FORM, INTERPRETATION, AND

EVALUATION IN MOTION PICTURES

MSTU1001: Introduction to Film and Television Studies
March 5, 2019
 PLAN FOR TODAY’S LECTURE
• Housekeeping
• Review of the concept of form with reference to Hero
• Brief in-class screening and activity with One Week
• Broad discussion of interpretation and evaluation
• Summary and looking ahead
 REVIEW: THE CONCEPT OF FORM
• “the way the parts work together to create an overall effect” (BTS 51).

• “the overall set of relationships among a film’s parts” (BTS 52).

• What kinds of parts?

 PARTS AND PATTERNS
• Narrative parts – a story as a pattern of narrative elements
• Stylistic parts – also used in ways that create patterns
STYLISTIC PATTERNING IN HERO (2002)
Extreme long shots render human figures tiny in relationship to landscape
STYLISTIC PATTERNING IN HERO (2002)
Extreme long shots render human figures tiny in relationship to landscape
STYLISTIC PATTERNING IN HERO (2002)
Extreme long shots render human figures tiny in relationship to landscape
STYLISTIC PATTERNING IN HERO (2002)
Extreme long shots render human figures tiny in relationship to landscape
STYLISTIC PATTERNING IN HERO (2002)
Frames are often symmetrically balanced
STYLISTIC PATTERNING IN HERO (2002)
Frames are often symmetrically balanced
STYLISTIC PATTERNING IN HERO (2002)
Frames are often symmetrically balanced
STYLISTIC PATTERNING IN HERO (2002)
Frames are often symmetrically balanced
STYLISTIC PATTERNING IN HERO (2002)
Frames are often symmetrically balanced
STYLISTIC PATTERNING IN HERO (2002)
Frames are often symmetrically balanced
STYLISTIC PATTERNING IN HERO (2002)
Symmetrical frames are particularly common used in conjunction with a pair of frontal angle close-ups coupled in a shot/ reverse-
shot sequence
STYLISTIC PATTERNING IN HERO (2002)
Symmetrical frames are particularly common used in conjunction with a pair of frontal angle close-ups coupled in a shot/ reverse-
shot sequence
STYLISTIC PATTERNING IN HERO (2002)
Symmetrical frames are particularly common used in conjunction with a pair of frontal angle close-ups coupled in a shot/ reverse-
shot sequence
STYLISTIC PATTERNING IN HERO (2002)
Symmetrical frames are particularly common used in conjunction with a pair of frontal angle close-ups coupled in a shot/ reverse-
shot sequence
STYLISTIC PATTERNING IN HERO (2002)
Symmetrical frames are particularly common used in conjunction with a pair of frontal angle close-ups coupled in a shot/ reverse-
shot sequence
STYLISTIC PATTERNING IN HERO (2002)
Symmetrical frames are particularly common used in conjunction with a pair of frontal angle close-ups coupled in a shot/ reverse-
shot sequence
STYLISTIC PATTERNING IN HERO (2002)
Bold, distinctive color schemes are used for different narrative segments
STYLISTIC PATTERNING IN HERO (2002)
Bold, distinctive color schemes are used for different narrative segments
STYLISTIC PATTERNING IN HERO (2002)
Bold, distinctive color schemes are used for different narrative segments
STYLISTIC PATTERNING IN HERO (2002)
Bold, distinctive color schemes are used for different narrative segments
STYLISTIC PATTERNING IN HERO (2002)
Bold, distinctive color schemes are used for different narrative segments
 NARRATIVE PATTERNING IN HERO
• Unnamed meets with the king (narrative frame/container)
• King’s brief (single shot?) flashback to previous assault on palace (green palette)
• Unnamed’s flashback (subjective narration) to battle with Sky
• Frame
• Unnamed’s flashback to the calligraphy school (red palette)
• Frame
• The king’s imagined flashback (blue palette)
• Frame
• Unnamed’s flashback correcting the king’s version (white palette)
• Broken Sword’s flashback to the previous assault on the king (green palette)
• Frame – ties together narrative lines of the original narrative frame with the narrative line of the white
palette
 FORMAL PATTERNING AS
STRUCTING EXPECTATIONS
• ”Artists design their works—they give them form—so that we can have a structured
experience” (BTS 51).

• “[Form] creates expectations and sustains them over time…

• Expectation pervades our experience of artworks. In reading a mystery, we expect that a

solution will be offered at some point, usually the end. In listening to a piece of music, we
expect repetition of a melody or motif. In looking at a painting, we search for what we
expect to be the most significant areas…” (BTS 54)
 PRINCIPLES (FUNCTIONS?) OF
FORM (ACCORDING TO BTS)
• Function
• “What is this element doing there? How does it cue us to respond?”
• Similarity and Repetition
• “Are elements or patterns repeated? If so, how and when? Are motifs and parallelisms asking us to compare
elements?”
• Difference and Variation
• “How are elements contrasted and differentiated from one another? How are different elements opposed to one
another?”
• Development
• “What principles of progression or development are at work through the form of the film? Does a comparison of
the beginning and ending point toward the film’s overall form?”
• Unity and Disunity
• “What degree of unity is present in the film’s overall form?”
ONE WEEK (1920)
A twenty-minute, 2-reel silent short by
Buster Keaton (writer, director, star).

Take a few notes with the questions about

form in mind…

Will ask for responses afterwards…

 BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!
• What do BTS get right?

• “We suggest that the search for implicit meanings should not leave behind the particular and
concrete features of a film…

• “…we should strive to make our interpretations precise by seeing how each film’s thematic
meanings are suggested by the film’s form. In a narrative film, both explicit and implicit
meanings depend on the relations between story and style” (BTS 59)
 “READINGS OF TEXTS” VS
“ARTISTIC APPRECIATION”
• BTS say “films have meaning because we attribute meanings to them” (60). In many other
courses, this process involves “reading” a “text.”

• Artistic appreciation is different. It assumes artworks (both ‘low’ and ‘high’) have meaning
because they are intentionally designed artifacts. Their meaning might not always be what was
intended (though it often is)… but it is not a matter of what audiences think it is…

• It assumes that part of an artwork’s value lies in its meaning, whether this amounts to depth,
sophistication, complexity, subtlety, or whatever. If meaning was something ascribed by
audiences, then it couldn’t be part of an artwork’s value… unless value, like meaning, was
entirely subjective.
 EVALUATIVE CRITERIA
• BTS say “we can try to make a relatively objective evaluation by using specific criteria. A
criterion is a standard that can be applied in the judgment of many works” (61).
• coherence, unity, intensity of effect, complexity, originality

• Should they add meaning?

• An on-going puzzle: How do we get from formal analysis to the evaluation?

 SUMMARY
• Form refers to the various parts (narrative and stylistic) of motion pictures and how these
parts interact.

• Analysing form is largely a matter of closely attending to narrative and stylistic features to
see how they are structured or patterned to create particular effects or to cue us to respond in
particular ways.

• The upshot of a formal analysis may be an interpretation, but it need not be. We can also
ask, more broadly, about how the elements of form function together.
 FOR NEXT WEEK
• Reading: Chapter 3 of Bordwell, Thompson, Smith
• Chapter 2 of Corrigan (optional)

Screening: Citizen Kane (1941)