Film - Section 5 - Chapter 12

Film & Ideology

Ideology

Refers to system of beliefs that shape our understanding of and relationship to the world around us, often without our being aware of the power and influence that they have over us.

Pudovkin

believed that shots were like bricks that were carefully placed, one by one, to form a kind of cinematic wall, and the montage was effectively the cement that held them together.

Vertov

Being essentially a documentarian was not interested in the narrative cohesion could produce.

Eisenstein

Montage meant a kind of dynamic editing used both expose and explore the dialectic, or oppositional conflicts, of a given situation, and to create in the mind of the viewer a revolutionary synthesis.

Kuleshov

Showing the effects of montage on an audience’s perception of emotion. You read an emotion depending on the context.

Apparatus

Consists of the devices and operations required for the production of a film and its projector, the screen, and the spectator

Splatter Film

A subgenre of the horror film that features as its main convention the liberal use of stage blood; critics cite the shower montage in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho as the most important precursor of the…

Narrative

Tightly organized plot with clearly defined conflicts, cause-effect relationships, and focus on individual characters

Closure

Classical narrative cinema, no matter what genre, must have…. The narrative must come to completion. Any ambiguity within the plot must be resolved.

Vertical integration

The system of production, distribution, and exhibition that characterized Hollywood’s studio system; the so-called studios were essentially distribution and exhibition companies that provided their own product to distribute and exhibit, thereby integrating their operations in a 3-tiered, vertical way.