Book Review: The Film Experience
The Film Experience: An Introduction
Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White
th
2015, 4 edition
Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's
544 pp., 978-1457663543 (p.b.), CAD$106.99.
Review by Joakim Ake Nilsson
Kwantlen Polytechnic University
An instructor is faced with several challenges
when teaching an introductory film course in the
twenty-first century. Most students will come to the
class having experienced a variety of narrative films,
but will need to acquire the detailed technical vo-
cabulary and develop the analytical skills required
to engage critically with a film. Furthermore, apart
from the proliferation of social media and the pop-
ularity of video games that have made films less
popular and influential, students today have a vari-
ety of platforms to access a broad range of main-
stream, independent, and international films. This
means that beyond the latest Star Wars film or pop-
ular Disney animation, students will likely share a
limited number of commonly watched films an in-
structor can refer to when providing examples. The
instructor’s goal then is to choose films — classics?
foreign? popular? documentary? experimental? —
that teach students to critically engage with films,
not only by building their skills in analyzing the
themes and issues addressed in films, but also by
presenting terminology and concepts that will give
them the means to discuss and write about how the
formal and narrative elements of film communicate
those themes and issues.
In The Film Experience: An Introduction (4th edi-
tion), Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White eschew
the “Great Films and Directors” approach, and in-
stead make the pedagogical choice to emphasize
the role of the spectator/student in the film expe-
rience. As they explain in the Introduction,
While certain approaches in film studies look
first at a film’s formal construction or at the
historical background of its production, The
Film Experience begins with an emphasis on
movie spectators and how individuals respond
to films. Our different viewing experiences
determine how we understand the movies,
and, ultimately, how we think about a particu-
lar movie—why it excites or disappoints us.
(9)
While Corrigan and White do well to value au-
dience response to films, they quickly emphasize
the importance of spectators being “active viewers”
(9). Although film is obviously the subject matter
in an introductory course on film studies, it also
teaches broader academic skills, particularly critical
thinking and effective writing, and connects to ed-
ucational and social concerns beyond the film stud-
ies classroom. The authors feel that students should
move beyond subjective responses, reminding
them that to
think seriously about film and to study it care-
fully is therefore to take charge of one of the
most influential forces in our lives. Expanding
our knowledge of the cinema—from its formal
grammar to its genres to its historical move-
ments—connects our everyday knowledge to
the wider sociocultural patterns and questions
that shape our lives. (17)
Corrigan and White provide a text that takes a
very broad approach to introduce students to the
many facets that make up film studies. The chapters
are well-organized, and most follow the same struc-
ture, which makes the text more user friendly for
students. For example, Chapter Three, titled “Cin-
ematography: Framing What We See,” begins with
“A Short History of Cinematography” and then
discusses “Elements of Cinematography” and then
concludes with “Making Sense of Cinematog-
raphy.” In this last section, students are asked to
think about the expressive effects of framing and
camera distance, moving from identifying and de-
scribing formal elements of cinematography to
MISE-EN-SCÈNE 1
 Joakim Ake Nilsson
“defining our relationship to the cinematic image”
(122). This structure, as seen in all chapters, reflects
the authors’ emphasis on critical thinking, and how
the student should progress from identifying for-
mal elements to discussing how those formal ele-
ments work in the film to communicate specific
ideas to, and evoke certain feelings in, the audience.
In each chapter, the authors provide a large
number of brief references to films, each accompa-
nied by a single frame image. These images are
drawn from films from a variety of time periods
and countries, and provide a broad array of exam-
ples that students and instructors can explore in
more detail. However, as most of the film refer-
ences given in the text are very brief, they may not
have much meaning to students if they have not
seen the film; without the ability to connect the ex-
ample to the concept being discussed, students may
not be able to “see” the concept in action. This ap-
proach stands in contrast to a much shorter and less
visual text like Ed Sikov’s Film Studies: An Introduc-
tion (2009); Sikov instead provides more generic,
hypothetical, though more concretely-detailed ex-
amples to explain formal and narrative elements.
Corrigan and White also provide a few additional
detailed examples in the “Form in Action” and
“Film in Focus” sections in each chapter, which of-
fer lengthier discussions of films, as well as a link to
the LaunchPad Solo website. This is a very valuable
resource where students can view over sixty mon-
tages and film clips and instructors can find instruc-
tional resources, and select and embed videos clips
for lectures and assignments. Website access is free
for instructors, and can be bundled with the text-
book for no additional cost, giving students a six-
month subscription to the website.
Another valuable feature of the text is that each
chapter begins with “Key Objectives,” a point-
form list of the main ideas to be covered, and ends
2 Vol. 1, No. 1 | Winter 2016
with a “Concepts at Work” section. Many introduc-
tory film textbooks end each chapter with a detailed
summary of the main ideas and concepts presented
in the chapter. Consistent with their focus on criti-
cal thinking, Corrigan and White have chosen in-
stead to provide a brief summary, and then present
questions and activities that ask students to apply
the concepts to specific films: at the end of the
Chapter Four, “Editing: Relating Images,” they ask
students to “Draw a floor plan of Marlowe’s office
based on the spatial cues given in The Big Sleep’s ed-
iting” (173). This requires students to apply the
principles of film editing in an imaginative way,
which is far more valuable than simply asking stu-
dents to memorize and describe different types of
editing. What would be useful at the end of each
chapter to both students and instructors is an al-
phabetical works cited list of all referenced films,
given the large number of films included in each
chapter.
In Part One, “Cultural Contexts: Watching,
Studying, and Making Movies,” Corrigan and
White discuss the importance of students engaging
critically with film. In the Introduction, “Studying
Film: Culture and Experience,” they ask students to
think more critically about how the viewer’s iden-
tity plays a key role in the film experience--how “ex-
periential circumstances” and “experiential histo-
ries” (10) shape a viewer’s emotional and/or critical
response to a film. In Chapter One, titled “Encoun-
tering Film: From Preproduction to Exhibition,”
the authors present an overview of the making,
marketing, and exhibiting of films, and how culture
and technology play a role in the changing ways
viewers experience films. Continuing their focus on
the role of the viewer in all aspects of film, they
begin the chapter by suggesting that students
should “think of production and reception as a cy-
cle rather than a one-way process: what goes into

making and circulating a film anticipates the mo-
ment of viewing, and viewing tastes and habits in-
fluence film production and distribution” (20). This
overview also provides a valuable context in which
students can explore the expressive qualities of the
formal and narrative elements of film, which the
authors address in the next two parts of the text.
In Part Two, “Formal Compositions: Film
Scenes, Shots, Cuts, and Sounds,” Corrigan and
White examine the formal elements of film in de-
tail, dedicating a chapter each to mise-en-scène, cin-
ematography, editing, and sound. They clearly de-
fine and explain technical terms, using numerous
examples and images from a range of national and
historical films and film genres, including detailed
discussions of mise-en-scène in Spike Lee’s Do the
Right Thing (1989) and the animated Fantastic Mr.
Fox (2009), editing in Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and
Battle Potemkin (1925), and the relationship between
image and sound in Singin’ in the Rain (1952). In the
“Concepts at Work” section that ends the chapter
on film sound, the authors again prompt students
to think critically about the relationship between
sound and other formal and narrative elements of
the film. As a suggested “Activity,” they ask stu-
dents to “select a scene or sequence from a film that
uses orchestral music” and then substitute another
type of music or a song and reflect on ways in
which “the changes redirect our understanding of
the scene and its meaning” (209).
Part Three, “Organizational Structures: From
Stories to Genres,” dedicates one chapter, “Narra-
tive Films: Telling Stories,” to discussing the narra-
tive elements of film. Other chapters follow, focus-
ing on documentary films and “Experimental Film
and New Media.” The authors effectively outline
each area of film. However, for instructors teaching
a one quarter/semester class, it may be enough to
discuss narrative film; documentary film has its
Book Review: The Film Experience
own history and formal elements, and analyzing ex-
perimental film requires a strong knowledge of nar-
rative film that the students are still developing. An
important element of narrative film that the authors
do not discuss is how stories, whether original or
adapted, become screenplays, which are then
turned into films. Screenwriters are only mentioned
in a paragraph in Chapter One, and some instruc-
tors may feel that more attention should be paid to
how the written word shapes the narrative and non-
narrative elements of a film. The final chapter of
Part Three addresses the history and elements of
genre, and briefly outlines the features of six im-
portant genres: comedies, westerns, melodramas,
musicals, horror films, and crime films. This is an
effective choice, as the variety of genres will give
students and instructors the opportunity to explore
one or more of these genres in more detail. In dis-
cussing each genre, Corrigan and White describe
key features and themes, as well as subgenres, such
as Psychological versus Physical Horror films. They
also challenge students to think more critically
about what attracts viewers to a particular genre.
They explain that “[c]omedies celebrate the har-
mony and resiliency of social life. Although many
viewers associate comedies with laughs and humor,
comedy is more fundamentally about social recon-
ciliation and the triumph of the physical over the
intellectual” (322). They describe the appeal of hor-
ror films as rooted in social and psychological ca-
tharsis: “horror films dramatize our personal and
social terrors in their different forms, in effect al-
lowing us to admit them and attempt to deal with
them in an imaginary way and as part of a commu-
nal experience” (332). The authors provide an ef-
fective description of each genre, but also ask stu-
dents to reflect on how films can cross between
genres or can challenge genre conventions.
Part Four, “Critical Perspectives: History,
Methods, Writing,” will force instructors to make
MISE-EN-SCÈNE 3
 Joakim Ake Nilsson
content and pedagogical choices based on the
amount of content they think they can effectively
ask student to engage with, and on the level of crit-
ical thinking skills their students possess. Chapter
Ten, “History and Historiography: Hollywood and
Beyond,” is a valiant attempt to cover, in forty
pages, the history of Hollywood cinema, Interna-
tional cinema, Independent cinema, and cinema by
women, African Americans, and the LGBTQ com-
munities. This broad approach stands in contrast to
the choice made by John Belton in American Cin-
ema/ American Culture, 4th edition (2012); taking a
cultural studies approach, Belton provides a more
detailed exploration of how post-World War Two
American cinema reflects the cultural and political
changes in American society. Corrigan and White
have clearly emphasized inclusivity, and instructors
can choose to provide more detail regarding one or
more of these areas of film history. In the next
chapter, Corrigan and White explore film theory,
which many instructors may decide is simply too
much to ask of students in a first-year film class—
most instructors will introduce a particular theoret-
ical approach simply by emphasizing political or so-
cial issues, such as representations of race or gen-
der, but most universities leave a more detailed ex-
ploration of film theory for a second- or third-year
course.
The last chapter of this section, and the final
chapter of the book, “Writing a Film Essay: Obser-
vations, Arguments, Research, and Analysis,” is
one of the highlights of the book, and one of the
best chapters on writing about film that I have en-
countered. The authors discuss the importance of
students moving from personal opinion to critical
objectivity, and provide an excellent model of the
writing process, by which students work from crit-
ically watching a film to establishing a topic to de-
veloping a thesis. To help students distinguish be-
4 Vol. 1, No. 1 | Winter 2016
tween different common writing assignments re-
lated to film, the authors provide a sample of a crit-
ical film review of Minority Report (2002), and then a
sample essay presenting of a more objective analy-
sis of Rashomon (1950). Corrigan and White clearly
explain the need for primary and secondary
sources, and discuss how to effectively incorporate
and correctly cite sources in the unfortunately now-
outdated seventh edition of Modern Language As-
sociation (MLA) style. To further assist students in
their research, the authors provide a good list of In-
ternet sources related to film studies. They also pro-
vide a full-length sample research essay that ex-
plores the connection between historical context
and violence in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920).
Furthermore, after an extensive Glossary, the au-
thors include a final section entitled “The Next
Level: Additional Sources,” which provides a list of
secondary sources related to each specific chapter,
some of which are mentioned in the particular
chapter.
Corrigan and White have provided instructors
and students with a text that effectively covers most
aspects of film studies, and provides an expansive
range of examples, both in the text and through the
accompanying website. Teaching the text cover to
cover may be more appropriate for a course divided
over two quarters/semesters, but instructors can
choose particular areas of genre, film history, and
film theory to suit their needs. The structure of the
text is easy to follow, and the outlining of “Key Ob-
jectives” at the beginning of each chapter allows
students to focus their attention on specific learn-
ing outcomes for that chapter. Again, the “Con-
cepts at Work” section that ends each chapter does
not focus on summarizing the main concepts ad-
dressed in the chapter; instead, it provides ques-
tions and activities that help students analyze how
the ideas presented inform our understanding of
the film experience. The greatest strengths of The
 Book Review: The Film Experience

Film Experience: An Introduction are the more detailed fectively-supported film analysis. This book effec-
analyses of films that can be viewed on the tively provides the tools necessary to develop a stu-
LaunchPad Solo website, a valuable resource for stu- dent’s skills in analyzing, researching, and writing
dents and instructors, and the last chapter, which about all aspects of film.
provides students with all the tools necessary to
move from active viewing to critical thinking to or-
ganizing their ideas into a clearly-structured and ef-

MISE-EN-SCÈNE 5