decoy. Because Eve is in danger, Thornhill continues playing Kaplan in order to divert suspicion from Eve. The film then shifts to Mount Rushmore, where the cafeteria becomes the stage of a mock killing, in which Eve ‘shoots’ Thornhill in order to regain Vandamm’s trust. Eve then flees from the police and Thornhill is driven away in an ambulance. In a nearby wood, Eve and Thornhill meet up briefly and declare their love for one another. (It is only at this point in the film that Thornhill meets the ‘real’ Eve.) Eve then returns to Vandamm, who later discovers her real identity. She is rescued by Thornhill and they escape across the stone faces of the presidents on Mount Rushmore. They are finally reconciled as a married couple after Vandamm is defeated.
Thornhill motivates the film’s cause–effect logic, since he must prove his innocence by finding George Kaplan. The forward momentum of the film is therefore driven by the needs and wishes of Thornhill. The resolution of these needs and wishes give the film a strong sense of closure, for Thornhill not only proves that he is the wrong man, but he also manages to expose Vandamm’s spy ring and find a wife at the same time!
As this description of North by Northwest implies, narrative does not simply consist of a series of events linked together in a causal chain motivated by characters. Narratives are also structured into three stages: a beginning (Thornhill meeting his friends in the bar of the Plaza Hotel), a middle (being mistaken for Kaplan leads to Thornhill’s kidnapping and to his subsequent adventures) and an end (Thornhill’s successful attempt to prove his innocence, expose Vandamm and marry Eve).
The narrative theorist Tzvetan Todorov also describes narratives in terms of three stages:
3
3
a state of equilibrium
3
3
the disruption of this equilibrium by an event
3
3
the successful attempt to restore the equilibrium.
The transition from one stage to the next is called the narrative’s
‘turning point’, in which crucial events change the direction of the narrative action. (See Kristin Thompson, Storytelling 2 Film structure: narrative and narration 37
in the New Hollywood, pp. 29–36 for a detailed discussion of ‘turning points’.) The crucial issue in examining narratives in terms of Todorov’s three-part structure divided by turning points is that the narrative is not defined as a linear structure, but as a circular one. An initial state of affairs is introduced and is then disrupted. The narrative is then driven by attempts to restore the equilibrium, which is finally achieved at the end.
However, the equilibrium achieved at the end is not identical to the initial equilibrium. As Todorov argues, narrative involves a transformation. In North by Northwest, it is primarily Thornhill who goes through a transformation. At the beginning of the film, he is an unmarried advertising man planning to go to the theatre with his mother. By the end of the film he is a married advertising man. This transformation is brought about by his temporary loss of identity (he is mistaken for a CIA agent and taken out of his everyday lifestyle by kidnappers). The middle part of the narrative has therefore caused Thornhill’s transformation.
We can characterize the middle part of the narrative as the narrative’s liminal (or transitional) period, which means that it takes place outside established (or ‘normal’) social events. The liminal period of a narrative therefore depicts transgressive events, events that exist outside normal social events, whereas the initial and final equilibrium stages of the narrative represent social normality.
The concept of liminality can clearly be applied to North by Northwest. The film begins with the everyday routines of Thornhill. He is then literally taken out of his everyday routines by the kidnappers, whereby he loses his identity (the kidnapping therefore signals the beginning of the film’s liminal period). It is only when Vandamm is arrested that Thornhill can regain his true identity and return to his original routines – but with a new wife.
David Lynch’s independently produced American film Blue Velvet (1986) parodies this three-fold narrative structure. It begins with an excessively picturesque series of shots of small town America: a simplistic, naive and innocent environment.
However, underneath this chocolate box image, there is a terrifying world of horror, violence and evil. The film depicts the journey of Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) from this 38
picturesque environment to the underworld, and back again.
In the liminal space of the film’s underworld, Jeffrey confronts Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), the incarnation of evil, whom Jeffrey has to confront and defeat in order to return to the light of day. With the help of Sandy (Laura Dern), Jeffrey manages to defeat Frank, which then enables Jeffrey to return to the world of innocence. As with the opening scene, this world is presented in an excessively idealistic way, a parodic image of normality (or established social events). As with Roger Thornhill in North by Northwest, Jeffrey has been transformed, for he has found himself a partner, Sandy, as a ‘reward’ for his journey into, and successful emergence from, the underworld.
Additional elements of narrative structure include exposition, dangling causes, obstacles, deadlines and dialogue hooks.
Exposition fills in the back story of the characters and their situation. The first scene of Psycho functions primarily as exposition. In the hotel, the dialogue between Sam and Marion is geared to spelling out the back story of their lives – primarily their lack of money, which prevents them from getting married.
The prologue to Steven Spielberg’s A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001) offers concentrated exposition, first in the form of a voice-over (which, we discover by the end of the film, is narrated by an alien) and then a lecture by Professor Hobby (William Hurt).
The voice-over informs the audience that Earth’s resources are scarce and that androids (or mechas) are commonplace because they use few resources. Then, Professor Hobby’s lecture informs his audience in the film – and us – that he wishes to manufacture child mechas for childless couples. (We later discover that the child mecha he develops – David – is modelled on his own lost son.) Professor Hobby wants to develop a child mecha that can love, thereby introducing one of the film’s main themes.
The first scene of Psycho also reveals another standard narrative device: the obstacle, which stands in the way of the characters reaching their goal. Marion’s main goal is to get married, but lack of money is an obstacle. She overcomes this obstacle by stealing Cassidy’s money. But this act of stealing does not solve Marion’s problems, for it throws the film into disequilibrium 2 Film structure: narrative and narration 39
and Marion becomes a fugitive. Additional temporary obstacles plague Marion, including the policeman who wakes her up
and follows her, the car salesman who does not want to sell her a car too quickly, and, of course, the rain, which prevents her from reaching Sam, and instead diverts her to the Bates Motel.
Norman is the final – and permanent – obstacle to Marion achieving her goal. His murder of Marion in the famous shower scene creates a further, more radical disequilibrium than Marion stealing Cassidy’s money. In the end, the disequilibrium created by Norman murdering Marion replaces the disequilibrium created by Marion stealing Cassidy’s money. Psycho returns to equilibrium when Norman is caught for murdering Marion, his mother and the detective Arbogast. Cassidy’s money is only mentioned in passing, indicating its lack of importance in the film’s return to equilibrium. Cassidy’s money is simply an element of the film that has little importance in itself. Instead, its function is simply to get the narrative underway – what Hitchcock called a ‘MacGuffin’.
Kristin Thompson defines the dangling cause as ‘information or action that leads to no effect or resolution until much later in the film’ ( Storytelling in the New Hollywood, p. 12). In fact, we feel that a film is coming to an end precisely because its dangling causes are gradually being tied up. A film such as Mulholland Dr. , to be analy
sed in detail at the end of this chapter, is structured according to many dangling causes.
However, they are not conventionally resolved at the end of the film, even though we can argue they are resolved indirectly.
The deadline is simply a time limit placed on a protagonist to accomplish a goal. Thompson gives two examples:
The deadline may last across the film. In His Girl Friday (1940), for example, the opening scene reveals that Walter Burns is under intense pressure to obtain a reprieve for Earl Williams before the execution, scheduled for the next morning. Or a deadline may last only a brief while, as in the situation near the end of Alien when Ripley sets the spaceship’s self-destruct mechanism and has only ten minutes to escape.
Storytelling in the New Hollywood, p. 16
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The aim of the dialogue hook is to create a link between two consecutive scenes. Thompson notes that:
Frequently at the end of a scene a character will mention what he or she is going to do and will then immediately be seen doing it early in the next scene. Such a line is a ‘dialogue hook’.
Storytelling in the New Hollywood, p. 20
Finally, a few words about the actual arrangement of the narrative events. Most narratives are linear and chronological because they present events in the order in which they happen.
This applies equally to the two Hitchcock films discussed above, Psycho and North by Northwest. However, a film that, for instance, contains a flashback does not have a chronological narrative, because the narrative events are not presented in a linear order. By rearranging the narrative events in a non-linear order, flashbacks upset a film’s cause–effect logic. Flashbacks are evident in films noirs (such as Mildred Pierce and Double Indemnity) and are one of the main devices that create the complex and convoluted narratives that are typical of film noir. ( Film noir will be discussed in Chapter 4.) If we return to the discussion of Psycho, where I talked about beginning the film with scene 3, it is possible to imagine that, when Marion drives out of town with the money, scenes 1 and 2 could appear on screen in the form of flashbacks. These two scenes would then supply the cause of Marion’s actions. At the end of this chapter we shall look at the complex and convoluted narrative structures of Pulp Fiction and Mulholland Dr.
We shall now discuss how narratives are conveyed to the
spectator.
Restricted and omniscient narration
Spectators do not have direct access to a film’s narrative events.
Instead, narrative is filtered through a process called narration.
The term ‘narration’ refers to a mechanism that determines how narrative information is conveyed to the film spectator.
Here I shall discuss how narrative information is conveyed 2 Film structure: narrative and narration 41
to the spectator by means of two modes of filmic narration –
omniscient narration and restricted narration.
Restricted narration ties the representation of film narrative to one particular character only. The spectator experiences only those parts of the narrative that this one particular character experiences. We can therefore think of restricted narration as a
‘filter’ or barrier that allows the spectator only limited access to the narrative events. This type of narration is typical in detective films such as The Big Sleep (discussed below), in which the camera is tied to the detective throughout the whole film.
In omniscient narration, on the other hand, the camera is free to jump from one character to another so that the spectator can gain more information than any one character. Omniscient narration is therefore more like the view from a large window, which allows the spectator a panoramic view of the narrative events. Omniscient narration is typical in melodramas.
However, many films (such as North by Northwest) combine restricted and omniscient narration.
Sometimes in omniscient narration, the camera will disengage itself completely from all characters. In this case, narration is directly controlled by someone outside the narrative – the director. Psycho mixes restricted and omniscient narration. In the first two scenes the camera is tied to Marion, making it restricted narration. But in scene 3, the narration becomes omniscient, as the camera disengages itself from Marion and begins to represent the director’s vision directly. In the first few seconds of the scene, Hitchcock keeps the money off-screen, giving the spectator the fleeting impression that Marion may have gone to the bank and deposited the money. But when Marion turns her back to the camera, Hitchcock moves the camera to reveal the money on the bed. The camera then pans to the half-packed suitcase.
These seemingly simple camera movements speak volumes. In these moments the camera is representing the director’s vision, in which the director is subtly signifying the film’s shift towards disequilibrium. In every scene and every shot of a film, ask yourself, Whose vision is being represented? Who is conveying this narrative information to me? These are the questions to ask yourself when analysing a film’s narration.
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Furthermore, these types of narration produce a particular response in the spectator. In restricted narration, the spectator knows only as much as one character, resulting in mystery.
In omniscient narration, the spectator knows more than the characters, resulting in suspense.
A good illustration of these different spectator responses can be found in an example given by Hitchcock in his famous
interview with François Truffaut ( Hitchcock, p. 52). In this interview Hitchcock gave the example of a bomb placed in a briefcase under a table. If the spectator knows about the bomb and the characters around the table do not, then the spectator, placed in an omniscient position in relation to those characters, will feel suspense as he or she anxiously waits for the bomb to explode or to be discovered. But if the spectator is not privileged over the characters’ knowledge, then the spectator, like the characters, is in for a shock. In this second example, the scene is governed by restricted narration.
In omniscient narration, the spectator is implicated in a fantasy of ‘all-seeingness’, where he or she can imagine seeing everything of importance in the narrative. At certain moments in the film, the camera disengages itself from one character and begins to follow another character, which means that the spectator gains more information about the narrative than any of the characters. This results in suspense because it manipulates the spectator’s expectations as to how a character will react to a particular piece of information that the spectator already knows about, but which the character does not yet know about.
Restricted narration involves the spectator in the narrative in a different way. Because the camera is usually linked to a single character, then we know only as much as that character.
This results in mystery because the spectator, like the character we are following, does not know what will happen next. In detective films, in which the camera follows the detective around the narrative world attempting to uncover the motives of a crime, these motives are hidden equally from the spectator and character by the restricted narration.
2 Film structure: narrative and narration 43
Restricted
The camera filters the narrative only
narration
through the vision of one character
The camera jumps from one character
to the next
Omniscient
narration
No characters (the camera filters the
narrative through the director’s vision)
We shall now see how restricted narration structures Howard Hawks’s 1946 film The Big Sleep, Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film Taxi Driver, how North by Northwest mixes restricted and omniscient narration and, finally, how omniscient narration predominates in Douglas Sirk’s melodrama Magnificent Obsession (1954).
reStrIcteDnarratIonIn ThE Big SlEEp
In The Big Sleep, Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) is hired by General Sternwood to follow a man called Geiger because he is
blackmailing Sternwood’s younger daughter, Carmen. Marlowe follows Geiger to his home but remains outside in his car. As he waits, another car pulls up and the driver goes into Geiger’s house. Marlowe looks in the car and finds out that it belongs to Carmen. Nothing much happens afterwards, so Marlowe
rests. Then he hears a scream and sees a flash of light coming from Geiger’s house. As he approaches Geiger’s house, Marlowe hears gunshots, footsteps as someone exits the house via the back door, and sees two cars pull away. Marlowe enters Geiger’s house and finds Geiger dead on the floor and Carmen drunk.
He also finds an empty camera and a book written in code.
Marlowe takes Carmen home…
What is significant about The Big Sleep in terms of narration is that it strictly adheres to restricted narration; that is, the camera is always tied to Marlowe, so the spectator finds out what happens in the narrative only when Marlowe does. For example, while waiting outside Geiger’s house, Marlowe sees a car pull up outside. He hides in his car so as not to be seen.
Interestingly, the camera remains outside the car and shows 44
a figure getting out of the other car and entering Geiger’s house. Yet, the figure remains in shadow. So, even though the camera does not directly imitate Marlowe’s point of view as he hides in the car, it does not privilege the spectator either. The spectator does not know who got out of the car and neither does Marlowe. It is only when Marlowe goes to inspect the car that he and the spectator find out, at the same time, that the car belongs to Carmen.
Film Studies- An Introduction Page 6