ABSTRACT
In a general sense, we call something “art” when we attribute a high cultural value to it. Thus, in principle, and from a historical perspective, no film has an intrinsic, universally valid, artistic value. Its value depends on it (and us) being embedded in cultural discourse that gives it value, that tells us why it is good. Cultural discourses are the networks of words and images that mediate and interpret our experience, and it is from these networks that critical narratives of cinematic art-reasoned accounts that explain why certain films are good-emerge. Thus, formal or informal critical narratives of the cinema, based in collective or personal memories of what films have achieved as art, create expectations that govern the ways in which we experience and value films. These critical narratives are themselves grounded in explicit or implicit theories of what the art of the cinema can and should do, and it is ultimately these theories that determine whether or not a film is defined as a “work of art.” Though films are created by filmmakers and enjoyed (or not) by their audiences, their creation and enjoyment do not in themselves give films aesthetic value: the historical status of films as art is always dependent on the cultural discourses which define them as such. Thus, some films are only recognized as art long after they first appeared; others, once celebrated as eternal masterpieces, suddenly plummet in value and disappear from the critical narrative. It is as if the history of film as art is always, and perhaps necessarily, out of sync with its object, trying to catch up with the unceasing evolution of the cinema itself.
