----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Freelancer's comments on over-analysis are, many will recognize, grounded in 19th-century romantic aesthetics, even if he doesn't -- like many who employ them -- know their source. He needs to know something about the intentional fallacy (what the artist thinks they PUT IN doesn't much matter given the social, psychological, ideological, etc. forces surrounding the work), and theories of meaning that don't assume a simple "containment" of meaning "in" a work. These debates remain interesting, but many of us have thought about film using theoretical models from our own century, not a pre-cinematic organic "art for art's sake" set of ideas that pass themselves off as "common sense." And of course Picasso could paint in a realistic way -- he did for some time -- but saw that such forms were no longer needed in a world that had photography and cinema.