Film theory : creating a cinematic grammar

145 Pages·2014·1.158 MB·English

by  Colman, Felicity

FILM THEORY
CREATING A CINEMATIC GRAMMAR
FELICITY COLMAN
SHORT CUTS
SHORT CUTS
INTRODUCTIONS TO FILM STUDIES
OTHER SELECT TITLES IN THE SHORT CUTS SERIES
THE HORROR GENRE: FROM BEELZEBUB TO BLAIR WITCH Paul Wells
THE STAR SYSTEM: HOLLYWOOD’S PRODUCTION OF POPULAR IDENTITIES Paul McDonald
SCIENCE FICTION CINEMA: FROM OUTERSPACE TO CYBERSPACE Geoff King and Tanya Krzywinska
EARLY SOVIET CINEMA: INNOVATION, IDEOLOGY AND PROPAGANDA David Gillespie
READING HOLLYWOOD: SPACES AND MEANINGS IN AMERICAN FILM Deborah Thomas
DISASTER MOVIES: THE CINEMA OF CATASTROPHE Stephen Keane
THE WESTERN GENRE: FROM LORDSBURG TO BIG WHISKEY John Saunders
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND CINEMA: THE PLAY OF SHADOWS Vicky Lebeau
COSTUME AND CINEMA: DRESS CODES IN POPULAR FILM Sarah Street
MISE-EN-SCÈNE: FILM STYLE AND INTERPRETATION John Gibbs
NEW CHINESE CINEMA: CHALLENGING REPRESENTATIONS Sheila Cornelius with Ian Haydn Smith
ANIMATION: GENRE AND AUTHORSHIP Paul Wells
WOMEN’S CINEMA: THE CONTESTED SCREEN Alison Butler
BRITISH SOCIAL REALISM: FROM DOCUMENTARY TO BRIT GRIT Samantha Lay
FILM EDITING: THE ART OF THE EXPRESSIVE Valerie Orpen
AVANT-GARDE FILM: FORMS, THEMES AND PASSIONS Michael O’Pray
PRODUCTION DESIGN: ARCHITECTS OF THE SCREEN Jane Barnwell
NEW GERMAN CINEMA: IMAGES OF A GENERATION Julia Knight
EARLY CINEMA: FROM FACTORY GATE TO DREAM FACTORY Simon Popple and Joe Kember
MUSIC IN FILM: SOUNDTRACKS AND SYNERGY Pauline Reay
MELODRAMA: GENRE, STYLE, SENSIBILITY John Mercer and Martin Shingler
FEMINIST FILM STUDIES: WRITING THE WOMAN INTO CINEMA Janet McCabe
FILM PERFORMANCE: FROM ACHIEVEMENT TO APPRECIATION Andrew Klevan

NEW DIGITAL CINEMA: REINVENTING THE MOVING IMAGE Holly Willis
THE MUSICAL: RACE, GENDER AND PERFORMANCE Susan Smith
TEEN MOVIES: AMERICAN YOUTH ON SCREEN Timothy Shary
FILM NOIR: FROM BERLIN TO SIN CITY Mark Bould
DOCUMENTARY: THE MARGINS OF REALITY Paul Ward
THE NEW HOLLYWOOD: FROM BONNIE AND CLYDE TO STAR WARS Peter Krämer
ITALIAN NEO-REALISM: REBUILDING THE CINEMATIC CITY Mark Shiel
WAR CINEMA: HOLLYWOOD ON THE FRONT LINE Guy Westwell
FILM GENRE: FROM ICONOGRAPHY TO IDEOLOGY Barry Keith Grant
ROMANTIC COMEDY: BOY MEETS GIRL MEETS GENRE Tamar Jeffers McDonald
SPECTATORSHIP: THE POWER OF LOOKING ON Michele Aaron
SHAKESPEARE ON FILM: SUCH THINGS THAT DREAMS ARE MADE OF Carolyn Jess-Cooke
CRIME FILMS: INVESTIGATING THE SCENE Kirsten Moana Thompson
THE FRENCH NEW WAVE: A NEW LOOK Naomi Greene
CINEMA AND HISTORY: THE TELLING OF STORIES Mike Chopra-Gant
GERMAN EXPRESSIONIST CINEMA: THE WORLD OF LIGHT AND SHADOW Ian Roberts
FILM AND PHILOSOPHY: TAKING MOVIES SERIOUSLY Daniel Shaw
CONTEMPORARY BRITISH CINEMA: FROM HERITAGE TO HORROR James Leggott
RELIGION AND FILM: CINEMA AND THE RE-CREATION OF THE WORLD S. Brent Plate
FANTASY CINEMA: IMPOSSIBLE WORLDS ON SCREEN David Butler
FILM VIOLENCE: HISTORY, IDEOLOGY, GENRE James Kendrick
NEW KOREAN CINEMA: BREAKING THE WAVES Darcy Paquet
FILM AUTHORSHIP: AUTEURS AND OTHER MYTHS C. Paul Sellors
THE VAMPIRE FILM: UNDEAD CINEMA Jeffrey Weinstock
HERITAGE FILM: NATION, GENRE AND REPRESENTATION Belén Vidal
QUEER CINEMA: SCHOOLGIRLS, VAMPIRES AND GAY COWBOYS Barbara Mennel
ACTION MOVIES: THE CINEMA OF STRIKING BACK Harvey O’Brien
BOLLYWOOD: GODS, GLAMOUR AND GOSSIP Kush Varia
THE SPORTS FILM: GAMES PEOPLE PLAY Bruce Babington
THE HEIST FILM: STEALING WITH STYLE Daryl Lee
INTERNATIONAL POLITICS AND FILM: SPACE, VISON, POWER Sean Carter & Klaus Dodds
FILM T HEO RY
CREATING A CINEMATIC GRAMMAR
FELICITY COLMAN
WALLFLOWER
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A Wallflower Press Book
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Copyright © Felicity Colman 2014
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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements vii
Introduction: The Written Matter of a Cinematic Grammar 1
1 Models 19
2 Technology 43
3 Spectators 71
Conclusion: Film Theory as Practice 95
Bibliography 103
Index 129

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to the students and teachers of film theory that I have worked
with, and all encounters that have helped my thinking on and through this
discipline, especially Angela Ndalianis and Barbara Creed.
Special thanks to Apollonia Zikos, Erin Stapleton, Anna Hickey-Moody, Roy
and Dr Tang, who have helped me immeasurably in vital moments.
Thanks to Yoram Allon, Commissioning Editor at Wallflower Press, for his
tireless support of the discipline of film studies.

INTRODUCTION: THE WRITTEN MATTER OF
A CINEMATIC GRAMMAR
Writing about Werner Herzog’s documentary film Grizzly Man (2005) in
Cineaste magazine, Conrad Geller reminds his readers of one of the unfor-
gettable scenes of the bear-loving naturalist, Timothy Treadwell. Geller
writes of a moment selected by Herzog from Treadwell’s video blog, where
Timothy is ‘fondling a large pile of bear dung. It was, he says, produced
by one of his familiar bears, Wendy. “It’s still warm” he says wonderingly.
“It was inside of her!”’ Geller characterises this film through such scenes,
later asking ‘Did Treadwell do some good?’ He concludes that Grizzly Man
‘comes down to a kind of metaphysical debate between Treadwell and
Herzog’ (2005: 52–3).
The type of approach that Geller takes typifies contemporary writing
about film. An affectively resonant scene from a film is re-drawn with words
with emotive emphasis (fondling; wonderingly), a conceptual index is
applied to the film (metaphysical), and a philosophical argument concern-
ing ethics is drawn in with the question of ‘doing good’. But how would we
describe Geller’s own mode of theorisation? Would we label him a Marxist
theorist as he looks to the relationship between Treadwell’s social world of
film production and that world’s continuation of social inequities and hier-
archies (not the least between man and animal)? Or would we categorise
him using a phenomenological approach, where the ‘encounter’ is delib-
erately not reduced to representational terms, but can only be personified
in terms of its sensate dimensions (for example, see Sobchack 2004)?
Geller further asks us to consider auteurist theory (see Bazin 2008), with
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