Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis

by Barry Salt

Film Style and Technology is a history of film style and its relationship to film technology. It also includes a theory of film analysis and demonstrates this theory using the films of Max Ophuls.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, History

Paperback

First published November 1, 1983

Reviews

[Evan · Rating 5 out of 5]

In many ways, this is the premier book on film; a staggering achievement.

Salt was a lone voice in the academic miasma. In fact, he pretty much puts all other film scholars to shame by putting under a harsh clear light the ahistorical laziness of dogmatic theoretical approaches. He has zero truck with film theory. As a theoretical physicist, he is only interested in a scientific and archeological evidence-based approach to arrive at the facts. Film theory is anacronistic, as it overlays upon films later assumptions or social constructs that tell us little or nothing about the actual films themselves, how they were actually made and how they fit within the context of their times.

Salt backs his analysis of the evolution of filmmaking, narrative approaches to storytelling and the hard technical aspects entirely with thorough knowledge and clear evidence. Philosophy and social sciences are one thing, but homework is another. He has done his. His skewering of nonsensical and often irrelevant competing theories of film that push and justify political and contemporary social agendas is so devastatingly spot-on that his book was actively opposed by the very academics whose livelihoods depend on pushing such hogwash on impressionable students. As a result, this book has had a hard time finding its audience and proper distribution. And, it's clear that Salt, from his introduction, has borne a chip on his shoulder as a result of this treatment.

Whatever the case, this book is quite an achievement. I have not read all of it by a long shot, but what I have read has been eye-opening. It is definitely NOT for the casual film reader, but for the most serious researcher.

(KevinR@Ky, amended 2016)

[lcjfrc · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the first truly formal study of film, which results with a thorough examination of how shooting practices, editing, especially cutting, etc. changed throughout history, but Salt is so bitterly positivist in his approach that it is obsolete.

His main motivation to write the book in the first place seems to be his radical denial of any previous analysis, as he considers all of them to be mystifying and useless. Salt is very proud of his background in natural science, but also points out how unrecognized his genius is in the field - one wonders how is that. The militancy of his theoretical persuasion, unconstructive critique of previous approaches, as well as his reduction of film’s formal questions to banality such as frames' duration through history unsurprisingly makes every other scholar in the field uncomfortable.

Salt's study has value, but he overestimates it. The sample he is working on is rather restricted, unrepresentative. He is for sure someone who has allegedly seen many films, but he himself points out that he cannot really talk much about anything else but the Hollywood canon. He is also terribly bad at stylistic analysis, if he engages in any.

Overall, his book ends up as a catalogue of titles, which has some use, but other than that, reading it feels like working with the material made by someone who has nothing to say and everything to stand against. He aimed at such a great scope of his study, yet ended up getting lost in oversimplification and subjective connection of information.

The warmest suggestion would be to read David Bordwell instead.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a really useful text for specific references to film technologies. Barry Salt's method straddles the OCD line and there is no way I could ever perform his extremely minute formal analysis. With that said, this is flawed text in a number of respects. Most obviously, Salt's absurd assertions regarding anything resembling critical theory cast doubt on his motives from the beginning (are we to seriously believe that Althusser and Lacan recanted their entire philosophies on their deathbed?). Additionally, there is a general dearth of analysis that goes beyond "here is how the technology developed and maybe it influenced film style in such and such a way." I will say that his organizing principles of Scale of Shot and Average Shot Length are interesting studies.

He also ends the book by saying that in addition to the relatively short number of works consulted, his information is based on texts that he has forgotten but that definitely do exist--trust me!

[Greta · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a great deal of guilty pleasure to be had in his initial chapters, where
he gleefully demolishes several schools of film theory. After that,
most of the book is a detailed description of cinematic techniques and
trends, decade by decade, with the object of establishing objective
criteria for evaluating films rather than the subjective judgement of a
single viewer. He finishes off by demonstrating his methods with the
films of Max Ophuls, in which he shows that it's impossible to evaluate
a film without making some subjective judgements. Very useful for
students of silent film as well as later, though the graphs of average
shot lengths, description of mikes and lenses and such can get very
geeky. He does include a helpful glossary. And the snark factor is
never entirely absent, there are a few filmmakers whose effects he
chalks up more to incompetence than intent.