Film theory is a set of scholarly approaches within theacademicdiscipline offilm or cinema studies that began in the 1920s by questioning the formalessential attributes ofmotion pictures;[1] and that now provides conceptual frameworks for understandingfilm's relationship toreality, the otherarts, individual viewers, andsociety at large.[2] Film theory is not to be confused with generalfilm criticism, orfilm history, though these three disciplines interrelate.
Although some branches of film theory are derived fromlinguistics andliterary theory,[3] it also originated and overlaps with thephilosophy of film.[4]
French philosopherHenri Bergson'sMatter and Memory (1896) anticipated the development of film theory during the birth of cinema in the early twentieth century. Bergson commented on the need for new ways of thinking about movement, and coined the terms "the movement-image" and "the time-image". However, in his 1906 essayL'illusion cinématographique (inL'évolution créatrice; English:The cinematic illusion) he rejects film as an example of what he had in mind. Nonetheless, decades later, inCinéma I andCinema II (1983–1985), the philosopherGilles Deleuze tookMatter and Memory as the basis of hisphilosophy of film and revisited Bergson's concepts, combining them with thesemiotics ofCharles Sanders Peirce. Early film theory arose in thesilent era and was mostly concerned with defining the crucial elements of the medium.Ricciotto Canudo was an early Italian film theoretician who saw cinema as "plastic art in motion", and gave cinema the label "the Sixth Art", later changed to "the Seventh Art".
In 1915,Vachel Lindsay wrote a book on film, followed a year later byHugo Münsterberg. Lindsay argued that films could be classified into three categories:action films,intimate films, as well asfilms of splendour.[5] According to him, the action film wassculpture-in-motion, while the intimate film waspainting-in-motion, and splendour filmarchitecture-in-motion.[5] He also argued against the contemporary notion of calling filmsphotoplays and seen as filmed versions of theatre, instead seeing film withcamera-born opportunities.[6] He also described cinema ashieroglyphic in the sense of containing symbols in its images.[6] He believed this visuality gave film the potential for universal accessibility.[7] Münsterberg in turn noted the analogies between cinematic techniques and certain mental processes.[8] For example, he compared theclose-up to the mind paying attention.[8] Theflashback, in turn, was similar toremembering.[9] This was later followed by theformalism ofRudolf Arnheim, who studied how techniques influenced film as art.[10]
Among early French theorists,Germaine Dulac brought the concept ofimpressionism to film by describing cinema that explored the malleability of the border between internal experience and external reality, for example throughsuperimposition.[11]Surrealism also had an influence on early French film culture.[12] The termphotogénie was important to both, having been brought to use byLouis Delluc in 1919 and becoming widespread in its usage to capture the unique power of cinema.[13]Jean Epstein noted how filming gives a "personality" or a "spirit" to objects while also being able to reveal "the untrue, the unreal, the 'surreal'".[13] This was similar todefamiliarization used byavant-garde artists to recreate the world.[13] He saw the close-up as the essence ofphotogénie.[14]Béla Balázs also praised the close-up for similar reasons.[14] Arnheim also believed defamiliarization to be a critical element of film.[15]
After theRussian Revolution, a chaotic situation in the country also created a sense of excitement at new possibilities.[16] This gave rise to montage theory in the work ofDziga Vertov andSergei Eisenstein.[16] After the establishment of theMoscow Film School,Lev Kuleshov set up a workshop to study the formal structure of film, focusing on editing as "the essence of cinematography".[17] This produced findings on theKuleshov effect.[17] Editing was also associated with the foundationalMarxist concept ofdialectical materialism.[17] To this end, Eisenstein claimed that "montage is conflict".[18] Eisenstein's theories were focused on montage having the ability create meaning transcending the sum of its parts with athematic effect in a way thatideograms turned graphics into abstract symbols.[19] Multiple scenes could work to produce themes (tonal montage), while multiple themes could create even higher levels of meaning (intellectual montage).[19] Vertov in turn focused on developingKino-Pravda,film truth, and theKino-Eye, which he claimed showed a deeper truth than could be seen with the naked eye.[20][21]
In the years afterWorld War II, the French film critic and theoristAndré Bazin argued that film's essence lay in its ability to mechanically reproduce reality, not in its difference from reality.[22] This had followed the rise ofpoetic realism in French cinema in the 1930s.[23] He believed that the purpose of art is to preserve reality, even famously claiming that "The photographic image is the object itself".[24] Based on this, he advocated for the use oflong takes anddeep focus, to reveal thestructural depth of reality and finding meaning objectively in images.[25] This was soon followed by the rise ofItalian neorealism.[25]Siegfried Kracauer was also notable for arguing thatrealism is the most important function of cinema.[26]
TheAuteur theory derived from the approach of critic and filmmakerAlexandre Astruc, among others, and was originally developed in articles inCahiers du Cinéma, a film journal that had been co-founded by Bazin.[27]François Truffaut issued auteurism's manifestos in twoCahiers essays: "Une certaine tendance du cinéma français" (January 1954) and "Ali Baba et la 'Politique des auteurs'" (February 1955).[28] His approach was brought to American criticism byAndrew Sarris in 1962.[29] The auteur theory was based on films depicting the directors' own worldviews and impressions of the subject matter, by varying lighting, camerawork, staging, editing, and so on.[30]Georges Sadoul deemed a film's putative "author" potentially even an actor, but a film indeed collaborative.[31][page needed]Aljean Harmetz cited major control even by film executives.[32]David Kipen's view of screenwriter as indeed main author is termedSchreiber theory.
In the 1960s and 1970s, film theory took up residence in academia importing concepts from established disciplines likepsychoanalysis,gender studies,anthropology,literary theory,semiotics andlinguistics—as advanced by scholars such asChristian Metz.[33] However, not until the late 1980s or early 1990s did film theoryper se achieve much prominence in American universities by displacing the prevailing humanistic,auteur theory that had dominated cinema studies and which had been focused on the practical elements of film writing, production, editing and criticism.[34] American scholarDavid Bordwell has spoken against many prominent developments in film theory since the 1970s. He uses the derogatory term "SLAB theory" to refer tofilm studies based on the ideas ofFerdinand de Saussure,Jacques Lacan,Louis Althusser, andRoland Barthes.[35] Instead, Bordwell promotes what he describes as "neoformalism" (a revival offormalist film theory).
During the 1990s the digital revolution in image technologies has influenced film theory in various ways. There has been a refocus onto celluloid film's ability to capture an "indexical" image of a moment in time by theorists likeMary Ann Doane, Philip Rosen andLaura Mulvey who was informed by psychoanalysis. From a psychoanalytical perspective, after the Lacanian notion of "the Real",Slavoj Žižek offered new aspects of "thegaze" extensively used in contemporary film analysis.[36] From the 1990s onward the Matrixial theory of artist and psychoanalystBracha L. Ettinger[37] revolutionizedfeminist film theory.[38][39] Her conceptThe Matrixial Gaze,[40] that has established a feminine gaze and has articulated its differences from the phallic gaze and its relation to feminine as well as maternal specificities and potentialities of "coemergence", offering a critique ofSigmund Freud's andJacques Lacan's psychoanalysis, is extensively used in analysis of films[41][42] by female authors, likeChantal Akerman,[43] as well as by male authors, likePedro Almodovar.[44] The matrixial gaze offers the female the position of a subject, not of an object, of the gaze, while deconstructing the structure of the subject itself, and offers border-time, border-space and a possibility for compassion and witnessing. Ettinger's notions articulate the links between aesthetics, ethics and trauma.[45] There has also been a historical revisiting of early cinema screenings, practices and spectatorship modes by writers Tom Gunning,Miriam Hansen and Yuri Tsivian.
InCritical Cinema: Beyond the Theory of Practice (2011), Clive Meyer suggests that 'cinema is a different experience to watching a film at home or in an art gallery', and argues for film theorists to re-engage the specificity of philosophical concepts for cinema as a medium distinct from others.[46]
