George Sadoul Compared With David Bordwell Film History

Film history can summarize the past experience and show integrated andsystematic knowledge to the current scholars. The developments of the Chinese movieare closely related to the construction and dissemination of film history worldwide.After the year of1949,the education of film arts spread in the university step by step.Two books take important roles on the education of the world film history. The one isWorld Film History written by French film historian Georges Sadoul. The other one isalso World Film History written by American film theorists David Bordwell andKristen Thompson. During30years of the film higher education in China, thestudents accept the world film knowledge depending on these two books, andunderstand the status of the Chinese movie and the film developments all around theworld.In their works, the two authors present different objectives,concepts,researchmethods and conclusions about film history. In the same time, their backgrounds alsohave differences,including their life periods,nationalities,culture,knowledge structureand social status. Therefore, they have different viewpoints on their book writing.Film historiography and comparative study as the basis theoretical of this paper,analyzing these two texts systematically. Of course, I am not only tudy the analysis ofthis two different text, but also put the text into a broader social and cultural systemsand open. Author’s social identity, knowledge background, philosophy orientationand other factors are also important factors affecting writing film history. Therefore,the first chapter discusses the impact of the two different texts of the backgroundhistory of identity, purpose the reality of the power of their writing film history,these diefferent factors have led to film history observation position and angle offilm history differently. The second chapter discusses the unique masterpiecetheory and sociological criticism and Formalist criticism had make different impactsto their film history writing. Film historian position, concepts and methods areultimately reflected in the specific text of which writing film history.The thirdchapter by comparing the two texts of film history for centuries in different countriesand genres in style, architecture, different length of text, looking for the similaritiesand differences ideas of the film history of two authors. The final chapter is based onthe development of Chinese cinema ’s position to view the history of Chinese cinemain two different texts, confirming its position in film history with the idea of writingthem outside the range for Chinese films in the world to find their own movieposition, thereby providing direction and guidance for future film-making practice.Overall, this paper studies the basic research methods of film history is thatstance, concepts, methods and conclusions historians four basic aspects, from writingfilm history abstraction to the logical order of writing for specific research.