Films have been a central critical issue in the last century. At first the film was not given the art title. But critics could not resist the great influence exerted on cinema by society and human thought in a short period of time. When a film was considered an object worthy of serious study, film studies emerged and became firmly established within academic institutions. As soon as moving photographic images were projected onto the screen, critics, writers, philosophers, and even filmmakers began to describe the new medium, as critical problems were caused by the rapid growth and development of the medium. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Film theory provides conceptual frameworks for understanding film's relationship to reality, the other arts, individual viewers, and society at large. Early film theory arose in the silent era and was primarily concerned with defining the crucial elements of the medium. It largely evolved from the work of directors such as Germaine Dulac, Louis Delluc, Jean Epstein, Lev Kuleshov, Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Paul Rotha, and film theorists such as Rudolf Arnheim, Bela Balazs, and Siegfried Kracauer. The discussion about the film moved forward in only two directions: the realist and the formalist traditions. After the Second World War, especially in the 1960s and 1970s, film theory became interdisciplinary in nature by importing concepts from established disciplines such as Marxism, psychoanalysis, gender studies, anthropology. , literary theory, semiotics and linguistics. During the 1990s the digital revolution in imaging technologies impacted film theory in various ways. Cinema is designed and believed to entertain, to bring the viewer into a world that is completely different from the real one, a world that offers an escape from the daily routine of life. Cinema is a popular medium of mass consumption that plays a key role in shaping opinions, constructing images and reinforcing dominant cultural values. Before film studies was established as an academic enterprise, a fair amount of theoretical writing on film already existed. Hugo Münsterberg, Béla Balász and Rudolf Arnheim were the most important; however, the protagonists of Soviet montage film, Eisenstein and Kuleshov, also contributed substantially to the first theoretical reflections on the nature of cinema and its impact on spectators. André Bazin, perhaps most significant in the period in which early film theories were gradually replaced by modern theories within academia, wrote numerous essays in the 1940s establishing a new perspective on cinema, including through the French film magazine Les Cahiers du cinema. Characteristic of most early writings is an interest in the meaning of film in relation to other art forms. Is cinema understandable as an extension and transformation of photography, theatre, novel or painting and, if so, what is the contribution of cinema itself? Since cinema was considered a mechanical recording of reality, it was also not at all clear that it was at the same time identifiable as art. It was deemed necessary to define cinema as an art form in and of itself, to endow it with art. Interested in what the essence of film was, initial theory was often directed towards ontological questions about cinema. The 1960s saw the humanities undergo considerable expansion. Film programs were established in Western countries. Many film scholars came from other fields of study, whichmeant that many new theoretical questions were raised. Even more important has been the proliferation of theories and epistemologies and the shift towards a new focus in film studies. The question of the essence of cinema was still a common thread in many writings, but the legitimation of film studies as a scientific enterprise seemed more urgent. The dominance of structuralism followed by semiotics and psychoanalysis meant that film studies were linked to new fields. Furthermore, the politicization of the humanities meant the importation of new theories regarding philosophy and cultural ideology, which were essentially taken from different strands of Marxism. The issues in that period were, therefore, of a scientific and political nature. Other changes in film theory took place throughout the 1980s, with greater attention to the interaction between film and viewer and a focus on film as a cultural issue. Both of these new focuses meant that film studies was once again linked to new fields as it became part of a huge industry known as cultural studies. New studies linking film to cognitive psychology have also reestablished the connection between film studies and natural sciences, such as neurobiology and other brain sciences. These new fields entailed another enormous accumulation of texts related to film studies. The change of the 1980s raised questions about culture and the natural sciences. This very brief history of film theory indicates how the history of theory creates serious problems for teachers of film studies. The first problem has to do with the teachers' own (in)ability, in fact, to follow the new theoretical paradigms in their entirety. The second problem is related to actual teaching in the fields of film theory, film history and film analysis. Given the immensity of theories, how is it then possible to present serious and relevant theories for students at different levels? The answer is obvious: from film readers who understand the most central texts in the history of film theory. Academic collections rose to the challenge of the vastness of the theory and gave rise to the "film reader industry." A film reader, however, always responds, in one way or another, to his or her historical context with real theoretical programs and more or less specific requirements. Film readers, therefore, are not necessarily the answer to the proliferation of theories but may be part of the problem through the proliferation of books. Rutledge has published a new four-volume film reader Film Theory. Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies edited by Philip Simpson, Andrew Utterson, and KJ Shepherdson. One would expect these four volumes, which collect 99 articles and book fragments, to appeal to readers without allegiance to any specific agenda and with a high degree of perseverance. This expectation, however, is not entirely satisfied. And furthermore, presumably there was no intention to satisfy this rather naïve expectation of an impartial presentation when the book's subtitle (the emphasis on “Cultural Studies”) is taken as indicative. Some parts of the volumes are strongly influenced by a cultural studies approach. This means that the editors have chosen to include texts that only minimally address issues of cinema, theory and history of cinema, such as the text by Jean Baudrillard. The price for this inclusion is, of course, the exclusion of the most relevant texts. Film Theory is divided into 12 parts that cover topics that have dominated film theory at different times. The first section “Essence and specificity” concerns thefirst theory of cinema. It also includes new perspectives on the question of the essence of cinema. This question alone could have filled all the volumes of the book, as it has been intermittent throughout film theory. The question of essence is linked to the notion of film as a specific type of language, which is addressed in the second section of volume one. “Language” was, of course, the buzzword or key concept when structuralism was introduced into film studies, or rather, academic film studies was born at the same time as structuralism in the 1960s. In this second section, cinematographic language is traced back to its origins in the Soviet theories of the 1920s where the theories of editing treated film exactly as a sort of language. Curiously, however, Bazin's influential essay “The Evolution of the Language of Cinema” is also included in this section. This is strange given that Bazin's essay uses language as metaphor rather than understanding film as language; in fact his essay addresses the essence of the film. The last section of the first volume is dedicated to “Technologies”. The sections contained in Film Theory are relevant to most film studies programs and, overall, the Film Reader will answer many teaching needs. A very helpful chronological table is included, making it easy to get a sense of the historical context of the essays and see what other essays appeared around the same time. The chronological table is part of the history of film theory. The table would have benefited from the inclusion of other significant writings not included in the four volumes and perhaps even some film history. The choices made in every anthology of film theory are always debatable according to different preferences and idiosyncratic judgments of taste. The choices made in Film Theory seem balanced overall despite my reservations. Film Theory, however, is not a film reader above other readers, and the length of the book is not guaranteed by the huge number of essays and book fragments included. Once people realized that films could do much more than provide simple entertainment, a variety of theories and approaches were developed to help analyze films in order to understand how they created responses in viewers and what they might mean. . Different approaches examine different aspects of a film for different reasons. A formalist approach looks at the film itself, its structure and form. Therefore, while other approaches often use some degree of external evidence to analyze a film, a formalist approach will focus primarily on internal evidence. This approach could analyze how the way the plot presents story material forces the viewer to see things at certain times and have reactions that might be different if presented in some other way. A narrative analysis will examine how a film uses various formal narrative elements (such as character, setting, repetition/variation, etc.) to convey meaning to the viewer. Analysis of specific formal techniques might focus on a film's use of mise-en-scène or photographic composition, camera movements, editing choices, sound in relation to the image, etc., noting the effect of such techniques on how the spectator perceives the scenes and interprets them. what they mean. A realist approach examines how a film represents “reality.” Some films attempt to make techniques “invisible” to viewers so that characters and situations are always the center of attention. Others attempt to use cinematic techniques to replicate a certain type of reality that the.