“Bad Movies and Good;
Good Movies and Great”,
Thematic Elements, and
Story Structure
Review of the Essay’s Important
Concepts, Chapter 2 and some of
Chapter 3 Review
In judging a film, we need to ask
three basic questions:
What is its central purpose? (theme)
How fully has this purpose been
accomplished?
3. How important is this purpose?
1.
2.
Purpose of First Question: Understand the
film
Purpose of Second Question: Measure its
perfection
Purpose of Third Question: Measure its
significance
Chapter 2: Thematic Elements
Theme: The central, unifying purpose and focus
of the film (Unlike literature, the theme of the
film is not limited to an idea.)
 Types of Themes found in Film:
1. Plot
2. Emotional Effect or Mood
3. Character
4. Style, Texture, Structure
5. Idea

Focus on Plot
The film is most concerned with what
happens. Its primary purpose/ focus is
linked to its plot.
 Action/Adventure films and detective
stories are concerned mainly with plot
 Examples: Bourne Series, Gladiator, Day
After Tomorrow, LA Confidential , Raiders

of the Lost Ark, Pirates of the Caribbean
Emotional Effect or Mood
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The film’s primary concern is to convey a certain
mood to an audience, get the audience to feel
and react a certain way.
Horror/Suspense Films are most notably
concerned with the Emotional Effect
Horror/Suspense: Alfred Hitchcok films, Saw
Series, Texas Chainsaw Massacre series
Comedy: Stepbrothers, Superbad
Romantic Films: Notebook
Dramadies (part comedy and part drama) are
concerned with both emotions. Royal
Tenenbaums
Character
The film’s primary concern is with
portraying a unique character and tracing
his/her development. These films are
“character driven” rather than plot driven.
 Bio-pictures focus on character (Ali,
Raging Bull, Frida, Ray, Capote)
 Non-bio pictures that also focus on
portraying a unique character: Rushmore,

Charlie Bartlett, Napoleon Dynamite
Texture, Style, Structure
These films are most concerned with the
visual representation of the story and
experimenting with style and structure.
What we remember most is the “look” of
the film or the way in which the story was
told.
 Examples: Memento, Sin City, New World,
Waking Life, 300, Scanner Darkly

Ideas
The film’s primary concern is to convey an idea
about life, human relationships, the human
experience, and/or society.
 The idea may be stated directly by a character
or clearly represented by a particular scene or
conveyed more subtlety through the connection
of various elements.
 The film’s central idea is open for interpretation
and there may be several opinions as to what a
film’s central idea is.

Perfect Film
no excess scenes, no shot that does
not contribute to the total meaning
 no cinematic element—cinematography, acting,
dialogue, editing, sound—that distracts from the
central purpose of the film.
 Each cinematic element will be the best possible
one for expressing the total meaning: The
images and the dialogue will be fresh, not trite
(except, of course, when the film deliberately
uses trite or clichéd cinematic language for
purposes of irony).

Perfect Film, cont.
 There will be no clashes between the
scenes and sound of the film and its
sense, or its form and its content.
 The structure of the film will be the best
possible structure: images and sound will
be so effectively arranged that any
rearrangement would be harmful to the
film.
Elements of a Good Story
Unified in plot
 Credible
 Interesting
 Simple and Complex
 Handles emotional Material with Restraint
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(Chapter 3 Review)
Good vs. Great Film
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A great film communicates a richer experience; it
successfully accomplishes a more significant
purpose. The discriminating viewer will get from it a
deeper enjoyment because he has been nourished as
well as delighted.
Great movies engage the whole viewer in his response—
senses, imagination, emotion, intellect; it does not touch
the viewer on just one or two sides of his nature.
Great films seek not merely to entertain the viewer but
to bring the audience, along with pure pleasure, fresh
insights, or renewed insights, and important insights,
into the nature of human experience.
Good Vs. Great Film (cont.)
Great film, we might say, gives its viewer a
broader and deeper understanding of life, of his
fellow men and of himself, always with the
qualification, of course, that the kind of insight
which art gives is not necessarily the kind that
can be summed up in a simple “lesson” or
“moral.”
 It is knowledge--felt knowledge, new
knowledge--of the complexities of human nature
and of the tragedies and sufferings, the
excitements and joys, that characterize human
experience
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