Philosophical Problems of Classical Film Theory
Language: English
Pages: 280
ISBN: 069107321X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
This book is an analytical inquiry into classical film theory (that is, film theory before the advent of the semiotics and poststructuralism that began to dominate academic film literature in the 1970s). The author brings his training and experience as both an analytical philosopher and a film scholar to bear on its chief tenets. Using Rudolf Arnheim, Andre Bazin, and V. F. Perkins as representatives of major types of thinking about film, he provides clear and concise overviews of their work and locates their thought against the critical and theoretical currents of their times, the historical development of the cinema, and the prevalent issues in philosophical aesthetics. This closely reasoned book characterizes the structure of classical film theory, attempts to diagnose its shortcomings, and suggests avenues of inquiry for postclassical film theory. In addition, it includes many illuminating discussions of particular films and cinematic techniques.
Arnheim and Bazin represent opposing positions on the nature of photographic recording that are so deeply entrenched in our intellectual culture that these arguments seem to return over and over whenever discussion of the photographic arts is broached. Professor Carroll offers a uniquely penetrating appraisal of their work. Perkins, a more contemporary thinker, has not been subjected to any detailed analysis until now.
Gilda Melvyn Stokes (BFI Film Classics)
Amores Perros (BFI Modern Classics)
The Godfather (BFI Film Classics)
of their theories of film. What I would claim we find as a common problem in the "specificity" approaches of Arnheim, Bazin, Perkins, and the classical tradition they exemplify, is their failure to appreciate that it is their prior commitments concerning the use, value, or role of cinema that lead them to focus upon the characteristics of ~he medium that have come to preoccupy them. In terms of the framework for reading film theory I set forth in the Introduction, I might make this point by
composite because music is the dominant constituent medium to which the language and the scenography are subservient. Nor are laconic talking films with functional dialogue acceptable composites, because such dialogue is subservient to the visuals and, for the most part, is redundant to the action. On the other hand, more fully developed dialogue tends to make the film medium subservient to speech, paralyzing the action and thwarting the medium's commitment to animated movement. Dialogue cannot
in terms of resemblance. However, one can maintain an illusion theory without reference to resemblance. One might argue that for a painting x and its subject y, x represents y if and only if x causes normal viewers to believe that y is before them. "Before" should be read in the sense that Macbeth saw a dagger "before" him. Thus, according to this theory, a picture of Attila is a representation of Attila if and only if it (the picture) causes viewers to believe that Attila is before them. Here,
used to point to stylistic differences between contrastjog artworks. When we call a film or a movement realist, we are directing attention to certain characteristics the given films have that other films lack. Rules of the Game uses deepfocus cinematography to induce audiences to search the image for dramatic details that are lodged in the background of long-take shots. This mode of composition differs from the techniques prevalent in Russian films of the twenties and Hollywood films of the
reconciles the potential for conflict between the creative and reproductive capacities of the medium. This is how Perkins frames the problem: The movie is committed to finding a balance between equally insistent pulls, one towards credibility [realism] and the other towards shape and significance [creation- 181 ism]. And it is threatened by collapse on both sides. It may shatter illusion in straining after expression. It may subside into meaningless reproduction presenting a world which is
