For the record, I second Greg andElena’s remarks above. As for helping out the initial poster who asked about theory, I learned plenty of interesting things in my film classes at McGill 30 years ago, but I also learned quite a bit JUST by reading the critics, in books and magazines from the public library. I always enjoyed reading Pauline Kael and Susan Sontag. People should read as much about the movies as they want to; to really get to an understanding of films – see lots of’ ’em, and then follow-up with reviews and articles (from a variety of credible journals) about the ones that puzzled or bothered you the most.
i think bordwell goes deeper than technical virtuosity. he demystifies. hes trying to get at understanding how a director achieves those enlightened insights. which is just as important as analyzing the insights, and maybe even, arguably, an obligatory first step. but theres room for all at the table.
SLAB theory/theorists are “Sausseure-Lacan-Althusser-Barthes”. if im not mistaken, bordwell coined the term, humorously of course.
Reading Film Art alone should tell you that Bordwell and Thompson have no problem discussing the content and meaning of a film. They correctly understand that content and meaning come from style, narrative placement, and a number of other “technical” components of filmmaking. Their work is important to film theory more than criticism. By tracing film movements and styles, they are better able to understand how movies, both past and present, work. How this is not a valueable contribution to film studies, I’ll never know.
its more than valuable, its landmark. bordwell is already a giant of film studies. his stature will only continue to grow as film and film studies mature in this new century.
Hitchcock Truffaut, is an awesome book. Conversations with Walter Murch by Michael Ondantte is alright. Masters of light, notes on the cinematographer by Robert Bresson is easy to read. Gogard on godard is just most of his essays, its pretty interesting if you find a good article, same with hitchcock on hitchcock. I haven’t read Andre Bazin, i really want to now. Graham Greene also wrote lots of reviews.
If you’re at the stage of looking around, it’s not film theory you want, it’s film theories, or theorists, until you find the one you like. Different approaches drift in and out of fashion. I agree with whoever mentioned Deleuze, but to be read slowly and without panic, even in the original – I dread to think what he turns into in translation. Remembering that he’s not strictly so much a film theorist as a philosopher who happens to write about film.
An interesting name to attach to an original approach, that no one’s mentioned yet, is Laura Marks
never heard of her. whats she known for? can you send any samples of her work?
For a more psychoanalytical understand read or watch what Slavoj Žižek is saying about film! Very amusing and enlightening at the same time. To start with I recommend watching ‘The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema’.
Pervert’s Guide to Cinema is worth a watch, but Zizek has a perspective on life that’s so insular and disconnected…well, it’s no wonder he likes Hitchcock!
The most interesting film theory scribe is Jean-Louis Schefer.
Why? Send a representative sample if you can.
My current favorite is “Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film” by Carrol J. Clover
There are some excellent compilations of works by different theorist spanning multiple decades, two books that I have found particularly interesting are:
“Film Analysis: A Norton Reader.” Jeffrey Geiger and R. L. Rutsky
“Film Theory and Criticism” Edited by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (This one is especially helpful as an introduction to the major schools of film theory.)
More specifically,
Christian Metz: The Passion for Perceiving
Laura Mulvey: Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
Tania Modeleski: The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock and Feminist Theory
Tom Gunning: An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)credulous Spectator
John Belton
Thomas Schatz
Bordwell is a good starting place for rudimentary concepts in film. I think he is able to articulate much about what fascinates us about film and why classical film narrative has been as effective as it has.
DEFINITELY READ: Sergei Eisenstein
Andrew Sarris has a lot of interesting things to say about the Auteur Theory
Miriam Hansen: Pleasure, Ambivalence, Identification
Kristen Thompson: The Concept of Cinematic Excess
Mary Ann Doane: The Voice in the Cinema: The Articulation of Body and Space (This is an especially stimulating essay about the role of sound in film, which often gets overlooked in critical analysis)
Vsevolod Pudovkin: Film Technique (great stuff about editing)
Gringo Tex
Bordwell perceives the blandest of films, created only to make money, that express nothing of value, to be worth talking about.
Wasn’t this battle already fought and won by Cahiers over 50 years ago? Has the old rear guard now become the avant garde?
Bordwell’s primary project is to trace the evolution of cinematic style from its very beginnings to the present. He has admitted himself he’ll never actually accomplish that but it’s the effort he and others are making. This necessarily entails analysis of the “bland” films that embody the “standard” as well as the “masterpieces” that represent dialectical steps forward in film language.
As side projects, Bordwell has conducted book-long studies on individual directors like Dreyer, Ozu and others. These are more in line with the traditional “masterpiece” approach to criticism and are indispensable if you’re a big fan of the director.
Another essential book, especially regarding this thread, is On the History of Film Style where he traces the historical movements of film theory from Brasillach to Bazin to Burch to Metz.