Interpreting and

Analyzing Film:
Moving Between Criticism
and Theory
Part I
Learning Outcomes
• Identify the four levels of studying meaning of film texts.
• Relate film texts with political, historical and cultural issues.
• Analyze films by using some relevant approaches.
Introduction
• A critic evaluates the quality of a filmmaker’s work.
• How are the shots designed and composed? How effective is
the direction? How is the story told? These are some of the
questions we ask.
Four Level to write about film:
by Christopher P. Jacobs

Referential Content: telling what happens

Review: personal evaluations and impressions

Analysis: how it communicate meaning to the

viewers uses various cinematic techniques and
narrative form

Symptomatic Interpretation: looks at the film

as part of the broad context of society
Interpreting and Analyzing Film

Interpret
the moving
image texts

Critical
Film
Cultural,
Analysis
historical,
social
issues
Audience and Meaning of Film
• The film texts is how a film “speaks” to its audience.
• Filmmakers transfer a certain idea through telling a story.
• Audience is decoding the meaning of film, even when it’s not
there purposefully.
How to Analyze?
• Multiple viewings of the film
• Elements you noticed the most
• Determine the problem statement and find evidence to
support your ideas
• Examine one aspect in some depth or several important
aspects briefly
• Analyze the meaning
• connect to film approaches/ theories
What to analysis?

Script Acting

Directing Cinematography

Editing Sound
 Narrative Structure Analysis
Analysis of the story elements, including plot structure, character
motivations, and theme.
 Mise-en-Scene Analysis
Analysis of the arrangement of compositional elements in film
props and costumes, setting, lighting, camera angles, frames,
special effects, choreography, music, color values, depth,
placement of characters,etc
Study Film by using Film
Theories/Appraoches
• Film could do much more than provide simple entertainment,
a variety of approaches were developed to help analyze films.

• Different approaches/theories examine different aspects of a

film for different reasons.
Theories that focus on the
work: Realist Model
• This model looks at the connection between the film images
and the social, psychological and physical realities before the
camera.
• To honour and respect the integrity of the events.
• Realist films are attempting to be life-like, natural.
• Realist theory implies there is a limit beyond how stylistic
manipulation begins to falsify and destroy the truths that the
realist filmmaker pursues.
• Realist films try to be audience-centered.
Theories that focus on the
work: Realist Model
• Techniques suited for realism are deep focus cinematography
and the long take.
Open Water
Realist Model:
• [Case Study: Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho shower scene]

• By minimizing editing, deep focus and long take respect the

wholeness and richness of space and reality
Realist Model
• Ideally, most of the film would be shot on an actual location
instead of a studio set.
• If a Realist film is shot on a set, it will usually be carefully
crafted to look as realistic as possible.
Theories that focus on the
work: Formalist films
• This theory says film indeed is an art and not a reproduction
of reality.
• The opposite of realist filmmaking,
• Formalist films are more concerned with their artistic style
and design and they often come directly out of the artist’s
imagination.
• Formalist films are not at all concerned with trying to re-
present reality like a Realist film, they are trying to present the
artist’s vision of the world, whether that is connected to the
“real” world or not.
Formalist films

• Stylistically, Formalist films pay much more attention to the

design and formulation of the shot composition.
• Most of the time, these shots will be filmed on elaborate
studio sets that are constructed specifically for the film.
• Studio sets are perfect for Formalist films because it is very
easy to control the lighting elements and camera equipment
in order to get the exact shot that the filmmakers want.
• The types of shots that Formalists create are very controlled
and deliberate; the camera angles, camera movements,
arrangement of objects and people within the shots are often
designed to convey a very specific meaning.
Formalist film analysis
• Narrative elements:
• characters, plot development, story structure, motifs,
foreshadowing, motivation, and the like.

• Cinematic techniques in specific ways to convey, stress, or

enhance the themes of the narrative:
• how cinematography and editing draw the viewer’s attention to
parts of the mise en scène and tell the story in ways that go
beyond the mere dialogue and plot actions.
Case Study: Hantu Kak Limah
• http://www.rojakdaily.com/entertainment/article/5664/hantu
-kak-limah-is-now-officially-the-highest-grossing-malaysian-
film
• http://www.farhanajafri.com/2018/08/movie-review-hantu-
kak-limah.html
• http://hansrollodepelicula.blogspot.com/2018/08/review-
filem-hantu-kak-limah.html

Compare these three reviews.