A number of things said here recently, and particularly Fred's posts,
have made me think about some of the ways that I look at film that in
the past I've taken for granted. My experience is that usually when I
see a narrative film, I'm primarily concerned with the story being
told. My awareness of the formal elements that go to make up this
story – acting, camera movement, music and so forth – fluctuates: I'm
conscious of them, but not all of them equally, and not all the time.
Normally when I want to write about or study particular films it's
because I had some kind of compelling initial experience, but I have
to go back and look at them multiple times to try and see how that
experience was created. Of course, I then run into a version of the
Heisenberg Principle: the more closely I try to look at my
experience, the more that experience changes.

Whether or not you buy the idea that Hollywood film style
is `invisible' (I don't) the concept of a style that isn't meant to
be noticed does seem to have some currency among filmmakers
themselves. I recall an interview with Preminger, for example (quoted
in V.F. Perkins' book Film As Film) where he says that his ideal film
would be one where audiences got so caught up in the story that they
never noticed a cut or a camera movement. Which is not to say they
wouldn't be affected by these things – my point is that form affects
us all the time whether or not we're aware of it. I'm curious what
others feel about this – as I'm sure we agree that there remains a
basic, unbridgable gap between the primary experience of art and the
type of analysis carried out in criticism.

JTW