This chapter asks you to consider style and form as the framework for a total film. Form (a film's organization into a categorical, rhetorical, abstract, associational, or narrative system) and Style (the repeated and salient use of film techniques) can be analyzed in terms of previously discussed films, such as Citizen Cane, Gap-Toothed Women, The River, Ballet Mechanique, and A Movie.

After reading this chapter, you should be able to understand:

1. That group style is the consistent use of techniques across the work of several filmmakers.

2. No single film uses all the technical possibilities available because the filmmaker makes certain technical choices and adheres to them throughout the film to retain consistency.

3. For the audience, stylistic expectations derive from both personal experience of the world generally and from personal experience of film and other media. A film can either adhere to a viewer's general stylistic expectation or require that the viewer changes their expectation.

4. There are four primary steps that must be taken in order to analyze a film:

   • Determine the organizational structure of the film, its narrative or nonnarrative formal system.

   • Identify the salient techniques used.

   • Trace out patterns of techniques within the whole film.

   • Propose functions for the salient techniques and the patterns they form.

5. No single set of rules will allow the audience to understand every film automatically. Any film creates a unique form from an interplay of overall structure and film style, and each individual element functions according to its place within that system.

6. Recognize the distinct styles in Citizen Kane, Gap-Toothed Women, The River, Ballet Mechanique, and A Movie.