reading visual arts

2. • Your job is to conduct a critical analysis of the class film.
• In everyday usage, when the words “critical” or “to criticize” are used, it implies that
something is being evaluated in a negative manner.
• However, when “criticism” is used in an academic sense, as we’ve been doing throughout
the semester, remember that it means to analyze something in depth, using higher-level
critical thinking.
• It does NOT necessarily imply a negative point-of-view on the subject at hand.

3. • We are NOT writing a film review for this paper.
The goal or purpose of a film review is to help readers decide whether they
want to see a movie. Therefore, film reviews provide the following things for
the reader:
• A plot synopsis—what happens in the movie
• A discussion of the movie’s target audience
• A list of which stars appear in the movie
• An evaluation—an overall thumbs-up or thumbs-down

4. • Instead, we ARE writing an academic film analysis for this paper.
A film analysis differs from a movie review in that it contains:
• No plot synopsis
• No discussion of the target audience
• No focus on the movie stars
• Film Analysis focuses on the film as a “rhetorical artifact,” which is an academic
term that means that the film is assumed to have meanings and messages beyond its
surface appearance and entertainment components.

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7. • This can be society at large, the particular culture, time, and place that
created it, the director’s personal life and previous body of work, or various
psychological and/or ideological contexts:
Examples:
Culturalist – place it was created
Psychological – often identifies plot elements with theories of
psychologists
Feminist – concentrates on the portrayals of women in a film
Marxist – attempt to associate characters and events in a film as
representative of class
Generic – looks at a film as a representative of a genre

8. Culturalist Movies Psychological Movies
Feminist Film

9. Marxist Film

10. • ‘A style of filmmaking that attempts to represent the look of objective
reality as it’s commonly perceived.
• Examines how a film represents “reality”
• Some films attempt to make techniques “invisible” to viewers so the
characters and situations are always the primary focus - Realist
• Others attempt to use cinematic techniques to replicate a certain type
of reality the filmmaker wants the audience to experience - Formalist

11. Realist Film

12. • A style of filmmaking in which aesthetic forms take precedence over the subject
matter as content. Time and space as ordinarily perceived are often distorted.
For Formalism, film is an art because its properties are exploited to express
filmmakers’ own vision’
• Looks at the film itself, its structure and form, a formalist approach will focus
primarily on internal evidence. A narrative analysis will examine how a film
employs various narrative formal elements analysis of specific formal
techniques might concentrate on a film’s use of scene or photographic
composition, camera movements, editing choices, sound in relation to the image,
etc.

13. Formalist Film

14. • Analyzes the symbolism and meaning of some aspect of the film. Generally
focuses on one element and analyzes its symbolic use throughout the film
Elements are symbolic or representative of more than their surface suggests:
Cinematography
Editing
Sound
• Films are full of things that you can analyze semiotically, looking for ways that
these things could be symbolic or representative of more than their surface
suggests. Here are some concrete ideas:
• Color, Light, Costume/Props, Music, Editing

15. • Theory that elements of human culture must be understood in terms of their
relationship to a larger, overarching system or structure.
• Emphasizes how films convey meaning through the use of codes and
conventions not dissimilar to the way languages are used to construct meaning
in communication.