Narrative Theory in Film
by Jeff Frame
Girl by the Mirror
by
Pablo Picasso
Which picture is truer to reality?
Why?
The two streams of film . . .
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a dna ™emiTk ciuQ
ros se rpmo ced )de s serpmo cnU ( FFIT
.erut cip sih t ee s ot dedeen era
The Lumiére Brothers
George Méliès
(The camera records life.)
(The camera re-imagines life.)
While the Lumiere Bros. captured
life, giving birth to the concept of
the documentary . . .
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Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat
. . . Méliès, Porter, and Griffith
re-invented life, launching the
concept of narrative film.
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Voyage to the Moon
Film vs. Fiction
• equal in absence, permanence, and “re-readability”
• size of the audience (reader-response & Fish’s
“interpretive community”)
• effects of celebrity vs. character
• depth vs. selectivity and editing of details; adaptation as
a new creation
• similar narrative tools used for storytelling
• the power of suggestion vs. depiction
• film is a tangible image (Myth of Total Cinema, Bazin)
• books are more time-consuming
• movies as collaboration of artists vs. the auteur (author)
• books are probably easier to preserve overall
Narrative Film & Film Language
Edwin S. Porter (U.S.)
• Location shooting for narrative film
• Parallel action using primitive crosscutting
techniques
• The Great Train Robbery
•Life of An American Fireman
Narrative Film & Film Language
D.W. Griffith (U.S.)
•Shot=Word
•Union of narrative film and camera
technique; discovery of montage as a
tool to create coherent, systematic,
artistic expression through film
•Montage: the art of combining pieces of film
or shots into larger units
•Excerpt from BIRTH OF A NATION
Narrative Film & Film Language
Vsevelod Pudovkin (U.S.S.R.)
•Montage as a means to construct a film
systematically through editing and
simply adding one shot to another,
more realistically
•Script, sequence, scene, shot—the larger
framework of film as a language
•Two-fold purpose of editing: method of
scene connection & “psychological
guidance” of the spectator
•Five (5) narrative tools of editing:
contrast, parallelism, symbolism,
simultaneity, and leit-motif
Narrative Film & Film Language
Sergei Eisenstein (U.S.S.R.)
•Dialectical montage: montage as a means to
collide images in conflict in order
to create new meaning
•Perfection of the uses of montage in
narrative film
Narrative Film & Film Language
Andre Bazin (France)
•Opposed to montage primarily because film’s
value as an art form is capturing reality
instead of altering reality expressionistically
with various shots and camera angles.
•The content of shots is more important than the
order of shots.
•Space in front of the camera is more
important than the progression of
time via combine shots with camera.
•Took the ideas about depth-of-field from Renoir,
Wyler, and Welles in 30s/40s and developed
the notion of composition-in-depth
Narrative Film & Film Language
Jean-Luc Godard (France)
•Resisted composition-in-depth (CID) for mise-enscene effects in favor of the two-dimensional
walk-around, or one long, slow tracking shot
•To him, CID presents an infinitely deep, rich,
complex, ambiguous, and bourgeois world that
should be demystified, along with its pretenses,
by the filmmaker
Narrative Film & Film Language
Christian Metz (U.S.)
•Film is not a language and the shot does not equal
the written word; but film does act like a
language.
•Film has syntagmatic and paradigmatic values
•Film should be codified as a non-linguistic system
of signs and symbols (semiotics) based on the
work of Lacan and Saussure
Narrative Film & Film Language
Daniel Dayan (U.S.)
•Post-structuralist argument for “the system of the
suture” and narrative gaps
•Analysis of Oudart’s theory of “the absent-one,”
or “that which any shot necessarily lacks if it
is to attain meaning”—another (missing)
shot
•Visual authorization and manipulation theories
Narrative Film & Semiotics
from Charles S. Pierce (and Peter Wollen)
1 – Icon: a sign in which the signifier represents
the signified mainly by its similarity to it
2 – Index: which measures a quality not because
it is identical to it, but because it has an
inherent relationship to it
3 – Symbol: an arbitrary sign in which the
signifier has neither a direct nor an
indexical relationship to the signified, but
rather represents it through convention
Narrative Agency &
Film Sound/Music
Aaron Copeland’s 5 functions of FM:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
creating atmosphere
underlining the psychological states of
characters
providing background filler
building a sense of continuity
sustaining tension followed by a
leading to a sense of closure
Film Narrative & Structure
“syuzhet”
non-diegetic
discourse
paradigmatic
extrinsic
“soundtrack”
“fabula” (Formalists)
diegetic
story
(Chatman)
syntagmatic (Metz)
intrinsic
(Freud)
(Levinson)
Film Narrative & Structure
from Pramaggiore and Wallis’s
Film: A Critical Introduction, Chapter 3
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the concept of a narrative film
screenplay vs. shooting script
diegetic (part of the implied story world)
non-diegetic (or extra-) (exists outside of story world)
story (fabula) vs. discourse (syuzhet)
(see Seymour Chatman)
three-act structure
exposition, complications, climax, & dénouement
1st person or 3rd person, omniscient or restricted
point-of-view shot
Film Narrative &
Alternative Narrative Structures
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episodic narratives (as opposed to climactic)
open-ended narratives
frame narration
in medias res (“in the middle of things”)
imbedded (hypo-diegetic) narratives (mise-en-abyme)
simple flashbacks and flashforwards
meta-narratives and self-referentiality
nonlinear forms:
lucid dreams (Eternal Sunshine, Vanilla Sky, Mulholland Drive)
forked paths (Groundhog Day, Sliding Doors, Run Lola Run)
reverse riddles (Memento, Betrayal)
view variori (Rashomon, 11:14, Babel)
nondiegetic nonlocality (Annie Hall, Pulp Fiction, 21 Grams)
Film Narrative & Structure:
Rashomon—A Case Study
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Departs from a three-act structure with frame narration and an
embedded narrative told via flashbacks
Frame story is structured by cause and effect while the embedded story
is structured through the “view variori” nonlinear approach; because
the story is repeated 4 times, the cause and effect logic becomes
confusing
The frame story shows “the human capacity for altruism” while the
embedded narrative suggests “the ambiguous nature of reality”
Another novelty of the film is that philosophical questions and abstract
ideas become more important than actions
Audiences often have a difficult time identifying with the characters
because of the highly stylized acting technique of the culture and time
period and the unreliability of the woodcutter’s versions of the story
Nonlinear
Narrative Film
Structures
Nonlinear Narrative Film Structures
LUCID DREAMS
(this category comes closest to Time Travel in its
emphasis on story)
Stories in which the protagonist is
unable to discern reality from
illusion
POV: Omniscient Narrator—Inside View &
Authority—nonlinear in story and
discourse)
Nonlinear Narrative Film Structures
FORKED PATHS
(we are shown the possible alternatives for our past
choices in life)
Stories in which the viewer observes
multiple potential outcomes for the
protagonist
POV: Constant beginning--variable outcomes--story
and/or discourse)
Nonlinear Narrative Film Structures
REVERSE RIDDLES
(we are shown “what went wrong” then led
backwards through time to find out why)
Stories in which the discourse reveals
a narrative in reverse chronological
order with no apparent diegetic
cause
POV: Reverse and variations of reverse--discourse
only)
Nonlinear Narrative Film Structures
VIEW VARIORI
Stories in which the same incident(s)
is viewed from the various
perspectives of several different
characters in the narrative
POV: Constant event--variable perspectives-discourse only)
Nonlinear Narrative Film Structures
NON-DIEGETIC
NONLOCALITY
Stories in which the events of the
diegesis are shifted into complex
and seemingly arbitrary
nonsequential discourse patterns
with no apparent diegetic cause
POV: Mixed time phases--past/present/future-authorial discourse)
Narrative Theory in Film
by Jeff Frame