Introduction to Film Studies

• “A film is a multimedial narrative form based on a physical record of sounds and moving pictures. Film is also a performed genre in the sense that it is primarily designed to be shown in a public performance. Whereas a dramatic play is realised as live event, and can theoretically be repeated infinitely without any change. Like drama, film is a narrative genre because it presents us with a story (a sequence of actions). Often, a film is an adaptation of an epic or dramatic narrative (examples are Stanley Kubrick s adaptation of Anthony Burgess s novel “A Clockwork Orange”, Milos Forman s film of Peter Shaffer’s

• “Amadeus”. (Jahn, 2003)

What is a Movie?

• “A movie is a text that interweaves sound in any or all of its aspects (noise, music speech) and image (everything from the printed word to physical action, movement, gaze, and gestures) for the purpose of telling a story”. (Dick, 1998).

Peircian Semiotics The Three Modes

• The Icon

• The Index

• The Symbol

The Symbol

• Symbol/ Symbolic: a mode in which the signifier does not resemble the signified but which is fundamentally arbitrary or purely conventional – so that the relationship must be learnt e.g. language in general (plus specific languages, alphabetical letters, punctuation marks, words, phrases and sentences), numbers, Morse code, traffic lights, national flags.

The Icon

• Icon / iconic: a mode in which the signifier is perceived as resembling or imitating the signified (recognisably looking, sounding, feeling, tasting or smelling like it) – being similar in possessing some of its qualities: e.g. a portrait, a cartoon, a scale model, onomatopoeia, metaphors, ‘realistic’ sounds in ‘programme music’, sound effects in radio drama, a dubbed film sound track, imitative gestures. Film stars may be regarded as intertextual icons often associated with specific genres and narrative structures (e.g. James Cagney and the Gangster films)

The Index

• Index/ indexical: a mode in which the signifier is not arbitrary but is directly connected ion some way (physically or causally) to the signified - this link can be observed or inferred: e.g. ‘natural signs’ (smoke, thunder, footprints, echoes, non-synthetic odours and flavours), medical symptoms (pain, a rash, pulse rate) ..Indexes do not exist in isolation .The icon is always an indexical sign. Indexicality is culturally bound.

Editing and Mise –en -scene

• These are two fundamental cinematic concepts • Mise-en –scene includes: decor,types of

shots,colour,lighting, performance,space relations or blocking,the Gaze,diegetic sound ,angularity.

• Editng refers to the order in which shots are asssembled within a scene and bewteen scenes.

• Within the Classical Holllywood tradition edting is supposed to be invisible. This is called continuity editing

• Classical Hollywood narratives were character driven and interpellated the spectator through their seamlessness in terms of cutting .The spectator did not become aware of the construction of the cinematic text .

Camera Shots and Angularity– 1-Long shot– 2-Establishing shot– 3-Medium shot– 4-Close up– 5-High angle and low angle

shots.– 6-Point of view shot– 7-Two shot – 8-Soft focus– 9-Wide angle shot– 10-Subjective shot

The Gaze

• Spectatorial gaze

• Camera gaze

• Intradiegetic gaze

• Gendered gaze

• Ethnic gaze

• Normalising gaze

• Empowered/disempowered gaze

Cinematic SpacePoint of view/audition

• Onscreen space• Offscreen space

• Focalisation• Point of view /audition• Restricted narration

• Voice over • Spectatorial interpelllation (suture)• Allegiance/Alignment with onscreen characters

Signifiers in Film Texts

• There are three kinds of signifiers in film texts:

• 1-Visual • 2-Auditory or acoustic• 3-Verbal (speech and print)• It is fundamental to analyse the interelation

between the three kinds of signifiers whenever a film is analysed.

Film Theory.:Significant Approaches

• Media semiotics• Mise-en-scene Criticism

• Feminist Film Theory• Psychoanalysis• Postcolonial Film Theory

• Thematic Approach• Ideological Criticism• Intertextual Analysis (Film Adaptation)

Film Genres

• Film Noir

• Female Melodrama

• Gothic Film

Female Melodrama I

• Melodrama :Melos and Drama

• Origins in the pre-revolutionary French unofficial theatrical performances (18th century)

• Textual characteristics:

• 1-Emphasis on the victim

• 2-The presence of masochism

Female Melodrama II

• 3-The struggle between female desire and socially sanctioned femininity (Feminist Film Theory)

• 4-The articulation of unspeakable feelings of the characters through mise-en-scene

• 5-The inability of the characters to understand the full implications of their existential position within society

• 6-Feeling of entrapment within the bourgeois home

• 7-Lack of agency of the female gaze

Female Melodrama III

• 8-The presence of excess made manifest through decor, colour, uses of light, and shadow, musical score and body language

• 9-The casting choices of film stars associated with this mode (e.g. Bette Davies)

• 10-The subtle critique of the American Dream and Patriarchal ideology through the subversion of the narative structure which usually contains a fake happy ending

• 11-The use of distanciation techniques

Gothic Films I

• Textual characteristics :• 1-The Fantastic

• 2-The Uncanny

• 3-Haunting

• 4-Abjection and the Grotesque

Gothic Films II

• 5-The presence of the monster or freak

• 6-Monster cannot be expelled

• 7-The intrusion of the Doppelganger

• 8-No narrative closure

Film Noir (Kaplan:1998)

• Textual characteristics:• 1-Investigative nature of narrative• 2-Convoluted plots• 3-Plot devices such as voice over narration (often

male voice over)• 4-Presence of spider woman /femme fatale

/nurturing woman • 5-Sharp contrast between light and darkness• 6-Characters’ subjectivities are fragmented • 7-Masculinity crisis

Theory of Adaptation (Hutcheon:2006)

• Transtextuality• Intertextuality

• Adaptation/Transposition• Replication/Recreation• From the linguistic to the iconic

• Dialogic relationship between literature/film• From hypotext to hypertext• Fidelity?

Shakespeare on Screen

• The Theatrical Mode (Hindle:2007)

• The Filmic Mode

• The Realistic Mode

• The Periodising Mode

• Adaptation/Appropiation

• The Director as Author