Hatfield plaza movies

5TH EDITION

LOOKING AT MOVIES RICHARD BARSAM & DAVE MONAHAN

AN INTRODUCTION TO FILM

W.W. NORTON & COMPANY B

RICHARD BARSAM (Ph.D., University of Southern California) is Professor Emeritus of Film Studies at Hunter College, City Univer- sity of New York. He is the author of Nonfiction Film: A Critical History (rev. and exp. ed., 1992), The Vision of Rob- ert Flaherty: The Artist as Myth and Filmmaker (1988), In the Dark: A Primer for the Movies (1977), and Filmguide to Triumph of the Will (1975); editor of Nonfiction Film: Theory and Criticism (1976); and contributing author to Paul Monaco’s The Sixties: 1960–1969 (Vol. 8 in the History of the American Cinema series, 2001) and Filming Robert Flaherty’s Louisiana Story: The Helen van Dongen Diary (ed. Eva Orbanz, 1998). His articles and book reviews have appeared in Cinema Journal, Quarterly Review of Film Studies, Film Comment, Studies in Visual Com- munication, and Harper’s. He has been a member of the Executive Council of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and the Editorial Board of Cinema Journal, and he cofounded the journal Persistence of Vision.

DAVE MONAHAN (M.F.A., Columbia University) is an Associate Professor and Department Chair of Film Studies at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. His work as a writer, director, and editor includes Things Grow (2010), Ringo (2005), Monkey Junction (2004), Prime Time (1996), and Angels Watching Over Me (1993). His work has been screened internationally in over fifty film festivals and has earned numerous awards, including the New Line Cinema Award for Most Original Film (Prime Time) and the Seattle International Film Festival Grand Jury Prize for Best Animated Short Film (Ringo).

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

vii

To Students xvii Preface xix Acknowledgments xxiii

CHAPTER 1 Looking at Movies 1 Learning Objectives 2

Looking at Movies 2 What Is a Movie? 3 The Movie Director 5

Ways of Looking at Movies 6 Invisibility and Cinematic Language 6 Cultural Invisibility 10 Implicit and Explicit Meaning 11 Viewer Expectations 13 Formal Analysis 14 Alternative Approaches to Analysis 19 Cultural and Formal Analysis in The Hunger Games 22 Analyzing Looking at Movies 32 Screening Checklist: Looking at Movies 33 Questions for Review 34 Student Resources Online 34

CHAPTER 2 Principles of Film Form 35 Learning Objectives 36

Film Form 36 Form and Content 36

Form and Expectations 39 Patterns 41 Fundamentals of Film Form 45 Movies Depend on Light 45 Movies Provide an Illusion of Movement 46 Movies Manipulate Space and Time in Unique Ways 48

Realism and Antirealism 55 Verisimilitude 58

CONTENTS

viii Contents