what is the difference between a "movie" and a "film"? (1 Viewer)

[Stevan Lay]

For a DIRECTOR though, it becomes a bit more serious.

IIRC, a similar tiff occurred between Oliver Stone and Quentin Tarantino where Stone had suggested that Tarantino should stop making movies (Reservoir Dogs & Pulp Fiction) and start making films.

 

[Jeff Gatie]

I stand corrected, but I still say we get to name it!

 

[Dan Rudolph]

If you want to be really snotty, say cinema.

 

[rockinricky]

When I was growing up, I thought differently.

"movies" were something one watched in a cinema, but "films" were watched in school.

Later on I picked up the idea of "film" being more 'elite' than "movie".

Gone With The Wind is a film.

Star Wars is a movie.

Now I think of the terms as being interchangeable.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

When I was in high school a gang of us use to go to the local octoplex fairly regularly. We developed the following scale of increasing "quality" or "pretentiousness" (depending on who you asked) to get a feel for what everyone was in the mood for. ("So, you guys want to do a flick or a movie?")

1. Flicks ("B" movies, exploitation, low budget horror)

2. Movies (Respectable mainstream, most "soaps" and "chick flicks", big budget action films. Kramer vs. Kramer, Rocky, Blazing Saddles are alll movies)

3. Films. More serious and/or better-made fare. (Think The Godfather, The French Connection, Patton, Annie Hall. Oliver Stone has never made a film. He's made a lot of self-important, self-indulgent, self-congratulatory crap and has no business lecturing anybody about anything. QT has never made a film either. He's made flicks whose big budgets and name actors raise them to the level of movies.)

4. Cinema. Almost exclusively used for the foreign (usually French) version of high-end film, Bergman, etc. Cousin, Cousine was cinema. So was The Tin Drum. A few American films also made this category, but always with the implication that the term was slightly perjorative when applied to them. These were mostly American films that were trying to be French films. Great American movies are Film. American movies that try too hard to be great were Cinema. The entire career of Paul Mazursky falls into this category, as does much of Woody Allen's post-Annie Hall work. On the other hand some work that simply trancends any category is also cinema in the best sense, regardless of where they come from: Duck Soup, 2001 and Modern Times are all cinema.



Regards,

Joe

 

[Glenn Overholt]

I think that's backwards now. I can hear a producer saying - "Ok, get that film to the cutting room!" Never would it be - get that movie to the cutting room, so a film would be an unfinished movie.

Glenn

 

[Michael Harris]

I've heard of "film studies" being offered at universities but not "movie studies".

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

I can hear a producer saying - "Ok, get that film to the cutting room!" Never would it be - get that movie to the cutting room, so a film would be an unfinished movie.

There is a difference between "film" as a physical medium (which applies as much to still photography as motion pictures) and "film" as an art form. Your example conflates the two meanings and misses the distinction. So no while a pile of film may be an unfinished movie, a film is not an unfinished movie.

Regards,

Joe

 

[RyanAn]

1. Flicks ("B" movies, exploitation, low budget horror) 2. Movies (Respectable mainstream, most "soaps" and "chick flicks", big budget action films. Kramer vs. Kramer, Rocky, Blazing Saddles are alll movies)

So all chick flicks are B-Movies. Personally, I consider films, flicks, movies, etc to the mean the same thing - a moving picture. Same darn thing. My senior english teacher always used to try and explain the difference. "You know what we are going to watch in here? Films. When you watch a movie, you eat popcorn, not a film." Something similar to that.

Ryan

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

"...When you watch a movie, you eat popcorn, not a film."

I don't eat a film regardless of what I'm watching.

So if I eat popcorn while watching Wild Strawberries it's a movie, but if I refrain it is magically transformed into a flim? What is it if I eat a bowl of soup?

Regards,

Joe

 

[Dan Rudolph]

I once ate a film while watching my dental X-rays being taken. Not very pleasant.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

I've heard of "film studies" being offered at universities but not "movie studies".

That's because academics always go for the most stilted and pretentious titles possible. They'd slit their throats before allowing a "movie studies" program on campus, even if the films that end up being studied are Deep Throat, Peyton Place and Porky's Revenge.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Nick T Robot]

Film is the stuff you make Movies with unless you go digital like George Lucas or Robert Rodriguez.

Kind of like the difference between The Internet and The World Wide Web. The World Wide Web is the information, The Internet is the way you connect to that information. But most people use the terms interchangably.

I always think of this quote when I hear the term film:

We're trying to make a movie here, not a film!

-Kit Ramsey, (Eddie Murphy in Bowfinger)

 

[Seth Paxton]

IMO there is actually a bit of irony to film studies since the field teaches you that even movies are films.

Some people might think that film studies is about generating the snobbish distinction between the 2 ideals or at least expanding it, when in fact it is about closing the gap by understanding that even in B-movie or popcorn efforts the ideals of film art abound.