The Debate Goes On: Form vs Ideal

Argument
-Although both Formalist Film Criticism and Ideological Film Theory derive from the same point of origin, they hold a much different amount of importance as to their effectiveness. Formalist Film Criticism holds the more clout, in my opinion, because it is the only one that can read the structures and intricacies of the film proper making it come alive in meaning; whereas, Ideological theory fails to separate the medium from its literary counterpart, the novel.

Claim One
>Both Formalist Criticism and Ideological theory come from the same way of thinking about film that came before it, including preceding theories such as: Marxist and Auteur Theory.
-Support One
>Plato's "Allegory of the Cave"
-what is cinema?
>what is Theory of film?

Claim Two
>Formalist Criticism allows the person viewing to delve into the film's world and use the pieces that are given only through the film to express the true meaning behind it, unlike Ideological theory.
-Support Two
>Robin Wood's "Psycho" vs Laura Mulvey Death 24x a Second(excerpt)

Claim Three
>A perfect example of how effective Formalist criticism can be is through the analysis of Hitchcock's Psycho.
-Support Three
>Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho
>Robin Wood's "Psycho"
-the meaning of objects and eyes.

Paintings, Perceptions, and Paris

Midnight in Paris.
It sounds like a straight to DVD romantic comedy just by name alone. The film’s name draws upon the heavy clichés of Paris being the center of romance and culture of the world, and the film itself doesn’t fall too short of this initial premise. I couldn’t look past the fact that this all seemed a little too intentional, especially for a Woody Allen film. This stereotypical Hollywood film coming from this man begs that there must be something more than just a story about a man wanting the cultural and romantic freedom that the city of Paris can only provide, or in easier terms, a story about a man falling in love with Paris. In my opinion, Woody Allen creates the illusory world of the Hollywood interpretation of a romance in Paris not to just create a film that the populace would enjoy, but also to bring attention to itself as an illusion rather than a reality.

There is a moment in this film that seems to encapsulate this idea I presented. In the movie, Gil, his fiancé, and Paul are in a museum, where Paul goes on one of his long, pompous spiels about a Picasso painting that just so happened to be the same one that Gil had seen being discussed when he traveled back to 1920’s Paris. Soon Gil interrupts Paul with a version of the painting that came directly from his encounter with Pablo Picasso himself.

Within this moment the audience is shown how there are two differentiating opinions on the same painting. Where one seemed a little too high cultured and overly pseudo-intellectual, the opinion of Paul; the other came off more down to earth and driven by human desires and forces. This seems too deliberate of a choice in the film to be just a way to crack a joke at Paul’s expense. In a way, Woody Allen seems to be expressing a few different ways to look at a film after a first glance. For example, Midnight in Paris seems like a very superficial Hollywood movie at first glance, but as we have discussed, it seems too superficial to be such. Like the painting we have to see it a few different ways with various opinions even though many would disagree and say it is cemented in one way. Like Gil, we have to challenge the established ideas about that painting, or in a broader sense about film in general.