This study is concerned with the ways in which popular film (whether deriving from Hollywood or elsewhere) produces powerful sensory and emotional responses in the spectator. It is possible to focus on a particular genre – such
as horror and consider shock effects – or the melodrama as ‘weepie’. Alternatively, the focus may be on spectacle, whether relating to the body of the star or to the staging/choreography of action. This topic is not concerned
specifically with either issues of representation or value judgements but rather with developing understanding about how films create the emotional responses they do. It is expected that a minimum of two feature-length films
will be studied for this topic.
In choosing a popular film designed to give pleasure to an audience, the first criterion should be – does it raise interesting questions for a study of spectatorship?
Let us take a specific film – Benigni’s Life is Beautiful. (which, by the way, is a ‘popular film’, an Oscar winner and a film clearly designed for the mainstream market in its country of orgin, and which has gone on to be a global best
seller in the dvd market.) Life is Beautiful tells an emotive story – designed to play on the cusp between comedy and tragedy. It is somewhat (!) fantastic in its premise but has a coherence within its own fictional terms. We may ask
the following questions:
– How does the film work to generate emotion, and here the emphasis may
be on relatively straight forward issues like the use of mise-en-scene,
staging and music or more complex issues of identification and spectator
alignment with particular characters?
– How far does the spectator feel consciously manipulated by the film and,
by contrast, how far does the emotional power of the film derive from a
combination of elements which are difficult to pin down?
– How far does the emotional affect of the film derive from contextual
knowledge, – in this case, our ability to respond to the film in the gap
between fictional representation and historical fact?
Studying this film alongside Schindler’s List opens up some important
broader debates about ‘good news’ Holocaust movies.
The above is a complex example – chosen to illustrate how rich and
challenging this topic can be, depending on the level of ambition.
Paget A2 Film Studies 