While many film theorists and filmmakers condemn todays highly commodified modern movies as indicators of cinema's death, many others believe it is an opportunity to return to the medium's roots. Technological advancements combined with an increasingly mainstream understanding of Hollywood plot structure have increased the genre hybridity of post-classical films, allowing the sensationalism of 'spectacle' cinema to be narrativized. Though cinema is restructuring correspondingly, it is far from dead.
Though certain scholars debate the exact dates of the era, classical cinema in Hollywood roughly spanned from the narrative-cementing coming of sound in 1927 to the mid-1960s that ushered in the age of New Hollywood. This epoch of New Hollywood eventually transformed into the current style of filmmaking labeled post-classical cinema. The primary aesthetic distinction between classical and post-classical filmmaking concerns a kind of editing that emphasizes story coherence. Steven Shaviro’s Post-Cinematic Affect describes the post-continuity style as ‘a preoccupation with immediate effects that trumps any concern for broader continuity - whether on the immediate shot-by-shot level, or on that of the overall narrative’ (123).
With the arrival of New Hollywood are the naysayer critics who believe the post-classical technical style that the era employs will usher in the death of cinema itself. Many such film theorists assert that the continuity techniques of classical film are crucial to establishing the narrative, a cornerstone of coherent storytelling. In Cinema Is Not What It Used To Be, André Gaudreault analyzes film critic Will Self’s contention on the death of narrative storytelling as a response to digital cinema’s arrival, ‘The death of cinema is thus clearly likened to the end of its hegemony—a hegemony, moreover, of a certain kind: its domination is carried out through its narrative mode, the same mode the institution chose, over other possible modes (such as the attractional mode, for example), to establish as the standard with respect to cinema’s identity’ (13-14). The departure of an emphasis on narrative continuity from the identity of cinema comes with byproducts augmenting the perception of cinema’s demise. The prioritization of sensationalism, or instead immediately gratifying digital effects, over the narrative implies a transition of power from the auteur directors to the studios who manage them. This shift inhibits the creative potential of new directors since the resulting trend encourages a film’s financial success rather than artistic or stylistic expression. The increasingly intrusive influence powerful conglomerates have in the production and distribution of post-classical films accounts for the oversaturation of second-rate remakes, which have become yet another means of cornering guaranteed audiences through the exploitation of nostalgia.
While the transition from classical to post-classical filmmaking infers a reshaped cinema identity that prioritizes the image’s graphic and painterly qualities over valuable continuity techniques, it doesn’t necessarily entail its demise. In the New Review of Film and Television Studies, Eleftheria Thanouli covers the technical differences between classical and post-classical film,
‘The post-classical films adopt a different approach to cinematic space that emphasizes its graphic nature. As where the photographic qualities of film were dominant in the classical archetype (staging in depth, linear perspective, central positioning, continuity editing) the advent of technology has prioritized the graphic and painterly qualities of the image (fast cutting rate, extreme lens length, free ranging camera movement)’ (189).
George Miller’s 2015 action phenomenon Mad Max: Fury Road is an exemplary post-classical film in terms of the dominant graphic qualities Thanouli references above. The extreme lens length evident in figure one and two displays capabilities that exceed the technological limitations of classical filmmaking. It might not be apparent because the stills above are static photos, but in real-time, the camera moves freely between fast-cutting frames to capture the film’s chaos. Compared to Fury Road, the static stills of 2001: A Space Odyssey in figures three and four represent the more photographic techniques renowned director Stanley Kubrick employs. Both graphics feature the central positioning of emphasized characters and a more linear perspective that forces the audience to observe staged depth in the frame. In both cases, form fits function, but it’s safe to say that without the technological advancements of post-classical cinema, painting the immersive universe of tumultuous road rage in Fury Road would have been impossible.
In terms of establishing the world-building capabilities of post-classical technology, few films are more integral than James Cameron’s 2009 mega-blockbuster Avatar. Dan Strutt’s analysis in The Digital Image and Reality: Affect, Metaphysics and Post-Cinema details the immersive potential of digital cinema that Avatar captures,
‘...we can see, through a ‘new wave’ of auteur digital 3D films, that many of its sculptural and corporeal affects do indeed ‘rethink cinema’ in that they not only offer up a more haptic address, adding a dimension of affective depth which is more intensive and immersive, but within this also create a novel experience of reality which still can seem very much experimental, breaking new ground even within the commercial confines of mainstream and narrative media’ (153-154).
Already proven a master of action with hits like The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, and Terminator 2: Judgement Day, James Cameron extends his understanding of both the genre and digital storytelling with Avatar. Cameron’s background, combined with a mammoth budget and creative control, helped him forge an archetype of the 21st-century action film that prioritizes spectacle-driven action over the development of characters and themes more likened to the classical cinema. However, this is not to say that movies with these priorities didn’t already exist, but rather that none of them had yet employed modern technology to shape the narrative in such an effectively immersive manner. Cameron mixes Avatar’s breathtaking computer-generated graphics (evident in figures five - eight above) with a knowledge of established action tropes (i.e., a battle for power between races in figure eight) to create a groundbreakingly immersive world that plays host to what seems more like an experience than a narrative story itself. The record-shattering financial success of the movie is a testament to the potential of digitized post-classical films that the film unlocks.
The advent of digital technology allows post-classical genre films to successfully revive tropes of classical pictures from the same genre by embellishing said conventions in a way that classical films couldn’t previously, given their technological inferiority. This potential for revival is a symptom of the popularity of genre-hybridity in post-classical films; Thanouli describes, ‘Hybrid genre films are the norm now (though they have always existed) yet what separates the post-classical paradigm from the classical is that it initiates an archaeological dig into the classical genre codes to revive them triumphantly’ (186). Though this ‘archaeological revival’ of established tropes is now standard across all genres of post-classical film, it is perhaps most prominent in genres like action and science-fiction due to their reliance on technology and effects. In accordance with the progression of film technology in these genres is the widening enormity of the spectacles they sensationalize. As where cornerstone science-fiction films like David Lynch’s Dune bank on costume and makeup design (figure 12) to connote an alien race, Avatar can construct a much more immersive, realistic race of humanized aliens despite the higher prevalence of computer-generated graphics involved. In this sense, Avatar is a modern update of Dune’s immersive attempt to discourage the abuse of nature for military or industrial purposes. In the same vein, the increasingly rampant application of automobiles in Fury Road is a contemporary installment of Mad Max that highlights the precious value of scarce natural resources via a sensationalized, action-driven narrative punctuating its anti-materialist subtext.
Cameron’s Avatar is exemplary in that it subverts the widespread notion of narrative and spectacle as oppositional by effectively employing situation dramaturgy. Scott Higgins details this concept with ‘Suspenseful Situations’ in Cinema Journal,
‘The commonly held view of narrative and spectacle as oppositional, and the emphasis on the genre’s apparent subversion of classical qualities, have clouded our historical understanding of the action film. In contrast, the concept of situational dramaturgy helps bridge spectacle and narrative, and places the contemporary action film in a tradition that stretches through the classical period from historical adventures, to sound serials, to the James Bond franchise’ (75).
As Higgins notes, the bridge between spectacle and narrative is situational dramaturgy, a technique described as being ‘dominated by the aesthetics of spectacle’ as it features a ‘critically disreputable, but trendy and practical, way of generating plots from stock elements.’ In other words, it is a mode of narrative that situates characters and actions in a manner less dependent upon the story’s coherence as it invokes an emotional reaction from the spectacle. It’s important to note that this style doesn’t bereave cinema of narrative altogether. Instead, it manipulates the audience’s understanding of established genre tropes to replace narrative development with spectacle development when employed successfully. For example, as groundbreaking as Avatar was, its plot structure was by no means new in terms of conventions of the action, adventure, or science-fiction genre. A militant foreigner attempts to gain the trust of an alien community to exploit them for their resources. Throughout his time with them, he realizes the army he’s working for is the true enemy and ends up fighting against them. Instead of his development being measured through classical film conventions (i.e., moral epiphany catalyzed by dialogue, realist action, or progression of symbolic mise-en-scène elements, etc..…), it is traced through spectacular actions that acclimate him into the community. Broad examples include learning how to fly their creatures, mating with one of the locals, and eventually fighting for their freedom. That the addition of post-classical film technology allows situational dramaturgy to redefine spectacle cinema indicates the still-unexplored potential for the future of narrative cinema and spectacle’s relation to it.
The post-classical period is not the only era of cinema where the use of spectacle as a narrative device was popular. In cinema’s infancy at the beginning of the 20th century, films were viewed more from an attraction standpoint than an actual narrative story to relate to. Tom Gunning expands on this period that came to be known as the ‘cinema of attractions’ in the following excerpt, ‘Cinema of Attractions may feature a narrative, but this purpose is background to creating a series of displays (or magic tricks) strung together that invoke emotional reactions and visual curiosity’ (3). This cinema of attractions relates to the post-classical era because both styles prioritize invoking a reaction through spectacle instead of coherent narrative storytelling. As Gunning points out, both incorporate narrative elements but come in different forms. Post-classical filmmakers are able to use their audience’s subconscious understanding of ingrained narrative genre conventions to foreground spectacle on account of presumed post-classical genre-hybridity inundation. And it is here where the most significant difference between post-classical film and the cinema of attractions lies: the earliest film viewers had no preconception of historical genre conventions, and as a result, the requirement for narrative uniformity was very loose in order to suspend audience disbelief. These early viewers were, therefore, much less prepared for what they would see, and what came across was more of a fantastic spectacle than a story. Yet, the immersive reality of the story itself was unharmed by its lack of cohesiveness. For example, Georges Méliès’ Voyage dans la Lune (pictured above in frames thirteen and fourteen) features a group of scientists who want to travel to the moon. Since there is no dialogue to notify the viewer of what the scientists are saying, the audience has a loose understanding of what’s happening. In what is now regarded as an integral montage in the history of film, the scientists climb into what looks like a giant silver bullet and are shot directly into the moon (as pictured in figure thirteen). What confusion the audience experienced before this dissipated as it became clear the scientists were planning to explore the moon. This centralized spectacle not only served to clarify the narrative but also conjured the audience’s fascination at the sight of it. From this concept comes the term’ cinema of attractions.
The genre hybridity of post-classical films contains within them the spectacles that were popular during the era of the cinema of attractions.
‘As Gunning noted in his original formulation, with the rise of narrative the attraction “goes underground,” confined to specific genres such as the musical. Here attractions are allowed to remain, but as separate intrusions into or breaks in the narrative. Furthermore, Gunning suggests that spectacular films of the 1980s reaffirm cinema’s “roots in stimulus and carnival rides, in what might be called the Spielberg-Lucas-Coppola cinema of effects. But effects are tamed attractions’ (76).
As the narrative priority of cinema continues to decrease in post-classical film, the spectacles associated with their corresponding genre continue to increase. As noted above, films by innovative directors like Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Francis Ford Coppola have set modern filmmakers on a path to create movies with effects that act like tamed attractions. When these spectacles take the place of narrative, they do not always equate to their intended emotional reaction. What makes these directors so great is their ability to successfully develop the spectacle so that it simultaneously fascinates while advancing the plot. In this sense, the post-classical director aims to control their film’s sensations in an organized manner so they don’t fail to evoke an emotional reaction by lop siding the balance too far in favor of either the spectacle or the narrative exclusively. Therefore, the spectacle’s syncopation with narrative is necessary because without adequately establishing the story’s emotional stakes, the attraction that caters to this moving scenario loses its intended effect. Mad Max: Fury Road does this brilliantly because even though almost all of the film is action, the sparse moments in between, and even during in some cases, sensationally develop the desires and motivations of the characters involved in the glorious action. The Lumiere Brothers’ 1895 groundbreaking short film Arrival of a Train at the Ciotat works similarly. Though there are no characters in this film other than the speechless passengers boarding the train, they still managed to instill the simple act of a train arriving with such vigor that it scared many audiences out of their seats upon first viewing as they thought the train would burst out of the screen and mow them down.
Many critics might assert that post-classical film fails to capture the sensationalism of the early cinema of attractions. While they might be right in that most films fail to do so, they would be wrong to mark this as an indicator of cinema's demise, for when applied effectively, the sensationalism of post-classical films successfully narrativizes spectacle cinema. Contemporary filmmakers like George Miller and James Cameron, who can successfully utilize sensationalism in the context of genre conventions to replace narrative, are not killing cinema by any means. In fact, they are bringing it new life.
Gaudreault, André. ‘Cinema Is Not What It Used to Be.’ The End of Cinema?: A Medium in Crisis in the Digital Age, Columbia University Press, New York, 2015, pp. 13–40. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/gaud17356.5. Accessed 18 May 2020.
Gunning, Tom. ‘The Cinema of Attractions’, Wide Angle, Fall 1986, pp. 3
Higgins, Scott. ‘Suspenseful Situations: Melodramatic Narrative and the Contemporary Action Film.’ Cinema Journal, vol. 47, no. 2, 2008, pp. 74–96. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30137703. Accessed 18 May 2020.
Murray, Smith. ‘Theses on the Philosophy of Hollywood History,’ in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema, ed. Steve Neal and Murray Smith (New York: Routledge, 1998), 13.
Shaviro, Steven. ‘Post-Cinematic Effect,’ O-Books, 2010.
Shaviro, Steven. ‘Post-Continuity: An Introduction’, Post-Cinema: Theorizing 21st Century Film, Reframe Books, 2016,
Strutt, Dan. ‘Dynamic Digital Spaces, Bodies, and Forces,’ The Digital Image and Reality: Affect, Metaphysics and Post-Cinema, Amsterdam University Press, 2019, pp. 113–158. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvx8b78q.7. Accessed 17 May 2020.
Thanouli, Eleftheria. ‘Post-Classical Narration’, New Review of Film and Television Studies, 2006, 4:3, 183-196, DOI: 10.1080/17400300600981900.