FILM 114 Lecture 8 Notes PDF

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Classical Narrative Structure & Narration
Vertigo film directed by Alfred Hitchcock (1958)
Professor Matt Connolly...

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Classical Narrative Structure & Narration Vertigo film by Alfred Hitchcock (1958) ● Basics of Narrative Structure and Narration ○ Think back to Citizen Kane ■ What are some words that you would use to describe Charles Foster Kane? ■ How did you feel about him as a character? Did those feelings change across the film? ○ Questions of: ■ Character identification ■ Revelations of narrative information ■ Suspense and surprise ■ All tie back to issues of how a film constructs its narrative ○ What is a “narrative”? ■ A chain of events linked by cause and effect and occurring in time and space ● Actions that occur in the story ● Jaws - First, a shark attacks a swimmer on the beach; Then, Brody wants to close the beaches as a result; As a result, the mayor refuses his request while talking to him in town ○ Plot vs. Story ■ Plot - all the events that are directly presented to us ● The plot is constructed by choosing and arranging story elements in a particular way ■ Story - all the events we see and hear plus all those that we infer or assume to have occurred ○ Example - North by Northwest ■ Plot: ● Rush hour in Manhattan ● Roger gets off the elevator and walks with his secretary ■ Story: ● (Roger works a busy day in his office) ● Rush hour in Manhattan ● (Roger gets on the elevator and talks to his secretary) ● Roger gets off the elevator and walks with his secretary ■ The plot that we see on the screen here is making decisions about what to include explicitly and what it assumes the audience can infer about the situation ■ All film narratives make such decisions ○ Time in Narrative - Options for Manipulation ■ Order- can present story events out of order in the plot

● Example: flashback ■ Duration - can skip over years of time in the story through their arrangement in the plot ■ Frequency - can also us to see the same story action from multiple viewpoints ○ Narration- the plot’s way of distributing story information to achieve specific ends ■ The moment-by-moment process that guides viewers to build the story out of the plot ○ Issues of Narration ■ Range of Narration ● How restricted or unrestricted is the viewer’s access to characters and information? ● Restricted - A Man Escaped ● Unrestricted - Citizen Kane ■ Depth of Narration ● How much or little access does the viewer have to a character’s subjectivity (mental and/or perceptual) ● Subjective - A Man Escaped ● Objective - Trouble in Paradise ■ Both are spectrums; very few films are COMPLETELY restricted or COMPLETELY unrestricted ○ Classical Hollywood Narrative - 5 components ■ Goal-oriented Protagonist - the main character with a clear goal or ambition that is defined early and worked towards across the film ■ Cause & Effect- the actions that occur in a scene are motivated by the previous scene and will motivate the actions in the next scene ■ Serious of Obstacles Structures the Plot ■ Deadlines and Appointments Motivate Plot Progression ■ Clear closure is achieved by film’s end ● Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958) ○ What do you think and feel about Scottie at the beginning of the film? How does that change across the film? ○ What is the general range of narration? Does that change and, if so, how does it affect our understanding of scottie?...