Film Theory
National cinema is a tough subject to broach. You may not have even heard of it before. Film Inquiry provides a beginners guide.
Why do we even need film criticism? Well, the short and long answers are multi-faceted messes of conflicting perspectives – just like film.
On numerous conscious and subconscious levels, Jean Vigo’s Zero for Conduct is one of the most honest examinations of humanity and human society yet made in cinematic form. That is Anarchic Cinema.
In our latest entry of Anarchic Cinema, we discuss the birth of Japanese V-Cinema and the contributions of Takashi Miike.
Matthew Roe explores the Dogme 95 movement, arguing that it shows the boundaries of the human psyche, creativity and sociopolitical climate more effectively than any other movement of its time.
We examine how films have changed their use from black and white to color, as well as how it has continued to be used today.
Sketch comedy challenges the audience and explores unconventional ideas; this pushes directors to bring this mindset into feature films.
The importance and brilliance of colour in film cannot be stressed enough. Colour has the amazing ability to grab the audience’s attention, foreshadow information and control or influence emotion consciously and/or subliminally.
In this film theory piece, we discuss auteur theory, the film theory that states the director is the supreme reigning artist of their work.
Last month it was announced that Kirsten Dunst, in her directorial debut, will be directing Dakota Fanning in an adaptation of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. In an interview, Dunst has noted that her approach in adapting the seminal text has been to avoid the ‘didactic’ and instead ‘make a life of something … you really need to make your own scenes up’. Such an approach, while entirely refreshing for me, is one that regularly receives criticism from those that view the source text as somehow sacred, and thus static and intractable.
This is the second and last part of “What Is Mise-en-scène”. Find part one (dealing with mise-en-scène of setting, costume and objects) here! Cinematography If there is an important element in mise-en-scène then cinematography is it.
Mise-en-scène is one of the great terms used in film criticism. It is also the most basic and is usually the first thing you’ll learn on any film theory course. Unfortunately mise-en-scène is also, strangely, one of the hardest terms to understand.
This is the second and final part of our What Is Film Analysis article. Find the first part, on Narrative and Character, here. Production The giveaway of any bad production is the settings and costumes.
Film analysis, as far as I can tell, isn’t conducted any more in mainstream film criticism. That’s because these days anyone can write about film, and do. The film theorists and heavy-weight reviewers of the past have been overtaken by the age of the internet and by all the people ‘having a go’.
Laura Mulvey is a feminist film theorist from Britain, best known for her essay on Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Her theories are influenced by the likes of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan (by using their ideologies as “political weapons”) whilst also including psychoanalysis and feminism in her works. Mulvey is predominantly known for her theory regarding sexual objectification on women in the media, more commonly known as The Male Gaze” theory.