The Concept of Formalism

I'm interested to see how we will be applying this concept in class. The examples Christie gave in the article were all of films that I myself have not seen yet, and therefore found it hard to grasp the concept of Formalism and Neo-formalism. Even when I attempted to look for a simpler definition somewhere online no one could seem to pinpoint what Formalism really is. So I'm going to try to make a succinct definition for it. Formalism has many components, one is that it looks at film as more of an art form. Formalism came before film, therefore once film came about, it was incorporated into these discussions. The second facet is that formalism looks at the "process by which perception is slowed down, or even obstructed." This is important because it means that Formalism disects HOW films create and affect our perceptions, which is a pretty cool concept. The last component is having the distinction between story and plot, the story being more of an underlying meaning and the plot being the actual happenings in the movie.