Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema

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Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema

4.16 of 5 stars 4.16 · rating details · 37 ratings · 2 reviews

David Bordwell's new book is at once a history of film criticism, an analysis of how critics interpret film, and a proposal for an alternative program for film studies. It is an anatomy of film criticism meant to reset the agenda for film scholarship. As such "Making Meaning" should be a landmark book, a focus for debate from which future film study will evolve.

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Paperback, 352 pages

Published October 1st 1991 by Harvard University Press (first published January 1st 1391)

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Jun 11, 2013 Jackson rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a history and analysis of film interpretation, focusing on criticism in specialized or academic journals. Bordwell's basic argument is that interpretation is a conventional activity following identifiable cognitive practices. These practices may be informed by theory but they are not essentially a theoretical enterprise. Interpretation is rather an intellectual craft. Mastery of these practices allows the critic to solve problems of interpretation in institutionally appropriate ways, chi...more This is a history and analysis of film interpretation, focusing on criticism in specialized or academic journals. Bordwell's basic argument is that interpretation is a conventional activity following identifiable cognitive practices. These practices may be informed by theory but they are not essentially a theoretical enterprise. Interpretation is rather an intellectual craft. Mastery of these practices allows the critic to solve problems of interpretation in institutionally appropriate ways, chiefly by producing interpretations which are novel and plausible.

The argument is very stimulating and frequently revelatory. The demystification one feels about interpretation perhaps makes reading the book valuable all by itself. However the book is perhaps overly complex and might have benefited from some editing. There are 882 footnoted references and at times the scope of the argument seems to overwhelm the text. And at other times the argument is both repetitive and diffuse. I found it hard to track the very large specialized vocabulary Bordwell was using in his analysis. In general his terminology is rather loose. A large number of conceptual schemes are introduced, and it becomes hard to distinguish their differences and relations to each other and the main argument.

Bordwell spends the bulk of the book constructing a diagram of interpretive activity. The diagram does not show an important prior conclusion, that interpretation as practiced academically is primarily addressed at either implicit or symptomatic meaning.
He argues that critics generate implicit and symptomatic meanings by applying semantic fields to a set of cues within the film via a set of assumptions and hypotheses which are then mediated by schemata and heuristics. He identifies many interesting concepts and arranges them in an interesting way, and the basic program seems plausible, but it is hard to say how accurate his specific picture is.

The actual diagrams he provides do not incorporate important stages of his description of interpretive activity, for instance rhetoric and the model film. “Assumptions and hypotheses” is added to the diagram without any corresponding exposition, and the nature of filmic “cues” is taken as unproblematic, at least for the sake of this book.
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Feb 11, 2009 Amanda rated it 4 of 5 stars

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An interesting examination of the histories and contexts of the way scholars have interpreted film, with a brief guide at the end to a better way of thinking about film studies.

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