Realism in Classical American Film
Hollywood Narrative
Table of Contents
1 Realistic Narrative
2 Non-realistic Narrative
3 Purer Form of Realist Narrative
Narrtive
• Narrative – a structured or constructed chain of
stories that tells fictional or non-fictional events.
• Story and Narrative
* Story – an account of an event or related events;
a event unit
• Components of narrative: narrating - the
combination and arrangement of stories or event
units; narrator - the one who tells a narrative
(generally by voice-over in the case of cinema)
• Narratology - study on narrative, narration and
narrator.
Realist 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 plausible and probable - that is, ‘real’
– render ‘reality’ and ‘truth’ effects in story.
• The first concern plausibility
Realist Narrative
• The classical Hollywood film creates truth
effects by concealing artistry in narration.
• → Narration, too, like various filming
techniques, must be ‘invisible’ and unobtrusive
so that most viewers barely notice its narration
technique and artificiality.
• The way in which a story is told – to make
narration invisible.
Realist Narrative
• Narration ‘techniques’ and ‘devices’ employed to
create illusion of reality but kept invisible:
• Formulae - CHRONOLOGICALITY and
CAUSALITY
• CHRONOLOGICALITY - events occur in a 1-23 order (occasional flashbacks - the only
permissible narrative manipulation)
Realist Narrative
• Chronological realist narrative of Best Years of
our Lives
• Ex-servicemen return to their home town (E/U 1)
– they try to re-establish their relationship with
their wife or fiancée, while finding it difficult to
settle back in their former job (E/U 2).
Non-realist (Formalist) Narrative
Formalist 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 in an
assault on him, has no short
term memory.
Non-realist (Formalist) Narrative
• He is looking for the real killer of his wife,
photographing with his Polaroid camera and
tattooing on himself the important facts he finds.
Each action the viewer watches is the one taken
place earlier than the action she watched it last. (In
normal storytelling, the action you have just seen is
the one taken place later than the last action).
Non-realist (Formalist) Narrative
• Opening sequences – Leonard kills Teddy (cs last) Lenard takes Teddy to the building where the latter
killed the former’s wife (cs first before last) –
Lenard in a motel waiting for Teddy’s arrival (cs 2nd
before last) – Lenard is told by Teddy on the phone
he is coming to see Leonard (cs 3rd before before) so
on. cs – chronlological sequence
Realist Narrative
• CAUSALITY - 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 isolates 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.
Realist Narrative
• Homer lost both his arms in
the war (cause) – stress on
his engagement to Wilma
(effect)
• Stephenson’s only daughter
is found going out with his
friend. (cause) – a family
conflict in which he
opposes that she goes out a
married man who is a lot
older than her. (effect)
Non-realist
(Formalist) Narrative
• Mulholland Drive (2001) - divided into two main
sections: the first, which could be interpreted as a
dream (1 hour 56 minutes), and the second, the
final 25 minutes, which might be made of real
events. Important events in the first section are
repeated in the second section, but with significant
differences.
Non-realist (Formalist) Narrative
• A woman involved in a traffic accident (cause) –
the woman falls into sleep in a front yard of a
house in Sunset Boulevard (effect)
• A man tells what he seems to have experienced in
his dream to another man (cause) – he faints to see
a hairy man (effect)
Non-realist (Formalist) Narrative
• There is not much logic of cause and effect in the
actions in the first part. The lack of causality is
compensated by the repetition, which gives the
film more textual coherence.
Realist Narrative
• COINCIDENCE
• According to the Hollywood narrative
‘formulae’, coincidence should be confined
to the initial situation.
• The later in a film a coincidence occurs, the
weaker it is - the loss of credibility.
Realist Narrative
• Acceptable COINCIDENCE
• A woman and a man separated in Paris and many
years later she suddenly walks into the bar he runs in
Casablanca. “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in
all the world, she walks into mine.”
• She did not know who owns the bar. Coincidence
happens at the beginning of the film.
Less than Realist Narrative
• Less satisfactory coincidence when it takes place
towards the end of the film
• Undercover police agent, Chan, investigates Triad
crimes with little results. While his colleague Lau
is out of office, he idly poke round Lau’s desk to
find the envelop that is supposed to be in the hands
of the gang: a sign that Lau is a Triad mole.
Less than Realist Narrative
• Deus-ex-machina (god from the machine) – the
sudden appearance of god at the end of a play to
set things right
• An extreme variation of COINCIDENCE
• Some event, character, ability or object solves a
seemingly unsolvable problem in a sudden,
unexpected way.
• A bus breaks down and one of its passengers is a
car mechanic and fix the trouble.
• A drunkard spent all his money on drinks and a
millionaire suddenly appears to give him money.
Less than Realist Narrative
• Boys stranded on a desert island become gradually
savage and start factional fights. Jacque who fears
that his position as ‘lord of the island’ is challenged
by Ralph orders his boys to kill him. When boys
are hunting down Ralph, a navy officer suddenly
appears and his ship rescues the boys. Lord of the
Flies (1990) clip
Realist Narrative
• A case in which a
coincidence takes
place in the middle of
a film. People in a
local community
discussing about the
birds’ attack on school
children.
• Alfred Hitchcock’s
The Birds (1963)
Realist Narrative
• An action must have a MOTIVATION
• One must have a good reason for what one
does.
• When an action is unmotivated, it would
lose its credulity
Realist 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-realist (Formalist) Narrative
• An example completely ignoring the
(realist) narrative formulae developed in
classical American films
• Chronologicality, Causality, Motivation
Non-realist (Formalist) Narrative
• Surrealist film by Louis
Bunuel designed by
Salvatore Dali
• No chronological order,
no causality or no
motivation
• Un Chien Andalou (1929)
• clip
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 as it does 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 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
effect’.
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)
Purer Form of Narrative
• Gus Van Sant, Elephant
(2003) – about a shooting in
an Oregon high school
partly base on the
Colombine High School
massacre. The film mostly
follow the lives of several
characters but the scenes are
not directly related to the
main plot – the shooting of
students. clip
Purer Form of Narrative
• L’Amore in citta (1953) - a
omnibus film about various
forms of love and lovers. Dino
Risi’s ‘Paradiso per tre ore’
(Three hours of paradise)
• Stick to the realist narrative
formulae - chronological,
causality and motivation
• Story time is equal to real time.
Duration of story is the same to
that of reality.
Realism in Classical American Film
• Do ‘artless’ arts in American films in the
classical period still dupe you to take narratives
and images for reality?
• Do those films that the cinema audience in the
early half of the twentieth century took realistic
or ‘mistook’ as an extension of their reality
continue to have the same effect on you now?
• If not, why do you think they do not?