Beginning Film Studies - Introduction

Introduction

The Coming of Film
  • Walter Benjamin, in the 1930s, highlighted the arrival of film as a new art form in the late nineteenth century.
    • Film techniques like slow motion and close-ups could reconfigure time and space.
    • Film could liberate and differentiate itself from earlier visual culture.
  • Other scholars see film's emergence as a synthesis of existing technologies and practices.
    • Rick Altman argues that names like 'photoplay' and 'electric theatre' show film's conservation and appropriation.
Origins of Film
  • Traditionally, the Lumière brothers' demonstration in 1895 was considered the founding moment.
  • Genealogists of film trace its origins further back.
    • Abel Gance and Vachel Lindsay linked film to ancient visual forms like Egyptian hieroglyphics.
    • Laurent Mannoni finds an early 'cinema' in 13th-century experiments with projecting images in darkened rooms.
Optical Machines
  • Many optical machines prefigured cinematic experience.
  • Magic Lantern: Popular in the Victorian era, it projected slides of images.
  • Phenakistoscope: Invented in the 1830s produced a sense of movement using a spinning disk and a mirror.
  • Zoetrope: A drum rotated to create a film-like sequence.
19th Century Visual Culture
  • Michael Wood describes it as a "cabinet of wonders."
  • Inventions like the Photobioscope, Phasmatrope, and Praxinoscope contributed to film's development.
  • Waxworks, dioramas, panoramic paintings, theatre, and photography also played a role.
Film's Instability
  • Film criticism sought to define film as a distinct art form in the 20th century.
  • Tom Gunning notes film is being dispersed into new image technologies.
  • Boundaries between film and other spectacles (video games, internet sites) are blurring.
  • Digital imaging is replacing photochemical processes, challenging film studies' foundations.
The Impurity of Cinema
  • Alain Badiou emphasizes the "fundamental impurity of cinema."
  • Gunning argues there is no single identity to guard in film.
  • Film studies should be plural and contentious, embracing its multiplicity.
The Invention of Film Studies
  • From its beginning, film has stirred intellectual inquiry.
  • Early discourse explored film's artistic parameters, ideological implications, and cultural effects.
  • Early film students included figures from literature and painting, drawn to its modernity and elasticity of time and space.
Early Film Critics
  • Virginia Woolf engaged with film in diary entries, novels, and essays like 'The Cinema' (1926).
  • Victor Freeburg drew on art criticism to respond to film in 'The Art of Photoplay Making' (1918) and 'Pictorial Beauty on the Screen' (1923).
  • Hugo Münsterberg analyzed the psychological activity initiated by film in a book of 1916 ('the photoplay').
Film Studies as a Discipline
  • Dana Polan notes that film was studied before 1935 but without disciplinary solidification.
  • The first degree in film studies was offered by the University of Southern California from 1933 onward.
  • Film studies gradually disavowed vocational bias and emerged as an accredited academic discipline internationally.
Focus of the Book
  • This volume provides a critical introduction to key subjects, concepts, and methodologies in film studies. It aims to provide
    • knowledge of conceptual shifts in 20th- and 21st-century film studies,
    • a vocabulary for analyzing film form and style,
    • a sense of the ideological dimensions of film,
    • an awareness of key post-textual areas of film studies, and
    • a prospectus of possible directions for the future.
Approaching Film Studies
  • This book advocates a field of diverse activities rather than a single set of orthodoxies.
  • It assesses benefits of 'strong' conceptual frameworks while welcoming hospitability to a wide range of research projects.
Organization of the Chapters
  • Chapters 1-3 focus on the film text itself, covering aspects of mise-en-scène, editing, and soundtrack.
  • Chapters 4-8 move outwards, discussing film narrative, genre, authorship, stars, and ideologies.
  • Chapters 9 and 10 de-center the film text, focusing on production, distribution, and consumption.
The book includes:
  • 'Stop and Think' sections to encourage readers to recognize explanatory power and intellectual gratification.
Language of Film Studies:
  • Terminology may seem abstract, but abstract discourse is valuable for critical work.
Choice of Films
  • Concluding case studies are taken from recent, popular American cinema.
  • The book is committed to a wide geographical remit, drawing on films from various nations and periods.