What to do
Start with an open mind
Before you embark on your journey, it’s important to set aside your preconceptions about the kinds of films with which you might be unfamiliar. Here are a few things to consider.
Some folks seem to think that a movie with subtitles must be ‘arty’, pretentious, difficult or boring. But all it really means is that the film was made in a country where the first language is not English. In fact, subtitles can be a good sign, since their presence shows that the film has been deemed interesting enough to be exported to other cultures. Remember that many – perhaps most – of the films widely regarded by movie critics, historians and directors as among the greatest ever made are not in English. Yasujirō Ozu’s Tokyo Story (1953), Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game (1939), Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 (1963) and Bergman’s Wild Strawberries (1957) are regular high-flyers.
Similarly, just because a film is in black and white rather than colour doesn’t mean that it is inferior or impoverished. Many of the most rewarding and entertaining films of all time were shot in black and white, either because that was, for technical reasons, the norm when they were made, or because the filmmakers deliberately chose to shoot in black and white; monochrome can produce a formal beauty different from colour. Again, critics, historians and directors number many black-and-white movies in polls and surveys of the greatest films ever made. Alongside the titles I mentioned above, Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941), Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) and Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (1959) are consistent favourites.
Don’t be put off because a film was made before the advent of sound brought us ‘talking pictures’. Of course, sound – which is considerably more than just the spoken dialogue – has been an important part of the filmgoing experience since the late 1920s. But even before then, films were rarely ‘silent’ because they were usually presented with music – and that is how movies from those years are presented and enjoyed today. Moreover, many films made during the first three decades of cinema history have an extraordinary visual eloquence and elegance, not to mention an exhilarating inventiveness – this, after all, was when filmmakers were establishing, exploring and extending the language of film. That’s why best-ever movie polls often feature classics such as F W Murnau’s Sunrise (1927), Dziga Vertov’s semi-documentary Man with a Movie Camera (1929), Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) and Buster Keaton’s The General (1926).
Remember that a film’s age has nothing to do with its worth or its capacity to entertain. Like any other medium or artform, film is constantly changing, but not necessarily for the better. People have made good and bad movies throughout cinema’s long and varied history. Finally, try not to be put off by a film’s genre, its running time, its title or the term ‘documentary’. For the sake of simplicity, I’ve mostly mentioned fictional movies in this Guide, but much of what follows can also be applied to nonfiction films. Bear in mind that there are great (and awful, and utterly average) documentaries, animated films, short films, long films, experimental films, etc; and that a film’s title usually tells us very little about the experience of watching the film.
Give movies a chance
Once you’ve selected a movie to watch, try to view it under the best circumstances possible. A cinema with a decent-sized screen, good sightlines and quality sound is the optimum option for appreciating a film’s visual and aural subtleties; try to find one where the audience tends to be attentive rather than talkative. If such a cinema isn’t accessible, then the best alternative is as large a screen as you manage at home (or at a friend or relative’s home). Laptops are not good for picture quality or sound, let alone any kind of ‘immersive’ experience, and phones won’t do anything for your appreciation of a movie’s finer qualities, so these should be avoided. TV and streaming channels are fine for home viewing, with some (eg, Mubi, BFI Player and the Criterion Channel) specialising in curated, non-mainstream fare. Many Blu-rays (for the best-quality picture and sound) and DVDs have extras (commentaries, introductions, documentaries, essays), which can add to your understanding, appreciation and enjoyment. These extras are best watched after the movie itself, to avoid spoilers.
Be patient. Give the movie time and your undivided attention. Don’t expect to be hooked from the first minute. Even if you feel you’re getting little out of a movie, if you’re watching at home, give it a minimum of, say, 40 minutes before you switch off; you’d be surprised how many filmmakers wait half an hour or so before they drop their first narrative bombshell.
Get some advice
If you have any friends or acquaintances who fancy themselves as film-buffs, ask them for tips on which movies and filmmakers to check out. You’ll also find that staff working at cinematheques and independent cinemas showing old films or art movies are often more than happy to share their enthusiasms. And remember: people don’t just like movies; they tend to like talking about them, especially their favourites, too. So try to watch movies with friends and share your thoughts; if you notice that the cinema you frequent has regulars, they could be cinephiles who would be happy to discuss movies in the lobby or bar after a screening. Finally, if you’re lucky enough to have a film festival in your locality, that’s a great way to not only see movies but to meet like-minded people too.
Play to your strengths and interests
If you have a special interest in a particular genre among recent mainstream movies, you could do worse than explore its history: comedies, action adventures, horror films, thrillers, sci-fi, westerns and love stories have all been going strong for well over 100 years, and musicals became popular as soon as sound became predominant at the start of the 1930s. You may find it useful to work your way steadily backwards in time from the present. Or it could be exhilarating to check out early landmark films of the genre in question, such as: Lang’s Metropolis (sci-fi), Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922, horror) and Keaton’s Steamboat Bill, Jr (1928, comedy) – all still impress and amaze more than 90 years after they first appeared.
If you’re especially fond of, or knowledgeable about, a country or part of the world, or want to know more about it in anticipation of a forthcoming visit, why not check out its films and filmmakers? If you’re a news junkie or fascinated by politics and current affairs, you might find yourself drawn to documentaries. If you’re a fan of contemporary art, you could sample avant-garde and experimental films. If you’re a history nut, there are period dramas galore – not to mention ‘contemporary’ movies made over a fast-changing period of more than 120 years. If you’re a bookworm, there are countless literary adaptations. You get the idea – indulge yourself.
Follow your likes
If you find a movie especially interesting or enjoyable, use the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) website to identify another film starring the same actor, scripted by the same writer, shot by the same cinematographer, or, above all, made by the same director. Directors are widely regarded as the most important member of a film’s creative personnel because they – if they’re any good – bring all the other cast and crew members’ contributions together to form a coherent whole, sometimes with a recognisable signature style or thematic concerns. As film follows film, you’ll get a better idea of what and who you like and dislike, and come across new exploratory paths to follow.
At the same time, when you find a film that’s worked well for you, do a little research to find out more about its place in cinema history. Besides being made by a specific group of people, it will also be part of a national cinema, and you might follow that route: in every continent, there are countries renowned for having distinguished and distinctive schools and styles of filmmaking. Moreover, the film in question may also be regarded as having been part of, or influenced by, a historical movement. So if you find that it’s an example of German expressionism, French poetic realism, Italian neorealism, the French New Wave or whatever, it can be rewarding to check out other examples. For instance, let’s say your diet has mainly centred on American crime films; you could do worse than check out the ‘New Hollywood’ films of the late 1960s and ’70s – which gave us classics such as the Godfather movies (1972, 1974, 1990) and many more lesser-known gems – or the extraordinary flowering of Hollywood film noir of the 1940s and ’50s, with dozens of hard-boiled gems, such as The Big Sleep (1946), The Killers (1946) and Touch of Evil (1958).
Reflect on how films are made
As you explore the world of film, you’ll enrich your experience by dwelling on different aspects of how they’re made. A good place to start is by thinking about a film’s narrative structure. Narrative is not story itself but how a story is related; it is about tone, texture and timing, pace and duration, perspective and point of view, consistency and credibility.
Most stories are told in a fairly straightforward, chronologically linear fashion: Keaton’s The General and Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948) are both models of structural clarity.
But in Citizen Kane, Welles deploys a series of flashbacks to investigate a recently deceased tycoon’s life as remembered by those who knew him best. Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973) repeatedly interrupts a chronologically linear story with shots of uncertain status – might they be memories, anxieties, wishful fantasies or clairvoyance? – to explore a couple’s response to the death of their child. And in Robert Altman’s Nashville (1975), any overarching story is virtually abandoned as the film simply observes, to impressionistic effect, the everyday behaviour of dozens of characters attending or somehow connected to a five-day-long country music festival.
Michael Haneke’s Code Unknown (2000) goes still further, evoking the fabric of modern urban society by interweaving brief fragments from the lives of a number of apparently unrelated individuals who were unwittingly all present at a seemingly unremarkable event in a Parisian street. In other words, narrative can be extremely flexible.
In fact, there is more – far more – to a film than its story. If indeed there is a ‘story’ because, as Code Unknown shows, there doesn’t always have to be! Indeed, it might help to start thinking about films a little differently – approach them as you would, say, a piece of music, a painting, a photo, a sculpture or a poem.
Movies are actually made up of many different elements. Alongside the script and performance, just as important are composition, lighting, colour, camera movement, editing, costume and set design, music, sound design, use of space and architecture. A skilled director will deploy all these elements in such a way as to suggest how characters relate to one another and to the world they live in, and to inflect the viewer’s relationship to everyone and everything seen and heard on screen.
Film is such an immensely rich, complex medium, which at its best works on several levels at once. The more you watch, the more you will come to appreciate the collaborative artistry that goes into it. In the final section of the Guide – Learn More below – I’ve shared some pointers for other aspects of film you might look at more closely as you continue your deep-dive into cinema. I hope that, in time, your own journey into film will give you as much pleasure as it has given me.
