2025 № 2 (53)

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DOI: 10.51678/2226-0072-2025-2-448-481

For cit.: Kozhokaru T. I. Film Analysis: Raymond Bellour’s Methodology. Hudozhestvennaya kul’tura [Art & Culture Studies], 2025, no. 2, pp. 448–481. https://doi.org/10.51678/2226-0072-2025-2-448-481. (In Russian)

Kozhokaru Tatiana I.

MA (in Art History), PhD Student of the Department of Cinema and Contemporary Art, Faculty of Art History, Russian State University for the Humanities, 6 Miusskaya Sq., Moscow, 125047, Russia

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8987-4032

ResearcherID: LMH-7025-2024

tatiana@journalist.com

Film Analysis: Raymond Bellour’s Methodology

Abstract. The article is devoted to the identification of the algorithm for analysing a feature film used by the French film and literary theorist Raymond Bellour (b. 1939) when analysing a fragment of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963). Not only are the analytical tools employed by the French scholar presented as a step-by-step procedure, but they are also displayed in the form of a diagram, which makes it easier to apply in practice and to adapt for different research tasks.

The study of R. Bellour’s analysis of the sequence of shots from the film The Birds reveals that the French researcher uses an analytical scheme based on a detailed systematization of form and content elements followed by a frame-by-frame analysis accompanied by the identification of key principles of narrative construction by visual means. In addition, the paper describes the specifics of R. Bellour’s approach to film analysis and traces the evolution of the author’s views on the art of the moving image.

This study is relevant because the analytical schemes used by R. Bellour remain virtually out of sight in Russian film studies: only one article by the French scholar, Le texte introuvable (1975), has been translated into Russian. His fundamental collection of articles and essays L’Analyse du film (1979) is only listed in the encyclopaedic dictionary on cinema edited by S.I. Yutkevich among the most famous works referring to ‘film textology’ — a theoretical trend whose foundations were formulated in R. Bellour’s work Pour une stylistique du film (1966).

Keywords: film analysis, analytical tools, frame-by-frame analysis, film textology, Raymond Bellour, Alfred Hitchcock

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Received 28.07.2024

Accepted 11.03.2025