Cinema Studies

Paper Summary:

The paper first examines Monaco's "How to Read a Film", which offers a wide angle lens through which to consider the possible value in reading film. The paper focuses on Monaco's attention to technological and cultural changes impacting film and asserts that the author is largely successful in his aims. The paper then reviews Braudy and Cohen's "Film Theory and Criticism", which is a standard and effective primer on the evolution of technical approaches, theoretical understanding, and artistic pursuit across the first decade of film's evolution. The paper points out the distinctive value in the text for its ethno-inclusiveness, but posits that the approach taken is characteristically dry and over-burdened by film jargon.

From the Paper:

"James Monaco's seminal cinema studies text, How To Read Film, is currently in its third edition. The 2000 release provides a perspective on the study and criticism of film that is broad, sweeping and rather lofty in its aim to draw connections between this medium and patterns or cycles in culture. The author is largely successful in this, though at times the text's discourse does stray to sociological tangents which tend to cause something of a mild irritation in the read driven exclusively for a more direct introduction to film. However, to demand this may be somewhat to overlook the purpose of the Monaco text, which is to offer a wide angle lens (pun intended) through which to consider the value possible in 'reading film.' It seems that Monaco's purpose, suggestible in his lengthy meditation on classical epistemology as per the traditions of the Greeks and Romans, is to provide something of a similarly academic framework for film as those which existed for understanding categories such as literature and still visual expression."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Braudy, L. & Cohen, M. (2004). Film Theory and Criticism, 6th ed. Oxford University Press.
• Monaco, J. (2000). How to read a film, 3rd ed. Oxford University Press.

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