This is a very good question, though I think it is not a case of
applauding someone at all. There is of course the obvious case in
festivals, when the audience knows that the filmmaker or cast/
crewmembers are present and is applauding them.
Applause in other cases is fairly rare in my experience, but I have
generally found it to take place either in response to (1) an
emotionally overwhelming ending -- in which case applause seems to
serve as a kind of public emotional response, a way of expressing and
relieving an overwhelming emotion (and I have seen this in the case
of joyful endings in say romantic films or feel good triumphal
endings when someone overcomes in spite of the odds, but also in the
case of emotionally devastating endings -- I have witnessed applause
at the end of Bicycle Thieves for example); (2) or the applause is a
kind of endorsement of the "point of view" of the film -- usually in
the case of a film with a fairly specific political message -- as in
the applause I heard at the end of Fahrenheit 9/11 or An Inconvenient
Truth.
In neither of these cases could the applause be described as directed
at someone (whether cast crew producers or even "institution") except
incidentally. The applause seems more to be an easily accessible
means for the audience to express their own reaction to the film --
whether this is an emotional response or a cognitive endorsement (and
these are of course overlapping categories).
Nate Andersen
Assoc. Prof. of Phil.
Eckerd College
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