Film—The Art in Motion: Reading How to Read a Film

Film—The Art in Motion: Reading How to Read a Film

There is an old saying: “Outsiders watch the spectacle; insiders see the craft.” I have felt the truth of that line deeply on two occasions. The first was after reading the Water Margin annotated by Jin Shengtan, and the second was after finishing Thomas Foster’s How to Read a Film. Every time I come across the name “Thomas,” the only image that immediately pops into my head is that blue little train with a slightly mischievous air, and I can hardly associate it with anything else. Even so, I still try to imagine what this teacher and friend—someone who offers viewers and readers a professional initiation into the arts, and who also wrote How to Read Literature Like a Professor and How to Read Novels Like a Professor—might be like. I imagine him as elderly, wise, and modest.

As a reader, I found How to Read a Film somewhat different from the author’s other two books. From the beginning of our basic education, we are taught to analyze and understand literary works in various ways. Although those methods may differ greatly from Thomas Foster’s, we generally do have at least some foundation in how to write an essay, or how to read an article or a story. Film, however, is an entirely different matter. Unless someone is especially interested in cinema as an art form, or has formal training in film or theater school, most people do not approach a movie from a professional angle when appreciating or analyzing it. Our education may include traditional arts such as literature, music, and painting, yet it often turns a blind eye to film, an art form with both a distinguished history and immense popular appeal. Most people go to the cinema far more often than they go to a concert hall or an art museum. But perhaps it is precisely because film is so ubiquitous that we end up seeing the trees but not the forest: we focus more on entertainment value, visual effects, logic, plot, and other qualities presented by the movie, while overlooking its essential nature as art.

How to Read a Film addresses that gap in an accessible way. It is not a textbook, so it is not filled from beginning to end with dry concepts and theory. Yet it is also undeniably a professional work, touching on the basic techniques and elements of cinema. The author explains these through a large number of excellent films as examples, making the book lively while also clear and penetrating. If you have seen the films he discusses (I have seen only a small portion of them), his analysis often brings a sudden moment of clarity, or a knowing smile. And even if you have not seen the film in question, you can still appreciate its brilliance simply through the author’s vivid descriptions. That kind of brilliance is often hard for a layperson to articulate.

In the book, the author uses the shot as his point of entry. A fight scene that flashes past our eyes and seems perfectly continuous may actually have been shot in disconnected fragments, very likely assembled from many separate shots. The reason we experience it as whole and seamless is simply an illusion created by the editor’s skillful cutting. Although editors now mostly work on computers, in the early days they really did have to pick up scissors and cut the film itself. From there, the author moves on to discuss paragraphs, structure, modes of narration, style, and other professional matters related to cinematic art, analyzing and explaining them one by one through concrete examples. The writing is so vivid and so apt that it makes one want to stop reading immediately and go find every film he mentions for verification. At the same time, movies I had already seen kept resurfacing in my mind, making me want to rewatch them from the beginning. It took real effort to suppress that urge. And once I had finished the whole book, the very first thing I did was look up one of the films mentioned and watch it (The Sting, in my case). Suddenly, it felt as if the world inside movies had become completely different from before. Even though I still could not see very much beneath the story, I was no longer wholly ignorant.

One thing worth noting is that from the very beginning, the author tries to address a question central to all books of this kind: do we need sufficient professional knowledge in order to appreciate beauty in art? Even without understanding painting, one may still be captivated by Mona Lisa’s smile or Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Even without understanding music, one may still be enchanted by the melodies of Beethoven or Mozart. Likewise, even without any professional knowledge of film, one may still be moved by a movie itself. So where, then, does the value of expertise lie? Might too much professional knowledge interfere with the pure beauty of art? The latter concern may indeed exist to some extent. But in my view, the greatest value of having more professional knowledge is that it allows us to perceive more kinds of beauty in art. We are not only moved by that beauty; we are also able to understand what it is that truly moves us. Perhaps that is the greatest difference between a complete outsider and an insider.

He has an intelligent, almost instinctive gift for knowing when and where to stop talking details and turn to the larger view, and when and where to turn back.

Film presents action in motion, even if the movement is very small. But it actually does more than that: it filters the action in motion that it presents.

Show, don’t tell.

In Hollywood movies, there is nothing less predictable than someone who has just died.

Essentially, the language of film differs from the language of theater. Its grammar is one of selection, not presentation.

When we watch a film, our attention is focused on what the camera has selected for us. It is a highly exclusionary mechanism.

Shots, scenes, sequences: they make up the framework that supports a film. These elements are extremely important; without them, film can neither be made nor understood. Whenever we watch a movie, we are observing these things and using them to process information.

An image is a picture described in words.

The American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson said in his essay Self-Reliance, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” He said more than that, of course, but this one line applies to our subject here, because foolish consistency is also the demon that produces narrow plotting.

The actions of various characters propel the plot, while character is revealed through the plot.

This man cuts himself off from others, shuts himself in, and lives inside the shell of a shattered dream. I do not know whether the history of film has ever produced a deeper sense of loneliness; at any rate, I have not seen it. (Citizen Kane)

In Ionesco’s literary world, people are drawn into political fanaticism: first they condemn the rhinoceroses, and then they become rhinoceroses.

Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola gave us Don Vito Corleone. First of all, the role is not played by a professional tough guy, but by Marlon Brando, who may have been the finest male actor of his era.

Self-imitation is the death knell of any art form—film, music, theater, visual art, or literature—especially when it happens unconsciously.

What does it mean to live in an age of great film adaptations? It means only that some novel, memoir, or comic we love may someday make its way onto the big screen.

“Do no harm” is the first ethical principle that people in medicine learn in school.

If you are going to make a remake that fully reproduces the original source—assuming for a moment that this is a good idea—you had better bring something new to the party. That is nearly impossible to do. If an old movie was bad, why reproduce it so precisely? And if it was a classic, what makes you think you can do it better?

Sutton’s Law comes from the bank robber Willie Sutton. When asked why he robbed banks, he replied, “Because that’s where the money is.”

The question has never been simply whether the music is good enough, but whether the music makes the film better.

The key is that you need to learn about film and about the things in film that you like. We have already established one thing: you really do like them, and you want to know more about them. I only think you should do that in the way that suits you best. That will bring you the greatest pleasure, and that is what film is really about.

So let me take you back through time, into the distant history of film, to the era before sex appeared. Well, there is no such era. Almost from the time the Lumière brothers filmed workers leaving the factory, romance and sex were already among the things people cared about.

Many of Woody Allen’s methods come closest to those of Latin American magical realist writers. His films, like their novels, are not fantasy; rather, they cause fantastic elements to burst forth within an ordinary universe.

Quentin Tarantino cannot resist that almost adolescent fascination with violence, so violence is always ready to appear at any moment, and it is always excessive.

Robert Altman likes the noisy scenes in which many people talk at once, so we can never hear every line of dialogue, only fragments of different conversations.

Unlike other artistic media, film is one in which everyone can become an expert appreciator.