David Bordwell
David Bordwell was an American film scholar and historian whose work shaped the study of film form, cinematic storytelling, and film history.
Film theory: The systematic study of cinema’s forms, meanings, technologies, and effects. Bordwell challenged broad theories of cinema by emphasizing historically grounded analysis of film form.
Classical Hollywood cinema: A filmmaking tradition characterized by goal-driven plots, continuity editing, and clearly motivated action. Bordwell’s account of classical narration shows how this tradition makes stories legible and coherent.
Kristin Thompson: An American film scholar known for research on film form, history, and narrative. Thompson collaborated with Bordwell on influential books about film style and Hollywood history.
Psychoanalytic film theory: An approach that interprets cinema through concepts drawn from psychoanalysis, including desire and unconscious processes. Bordwell criticized its abstract claims when they lacked historical or empirical support.
Film narrative: The organization of events and information in a film to create a story. His account of narration explains how films guide viewers through stories without simply presenting them.
Art cinema: A filmmaking tradition that foregrounds authorial expression, ambiguity, and departures from classical storytelling. He described art cinema as a distinct mode with characteristic narrative conventions.
Noël Carroll: An American philosopher whose work includes influential writing on film theory and aesthetics. Carroll shared Bordwell’s criticism of grand theories and defended clearer, middle-level explanations.
Screen theory: A film-theory tradition associated with the journal Screen and structuralist, Marxist, and psychoanalytic analysis. His critique challenged Screen theory’s reliance on overarching explanations of spectatorship and ideology.
Film style: The patterned use of cinematic techniques such as editing, cinematography, sound, and mise-en-scène. Bordwell analyzed style as a historically changing set of choices, not merely decoration.
Hong Kong action cinema: A body of films known for choreographed combat, kinetic editing, and inventive action staging. Bordwell traced how its filmmakers developed distinctive techniques for staging movement and spectacle.