A movie is at once a work of experience and a singularity. It can be a source of pleasure or disappointment and such emotions are part and parcel of the spectator’s cinematographic journey. While the movie industry seeks to please the public, sociological and economic research have focused very little on the development of spectator satisfaction over time.This thesis aims at demonstrating that the degree of satisfaction is the result of a process that starts before the screening and ends well after it. This personal and social process leads the spectator to meet three representations: the expected movie, the interpreted movie and the souvenir-movie. We will thus carry out a theoretical multi-disciplinary analysis of the way in which these representations of film reflect on the spectator’s inner schemata and external influences, as well as a practical case study based on the following types of data:- qualitative (from 22 series of four interviews about the spectators’ opinions of Steven Soderbergh’s movie Solaris, before and after the screening),- quantitative (from a data base of 577 movies of 11 different genres)
