We can also see the principle of montage at work in the
shower scene murder in Hitchcock’s film Psycho. The scene continually cuts from Marion Crane in the shower to Norman’s
‘mother’ wielding a knife. The shots (the raw material) do not contain images of Marion being cut or stabbed by the knife.
Nonetheless, the rhythm of the cutting creates a meaning that goes beyond the literal content of the images – Marion’s murder.
This scene therefore illustrates Eisenstein’s argument that the arrangement of shots into a rhythmic pattern is more important than the single shot just as, in music, the arrangement of notes is more important than the single note.
But the realists stressed the importance of the single shot because it maintains film’s recording capacity, which is interrupted by the cut, or the transition to another shot.
The realists argued that the formalists are denying film’s unique capacity of mechanical recording. For the realists, the exploitation of the recording capacity of film by means of the techniques of the long take and deep focus fulfils, for the first time in the history of art, the aim of art – a life-like representation of reality.
In general terms, the formalists developed their arguments within a modernist framework (a concern with the internal structure of a medium). For the realists, the function of art is to imitate nature.
Filmic examples of these two theoretical positions have
already been discussed in the first part of this chapter. But now, hopefully, the significance of the filmic techniques championed by each side – deep focus and the long take in the case of the realists; editing, montage, etc. in the case of the formalists –
are more apparent. Furthermore, I have no intention of
favouring either the formalists or the realists. Both have put forward strong and cogent arguments and the reader may
wish to read the original books that present each side of the argument, to get a more informed view. However, it may be 26
worthwhile mentioning that both sides have decided to argue that film has only one function and both have emphasized that this function can be achieved only through a limited number of filmic techniques. By considering both arguments, we can see that film performs both functions. A film can be made using the unified, unedited space of the long take, or with the synthetic, constructed space of montage. Film records as well as distorts.
Digdeeper
Altman, Charles [Rick], ‘towards a Historiography of American Film’, Cinema Journal, 16, 2 (1977), pp. 1–25.
An invaluable outline of various approaches that have been adopted in film studies (i have modified Altman’s list in the opening of this chapter).
Andrew, J dudley, The Major Film Theories (New York: Oxford university Press, 1976).
this book is still the most accessible introduction to the work of the formalists (Hugo münsterberg, Rudolf Arnheim, Sergei eisenstein, Bela Balazs), the realists (Siegfried Kracauer, André Bazin) as well as the film theories of Jean mitry, Christian metz, Amédée Ayfre and Henri Agel.
Arnheim, Rudolf, Film as Art (london: Faber and Faber, 1958).
Arnheim’s formalist statement on film art.
Bazin, André, Orson Welles: A Critical View (California: Acrobat Books, 1991).
A concise and lucid analysis of Welles’s early films. For me, this book contains Bazin’s clearest defence of the techniques of the long take and deep focus.
Bazin, André, What is Cinema? , 2 volumes (Berkeley: university of California Press, 1967, 1971).
Bazin’s seminal collection of essays that defends a realist film aesthetic.
Bordwell, david, Staiger, Janet and thompson, Kristin, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (london: Routledge, 1985).
1 Film aesthetics: formalism and realism 27
the undisputed, authoritative heavyweight study of classical Hollywood cinema, covering the history of film style, technology and mode of production.
Buckland, Warren, Directed by Steven Spielberg: Poetics of the Contemporary Hollywood Blockbuster (New York and london: Continuum, 2006).
in this book i examine Spielberg’s film-making practices – the choices he makes in placing or moving his camera, framing a shot, blocking the action, editing a scene, designing the sound, and controlling the flow of story information via a multitude of narrational techniques.
Carroll, Noël, Philosophical Problems of Classical Film Theory (Princeton: Pinceton unversity Press, 1988).
eisenstein, Sergei, Writings, Volume 1: 1922–1934 (ed. and trans.
Richard taylor) (london: British Film institute, 1988).
the first of three authoritative volumes of eisenstein’s collected essays.
elsaesser, thomas and Buckland, Warren, Studying
Contemporary American Film: A Guide to Movie Analysis (london: Arnold; New York: Oxford university Press, 2002).
Chapter 3 discusses mise-en-scène, and Chapter 7 discusses André Bazin’s work.
Gottlieb, Sidney (ed.), Hitchcock on Hitchcock (Berkeley: university of California Press; london: Faber and Faber, 1995).
A comprehensive collection of Alfred Hitchcock’s writings on the cinema.
Salt, Barry, Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis, Second edition (london: Starword, 1992).
the research carried out for this book is phenomenal and simply overwhelming. Salt has analysed literally thousands of films shot by shot from each decade of the cinema, noting the stylistic parameters of each shot and scene and representing this
information statistically (including bar charts of shot scales of individual films). the book is also packed with information on the history of film technology.
28
focuspoints
Mise-en-scène designates what appears in front of the camera –
set design, lighting and character movement.
Mise-en-shot means ‘putting into shots’ or simply ‘shooting (a film)’.
✲ The long take and deep focus emphasize the drama as it unfolds within the shot. These techniques create a fusion between actors and settings, allow the actor’s performance to shine through and have the potential to sustain a mood or emotion over a long period of time; however, they distance the spectator from the unfolding action.
✲ Colour can be manipulated to create an atmosphere, as in the non-bleaching process used by cinematographers such
as Darius Khondji.
✲ Editing, which consists of breaking down a scene into a multitude of shots, allows the director to fully involve the spectator in the action at the expense of breaking the film’s actual spatial and temporal unity; however, a synthetic unity is restored by means of the technique of continuity editing (which includes the axis of action line, the eyeline match, point-of-view cutting, the match on action cut and directional continuity).
✲ The formalists, such as Rudolf Arnheim and the film-maker Sergei Eisenstein, defend film as art; they argue that the limitations of the filmic medium enabled film-makers to
manipulate and distort everyday experience of reality for artistic ends.
✲ By contrast, the realists, such as André Bazin, Siegfried Kracauer and Stanley Cavell, promote film’s recording
capacity; they argue that, by means of its automatic
mechanical recording of events, film does perfectly imitate our normal visual experience of reality and it is this unique quality of film that makes it an art.
✲ The formalists favour filmic techniques such as editing, montage, fast and slow motion, and the use of low and high camera angles.
✲ The realists favour filmic techniques such as the long take and deep focus photography.
1 Film aesthetics: formalism and realism 29
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2
Film structure:
narrative and
narration
Inthischapteryouwilllearnabout:
3
3 the main elements of a film’s narrative
structure
33 the different types of narration in a film.
31
… narrative is a way of organizing spatial and temporal data into a cause–effect chain of events with a beginning, middle, and end that embodies a judgement about the nature of the events.
Edward Branigan, Narrative Comprehension and Film, p. 3
The filmic techniques studied in Chapter 1 make up the micro (or small scale) properties of a film’s structure. In this chapter we shall examine the macro (or large scale) properties of a film’s structure. These macro structures fall into two main categories –
narrative and narration. These structures will be defined and illustrated in relation to both classical and contemporary Hollywood films. Finally, the chapter will end with an analysis of the unusual narrative structure of Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994) and Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, 2001).
The concept of ‘narrative’ refers to what happens or what is depicted in films (as well as novels), and ‘narration’ refers to how that narrative is presented to the film spectator (or reader of a novel). So ‘narrative’ refers to actions, events and characters, whereas ‘narration’ describes a mechanism that controls how the spectator gains information about those actions, events and characters. Below we shall look at narration.
But first, a description of what is meant by narrative.
Spotlight
Steven Spielberg said the following about the importance of narrative: ‘I think people will leave their television sets [and go to the movies] for a good story. Before fire and skyscrapers and floods, plane crashes, laser fire and spaceships, they want good stories.’
Narrative structure
A narrative does not consist of a random series of events, but a series of events related to one another in terms of cause and effect. If a film is based on narrative logic, an event on screen will be caused by a previous event: event B happens because of event A.
32
For example, a man in shot A points a gun in an off-screen direction and fires. In shot B another man is shown collapsing to the ground. Because of the way the shots are edited together (shot B immediately following shot A), the spectator reads the event in shot A as the cause of the event in shot B.
The causal link between the two shots can be illustrated by reversing their order: shot B, of the man collapsing, followed by shot A, of another man firing a gun. The logic of the two shots is incomprehensible to the extent that the spectator cannot understand the event of the man collapsing as being caused by the event of the man shooting the gun.
Scenes as well as shots are also linked together by a cause-effect narrative logic. We can see this by looking at the first three scenes of Alfred Hitchcock’s film Psycho (1960). First, a partial synopsis of the film. Psycho begins by narrating the story of Marion Crane (Janet Leigh). She is first shown in a seedy hotel room with her lover, Sam. They talk about getting married, but Sam has no money. Sam goes to the airport and Marion returns to her workplace (a real estate office), where she works as a secretary. Her boss asks her to deposit $40,000
into the bank. She leaves the office and then goes home, where she packs and drives out of town. One night she stops to rest at the Bates’s motel…
Scene 1. The first scene, Marion and Sam in a seedy hotel room during lunch break, establishes a problem: Marion and Sam cannot be married because he has no money (he is not financially independent and so cannot support a wife).
Scene 2. The second scene, of Marion returning to work, develops the theme of marriage further. The spectator learns that Marion’s boss, George Lowery (who deals in real estate) is lunching with a wealthy man, Tom Cassidy.
Cassidy’s daughter is to be married the following day, so he visits the office to buy a property as a wedding gift for his daughter. Cassidy hands over $40,000 in cash and Lowery asks Marion to take it to the bank. She asks Lowery if she can go home afterwards, since she has a headache and wants to sleep it off.
2 Film structure: narrative and narration 33
Scene 3. The third scene opens with Marion in her apartment. When she turns her back to the camera, the camera dollies in to an envelope on the bed and the
spectator sees that it contains the $40,000. The camera then pans right to show a suitcase, which Marion is in the process of packing. In a matter of seconds, this scene (within the context of scenes 1 and 2) establishes Marion’s motives: she is going to steal the money and leave town.
The cause–effect logic in these three scenes is very tightly constructed. One of the most fruitful ways to analyse cause-effect logic in narrative film is to imagine the scenes in a different order. For example, if Psycho began with scene 3, a sense of mystery would be created, because we would not have sufficient information to understand Marion’s motives.
Beginning the film with scene 3 is certainly plausible, but would it be logical? It would certainly raise many questions in the spectator’s mind: for example, whose money is this and what is this woman going to do with it? However, in the actual film, scene 3 is an effect of the previous two scenes (just as shot B in the hypothetical example above is an effect of shot A).
A lack is established in scene 1 – Sam’s and Marion’s lack of money; a surplus is established in scene 2 – Cassidy hands over $40,000 in cash. Its surplus status is emphasized throughout the scene: Cassidy stresses that he carries only as much money as he can afford to lose, and that he is rich because he does not pay taxes. Scene 3 then neatly ties up the lack and surplus – Marion steals the money.
The film presents only information relevant to its cause–effect logic. After all, is it a coincidence that the $40,000 is presented in the scene immediately after Sam and Marion talk about their inability to get married because of their lack of money? Is it a coincidence that Cassidy pays cash? And is it a coincidence that the money just happens to be for a wedding present? We can also ask other questions, such as: Is it a coincidence that the first three scenes directly follow on from one another? Why don’t we see Sam leaving the hotel room and going to the airport? And why don’t we see Lowery and Cassidy eating lunch?
34
By asking these questions, we begin to make explicit the film’s cause–effect logic. The last two events just mentioned are left out because they are not relevant to the film’s cause–effect logic, since they would not cause any effects in subsequent parts of the film. At the end of scene 1 we see Marion closing the door of the hotel room. Scene 2 begins with her entering the office. All extraneous information is simply eliminated (although we see the director, Hitchcock, standing on the sidewalk just outside the office – how relevant is this to the film’s cause–effect logic?!).
As with the transition from scene 1 to scene 2, Marion’s journey from the office to her apartment (via the bank?) is eliminated between scenes 2 and 3. In scene 2 Marion claims that she will go to the bank and then go home. Because, in scene 3, we see her at home, we initially assume that she has already gone to the bank. However, we soon have to revise our assumption, since the camera then shows the money on Marion’s bed. Here the ellipsis between scenes 2 and 3 is significant to the cause-effect logic of the film, whereas the ellipsis between scenes 1 and 2 is insignificant.
Not all shots and scenes in narrative films are linked by causal logic. We can imagine a shot of a man walking a dog followed by a close-up shot of the dog. If the shots are reversed, the meaning is still the same, since there is no causal logic linking these two shots. Such shots can be characterized as being descriptive, rather than narrative. It is common for most narrative films to contain moments of description. Indeed, the opening of Psycho contains several shots of the skyline of Phoenix, Arizona, which are descriptive because they simply aim to describe the space in which the narrative events are to unfold.
However, the dominant structure that holds a narrative film together (including Psycho) is still causal logic.
Spotlight
&nb
sp; For a film to appear coherent and meaningful, the relations between its actions and events need to be motivated. In narrative films, this motivation is supplied by the cause–effect logic.
2 Film structure: narrative and narration 35
But we need to go further than discussing narrative films in terms of cause and effect. Narrative development is dependent on the way in which the cause–effect logic is worked out in relation to the film’s character (or characters), who motivates that cause–effect logic. This point can be made by referring to Hitchcock’s 1959 film North by Northwest (which will also be discussed in my analysis of narration). First, I shall simply outline the rather complicated series of events contained in the film.
After a hard day’s work, Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant), a Madison Avenue advertising man, goes to the bar of the Plaza Hotel to meet a couple of friends. He decides to send a telegram to his mother to cancel their night out at the theatre. But, as he calls the bellboy, he is mistaken by spies for the CIA agent George Kaplan. The spies kidnap Thornhill and take him to the head of the spy ring, Vandamm (James Mason). Thornhill manages to escape from Vandamm and begins searching the
Plaza Hotel for George Kaplan. But Thornhill, pursued by the spies, is implicated in the murder of a UN delegate (who was in fact murdered by the spy ring). Wanted by both spies and police, Thornhill catches a train to Chicago. On the train he is assisted in his escape by a stranger on the train, Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), who hides Thornhill in her bathroom when the porter arrives, and in the top bunk of her sleeping compartment when the police search the train. But the film spectator discovers that Eve is Vandamm’s mistress and, once the train arrives at Chicago, she sends Thornhill into a trap – the famous ‘crop-duster’ sequence. Eve has supposedly contacted Kaplan and has sent Thornhill to meet him in desolate farm country. But, once Thornhill has reached the arranged location, he is pursued by a crop-dusting plane which almost kills him. He manages to escape and tracks down Eve at the Ambassador Hotel. After confronting Eve, Thornhill follows her to an auction room, where he finds her with Vandamm. Vandamm’s men attempt to seize Thornhill, but he saves himself by creating a disturbance at the auction and getting himself arrested by the police. It is at this point in the film that the CIA ‘Professor’ who created the decoy agent intervenes. At Chicago airport he informs Thornhill that Eve is the real CIA agent and that Kaplan is a non-existent 36
Film Studies- An Introduction Page 5