Neoformalism

I found Thompson’s article to be dense but very interesting to read. I enjoyed how she discussed various types of approaches to studying film and tied those in to her greater idea of Neoformalism. She touched upon how these different ideas of how to look at film have influenced each other and critiqued each other throughout the years. Thompson describes Neoformalism as the 20^th Century’s contribution to aesthetics, and also talked about how it is a communications model of art. Throughout various Communication classes that I have taken, we have learned the communications model to be sender--> medium--> receiver, and I agree with Thompson that this does apply to film analysis and the viewing of any film in general. Thompson makes a point in saying that the film does exist physically when we are not watching it, but all those qualities that interest the analyst result from the interaction between the work’s formal structures and the mental operations we perform in response to them (26). In this communications model of art, it is crucial that we participate as spectators if we want to accurately analyze a film, but it is also crucial that the sender, the creators of the film, create movies of greater substance than merely entertaining movies, and the medium must clearly convey the message in a practical way. If the movie is just made as merely entertaining, than it is not valuable because it gives no service to the spectator. I thought this was an interesting approach to looking at film analysis because of its connection to many of the previous ideas we have learned in Communications courses.