Critical analysis of Film Theory and Criticism

Seymore Chatman

What Novels Can Do That 

Films Can't (And Vice Versa)

I found Seymore Chatman's attempt to separated and filter stories and narratives down in to their key components to be an incredibly fascinating academic exercise and I agree with his conclusion that each form of expression has developed its own structures and language of delivery be it visual or textual. However I do not agree with many of his conclusions and I do not agree when he contends that narrative is somehow separate and antonymous from its medium. (p445) This I feel is totally wrong. The narrative and medium are two sides of the same coin and cannot be analysed independently of each other. The choice of Medium deeply affects the affect the narratives impact upon the audience. As Marshal McLuhan famously says in his book Understanding Media "The Medium is the Message." 

This very fact has long been a tool for the author who understands this fact allowing them to use the qualities the audience associates with the medium of delivery to add an element they did not expect. The most striking example of this I can think of would be Maus by Art Spielglemen. Here the author has intelligently used the medium of an animal fancy comic book to deliver a raw and explicit biography of his father’s past as a Jew suffering through World War 2.  I have also discussed in a previous blog how I feel the level in which some mediums are or are not a personal experience varies from medium to medium, as the delivery of some are more subjective than others. And Chapman himself discusses this when he point out the difference between the delivery of print and camera (p447) but I can't understand how he does not see how this effects the narrative. The narrative is not separate from its parts; it is the sum of its parts. 

This subjectivity of different mediums also disrupts his attempts to distil do the narrative structure in to two forms of time. Although I do agree with his basic premise of the way he lays out the two forms of time, however when he says “it takes x number of hours to read an essay...” (p446) I feel he is missing a very important point, the real point of importance to remember is that, it taxes x, y hours to read an essay but it takes y only x hours to read the same essay. This will affect the perception of time the audience experiences while reading the same cannot be said for film where all events will take place in the same time frame (unless of course you are watching from a lazy boy teetering on the edge of a black hole).In some mediums the very passage of time is subjective therefore the structure of the narrative is subjective. 

 Dudley Andrew

From Concepts in Film History

Adaption

This article is also an academic exercise and wishes to categorise the forms in which works have been adapted in to works of film. I personally found the rationale behind this to be quite sound and agree with the three distinctions provided for us. 

The first type given is "borrowing," This is a form of piggy backing of the former notoriety and praise of the subject matter you wish to adapt. This is done because it will guarantee a large audience base who will attend the adaptation because they are familiar with the previous body of work. This new incarnation of the original does not seek to completely ape the original but instead differs in many regards to create what could be considered a nod or a wink to the original while still being a new entity in its own right.

The second type is "intersecting," this is where the adaptation has tried to maintain some of the unique flavour of the original piece, but is delivered with a contemporary visual style and language. An example of such a Film would be Baz Lurham's Romeo and Juliet which took the classic play and set it in a highly stylised and contemporary American setting.

 The Last form discussed is "transforming," This is the form of Adaption that shows the highest degree of Loyalty or Fidelity to the original piece of Work. However this encounters the pitfalls of Subjectivity that I have previously discussed because no two peoples interpretations of a text will ever be the same so one must ultimately question whether such an enterprise of adaptation is not entirely futile if your mission is to bring the original works to a larger audience out of respect or is the goal more to stamp your mark upon it such as the way anyone who attempts to read Lord Of The Rings after having watched the film will find their imagination confined largely within the imagery of the film.

Anne Friedberg

The End of Cinema: Multimedia and Technological Change

I enjoyed this article however I enjoyed it from a nostalgic point of view. It felt to me like watching old Tomorrows World programs. It is interesting just how quickly the pace of technology has advanced shows up the age and clunkiness of the past. This is primarily the theme of this article and in a way the point of the argument is proven by the dated references within it. When she talks of how objects such as CD-ROMS will revolutionise the delivery of film by bringing it to our computers it displays a quaint level of naivety to the emergence of faster more powerful internet around the corner. This development made it no longer important to have to actually have a hard copy of the disk in order to watch it.

The new wave of digital delivery and the powerful screens from the big home cinema systems which seek to recreate the feel of the night out in doors, to the palm held high resolution which seeks to create a more mobile viewing platform; now increasingly available for increasingly low prise is what is fuelling the revolution in film and cinema.