Preface 
Acknowledgments

Chapter 1 PHOTOGRAPHY 
Realism and Formalism 
The Shots 
The Angles 
Light and Dark 
Color
Lenses, Filters, and Stocks 
The Digital Revolution 
The Cinematographer 
Further Reading 

Chapter 2 MISE EN SC?NE
Composition and Design 
Territorial Space 
Proxemic Patterns 
Open and Closed Forms 
Further Reading

Chapter 3 MOVEMENT
The Moving Camera 
Mechanical Distortions of Movement 
Further Reading

Chapter 4 EDITING
Continuity 
D. W. Griffith and Classical Cutting 
Soviet Montage and the Formalist Tradition 
André Bazin and the Tradition of Realism
Further Reading

Chapter 5 SOUND
Historical Background
Sound Effects 
Music 
Musicals 
Spoken Language 
Further Reading 

Chapter 6 ACTING
Stage and Screen Acting
The American Star System 
Styles of Acting 
Casting 
Further Reading

Chapter 7 DRAMATIZATION
Time, Space, and Language 
The Director 
Settings and Décor 
Costumes and Makeup
Further Reading

Chapter 8 STORY
Narratology 
The Spectator
The Classical Paradigm 
Realistic Narratives 
Formalistic Narratives 
Nonfictional Narratives 
Genre and Myth 
Further Reading

Chapter 9 WRITING
The Screenwriter
The Screenplay
North by Northwest:he Screenplay
Figurative Comparisons 
Point of View 
Literary Adaptations
Further Reading

Chapter 10 IDEOLOGY
The Left-Center-Right Model
Culture, Religion, and Ethnicity 
Feminism
Queer Cinema
Tone 
Further Reading

Chapter 11 CRITIQUE
Theories of Realism 
Formalist Film Theories 
The Auteur Theory 
Eclectic and Synthesizing Approaches 
Structuralism and Semiology 
Historiography 
Further Reading

Chapter 12 SYNTHESIS: Citizen Kane  
Photography 
Mise en Scène 
Movement 
Editing 
Sound 
Acting 
Dramatization 
Story 
Writing 
Ideology 
Critique 
Further Reading

Glossary
Text Credits 
Index

Realism and Formalism
Even before 1900, movies began to develop in two major directions: the realistic and the formalistic. In the mid?1890s in France, the Lumi?re brothers delighted audiences with their short movies dealing with everyday occurrences. Such films as The Arrival of a Train (see 4-4a) fascinated viewers precisely because they seemed to capture the flux and spontaneity of events as they were viewed in real life. At about the same time, Georges Méliès (pronounced mel-yez) was creating a number of fantasy films that emphasized purely imagined events. Such movies as A Trip to the Moon (see 4-4b) were typical mixtures of whimsical narrative and trick photography. In many respects, the Lumières can be regarded as the founders of the realist tradition of cinema, and Méliès of the formalist tradition.
Realism and formalism are general rather than absolute terms. When used to suggest a tendency toward either polarity, such labels can be helpful, but in the end they're just labels. Few films are exclusively formalist in style, and fewer yet are completely realist. There is also an important difference between realism and reality, although this distinction is often forgotten. Realism is a particular style, whereas physical reality is the source of all the raw materials of film, both realistic and formalistic. Virtually all movie directors go to the photographable world for their subject matter, but what they do with this material-how they shape and manipulate it-is what determines their stylistic emphasis.
Generally speaking, realistic films attempt to reproduce the surface of reality with a minimum of distortion. In photographing objects and events, the filmmaker tries to suggest the richness of life itself. Both realist and formalist film directors must select(and hence, emphasize)certain details from the chaotic sprawl of reality. But the element of selectivity in realistic films is less obvious. Realists, in short, try to preserve the illusion that their film world is unmanipulated, an objective mirror of the actual world. Formalists, on the other hand, make no such pretense. They deliberately stylize and distort their raw materials so that no one would mistake a manipulated image of an object or event for the real thing. The stylization calls attention to itself: It's part of the show.
We rarely notice the style in a realistic movie because the artist tends to be self-effacing, invisible. Such filmmakers are more concerned with what's being shown rather than how it's manipulated. The camera is used conservatively. It's essentially a recording mechanism that reproduces the surface of tangible objects with as little commentary as possible. Some realists aim for a rough look in their images, one that doesn't prettify the materials with a self-conscious beauty of form. "If it's too pretty, it's false," is an implicit assumption. A high premium is placed on simplicity, spontaneity, and directness. This is not to suggest that these movies lack artistry, however, for at its best, the realistic cinema specializes in art that conceals its artistry.
Formalist movies are stylistically flamboyant. Their directors are concerned with expressing their subjective experience of reality, not how other people might see it. Formalists are often referred to as expressionists, because their self-expression is at least as important as the subject matter itself. Expressionists are often concerned with spiritual and psychological truths, which they feel can be conveyed best by distorting the surface of the material world. The camera is used as a method of commenting on the subject matter, a way of emphasizing its essential rather than its objective nature. Formalist movies have a high degree of manipulation, a stylization of reality.