Some Basic Categories and Concepts in Film Theory

Approaches to Film Theory

Formalist - analysis based on formal components of film, e.g. camera angle, depth of focus, lighting effects, framing, camera mobility, altered motion, etc.

Realist - film is a reproduction of the real. It hides the sign as sign allowing the viewer to settle into a position of comfort. [It also assumes a kind of empiricism - that knowledge is gained directly through the experience of the film.]

What these two approaches share is the naturalist assumption. They differ in that the formalist thinks what's important in film is its capacity to be more than a reproduction of the real, whereas the realist thinks the representational quality of film is its greatest value.

Naturalism

Classic film theorists generally assumed a "naturalist" position, i.e. that a film is a copy of the world -- a reproduction of reality. (Cf. "A photograph is a copy of the world.")

In fact, a film is a sign, not a reproduction of the real.

Semiotics

A sign is something that stands for or represents something.

Types of Signs (based on relation of the sign to the thing it represents)

iconic - resemblance (road sign indicating curve ahead)
indexical - causal relation (smoke is sign of fire; tree rings sign of the age of tree)
symbolic - arbitrary or conventional relation (word and object)

A photograph is both iconic and indexical. The same follows for film.

Saussure

In the '70s film theory shifted from visual to linguistic models of analysis based primarily on the structuralism of Saussure.

1. diachronic --> synchronic analysis
2. langue/parole
3. signifier/signified
4. semiotics (semiology)

Barthes

Hidden meanings can be revealed if an image is analyzed in terms of the codes of signifier and signified. Literal meanings (manifest content) cover over the hidden or ideological meanings (latent content). Thus, the so-called realism of the image conceals other ideas and values that are not obvious or apparent to the casual observer.

Metz

Christian Metz pushed further the notion of film as a language or system of signs.

1. The cinematic image is to the scene represented as the signifier is to the signified. But unlike language, this relation is iconic and indexical. Thus, film differs from language in that the relation is not entirely arbitrary.
2. It doesn't follow from this difference that the meaning of the cinematic image is direct, literal and beyond cultural codes.
a. The world as we perceive it is not given directly. Much of our perception is both species specific and learned, shaped by our knowledge, needs and interests.
b. The cinematic image on the screen is, to some extent, a representation of what we would see if we were placed where the camera is positioned. But even this is altered, e.g. by processing, the two-dimensional nature of the image, etc., as well as by our expectations and predispositions.
3. Thus, the cinematic image (signifier) stands for something that is absent -- that which is absent has been textualized and is a "form of writing". Its meaning is not given but must be processed, read or interpreted from the material signifiers.
4. The meanings generated in the production and reception of film are ideological and subjective and lend themselves to political and psychoanalytic analyses.

T. R. Quigley, 2004