Metz's Film Theory

• Metz believed film should be regarded as a language - organizes and encodes material in accordance with a set of cultural conventions
• addressed two problems: determining artifice which qualifies cinema as a language, distinguishing features of films that were common and on which a classification system could be based 

The cinema: langue or langage?

• Langue as spoken and written in linguistic sense, langage as broader term for signs of communication

Used Martinet's Theory:

• language is distinguished form less systematic communicative modes by 'double articulation'
• any linguistic utterance can be analysed into smaller