ABSTRACT
This chapter takes the reader to the heart of film study: the practice of watching and responding critically to film. It discusses the ideas of film authorship and film signatures, as well as to film history, to address the phenomenon of the film review. The chapter emphasizes links to categories of production and exhibition, by examining how genre is as much an industrial logic of production as it is a system for selection. Cinema remains a relatively young medium. Alternative accounts of reception, in some measure derived from the study of literature, emphasize more active relationships to cultural products. Studying film reception frequently involves surveying how actual viewers historically responded or might have responded to films.
