Chapter 1: The Nature of Narrative

1. Chapter 1: The Nature of Narrative

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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)

5. 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

6. The Viewer’s Contribution to Narrative • The search for pattern • Stories activate the viewer’s 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

7. Film Genres • The basic American film genres: • The Western • The Gangster film • The Musical • The Horror film

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. Evolution of the Genre • Universal Pictures (1930s) • Atmosphere, suggestion, triumph of ‘normality’ • Contemporary horror • Explicit gore and shock, triumph of the monster

17. Horror’s 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?