“Elusive and Puzzling”: Starting Out in Film Theory

On academia, neoformalism, and hope

Dear reader,

Starting out in film studies is a very daunting task. Bright eyed film fans drawn to the field as a means of exploring how their favourite films work are very quickly met with a myriad of questions, labels, schools, and philosophies. Are you a semiotician or an auteurist or a structuralist? Have you read any Metz or Freud or Lacan or Mulvey? Do you work in written essays or video essays or proposals or presentations? Have you not seen X under-appreciated film by Y little-known director from Z country whose national cinema you’ve evidently neglected due to your biases informed by 1, 2, and 3?

Fight or flight understandably kicks in fast, and the natural reaction is to slam the lid of Pandora’s Box back down long before hope has any chance to reveal itself.

That’s been my experience anyway. Up until recently, that is.

Enter Kristin Thompson

This week while researching for an upcoming essay I decided it was finally time to get to grips with Kristin Thompson’s 1988 tome, Breaking the Glass Armor. For those not in the know, Thompson is one of the founders of the neoformalist form of film analysis alongside David Bordwell. Their 1979 book Film Art: An Introduction is still used today as a foundational text in teaching film analysis - so much so it’s currently in its 12th edition, with a 13th scheduled for release in December next year [1].

While Film Art aims to be a more general introduction to film analysis in general (albeit while gently pushing in a neoformalist direction), Breaking the Glass Armor explicitly makes the case for neoformalism as the film analysis method de rigueur. Not only is it fairly intimidating physically - 400 pages on a single if extremely complex argument - but its stature in the field makes a lot of rookie film scholars shake in their boots a little. After all, who has not been afraid that their take-aways from a film popularly called a “classic” like Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941) or Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976) might be considered so off-base that you think it better not to engage with them at all than risk putting your credentials in mortal peril?

Citizen Kane (Image: Encyclopaedia Britannica)

I don’t have time or the volition to share my thoughts on Thompson’s argument here, although they will almost certainly be made clear in said upcoming essay for my course (an abridged version of which may well appear as a future article). Rather, I wish to share the impact the first few pages of the first chapter of Glass Armor had on me.

A Criticism of Criticism

Straight out the gate, no time is wasted before making big swings about film scholarship’s tendency to prioritise approach over film texts. While recognising that it’s impossible to do an analysis of a film without an approach, Thompson argues that all too often film scholars start with an approach and then choose which films to analyse based on their propensity to verify their argument. In doing so, scholars, inadvertently or otherwise, risk making films “seem dull and unintriguing” when their job really ought to be to “emphasize (sic.) the intriguing aspects of films” [2].

This instantly struck a chord within my battle-weary soul. Over the last four months, I’ve been on a whistle stop tour of most of the major theories, each one backed up by a film that was supposed to back up each one. A week on Affect and Sensory Cinema was backed up by a screening of La Ciénaga (Martel, 2001); criticisms of Bordwell’s brand of Neorealism were laid bare by Ozu’s the End of Summer (1961); gaze theory was deconstructed by Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Sciamma, 2019). The pressure was then to find another film that fit neatly into these boxes, to prove your favourite theory right and ultimately find your place in the field.

The End of Summer (Image: The Criterion Collection)

The problem was, as a film fan, it had never once crossed my mind that I might like a film because of how well it demonstrated this or that theory. Film theory appeared as a world in and of itself, removed from the actual experience of watching a film that hundreds of millions of people enjoy all across the world - yourself included I assume if you’ve made it this far into this article!

Cue a pervasive doubt that I was on the wrong course and on the wrong track in life more generally. What had I signed up for? Did I even enjoy films in the first place?

A Light in the Darkness

Traditional film studies writing speedily dispatched, Thompson offers a simple but significant pearl of hope. Rather than setting out to just demonstrate a predetermined theory, Thompson advocates for analysing a film because “there is something about it which we cannot explain on the basis of our approach’s existing assumptions” [3]. Crucially, it’s ok to not understand how and why this “something” works or why we’re attracted to it. In fact, ideally “it remains elusive and puzzling after viewing,” the joy of the analysis being derived from fitting the pieces to this mystery together [4].

I’m well aware this seems blindingly obvious. Of course you should analyse a film because it interests you. Why would you waste time on a film that you find so easy to break down and post into neat little boxes if that doesn’t do anything for you?

But in the thick of the forest, surrounded by trees at all angles, it can be hard to keep sight of what it is you love about what you do. And what I love is that something. That little detail that grows into a spark and starts to turn gears in your mind in a combination you haven’t used before. That’s not to say that every film has to be some kind of mental obstacle course - there’s a lot to be said for comforting films, genre films, even films that are perfectly happy doing everything by the book, Thompson goes on to say as much herself later on in the book. But nothing can really beat that feeling of being pulled in for the first time by a film you know is going to be a companion for a long time.

It’s those films that got me to want to pursue film studies in the first place. And I’m willing to bet the same is true for most other fledgling film scholars.

Moving Forward

An earlier draft of this article went on to say Thompson had single-handedly saved my degree and my passion for film. That might be a slight hyperbole. There is, however, a lesson to be learned here.

In academia, as in life, it’s all too easy to get bogged down in the details, to feel like you have to know everything about everything to succeed, to feel that the sheer amount of knowledge and arguments and ideas out there means you have nothing to contribute.

Stick to your guns, reader. Embrace that there are always going to be things you won’t know. Hold onto that something you can’t explain, and allow it to light the way. Your work will be all the better for it.

Until next time,

Max

References

[1] Blackwells, ISE Film Art: An Introduction (n.d.) < https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/ISE-Film-Art-An-Introduction-by-David-Bordwell-Kristin-Thompson-Jeff-Smith/9781265205478> [Accessed 27 December 2022]

[2] Kristin Thompson, Breaking the Glass Armour: Neoformalist Film Analysis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), p.4. De Gruyter ebook

[3] ibid, pp. 4-5

[4] ibid, p. 5