Film Theory
Portfolio

During this semester in film theory, I have applied films and filmmaking techniques to a wide variety of ideological frameworks, many of which are very dissimilar if not contradictory to one another. However, there are some central questions and concepts that I continued to develop my ideas on throughout this class. I am particularly interested in how meaning is constructed in film, whether through reorganizing established ideas or through the emotions evoked by the viewing experience. Building on this, I have explored how cinema transforms internal experiences, such as memory and feeling, into external images that audiences can recognize and interpret. Throughout these analyses, I frequently referenced Eisenstein’s theory of montage to connect to these concepts and consider how conflict functions in creating a film’s ideological significance. These recurring ideas form the foundation of my approach to understanding cinema as an interpretable art form.

To create a stronger throughline between these writings, I expanded on them through my concept of recognition theory, which I developed in my second mid-semester paper. I defined recognition theory as, “The power of cinema is not made by introducing new ideas, but by reorganizing what the audience already knows, through making abstract memories, emotions, and concepts visually recognizable, thereby constructing new meaning.” By applying this concept to my other theoretical analyses, I was able to clarify and expand on what recognition theory actually means and how it can be a useful framework for thinking about how perception, memory, and ideology can function in tandem within cinema. This approach has allowed me to connect diverse theoretical perspectives and films under a shared understanding of cinema as a medium shaped by the viewer’s experience.

In this portfolio, I first include my recognition theory paper, which lays out the concept and compares it to other film theories, as well as the film They Live. Next is my other mid-semester paper, which critiques the theories of Dulac, connects her ideas with Eisenstein’s, and uses the film Killer of Sheep as an example of how cinema can construct meaning through visuals in a much broader way than Dulac and Eisenstein’s ideas. I expanded on my original version by connecting this analysis to recognition theory, arguing that understanding cinema’s construction of meaning is best understood through how it is experienced and created by the audience. To demonstrate this, I applied Killer of Sheep to recognition theory by explaining how the film’s lack of plot and emphasis on everyday moments creates a more active role for the audience by forcing them to interpret meaning through the emotions and societal realities they recognize.

For my cinematheque screening reflection, I again added a paragraph connecting my analysis to recognition theory. Similar to Killer of Sheep, The Third Man makes the audience take on an active role in constructing meaning by conveying its themes through visual style. The film also does something interesting that helps to further define recognition theory: subverting a Hollywood cliche. The film ends with a character walking towards the camera from a distance rather than walking towards the horizon as the audience might expect. This reversal of expectation reverses recognition, thereby encouraging a heightened critical lens on what is being represented through this subversion. This shows how meaning can be created not only through recognition but also by reversing what we as an audience have been trained to recognize through filmmaking conventions.

My portfolio ends with a few selected screening responses that I deemed relevant to my other papers because they analyze how their respective films construct meaning in unique ways. Lovers Rock creates an immersive experience that encourages emotional release and an examination of the culture it displays through its cinemagraphic style of a wandering camera. Both Man with a Movie Camera and Touki Bouki demonstrate how montage can be used in film to communicate nuanced emotions and actively engage the audience in constructing meaning. The film Time uses multiple forms of footage and deliberately slow pacing to tell a story about waiting in a way that makes the audience feel the struggle of the documentary’s subjects. I added a few sentences to some of the responses to emphasize their construction of meaning, but mostly left them the same.

These writings reflect my developing understanding of cinema from analyzing individual theories and techniques to developing a more cohesive framework for cinematic meaning. Writing the first mid-semester paper critiquing the works of theorists helped me narrow down how to actually account for the range of ways cinema operates. This process helped me define recognition theory, which allowed me to synthesize these ideas and communicate the role of the viewer in constructing meaning. In revisiting these pieces, I became more aware of how films not only use formal techniques but also engage the audience’s memory and emotional experience. This portfolio shows not just what I’ve learned about film theory, but how my way of watching and thinking about films has changed over the semester.

In Film Theory this semester, we have discussed the many ways throughout history in which the film medium has been prescribed meaning, purpose, and power. From the ontological and epistemological theories of early scholars to the psychoanalytic and ideology-focused ideas of contemporary scholars, cinema and its relation to the mind, reality, history, and society have been defined in a myriad of ways. These concepts have given me my own ideas on the most impactful features of film and how it creates significance, which I will refer to as recognition theory. The power of cinema is not made by introducing new ideas, but by reorganizing what the audience already knows, through making abstract memories, emotions, and concepts visually recognizable, thereby constructing new meaning.

One of the most important aspects of the film medium is that it gives shape to ideas that are difficult to articulate. It introduces the audience to a new premise to capture attention, but then draws on concepts audiences already understand to convey meaning, translating internal experience into an external image. That recognition encourages audiences to think more deeply about their perceptions of that concept. Visuals, the main technological power of film, are important to this process because imagery can bypass rational explanation and feel intuitive, which makes film work more like memory or emotion than language. Because of this, the audience is not passive in the viewing process; instead, they actively participate in constructing it, using their own experiences to interpret what they see.

One theorist who aligns with recognition theory is Hugo Munsterberg. His writings argue that film externalizes mental processes such as attention, memory, and imagination. He believed film is artful when it focuses on depiction, or taking from the world and creating something new, and focusing on emotion to emanate the soul. To expand on this, film does not just mirror the mind, but triggers recognition by allowing viewers to see their own internal experiences reflected to them. Another theorist with similar ideas was Susanne Langer, who believed cinema was most similar to dreaming. Her idea of film as a “virtual present” aligns with this recognition theory, as dreams often feel meaningful not because they explain something new, but because they reorganize familiar emotions into new forms.

The montage theory of Eisenstein partially coincides with this theory of recognition in terms of the role of the audience. Eisenstein thought that the audience plays an active role in the viewing experience because they are the ones creating meaning through the imagery. His ideas about film fragmenting and reconstructing reality relate to my theory in that film reorganizes previous audience understanding. My theory also aligns with his ideas about how emotional effect arises, in which he states, “Emotional effect begins only with the reconstruction of the event in montage fragments, each of which will summon a certain association-the sum of which will be an all-embracing complex of emotional feeling” (60). However, Eisenstein sees meaning as produced through the collision of images, whereas my perspective is more rooted in how these constructed images resonate with the headspace of the viewer.

It is important to note that recognition theory and the writings of Munsterberg, Langer, and Eisenstein are working to define where the power and art of cinema originates from, so it is also useful to recognize when cinema has the opposite effect. The theories of Baudry and Althusser voice what creates this alternative cinematic effect, which is most closely aligned with mainstream classical narrative film. Baudry argues that continuity editing inherently obscures the truth, and Hollywood thereby works to define one “correct” way to tell stories. Althusser’s theory builds on this by claiming that the film apparatus works to reproduce dominant ideology. In this scenario, the audience becomes passive information receivers rather than being able to actively construct the meaning themselves. When cinema suppresses recognition by limiting interpretative freedom, it loses its most powerful function, not just to represent reality, but to make viewers see themselves within it. Recognition then becomes a source of meaning as well as a form of agency by allowing audiences to question and reshape the ideas presented to them.

The film They Live helps paint a clear picture of this relationship between passive reception and active observance. The film literalizes seeing on a deeper level through the act of putting on the sunglasses, which reveal the hidden ideological messages embedded in everyday media and advertisements like OBEY and CONSUME. The film does not have to introduce entirely new ideas about capitalism or control; instead, it reorganizes familiar elements of consumer culture, like billboards, money, and television, into something newly visible. In doing so, They Live engages in recognition theory, as it forces both the protagonist and the audience to confront what was always already there, but unseen. At the same time, the film engages with Baudry and Althusser’s concerns of how cinema can function as an ideological apparatus and condition passive spectatorship. However, by making that process visible, They Live enables the viewer to witness this obscuring effect and, like the protagonist, choose whether or not to “see.”

Recognition theory defines artful cinema as something that activates meaning through the viewer’s own perception, rather than a medium that delivers meaning to a passive audience. As They Live demonstrates, the most powerful films are not those that tell us something entirely new, but those that make us see the familiar differently, revealing the structures, emotions, and ideologies that are always present but obscured. Recognition theory positions cinema as a tool for awakening rather than a site of ideological control. In this way, the true potential of film lies in its ability to shift spectators from passive observers into active participants capable of recognizing and then questioning the influence of the dominant superstructure.

As film emerged as the seventh art form, many theorists sought to determine the virtues of the medium and its potential moving forward. In her essay “Aesthetics, Obstacles, Integral Cinégraphie,” Germaine Dulac argues that cinema achieves its highest artistic potential not through storytelling or realism, but through movement, rhythm, and visual suggestion. Her emphasis on movement and rhythm highlights important qualities unique to film, however, her theory ultimately proves too restrictive. Cinema does not create meaning just from movement or montage alone, but from a variety of techniques, including editing, composition, performance, and sound, through which conflict and expression emerge in many forms.

Germaine Dulac argues that cinema as art, or cinematic truth, must be removed from photographic reality and instead emphasize movement. She criticizes society’s initial uses of film as being too simplistic and lacking artistic prowess, stating, “No one sought to know if within the apparatus of the Lumiere brothers there lay, like an unknown and precious metal, an original aesthetic” (390). She also outlines what she believes is the most pressing shortcoming of film: the incorporation of other art forms. By centering film around a performance like in theater, it “became an outlet for bad literature” (391), since images were used to illustrate a subject rather than life itself. She advocates instead for using cinema’s unique abilities to unlock its full potential through the mathematical implementation of movement. She provides direction on creating “integral cinégraphie” to give meaning to shots: “In order to create dramatic movement, one must successively contrast varied mimetic gestures and intensify them by using different shots corresponding to a motivating feeling…By the use of interposed shots and the necessary divisions, a cadence was imposed. From the juxtaposition, rhythm was born” (393). She credits Impressionism as a valuable development in expanding how the natural world can be used to represent feelings or situations, like with a shadow or a flower. However, this progress toward art cinema has been inhibited by “ignorance and habit”, since people want to see what is familiar to them. Dulac believed unearthing pure cinema would be difficult, but the form’s truth would reveal itself when used similarly to music, as they are “Two arts that arouse emotion through the agency of suggestion” (398).

Although Dulac makes several valid points, she is overly critical of early filmmaking attempts, and she only values a narrow aesthetic style that excludes other artistic forms of cinema. Her perspective has to be taken with a grain of salt in the modern era, since she is considering silent film. However, her ideas can still be critiqued within that context. She is against the simplistic initial uses of the film camera and their attempts to capture raw life, but this was an essential step toward artistic filmmaking that could not have been avoided. She also dislikes the use of other art forms within film, but this perspective underestimates the value of narrative and acting. These elements are beneficial and arguably essential for creating a truly artful film. Her vision of artistic cinema is too methodically formulated to be applied broadly. Using contrasting shots to create juxtaposition and rhythm can be a powerful filmmaking device, but always using said device to create meaning would become repetitive and obvious. Great cinema incorporates visual symphony, but Dulac’s theories do not verbalize what actually creates this harmony: Conflict.

Sergei Eisenstein had similar ideas to Dulac about what constitutes artistic cinema, but he expanded on Dulac’s ideas surrounding juxtaposition through his theories about conflict. Both Dulac and Eisenstein believed that film was meant to represent the abstract and that absolute realism is not art. Eisenstein argued that conflict through montage, or combining images to represent a concept, is the basis of art, and that editing is the tool to accomplish this. This theory gives more weight to Dulac’s concept of integral cinégraphie by defining what it is about rhythmic, juxtaposing shots that are artful–the conflict it creates. However, it is also possible to create conflict and art in film without manipulating the imagery through editing.

The film Killer of Sheep contains examples of how conflict can be created within cinema in a variety of ways. In the scene where Stan attempts to get a new engine, conflict is immediately established when the truck pulls up on the slanted hill in front of the house. The shot contains visual conflict through intersecting lines, a concept Eisenstein details, and narrative conflict because it foreshadows the end of the scene. Later, inside the house, the camera drifts focus from the injured man lying on the floor to the engine in front of him, as if we are Stan looking at what he came there for. This creates conflict between the object of his desire and an obstacle, but this is done without editing. Dulac and Eisenstein’s ideas about temporal rhythm are still present though, with the many lengthy shots of the two men struggling to carry down the engine, which is then juxtaposed with the broken engine quickly being left behind after it is broken. Another scene with a different type of conflict is when Stan and his wife slow dance together. It is one continuous shot, and the conflict is created through the differences in body language, as Stan moves like a statue and his wife pines for affection. This difference is further emphasized by the darkness of the room and the bright light of the window rather than by shot variety. One final example is the end of the film, where shots of sheep in the slaughterhouse are juxtaposed with a romantic song that repeats the word "unforgettable". This creates conflict by calling these nameless, uniform sheep, and by thematic extension the film’s characters, unforgettable, a falsehood intensified with the clash of bloody gore and a romantic song. In this scene, conflict is created through music rather than editing.

While Dulac’s vision of cinema as a rhythmic, movement-based art form offers insight into the unique capabilities of cinema, it remains limited by its exclusivity. As seen through Eisenstein’s theories and the varied techniques in Killer of Sheep, cinematic meaning is accomplished not only through editing and visual rhythm, but also through performance, sound, duration, and the conflict created. Acknowledging that there is no single “true” form of cinema and that meaning can emerge through a wide range of techniques reveals that a more fruitful consideration may be less about identifying an ideal formal structure and more about understanding how meaning is experienced by the viewer. This opens the door to my concept of recognition theory, which reframes cinematic meaning not as something contained within the image itself, but as something activated through the audience’s perception.

Returning to the example of Killer of Sheep, the film effectively represents this concept of recognition theory, since it tells the audience almost nothing and instead relies on the recognition of emotions conveyed through fragmented moments of everyday life. The lack of a conventional plot becomes the point: the film does not construct meaning through dramatic events, but by reorganizing familiar experiences, like labor, family tension, and exhaustion, into a visually recognizable form. The film externalizes these internal states often not through explicit dialogue, but also through duration, repetition, and gesture, like with Stan’s body language, the slow pacing, and the lingering shots of domestic space. Meaning emerges not from what happens, but from how these moments resonate with what the audience can empathize with emotionally and socially.

At the same time, recognition does not mean the film is easily interpretable. Its ambiguity prevents passive consumption and requires the audience to use what they see and feel to actively construct meaning. It does not impose a singular ideological reading, but instead creates space for multiple interpretations that could include class struggle, emotional isolation, systemic limitation, or something else, depending on the viewer’s own experiences and perspective. For example, the recurring imagery of the slaughterhouse works as a metaphor because it feels recognizable on an affective level. The repetitive, mechanical killing of sheep mirrors the monotony and pain of Stan’s life, but its power comes from how viewers feel that connection rather than being explicitly told it.

Killer of Sheep demonstrates how the power of cinema does not exist from adhering to a single formal system, but rather through activating meaning through the viewer’s perception. The theories of Germaine Dulac and Sergei Eisenstein provide insight into how rhythm, movement, and conflict contribute to cinematic expression, but these elements are only part of a broader process. Meaning is not constructed solely with editing or visual structure, but exists through the interaction between the film and the audience’s framework of prior emotions and experiences. Killer of Sheep transforms ordinary moments into something deeply resonant by allowing viewers to recognize aspects of their own internal experiences within its images. In doing so, the film exemplifies recognition theory, positioning cinema not as a medium that delivers fixed meaning, but as one that invites active interpretation and emotional engagement, expanding how film can represent both reality and the self.

I attended the March 18th screening of The Third Man. Dr. Bernstein began by explaining that this was his third of three noir installments for his Cinematheque selection, and he provided some background on the genre. Coming from Hollywood but named by the French, noir often expresses a sense of paranoia and suspicion, and portrays cities as dangerous. They contain distinct character types like a detective or the femme fatale, and they reflect feelings of alienation in a post-war world. Noir films take inspiration from foreign filmmaking, like the lighting of German Expressionism, to portray their nihilistic themes. And they often ask the audience to identify with those who are on the losing end of society.

One of the most interesting aspects of this film to me is just how much international intersectionality it contains. This is a British film made by British filmmakers, and it puts a twist on the classic American noir genre by infusing it with a punchy British sense of humor. It contains the stylized film noir style, but it could also be considered a rubble film because it was shot on location in Vienna, and characters are constantly walking in and around crumbling buildings. Dr. Bernstein pointed out that the themes of moral decay align very well with this imagery. Vienna itself was split into different national sectors, and the conflict this creates is a very important aspect of the film. Martins is always struggling to understand what others are saying due to the language barrier, which could also represent his general lack of understanding of the post-war world around him. Therefore, The Third Man contains a global sensibility about post-World War II society.

Dr. Bernstein defined The Third Man as a film about post-war disillusionment and immorality. Holly Martins begins the film trying to find justice for his friend, but slowly discovers his friend might not be so deserving of such treatment. The differences between him and Anna show how some are motivated by a sense of justice, and others by loyalty and love, and how those motivations are complicated in a world of corruption. This subjective line between right and wrong makes justice itself an unclear concept, and shows the pervasiveness of the sense of distrust internationally. The cinematography within this film creates visual conflict, which resonates with Eisenstein’s montage theory. The frequent use of Dutch angles, looming shadows, and striking contrast makes internal “montage within the frame.” An example of this is the famous reveal of Harry Lime emerging suddenly from the shadows into a doorway, which juxtaposes darkness and light in a way that visually mirrors the moral ambiguity of his character.

For such a pessimistic genre, I thought the humor worked surprisingly very well. It made the interactions between characters feel much more realistic, and evokes the relatable feeling that life has so much injustice that it can become comical in a way. There are some truly incredible shots in this film, notably Harry Lime’s fingers sticking out of the sewer drain just before he is killed, or the dynamic chase scenes around the streets and sewers of Vienna. The last shot ties all of this together very well, when Anna walks right past Holly when he was waiting for her. It is funny how she simply ignores him, and it reflects her disillusionment with society and a foregone sense of justice. It reverses the stereotypical happy ending shtick of characters walking into the distance at the end of the film; instead, Anna walks towards the camera from a distance, leaving Holly behind. In doing so, The Third Man uses its visual style and dark humor to subvert traditional cinematic closure, reinforcing noir’s bleak message that resolution and redemption are often an illusion.

The Third Man can be understood through recognition theory, as its meaning is not simply conveyed through narrative, but also activated through the viewer’s ability to recognize the emotional and ideological tensions. The film externalizes these internal and societal experiences of post-war disillusionment or moral ambiguity through its visual style and atmosphere. The confusing geography of Vienna, the constant language barriers, and the contrasts of light and dark all transform familiar feelings of confusion, distrust, and instability into a visible form. As a result, the audience is forced to actively recognize this visually and morally obscured setting as a representation of post-war disillusionment. The subversion of a traditional happy ending reinforces this process, as it denies narrative closure in a way that feels emotionally and historically familiar. In this way, The Third Man exemplifies recognition theory by transforming abstract post-war anxieties into something interpretable for the viewer. I thought this was a beautiful and entertaining film that holds up very well and can continue to spark societal discourse.

Lovers Rock is one of the most uniquely emotionally impactful films I have seen in a while. The power of the storytelling comes almost entirely from the music, while also being a beautifully crafted visual experience. It can be described as a hangout film, but watching it feels more impactful than other films within that genre, since the film’s emotions sit in the gut. It’s an escapist experience, not only for the audience but for the characters as well. The hardships of racism are quite literally right down the block, and they are protected only by their community and music. The audience is fully immersed through the camera movement, as it seems to just float around the home. It captures singing, dancing, and even moshing intimately through carefully choreographed camera coordination, which allows viewers to experience these moments as if they are part of the space rather than detached observers.

The storytelling McQueen achieves in Lovers Rock exemplifies some of Truffaut’s points in favor of auteur-driven cinema. The film is anything but screenplay-driven, because the most important emotional arcs of the film are rooted in the visuals and music, like the “Silly Games” sequence. In this moment, meaning is constructed through repetition, collective singing, and duration, turning a simple song into a shared emotional release that the audience experiences alongside the characters. I honestly could not understand what the characters were saying a lot of the time because of their accents, but it did not really matter what they were saying. It feels like we as the audience are let into a private world, and the filmmaking techniques translate the characters’ emotions into a collective and immersive experience. Lovers Rock is empowered through personal, director-driven filmmaking, which is exactly what Truffaut argues film should be about.

In Man with a Movie Camera, Vertov is constantly bringing to life Eisenstein’s theories of montage and how it creates new meaning. He combines images of factories, transportation, workers, and leisure to paint a bigger picture about how it feels to live within Soviet society. The meaning is derived from how the shots interact with each other rather than any one singular shot. A more specific example of this “intellectual cinema” is when it cuts between machines and human bodies, creating a visual metaphor of how people and industry are interconnected. Vertov also constantly “dismembers the event” by isolating images from reality and framing and editing them into something new. The audience doesn’t just watch daily life unfold naturally; instead, we experience a constructed version that emphasizes emotional intensity. I think this reinforces Eisenstein’s argument that film is less about realism and more about how we feel and interpret the world. Eisenstein also emphasizes conflict as the basis of montage and art. In Man with a Movie Camera, conflict appears through visual contrasts, such as work versus leisure, machines versus humans, and movement versus stillness. These collisions between images create energy and keep the audience engaged. The film clearly shows how montage can generate meaning, emotion, and ideological messaging through the collision of images rather than classical narrative storytelling.

For my film history class this week, we watched Touki Bouki (1973), which includes a lot of abstract montage editing and really exemplifies some of Eisenstein’s ideas. As an exemplary part of the third cinema movement, the film revolves around themes of colonization, poverty, and immigration. The main characters hope to leave Senegal for Paris, and they resolve to crime to achieve this. But at the end of the film, one of the main characters runs off the boat that will take him there, finds his motorcycle which has been crashed by someone else, and sits in the street in anguish. The film then cuts to shots of a bull being dragged into a slaughterhouse and killed, and shots of a boat slowly drifting through the sea. I think the gruesome image is supposed to evoke sadness in the audience, and also draw comparisons to how it feels to live in a world of limited resources and freedom, with the images of the sea representing dreams of a better life. This film also demonstrates Eisenstein’s theory of montage by combining images that convey very separate emotions to convey a more nuanced emotion and expand on its themes.

The film Time explores the resounding impacts of what Althusser would refer to as a repressive state apparatus. Fox Rich and her family fight against the prison system for twenty years to obtain justice for her husband and give him a chance at parole. Justice is a repeating theme in this film; it’s an idea that feels almost impossible as the system continuously beats them down until the very end, where you see that her efforts were not futile. She mentions that her family taught her to believe in the American dream, which is a powerful statement since her life experiences have the ability to convince someone of the opposite. But maybe it was the fact that she believed the dream was real that enabled her to find success later in life and get her husband out of prison. Fox clashes against the “reproduction of submission” imposed by the infrastructure of society, meant to keep people within their place in the system. Those forces wanted her and her family to give in to the punishments imposed, and a seemingly endless stream of bureaucratic obstacles stood in her way. It was her determination and belief in change that enabled Fox to get through those obstacles and reunite with her husband.

The most striking aspect of this film to me was its efforts to really make the audience feel the pain of waiting the same way the Rich family did. We watch Fox wait on the phone on hold for what feels like forever, and we know she is praying for some sort of news, just for her to get nothing. The home footage is another important aspect of conveying the pain of their situation, as we get to see some of the many memories that Rich did not get to be a part of while he was in prison. In one video diary, we watch Fox make up a lie about where her husband is to another mom while their kids play in the pool. In another, she talks to the camera as if it is Rich and says how happy she’ll be when he gets home. The film cuts from that footage to the documentary footage of her decades later, her face more wrinkled, strong, but still missing her husband. The documentary footage mostly displays her resilience and determination, but the home footage reveals the struggle within that.