How to read a film - The Language of Film: Signs & Syntax

3. The Language of Film: Signs & Syntax

Signs (pg. 170 - 191)

• 'Film is not a language in the sense that English, French, or mathematics is.'
• 'it's impossible to be ungrammatical in film.'
• 'Clearly, it is not necessary to acquire an intellectual understanding of film in order to appreciate it - at least on the most basic level.'
• 'The word 'image', indeed, has two conjoined meanings: an image is an optical pattern; it is also a mental experience, which is probably why we use the word 'imagine' to describe the mental creation of pictures.'
• 'we do indeed read an image physically as well as mentally and psychologically, just as we read a page. The difference is that we know how to read a page - in English, from left to right and top to bottom - but we are seldom conscious of precisely how we read an image.'
• 'Film is not a language, but is like language, and since it is like language, some of the methods that we use to study language might profitably be applied to a study of film.'
• 'Semioticians justified the study of film as language by redefining the concept of written and spoken language. Any system of communication is a 'language'; English, French or Chinese is a 'language system'. Cinema, therefore, may be a language of a sort, but it is clearly a language system.'
• 'As Christian Metz, the well-known film semiotician, pointed; we understand a film not because we have a knowledge of its system because we understand the film. Put another way, 'It is not because the cinema is language that it can tell such fine stories, but rather it has become language because it has told such fine stories' [Metz, Film Language, p.47].'

• 'An ant-covered hand from Dali and Bunuel's surrealist classic Un Chien Andalou (1928). Another very complex image, not easily analyzed. Iconic, Indexical, and symbolic values are all present: the image is striking for its own sake; it is measure of the infestation of the soul of the owner of the hand; it is certainly symbolic of a more general malaise, as well.'
• 'the source of the image seems to be a trope: a verbal pun on the French idiom, 'avoir des fourmis dans les mains', 'to have ants in the hand', an expression equivalent to the English 'my hand is asleep'. By illustrating this phrase literally, Dali and Bunuel extended the trope so that a common experience is turned into a striking sign of decay.'

Syntax (pg. 191 - 249)

• 'Film has no grammar. There are, however, some vaguely defined rules of usage in cinematic language, and the syntax of film - its systematic arrangement - orders these rules and indicates relationships among them.'
• 'Rudolf Arnheim, in his highly influential study Art and Visual Perception, suggested ten areas of concern: Balance, Shape, Form, Growth, Space, Light, Color, Movement, Tension, and Expression.' - the framed image