Stanislav Olegovich Egorov,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Novosibirsk State University, Novosibirsk, Russia, e‑mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Cinema, History, Ideology: Possible Approaches to the Film Text Interpretation
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2022-5-1
The article is devoted to the consideration of possible approaches to the analysis of cinema from the point of view of historical science. Based on the ideas expressed by the French historian M. Ferro, the ideology implicitly contained in the film is determined as an object of research interest for history. To search for methods for analyzing ideology in cinematography, an appeal to the Cinema Theory is proposed. As a result of a review of the main directions that exist in modern English-language Film Theory, it is concluded that none of the two main directions satisfies the request for a theoretical and methodological apparatus that allows analyzing ideology in cinema in an academic context. Thus, the set of approaches united under the term “Theory” (which includes neo-Marxist, Psychoanalytic and post-Structuralist interpretations of cinema, as well as studies from the positions of various minorities) initially sets a specific ideologized reading of the film text, and the opposing school of neo-Formalism fundamentally refuses to analyze the ideological content. It is supposed to build the theoretical and methodological apparatus of film research at two levels: the analysis of ideology through the study of the plot and images. Further, possible ideas and concepts from related humanities are proposed, including those that have been applied in film studies in relation to the study of specific topics. Among such areas of potential borrowing of theories and methods that can help a more rigorous and objective analysis of ideology in cinema, various variants of Structuralism are indicated, in particular, the Morphology of V.Ya. Propp, Semiotics (especially the works of Yu.M. Lotman), Iconological school in Art History, the theory of Archetypes developed in Psychoanalysis.
Publishing: 28/10/2022
The article has been received by the editor on 03/08/2022
How to cite: Egorov S.O. Cinema, History, Ideology: Possible Approaches to the Film Text Interpretation // Historical Courier, 2022, No. 5 (25), pp. 11–20. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2022/ISTKURIER-2022-5-01.pdf]
Links: Issue 5 2022
Keywords: ideology; film theory; methodology of history; semiotics; structuralism