If you are reading this blog it probably means that you, like me, are interested in movies a little more than the average person. Maybe you're a student who's learning about film and wants to explore the ins-and-outs of basic film interpretation and analysis. Maybe you're a movie-buff who doesn't care so much about the scholarly side of things. Maybe you're just stumbling upon this now and have no idea to exit out! No matter what situation you're in, there's an easy way to introduce yourself to the basic principles of film criticism and analysis, regardless of your background. In this post, I'll be sharing some tips for how to be an informed viewer, and how to develop (or refine) your skills as a critic.
This step is either the easiest or the most difficult, depending on your background in film. Before you can start critiquing film, you need to develop a background (however rudimentary) in film enough to be able to compare films and contextualize them in history's technicalities, and thus decide on whether or not you think a film is good. If you've only ever seen low-budget 1980s slasher films and you try to jump right into Citizen Kane, it may come as a surprise to you that so many people consider it to be the greatest film masterpiece of all time (frankly, even if you've seen a lot of classic films it may still puzzle you- and we'll get to that in a second).
To understand what makes a film great, it's important to make an effort to understand basic film history. Stuff like film theory can serve as a very important tool in film analysis, but in my opinion, if you're a beginner, it's more important to understand the historical context of a film to judge whether or not you think it made the best use of the technology it was allowed at the time, as well as whether or not it was particularly innovative or important for the time it was made in. Films like Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968; pictured above) and, yes, Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941) are both films considered highly innovative and influential because of the ways in which they helped to develop cinematic techniques and radical styles of filmmaking that are now considered staples of motion picture making. Learning about the ways in which celebrated films were able to pioneer filmmaking techniques makes these films all the more enjoyable (and impressive) to watch.
Of course, it's important to judge a film not only by how technically great you think it is, but also by how much you enjoyed it. There are great films that I think are very boring, and there are bad films I think are incredibly entertaining; entertaining is not a synonym for great. Obviously the goal of making a perfect film is being able to effectively balance cinematic perfection/greatness with entertainment value; this is a very difficult thing to do.
It also gets complicated when trying to evaluate controversial films, of which there have been many. Watching films like D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915) or Victor Fleming's Gone With The Wind (1939), it's difficult to get past the blatant and deeply-troubling racism. Yet there is a reason that these films, particularly Griffith's, retain the distinction of being cinematic masterpieces: despite their unforgivable racial prejudices, they both pioneer unprecedented cinematic techniques that are now staples of the industry. For instance, The Birth of a Nation was the first film to pioneer the use of the close up, the Iris Shot (expanding or closing circular masks to open up or close a shot), the ability to shoot outside, the ability to shoot during the nighttime, tinted film frames, high-angle shots, panoramic long shots, fade-ins and outs, vignettes, lap dissolves, the dramatic retelling of history through film, cross-cutting between shots, tracking shots, parallel editing, scenes shot from multiple angles, and a score specifically compiled and arranged. So basically, it's an important film, despite its troubling history and despicable message.
My favorite way to research film history is by using online scholarly databases like JSTOR (which you can get access to at most public libraries, most high schools, and virtually every college or university), as well as some of the databases supplied by my college specifically for Cinema and Media Studies research. Once I've watched a film, I search the film's title in JSTOR and look for articles that seem like interesting pieces of analysis, as well as for straight-up reviews of the film, from the year it was released to present-day. I also rely heavily on plain-old books to learn about film studies; some of my most-used books on film include Richard Osborne's Film Theory For Beginners, David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson's Film Art: An Introduction, the interviews conducted between Alfred Hitchcock and François Truffaut in Hitchcock/Truffaut, and Robert Skylar's Film: An International History of the Medium. It's also important to broaden your horizons by exposing yourself to as many films as you possibly can- that means opening your mind to genres you've never thought to explore or never even heard of, like silent films, science fiction, or even classic Hollywood black-and-white films.
Yet there remains a question: After developing a base, how can you effectively balance your own thoughts about a film with the historically-based facts about the film's production style?
The best way to balance your thoughts and what you think is technically great (or not so great) about a film is to develop a rubric for criticism. When I review films for this blog, I score them based on a scale I developed, which I will now share with you:
As you may notice, it was developed on the very high-tech platform of Google Docs. Basically, it's incredibly easy to develop a rubric- all you have to do is decide what you want to judge, put those factors in one column, and then create columns for judging. Once you've scored a film, you tally up the score and divide it by the number of categories to find a simple average. I go off of a 1-5 scale, but there are obviously many other ways to do it; Rotten Tomatoes uses a 1-100% scale, and many critics, like the late and great Roger Ebert, use a system of 1-4 stars.
Let me show you an example of a recent film I watched to illustrate how to use the rubric:
See? Easy peasy. But once you've scored a film, what are you going to do with it?
If you've gone to the effort of learning about film history and theory and developing a rubric to use to critique films, it only makes sense that you would want to do something with all of that work. This, to me, is where individual expression comes in. Whether you want to start a blog about your journey through films like I did, or try something more innovative like a podcast or a vlog, or even just keep a journal of your thoughts and ideas, it's rewarding to take your thoughts and turn them into something bigger. The truth is, you don't have to be a professional to be a critic. While you'll certainly gain a more prestigious reputation, as well as be more trusted and respected, if you have the kind of credentials that professionals have, all it really takes to be an amateur film critic is to follow the steps I've outlined in this blog entry. To recap:
Step One: Develop A Base, learning about film production and history, as well as exposing yourself to theory and classic film criticism. This can be properly achieved through reading articles and reviews found on online databases like JSTOR, or even free online encyclopedias and well-established and credible websites.
Step Two: Develop A Rubric, breaking down the categories of what you consider the building blocks of a film, while also factoring in your own enjoyment of the film despite any technical failures. This can be done either by using the super high-tech and advanced rubric I created and featured here, or by creating your own!
Step Three: Share Your Criticism by finding a platform suitable to you to express some of your ideas and new-found/refined knowledge. Personally I favor writing blog-style, but I also think that this can extend into academic writing, journaling, or even conversing with people you know who hold similar interest. You can also find more ~creative~ ways to share your thoughts, like by starting a podcast (and I'll be the first one to admit that I ADORE film podcasts), making a vlog, starting a club, or anything you can think up.
I hope this has been a helpful way for you to organize your thoughts about a possible detour into film criticism, but even if that's not for you, the tips offered here in Step One can still help you become a more informed viewer, which can enrich the overall film-watching experience dramatically. Happy film-watching!
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