I recently re-took up, after a considerable absence due to the GRE, an introductory text about Film Theory which is the title of the book. It is by Robert Stam and I must say it is a very informative and pleasurable read. I came across such critics like Kracauer, Metz, and others. I was really moved by the Third Cinema writings of Latin American writers. I never thought that films were divided along the same lines as international relations; the first world, the second world, and the third world. This movement put forth many apt criticism about European, American, and Japanese Cinema, but at the same time didn't accept without critical debate the Cinema of the Soviet Union and it's satellites. I was very impressed with the anti-colonialist writings of Frantz Fanon, particularly his comments about film and the films it engendered in Africa.
Metz also put forth interesting ideas about how film language is contructed. How the words used in films become codes and symbols for meanings that we readily adopt in our understanding of achetypes, genres, and films. Furthermre, I was particularly taken with Metz's and others writing about psychoanalysis and Cinema. It really made me think about the viewing experience. It also talked about how Cinema is like a dream. It is an escape from reality or is it? Clearly I would have to side with the idea that Cinema is a dream. When you go to see a film or you pop in a DVD, or watch something on Hulu, it is the beginning of a dream like experience. For two to three hours you are lost in a make believe world, even if it is something based in reality like a Rosselini film, cinema is a dream. It creates characters that you feel for, that you talk to, that you identify with.
This is an ongoing blog about film theory as presented in the book and from other sources I may come across.
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