ABSTRACT
At the beginning of this book we put forward two questions. Our examination of the first, which focused on the adequacy of the term film emotion, will be postponed for a while. But we are now able to formulate an answer to the second question, namely, how to explain the systematics of the emotion evoked by films. The following is a proposal for the description of that systematics, based on the insights developed in the previous chapters. It consists of a tentative model representing the course of the emotion aroused by the traditional feature film, together with the determinants of that emotion. As we have seen, films not only trigger a multitude of emotions, they also regulate their intensity from one moment to the next. The model is intended to account for the composite nature of those emotions, as well as their dynamics.
