ABSTRACT
Film formalism is an unusual kind of formalism, for at least four reasons. The first reason is that, whereas in relation to other art forms – including painting, music, and dance – formalism has been a fairly dominant, mainstream view, in relation to film, formalism is a minority view overshadowed by a strong interpretive tradition. Moreover, it is not a minority view because it has gone largely unnoticed; on the contrary, formalism in its contemporary guise is seen by many film scholars as a threatening force to be vigorously resisted. The second reason film formalism is unusual is that it does not uphold many of the familiar formalist tenets. Most notably, film formalists deny the aesthetic significance of a sharp distinction between form and content, the existence of a distinctly aesthetic response to formal beauty, and the appropriateness of purely “immanent” and ahistorical criticism. The third reason that film formalism is unusual is that it is associated with a constructivist view of meaning, whereas classical formalism, in its commitment to the autonomy of art, would claim that the meaning of a work is determined by its intrinsic formal features. Finally, the fourth reason that film formalism is unusual is that it is derived from literary theory and yet finely attuned to the historical and technical possibilities of the film medium. As we shall see, it is precisely this attunement that explains the unusual features of film formalism. Yet film formalism remains part of a broader formalist tradition insofar as it is, in essence, a program for the structural analysis and appreciation of films as aesthetic objects.
