First of all, why do we interpret films? One response is that primarily we are trying to figure out what the director was trying to get across to the audience by subtle symbolism. Another is that we are trying to figure out why the movie ended the way it did. And yet another is strictly to prove that we are able to understand what the director was attempting to show.
The original idea from which modern interpreters are able to get a hold on the director's meanings, is to study the film as a work of text. Specifically there are formulaic patterns available for the study of novels and other forms of the written word which are available as the basis for the interpretation of the performed and visualized work.
You are primarily able to use the tools of the text based schema if the film was written with the intent for interpretation in mind. In particular, the film must contain a coherence between segments and ideas, and the dialogue of the characters was written to achieve a purpose.
The specific types of text schema that are nearly essential to modern film interpretion are spelled out in David Bordwell's "Making Meaning." First there is the idea of the Bull's-Eye Schema, and also expressivist / commentative, journey/ struggle tragectories, nodal passages, and allegorical and mythic patterns. There are also many forms of category schema and personification schema, which have been discussed in Chapter Seven.
This page presented by Susan.
It is currently under construction.