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 plausible and probable
- that is, ‘real’ – render ‘reality’ and ‘truth’
effects in story.
Realistic 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.
Realistic 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)
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 she
has watched. (In normal storytelling, the scene you
have just seen is the one later than the last)
Realistic 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.
Realistic 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.
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 those in the second
half are more mundane repetitions of those in the
first part.
Realistic 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.
Realistic Narrative
• COINCIDENCE
• According to the Hollywood narrative
‘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 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.
Realistic 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)
Realistic 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
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
• An example completely ignoring the
(realist) narrative formulae developed 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 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
• 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.