I really think this is a snare and a delusion and that such searches for
objective science have done great harm to cinema studies over the years.
Semiotics, montage-theory, culture theory: all of these have been like
bubonic plagues. The primary reality of cinema studies is the
experience of films. The problem is not to be objective but to be
honestly subjective. If you find a unified theory of human experience,
then you can go on to verbalize a unified theory of human experience of
films. But I don't know how relevant it will be to my experience of
Walsh compared to my experience of, say, Godard. Or of my wife. Art is
about experience of individuals, not of experience of theory. It makes
no sense to speak of "close-ups" in the abstract (or any other
arbitrarily defined film element), because each really true artist
re-invents close-ups in each authentic movie. The problem is to
experience the individual close-ups in the individual movie, and then to
account, honestly, for your experience.

This is the problem. This is the challenge. More than one person in
this group has remarked that it is easy to say what you don't like about
a movie, difficult to say what you do like.


Elizabeth Nolan wrote:

>
> Is the unified theory of film paper available?
>
>