety of genres: for example, the western, romance, gangster, comedy and melodrama. Consider the types of characters, settings, costumes, props, weaponry, methods of transportation, sounds, etc. that are typical of each genre. (see: http://www.answers.com/topic/cinematic-genre)


Stylistic Paradigms—Study Notes
Film style represents the plastic means through which ideas are communicated using film. No one film adheres to a singular style. Most blend elements from each paradigm—classical, formalism and realist. Hypothetically speaking, if a perfect example of realism existed in film it would probably look a little like the imagery from a surveillance camera. With no obvious directorial influence, this perfect realist film would describe the world it pictured with little or no human intervention. This is a cinema of long shots and long takes, non-professional actors, actual locations, natural lighting, and little dramatic action. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the perfect formalist film might look like a completely abstract, avant-garde film; concerned primarily with the formal means through which film makes meaning, this type of film exploits the basic formal features of the medium to elaborate meaning. This is a cinema concerned with light, rhythm, movement and framing. Classical film blends elements of both realism and formalism.

Classical form is typical of mainstream, genre films and especially those films produced during the ‘classical period’ of the Hollywood Studio system. Largely defined by the classical plot structure that gives the script its linear form (rising action in the second act), the classical film blends elements of realism and formalism in its production. Classical films represent actions and settings that seem plausible--realistic. As such, the classical film adheres to the continuity system in editing, a system ‘that matches spatial and temporal relations from shot to shot in order to maintain continuous and clear narrative action” (see below, ‘Continuity System’). Classical films also borrow signifying mechanisms from formalism, in particular the use of elements of style to assert theme. Subsequently, music, lighting, sound, setting and other elements of mise-en-scène are employed for symbolic purposes. However, unlike formalism, the classical film uses form economically. (see: “Classical Hollywood Cinema,” http://faculty.uwb.edu/mgoldberg/courses/definitions/classicalHollywoodcinema or “Continuity System” http://cla.calpoly.edu/~SMARX/courses/continuitysys.html.html


In contrast, formalist cinema is a cinema of excess. Formalist movies are stylistically flamboyant. Their directors are concerned with expressing their unabashedly subjective experience of reality, not how other people might see it. Formalists are often referred to as expressionists, because their self-expression is at least as important as the subject matter itself. Expressionists are often concerned with spiritual and psychological truths, which they feel can be conveyed best by distorting the surface of the material world. The camera is used as a method of commenting on the subject matter, a way of emphasizing its essential rather than its objective nature. Formalist movies have a high degree of manipulation, of re-forming of reality. But it's precisely this "deformed" imagery that can be so artistically striking in such films. “Formalism expresses film’s potential as an expressive medium. The available film techniques are of central importance—use of camera, lighting, editing. For the formalist film should not merely record and imitate what is before the camera, but should produce its own meanings. Primary importance is attached to the filmic process, and it is suggested that film can never fully record reality anyway, if only because it is two-dimensional compared to reality’s three dimensions” (113 Studying Film)

In discussing realism as an aesthetic category in film we usually follow two routes of influence: the use of realism codes and conventions in the production of fictional narratives concerned with social issues (Neo-Realism, Nouveau Vague); and the direct cinema/documentary cinema route. For the purposes of our study, we are concerned with the former: realist style in fictional or avant-garde film.

The terms and characteristics of counter-cinema were defined by 1970s film critics, to describe the political dimensions and strategies of contemporary avant-garde films. It refers to film practices that seek to challenge conventions of traditional cinematic narrative, so to engage the viewer intellectually in filmic storytelling. Sometimes called the ‘essay’ film, this approach to filmmaking advocates such things as direct address (where the actors address the audience), the use of an antihero (so to effect an estrangement from the protagonist), and complicated, sometimes multiple and non-linear story lines (so to solicit active spectatorship). (See ‘counter-cinema’ in this blog for a digest of characteristic features.)

According to Patricia White and Timothy Corrigan:

“postmodernism is a style that incorporates many other styles through fragments or references in a practice called pastiche. That is, it is a triumph of style itself. Historically, postmodernism is the cultural period in which political, cultural and economic shifts engendered challenges to the tenets of modernism, including its belief in the possibility of critiquing the world through art, the division of high and low culture and the genius and independent identity of the artist (The Film experience: An Introduction, 469).

Hence, postmodern film is principally characterized by its use of pastiche (an excessive use of references to other cultural signs or productions) and fragmentation. With its amalgamation of filmic styles, references to other films and characters and fragmented narrative, the films of Quentin Tarantino are said to exemplify postmodernism in film.