Marjerie Go 23 February 2017

IS 162.4

Cinemas of the World : Film and Society from 1895 to the Present
James Chapman

Reflectionist Model of Film

Siegfried Kracauer
1) Film is the more accurate reflection of current societal conditions than other mediums
a) It is made collectively
b) It is produced to satisfy the desires of the audiences
2) The cinema of Weimar Germany is a good example of this
a) History of Weimar Germany
i) The name given to the period of German History from 1919 to 1933
(1) Pre-Nazi
(2) Consists of three main parts
ii) Postwar Constitution was written in Weimar
b) The films during this era provided an insight into the mindset and
psychological state of the Germans
i) Films include: D
as Kabinet des Dr Caligari, r Mabuse,
Nosferatu and D
der Spieler
ii) These films reflect the psychological trauma of the war-torn Germany
following their defeat in World War I
3) Approach: Zeitgeist criticism
a) Definition of zeitgeist - a primary perspective that is prominent during a
certain period
b) Films are seen to reflect moods, thoughts, and feelings during that era
4) Criticisms of his work
a) Paul Monaco
i) Says that he read too much out of the films through hindsight
ii) Read the films using the lens of WWII when it was impossible for the
audience to have had moods, thoughts, and feelings regarding it in the
20s
b) Kristin Thompson
i) Focuses only on a narrow selection of films
(1) Only focuses on German films whilst ignoring the prominent
American films
(2) Focus is on Expressionist films which were not representative
of all the films that the audiences watch
(a) Sometimes called Formalism
(b) Major distortions of the material world are made in the
film; is a contrast to Realism
(c) Shows a subjective form of reality: rejects tradition and
realistic interpretations of nature
ii) Films he focused on were not those that had been most successful in
the box-office
Hollywood Quarterly: debate on Zeitgeist criticism
1) John Houseman
a) Argues that the movie The Big Sleep (a box-office hit) shows a clear reflection
of the current state of America in the year 1947
i) A state filled with gangsters, illegal gambling activities, and murders
2) Lester Asheim
a) Argues that the most successful films during the year that The Big Sleep was
a hit in the box-office were films that were light and purely for entertainment
i) Example: The Bells of St. Marys, Blue Skies, Road to Utopia, and
Easy to Wed
b) These films made no claim that reflects the post-war America as
light-hearted, romantic, and portrays the joys of youth
c) Points out that Houseman makes broad generalizations based on one film,
and argues that the sample should be representative of the major
characteristics of the country/universe

The Reflectionist model

1) Relied on a certain type of film when reading these as reflections of social and
psychological conditions
2) Robert B. Ray
a) Points out the discrepancy of the commercially successful films vs. those that
are deemed as significant films
3) Film noir, a film marker by a mood of pessimism, fatalism, and drama (Oxford
Dictionary), was seen as more representative of the American Society in the 1940s
4) A word of warning:
a) Arthur Marwick
i) There is a law of the market; the bigger its commercial success, the
more a film tells us about the unvoiced assumptions of the people who
watched it
5) Social film history
a) Social film historians
i) Should consider all the films that audiences would have watched, not
only those that critics find significant
ii) Should move away from the aesthetics of film history
iii) Should move towards genre films and star vehicles that are more
likely to be representative of the audience's cultural and societal
context
iv) Jeffrey Richards - look at both the good and the bad films in search for
themes; films as a source of social history
b) Dominant metaphor: reflection
i) Robert Sklar - film as primary source for the history/past of society and
behavior
c) Prem Chowdhry - affirms that films reflect history; thus there is a need to
recognize it as a valid historical archive
Criticisms of the Reflectionist Model
1) Film theorists regard it as too simplistic
a) Advocates of the reflectionist model pay little to no attention to the formal
properties of film (Mise-en-scene, Cinematography, Editing, Sounds)
b) Form and style is being disregarded, too much focus is placed on seeing films
as a reflection of society
c) Jacques Segond - asserted that the plot and dialogue of the fil (explicit) is
only a part of the medium that expresses its implicit meaning
d) Graeme Turner - fi lm neither records nor reflects reality; it merely re-presents
it
e) Inclination of film theory school is towards close textual analysis; borrowing
methods from literary criticism; detaches film from any historical context
f) David Bordwell - film as a sterile notion of self-sufficient text
i) Supported by a uteur theory advocates
(1) Definition of a uteur - the director who oversees the audio and
visuals of the movie is the more an author of the movie than
the screenplay writer (Britannica)
(2) Sees films as a form of self-expression rather than a product of
societal conditions
g) Liliana Cavani - a film is a thing in itself, because in every case it is an
invention

Modifying the Reflectionist Model: Mediation

1) An attempt to find a relationship between film and society wherein the formal
properties of film arent disregarded and the historical contexts can be located
2) John Belton
a) Films can be analyzed or psycho-analyzed to reveal a particular insight on the
cultural conditions that brought about the film and the audiences
b) In more ways, film reflects what the audiences want to see rather than their
reality
3) Elizabeth Grottle Strebel - argues the necessity to examine cinematic forms and
content as an expression of the times

Cultural Studies in the 1980s

1) Cultural study scholars
a) Used Gramscis concept of hegemony
i) Definition of hegemony - t he process of victory of the dominant class
over the consent of subordinates due to political, moral and intellectual
leadership
ii) Began to interpret pop culture as a site for the negotiation and
contestation of ideologies
2) Film as an instrument of propaganda
a) Early research on film history had verified this
i) Nazi Germany - totalitarian regime used film as a means of
persuasion and control
 ii) Liberal democracies - films serve as a medium for the leaders to
promote certain ideologies
iii) Tony Aldgate - British cinema as means to foster harmony and social
integration in the 1930s to 1940s
iv) Hollywood - the propaganda arm of the American Dream machine

Summary
1) Although the reflectionist model is too simplistic, films cant be detached from the
context in which they were produced and consumed
2) Gramscis ideas may have overlaid a theoretical dimension to the debate, the
hegemonic turn reinforced what the historians have already been doing
3) Films may not entirely reflect the realities of society, they are created and responded
to based on the circumstances in which they were produced
4) Styles of film is shared across filmmakers in all cultures and societies but the context
of the films is not

References:

Stephen Tonge. European History: The Weimar Republic: Germany 1919-1933.

http://www.historyhome.co.uk/europe/weimar.htm

Giannetti, Louis. Understanding Movies. 5th ed. Engelwood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.,
1990. https://public.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/20th/expressionistfilm.html

The formal elements glossed here are developed in detail in Film Art: An Introduction (7th
ed.) by Bordwell & Thompson. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004.
https://analepsis.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/bigfourfilmanalysis.pdf