When we first think of evaluating films, we think initially of film crit-ics. These are people who are in the business of pronouncing on the value of films. There are so many films to see and so little time. Thus, almost all of us have to fall back on the recommendations of film crit-ics in order to inform our choice of viewing fare.
There are several different ways in which the role of a film critic may be pursued. Some critics attempt to function as consumer re-porters—trying to predict which films most of their readership will enjoy. For such readers, these critics serve as consumer guides. Other critics aim at being taste-makers—identifying which films are special, and in the best of cases, suggesting how the rest of us might go on to appreciate them. Readers who prefer their tastes confirmed will gravi-tate toward the consumer guides. Those who want their taste ex-panded are likely to admire the critics who are able to pick out singu-lar cinematic achievements and to contextualize and explain them.
However, though the role of the film critic commands an impor-tant position in cultures awash with movies (both in movie theaters, and on television and video cassettes), it would be a mistake to think
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of film evaluation as exclusively a professional matter. For evaluating films is something that we all do all of the time.
Nor do I mean by this merely that we automatically form preferences for some of the films we see over others and rank some of them as better than the rest. As humans, we tend to do this with respect to most of our experiences. But with regard to film viewing, this is not something that simply happens to us au-tomatically. It is something that we avidly pursue. Evaluating films is part of our everyday film culture. When we talk about films with others, most of our time is spent trading evaluations, comparing them, sometimes sharing them, and often arguing about them. Indeed, we frequently read critics after we have seen a film in order to enter imaginary conversations of this sort with them.
Film viewing is often portrayed as a solitary affair in which each spectator communes with a brightened screen in a dark room. But film viewing is more sociable than that. Film viewing is part of our social life. After we have seen a film, we want to talk about it with others. We want to tell them what we have seen, to exchange ideas with others who have seen the same films, and to discuss our reactions and theirs. Film viewing is a natural pretext for sociability. And film evaluating is at the crux of this very elemental form of social exchange and consolidation. It is through such encounters that we express and develop our-selves as cultural beings.
That is to put the matter very abstractly. But what I have in mind can be clar-ified by recalling a very common experience. You attend a film with some friends. Afterwards you go out for coffee, or sweets, or a drink. You talk about the film you have just seen, remarking on the parts you liked or disliked. But, of course, quite frequently the conversation does not just end with a summary of personal preferences. The discussion may often turn to whether or not the film is good or whether it worked. That is, there is an almost ineluctable tendency for the conversation to move from reports of subjective enjoyment or boredom to questions of objective evaluation.
Experiences like these are part of the typical life of film-going—which is to claim that evaluation is at the heart of this practice for most of us. It adds zest to the activity. It is something that ordinary film-goers care about deeply. It is something that they want to do. And yet it is this aspect of film-going to which recent film scholarship pays little attention. Where ordinary film viewers prob-ably care more about evaluation, contemporary film scholars are more obsessed with interpretation. So, by way of balance, attention, in this chapter, will shift to certain selected issues concerning evaluation. Let us talk to the film-goer where she or he lives. Specifically, in what follows, I will discuss certain kinds of
selected problems that arise inevitably in the course of film evaluation, the tra-ditional way in which classical film theorists attempted to resolve those prob-lems, and I will conclude with some programmatic remarks about alternatives to the classical solution.
SOME PROBLEMS OF FILM EVALUATION
I have suggested that film evaluation is something that we come to almost nat-urally. So in what sense could it be problematic? Well, recall the scenario I al-luded to above. Suppose a group of us has just seen a film together—for exam-ple, Speed (). You like it; I do not. As often as not, the conversation will not stop there. You are apt to defend your liking of the film by saying that it is good.
I may reply that I do not deny that you liked the film, but I add that that does not prove that it was good. It is perfectly consistent, I say, for you to like that film and for the film to be bad at the same time. Moreover, I add that Speed is a bad film.
At this point, notice that we have left off talking about our likes and our dis-likes and we have entered the realm of objective evaluation. You are claiming that any reasonable and informed viewer should regard Speed as a good film, whereas I am denying that. In other words, we both accept each other’s likes and dislikes. There is no more arguing about that than there is about our pref-erences in ice cream. But we are arguing—our discussion revolves around com-ing up with reasons that we believe should sway or even compel others to accept our viewpoint.1
A subjective report of a like or a dislike is a fact about us. It does not com-mand the agreement of others. If you dislike spinach that is not a reason for me to dislike spinach, since reasons—as opposed to mere likings—are objective.
Reasons are offered to others with an implicit claim on their assent. Thus, if you provide a reason for saying that Speed is a good film and if that reason is relevant and acceptable, you expect others to concur with your assessment. In our dis-cussion of Speed, our behavior—our exchange of reasons—gives every appear-ance of being committed to objectivity. We do not pound the table and shout
‘But I like it!’ We try to find objective reasons that will convince others that our assessment is correct.
Here, in a nutshell, is the central problem of film evaluation (and, indeed, of all aesthetic evaluation). It emerges from a stubborn fact with which we are all familiar. That is the fact of disagreement. We disagree about our evaluations of film. Moreover, as I have already indicated, we do not act as though these
dis-agreements are merely a matter of personal whims or preferences, since we ar-gue about them, we advance reasons on their behalf, and we attempt to defend them.
When you say that Speed is good, you are advancing an objective claim, and your conversational behavior implies that you believe that your evaluation can be rationally adjudicated. But how is that possible? How can such disagree-ments be resolved rationally?2How can you hope to defend your assessment objectively?3Those are some of the central questions of film evaluation.
In order to get some sense of how such disagreements might be negotiated rationally, let us follow our imaginary dispute about Speed a little further. You say it is good; I say it is bad. What happens next? Very often we start mention-ing other films. You might refer to other suspense films, such as Die Hard () or The Man Who Knew Too Much (, ). Your purpose here might be to get me to agree that they are good films. For if I agree that they are good films, you will argue that consistency (a test for rational objectivity) demands that I agree Speed is also good, on the grounds that Speed shares essential features with the other suspense films that I have already conceded are good.
Here the conversation could go in several directions. I might deny that Speed is really analogous to the paradigms you have adduced, or I might deny that the other films you have mentioned are good. Let us explore the second option.
Suppose that I deny that any of the three films are any good. At this point, you will begin to wonder what I think makes for a good film, and you may chal-lenge me to produce an example of one. Say my example is Riddles of the Sphinx (), an avant-garde film that mixes disjunctive editing with dense, philo-sophical voiceover narration.
You agree that Riddles of the Sphinx is a good film, yet you cannot but feel that somehow I have missed the point. You say that that is not the kind of film that Speed is. Speed and Riddles of the Sphinx belong to different categories—
they serve different purposes, and, in consequence, they have different stan-dards of evaluation.
Perhaps one thing that this debate reveals so far is that when we evaluate films, part of that process involves placing the film in question in a certain cat-egory. This is a psychological fact about us. To evaluate, one categorizes.4The reason for this is that categories are generally connected to purposes and stan-dards. When we categorize a piece of cutlery as a steak knife, we recognize that its purpose is to slice through thick pieces of beef and that, in consequence, a good-making feature of it is its sharpness. Sharpness, in other words, is a stan-dard of goodness in steak knives because it is in virtue of its sharpness that a
steak knife can discharge its purpose. In this way, categories, purposes, and standards form a matrix.
When we view a film, we also—as a matter of psychological fact—place it in a category, one that shapes our expectations and standards. Our dispute about Speed in the preceding example turns on the fact that we have situated Speed in different categories or comparison classes.
But, as I have said, this is only a psychological fact, not a logical one. We do not resolve the question of whether Speed is good by citing the different cate-gories in which we regard Speed. That may clarify our differences, but it does not settle them. Our disagreement will not be adjudicated rationally until we are able to determine which of our competing categories is the correct one (or, at least, the more correct one).
Our dispute about the goodness or badness of Speed, then, has escalated, so to speak, into a disagreement about categories. Which category (or categories) is (are) appropriate or correct in this case? Our debate looks like it can be brought to a reasonable resolution only if we can determine which category is the correct one to bring to bear on the case of Speed. A great many problems about film evaluation could be resolved, if only we had a way to fix the correct category or categories for evaluating the film in question.5But how does one determine a correct category? That is the million dollar question. For without an answer to that question, it looks like our disagreement is just as rationally in-tractable as the question of whether or not Speed is good.
THE CLASSICAL SOLUTION
As we have just seen, one of the central problems of film evaluation is what we can call ‘the problem of the correct category.’ This is not a problem that has concerned recent film scholarship. However, there is a way of looking at classi-cal film theory—film theory prior to the advent of semiotics and poststruc-turalism—such that the problem of the correct category turns out to be one of the central issues, if not sometimes the central issue, with which film theorists, such as Rudolf Arnheim and Siegfried Kracauer, were wrestling.6
Classical film theory is generally preoccupied with isolating the essence of film—what some people call the cinematic. The cinematic is what differ-entiates film from other artforms, such as theater and painting. Moreover, clas-sical film theorists were not simply concerned with what in fact differentiated film from other artforms. The differentiae they sought were also often norma-tive. That is, they were concerned with the way in which film should be
differ-ent from other arts. Stated obscurely, they thought that films should be cine-matic. Various classical theorists defined what constituted being cinematic in different ways. But for most of the classical theorists, they had a conception of what counted as cinematic. And for them, the failure of a film to be cinematic was a defect.
What does this notion of the cinematic have to do with the problem of the correct category? Well, effectively, for the classical film theorist, all films—or at least all the films that we would want to talk about from an aesthetic point of view—fell into one category which we might call film as film. Thus, debates about the goodness or badness of a given film could be referred back to the question of whether or not the film under discussion was cinematic, that is, whether it was a proper instance of the category of film as film. Consequently, if we want to determine whether Speed is a good film, then what we have to do is to show that it is cinematic.
One obvious advantage of a classical approach to the problem of the correct category is that it makes film evaluation a very unified practice. The notion of the cinematic, in the hands of a given classical theorist, provides a single scale on which all films can be weighed and compared. Whether or not a film is good (relative to the category of film as film) can be established by showing that it is cinematic, while how good it is can be gauged in light of how cinematic it is.
Similarly, one can say that a film is bad if it fails to be cinematic, or that it is flawed to the degree that uncinematic elements intrude into its style. Moreover, films can be compared and even ranked as good, bad, better, and worse in ac-cordance with a single measure—their degree of cinematicity.
This is a very tidy program. It would provide a way of rationally negotiating disagreements about evaluating films just in case one were able to characterize satisfactorily what counts as cinematic. But there is the fly in the ointment. For, as is well known, different classical film theorists tended to argue for different and often conflicting (or non-converging) conceptions of the cinematic.
Early film theorists, for instance, tended to locate the cinematic in terms of two contrasts—that which differentiated film from theater, on the one hand, and that which differentiated film from the slavish recording of reality, on the other hand. They emphasized the difference between film, properly so called, and mere recording, in order to establish the credentials of film as an artform—
something that did not simply duplicate reality but that could reconstitute it expressively and creatively.
But they also differentiated film from theater. The point here was to demon-strate that film was a unique artform, an artistic category unto itself—film as
film. Thus, these early film theorists, of whom Rudolf Arnheim7is a leading ex-ample, argued that film, properly so-called, was neither an imitation of nature, nor an imitation of any other artform, notably theater.
Whereas theater narration typically relies on words, cinematic narration, it was asserted, could and should emphasize movement, image, and action. If theater was primarily verbal, cinema, ideally, was primarily visual. Likewise, cinema had resources, particularly editing, that enabled filmmakers to manip-ulate spatial and temporal transitions with more fluidity than was customary in theater. Thus, editing, or montage, was generally celebrated as the most impor-tant, essential characteristic of cinema. On this view, film was essentially visual, its natural subject of representation was animated action, and its primary means of expression was editing or montage.
Other techniques were also regarded as cinematic—including close-ups, camera angulation, trick photography, visual devices such as fades, wipes, and superimposition, camera movement, and the like. As with editing, these tech-niques were prized because they both declared the difference between film and theater (inasmuch as the effects available through these devices were not easily achieved in theater) and departed from the ‘straight’ recording of reality. In other words, the use of these devices standardly indicated that film differed from theater and from what was thought of as ‘normal perception’. They dis-played film as a unique artistic category—film as film.
A feature of a film was cinematic, then, as long as it deployed techniques that underscored the putatively unique capacities of cinema. Stylistic features that failed to do this—such as the use of extended dialogue or stolid tableaux shots—were uncinematic. Excessive reliance on words at the expense of ani-mated action, or the use of a single camera position to record the declamation of dialogue (rather than exploiting the powers of editing) was not only uncine-matic, but downright theatrical. And to be theatrical or uncinematic flew in the face of the canonical standards of film as film. Theatrical or uncinematic films were bad films, inappropriate or defective examples of the category.
A film such as Speed does very nicely on this conception of film. Dialogue here is in the service of action, of which there is quite a lot, which, in turn, is magnificently articulated through the editing. On the other hand, a film such as Riddles of the Sphinx would probably fare badly on this approach because of its extensive use of language. This approach to film evaluation could settle our earlier dispute in short order, if only its account of the essence of cinema were compelling.
But this conception of cinema is hardly incontestable. In fact, it was
chal-lenged by later film theorists in the classical tradition. These later classical the-orists, of whom Siegfried Kracauer8is a noteworthy example, are often called realists because they thought that the essential feature of cinema is photography and that this feature committed cinema to meeting certain standards that
chal-lenged by later film theorists in the classical tradition. These later classical the-orists, of whom Siegfried Kracauer8is a noteworthy example, are often called realists because they thought that the essential feature of cinema is photography and that this feature committed cinema to meeting certain standards that