From the early 1990s Noel Carroll, who proposed an alternative solution of the problem “What is cinema?”, became one of the key figures of American philosophy of art. Carroll’s interpretation of the main conceptions appears to be in tune with two opposite approaches - anti-essentialism of the second half of the 1950s and media essentialism of the early cinema theory. Carroll’s alternative view involves a suggestion to stop debates on cinema essence and come to studying its components.