Reddit reviews What Is Cinema? Vol. 1
We found 7 Reddit comments about What Is Cinema? Vol. 1. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
University of California Press
Reddit reviews What Is Cinema? Vol. 1We found 7 Reddit comments about What Is Cinema? Vol. 1. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Theres a 15 part documentary on Hulu called The Story of Film: An Odyssey. It's excellent, and it will give you a very broad understanding of the history of film.
As for lists, one good way to start is to watch all of the movies on the [AFI 100] (http://www.afi.com/100Years/movies.aspx). That will give you a very broad picture of the history of American movies. Just set aside one day a week and watch one movie on the list every week.
Don't just watch them. Try to find out WHY each movie is revered as it is. After watching it, then read as much as you can about it. Read Roger Ebert's review, read it's entry on Filmsite.org, and start trying to contextualize each movie in its place in cinema history.
That will take you two years, but you'll have a much deeper appreciation than you do now.
After that, I suggest watching the BFI Sight and Sound Top 50. That will give you a more broad understanding of foreign film as well.
As for books I assign these to my class:
Film Art: An Introduction
This is the textbook that the department assigns. Its pretty broad and a decent overview.
Hitchcock In the 1960's Francois Truffaut interviewed Alfred Hitchcock and covered his entire filmography in detail. Fantastic, indispensable read.
What Is Cinema?
Andre Bazin was a french film critic, and the originator of Auteur theory. This is one of the original film theory books.
The American Cinema
Andrew Sarris is the American analog of Bazin. This is also a fundamental Film Theory book.
That should give you a solid start.
As that asshole who posted that thing, I...
A. Narcissistically think it's awesome that you're asking this question. Mostly because I asked this question, and I honestly enjoy film more because of it. I disagree completely with the idea that when one understands art more it's thus more difficult to enjoy it.
B. Literary theory is helpful with many films, especially the more standard ones. It becomes less helpful when we get into more avant garde cinema, but either way, I think it's a great jumping off point but one should preferably support the analysis that has been framed in Literary terms via Cinematic ones, because that's where the evidence to support your theory actually lies.
C. Here are my bullet points of advice, in the interest of economizing information:
Christian Metz will teach you about how film communicates information through non-verbal aesthetics. If you want to understand how to analyze film via a non-literary perspective, this is where to start.
Hugo Munsterberg is the father of most film theory. Oddly, he doesn't seem to like movies very much, but the book has some very relevant information on the interaction between film and spectator, that is essential (assuming a relatively modern approach at least. I suppose a formalist wouldn't care too much about the meaning of the film itself and thus the relationship wouldn't matter).
Slavoj Zizek has a lot of books on cinema, but also his documentary "The Perverts Guide to Cinema" is one of the most entertaining, as well as informative looks at film I've seen. It doesn't really address aesthetic elements as well as take a Lacanian look at why certain scenes provoke the reactions they do or what they mean, but I think that if one combines this psychological perspective with the understanding of how juxtaposition of elements conditions the viewer as evidenced by a lot of Soviet Film Theory, one can figure out the mechanism of how these meanings are being communicated. Also here's an interesting more structural take on Zizek that I've read.
I don't find it necessarily essential to my own views, but Sergei Eisenstein has a lot of really interesting work, and his books use a lot of synonymous examples in other art to illustrate how film works differently from theater and other narrative form. It also breaks down the Soviet Montage theory better than almost any other work.
Another essential book for many that I'm not a huge fan of yet I'd still say is pretty important to read is What Is Cinema by Andre Bazin
Dude loves movies and is pretty enlightening for many people I just disagree with a lot of his ideas of how film should best be made.
Andrew Sarris is a relatively important guy for understanding American film criticism. He and Pauline Kael warred for a while, and I think Pauline Kael is a blowhard ignoramous who never actually said anything relevant or informed about movies. People love her though, probably because she was an entertaining writer, and she was influential. But anyway, Sarris was the one who brought auteur theory, the dominant theory of understanding filmmaking today, to America from France.
An interesting look at directorial style and authorship is Martin Scorese's "A Personal Journey Through American Movies". It's not comprehensive or detailed, but it will not only show you some great classical era films to look up, but he has a unique idea of the director as filling one of four roles, storyteller, illusionist, smuggler and iconoclast. As a side note, I think Scorsese sees himself as a Smuggler, and attempts to be much more so in the wake of his reaching iconic status. For a much more challenging work of film criticism from a director that is still alive, check out Histoire(s) du Cinema by Jean-Luc Godard.
Finally I'd say Tom Gunning, who I actually met once and was fascinating to listen to, is pretty important. He's mostly focused on early film, and the development of how a film communicates narrative. He will illustrate some interesting things on spacial reasoning and editing and how logical information is communicated. For instance now in film you know which character is on the left by giving him some negative talk space in close up on the right, and when a character leaves frame on the right they enter the next from on the left if one wishes to maintain continuity of space, time and setting. Also his cinema of attractions theory is pretty interesting and explains exactly why people go watch Michael Bay movies, as well as elucidating the mentality of film-goers in the pre-Griffith era.
Also, look around the web. Some places like Slant.com, RogerEbert.com's essays and blogs sections, or Mubi.com occasionally have some really interesting stuff. Also there are random blogs around that do really enlightening work (like mine! shameless self promotion aside, if you want it I'll send it to you but I'm not gonna be that douche) that I sometimes stumble across.
Let me know if you have any questions or need clarification, and good luck!
Andre Bazin has a fantastic argument in his book What is Cinema where he talks about the fathers of cinema and their goals. When cameras were first invented the goal was to best replicate the human experience from a subjective point of view. Like 'being there'.
This advancement has never stopped in cinema, and it's innovations have been driven by the entertainment market.
Example.
We can focus our eyes on foreground and background images.
DOF
Our iris open and close for light.
Aperture
We hear sound.
Talkies.
Adrenaline kicks up the amount of image information when we are in an intense state.
Higher Shutter Speed (action films primarily).
We see in color.
Color film.
We have peripheral vision.
Anamorphic.
Our heads are on 'gyroscopes'.
Dolly's and Steadicams.
We hear sound with two ears and understand that sound in physical space.
Surround sound.
And so on...
3D is just the next logical step.
It just sucks right now and no one knows how to use it.
Just like all the innovations above, it will get better once we figure out how the hell to tell better stories with the technology.
My 2 cents anyway.
this one
Also, I highly recommend you this book, by Andre Bazin
check out /r/flicks too. i like it even more than /r/truefilm. word up to my crew at /r/moviescirclejerk... they keep it realer than most out there. despite the sub's hilariously nasty and sarcastic nature, they do have interesting discussions.
/r/movies ... your sub is trash. [(BOOOOOOOM)] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAFZnvTfFAs)
anyway, you want essays, and you're gonna get em.
It's cool to see actual Film Theory and Criticism in a Youtube video and not just topical bullshit.
If this piques your interest, and you really want to slog through some serious shit, here are collected readings:
Theory of Film by Siegfried Kracauer
What is Cinema by Andre Bazin
Film Form: Essays in Film Theory by Sergei Eisenstein
And the most difficult: Film Language: A Semiotics of The Cinema by Christian Metz
I'll leave this as an informal AMA if anyone has any questions. I have a degree in Film Criticism from a University, and it's mainly useless except for dinner table conversation.
No problem at all! In this case, I mostly learned it by reading a lot of essays and interviews and books, in this case especially ones on Kubrick and on cinematography. I don't remember specifically what stuff in particular, unfortunately. The best advice for watching EWS (or any film) in its intended format is to find a screening of it that's in 35mm--depending on where you're located, good bets are museums like MOMA in NYC, a local university, or arthouses and repertory theatres that might have a Kubrick retrospective or something.
As far as becoming well-versed in film, the first step is to watch everything you can get your hands on, even if you think it will be awful, and pay as much attention to the choices that are being made, how a camera is moving, what is in the frame and what isn't, lighting, color, dialogue, etc., even if you have no idea really what to be paying attention for. Anything you can think of or see onscreen, think about why that choice is being made and what the purpose of that choice is. And then after viewing something, look up some reviews of it (to find good critics, a good start is to go to Rotten Tomatoes, narrow down a movie's reviews to Top Critics, and then read the full reviews from there), positive and negative, and try to match what they're talking about to what you just saw and see if you can recognize what they're mentioning. And if you can't, just store the type of thing they're talking about and remember to think about it during the next movie you watch, and the next, and so on. Practicing this will build up your knowledge quite quickly, and it will become second nature to pick up on all kinds of things, and once that becomes habit and you don't have to pay as much attention consciously, you'll pick up on more and more subtle nuances. (If you want to have a starting point for films, you can go with a list like this, a list of 1000 movies that are "the best of all time" as a result of aggregating several different polls. Obviously, you never want to put too much stock in other people's opinions of what the best is, and it seems intimidatingly long, but like I said, it's just if you want a reference point. And they link to the polls they use, so if you want a smaller list to work with you, you can try one of those. This is helpful because again you'll discover what you like, so you might find one movie on that list by a director you love and then go off and watch everything else she ever did. And then you come back to the list. So it's not really about completing the list, just using it as another starting point for discovery.) Also, I recommend you keep at least a brief log of everything you watch, along with some notes about it--this will help you keep track of directors/screenwriters/cinematographers you like, as well as help you understand what you like and don't like about films better.
Once you start to feel comfortable with some of the basics, you can start seeking out books that discuss the film-making experience. With both movies and books, you'll discover your tastes as you go along, so it's best to start casting a broad net and reading books that cover a lot of topics, and then you might find that cinematography interests you most and then start reading books that are more specifically about that, and subscribing to specialty magazines like American Cinematographer, or you might find it all appealing and want to read books on all aspects of filmmaking.
That probably seems like a ton of info and fairly intimidating, but I basically started from nothing and basically just taught myself whatever I know by this method, no film school or anything certainly. Not saying I'm an expert on this stuff by any stretch of the imagination, but I've been able to become knowledgeable enough.
Some specific recommendations that I found immensely helpful that hopefully might be helpful to you too:
Current film critics: Dana Stevens (Slate), Stephanie Zacharek (Village Voice), Karina Longworth (freelance), Manohla Dargis (NYT), Wesley Morris (Grantland), A.O. Scott (NYT)
Kubrick:
The Stanley Kubrick Archives - A great book that also features Kubrick's drawings, personal notes, continuity photos, and interviews with him
Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made - A book on SK's uncompleted Napoleon film
The Kubrick Site - A really amazing online resource with a lot of links to essays and articles
Film magazines: Sight and Sound, Film Comment, American Cinematographer, Filmmaker, Little White Lies, Screen International
Books (if you only ever read one book on film, I'd make it Hitchcock/Truffaut--I learned more from it than from any other single source):
Hitchcock/Truffaut
What is Cinema?
Pictures at a Revolution
Negative Space
A Cinema of Loneliness
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls
The Age of Movies
Making Movies