The spectator hears the scream and sees the flash of light at the same time as Marlowe does. We are not privileged into knowing who screamed (although both we and Marlowe can
guess that it was Carmen) and we do not know what the flash of light represents. As Marlowe approaches Geiger’s house, he hears someone leaving via the back door. He does not see who it is, so neither do we. However, we do see a shot of the feet of the person leaving. This is an aural point-of-view shot. It would have been easy for the director to have shown the whole figure (we later find out that it was Sternwood’s chauffeur, Owen Taylor; he was followed by the blackmailer Joe Brody in the second car). But if the film had revealed the identity of Owen Taylor (and Joe Brody), this would have violated the film’s adherence to restricted narration.
Inside Geiger’s house Marlowe attempts to find out what
happened. Again, the spectator closely shadows him and
discovers what happens only when Marlowe does. This analysis of a segment from The Big Sleep therefore illustrates the film’s strict adherence to restricted narration.
reStrIcteDnarratIonIn TAxi DRivER
Taxi Driver narrates the story of Travis Bickle (Robert de Niro).
An ex-marine, he is unable to sleep at nights, so he gets a job as a night-time taxi driver. He begins to date Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), who works in the presidential campaign office of Charles Palantine. But after Travis takes Betsy to a porn film, they split up. Travis’s increasing paranoia (brought on by a multitude of causes) leads him to buy an arsenal of weapons.
He meets a young prostitute, Iris (Jodie Foster), and decides that his mission in life is to save her. At first, Travis decides to assassinate Charles Palantine, but his attempt is thwarted.
2 Film structure: narrative and narration 45
The climax of the film consists of Travis shooting and killing Iris’s pimp, Matthew (Harvey Keitel), and several other men associated with him. Travis is himself wounded in this massacre, and attempts to shoot himself but runs out of bullets. The end of the film shows that the media has treated Travis as a hero, because he saved Iris and returned her to her parents. In the last scene, Travis picks up Betsy in his cab but they fail to communicate with one another. Travis drops off Betsy at her destination and drives off alone.
A few words about the narrative structure of Taxi Driver before proceeding to analyse its narration. The narrative is motivated by Travis’s attempts to find meaning in his life. This attempt leads him briefly to Betsy, but when their relationship breaks up, Travis quickly descends into paranoia and the underworld of New York city (the transition from initial equilibrium to disequilibrium is not clearly marked, but takes place very gradually). The shoot-out marks the violent end to the disequilibrium period of the narrative, leading to a new equilibrium, marked by the transformation of Iris. However, Travis is not transformed by his journey into paranoia and into New York’s underworld. He remains the same insomniac unable to communicate with people.
Taxi Driver is based almost exclusively on restricted narration.
This means that the flow of narrative information is filtered through a single character. Travis Bickle acts as the film’s dominant character, the narrative agent who determines the flow of narrative information to the spectator.
The almost obsessive attachment of the camera to Travis means that spectators gain a very limited perspective on the narrative world. This attachment of the camera to Travis is clearly signified in the film’s credit sequence, in which three shots of New York city, as seen through a car windscreen, are framed by two close-up shots of two eyes (presumably Travis’s) looking off-screen.
Additionally, this positioning of Travis as dominant character is strengthened in the first three scenes of the film. Scene 1 opens with a shot of a glass office door with the words DEPENDABLE
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TAXI SERVICE printed on it, through which we see a man sitting behind a desk. Within a second of this shot appearing on screen, a man enters screen right and physically dominates the frame, even though he has his back to the camera. On his back is written the name ‘Bickle T’. As he walks through the door, the camera moves with him. In other words, the camera has attached itself to Travis’s movement. The camera then moves round to focus on Travis’s face, thus linking name and face in the same shot. This opening shot also links together the words
‘Bickle’ and ‘dependable’, an ironic commentary when we
realize how highly unstable and unbalanced Travis is.
In this opening shot, it is as if the camera is ‘waiting’ for someone (anyone) to approach and enter this door; whoever does so becomes the film’s dominant character. This process of looking for a dominant character is common to the opening of most narrative films, but the seeming randomness of this process was turned into an art form by Hitchcock. In the opening of North by Northwest, for example, the camera wanders through a busy rush-hour crowd before finally attaching itself to Roger Thornhill. And, in the opening of Psycho, the camera pans across the skyline of Phoenix and gradually moves towards a hotel; it seems to randomly pick one hotel room window, penetrate it and find its dominant character in the form of Marion Crane.
But back to Taxi Driver. The first three scenes are based on concentrated exposition, providing in condensed form
background information about the film’s dominant character.
The man behind the desk interviews Travis for the job of a taxi driver. From his questions the spectator comes to understand Travis’s motivation for wanting to work nights as a cab driver, about his honourable discharge from the marines, his age, lack of education and so on.
The final three shots of this scene consist of Travis walking out of the office, through the cab station and into the street. None of these shots provides additional narrative information about Travis; instead, their aim is indirect, to provide atmosphere, and to set the scene in which the film is to unfold. Moreover, this gives Scorsese the opportunity to play with film style. As 2 Film structure: narrative and narration 47
Travis walks out of the office, he looks towards the taxis and then walks off-screen right. The camera then pans left across the garage and stops at the entrance, by which time Travis has re-entered screen space, this time from the left. In other words, he has walked behind the camera.
This use of the space behind the camera is an unusual practice because, as we saw in Chapter 1, narrative film attempts to imitate the space of Renaissance painting and the proscenium space of nineteenth-century theatre. The rules of continuity editing aim to position the spectator in the cinema in a similar way in which the spectator is positioned in theatre – on the side of the invisible fourth wall.
However, in the shot under discussion, Scorsese breaks this rule by allowing Travis to briefly occupy the imaginary space occupied by spectators. This stylistic trick (which is also evident in the films of Ernst Lubitsch and Carl Dreyer) is repeated again, when Travis returns his taxi to the garage after his first night. The taxi is driven behind the camera, rather than in front, as would be usual in order to maintain the proscenium space of theatre and Renaissance painting.
The second scene of Taxi Driver, depicting Travis in his apartment, consists of one shot, a slow panning shot which functions to describe his domestic space (hence the shot is expositional). Furthermore, this shot is accompanied by Travis’s voice-over, which serves to strengthen his role as dominant character. As we shall see in more detail below, this shot is repeated in the film’s penultimate scene. This time it pans across the wall of Travis’s apartment, upon which is pinned a series of newspaper articles defining him as a hero and a letter from Iris’s parents, thanking him for returning their daughter. Travis’s voice-over in scene 2 is now replaced by the voice of Iris’s father.
Like Rupert Pupkin in Scorsese’s The King of Comedy, Travis has attained recognition through controversial means.
The third scene then re-establishes one of the film’s internal norms – point-of-view shots
of New York at night from the perspective of Travis in his taxi. These shots, as with the last three shots of scene 1, serve to set the scene in which the narrative is to be played out and are immediately given meaning 48
by the continuation of Travis’s voice-over offering a negative evaluation of what is shown on screen. This serves further to define Travis’s contradictory character – contradictory because he is at once fascinated and reviled by the low life on New York’s streets.
The windscreen of Travis’s taxi, the use of camera movement and placement, together with Travis’s voice-over, mark the narration as restricted. It could be argued that some scenes are not focused on Travis (in other words, the film does rely on moments of omniscient narration after all). The first scene that may conform to this reading occurs in Charles Palantine’s campaign office, which consists of Betsy talking to a fellow worker, Tom. However, as the scene begins to draw to a close, Betsy notices Travis sitting in his cab staring at her. We then retrospectively read this scene as being focused on Travis. Travis may not be able to hear what Tom and Betsy are talking about, but the scene is nonetheless based on his visual experience.
Another scene in Taxi Driver that could more legitimately be defined as beyond Travis’s awareness is the scene in Matthew’s apartment, where he attempts to convince Iris that he loves her.
However, this scene begins with Travis outside the apartment sitting in his cab, looking off-screen. The implication here is that Travis is well aware of the events going on in the apartment.
Another shot we need to consider in terms of restricted narration is the penultimate scene of the film, already mentioned above.
Here, the camera pans across the wall of Travis’s apartment, showing the newspaper clippings and a letter from Iris’s parents.
Travis is not present in the apartment, so the camera movement is not determined by his awareness at this moment in time. The shot is therefore not focused on Travis, although it does not offer the spectator any information Travis is not already aware of.
Instead, it functions as a new expositional scene, informing the spectator (with some surprise) of what happened to Travis after the shoot-out. The film reached its climax with the shoot-out so we have now reached a new equilibrium.
However, in the shoot-out, there are a few seconds of
omniscient narration, as a man is seen coming out of Iris’s room. The spectator sees him come out of the room and shoot 2 Film structure: narrative and narration 49
Travis in the shoulder. Moreover, once the massacre is over, the camera pans over the scene of the carnage. With the exception of these few shots, it is possible to argue that the rest of Taxi Driver is structured on restricted narration.
As this analysis of Taxi Driver shows, it is very difficult for any film to rigidly adhere to restricted narration, that is, tie itself exclusively to the experiences of the dominant character.
Nonetheless, in Lady in the Lake (Robert Montgomery, 1947), virtually the whole film’s narrative is constructed around the point of view (POV) of the detective:
Edward Branigan has described the effects this has on the film: For most of the 103 minutes, [ lady in the lake ] appears to be an elaborate POV shot from the private eye of detective Phillip Marlowe (played by Robert Montgomery). Characters look directly into the camera when speaking to Marlowe. At various times we see Marlowe’s arms and feet at the edges of the frame; we see his shadow, smoke from his cigarette, his image in mirrors; we see extreme close-ups of a telephone receiver as he talks, lips approaching for a kiss, an on-rushing fist approaching for a knock-out blow. The camera sways as Marlowe walks, shakes when he is slapped, loses focus when liquor is splashed in his eyes, and blacks out when his eyes close for a kiss and when he’s knocked out.
Narrative Comprehension and Film, p. 142
These shots are interrupted only by shots of Marlowe sitting at a desk and speaking directly to the camera about the events being shown. The overall effect is one of artificiality and claustrophobia.
reStrIcteDanDomnIScIentnarratIonIn NoRTh By
NoRThwEST
We shall now see how North by Northwest uses omniscient narration at strategic points in order to manipulate the spectator’s engagement with the narrative. At specific moments in the film, the camera disengages itself from its dominant 50
character, Roger Thornhill, in order to give the spectator some additional information about the narrative that Thornhill does not possess.
Narration does not become omniscient in haphazard fashion; rather, it does so only at specific moments in the narrative.
There are several significant moments when the narration becomes omniscient in North by Northwest. (Remember that omniscient moments are those which lie outside Thornhill’s span of awareness; sometimes it may be a single shot, sometimes an entire scene.)
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The first omniscient moment is in the bar of the Plaza Hotel, when Thornhill attracts the attention of the pageboy who is paging George Kaplan. The camera quite suddenly and
dramatically disengages itself from Thornhill and the group of men he is drinking with to show the two kidnappers. The spectator then sees, from the kidnapper’s point of view, the pageboy walk up to Thornhill. The kidnappers then wrongly infer that Thornhill is Kaplan.
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The second moment is when Thornhill, his mother and the
police go to the house where Thornhill said he was taken, to check up on his story about the kidnapping. As this group drives away from the house, the camera remains behind
and pans left to reveal a gardener, who is in fact one of the kidnappers.
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The third moment is in the public lounge in the UN building, when the camera cuts from Thornhill to the same kidnapper.
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So far, these examples refer to single shots which are inserted into scenes constructed around restricted narration. But the fourth example of omniscient narration refers to an entire scene, in which the CIA professor explains to his colleagues that Kaplan is a non-existent decoy agent (although he is in fact indirectly explaining to the spectator who Kaplan is).
This scene comes between the shot of Thornhill escaping
from the UN and his arrival at Grand Central Station. In other words, the scene ‘interrupts’ Thornhill’s escape, for we can easily imagine the scene at the train station directly following his escape from the UN.
2 Film structure: narrative and narration 51
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The fifth major moment of omniscient narration is when
a cashier at the train station looks at a news photo of
Thornhill and then telephones the police. But in this instance, Thornhill has guessed the additional information that the spectator is privileged to see, for Thornhill turns away from the window before the cashier returns.
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The next moment occurs on the train, when Thornhill meets Eve. In Eve’s compartment, Thornhill hides in the washroom while the porter makes up the bed. The camera remains
with Thornhill in the washroom. But afterwards, we see the porter carrying a message to Vandamm. Here, the narration has become omniscient, for the camera has disengaged from Thornhill in order to provide the spectator with additional information, namely, that Eve is working with Vandamm.
Yet the narration is not being completely omniscient – at this stage in the film, it does not reveal the true identity of Eve (a CIA agent).
There are a few other moments of omniscient narration: when Eve telephones Leonard (Vandamm’s right-hand man) at Chicago train station when Thornhill is, again, in the washroom having a shave; there are two shots of the professor at the auction; and, finally, the shots of Eve and Vandamm walking towards the plane near the end of the film while Thornhill is still in the house.
These are the major moments in the film when omniscient
narrati
on dominates. Their primary aim is to create suspense; they create suspense because the spectator knows more than Thornhill, and is anticipating how Thornhill will react to this situation.
omnIScIentnarratIonIn MAgNificENT oBSESSioN
In opposition to restricted narration, a film based
predominantly on omniscient narration presents the spectator with a wide breadth of narrative information. This is achieved by the narration shifting from one character to another, so that narrative information is conveyed to the spectator from many sources. This type of narration is commonly used in melodramas and television soap operas, in order to create a discrepancy in knowledge between the spectator and characters.
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Like the moments of omniscient narration in North by Northwest, the spectator of melodrama is presented with more narrative information than any one character can possibly know. However, unlike melodrama, North by Northwest is not based on the systematic use of omniscient narration. The purpose of systematically employing omniscient narration in melodrama and television soap operas is to create a plethora of dramatic scenes where characters find out what the spectator already knows.
To illustrate how omniscient narration is systematically used in melodramas, I shall analyse Douglas Sirk’s film Magnificent Obsession. As with most melodramas, Magnificent Obsession narrates the story of more than one character. The film begins with Bob Merrick (Rock Hudson), a rich playboy testing his speedboat on a lake. The boat crashes and he has to be revived with the help of a neighbour’s resuscitator. However, while the resuscitator is being used on Merrick, its owner Dr Wayne Phillips, has a heart attack and dies. Merrick is admitted to the hospital run by the late Dr Phillips. Merrick discharges himself from the hospital and tries to walk home. He is given a lift by Helen (Jane Wyman), the widow of Dr Phillips. At first, the two do not recognize one another. But Merrick soon discovers who Helen is. He collapses and Helen takes him back to the hospital. It is only then that she finds out who he is. The rest of the film narrates the interrelation between Merrick and Helen Phillips and the transformations they undergo. Helen, at first, hates Merrick because he indirectly killed her husband but Merrick has fallen in love with Helen. In a scene where he attempts to express his love to her, she is run down by a car and blinded (remember this is a melodrama!). Doctors proclaim that she will never see again. On a trip to Europe, Helen decides to disappear (aided by her best friend, Joyce).
Film Studies- An Introduction Page 7