18
Film Analysis
ABSTRACT
Critical attention to the close analysis of film has grown steadily since the turn of the century, with a number of recently published titles making it their central focus for discussion. In turn, analysis itself has enjoyed a resurgence in contemporary film studies, resulting in a number of key titles that make precise scrutiny a defining critical approach. When reflecting on these trends, we are entitled to ask what is involved in the detailed analysis of film: what challenges and rewards are represented in this critical practice? With these questions in mind, this chapter explores processes of analysis through a series of examples from film studies. In building a picture of the various forms and approaches, the discussion seeks to evaluate the enduring centrality of detailed analysis in contemporary film studies.
Film analysis is one of the most if not the most prevalent of academic methods in film studies today. Examples of film analysis can be found across a whole spectrum of writing on topics within film history, theory, and criticism. It is to be expected that this kind of ubiquity might lead us to take film analysis for granted and, as a consequence, that we may neglect to reflect upon what we think we're doing when we analyze films. Certainly, the range and diversity of writings that fall under the general banner of “close textual analysis” in film studies suggests that many different people interpret the term in many different ways. Film studies has never settled upon one uniform method of analysis and it certainly is not the aim of this chapter to propose a defining approach. Indeed, there may be great benefit in having varying methods of analysis and, in any case, there are obvious points of convergence between approaches as much as there are distinctions. Neither am I concerned with detailing all of the analytical approaches to be found in film studies or to give an especially historical account of their development. Rather, what follows is an evaluation of a few different approaches, all of which I take to be important within film studies.
Introducing Film Analysis
It is a common, perhaps universal, practice for film studies courses in colleges and universities to feature some element of film analysis within the curriculum. Students are often introduced to the rudiments of analysis from the outset – as part of a first-year module, for example – and this tendency is indicative of a general acceptance that film analysis occupies a central significance in the study of the medium. This acknowledgment is shared elsewhere. Many “introduction to film studies” textbooks have been published over the past 40 years and all of them devote significant passages to the topic of film analysis. In common with university and college courses, this frequently happens right at the beginning. It is uncontroversial to suggest that, of the plenitude available, David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson's Film Art: An Introduction is the textbook that has received the most widespread use. Its ubiquity ensures that, for many students, the text may come to represent the key introduction to the principles of film study. The book has been reprinted in a number of editions since its first publication in 1979 and, given the breadth and diversity of contemporary film studies, it is notable that a particular approach has endured in each cycle of publication.
In adherence to the thrust of the book's title, the authors dedicate themselves to a conviction of film as art and, as one would expect, this becomes a guiding influence throughout chapters. Such assertions are perhaps unremarkable and represent no more than the reasonable expectations we might hold of this particular text. However, Bordwell and Thompson's methods for demonstrating the medium's status as an art form are striking, and of preliminary relevance to this chapter's concerns. As early as page 3, in a section proposing to focus on creativity, technology, and business, we are given a brief but fairly detailed analysis of a sequence from Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, complete with a number of accompanying frame enlargements from the film. The following segment is representative of this analysis, with the numbers in parentheses referring to frame enlargement illustrations:
The director of Shadow of a Doubt, Alfred Hitchcock, believed firmly in using the medium to arouse the viewer's mind and feelings. So, as Uncle Charlie launches into his monologue, Hitchcock presents us with a shot of the entire table (1.3). We've seen something like this shot in earlier scenes, and it orients us to the positions of the scene's major characters. At the same time, Hitchcock arranges things so that Uncle Charlie, not Emmy's husband, sits at the head of the table. His domination of the household is presented visually. As Charlie starts to talk, after a shot of Emmy, we get a brief shot of Little Charlie, eyeing him anxiously (1.4). When he begins to denounce the “useless women,” we get a close view of him as he continues his attack (1.5). (Bordwell & Thompson, 1979/2010, p. 5)
The discussion of Shadow of a Doubt, and of this sequence, contributes to the book's general introductory point about the ways in which film style – and particularly visual style – can become representational strategies in film. In this instance, the authors propose that Uncle Charlie's dominance is asserted through visual composition (and it is this dominance that will develop to become ever more sinister as the film progresses). If we can get beyond the bluntness of the language (we might ask which director doesn't seek to “arouse the viewer's mind and feelings”) that is surely designed to avoid taxing or troubling the novice film student, we can appreciate that Bordwell and Thompson place analysis at the heart of their introduction to film as an art form.
An effort is made to stay close to detail from the film, a fact illustrated in the relating of thematic points to shot compositions and also in the inclusion of numerous frame enlargements that elaborate these relationships. For the individual starting out in film studies with Bordwell and Thompson, the first method that will be encountered is a version of detailed film analysis. It follows that the authors place film analysis at the center of any introduction to the medium and, furthermore, this strategy demonstrates the extent to which they are not prepared to simply take for granted (or ask the reader to take for granted) that film is an art form capable of meaningful expression. Rather, they commit themselves to laying out in step-by-step detail the ways in which a single scene can achieve such an effect. This approach defines the whole of Film Art and, indeed, Bordwell and Thompson round off their analysis of Shadow of a Doubt in the following way:
The rest of this book will examine the ideas of form and style more closely. Here we just want to suggest that our Shadow of a Doubt scene is typical of how cinema works as art. Films have subject matter and themes that contribute to the artistic effect, but in themselves those amount to raw material. We have plenty of films about serial killers, but how many as vivid as Shadow of a Doubt? It's through form and style that film draws us into a moment-by-moment engagement, just as a song or a play or a novel does. As a film unfolds in time, it offers a developing pattern that encourages us to ask why things are happening and to wonder what will happen next. We feel curiosity and suspense and surprise. The film engages our vision and hearing, our knowledge of the world, our ideas, and our feelings. The filmmaker can create a structured experience that will involve us keenly – and sometimes change the way we think and feel about our lives. After watching Shadow of a Doubtt, many viewers ask whether the world is as sunny a place as it sometimes seems. (Bordwell & Thompson, 1979/2010, p. 7)
Some key themes emerge within this account of the book's analytical approach. The use of phrases like “how cinema works,” “raw material,” and “structured experience” reveals a view of film as something relatively mechanical and process-driven. It's entirely feasible to see the advantages of this attitude in the context of the book that Bordwell and Thompson have intended to write: their account of cinema allows the medium to remain manageable and, perhaps, appealingly linear for the uninitiated reader. Laying out a series of clear processes, especially ones that might extend across the whole of cinema, has obvious benefits in this context. The kind of analysis that Bordwell and Thompson engage in treats cinema as a series of constituent parts that can be taken apart, looked at, and then put back together again: rather like the components of a car engine or bars of a musical score. Film Art's achievement lies in its desire to retain relentless clarity as it performs this task of “taking apart,” its authors ever conscious not to lose the reader by making matters too convoluted or ambiguous. A second achievement is to keep the reader oriented precisely by staying close to detail from the films and, where possible, giving visual illustrations of the points raised. In this way, Bordwell and Thompson respond to their notion of film drawing us into “a moment-by-moment engagement” by undertaking moment-by-moment analyses of sequences, scenes, and sections.
It is perhaps understandable that an introductory text such as Film Art would strive for simplicity and linearity in its analysis. However, there are some inevitable drawbacks contained within such an approach. First and foremost, we might question whether analysis of this kind best responds to the complexity of the medium. Although sections of the book are devoted to shot-by-shot detail, it is notable that the resulting analysis often concerns itself with surface effect. This is most apparent when the discussion of Shadow of a Doubt moves to an evaluation of the film's impact upon the viewer. It is indisputable that hypothetical audience members might be moved to question whether their “world is as sunny a place as it sometimes seems” having watched Hitchcock's film, as Bordwell and Thompson suggest. The understatement inherent in this remark is effective as a witty reflection on Hitchcock's cinema (it is difficult to think of a film from his oeuvre that doesn't depict the world as slightly less than sunny). And yet, as the only evaluation offered, this assessment is unusually brief and purposely avoids engaging in any great depth with any of the film's various undercurrents and tensions. We are perhaps entitled to ask whether Shadow of a Doubt can really be summed up this easily. There is an imbalance, therefore, between the protracted nature of the analysis undertaken (“moment-by-moment engagement”) and the brevity of the evaluation that is reached. If the processes of analysis are made clear in Film Art, the purpose of analysis is left ambiguous. We might conclude that the approach demonstrated takes the film apart but then puts it back together a little too quickly, too neatly, and, in the process, risks reducing its qualities to a somewhat facile defining message (the world may not be as sunny as it seems). The method is then defined by its reductionist stance and, indeed, we might regard Bordwell and Thompson's contribution as a kind of reductionist analysis.
How far we take these criticisms of Bordwell and Thompson's analytical approach depends upon our view of Film Art as an introductory text, and of what an introductory text should aim to achieve. On the one hand, we might defend the book's stance by, quite reasonably, drawing attention to the fact that students of film are likely to encounter analyses that are far richer, more sophisticated, and greatly complex as they develop a sustained engagement with the field (some of them written by Bordwell and Thompson, perhaps). From this perspective, Film Art usefully introduces them to one method of analysis with, perhaps, the plausible expectation that the reader will move beyond the reductionist approach it embodies. On the other hand, we can speculate that this introduction to film analysis risks starting students off on the wrong foot precisely by not taking analysis to the point of meaningful evaluation. It should be added that, embedded in Bordwell and Thompson's analysis of Shadow of a Doubt, there are moments of evaluation and critical assertion: the observation that very few serial killer films are as “vivid” as Hitchcock's provides a clear initial statement of Shadow of a Doubt's value in the authors' eyes. As such statements are not capitalized upon, however, the reasons for conducting an analysis of this particular film may remain enigmatic.
Film Analysis and Criticism
Reservations of the kind potentially leveled against Film Art derive from the close relationship that exists between film analysis and film criticism. In their book, The Language and Style of Film Criticism, Alex Clayton and Andrew Klevan “characterise film criticism as a form of writing which addresses films as potential achievements and wishes to convey their distinctiveness and quality (or lack of it)” (Clayton & Klevan, 2011, p. 1). This distinction is useful not only in terms of emphasizing the central strength of the author's voice in film criticism but also in laying out a series of reasons why film criticism might be pursued at all. Following on from this, and in relation to film analysis, they suggest that
It is felt, perhaps, that serious academic analysis should differentiate itself from the evaluative reactions of the ordinary film viewer – “he's really good in this,” “this is definitely her best film” – or that “opinionated” newspaper reviewer. For the most part, films are used illustratively (valued primarily for their usefulness) rather than engaged with critically (valued for their achievements). (Clayton & Klevan, 2011, p. 2)
We might easily recognize Bordwell and Thompson's analytical approach to Shadow of a Doubt in this characterization. However, rather than necessarily seeing this only as a failing on the part of the authors, we might acknowledge that there is a genuine hesitation in Film Art over whether and when it is appropriate to offer critical judgments. Although it exhibits some of the central traits, Bordwell and Thompson's book does not automatically share the perceived prejudices of “serious academic analysis” that Clayton and Klevan describe. On the contrary, the analysis undertaken in Film Art seems to hold the modest assumption that strongly asserted film criticism may not be useful or helpful to the uninitiated reader taking their first steps in film studies. It might be said that, rather than forcing their own critical agenda, Bordwell and Thompson are especially anxious about the reader's experience. As a result, critical judgments are used cautiously in the book, emerging as brief comments or phrases, but rarely sustained or elaborated. In this way, and with perhaps admirable intent, Film Art dedicates itself to the process of analysis but, for the most part, suspends any subjective assertion as to why such analysis might be undertaken in the first place – how it might enhance an appreciation of a film's value and achievement, for example.
If Bordwell and Thompson's suppression of their critical perspectives is to be viewed as modest, as I suggest above, then we might be led to conclude that their intentions are commendable: that they want to help the reader as much as possible. Yet, we also have to concede that the endeavor brings with it some oddities, not least the fact that the analysis of Shadow of a Doubt occurs as part of an opening subsection entitled “Film Artistry.” If the admirable boldness of that titled statement is not addressed or pursued in the proceeding analysis, how then is the reader to understand what Bordwell and Thompson mean by “artistry” as opposed to, say, “competence”? Again, why analyze this film at all?
Alex Clayton draws attention to further, and more essential, issues with Film Art's approach, however. He identifies Bordwell and Thompson's tendency to reduce films down into cause-and-effect chains and goal-centered narratives within their analysis of Howard Hawks's His Girl Friday. Having illustrated a series of difficulties associated with these strategies, Clayton offers a crucial assessment:
What Bordwell and Thompson cannot escape is the fact that any descriptive word choice necessarily embodies an interpretative stance. The phrase “initial goal,” chosen primarily to recap the paradigmatic vocabulary advanced elsewhere, has nonetheless been picked from an available range of potential descriptions which might have included “vague wish,” “heartfelt desire,” “ill-defined plan” and “cover story.” Each would construe Hildy's [the film's lead female character, played by Rosalind Russell] situation in a slightly and significantly different way. (Clayton, 2011, p. 32)
We might say that Clayton's point relates not only to Bordwell and Thompson's descriptive approach but also to the way in which all analysis is inescapably fused with interpretive criticism. Every analysis undertaken represents a choice or series of choices made on the part of the analyst. Indeed, Bordwell and Thompson's brief analysis of Shadow of a Doubt is a demonstration of a particular critical perspective being adopted and offered to the reader. They make the point that
Everything that occurs in a film is affected by context. Sometimes we pull out a moment for study, as we've done here. But to get the full effect of that moment, we need to see it as part of the whole movie, from beginning to end. Any film has an overall organization, what we'll be calling its form. Calling it a form suggests that a film isn't simply a cluster of moments. It's a pattern. Shadow of a Doubt is organized as a story, and the dinner scene we've been examining contributes mightily to the progression of that story. It serves, we can say, a formal function. (Bordwell & Thompson, 1979/2010, p. 4)
The choice of the phrase “formal function” in the final sentence of this passage might implicitly mask the process of critical selection that the authors have undertaken. A potential strength of Bordwell and Thompson's focus on this moment from Shadow of a Doubt derives from their opening contention that the scene is “powerful” (Bordwell & Thompson, 1979/2010, p. 4). It is reasonable to speculate from this and from their ensuing analysis that, for the authors, the moment is pivotal and has qualities that are exceptional within this film's pattern of exceptional moments. Putting the moment back into its overall context (the whole film) is entirely logical, but care perhaps needs to be taken in order to avoid characterizing it as one moment in a pattern of equal parts within a film's “overall organization.” Bordwell and Thompson's analysis actually suggests that this moment is remarkable not only for its coherence with the film's overall organization, but also because of its distinctiveness – its power. Crucially, the moment also reinforces the authors' interpretation of the film: their evaluation of its dramatic goals and achievements. Yet, when that fact is subdued or avoided, even in an introductory context, the vital connection between analysis and interpretation is left ambiguous. A potential consequence of characterizing film analysis as objective rather than subjective is that opportunity for disagreement, dispute and, most importantly, engagement are curtailed. This holds implications for any text, but particularly one seeking to tutor students in the principles and procedures of film analysis. An alternative, therefore, is to view analysis as an inherent articulation of a critical position: a reading of a film.
Film Analysis and Systems
If analysis is always the product of interpretation, it can also be a way of organizing a film's audiovisual data, and of organizing our responses to that data. In a key essay that deals with the work of film analysis, Raymond Bellour (2001) outlines why, for him, such a process of organization might be important but also difficult. He compares film to literature and notes that
the text of a film is unattainable because it is an unquotable text. To this extent, and to this extent only, the word text as applied to film is metaphorical; it clearly pinpoints the paradox that inflicts the filmic text and to such a degree only the filmic text. (Bellour, 2001, p. 22)
Bellour's notion of film's special status as the “unattainable” text is striking because, quite clearly, it eloquently captures the potent intangibility of the medium. Furthermore, his choice of the phrase “unquotable text” is pertinent in that it addresses directly the challenges presented by film analysis: to translate the audiovisual form into written form without losing the shape and meaning of the original artifact. Bellour (2001, p. 25) expands on this point when he describes the moving image as paradoxical:
On the one hand it spreads in space like a picture; on the other it plunges into time, like a story which its serialization into units approximates more or less to the musical work. In this it is peculiarly unquotable, since the written text cannot restore to it what only the projector can produce: a movement, the illusion of which guarantees the reality. That is why the reproduction even of many stills is only ever able to reveal a kind of radical inability to assume the textuality of the film.
On a historical note, it may be worth pointing out that Bellour, who wrote his essay in 1975, is describing a standard of analysis that predates technologies such as video and DVD. So, as he concedes, “unattainable” text is a play on words: sometimes it was just very difficult to obtain the material film and find the facilities that would allow for close analysis to take place at all. (Perhaps one of the unanticipated pleasures of Bellour's writing is his modest acknowledgment, at various points in his essays, of the necessary fallibilities in sections of his analysis due to such practical and technical limitations.) But, even as technology has advanced beyond editing tables and 16 mm Steenbecks, and even as films have become so widely available that acquiring a copy can often involve only a simple Internet search, Bellour's evocative description of the film text as unattainable even as we attempt to capture it, escaping from us at the very moment we strive to reach it, stands the test of time. It would be hard to miss the poetry of Bellour's words (translated, in this instance, from the original French by Ben Brewster) and we might also note the underlying sense of responsibility to the medium that he expresses as he describes the profound frustration – the “radical inability” – of the film analyst and the methods they employ. In returning to that challenge time and again, Bellour exhibits his dedication to film.
Given his contention that the film text is inherently unattainable, it is useful to note some of the ways in which Bellour approaches the task of analyzing that text. Bellour opts to deal with films in segments, isolating specific scenes or sections of scenes for especially rigorous extended analysis. This technique often involves lengthy portions of shot analysis, which are always accompanied by especially large quantities of frame enlargements and which frequently detail repetitions and variations in visual style. Sitting alongside these breakdowns are passages of interpretation – what Bellour takes to be important within the section offered for extensive analysis. This fluctuating pattern of analysis and interpretation is not uncommon in film studies, and yet Bellour's work is noteworthy for the extent to which it places divisions between the articulation of a segment's function and claims for its meaning and significance. So, for example, when discussing a sequence from Marnie (it is the scene in which businessman Mr Strutt has discovered that Marnie has stolen $10,000 from him, before he is interrupted by the arrival of a wealthy client, Mark Rutherford) Bellour begins with a line-for-line quotation of the film's script, followed by a shot-by-shot breakdown (accompanied by a number of frame enlargements) before going on to discuss the words and images almost completely in isolation (Bellour, 2001, pp. 219–223). There is meticulousness to Bellour's method here: we are presented with an extensive section of the script (running to 31 lines) and every one of the 24 shots is accounted for in the proceeding description. A clear benefit of this approach is that we are given a great deal of data to contemplate and digest as Bellour moves through his analysis. In this sense, we might well conclude that the approach is admirably rigorous. And yet, he lays out all of this information in order to move to a single, albeit potent, point:
Once the dialogue has ended and the camera has completed the slow forward tracking shot that isolates Mark's face, he turns towards the spectator with a thoughtful look that is obviously supposed to indicate that, during the time when the shot becomes stationary, he is daydreaming about this woman whose virtual image he has helped to create. The real image that follows (25a) repeats exactly the beginning of shot 1 [a closeup view of Marnie's clutch bag from behind as she walk along a station platform] and seems to materialize his pensive gaze, taking the place of the traditional subjective shot . . . Mark thus sees what he cannot see but what he is in the position of being able to imagine by means of the camera that sees in his place. This repetition-effect, which makes Mark see/imagine what Hitchcock–the camera sees in shot 1, situates Mark on the trajectory of enunciation permitted by the camera-look. Mark's singular desire for Marnie is aroused by this relationship between himself and the image. He becomes the relay for that which Hitchcock can only possess through the camera, which forbids it to him precisely so that he may represent it. The fetishistic operation, thus redoubled, is extended from the director to the character who takes his place, which brings about a return to the narrative's initial condition of possibility: the essentially fetishistic position of the cinematographic signifier. (Bellour, 2001, p. 222; numbers in parenthesis indicate frame enlargement illustrations)
If we accept Bellour's reading of Mark's expression as functionally situating the character on the “trajectory of enunciation permitted by the camera-look,” then we are also entitled to wonder why he deems it necessary to reproduce the dialogue from the entire scene as well as account for every shot contained within its composition. We might suggest that Bellour's dedication to an especially painstaking, especially close, model of textual analysis has not only unnecessarily delayed the delivery of his crucial point but also distracted him from the critical task of articulating that which is crucial: editing out peripheral detail in order precisely to focus our attention upon the most important data. It is perhaps an adherence to taking everything in sequential order – as part of the segment's shot-by-shot progression – that restricts Bellour's critical options in his reading of the moment. One alternative available to him is to begin the analysis at the segment's end – with Mark's look and the transition to Marnie's bag. But, of course, that would disrupt the methodology at work in Bellour's analysis and risk undermining a central thesis of sequential development in Hitchcock's films. And so the reading is left critically unbalanced but chronologically correct.
In fact, there is a further issue with Bellour's reading of the sequence. In detailing every line from the scene, he is obliged to include a key interjection delivered by Mr Strutt's secretary:
| OTHER COP: | What were her references? |
| STRUTT: | Well, as a matter of fact . . . yes, she had references, sure . . . |
| SECRETARY: | [Oh] Mr Strutt, don't you remember, she didn't have any references at all. |
| (Bellour, 2001, p. 219–220) |
The secretary's sardonic prompt is expertly timed within the sequence, coolly deflating and frustrating Strutt's attempts at gaining the moral high ground as well as rewarding one of the cops' stifled guffaws from seconds earlier. It builds on an earlier shot of the secretary lowering her eyes and smiling knowingly as her boss launches into an elaborately lascivious description of Marnie. Beginning her sentence with “Oh” (a detail that Bellour can be forgiven for omitting) gives the line a faux innocence that delicately emphasizes this woman's intellectual superiority over her boss in this moment.
The irony of Bellour's reading is that, although he gives us the secretary's line, includes her in the shot breakdown, and actually features her in the selection of frame enlargement illustrations, he does not once mention her significance within the scene. This seems important, given the conclusions that Bellour reaches. If Mark takes Hitchcock's place in the “fetishistic operation,” what function does the secretary – the lone female character within the scene – have and, more importantly, what might her role be in relation to the director of this film? One possibility might be that she also embodies the director in some way, straining against that very operation of fetishism which Bellour identifies. At the very least, the character provides some balance to the scene, which should be noted in the light of such a strongly asserted theoretical reading. However we choose to interpret the role of the secretary, we may be entitled to conclude that her omission from Bellour's analysis is curious and, even, that it risks undermining the stringency of his approach as well as the strength of his critical interpretations.
Driven, perhaps, by his founding definition of its unattainability, Bellour commendably attempts to achieve an unusually close proximity to the film text in his analyses. His reliance upon frame stills and, elsewhere, his inclusion of detailed diagrams and tables demonstrates his desire to take the medium apart in order to understand it better, and presumably to help us understand it better too. And yet, it might be that the approach carries with it a warning. Although it is only one small example of Bellour's method, in his analysis of the segment from Marnie he appears to have sacrificed perspective in the pursuit of proximity. We are left to conclude that systematic accuracy, of the kind Bellour pursues as he enters stills and segments into tables like fiscal statistics, can only be worthwhile if it is combined with critical precision. Ironically, in getting as close as possible to the film's material, potentially pivotal moments can be lost. It might be a little harsh to suggest that Bellour's freezing of frames and cataloging of shots deadens the cinema he cherishes, but it is certainly the case that the process risks constraining the flows and rhythms of the medium. This can lead to certain elements being missed entirely: Alfred Hitchcock's sense of humor, for example.
Film Analysis, Statistics, and Objectivity
If the claim that Bellour's approach “deadens” cinema is made tentatively, then Barry Salt's assessment of the French theorist's work carries with it no such inhibitions. For Salt, in his book Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis (1983/2009), all interpretive models of film theory and criticism merit thorough re-examination. Indeed, in his chapter “The Interpretation of Films,” he explains that:
The question of what should count as valid interpretation of a film or other work of art, and why it should, is one that most people do not seem willing to face. For brevity we can consider the alternative positions on this question as being stretched out along a spectrum from the most conservative or restrictive position to the most extreme or radical. At the restrictive extreme the possibility of true, or at any rate fairly certain, interpretation is denied altogether, and at the other extreme all interpretations, however generated, are regarded as equally valid. In between these two extremes are various positions where smaller or larger numbers of different systems of interpretation are considered to be valid. There is also a tendency for the amount of unjustified personal intuition used by the critic or interpreter to increase towards the more radical end of the spectrum. (Salt, 1983/2009, p. 16)
Thankfully, and perhaps rather conveniently for his argument, Salt immediately dismisses the “most . . . restrictive position” from his discussion, stating that anyone denying valid interpretations but still producing interpretations is “wasting everyone's time” (p. 16). We should perhaps be relieved that this odd position is not explored in depth, but we might also wonder whether Salt would struggle to find a significant number of critics and theorists adopting it in order for it to exist as a recognized position at all. The obvious contradictions inherent in such a position would surely discourage anyone from articulating it and so, perhaps, Salt is speaking of a hypothetical stance, rather than a literal one. Nevertheless, he finds evidence for the second, more radical position in lots of places, and arrives at Raymond Bellour.
Before reaching Bellour, however, Salt does advance a couple of rather odd views about film interpretation. For example, he raises the notion of all interpretations being equally valid, in his view often cited as a justification for the most “extreme” interpretive position. In countering this, he refers to the fact that, although many artists and filmmakers claim that their work “means whatever a member of their audience wants it to mean,” they nearly always reject those interpretations. This seems to partially evoke Roland Barthes's famous assertion that “the birth of the reader must be ransomed by the death of the author,” but Salt goes on to give the example of filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky:
Although he has sometimes said to enquirers that his films mean whatever they mean to the individual person watching them, when it was suggested that the mother in Zerkalo was an unloving mother, he instantly rejected this, as he did other interpretations which he didn't agree with. (Salt, 1983/2009, p. 17)
No reference is given for this exchange and so we have to take Salt's word for it. Nevertheless, the issue here is that his example doesn't necessarily dispute artists' claims that meaning belongs to the audience or, rather, that they have the most significant role in its interpretation. It would be a very stringent application of Barthes' “Death of the Author” essay that required Tarkovsky to remain entirely silent on his films' meanings once they had been exhibited to the public. Rather, it seems that, in Salt's example, the director is merely responding to his work as an active audience member, and giving his interpretation of the film accordingly. His status as the film's director does not necessarily close off all other interpretations or mean that a definitive interpretation has been provided. A position has been articulated that can be accepted or rejected. Its validity will perhaps depend upon the justifications offered for such a strongly asserted judgment being advanced.
In this way, Tarkovsky enters into a fluid interpretive process that, if nothing else, has the potential to include. There is the suspicion that this kind of fluidity would not find favor with Salt as, throughout his study, he bemoans the ambiguity inherent in most film interpretation as opposed to more scientifically rigorous approaches. Indeed, on the topic of film perception, he proposes that scientists will one day take over from “theorists” sitting in armchairs in the humanities departments of universities and that this will be an immensely more favorable state of affairs (Salt, 1983/2009, p. 33). As Salt moves through the major models of film analysis and their founding theories (from the 1970s mainly, given the book's original publication date of 1983) very few figures remain standing. Althusser, Lacan, Greimas, Eco, Metz, Lacan, and other eminent names are taken to task in a fairly uncompromising style. Readers might welcome Salt's refreshing dismantling of certain theories that, when his book was published, were almost unassailable in certain corners of film studies. Certainly, the directness and forcefulness of Salt's criticisms were rare at the time and it still remains a rarity for such attacks to appear in academic books today.
Salt's account of Bellour's analytical approach is no less caustic. He takes Bellour's famous use of diagrams to demonstrate movement in North by Northwest's crop-dusting sequence as an opportunity to define these methods as “meaningless” (Salt, 1983/2009, p. 18). His technique for exposing this meaninglessness is audacious and effective: Salt constructs his own set of diagrams comprising completely random data (one diagram is “constructed by drawing a pair of axes, and then dropping ten pins which fell onto the sheet in the marked position”) and uses them to reach the same conclusions as Bellour, thus highlighting the proposed futility of the approach. In one section, he concludes that:
The fact that my interpretation, though based on a meaningless diagram, is indistinguishable in its nature from Bellour's interpretation demonstrates the pointlessness of his approach, and I could produce the same kind of interpretation for an infinite number of arrangements. (Salt, 1983/2009, p. 18)
It is worth noting that Salt's engagement with Bellour's methods of analysis is fairly brief and, as a consequence, it is hard to gain the sense that a comprehensive account of the latter's analysis of North by Northwest is being sought. Nevertheless, the nature of his criticisms recalls reservations we have had about Bellour's work, namely that his attempt to get as close as possible to the medium he analyses in some ways ironically draws him away from it. The North by Northwest diagrams (like the frame enlargements and tables) might represent an attempt to organize the data of the film and to retain an engagement with it as part of the analysis but, as Salt asserts, that very process potentially transforms the film's data to such an extent that it risks becoming an erroneous account of North by Northwest's climactic scene.
However, we might legitimately question whether the fact that Bell our's analysis can be made to fit different diagrams of Salt's (random) design necessarily undermines the validity of his overarching analytical approach. The diagrams are a means for Bellour to visually underpin the analysis he undertakes and, while we might concur with Salt that they are not flawlessly constructed, we would have to consider quite carefully whether the flaws are fatal. Furthermore, Bellour's analysis of North by Northwest is multifaceted and its fluency is variable; I am sure that many would suggest Salt is simply misrepresenting it in his brief account. For Salt, though, there are no such concerns: Bellour is a charlatan, like so many other film theorists.
Given the force with which Salt dismisses a series of prevailing analytical models, we might naturally be curious to discover what alternative method he proposes. Salt states that analysis of film can proceed in two directions:
Most importantly, films can be analysed in terms of their construction and their relation to their makers: analysis in this direction is mostly ignored in theorizing about film . . . Less importantly, films can be analysed in terms of the response of their spectators. Of course film-makers also form part of the audience, and they are the part that is capable of the fullest response and understanding. (Salt, 1983/2009, p. 25)
A clear priority in this explanation is the returning of the filmmaker to a position of greater authority within film analyses. This occurs at the expense of the “spectator,” and here we can appreciate that Salt seeks to discard not only film audiences (as he later tells us, “the major part of film audiences probably understand film in a very simple way. In fact as an intensified and extended dramatic representation i.e., like a stage play with knobs on”) but also those professional spectators who, in his eyes, promote the worst excesses of film theory. In any case, for Salt it is the filmmaker who is most qualified to offer an informed response to a film, without reference to audiences or theorists. This alternative approach to analysis is manifested in Salt's concentration on formal aspects of film style:
Questions of style arise when we consider films in relation to other films . . . The importance of formal style analysis is beginning to be realized, but it still has not got much further than remarking things like the fact that Howard Hawks keeps the camera at eye-level and doesn't move it if possible. But in fact there are other directors of his vintage who do this too. For instance Henry Hathaway . . . The real stylistic distinction is that further than this, Hawks keeps his Average Shot Length a little longer than normal, whereas Hathaway uses faster cutting. (p. 27)
This passage introduces the process of considering films comparatively, which is a key method of Salt's, and also an interest in statistical analysis that, among other things, can result in a recorded figure for average shot lengths in a film or across a number of films. (It should be added that Salt combines these approaches with an expert knowledge of cinema history and technology throughout his work.) The combination of these approaches leads him to the kind of information he lays out in relation to Hawks's film. And yet, while we might agree that the observation about Hawks's camera positioning and movement is fairly limited, it isn't abundantly clear why the second point about average shot lengths should be treated as any more enlightening, despite the fact that it highlights a distinction rather than a similarity between two filmmakers.
Salt devotes immense amounts of time collecting data on average shot lengths, numbers of shots, and shot scales in films, and there are some interesting results here: for example, the generally held view that average shot lengths have decreased over time in Hollywood is given credence as these lengths are plotted on a year-by-year graph and a decline is recorded (Salt, 1983/2009, p. 378). It is not difficult to envisage how such background information could usefully underpin further historical research in film studies. Salt goes further, however, as he applies this statistical approach to a “stylistic analysis” of the films of director Max Ophuls. In keeping with the book's overall methods, the stylistic analysis involves a breakdown of shot lengths, scales of shots, and camera movements in all of Ophuls's films accompanied, on the face of it, by short descriptions of the films' content and notable stylistic examples from them. This at least seems to have been the plan for the analysis, but we find the bland objectivity of the quantitative data clashing against the emphatic subjectivity of Salt's own value judgments. We are told, in relation to Letter From an Unknown Woman, that
Taken scene by scene, the major deviations from the norm are pretty much what might conventionally be expected. For instance, the cutting rate is a lot faster than normal when Lisa hears Stefan playing, and then meets him for the first time in Scenes 5 and 6, and also when he picks her up and takes her for a meal in Scenes 22 and 24 . . . On the other hand, Ophuls gets his longest takes in the most emotionally neutral scenes, such as the promenade before church at Linz, which is Scene 18 in my dissection. (p. 392)
As with Salt's attention to average shot lengths in Hollywood cinema, it is quite conceivable that statements of this kind could provide useful background context for those wishing to conduct an analysis of Ophuls's work. However, if we are to take them as a version of analysis in its own right, we have to question whether they provide any striking insights regarding the films of Max Ophuls. If a statistical analysis of Letter From an Unknown Woman yields only facts like the director was able to complement his character's emotions in the pace of his editing, then perhaps that method serves the filmmaker poorly. As it happens, when it comes to the point of evaluating Ophuls's work, Letter From an Unknown Woman fares rather badly, way behind the non-Hollywood films and merely in among those made in the United States (it is not clear why or how we have got into this game of ranking Ophuls's films, although in fairness this is something certain studies of film authorship do from time to time). Salt concedes that some might contest these judgments but he provides his own defense:
Let them reflect that their strong personal preference for Letter may depend on personality factors which cannot be expected to be the same for everyone else. My purpose is to eliminate these subjective elements as far as possible, and I believe I have succeeded, since if I were proceeding by my own feelings alone I would rate the last three Ophuls films rather low. (Salt, 1983/2009, p. 398)
Here we reach Salt's overarching goal of evaluating film objectively, and thus avoiding the deficiencies subjectivity can cultivate in the work of others. And yet, there is the suspicion that, as this objective approach compresses the films into statistical data, it drains away their vitality and their interest. No wonder, then, that Letter From an Unknown Woman emerges as an unremarkable endeavor. The three criteria for evaluating a film to which Salt adheres are: “originality in all respects of the film,” “the influence it has on other films,” and “the degree to which a film-maker has fulfilled his intentions in the finished film” (p. 28). It is not clear why these criteria are chosen, and certainly each of the points are at least problematic in terms of drawing evidence-based conclusions.
Nevertheless, as Salt equates originality to matters such as the mean scale of shot distribution, a film like Letter From an Unknown Woman emerges as fairly unoriginal precisely because its formal style is characteristic. Not only is it characteristic of Ophuls's filmmaking (although we are also told that Ophuls has no consistent style) but it is also typical of the romantic melodrama genre. On this theme, Salt in fact chides Robin Wood for his “over-interpretation” of the film (which occurs in chapter 5 of his book Personal Views), stating that the features Wood identifies and uses to underpin his arguments could be found in any number of similar films (Salt, 1983/2009, p. 389). Unlike Wood, Salt's brand of statistical analysis avoids considering how directors use conventional structures (shot lengths and distances, editing rates, genres, plots, locations, etc.) expressively and in combination. One possible starting point for evaluating the achievement of a film like Letter From an Unknown Woman (and a good deal of other Hollywood films) might be to think of the ways in which it could conceivably have become a very conventional “genre” picture in the hands of another director. But if we never engage with the ways that Ophuls employs those conventions and finds new opportunities for expressive depth, if we rely only on lists and tables of the shots he employs, we are likely to fall short of a detailed engagement with the film's achievements.
Salt's desire for subjective evaluation is clear, but it is not pursued consistently in his book. Alongside the statistical analyses, we also have passages like this one about an early Ophuls film, Komedie om Geld (The Trouble With Money):
The film is more distinctive than most of the films Ophuls made in this period, and is the only one with a fully original screenplay, in which he himself had a large hand. Not surprisingly it is the worst constructed from the narrative point of view, with a quite pointless idyll for a pair of totally unnecessary young lovers shoved into the middle of the film, and a total and very apparent lack of logic in the resolution of the difficulties of the hero in the second half. The pacing of the later stages is also noticeably sluggish. These faults are not in the least overcome by the Brechtian presentation of the story by a clown compère in a circus set who comments in song at the beginning, middle and end. (Salt, 1983/2009, p. 387)
In fairness, Salt does proceed with some details about the film's formal style, but the passage is characterized by the highly subjective series of value judgments being offered. It is hard to square paragraphs of this kind with the methodically objective statistical data that occupies Salt's arguments elsewhere. A fracture is therefore created between moments of subjective critical discrimination and the more serious, possibly more sterile business of analysis. The problem for Salt's work is that his impulse for the former keeps threatening to break through the rigorous neutrality of the latter, creating an integral imbalance. On the one hand we have a set of fairly arbitrary but methodically researched statistics about a filmmakers' work, and on the other we have candid personal responses to that work. Neither seems adequate, especially since Salt proposes his methods of analysis to be the viable alternative for a whole galaxy of other theoretical and analytical approaches. Salt's work has immense value not only for its expansive accounts of film history and technology but also because his data provides such a firm footing for anyone writing about film style. In that sense, it sits alongside rather than replaces those contributions the author finds to be “meaningless” or worse.
Film Analysis, Description, and Evocation
Salt's methods return us to the issue of objectivity in film analysis, and the extent to which that can ever be satisfactorily achieved. Moreover, his approach corresponds with analysis that seeks to order and organize the film text. For Salt, this process is conducted through the collation of data such as average shot lengths, and Bellour perhaps has a similar aim in mind when he constructs his diagrams and shot-by-shot breakdowns. We would need to test further whether this task of organization properly accounts for the films placed under scrutiny. However, even an initial consideration offers the possibility that certain issues emerge from these practices, not least in terms of what happens to the shape and flow of films when they are subjected to such stringent, overarching analyses. It is worth noting that such characteristics do not extend across everything in film studies that might be termed “analysis.” Douglas Pye, for example, begins his short analysis of a moment from Hitchcock's Rear Window in markedly different fashion:
Fade in on a partial view of the courtyard at night, the apartments to the right of Jeff's window catching the orange glow of the night sky, the rest of the space almost dark. Camera movement from right to left catches glimpses of people in their rooms; a few lights are on in the apartments (one comes on as we pass). The camera movement ends on Jeff (James Stewart), asleep in his wheelchair, his body parallel to the window, his face turned in towards the apartment. The dominant sound is of a soprano practising scales, accompanied by a piano, the sound unlocated but evidently nearby, the first chord on the piano timed to the opening of the shot and followed by three scales, then a longer final scale which ends as a shadow – cast from frame left, inside the apartment – rises over Jeff's body and onto his face. Until the dialogue begins there is now only the faintest of ambient sound. Cut to a low angle close-up of Lisa (Grace Kelly), dimly lit, lips slightly parted, looking directly into the camera and growing larger in the frame as she moves towards us. Cut back to Jeff, still asleep, the shadow moving up to cover his face. His eyes open, he looks up and faintly smiles. Cut back to Lisa in even tighter close-up, again looking into the camera (now that Jeff is awake the shot seems to be POV) and moving down to fill the frame. Cut to a profile two-shot, very close to the faces, Jeff on the right looking diagonally up and Lisa to the left looking down and moving into a kiss, her movement apparently step-printed to produce a fractionally staggered effect. She kisses him. (Pye, 2010, p. 45)
An underlying aim of Pye's analysis is to capture and convey aspects of the scene's shape and movement as he describes it to us. The opening words “Fade in on a partial view of the courtyard at night” draw us into the discussion through their efficiency and lack of conventional preamble, making an immediate connection with the reader but also resembling a typical direction from a shooting script – “fade in” displaying the author's commitment to technical details that achieve effects. And, of course, the phrase evokes our experience of watching films – especially of watching Hitchcock films – whereby we can be dropped into the action through a simple shot transition with varying degrees of force. From that opening, Pye dedicates himself to a process of evoking the sensation of the film's aesthetic composition as it is experienced by the spectator: the tracking of the camera, the rising of a shadow, faint ambient sounds, a move to tight closeup. The approach is methodical, with each feature detailed in order to express its role within the unfolding scene, but this process does not resemble the kind of purposefully neutral cataloguing we might encounter elsewhere in detailed analysis before the business of interpretation takes place.
Indeed, Pye's style of analysis anticipates interpretation and builds that anticipation into analysis as certain features are lingered upon in order to preempt, albeit delicately, the ways in which they might become significant. The description of “Lisa . . . dimly lit, lips slightly parted, looking directly into the camera and growing larger in the frame as she moves towards us” is not an arbitrary recording of visual data but rather an attempt to engage with the extraordinary effect that moment achieves within the film. In this sense, we might suggest that a kind of interpretive analysis takes place in Pye's work and that it is unfolding alongside, or perhaps in combination with, the ways in which this sequence in turn possesses an unusual point of view: the camera moving through and across details before settling upon its transient point of focus.
Pye does not divide up or seek to organize the film in the way that other analysts might be inclined to do. Rather than taking the film apart in order to inspect it, he displays a firm commitment to keeping it in shape, attending to the ways in which details unfold in the scene in a manner that best evokes that unfolding. In this way, the analysis lacks some of the near scientific exactitude we might find in the work of Salt, Bellour, and, to a lesser extent, Bordwell and Thompson. Even at this early stage, we can detect without too much difficulty that the analysis features the author's subjective voice. Ending the paragraph with a simple “She kisses him” after a section of detailed and fluent description provides a point of abrupt emphasis in the work, demonstrating that words are being chosen not only for their descriptive value but to define a writing style. If the skeptical reader were to cite the lack of scientific rigor and the subjectivity inherent in Pye's work as negatives, they might also be inclined to point out that his writing is more description than analysis–lacking, for example, the kind of systematic shot breakdowns that we find elsewhere and, as a result, remaining unsatisfactorily loose. It is worth staying with this potential division between description and analysis, especially in the light of some thoughts that Andrew Klevan has advanced on the subject while in conversation with the American philosopher, Stanley Cavell:
In the University where I teach we are encouraged to use a standardized form where we grade student essays. The form breaks down the assessment of the essay into different categories, and two of these categories are “description” and “analysis.” Description is presupposed to separate from analysis, and often description is seen as a weakness, or at any rate, weaker than the thing we call “analysis.” Therefore, if you've done a lot of analysis that is good, but if you merely seem to be describing then that is bad. Yet, I want my students to describe. (Klevan, 2005, p. 170)
Klevan's remarks have potency as they can be seen to extend across all the analyses covered in this chapter. If we are to assume that analysis and description are distinct, then a dilemma emerges as to where the point of separation should be marked. In Pye's case, it is apparent that analysis and description have, from the first paragraph, become entwined and that no easy disentangling can occur. To return to Klevan's point, we have a passage of critical description that develops and refines an understanding of the film's aesthetic composition, and so any attempt to differentiate description from analysis would become meaningless: the former is not merely a condition in order for the latter to take place. The interweaving of description and analysis continues in Pye's essay, even when we reach passages that are most emphatically interpretive:
[Lisa's] threatening shadow links back, via the conversation with Stella, to the Thorwalds' first appearance as the embodiment of Jeff's view of married life, and forward to the elaborate doubling of the two couples. If, for Jeff, Lisa at first most obviously parallels the “nagging” Mrs Thorwald, it is startling to recognise in retrospect that, in a telling rhyme across the film, Lisa's look into camera and at Jeff is echoed when Thorwald's more obviously threatening gaze moves from Lisa's gesture with the wedding ring, up and across the courtyard, to meet Jeff's eyes as he (and we) look through the telephoto lens. (Pye, 2010, p. 48)
In this section, Pye draws upon his propensity for evocative description in order to trace a series of thematic links between moments from the film and, as a result, convey a sense of Rear Window's overarching coherence. By fusing description with analysis, he discards any divisions between the two and, furthermore, combines them in conveying a central interpretation. It is also striking that, in order to reach conclusions of this kind, Pye moves away from considering only the moment of Lisa's entrance. Straightforwardly, he does not allow himself to get tied to the moment and as a result is able to move between scenes in order to propose a series of wider resonances. But, furthermore, the fluency inherent in Pye's style of analysis translates into freedom that allows him to move through the film's data with ease. Like the camera that sways around the courtyard in Rear Window, allowing and restricting access simultaneously, Pye manages to stay above the film's detail while at the same time focusing in on certain moments that he takes to be crucial. There is no doubt that, while it has a clear methodology, this approach is less formally structured than other examples of film analysis we might encounter. Moreover, it is reliant upon a subjective and, at times, critically discriminating interpretation of the film. Of course, as with the previous examples discussed in this chapter, how far we take these reservations depends upon how we view the role and function of film analysis. It is inevitable that for some Pye's work (and work of that kind) will represent a fluent and expressive version of film analysis while, for others, may lack the rigid definitions or attempted objectivity.
Conclusion
A short survey of different approaches to film analysis can only go so far, and it is worth acknowledging that work of this kind always holds the potential to be extended and taken in new directions. Other analytical models could then be incorporated and the influence of other pertinent theories (psychoanalysis, for example) in film studies could be addressed and evaluated. Nevertheless, the small sample represented in this chapter conveys something of the diversity that can be found within the overarching title of “film analysis,” highlighting similarities and disparities between different methodologies. It is hoped that, despite certain reservations being expressed and explored, all of the approaches are kept in play and their respective merits are not overlooked. In stating at the beginning of this chapter that no agreed model of film analysis has emerged in film studies, I am also suggesting that film studies has not resolved the divergences that exist between different approaches. The pursuit of one defining methodology seems futile given that such an activity would inevitability involve neglecting some of the benefits offered by different forms of film analysis. Retaining the current state of plurality provides those doing the work of film analysis with options – a series of different directions that might be pursued. And, of course, this state gives rise to the potential for a combination of approaches to be employed in film analysis, drawing together the relative strengths of each methodology.
REFERENCES
Bellour, R. (2001). The analysis of film. Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press.
Bordwell, D., & Thompson, K. (1979/2010). Film art: An introduction (9th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Clayton, A. (2011). Coming to terms. In A. Clayton & A. Klevan (Eds.), The language and style of film criticism (pp. 27–37). London, UK: Routledge.
Clayton, A., & Klevan, A. (2011). Introduction: The language of style in film criticism. In A. Clayton & A. Klevan (Eds.), The language and style of film criticism (pp. 1–26). London, UK: Routledge.
Klevan, A. (2005) What becomes of thinking on film? In R. Read & J. Goodenough (Eds.), Film as philosophy: Essays on cinema after Wittgenstein and Cavell. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Pye, D. (2010). Enter Lisa: Rear Window (1954). In T. Brown & J. Walters (Eds.), Film moments: Criticism, history, theory (pp. 45–48). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan for British Film Institute.
Salt, B. (1983/2009). Film style and technology: History and analysis. London, UK: Starword.