Quotable Pototables, David Bordwell Speaks
Most books analyzing contemporary Hollywood focus on changing subjects and themes, such as the representation of gender, ethnic groups, or cultural attitudes. The results are typically exercises in interpretation, taking films as "texts" to be deciphered. By contrast, this book emphasizes the craft of storytelling. In the spirit of reverse engineering, I want to tease apart the finished films and see what strategies of plot and visual style govern their design. We still lack knowledge of how Hollywood's "ever-vigorous tradition" tells stories in a distinctive way, so my main goal is to expose some central constructional principles of contemporary moviemaking. When we've grasped those principles, we will be in a better position to track both local and long-term changes in the ways movies work.David Bordwell
The Way Hollywood Tells It
I for one am hard pressed to find the distinction between "teasing apart" and "interpreting." As well I am not so sure about Bordwell's insistence that we "lack knowledge" of how Hollywood stories are told in a distinctive way. We have now been screening films as a culture for over 100 years, and Bordwell's own work inevitably contradicts his premise, by revealing consistencies of narrative construction over the entirety of Hollywood studio history. While I appreciate the remedial work he has done in analyzing the history of film narrative--and he has seen literally every movie ever made--his claim here is incredibly reductive. And, of course, he is opposed to "interpretation" focused on gender, race and class, while conveniently refiguring his own interpretation as a "teasing apart," "reverse engineering," "exposing," etc.