UNIT THREE-LESSON EIGHT: STORY
The Stories that Films Tell
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Assignment List. Recommended time to complete Lesson Eight: 9 hours. You may be interested in these video clips from You Tube about story structure. |
WEBLECTURE #8
The Stories Films Tell
Definitions: Story and Structure | Genre | Genre Cycles |
North by NorthwestNarratives are composed in order to reward, modify, frustrate, or defeat the perceiver’s search for coherence. –David Bordwell*
STORY AND STRUCTURE.
When we tell a "story," we give our listener a summary of what happened: the facts and details of an occurrence or a sequence of events, in chronological order—what happened first, what happened next, what happened then, etc. When the content of the telling is of central concern, we are in the realm of "story."
There are many ways to tell a story, many ways to arrange and manipulate the story materials. When the method of telling is of central concern, we are in the realm of "narratology," the study of narrative forms, structures, storytelling strategies and conventions, genres, and symbolic interpretations. The vantage point from which a story is told, the voice or perspective of the storyteller, is referred to as "point of view" in literature and in film. Who tells the story makes a difference in how the listener understands the story materials. If I tell the story of an accident from the point of view of the driver, I get one version of events. If I tell it from the perspective of the passenger, I get another. The police on the scene have their version. Any witnesses will add still another point of view. And the other driver (the one who cut me off!) will probably tell a very different tale (I can hear him yelling, "What do you mean I cut you off? You were speeding and clipped me!") I can choose to tell my story from any (or all) of these perspectives, as Kurosawa did in Rashomon, a remarkable film because of its complex narrative structure underscoring the themes of confusion and multiplicity of perspectives on truth.
STORY—that means the general subject matter and details or raw materials of an event in chronological sequence, beginning at the beginning and ending at the end. Structure—that's the way the details are delivered from storyteller to audience, the plot, the pattern of revelation of story materials. When the film director Jean-Luc Godard was asked whether a movie should have a beginning, middle, and end, he said, "Yes—but not necessarily in that order."
Remember Citizen Kane? Begins at the end, goes to the middle, then back to the beginning, and somehow ends up at the end again. If I ask you to summarize the story of Citizen Kane, you’d probably say something like this: The film tells the story of Charles Foster Kane, from boyhood when his parents in Colorado gave him up to be raised by a banker-guardian in charge of his fortune; to his building an empire in the newspaper business; then through marriage, politics, and castle building; and finally to his death and the aftermath. The movie recounts his failed bid for a governorship—failed through the scandal of a "love nest" with mistress Susan Alexander. His first wife divorces him, he marries Alexander, and then tries to make her an opera star despite the fact that she does not have operatic ability. When he realizes that dream of making his wife an opera star is doomed, he builds her a castle, Xanadu, where she spends her time entertaining guests she doesn’t care about when she isn’t alone working jigsaw puzzles or shouting across the cavernous rooms to complain to Charles that she’s bored. Kane dies, he gets a "News on the March" obituary, and a newspaper reporter is sent off to learn the meaning of his dying word, "Rosebud." The reporter interviews people who knew Kane: his guardian and banker, Thatcher (who, because he’s dead, gives his information through his diary); his business manager, Bernstein; his "friend," and drama critic on his paper, Leland; his second wife, Susan Alexander; and his butler, Raymond. They all tell slightly different versions of parts of Kane's life.
You’d probably do a better job of summarizing the story, but the point is that retelling the story means you set it into chronological order, telling the sequence of events from beginning to end in time.
If I ask you to tell me HOW the story is told—that is, to explain the narrative structure (the plot structure)—you would have to go back in your mind to remember the sequence of parts as you saw them on screen. You’d start with Kane's death, go the "News on the March," then to the newsroom where the reporter gets his assignment, then to the various people who are interviewed—each of whom tells a bit about Kane. In fact, to get the narrative structure of a film, you need a listing of the scenes or sequences, with information about what happens in each of the scenes or sequences, and when, where, and to whom these things occur. Then you can reconstruct the narrative structure.
The most common and popular narrative structure in the U.S. is the "classical paradigm" –a linear plot structure that may take the form of a chase, a search, or a journey. A classical narrative structure gives a close match to the story, because it is told in chronological order—without flashbacks or flash forwards. Giannetti’s definition, discussion, and examples are excellent and worth close study (cf. 328-332). Orson Welles' Citizen Kane does NOT conform to the classical paradigm, nor does Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon. Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest, however, is an excellent example of a film in the "classical paradigm." So are Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove and Jane Campion's The Piano.
GENRE. Once the movie begins, the narrative limits are further defined by expectations set by the style of the titles and the opening visuals, sounds, and musical score. As members of the film audience, we bring expectations to a film experience, based on the actors performing in it (particularly stars), the film’s title, the filmmakers (particularly the director and writer) or producers and distributors, and the genre of the film.
The word genre is a French word meaning "type of thing"—as in the words "generic," or "genus," or "GenX." As English does so often, it borrowed the word from the French, liked it, and now claims it as part of the English lexicon. The word "genre" is used in many different contexts. In literature, we use various classification systems when we talk about genre:
fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama
adult, young adult, children
history, psychology, biology, philosophy, etc.
classical, neoclassical, romantic, modern, postmodernYou get the idea: a classification system is a way of organizing raw materials. The Library of Congress sorts all the resources it receives every day and puts each item into a "box" called a "category"—this is a subject header, or area of knowledge. A bookstore uses a classification system to help customers find the books they want. The categories formed have traits in common that constitute their "genre." Imagine trying to find a book on Alfred Hitchcock in a bookstore or library that uses no classification system, but simply puts the books where there's a space! Imagine trying to find a videotape at a store that files the tapes willy-nilly!
In film, certain conventions, including narrative strategies, are associated with certain genres. Sometimes, we want to watch a particular kind of movie; in this case, we look for a particular film genre rather than for a particular film title.
"Honey, what kind of film you wanna watch tonight?"
"Oh, I don’t know. How about a disaster film?"
When you go to the library or video merchant with a particular title in mind, you just ask the clerk for the film. When you’re not particular about the film, you wander around the sections, which separate films by genre. If you want to watch a disaster film, for example, you know what to expect: a set-up getting you close to certain characters so you care about what happens to them, a conflict between the characters, a revelation of the impending disaster (a tornado, an earthquake, a meteor hitting the earth, a fire, a flood), news preparations for, and attempts to avert the disaster. You expect that the characters will prepare for the disaster, will develop their relationships, and will have conflicts. You are held in suspense till the moment when the disaster hits (here’s where we get the special effects that are the hallmark of the disaster film), and you expect that the characters will struggle for survival, with the masses of people will scream and get crushed, rolled, blown up, drowned, burned, swept away, etc.; some of the characters you care about will die, but at least one of them will survive, a hero at the end. Usually there are two or more heroes, often a single pair—male and female—rises out of the dust.
As Giannetti puts it,
Our knowledge of a given era or genre leads us to expect a predictable set of variables. For example, most westerns take place in the late nineteenth century and are set in the American western frontier. From books, TV, and other westerns, we have a rough knowledge of how frontier people were supposed to dress and behave.
When narratives fail to act according to tradition, convention, or our sense of history, as in Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles. . ., we are forced to reassess our cognitive methods and our attitude toward the narrative. Either we adjust to the author’s presentation, or we reject the offending innovation as inappropriate, crude, or self-indulgent. (324-25)
EXAMPLES OF FILM GENRES AND GENRE CYCLES. There are many different ways to classify films, and not all the classifiers agree with one another.
By general category:
- Fiction, nonfiction, avant-garde (film poetry).
- Realist, classical, formalist.
- Fiction feature, documentary, short live action, animation.
- Rating: G, PG, R, X, NR
- Audience: children, teenagers, parents, elders
- Purpose: entertainment, educational, promotional, propaganda
- By national origin, language, period,
- By director, star, cinematographer, producer, distributor, etc.
- Mainstream or independent; popular, art, cult; B-film or other
- By story technique, style, or tone
- Action-suspense
- Comedy (slapstick, screwball. . .)
- Erotic
- Film noir
- Melodrama
- Musical
- Romance
- Satire
- Shock
- Thriller
- Tragedy
- By story content—subject matter or theme
- Action-Adventure-Survival
- Animal
- Coming of Age
- Cult
- Disaster
- Domestic: home and family
- Fantasy
- Gangster
- Horror and/or occult
- Journey/Travel
- Love story
- Martial Arts
- Monster
- Peace and Social Justice: non-violent conflict resolutions
- Police story
- Mystery
- Road trip
- Science Fiction
- War and Violence
- Western
Recommended Websites on Genre: Tim Dirks provides an overview and many links to various sites on different genres: http://www.filmsite.org/genres.html. The fun in thinking about genre comes in critiquing classifications and inventing new ones. Movie buffs have gotten excited about developing Websites focusing on certain popular genres. Some of them are listed below:
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Genre films often reveal the shared values and fears of the generations making and watching them. As such, they can be seen as modern myths and commentaries on everyday life. This area of discourse is fruitful, and we will take it up in this class. You'll get some practice exploring this aspect of film interpretation in your response to one of the Assignments in this Lesson. Further discussion of myth and nonfiction narratives (documentaries and avant-garde films) and the theories of Hippolyte Taine, Freud, and Jung will be taken up in more depth in Lesson 10, when we look closely at theory and ideology in the making and interpreting of films.
*David Bordwell is Jacques Ledoux Professor of Film Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His books include Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema (Harvard Film Studies 1991), The Cinema of Eisenstein (Harvard 1993), and On the History of Film Style (Harvard UP, 1997). For more information about his work, see the David Bordwell Website.
North by Northwest (USA, Hitchcock, 1959)
NORTH BY NORTHWEST STUDY HINTS. Ernest Lehman, who wrote the screenplay for North by Northwest, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen. To get to know the story in the film, and prepare for the quiz, practice describing the parts of the movie as parts of the narrative form that Giannetti calls the "classical paradigm": exposition, identification of protagonist and antagonist, major scenes in the rising action, point of climax, resolution, and closure. Take notes in which you identify the major locations for each section of the film (hint: there are four cities or outskirts of cities, and one moving location)—and discuss the most intense scenes in relation to the classical paradigm (with the climax being the point of highest intensity in the whole film. You'll also be asked to consider how this narrative reflects the period of history during which it was made (hints for topics on which to comment: Cold War anxiety about the USSR and other Soviet bloc nations, gender stereotypes, postwar prosperity and nationalism, capitalist ideology and socio-economic class issues). Can you delineate one or more details in the film to illustrate your commentary? Does the tightly controlled, cleverly resolved narrative structure of the film world reflect the reality of the late 1950s? (What reality?) Or does the film offer an escape for filmgoers? (Escape from what? To what?) Use your imagination and experience as well as you knowledge of modern history and American culture.
GENRE. In North by Northwest (U.S.A., Alfred Hitchcock, 1959) can be classified in many ways, depending on why you are doing the classification. If you want to find the movie at a video store, you'll probably look under "thriller" or "spy thriller." You might even find it under "action," though except for a memorable plane crash and car ride, it seems tame by today's "blow-up, fight, shoot something/someone every few minutes" kind of action flick. You could also classify it as a "romance" or "romantic comedy" if you're interested in the relationship between Roger and Eve. A sociologist, psychologist, or historian might classify this film in terms of its subtext of "Alcohol Abuse" (Roger and alcohol never seem too far apart), or its treatment of genders or heterosexual relationships ("Dumb Blonde" movies, for example). If you are interested in American history or want to show your friend a film that reveals a particular historical period, you might consider classifying it as a "Cold War Movie." If you are focusing on the auteur theory in film, you could classify it as an "Alfred Hitchcock Film." You could classify it according to its technical features or awards (e.g., classify it among "screenwriter award" movies). However you classify the movie, you are considering its "genre."
- Recommended Web sites on Hitchcock and/or North by Northwest: IMDb North by Northwest site | Senses of Cinema: Alfred Hitchcock | Alfred Hitchcock: Master of Suspense | North by Northwest—Tim Dirks' page | Dialogue Script | Lehman's shooting script (pdf) | some North by Northwest locations | Screenshot gallery (photos) | The Bernard Herrmann Web Pages (film composer)
- Recommended Websites for information on the 50s: Anti-Communism and Conformity in the 1950s | Blacklisted Hollywood: A PBS Online Special | The Hollywood Blacklist | HUAC and Censorship Changes | HUAC=House on Un-American Activities Committee, run by Joe McCarthy) | The Literature & Culture of the American 1950s | Walt Disney's 1947 Testimony before HUAC (the House on Un-American Activities Committee). George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck, released in 2005, provides an excellent glimpse into what courage it took to speak truth to the power of Joe McCarthy, who ruined careers and terrorized a nation in a relentless pursuit of Communist sympathizers and whose mad abuse of power makes one think of General Jack D. Ripper of Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove —only Joe McCarthy was real. (Edward R. Murrow: "We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.") Also check the Cold-War links on Floren's Dr. Strangelove History page.
Take a Guided Tour of North by Northwest with director Alfred Hitchcock (~3-1/2 mins)
UNIT TWO: Lesson 6: Acting |
Lesson 7: Drama |
Lesson 8: Story | Lesson 9: Writing |
Lesson 10: Ideology, I
| Lesson 11, Ideology II - and Critique
Video Locator | IMDb |
Created 18 October 1998. Revised
12 October 2009.
Gloria Floren, Letters Department, MiraCosta College, One Barnard Drive,
Oceanside, California 92056.
Contents Copyright 1998-2009 Gloria L. Floren. All rights reserved. U.S.A.
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