This week, I have been perusing David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson’s Film Art, a book that is intended to help me with my analysis of the various films that I am using for my project. There are a few salient points that stood out to me:

Curiosity (p. 52) – This refers to the ability of the viewer “to frame hypotheses about prior events” – i.e., to speculate about what took place in the past. Many times, artists and filmmakers may depict a scene that asks us to make inferences about some earlier event.

This is particularly germane to the film Twelve Angry Men. In this film, we are not shown the trial of the accused. However, during the jury deliberations, there are numerous references to events that took place during the trial proceedings (for example, the testimony about the witnesses, which the viewer has not heard for himself, but rather he has to rely on the descriptions and recollections of the jury members).

I wonder why the filmmakers chose not to depict the actual trial, but rather compelled us to rely on the recollections of the jury members instead of letting us see and judge for ourselves.

Another example is in the film Inherit the Wind. Perhaps the viewer would be interested to see the actual classroom scene where the teacher taught the class about evolution (in violation of the law). Perhaps we would like to see how he spoke about it, his tone of voice, his mannerisms, etc. However, we are not given this information in the film, and we are forced to speculate about it and make our own inferences.