How to analyse a film
When it comes to analysing a film there are different methods and stages that you must go
through in order to produce a successful analysis. Each stage of analysis breaks the film
down into different areas and helps you to understand the director’s ideas for the film
during production stages.
The first thing to do in a film analysis is to do a genre analysis on the film; this involves
looking into each different aspect of the film, for example: Codes and conventions, Mise en
scene, Narrative, iconography and similar areas. These aspects of the film are analysed in
detail and compared with other films of the same genre to understand if the director was
going for an original angle. Most films will conform to the codes and conventions of the
genre mainly because it is what the audience wants. An example of this is a film such as
James Bond where all the aspects of the film are exactly how the codes and conventions of
the genre suggest. This means that considering James Bond is an action film it includes lots
of explosions, guns, money, suits and good looking women.However sometimes directors
will go against the usual way of doing things. This is quite a brave concept because choosing
to purposely make a film the way experience has proven wrong can often lead the film in
the wrong direction. If the director was trying to break the conformity of a genre in a
powerful way, they are referred to as an auteur director.
An auteur is basically a skilled director who creates films for the artistic and impressive
value rather than just to make money and be the next biggest thing. An example of an
auteur director is Quentin Tarantino who created Pulp Fiction, a film that was considered to
highly break the genre conventions of a typical crime film. The film did this in a clever way
by giving the film an obvious theme and complying with a lot of the conventions such as the
characters wearing black suits, carrying big guns, dealing with drugs and going after
dangerous women. All this makes the film sound like a regular gangster film until the film is
watched. One of the most noticeable things about the film is how it is played out; in a very
unique order to make the action run its course in a way that makes the film much more
interesting for the audience. This is referred to as a non-linear structure. In terms of the plot
however it differs greatly from the typical gangster films in that it doesn’t simply involve the
police trying to take down crime or gangsters combat the police. The film also contains a lot
of subtle differences in terms of props and style making the film look a lot more laid back
and less flashy to contrast the gangster theme.
When analysing film genres, it is important to remember the 7 main areas that genres can
be broken down into. One of these important factors is codes and conventions. Codes and
conventions are essentially the all-round things that make a film fit into a specific genre. An
example of codes and conventions is with a genre such as teen comedy, the codes and
conventions would be everything about the film that targets that particular audience. This
includes everything from the typical high school setting to the wild partying plot and
everything in-between. Another aspect of a genre is the setting, the setting defines the

entire look of the film to the audience before they even watch the film, so it is important
that the film producers choose a setting that works well with the genre and compliments
the look of the film. An example of this could be in gangster films where the typical locations
usually consist of places like diners, large houses, crowded cities, nice cars, dark nightclubs
and many more locations of the same theme. Pulp fiction does this very well by showing
many scenes in these precise locations. This instantly shows the audience the precise genre
and plot of the film. Similar to the setting, the characters included in a genre are again, a
defining factor of the style of the film. For each genre there is always a specific cast of
characters who are essential to the plot of the film for example in the horror genre There is
usually a very specific set of characters, consisting of an over confident character who
doesn’t believe what the others think is happening, a character who is always nervous and is
usually the first one to suspect something and always dies, The hero who is usually a male
character and completes a brave act usually to save his friends, a female victim who is
usually portrayed as young, dumb, attractive and always suffers an unfortunate death, a
loved up couple, usually too preoccupied with each other to notice that something bad is
going on, and finally the obvious character, the bad guy, the bad guy can take on any form
as long as it is terrifying, often being portrayed as either zombies, werewolves or a man in a
mask and can often withstand an inhuman amount of pain. Themes are another important
aspect of films in terms of the meaning portrayed whilst watching the film, each different
genre has a completely different theme but each film of the same genre tends to have a
small bunch of themes that reoccur often. In romantic films the theme of love is always
present similar to how it can be present in other genres or a similar theme such as
friendship with sidekicks in action films however it is always portrayed in a different way
depending on the genre. In action films the main theme would always be conflict due to the
purpose of the film and love with romance films purely down to the nature of the genre. In
the film ‘Quantum of solace’ the film makes use of the good looking women to add to the
theme and conventions of the film, the women are represented in a derogatory manner and
are objectified throughout the film. This is the case with many different action films and is
still used today despite many sexist concerns because of the conventions of the action
genre.Similar to this concept each genre has a typical set of narratives. This is mainly
because there have been many tried and the popular narratives are the only ones that get
good ratings. For example in comedy narratives usually involve a road trip, a holiday, a high
school parties and similar experiences. These narratives are specific to each genre because
the narrative makes it easy to fit the correct jokes/action into the film. Iconography is yet
another example of a trait of each genre; iconography is not displayed in each film but is
active in films of each genre. An example of iconography is from the film ‘Back to the future’
with the well-known car, the delorean is now a worldwide reminder of the film and instantly
makes people think of back to the future. Iconography is heavily linked to genre because it is
what people look for in each genre, things like sheriffs and horses in westerns, explosions in
action films and everything relevant to each genre to give the audience a clear indication of
the nature of the film.

Considering what genre analysis is made up of, there are still auteur films that contradict
the usual codes and conventions of typical genre qualities. One film that is considered non-
conforming to the usual genre codes and conventions is the film ‘Leon’. The film is part of
the action genre and is directed by Luc Besson, who is considered an auteur director. The
film does contain a good amount of action to make the film interesting and keep the
audience on edge; howeverthe action is shot in a completely different way to other action
films such as Quantum of solace. Being a stereotypical action film, Quantum of solace is full
of fast cars, beautiful women, expensive suits, huge explosions and just generally shows the
character living the life of his dreams. However Leon is a film with an incredibly similar plot
except it doesn’t contain any fast cars or beautiful women; the character wears scruffy
clothes and moves from tiny apartment to tiny apartment. The film is an arguably more
realistic approach on the life of a contract killer than the seemingly unbelievable approach
of James Bond. A perfect example of this is in the opening scenes of each film, the opening
scene to Quantum of solace can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfYC_CBNtiM Instantly from the very beginning of the
film it is obvious to the audience that the film is incredibly high budget, with immaculate
shots of foreign landscapes and flash cars, the very first five minutes consists of uncountable
numbers of shots of the main character and many different cars being destroyed in a high
speed car chase with multiple explosions and non-stop gunfire. This is a complete contrast
to Leon’s opening which can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa1DuNjhWOkIn this opening the film begins slow with
minimal volume and lots of obvious enemies with guns searching for someone that is hardly
ever seen by the audience. The action is a lot more violent and graphic than in the Quantum
of solace opening and the main character is made out to be a lot more mysterious and
flashy than the typical hero. Throughout the entire film the character is made out to have a
bad life and he simply does his job because it is all he knows.
Luc Besson, the director of Leon, is widely considered an auteur director mainly because of
this particular movie. This is because of the individuality and skill he showed in the directing
of the film. He did a lot of the work himself rather than allowing the film to be created with
him simply supervising the production and took a lot of care to make sure the film was in
the exact individual style he wished. For most directors it would be a simple task to get a
high budget film to be successful such as James Bond by simply sticking to the stereotypical
codes and conventions of the genre. However Luc Besson was determined to break the
conventions and make a film that showed great artistic merit despite how successful it
would be and how much money it would make. This is one of the most important factors of
an auteur director along with showing individuality in film creation.
Quentin Tarantino is another director considered as an auteur. He makes extremely popular
films such as: Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Django Unchained and Inglorious
Basterds. Each one of these films is a completely different concept; however each one
manages to break the conformities of its chosen genre. With each film he clearly put a lot

more effort into the artistic merit than making money off commercial success. In my opinion
Quentin Tarantino is an incredibly skilled director with a lot
of brilliant ideas and individuality. Reservoir dogs and pulp
fiction were two of Quentin Tarantino’s earliest films and
consequently were both gangster films. Due to the fact that
these movies were the ones that would establish him a
name in the film industry they were extremely significant to
his directing style and broke many different codes and
conventions whilst managing to play the gangster genre
perfectly to his advantage. His later films including Django
and Inglorious Basterds were of a much different style with
genres including American, western and War. These later
films continued to break conformity and stick with his
signature style however in a very different way. The fact that
his films all follow the same style furthers the impression of him being an auteur director.
Quentin Tarantino also writes a lot of his films such as Pulp
Fiction and Django. This proves that he does a lot of the work
himself rather than allowing somebody else’s creation to end
up in whatever way the actors make it. With him being both
the director and writer he chooses the cast for his films,
carefully choosing similar actors for each film often using the
same actors at least twice. This is even more of an indication
that he has high intentions for his films to be artistic and
convention breaking as he knows who he wants playing which
role before he has even finished writing the film.
Rian Johnson is a fairly new director who recently created a blockbuster called Looper.
Looper is a sci-fi/action-thriller with a heavy plotline about time travel and the pursuit of
ones future self. Rian Johnson is highly debated as an auteur director with a lot of fans
claiming that he puts the effort into his films for artistic merit and a lot of people claiming
that the films he makes are compliant to the genre codes and conventions.
Judging whether or not he is an auteur director is fairly hard considering his filmography
consists of three, very recent films;
however based on the evidence that has
been portrayed recently with the film
Looper I would argue that he is
somewhat an auteur director. I arrived at
this opinion by firstly checking how much
effort he puts into the production of his
films and with each film he has both
written and directed the entire thing.

With only Looper to go off in terms of content, considering he was by far the main creator of
the film it has to be said that all his effort was rewarded. With Looper being one of his first
films he almost certainly demonstrated marvellous technical abilities in being able to direct
a film so big and obtain a great cast including Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon Levitt. The
film has a very individual style and uses the concept of merging action and sci-fi to make a
film concept very rare in the entire film industry. The ability for a director to combine action
genre characters and the action setting with a sci-fi plot makes the film very unique and
impressive to look at, especially in the exciting scenes. The only aspect of the argument
which is debatable is how auteur directors usually disregard commercial success for artistic
merit and this film was created in an almost certain to be popular way. However in my
opinion if the film is managing to be individual and unique to the rest of the genre then I see
no issue with the director trying to make the film a blockbuster.