Realism in Classical American Film
Hollywood Narrative
Table of Contents
1 Realistic Narrative
2 Non-realistic Narrative
3 Purer Form of Realist Narrative
Narrative
• Narrative - structured or constructed story
which tells fictional or non-fictional events.
• Narration – an act of narrating, telling a
narrative
• Narrator - the one who tells a narrative
(generally by voice-over in the case of
cinema)
• Narratology - study on narrative, narration
and narrator.
Realistic Narrative
• The most important component of Classical
American Films is ‘narrative’ (story).
• The bottom line - their narratives are
constructed in such a way that they give the
viewer an impression that he/she is
watching something ‘real’ - render ‘reality’
and ‘truth’ effects.
Realistic Narrative
• The classical Hollywood film achieves reality
and truth effects by concealing artistry.
• → Narrative and narration, too, like various
filming techniques, must be 'invisible' and
unobtrusive so that most viewers barely notice
its technique and artistry.
Realistic Narrative
• Narrative techniques and devices which are
employed to make themselves invisible:
• Formulae -CHRONOLOGICALITY and
CAUSALITY
• CHRONOLOGICAL - events occur in a 1-2-3
order (occasional flashbacks - the only
permissible manipulation)
Realistic Narrative
Formalistic Narrative
• Christopher Nolan’s
Memento (2000)
• The entire story is told in
backward ( from the present
to the past).
• Leonard, as a result of a blow
received on his head during
an assault on him, he has no
short term memory.
Realistic Narrative
• He is looking for the real killer of his wife, with
the assistant of a Polaroid camera and tattooing
on himself the important facts he finds. Each
scene the viewer watches is one earlier than the
last one he/she has watched.
Realistic Narrative
• CAUSAL - actions are joined together as a
series of CAUSES and EFFECTS
• 'Plot is a careful and logical working out of
the laws of cause and effect. The mere
sequence of events will not make a plot.
Emphasis must be laid upon causality,
and the action - reaction of the human will.'
Francis Patterson, 'Manual for Aspiring
Screenwriters', 1920
Realistic Narrative
• e.g. A storm isolate a group of characters;
a war separate lovers;
a lack of care kills tropical fish;
a cheat leads to a divorce;
a betrayal prompts a revenge.
Realistic Narrative
• Mulholand Drive (2001) - divided into two main
sections: the first, which could be interpreted as a
dream (1 hour 56 minutes) and the final 25 minutes.
Important events in the first section are repeated in
the second section, but with significant differences.
Realistic Narrative
• Different characters repeat the same actions, and
these different characters are played by the same
actors. Furthermore, the important events in the
first part are mysterious, but there is a more
mundane repetition of them in the second half.
Realistic Narrative
• There is not much logic of cause and effect in the
first section. The lack of causality is compensated
by the repetition, which gives the film more
textual coherence.
Realistic Narrative
• COINCIDENCE
• According to the Hollywood ‘formula’
coincidence should be confined to the initial
situation
• The later in a film a coincidence occurs, the
weaker it is - the loss of credibility
Realistic Narrative
• A case in which a
coincidence takes
place in the middle
of a film.
• Alfred Hitchcock’s
The Birds (1963)
Realistic Narrative
• Actions must have their MOTIVATIONS
• One must have a good reason for what one
does.
• When an action is unmotivated, it would
lose its credulity
Realistic Narrative
• 'In order that the motion picture may convey
the illusion of reality that audiences demand,
the scenario writer stresses motivation - that
is, he makes clear a character's reason for
doing whatever he does that is important.'
Frances Marion, 'Scenario Writing' 1938
Non-realistic Narrative
• Complete ignoring of the narrative formula
in classical American films
• Chronologicality, causality, motivation
Non-realistic Narrative
• Surrealist film by
Louis Bunuel
designed by
Salvatore Dali
• Un Chien Andalou
(1929)
Illusion of Reality in Realist Narrative
• The film drama is:
‘… LIFE WITH THE DULL BITS CUT OUT’
(Alfred Hitchcock)
Illusion of Reality in Realist Narrative
• Classical realist narrative is NOT retelling of
what happens in reality because it extracts from
the world of its characters almost only elements
which are relevant to its progress.
• The realistic narrative in classical American
films, which is achieved through various
techniques and devices, is the one which gives
the viewer reality and truth effects, but is not
exactly real.
Purer Form of Realist Narrative
• Purer form of realism in narrative is found
in non-diegetic elements.
• Diegetic - being relevant to the progress of
a story
• Non-diegetic - being irrelevant to the
progress of an imaginary story
Purer Form of Narrative
• Siegmund Kracauer finds an inverted
relation between those images that further
the story and those ‘retain a degree of
independence of the intrigue and thus
succeed in summoning physical reality.’
Purer Form of Narrative
• Roland Barthes characterizes literary
reference to objects that have no discernible
narrative function except to give a material,
worldly weight to the description as ‘reality
effects.
Purer Form of Narrative
• A purer form of film
realism is found in an
incidental or contingent
element in narrative. ‘…
in the middle of the chase
the little boy suddenly
needs to piss. So he
does.’ (André Bazin)
• Vittorio de Sica’s Ladri
di biciclette (1948)