The filmic dialogue: A theoretical application of Grice's cooperative principle and conversational maxims to film

From modifications of H. Paul Grice's Cooperative Principle and conversational maxims, the interpretive framework of a reader-response film criticism theory is developed. Film-viewing re-directs the focus of the viewer from his or her personal narrative to another's narrative. The director must guide the viewer into his vision by participating in a filmic dialogue.; The director's adherence to the Filmic Conditions allows the viewer to recognize focal point(s) through an interior dialogue with the narrative. As the viewer appropriates the vision as his or her own, the film becomes devoid of new information. The director must then violate the Conditions to de-familiarize the narrative in order for the viewer to construct an individual diegesis.; The Filmic Conditions are applied to Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, Bryan Singer's Usual Suspects, and Pedro Almodovar's Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.