FILM AND MEDIA THEORY FINAL #2 EXAM QUESTIONS ANSWERED CORRECTLY LATEST UPDATE
2026
- ideas/principle which his works are based upon (philosophy of art, conflict, nature, industrialisation),
constructivist values
- in depth description of montage (rejects Kuleshov's ideas; building meaning from shots, and
blending shots)
- Looked to "conflicts" or "counterpoints" as the stimulants
"A series of compositional possibilities that develop dialectically from the thesis that the concept of
filmic movement (time lapse) derives from the superimposition of—the counterpoint between—two
different stills." - Answers The Dramaturgy of Film Form - Sergei Eisenstein
- The work of Dickens was relevant to the film through the innovations of D.W. Griffith
- Dickens' beginning alive odd and minor characters and the film's "striking figures of sympathetic old
men..."
- Crosscutting, most important principle in film composition (montage) was arrived at by Dickens
"What could be further from films! Trains, cowboys, chases...And The Cricket on the Hearth? "The
kettle began it" but, strange as it may seem, movies also were boiling in that kettle. From here, from
Dickens, from the victorian novel, stem the first shoots of American film esthetic, forever linked with
the name of David Wark Griffith." - Answers Dickens, Griffith, and Film Today - Eisenstein
- Theorized emotional connection and narrative could be propelled through juxtaposition, believing
real character development in a film took place in the cutting room
- Casted non-professional actors on enhance their realism, using montage to reveal the psychological
turmoil of his characters
"We have established, by these instances, the basic significance of the constructive editing of scenes.
It builds the scenes from separate pieces, from which each concentrates the attention of the
spectator only on that element important to the action." - Answers On Editing - Vsevolod Pudovkin
- Photography freed the visual arts from their obsession with resemblance
- Photography does not create the eternal; it embalms it, places time beyond the reach of its decay
[of film] "For the first time, the image of things is also the image of their duration, like a
mummification of change." - Answers The Ontology of the Photographic Image - Andre Bazin
- Advocates for realism in film, film can add to reality but also reveal more reality
- 1920-40 - directors who put their faith in the image & reality
- Parallel montage, accelerated montage, montage by attraction (Eisenstein)
- 1930-40 - common cinematic language evolved, film editing evolved, deep focus
"Let us sum up. Through the contents of the image and the resources of montage, the cinema has at
its disposal a whole arsenal of means whereby to impose its interpretation of an event on the
spectator. By the end of the silent film we can consider this arsenal to have been full." - Answers The
Evolution of the Language of Cinema - Andre Bazin
- Montage is a powerful but manipulating editing tool, can lead to "synthetic reality," while its virtue
lies in its ability to convey information efficiently, ex. compressing time or juxtaposing storylines
- Montage forces predetermined interpretation onto the viewer by cutting and arranging shots to
create a specific emotional or ideological response
[of The Red Ballon] "Montage which we are constantly being told is the essence of cinema is, in this
situation, the literary and anticinematic process par excellence. Essential cinema, seen for once in its
pure state, on the contrary, is to be found in straightforward photographic respect for the unity of
space." - Answers The Virtues and Limitations of Montage - Andre Bazin
- Film cannot replicate the live experience of a bullfight, has ability to capture/repeatedly show it,
creates unique power to depict the contrast possibility of death
- How film uses editing to preserve a sense of realism and "verisimilitude," can "desecrate and show
at will" death by making an unrepeatable event eternally repeatable
, "In a certain sense, it is even more moving because it magnifies the quality of the original moment
through the contrast of its repetition. It confers on it an additional solemnity. The cinema has given
the death of the Manolette a material eternity." - Answers Death Every Afternoon - Andre Bazin
- Focuses on the paradoxical beauty of science films, Painlevé's documentaries achieve a poetic,
"accidental" beauty by capturing the natural world with scientific objectivity
- Images that are miraculous and poetic, blurring lines between science/art
"Jean Painlevé occupies a unique and special place in French cinema. He understands that the most
skillful trepanning can fulfill two simultaneous, incommunicable and absolute postulates: saving a life
and depicting Père Ubu's machine for cracking skulls...Unfortunately, this dazzling cinematic truth
cannot be borne fby everyone." - Answers On Jean Painleve - Andre Bazin
- Inherent affinities - five qualities that link cinema to photography, emphasizing realism by capturing
the un-staged, the fortuitous, endlessness, the indeterminate, and the "flow of life"
- Film's true potential lies in its ability to record and reveal physical reality, which it does by embracing
the contingent, the accidental, and the open-ended
"Georges Méliès took over where Lumière left off, renewing and intensifyingf the medium's waning
appeal...Has not media very close to film offered similar gratifications? The artist-photographers
preferred what they considered aesthetically attractive compositions to searching explorations of
nature." - Answers Theory of Film - Sigfried Kracauer
- Film can be a tool for social and artistic revolution by moving away from narrative-drive stories and
instead using the camera to document/reshape reality
- "Kino-eye" - camera could be a perfect eye, showing a reality that the human eye cannot perceive,
editing could dramatize/construct new understanding of world
"The most thorough observation reveals not a single picture, not a single experiment directed, as they
should be, towards the emancipation of the film-camera, which remains wretchedly enslaved,
subordinated to the imperfect, undiscerning human eye." - Answers Film Directors: A Revolution -
Dziga Vertov
- Distinction between avant-garde/commercial cinema, avant-garde is necessary form, pushes cinema
forward though new visual/auditory techniques
- Defined avant-garde cinema as a pursuit of emotional expression through the "strictly visual and
auditory realm"
"To sum up, the avant-grde has been the abstract and realization of pure thought and technique, later
applied to more clearly human films. It has not only established the foundations of the dramaturgy of
the screen, but researched and cultivated all the possibilities of expression locked in the lens of a
movie camera." - Answers The Avant-Garde Film - Germaine Dulac
- Film can capture the "essence" of a subject through techniques like slow/fast motion, extreme close-
ups, rhythmic editing, moving beyond narrative to create deeper, connection with the viewer
- Cinema's unique ability to transform the mundane into the extraordinary/reveal "unreal" within real
by manipulating time/space, an aesthetic he calls photogénie
"Such is the clairvoyance of cinematography which represents that world in its overall, continuous
mobility. Faithful to the etymology of its name, it discovers movement where over eye sees nothing
but stasis." - Answers Photogenie and the Imponderable - Jean Epstein
- Now commonly accepted fundamentals of form: the documentary is an opening to the real world,
non-actors, emphasis on raw material of life
- Complicates naïve notion that these films can/should offer a purely objective view of the world
- Claims best of these films penetrate "surface values" of a subject as a way to "reveal life" rather than
describe it
"These films, of couse, would not like to be called lecture films, but this, for all this disguises, is what
they are. They do not dramatize, they do not even dramatize an episode: they describe, and even
expose, but in any aesthetic sense, only rarely reveal." - Answers First Principles of Documentary -
John Grierson
- Film should use medium to manipulate reality, rather than just documenting it
2026
- ideas/principle which his works are based upon (philosophy of art, conflict, nature, industrialisation),
constructivist values
- in depth description of montage (rejects Kuleshov's ideas; building meaning from shots, and
blending shots)
- Looked to "conflicts" or "counterpoints" as the stimulants
"A series of compositional possibilities that develop dialectically from the thesis that the concept of
filmic movement (time lapse) derives from the superimposition of—the counterpoint between—two
different stills." - Answers The Dramaturgy of Film Form - Sergei Eisenstein
- The work of Dickens was relevant to the film through the innovations of D.W. Griffith
- Dickens' beginning alive odd and minor characters and the film's "striking figures of sympathetic old
men..."
- Crosscutting, most important principle in film composition (montage) was arrived at by Dickens
"What could be further from films! Trains, cowboys, chases...And The Cricket on the Hearth? "The
kettle began it" but, strange as it may seem, movies also were boiling in that kettle. From here, from
Dickens, from the victorian novel, stem the first shoots of American film esthetic, forever linked with
the name of David Wark Griffith." - Answers Dickens, Griffith, and Film Today - Eisenstein
- Theorized emotional connection and narrative could be propelled through juxtaposition, believing
real character development in a film took place in the cutting room
- Casted non-professional actors on enhance their realism, using montage to reveal the psychological
turmoil of his characters
"We have established, by these instances, the basic significance of the constructive editing of scenes.
It builds the scenes from separate pieces, from which each concentrates the attention of the
spectator only on that element important to the action." - Answers On Editing - Vsevolod Pudovkin
- Photography freed the visual arts from their obsession with resemblance
- Photography does not create the eternal; it embalms it, places time beyond the reach of its decay
[of film] "For the first time, the image of things is also the image of their duration, like a
mummification of change." - Answers The Ontology of the Photographic Image - Andre Bazin
- Advocates for realism in film, film can add to reality but also reveal more reality
- 1920-40 - directors who put their faith in the image & reality
- Parallel montage, accelerated montage, montage by attraction (Eisenstein)
- 1930-40 - common cinematic language evolved, film editing evolved, deep focus
"Let us sum up. Through the contents of the image and the resources of montage, the cinema has at
its disposal a whole arsenal of means whereby to impose its interpretation of an event on the
spectator. By the end of the silent film we can consider this arsenal to have been full." - Answers The
Evolution of the Language of Cinema - Andre Bazin
- Montage is a powerful but manipulating editing tool, can lead to "synthetic reality," while its virtue
lies in its ability to convey information efficiently, ex. compressing time or juxtaposing storylines
- Montage forces predetermined interpretation onto the viewer by cutting and arranging shots to
create a specific emotional or ideological response
[of The Red Ballon] "Montage which we are constantly being told is the essence of cinema is, in this
situation, the literary and anticinematic process par excellence. Essential cinema, seen for once in its
pure state, on the contrary, is to be found in straightforward photographic respect for the unity of
space." - Answers The Virtues and Limitations of Montage - Andre Bazin
- Film cannot replicate the live experience of a bullfight, has ability to capture/repeatedly show it,
creates unique power to depict the contrast possibility of death
- How film uses editing to preserve a sense of realism and "verisimilitude," can "desecrate and show
at will" death by making an unrepeatable event eternally repeatable
, "In a certain sense, it is even more moving because it magnifies the quality of the original moment
through the contrast of its repetition. It confers on it an additional solemnity. The cinema has given
the death of the Manolette a material eternity." - Answers Death Every Afternoon - Andre Bazin
- Focuses on the paradoxical beauty of science films, Painlevé's documentaries achieve a poetic,
"accidental" beauty by capturing the natural world with scientific objectivity
- Images that are miraculous and poetic, blurring lines between science/art
"Jean Painlevé occupies a unique and special place in French cinema. He understands that the most
skillful trepanning can fulfill two simultaneous, incommunicable and absolute postulates: saving a life
and depicting Père Ubu's machine for cracking skulls...Unfortunately, this dazzling cinematic truth
cannot be borne fby everyone." - Answers On Jean Painleve - Andre Bazin
- Inherent affinities - five qualities that link cinema to photography, emphasizing realism by capturing
the un-staged, the fortuitous, endlessness, the indeterminate, and the "flow of life"
- Film's true potential lies in its ability to record and reveal physical reality, which it does by embracing
the contingent, the accidental, and the open-ended
"Georges Méliès took over where Lumière left off, renewing and intensifyingf the medium's waning
appeal...Has not media very close to film offered similar gratifications? The artist-photographers
preferred what they considered aesthetically attractive compositions to searching explorations of
nature." - Answers Theory of Film - Sigfried Kracauer
- Film can be a tool for social and artistic revolution by moving away from narrative-drive stories and
instead using the camera to document/reshape reality
- "Kino-eye" - camera could be a perfect eye, showing a reality that the human eye cannot perceive,
editing could dramatize/construct new understanding of world
"The most thorough observation reveals not a single picture, not a single experiment directed, as they
should be, towards the emancipation of the film-camera, which remains wretchedly enslaved,
subordinated to the imperfect, undiscerning human eye." - Answers Film Directors: A Revolution -
Dziga Vertov
- Distinction between avant-garde/commercial cinema, avant-garde is necessary form, pushes cinema
forward though new visual/auditory techniques
- Defined avant-garde cinema as a pursuit of emotional expression through the "strictly visual and
auditory realm"
"To sum up, the avant-grde has been the abstract and realization of pure thought and technique, later
applied to more clearly human films. It has not only established the foundations of the dramaturgy of
the screen, but researched and cultivated all the possibilities of expression locked in the lens of a
movie camera." - Answers The Avant-Garde Film - Germaine Dulac
- Film can capture the "essence" of a subject through techniques like slow/fast motion, extreme close-
ups, rhythmic editing, moving beyond narrative to create deeper, connection with the viewer
- Cinema's unique ability to transform the mundane into the extraordinary/reveal "unreal" within real
by manipulating time/space, an aesthetic he calls photogénie
"Such is the clairvoyance of cinematography which represents that world in its overall, continuous
mobility. Faithful to the etymology of its name, it discovers movement where over eye sees nothing
but stasis." - Answers Photogenie and the Imponderable - Jean Epstein
- Now commonly accepted fundamentals of form: the documentary is an opening to the real world,
non-actors, emphasis on raw material of life
- Complicates naïve notion that these films can/should offer a purely objective view of the world
- Claims best of these films penetrate "surface values" of a subject as a way to "reveal life" rather than
describe it
"These films, of couse, would not like to be called lecture films, but this, for all this disguises, is what
they are. They do not dramatize, they do not even dramatize an episode: they describe, and even
expose, but in any aesthetic sense, only rarely reveal." - Answers First Principles of Documentary -
John Grierson
- Film should use medium to manipulate reality, rather than just documenting it
