Formalist Article

This article had a lot of compact information that I had trouble disentangling. I still feel as if I have an unsure grasp on Formalism vs. Neo-formalism and hope that we can go into further clarification during class. One of the points of the article that I found particularly interesting though was the discussion of the viewer’s interaction with the film during the viewing. Christie mentions how Eikhenbaum questions how “transitions appear motivated rather than arbitrary” and how the viewer “is prompted to supply links through internal speech… by completing or articulating what is implied” (60). I found this very interesting because there is a certain level of unconscious processing at work when we watch these films. Christie compares it to Freudian dreams and what I would like to learn more about this dependence on the viewer’s ability to fill in the missing pieces, develop assumptions, and really have an interactive role with the film. Furthermore, Bordwell proposes the linking of perception and cognition-- the ‘constructivist theory’ which piggybacks onto this idea of the “unconscious of the filmic system” (60), by describing how the viewer comes into the film with certain already learned prototypes and schemas in order to categorize and give meaning to the events, characters and situations that they may come into contact with in the film (62).