Film makes the same kind of choices painting and music make, and for the same reasons

The argument

The case that cinema is art begins with what is actually decided when a film is made. Where the camera stands, what is in focus and what is left soft, how long a shot runs before it cuts, what the frame excludes, which take of a performance is kept, what the sound does underneath a silence: none of this is settled by the subject being filmed, and each choice changes what a viewer feels and understands. Proponents argue that this is exactly what composition in painting and phrasing in music consist of, the selection of means in order to produce an effect, and that a practice built entirely out of such choices is an art form on any ordinary definition. The second argument is that film has the features by which art is usually recognised. It has a history of styles and movements that argue with one another; it has formal problems that practitioners work on across decades, such as how to show time passing or a thought occurring; it supports criticism that can be right or wrong about a work; and it produces objects that reward repeated attention and go on yielding more. Proponents argue that nothing meeting all of those conditions is plausibly described as mere entertainment. The position does not require that every film be good. Most work in any medium is unremarkable, and painting and music are not disqualified by their own vast output of the derivative and the commercial. Proponents argue that the question is whether the medium admits of artistic achievement at all, and that the existence of films which plainly reach it settles the question, however much else is made alongside them.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Those who deny that cinema is art accept the list of choices and dispute their purpose. On their account framing, cutting and scoring in most films are chosen to hold an audience's attention and keep it in its seat, which is craft in the service of a commercial product rather than artistic intention. They add that the features of recognition are supplied after the fact by critics and festivals with an interest in treating film as art, and that an industry which decides what to make by projected return is not doing what a painter does, whatever similarities the techniques bear.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Many of those choices are in practice determined by cost, schedule and the requirements of coverage rather than freely made, so they are production decisions rather than compositional ones. [Rejecting P2] Selecting means to produce an effect also describes advertising, propaganda and shop-window display, so the premise fails to distinguish art from any other designed persuasion. [Rejecting P3] Contending styles, specialist criticism and works that repay attention are found in fashion, cuisine and sport, none of which the premise's own logic would then exclude from art. [Rejecting C] At most the premises show that film uses artistic techniques, which is consistent with its being a commercial medium that employs artists.