David Bordwell

David Bordwell (born 23 July 1947) is a prominent American film theorist, film critic, and author. He is the Jacques Ledoux Professor of Film Studies, Emeritus in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is married to Kristin Thompson, with whom he has written two textbooks: Film Art and Film History. Film Art is the most widely used introductory film textbook in the United States.

Bordwell lecturing on the economics of the film industry; his whiteboard diagram shows the oligopoly that existed in the US film industry during the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Biography

Career

Bordwell is a prolific scholar, interested in auteur studies (Ozu, Eisenstein, Dreyer), national cinemas (Hong Kong), history of film style, and narrative theory. Bordwell is considered the founder of cognitive film theory, an approach that relies on cognitive psychology as a basis for understanding film's effects. It was established as an alternative to the psychoanalytic/interpretive approach that dominated film studies in the 1970s and '80s.

Neoformalism

Bordwell has also been associated with a methodological approach known as neoformalism, although this approach has been more extensively written about by his wife, Kristin Thompson. Neoformalism is an approach to film analysis based on an observation first made by the literary theorists known as the Russian Formalists: that there is a distinction between a story and the form that conveys the story. For example, in a detective story, the murder comes at the beginning of the chain of events, but we find out the details about the murder at the end of the film, not the beginning. Much of neoformalism deals with the idea of 'defamiliarization' which is the general neoformalist term for the basic purpose of art in our lives: to show us familiar objects or concepts in a manner that encourages us to look at them in a new way.

Neoformalists reject many assumptions and methodologies made by other schools of film study, particularly hermeneutic (interpretive) approaches, among which he counts Lacanian psychoanalysis and certain variations of post-structuralism. In Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies, Bordwell and co-editor Noël Carroll argue against these types of approaches, which they claim act as "Grand Theories" that use films to confirm pre-determined theoretical frameworks, rather than attempting to do middle-level research that can actually illuminate how films work. Bordwell and Carroll coined the term "SLAB theory" to refer to theories that use the ideas of Saussure, Lacan, Althusser, and/or Barthes. Many film scholars have criticized neoformalism, notably Slavoj Žižek, of whom Bordwell has himself been a long-time critic. Their criticism is generally not based on any internal incosistencies in neoformalism; rather, they argue that neoformalism is an overly limited approach that does not incorporate cultural approaches.

Bordwell delivering a lecture on film theory.

Bibliography

• Bordwell, David (1974). French Impressionist Cinema: Film Culture, Film Theory, and Film Style (Reprint 2002 ed.). North Stratford, NH 03590: Ayers Company Publishers, Inc. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)CS1 maint: location (link)
• Bordwell, David (1981). The Films of Carl-Theodor Dreyer. Berkeley: University of California Press. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Bordwell, David (1985). The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960. New York: Columbia University Press. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Bordwell, David (1985). Narration in the Fiction Film. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Bordwell, David (1988). Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema. Princeton: Princeton University Press. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help) Available online at the Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan
• Bordwell, David (1989). Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); External link in |title= (help)
• Bordwell, David (1993). The Cinema of Eisenstein. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); External link in |title= (help)
• Bordwell, David (1994 (2002)). Film History: An Introduction. New York: McGraw-Hill. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• David Bordwell and Noël Carroll, ed. (1996). Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Bordwell, David (1997). On the History of Film Style. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); External link in |title= (help)
• Bordwell, David (2000). Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); External link in |title= (help)
• Bordwell, David (2003). Film Art: An Introduction (Seventh edition ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Bordwell, David (2005). Figures Traced in Light: On Cinematic Staging. Berkeley: University of California Press. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Bordwell, David (2006). The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies. Berkeley: University of California Press. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Bordwell, David (2008). Poetics of Cinema. Berkeley: University of California Press. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

External links

• David Bordwell. "David Bordwell's Website on Cinema". Retrieved March 28, 2006.
• David Bordwell. "David Bordwell's CV". Retrieved December 14, 2006.
• Chuck Stephens. "School's Out? Never!: David Bordwell Keeps Working the Room (interview)". Cinema Scope. Retrieved March 28, 2006.