Chapter 3  The System of Narrative Form


'Narrative' is a series of events taking place in specific times and places with causal relations (narrated).   It is normally what we call a 'story'.  (74)

'Diegesis' is a term used to describe all that take place in the stories of a film.  When we say that certain elememts are diegetical, it means they come out of the stories, not added to them.  In And God Spoke, the subtitles indicating each character's role (such as 'producer' or 'diretor') are not diegetical.  The 'New on the March' segment in Citizen Kane would be nondiegetical, if there weren't the shot showing a group of reporters watching it.  It would be an added segment not taking place in the story of the film about Kane, though it would certainly help us to know more about him.  (76)

'Plot' means everything an audience see or hear on screen, including those nondiegetical elements.  'Emplotment' is the arrangement of a story's form.  (76-77)  A story can be told in many different ways by giving it different plots.  In terms of movie, the colored version of a originally black-and-white film is having a different plot now, since the visual effect is now different.

'Cause and Effect' is crucial to a story, for it is how our interest in a story is aroused.  Most stories arrange their plots around it.   We may be given a cause at the beginning of a film and follow its development to see its effect.  Or an effect may be shown at the beginning for the audience to find its cause.  Citizen Kane  is a good example here.

Time is an element that a story likes to play with.  We may look at the order, duration, or frequency of time in a story.   For order, it can have 'flashback' (telling a story in retrospection) or 'flashforward' (telling a story in the future).  For the duration of time, we talk about 'story time' (the length of time covered in a story) and 'screen time' (the length of time used to screen a film).  The frequency of an event is an indication of its significance.  By showing an event more than once a film may reinforce its importance or by varying it a little bit the second time change its meaning.

Space refers to the settings/locations of a story as well as the screen space such as 'framing'.

Beginning, Ending, and Development of a story may bring the 'change of knowledge', we know more about life after we know how a story develops from beginning to end.  An ending may bring a closure to a story or leave it open for the audience to think about it more.  Normally the beginning and ending of a film are quite significant in diciding the film's meanings.

Narration is the process of telling a story.  The 'range' and 'depth' of a story are decided by what is told and how it is told.  Here we talk about narrative 'point of view', the narrator (is he or she a diegetic character? or an objective nondiegetic voice, that is an 'omniscient narration' ).

All the above elements become relatively set in genre films.  You would expect to see more or less the same kind of story with similar cause and effect plot as well as time and space elements.

Classical Hollywood films are those films whose plots focus on 'individual characters as causal agents'.  They are films about these characters' desires and the inevitable conflicts.  Psychological aspects are an important part.  The time order will be clear following a linear development.  They normally adopt an object narrative viewpoint.  Their ending will be an obvious closure (denoument).


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