The Thin Red Line
After the debate of expressionism and realism the next major movement in film theory was semiotics. Ever since the beginning of film history theorists have been fond of comparing film with verbal language. It was only until the 50s and 60s that the real study as film as a language could proceed. Semiotics is the study of systems of signs. The French theorist, Christian Metz (Film language: a semiotics of the cinema 1974) used semiotics as a systematic and scientific method to analyse the ways in which film produces meaning. This was in line with the structure list movement in linguistics and literature studies during the sixties and seventies. All the theorists argued that film communicates according to a specific set of grammatical rules.
