Sheila Weyers

On the perceived quality of movies

We address the question of the quality of movies produced between 1950 and 1970. A first outcome of our analysis is that the quality assessments made during the Cannes Festival, and to a lesser degree, by the U.S. Academy are short-lasting. In contrast to this, consumers seem consistent over time. There is, however, one issue on which experts agree as well as consumers: American movies dominate both in terms of commercial success and in terms of quality. There is less agreement, and sometimes there is even dissent concerning other dimensions. This does not come as a surprise and merely indicates that there is hardly a common yardstick along which the quality of a movie can be measured. Therefore, decomposing a work of art into quantifiable characteristics – even in a subjective but possibly unanimous way – would make it possible to explain the divergences between audiences and changes of appreciation over time.

Comparing artistic values. The example of movies

Analytic art philosophers suggest that artworks carry independently valuable properties that can be rated. However, they point out that since these properties are incommensurable, one cannot infer the overall value of works in order to compare them. We show how weights can be retrieved from observations in which art critics or experts rate properties, as well as the overall value of works. This will also make clear that experts do indeed implicitly use such weights. We illustrate the idea using movies for which we do observe both a rating of total value and the ratings of a certain number of properties, focusing on the 270 movies, both nominated and having been awarded the Oscar for “Best Picture” between 1950 and 2003.

Quantitative approaches to valuation in the arts, with an application to movies

Last year I gave several lectures on “intelligence and the appreciation of music among animals.” Today I am going to speak about “intelligence and the appreciation of music among critics.” The subject is very similar. Eric Satie, quoted by Machlis (1979: 124) Introduction The aesthetic evaluation of artworks (paintings, literature, movies, musical compositions or interpretations, etc.) is and always has been a very controversial exercise. Philosophers, starting with Plato, are not the only ones who keep arguing about beauty. Mathematicians (including Leibnitz, Euler, Helmholtz, and Weyl), physiologists (Fechner), biologists (Rashevsky, the founder of mathematical biology), and economists (Bentham and others) have also tried to contribute to the field, and no obvious path-breaking or definitive view has emerged. We find it convenient to follow Shiner (1996) and distinguish between philosophers who suggest that beauty lies in the artwork itself and those like Hume (1757: 6) who believe that “beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.” We identify three ways in which beauty of a work of art can be evaluated: as an attribute of the work, as determined by experts, and as confirmed by the passage of time. We begin this chapter with a brief discussion of these three approaches. Beauty as an attribute of a work Trying to break an artwork into attributes (also called properties by analytic philosophers, and characteristics or qualities by economists) is as old as Aristotle, who suggests in his Poetics that an object is defined by its essential attributes.