Film interpretation - who is the 'expert'
While I can appreciate film as a spectacle, I’m more interested in the meaning a film imbues. The question is whether this is something that can be accurately interpreted by an individual audience member, whether it requires a group consensus, or whether it is something that needs to be arrived at through ‘independent’ or ‘expert’ analysis. Whichever it is, there is no question that any interpretation is coloured by individual or group biases.
Some may consider the filmmaker themselves the ‘expert’ when it comes to a film’s meaning, even if not all films or filmmakers are the same. No one has spent much time pondering the meaning of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (beyond Russ Meyer’s obsession with violence and large breasts), or the point Ed Wood was trying to make in any of his films. For more accomplished filmmakers there is great variance in their approach to storytelling as well the attention or the intention they invest in meaning. Billy Wilder is considered one of cinema’s great auteurs (a theory I’ll come back to), but when asked about meaning in his films, Billy said:
“As a picture-maker, and I think most of us are this way, I am not aware of patterns. We’re not aware that ‘This picture will be in this genre.’ It comes naturally, just the way you do your handwriting. That’s the way I look at it, that’s the way I conceive it. When you see movies, you decide to put some kind of connective theory to them. You may ask me, ‘Do you remember that in a picture you wrote in 1935, the motive of the good guy was charity, and then the echo in that sentiment reappears in four more pictures. Or, you put the camera…. ‘I’m totally unaware of it. You’re trying to make as good and as entertaining a picture as you possibly can. If you have any kind of style, the discerning ones will detect it. I can always tell you a Hitchcock picture. I could tell you a King Vidor picture, a Capra picture. You develop a handwriting, but you don’t do it consciously.”
As a Writer/Director Wilder had a great deal of control over what story he told and how he told it, but even he admits that meaning is for others to interpret.
Film academics are people who have spent years studying film, filmmakers and film theory. They do apply a scientific method to their interpretations and assumptions, their work is peer reviewed, and it is read and cited by academics who seek to build on their theories. They also draw on other fields, such as psychology, to support their arguments.
One of the biggest influences in the area of film theory is psychiatrist and psycho analyst Jacques Lacan, considered "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". His work informs Critical theory (the idea that social problems stem from social structures and cultural assumptions), Marxist film theory (that views film through the political hierarchy and perceptions of social injustice), Apparatus theory (that assumes film is ideological because it is constructed to represent reality), and Feminist film theory which has referenced the male gaze (females viewed as objects) and the female gaze (females as subjects).
It’s a rabbit hole down which many different interpretations can be found, and explains why the way ‘we’ see a film changes over time. While I’m someone who generally trusts science and academics, in the area of film analysis and interpretation I’m harder to convince.
The main questions for me are about the quality of the evidence they gather, and whether or not it is possible to form a dispassionate view about a film.
Film critics too weigh in on meaning and interpretation. Their main purpose is to channel audiences towards what they label as ‘good’ films and away from ‘bad’ films, but they have parallel goals. The critic also has an audience to please which they do by aligning their tastes with those of their audience, never challenging them too much. They also need to avoid keeping people away from the cinema or the streaming service… if people don’t watch films then there is no need for critics. It’s why they write way more four and five star reviews, than they do zero and one star reviews, despite lower ratings often being warranted.
There are a number of standouts among the many film critics, with the most notable being Roger Ebert. He often explored meaning and was the first and one of only a handful of film critics to win a Pulitzer prize for his work. Much of his best work has been published in collections of his reviews and on his website.
Roger Ebert was a fan of Russ Meyer’s films. They were long time friends, it was rumoured there were both interested in large breasted women, and Roger wrote the screenplay for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. So perhaps Ebert was too close to Meyer’s films to be able to run a critical eye over them.
Someone who bridged all three categories was Francois Truffaut. He rose to prominence in 1954 when his article, "Une Certaine Tendance du Cinéma Français" ("A Certain Trend of French Cinema") was published in Cahiers du cinéma. In it he attacked the state of French films, lambasting select screenwriters and producers, and listing eight directors he felt worthy of special criticism: Jean Renoir, Robert Bresson, Jean Cocteau, Jacques Becker, Abel Gance, Max Ophuls, Jacques Tati and Roger Leenhardt.
The controversy generated by the article led to his work being published in the more widely read cultural weekly Arts-Lettres-Spectacles for whom he wrote more than 500 articles over four years. During that time he became increasingly convinced he could make better films than those he was criticising.
In 1959 he directed his first feature film, The 400 Blows, to considerable critical and commercial acclaim, winning Best Director at Cannes that year. He continued to make films as well as applying himself to analysis and criticism. He developed the auteur theory which gained increasing acceptance over time and in 1967 published his book-length interview of Hitchcock, Hitchcock/Truffaut… enhancing Hitchcock’s legacy and drawing attention back to a director who had begun fading from public view.
So at the end of the day who is best placed to discern a film’s meaning? For me its the inidvidual, which in turn means multiple interpretations are possible. I personally know there are films that have way more meaning for me than they do for others, and vice versa… which is what makes cinema culture so rich.