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Film Theory: Realism, Formalism, Gender

Film theory aims to explain how films produce emotional and mental effects in audiences by recognizing cinema as a distinct art form. There are three main film theories: 1) Realism attempts to represent subject matter truthfully without artistic conventions. 2) Formalism focuses on technical elements like lighting, editing, and sound. 3) Gender criticism examines how sexual identity influences film creation and viewing, often from a feminist perspective analyzing portrayals of men and women.

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Kenn Solomon
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150 views3 pages

Film Theory: Realism, Formalism, Gender

Film theory aims to explain how films produce emotional and mental effects in audiences by recognizing cinema as a distinct art form. There are three main film theories: 1) Realism attempts to represent subject matter truthfully without artistic conventions. 2) Formalism focuses on technical elements like lighting, editing, and sound. 3) Gender criticism examines how sexual identity influences film creation and viewing, often from a feminist perspective analyzing portrayals of men and women.

Uploaded by

Kenn Solomon
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Film Theories

Film theory, theory developed to explain the nature of motion pictures and how
they produce emotional and mental effects on the audience (Britannica, 2020).
Film theory recognizes the cinema as a distinct art form (Ibid.).

1. Realism

Realism, sometimes called naturalism, in the arts is generally the attempt to


represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding artistic
conventions, or implausible, exotic, and supernatural elements (Toppr, n.d.).
Realism has been prevalent in the arts at many periods, and can be in large
part a matter of technique and training, and the avoidance of stylization
(Ibid.).

Stylized is a term that refers to the artificial exaggeration or elimination of


details in order to deliberately create an effect - in other words, to make (or
interpret) a person, a face, a tree, a figure, or something as 'grotesque,'
'disturbing,' or 'over-bright' as opposed to realistic or naturalistic (Reddit,
2016).

2. Formalism
Formalist film theory is a theory of film study that is focused on the formal,
or technical, elements of a film: i.e., the lighting, scoring, sound and set
design, use of color, shot composition, and editing (Simhadri, 2009).

Simhadri (2009) further explains that formalism, at its most general,


considers the synthesis (or lack of synthesis) of the multiple elements of film
production, and the effects, emotional and intellectual, of that synthesis and
of the individual elements.

3. Gender Criticism

This approach "examines how sexual identity influences the creation and
reception of literary works." Originally an offshoot of feminist movements,
gender criticism today includes a number of approaches (English 205:
Masterworks of English Literature Handouts, n.d.).

The bulk of gender criticism, however, is feminist and takes as a central


precept that the patriarchal attitudes that have dominated western thought
have resulted, consciously or unconsciously, in literature "full of unexamined
'male-produced' assumptions."

Feminist criticism attempts to correct this imbalance by analyzing and


combatting such attitudes -- by questioning.

Other goals of feminist critics include "analyzing how sexual identity


influences the reader of a text" and "examin[ing] how the images of men and
women in imaginative literature reflect or reject the social forces that have
historically kept the sexes from achieving total equality."

Now, we have common understanding of the thematic approaches in film analysis.


We have learned that ideology lens through which a person views the world (Cole,
2019). It is the collective actions, thoughts and behavior of individuals and groups.

We also studied three types of ideologies; please know that there are other types,
we only studied three, as to cover the themes we shall be using specifically for film
analysis. The three ideologies we studied are religion, political and economic, and
sociology as an ideology.

Furthermore, we also discussed three film theories which would help us explain the
messages in films and how film, in a general sense, affects us, as viewers.

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