Evaluating Film Critique Approaches focusing on the Concept of Culture

This study attempts to evaluate film critique approaches from the viewpoint of the extent to which they focus on culture and on the cultural context of the creation of artwork. Four main film critique approaches are discussed: formalism, realism and neo-realism, author theory, and structuralism/semiology. Our main argument is that these approaches, in spite of their differences in theoretical and methodological aspects, usually perceive artwork as a unique entity and overlook its organic connection with ideology, discourse, common sense, subculture and history. In other words, we need an approach in film criticism which, just like the artwork itself, should be a montage of different techniques and strategies to be able to develop new theoretical and methodological instruments. This approach study not only cinematic language and technicality but also the social and historical context of cinema.