A Teenager’s Guide to Serious Film

by Ronald Chase, Founding Director of the San Francisco Art & Film Program

INTRODUCTION HURDLES FOR BEGINNERS BUILDING BLOCKS CHARACTER SETTING STYLE

INTRODUCTION

This guide is a primer to give you the tools for thinking about film seriously. Our aim is to help you develop your own opinions about film and, in the process, build a vocabulary of terms, concepts and ideas that help you think about yourself and how you relate to film. Out of this will grow your own taste as it relates to your personality, which will help you as you begin to discover the person you are and the person you want to become.

GOALS

1. Know what you like about a film and be able to explain why. You’ll be able to say, “I liked that film a lot, but I don’t think it was very well made,” or “this film was really well made, but I didn’t enjoy it very much,” and explain why. You’ll be able to describe the strengths and weaknesses of a film using references to its concept, style, editing, acting, lighting, use of camera and its imagery. You will have a subjective idea of your personal taste, and an objective idea of a film’s quality. To do all this will probably take you many more years, but at least we’ll give you a start.

2. Know enough about the techniques of filmmaking to be able to appreciate films on that level, regardless of whether the subject matter interests you or doesn’t. This requires having a technical vocabulary, and the ability to relate this vocabulary to individual scenes in a film.

3. Know enough about the history of film to make connections and associations, to spot influences, and read the symbolism. To do this, you’ll need a great deal of practice.

4. Be able to spot themes and subject matter and relate these elements to the individual scenes in the film, to help you form an educated opinion of the film’s meaning.

Ambitious? Yes. It’s tough, you need patience and determination to stick with it, but astute and brilliant observations from students over the years have convinced me that these are realistic goals.

WHAT DOES “SERIOUS FILM” MEAN?

By “serious films” I mean films of high quality that observe the world in a thoughtful or imaginative way, confronting truths about life, philosophy or art. You can discuss them in terms of artistic excellence or the truths they reveal.

Cine Club is designed to provide you a steady diet of exceptional films throughout the school year. Many of these will be classic, foreign, silent, and art-house films. These films are chosen because (1) they have many first rate qualities, (2) the subject matter will expand your knowledge of the world or of film in general and (3) they are not films you would choose on your own. We choose these films to stretch your mind and help expose you to a wider world. Hopefully you’ll find them entertaining too!

HURDLES FOR BEGINNERS

Making a transition to new types of film can sometimes be challenging. Know that this is not uncommon, and your attention will improve if you stick with it! Here are some of the difficulties students complain about at first so you can be prepared:

1. Subtitles:

Having to read and follow the film at the same time can be frustrating. If you’re not used to reading quickly, you’re in trouble.  One trick is to keep your attention on the images and only consult the subtitles when you need to. In many films the dialogue and relationships can be understood without much help from subtitles.

2. Being bored:

“I didn’t like it. It was boring.” That’s okay, but why was it boring? At what moment did you get bored? Most of the time when students are questioned closely, the boredom is directly connected to losing track of what the film is about.

Boredom is important. Sometimes boredom will help you understand something about yourself; sometimes it will help you understand where you got lost in the film, and of course sometimes it’s completely justified. When you lose interest, note when—and if you are completely confused, be patient, and note when your interest is piqued again.
 

3. Getting lost:

It’s only natural you might get puzzled and lost when:

a. A film contains new elements that might be unfamiliar to you.

b. A film is filled with symbolism that’s difficult for you to understand or interpret.

c. You get tired of reading the subtitles and get lost. (Believe me, this has happened to everyone at one time or another.)

BUILDING BLOCKS

Films are stories, but they are also about ideas. It's important how these ideas are expressed through plot, theme, subject matter, character, setting, and style. This “how” has also to do with ideas in film. 

When you talk about film, certain phrases, references and terms will always pop up. They concern the essentials of what is being told, and how the story is being created. Here are the building blocks on which film is built.

PLOT, THEME, AND SUBJECT MATTER

Most of the films you see in movie theaters today are plot driven. “The test of a good movie is that it’s able to tell a good story,” says the Hollywood mogul. This standard has held in Hollywood (and much of the rest of the world) through the last century. In this type of film a “story” hangs on a plot. The plot describes the story line, and dramatic conflicts. But many fine films do not follow this formula and to describe a plot often doesn’t describe what a story film is even about.

 For example, you could say MACBETH is about the abuse of power and its toll. Many of its major scenes relate clearly to this theme. A film could be about family dynamics, or about a young person’s loss of innocence. When searching for what a film is about, think first about its subject matter and its themes rather than its plot. 

Sometimes elements of the plot need to be mentioned to help explain how it explores its themes. Serious films have a clear grasp of themes and those themes relate to the experiences, aspirations, disappointments people experience in real life. Subject matter is different than plot. The very best plots clearly explore the subject matter and themes of a film.

 In many of our discussions after films, students are asked what the film was about. This often takes many stabs and can be open to a variety of interpretations. Sometimes the subject matter of the film can be hidden under layers of symbolism, or sometimes will be very clear in the way the film turns out.

 Films take their plots from all sources—history, news reports, novels and theater as well as original stories invented by the screenwriter.  The plot of a film can usually be synthesized into a single sentence (often called a logline). These are some examples from film and literature:

A CHRISTMAS CAROL (w. Charles Dickens)
A miserly old man is reformed through a series of visitations on Christmas Eve. Its major theme is redemption, its subject is the transformation of character.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT (w. Dostoyevsky)
A young man commits a crime and is slowly pursued to his inevitable punishment. Its major themes relate to the complex interrelation of the conscience, emotions and intellect to an individual’s actions; its subject matter is the defiance of moral laws and their effect on the individual.

THE SEVEN SAMURAI (d. Akira Kurosawa)
A besieged village hires a band of warriors to defend it from bandits. Its subject matter is the complexity of motives and relationships within a community, and one of its themes the complex ironies of heroism.

Great films require you to ask not only, “what’s going to happen next?” but also “what is this about?” Sometimes, the plot may have a minor part in a film, or no part at all. Rather than the driving force moving the film forward, the plot may be nothing more than a clothesline on which to hang a series of events or “set pieces” that expand the film’s themes.  For example:

LA DOLCE VITA (d. Federico Fellini)
Set in Rome in the 1950s, this film follows a newspaper reporter through one big “set piece" after another: the arrival of a film actress and her entourage; a visit to the house of two children who claim to see the Virgin Mary; an evening party with a band of decadent aristocrats in a deserted mansion, and so on. Again and again, the hero—his story with his girlfriend, friends and self doubts—gets lost in the crowd.

The subject matter of the film is the loss of faith, both on a personal level and throughout all levels of society. Each section of the film is constructed to reflect this theme. In the end, the reporter has lost his faith in life, but what gives the film its greatness and power is that in following him, the viewer is introduced to a complex social world in which scene after scene reflects the hero’s own dilemma. The effect is of a panorama of society mirroring the film’s theme.

LINEAR VS. NONLINEAR

We’ve already covered the separation of plot, theme and subject matter, but we also need to consider how the story is being told. For this we need two new terms, “linear” and “nonlinear.”

LINEAR: The most common way a plot is told is from beginning to end (linear narrative). The story starts at the beginning and continues to the end without interruptions.

NON-LINEAR: Another way of telling a story is to jump around between present, past, and future (nonlinear narrative).

EASILY ACCESSIBLE NONLINEAR STRUCTURE

One of film’s great strengths is the ability to move the same way memory does. The most common way a linear film narrative is interrupted is when a character stops and remembers. When we remember something in the past, we often remember an image—just a flash, that can trigger thoughts of our experiences. At this moment, the film cuts away from the present, and gives us a scene from the past. This technique is called “flashback” and is a popular and frequent example of a nonlinear technique. In films that go to the trouble of setting up a flashback (preparing us and leading us through a “cut away”) these scenes give the viewer little trouble. In films of the 1940s, the scene usually dissolves slowly, accompanied often by music or a voice-over, and the “memory” scene replaces the contemporary one. (Also the use of titles— “One Year Later,” “10 Years Before, and so on—easily help the viewer.) 

For example:

Hitchcock’s REBECCA is a memory film that begins with a slow move through a forest road toward the ruins of a manor house in the distance. A woman’s voice is heard over the picture, explaining her need to return to the past. The scene then fades to the past. This is a classic memory technique. A film of this sort usually returns to the present to end the story.

Billy Wilder’s SUNSET BOULEVARD opens with a dead narrator—a body floats in a swimming pool. The voice over is that of a dead man who becomes the narrator of the memory. This classic beginning and end to a film ( with a narrator) was the most common use of the “memory” film until the sixties, when this technique became more complex.

 Orson Welles’ CITIZEN KANE (1941) is a classic example of the nonlinear film. The way the film jumps forward and backward is skillful, and there are plenty of devices to help the viewer along. Its bold touches with this technique give the film much of its unique quality. The film begins in a castle, with a deathbed scene (Kane’s). The next scene jumps to a newsreel which outlines the plot of the film we are about to see, and ends in a screening room, where reporters are sent to solve the “mystery” of Kane’s life by interviewing his close circle of friends. This way it uses several voice overs (one for each friend). Each person’s narrative moves chronologically through the story, ending before another narrative begins, or overlapping with other narratives. Thus the film is constructed like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, which, when put together, give an overall picture of the story. CITIZEN KANE is a film of exceptional originality and left a huge impact on generations of film makers who wished to continue these “nonlinear” ideas about film.

COMPLEX NONLINEAR STRUCTURE

As films became more complex, many directors abandoned trying to make nonlinear stories easily accessible. Non-linear films can also move between different stages of the present, memory and fantasy.

For example:

Alain Renais’ LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD begins with long moving shots through the gilt and mirrors of a Bavarian castle. The voice-over resembles a cant—it doesn’t narrate, or explain, but hypnotizes.  The early scenes in the film are constructed primarily to invoke a mood. The “story” is constructed in fragments, pasted together like collage—scenes of isolation and longing in what could or could not be taken as a love affair. The “plot” is one that uses repetition of scenes to evoke memory. Nothing “happens” in the movie, but the intricate overlay of images and event leave the story open to the viewer’s imagination. The viewer must decide what has happened and what the scenes mean.

Bertolucci’s THE CONFORMIST tells a rather straightforward “memory” story—it opens in the present (or at least, the end of WWII), then goes back in time. But the viewer doesn’t get any help and, especially difficult, is that the past becomes a “memory” story—a car ride in the rain lets the hero muse on the “recent” past (in the past). A Russian doll of flashbacks. This technique becomes even more complex when the man’s memory involves a scene in which his memory inserts a character from his present—that is, a woman he will fall in love with, but hasn’t met yet in the story. She is seen in a memory, completely out of context, and almost out of character, as a vamp wrapped across a Fascist official’s office desk as if she is a wish-fulfillment on the part of the hero.  

Fellini’s 8 ½, an extremely popular but complex nonlinear film, takes place in the head of its major character, a film director who panics when he experiences a creative block in his work. The film opens in a dream, moves into the present, then into several dazzling scenes at a spa, filmed as if they were scenes in a film the director is imagining. Constantly the film moves back and forth between the past, the present, and fantasy, from the imagination’s (a film maker making a film) point of view. But the viewer gets little help. Often the memory scenes are filmed like fantasies, the scenes in the present like “films.” The insecurities, anxieties and longings of the director build into a climax that lead to his suicide. The suicide, however, in this context, has to be seen as symbolic. The scene is what he “feels” like doing. The director is quite alive in the very next scene, where all the film’s themes meld into a grand finale—the director films a final dance, with all the characters from his life, his memory, his present and his fantasy moving together into a unified whole—the film he had wanted to create all along.

CHARACTER

To believe a character, most people only need a body, a firm position in time and space, and the most superficial parcel of behavioral attributes. All of us get hints that we might be complex and inconsistent, but we often want to imagine other people as being simple and easier to understand. 

Often audiences get exasperated with characters who for one reason or another do not conform to their easy explanations or approval of the character’s actions. In films, characters are often judged by their “worst” behavior, where in real life we often ignore bad behavior in people we know, because we have an overall picture of them that puts their difficult behavior in a context which helps us understand it. If the character in a film has attributes of people we’ve met or know, we generally believe them regardless of how cliché or unrealistically they might act. We give them the benefit of the doubt. 

To create people “bigger than life” has been the goal of film making since it began, even if creating these people means adding unbelievable action, and asking preposterous things of them. Disturbing, unpredictable and well rounded characters are rare in movies where the lines are drawn in good or bad. But some popular films have been successful in creating complex characters.

For example:

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (d. David Lean)
Until the middle of the film the conflicted nature of the hero’s character is only hinted at. At first he is shown as brave, generous, vain, thoughtful, and non-conformist. The second half of the movie finds him vengeful, dishonest, filled with rage, blood lust, and self destructive inclinations and blatant. These traits are revealed gradually though events from his life, allowing us an opportunity to glimpse how these conflicting characteristics might come to live inside the same person, and giving Lawrence his complexity.

SETTING

Early films were created on film lots, in natural light, on constructed sets that filled the need for a revolving series of comedies and melodramas. For years, the authentic quality of these constructed sets varied. 

Many early directors like Chaplin and Von Stroheim were comfortable shooting “on location” in the actual settings like those in which the story takes place. Naive audiences didn’t pick many bones about things looking “real” as long as they had some identifiable details.

As films became more complicated, more attention was paid to detail. The new styles in decor from Germany—expressionism, with its brooding lighting effects and heavy architecture—allowed sets to become more stylized and left a large influence on the look of films.

The coming of sound in the late ‘20s brought radical change. Now outside sound was a problem, and scenes shifted from outdoor locations, to studio “outdoors” so the sound could be contained and balanced. This led to a period of artificiality which developed into a “studio style” of heavy back-lighting, highlights on actors faces, and elaborately built sets. “On location” was reserved for scenes that did not require sound. All films took on the “studio” look, with few exceptions. Films filmed “on location” still retained the stilted look of the “studio.”

 At the end of WW II the Italian films of the neo-realist school began to be seen by American film makers. The films coming out of Italy were all shot on location, with real people mixed with actors, in natural light. They were considered authentic and startling. Their influence was strong, and today the location of films varies—some are in studios, some on location or both. 

The settings of films do not have to be drawn from real life models. Films may be set inside the mind, in the body, the future, in space, but they need to have a consistency of style to convince you of their realness.

STYLE

When we discuss “style” in films, we refer to several different elements. For example, certain types of films—“expressionist,” “film noir,” “the Hollywood film”—are characterized by visual and subject matter that so clearly define them, their identity forms a style of film making. We also may discuss a certain director’s style, provided he has developed far enough with ideas about his techniques and themes that would make them identifiable. 

 There are a certain number of important directors of classic films whose style is instantly recognizable. The look of work done by the Italians now referred to as “neo-realism” has an instantly recognizable style—outdoor realistic locations, a grainy black and white film stock, a type of verisimilitude that is unmistakable.   Certain film makers tend toward fluid, complex camera movements, where others prefer a fixed, static camera. We sometimes refer to “subjective” and “objective” styles of film making. In the “subjective” style, the camera movements, editing, compositions are active forces in the film, guiding the viewer and selecting what he or she should see. In “objective” film making, the camera and the film techniques remain as invisible as possible, allowing the viewer to make his or her own judgement on what should be seen.

 Style refers to the overall characteristics of a film’s techniques, look, subjective or objective views of its director.

CONCLUSION

We think this should be enough to get you up and running! This guide is by no means comprehensive, but it's a start. We hope this is a good spring board for you to dive into the deep end!