Ed Sikov - Film studies: an introduction

Film Studies

Film and Culture Series
John Belton, General Editor

FILM STUDIES

An Introduction

Ed Sikov

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK

Publishers Since 1893

NEW YORK CHICHESTER, WEST SUSSEX

cup.columbia.edu

Copyright 2010 Ed Sikov

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

E-ISBN 978-0-231-51989-2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sikov, Ed.

Film studies : an introduction / Ed Sikov.

p. cm. (Film and culture)

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-231-14292-2 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-231-14293-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-231-51989-2 (ebook)

1. Motion pictures. I. Title. II. Series.

PN1994.s535 2010 2009033082

A Columbia University Press E-book.
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References to Internet Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

The author and Columbia University Press gratefully acknowledge permission to quote material from John Belton, American Cinema/American Culture, 3d ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008); copyright 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

for Adam Orman

and the other great students in my life

for John Belton

and the other great teachers in my life

CONTENTS

This book is designed to provide a basic introduction to the academic discipline known as film studies. It covers, in the first eleven chapters, the fundamental elements of formal film analysis, from the expressive content of individual images to the ways in which images link with one another; from the structures of narrative screenplays to the basics of cinematography, special effects, and sound. The books final chapter is a step-by-step guide to writing a final paper for the kind of course for which this textbook has been written.

Film Studies is a primera pared-down introduction to the field. It is aimed at beginners. It simplifies things, which is to say that the information it contains is straightforward and aimed at every student who is willing to learn it. Its complicated material, but only to a point. The goal here is not to ask and answer every question, cover every issue and term, and point out the exceptions that accompany every rule. Instead, Film Studies tries to cover the subject of narrative cinema accurately but broadly, precisely but not comprehensively. It is a relatively short book, not a doorstop or makeshift dumbbell. It isnt meant to cover anything more than the basic elements of formal film studies.

This book is about feature-length narrative cinemamovies that tell fictional stories that last from about ninety minutes to three or three and a half hours. It does not cover documentaries, which are about real people and events. Its not that documentary filmmaking is not worth studying; on the contrary. Its just that Film Studies is strictly an introduction to narrative cinema. Similarly, there is nothing in Film Studies about avantgarde filmsthose motion pictures that are radically experimental and noncommercial in nature. Film history is full of great avant-garde works, but that mode of filmmaking is not what this book is about.

People who study movies think about them in different and divergent ways. Scholars have explored sociological issues (race, ethnicity, religion, and class as depicted in films) and psychological issues (how movies express otherwise hidden ideas about gender and sexuality, for instance, or how audiences respond to comedies as opposed to horror films), to cite only a few of the various lenses through which we can view films. Researchers can devote themselves entirely to the study of film historythe nuts-and-bolts names, dates, and ideas of technological and aesthetic innovation that occurred on a global level. Similarly, the study of individual national cinemas has provided critical audiences with a broad range of cinematic styles to pursue, pinpoint, and enjoy.

Film Studies is not about any of these subjects. It is, to repeat, a primer, not an exhaustive examination of film interpretation, though the book has been expressly designed to accompany as wide a variety of film courses as possible.

This book centers on aspects of film form. You will learn the critical and technical language of the cinema and the ways in which formal devices work to create expressive meaning. Hopefully, if you go on to study film from a psychological or sociological perspective, or explore a particular national cinema, or take an upper-level film course of any kind, you will use the knowledge you gain here to go that much deeper into the films you see and study. This book serves as a first step. If this turns out to be your only exposure to film studies, you will still be able to bring to bear what you learn here to any film you ever see in the future.

Most film textbooks are awash in titles, names, and dates, and Film Studies is in certain ways no differentexcept in degree. In order to illustrate various points with examples, Film Studies does refer to a number of real movies that were made by important filmmakers at specific times in the course of film history. But in my experience, introductory students, when faced with the title and even the briefest description of a film they have never seen (and most likely will never see), tend to tune out. As a result, I draw a number of examples in Film Studies from hypothetical films; I will ask you to use your own imagination rather than draw impossibly on knowledge you dont already have about films you havent seen. Moreover, each individual film class has its own screening list. Indeed, from a professors perspective, one of the great pleasures of teaching cinema studies classes lies in picking the films to show and discuss. Film Studies tries not to get in the way of individual professors tastes. In short, this book does not come with its own prearranged list of films you must see.

Some film studies textbooks contain hundreds of illustrationsfilm stills, drawings, graphs, and frame enlargements, many of which are in color. Film Studies does offer illustrations when necessary, but in order to keep the book affordable, they are not a prominent feature.

In fact, Film Studies tries to be as practical and useful as possible in many ways. It aims for the widest readership and is pitched accordingly. It draws most of its examples from American films because they are the films that most American students have seen in the past and are likely to see in the future. It is designed to accompany a wide spectrum of film courses but is focused most clearly on the type of mainstream Introduction to Film class that is taught in practically every college and university in the United States and Canada.

I hope it works for you.

Consider the word REPRESENTATION (see glossary). What does it meanand what technology does it taketo represent real people or physical objects on film? These are two of the basic questions in film studies. The dictionary defines the verb to represent as to stand for; to symbolize; to indicate or communicate by signs or symbols. Thats all well and good as far as it goes. But in the first one hundred years of motion pictures, the signs and symbols onscreen were almost always real before they ended up as signs and symbols on movie screens.

We take for granted certain things about painting and literature, chief among them that the objects and people depicted in paint or described in words do not necessarily have a physical reality. You can paint a picture of a woman without using a model or even without having a specific real woman in your mind. You can paint landscapes youve never actually seen, and in fact you dont have to paint any real objects at all. Your painting can be entirely nonrepresentationaljust splashes of color or streaks of black paint. And bear in mind that all works of art, in addition to being representations, are also real things themselves. The woman Leonardo da Vinci painted against a mysterious landscape may or may not have existed, but the painting commonly known as the