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Film Narrative

Page history last edited by Monty Risenhoover 14 years, 4 months ago

Overview 

"Narrative" is difficult to describe when applied to any medium. In film the narrative style can vary from what may be considered a traditional narrative plot to merely utilizing a few narrative techniques. David Bordwell comments in his book Narration in the Fiction Film that understanding narrative style in film is more than perceiving movements, images, and sound, but that "the viewer must take as a central cognative goal the construction of a more or less intelligible story" (33). Unfortunately, "story" is more of a synonym than a definition for narrative, but some interpretation of Bordwell's discussion of comprehending film narrative reveals that there are basic conventions for narrative: actors (meaning something in action, not specifically people acting), setting, events, and a cause-effect relationship linking events together. These are, of course, not always essential to every narrative style in film, rather they are commonly recognized in many traditional narrative films.

 

An interesting facet of narrative that Bordwell focuses on is the viewer's interpretation of it. "People seek causal connections among events, both in anticipation and in retrospect," he says, creating an interesting connection between film narrative's inherent qualities and its relation to viewers (34). Is a "story" ordered in a specific narrative way, or do viewers create connections to perceive a narrative? Bordwell says that it is a reaction of humans to give order to events they see on a screen and to place them in a logical context to create some kind of story. He attributes this partly to our Western culture's goal of "creating a meaningful story out of the material presented" (34). In this way, we are already apt to interpret film as following a simple narrative style as we have been molded to that thought by centuries of narrative literature as well as popular early narrative cinema.

  

Early Narrative Film

It is difficult to distinguish a clear beginning for narrative film, especially with a very ambiguous definition of narrative in general. However, many conventions of "narrative" are found in the very beginnings of filmmaking. Thomas Edison had films showing something as simple as a woman dancing, yet this employed an actor as well as a setting for the dancer. What rules this out as narrative film for many is the lack of cause/effect links of events. There is still some controversy over defining The Lumière Brothers' 1895 film Arrivée d'un train en gare a La Ciotat (Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat) as a narrative film.

 

 

A still shot of the first second of the film would reveal a very clear, and somewhat complicated, setting, as well as a multitude of actors to the right of the frame. This doesn't seem any different from the actualities that the Lumiere brothers were famous for making. These differ slightly from narrative film in that they simply record action and are not actively creating actors/settings/events to be filmed. As this clip continues, the cause and effect relationships begin to appear: the train arrives and those waiting for it move forward; the train stops and those inside exit, etc. Certainly the basic conventions of film narrative are present here, but there is doubt as to whether this is simple storytelling (and, as an extension from that, narrative). Is this simply capturing an event or attempting to create these separate parts in a narrative fashion? Furthermore, is there a distinguishing factor to separate the two, narrative and actualities, from each other? The Lumiere brothers have been analyzed on both fronts and have been considered by some as following some form of film narrative (filmreference.com).

 

Georges Méliès certainly utilized narrative for many of his more famous films. H setting actors in very specific settings and leading them through a definite series of cause/effect based events. His 1902 film La Voyage dans la Lune clearly told the story of astronomers on a trip to the moon. Not only were the basic conventions of film narrative applied in this film, but Méliès also relied on very basic continuity editing to make these causal connections between completely different shots. A shot of the astronomers launched towards the moon followed by the image of their bullet landing on the moon employed continuity editing and relied on what Bordwell later observes of interpretting film narrative in general: "People seek causal connections among events, both in anticipation and in retrospect." 

 

Narrative Styles 

Many narrative styles that use some or all of the basic narrative conventions in varying ways are referred to in different movements in film. What we regard as the traditional narrative style of Griffith differs greatly from the style Eisenstein employs in his films, that are based strongly on the ideals of soviet montage. Similarly, other narrative styles can be found in German Expressionism or French New Wave.

 


 

Works Consulted

 

Bordwell, David. Narrative in the Fiction Film. Madison: The University of Wisconsin, 1985. Print

"Defining Film Narrative." Filmreference.com. Advameg, Inc., 2008. 13 October 2009.

Comments (2)

Sean Desilets said

at 3:47 pm on Oct 16, 2009

* Given the size and complexity of this topic, I think this is a marvelous start--especially the work on _Arrival of a Train_. I wonder whether _The Waterer Watered_ or _The Gay Shoe Clerk_ raise other questions.
* We may want to try a clearer definition of narrative and to introduce some other pertinent terms. My personal favorites are "story" and "discourse," but I think Bordwell often talks about the difference between plot and story. "Diegesis" is also a big term in film narrative, so we'll need a definition of that term
* Other stuff the page needs: more examples of and discussion of particular narrative styles--what's the difference between _Potemkin_ and _The Grand illusion_ in narrative terms, for example?
* The Bordwell & Thompson textbook has some good clear stuff on these questions

Sam Webster said

at 12:04 am on Oct 14, 2009

So I know it looks like I slacked off on the last part, but I was well over my limit of words and brainpower... go major edits!

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