Formalist vs. Realist

	Formalist-style film (expressionism/auteurism)	Realist-style film (cinema verité)
Mise-en-scene/mise-en-shot techniques associated with this style of film-making	Heavily Edited – ‘jump-cuts’ Montage Fast and/or slow motion Low/high camera angles, Transformation of 3D world onto a 2D surface Stylised/symbolic images Artificial setting Artificial lighting No attempt at verisimilitude Stylised dialogue/diagetic Lots of non-diagetic sound Sub-titles or other captions	Long takes, deep focus No special effects/montage Subjective viewpoint – uses camera  lens to reproduce way we look at world ‘Documentary’-style Natural/non-intrusive Realistic/ authentic setting Naturalistic lighting Naturalistic dialogue Lots of diagetic sound Minimal non-diagetic No reliance on external narrators or devices
Definition/aims of this style of film-making	Stylised of Auteur emphysise his own style	Life as it is reality. Real events in the impressions of real life.
Directors associated with style	Sergei Eisenstein Jean-Luc Godard	Roberto Rossellini (Italian neorealist) Jean Renoir Rodrigo Garcia
Films associated with style	October (1927) dir. Eisenstein	Nine Lives (2005)

Some definitions:

Formalist film theory is a theory that is focused on the formal, or technical, elements of a film: i.e., the lighting, scoring, sound and set design, use of color, shot composition, and editing. A formalist might study how standard Hollywood "continuity editing" creates a more comforting effect, while the formalist-style of non-continuity or jump-cut editing might be more disconcerting or volatile.

Montage: is a technique in film editing in which a series of short shots are edited into a sequence to condense space, time, and information. It is usually used to suggest the passage of time, rather than to create symbolic meaning as it does in Soviet montage theory.

Cinematic realism refers to the verisimilitude (non-stylised representation of reality) of a film to the believability of its characters and events. Cinematic realism takes as its starting point the camera's mechanical reproduction of reality, and often ends up challenging the rules of Hollywood movie making.