Chapter 1: The Nature of Narrative

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Chapter 1 The Nature of Narrative
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Elements of Narrative

• The fictive stance
• Structure story and plot
• Plot the way events are sequenced
• Story all the events that make up the narrative
  in proper chronology
• Plot is a subset of the story
• Narration and point-of-view

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Authorship and Point of View

• A film does not have a sole author
• Filmmaking is a collaborative act
• Point of view in cinema is typically third person
• Subjective shots can create brief, first-person
  perspective

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The Classical Hollywood Narrative

• The prevalent narrative type in popular cinema
• A main line of action with subplots
• The plot is activated by a main character
  pursuing a goal
• One plot event follows another, as links in a
  chain
• A line of rising interest and tension as
  characters face obstacles to their goals
• At the conclusion, all story issues are resolved
• Example The Searchers (1956)

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Alternatives to the Classical Hollywood Narrative

• Narratives may emphasize
• Ambiguity
• Minimal or implicit causality
• Nonlinear narratives or anti-narrative
• Alternative designs often found in
• Independent productions
• Avant garde cinema
• European and other foreign film traditions

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The Viewers Contribution to Narrative

• The search for pattern
• Stories activate the viewers desire to know
  what happens next
• Viewers infer connections among story events to
  complete the pattern
• Meaning is not in the film
• The viewer helps create it

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Film Genres

• The basic American film genres
• The Western
• The Gangster film
• The Musical
• The Horror film

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The Western

• The genre pre-exists cinema, emerging in late
  19th century
• dime novels
• Puritan captivity narratives
• the Leatherstocking Tales (1823-1841)
• painting (ethnographic studies, action scenes)
• theater

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The Western

• Defined by period, setting, and theme
• The stories address contradictory cultural values
• the individual/community
• violence/law
• wilderness/civilization
• The Western resolves these contradictions by
  suggesting that violence is necessary for the
  preservation of community

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The Gangster Film

• Emerges as mature genre in early 1930s
• Little Caesar (1930)
• The Public Enemy (1931)
• Scarface (1932)
• The classical structure portrays the rise and
  fall of a charismatic criminal

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Cultural Roots of the Gangster Film

• the Horatio Alger myth of success
• classical narrative arc
• 19th century robber barons
• the Great Depression
• Prohibition
• Sound filmmaking
• These elements combine to establish a critique of
  American society

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The Musical

• A new genre tied to the beginning of sound
  filmmaking ( The Jazz Singer, 1927)
• Two figures dominate the 1930s
• Busby Berkeley (Warner Bros.)
• kaleidoscopic effects
• Gold Diggers of 1933

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MGM and the Freed unit

• responsible for the great MGM musicals of the
  1940s and 1950s
• Freed collaborated with Vincente Minnelli, Fred
  Astaire, and Gene Kelly

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• The genre descended from theater, vaudeville,
  comedy sketches and songs
• Thus, the stories are episodic
• Narrative is slight, and it furnishes basis for
  song-and-dance
• of all genres, the musical is least oriented
  toward narrative
• Narrative gives way to a stylized fantasy of
  music, movement, and color in the production
  numbers

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The Horror Film

• Silent era Lon Chaney and the German
  expressionists
• Sound era
• Universal Pictures creates the classic movie
  monsters
• Dracula
• Frankenstein
• The Mummy
• The Wolf Man

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Evolution of the Genre

• Universal Pictures (1930s)
• Atmosphere, suggestion, triumph of normality
• Contemporary horror
• Explicit gore and shock, triumph of the monster

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Horrors Purpose

• Horror films question normality and human
  identity
• Reveal doubts anxieties about what makes us
  human
• Deal with the question What is required to
  remain human?