Narrative and Narration: Analyzing Cinematic Storytelling 2020017576, 2020017577, 9780231181433, 9780231543590

Citation preview

SHORT CUTS INTRODUCTIONS TO FILM STUDIES

SHORT CUTS INTRODUCTIONS TO FILM STUDIES FOR A COMPLETE LIST OF TITLES IN THE SERIES, PLEASE SEE PAGES 133– 134

N A R R AT I V E A N D N A R R AT I O N A N A LY Z I N G C I N E M AT I C S T O R Y T E L L I N G

WA R R E N B U C K L A N D

WA L L F L OWE R N E W YO R K

Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu Copyright © 2021 Columbia University Press Wallflower Press is an imprint of Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Buckland, Warren, author. Title: Narrative and narration : analyzing cinematic storytelling / Warren Buckland. Description: New York : Wallflower [2020] | Series: Short cuts | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020017576 (print) | LCCN 2020017577 (ebook) | ISBN 9780231181433 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780231543590 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Motion pictures—Philosophy. | Narration (Rhetoric) | Motion picture authorship. Classification: LCC PN1995 .B7977 2020 (print) | LCC PN1995 (ebook) | DDC 91.4301—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020017576 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020017577

Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America Cover image: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation/Photofest

CONTENTS

Preface

vii

Acknowledgments

xiii

PART 1. THE BASICS 1

The Emergence of Narrative, Narration, and Narrative Agents in Early Cinema (The Gay Shoe Clerk) 3

2

Narrative Structure in Classical and Contemporary Hollywood (Hitchcock and James Bond) 11

3

Narration (Gone Girl, beDevil, and Jurassic Park)

4

Enunciation and Reflexivity (The Grand Budapest Hotel and Marnie) 47

29

PART 2. TYPES OF STORYTELLING 5

Feminism, Narrative, Authorship (Gone Girl and Orlando) 65

v

CONTENTS

6

Art Cinema Narration (Alice in the Cities and Inland Empire) 81

7

Unreliable Narration and Puzzle Films (You Only Live Once, Stage Fright, and The Butterfly Effect)

8

Videogame Logic (The Fifth Element, Inception, and Source Code) 105 Coda

117

Works Cited Index

vi

129

121

94

PREFACE

In Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954) the hero, Jeff, is confined to his wheelchair looking out of his window at his neighbors. Except in a few significant scenes, the camera remains attached to Jeff’s awareness and visual experience of the story’s events. This means that the spectator’s access to the story is restricted, for it is filtered through the consciousness of one character. One night he hears a scream from an apartment occupied by his neighbor (Thorwald) and his wife; he later sees Thorwald leaving and returning to his apartment several times, carrying a large case. The spectator experiences these events from Jeff’s perspective. But in the early morning Jeff falls asleep; the camera then pans from the sleeping Jeff across the courtyard and shows Thorwald and a woman leaving the apartment; the camera then pans back to Jeff, still asleep. This is a moment of omniscient narration, a form of storytelling that places spectators in a position of superiority over the main character. In this moment in Rear Window, spectators are given more story information than Jeff—of Thorwald leaving the apartment with a woman. When nurse Stella turns up, Jeff tells her he thinks Thorwald has murdered his wife and has disposed of her body, and provides the clues (screams, Thorwald’s comings and goings with a large case). Up to the moment Jeff falls asleep, spectators make the same inferences, for they share the same story information. But when Jeff falls asleep, spectators see what Jeff does not see—Thorwald leaving the apartment with a woman.

vii

PREFACE

From that moment in the film, spectators think differently from Jeff because of the additional information they have. Jeff’s detective friend Doyle becomes involved, and eventually discovers the same piece of information, and tells Jeff that Thorwald was seen leaving the apartment with a woman and took her to the train station, while Thorwald returned to the apartment. Doyle then reinterprets the events as a domestic dispute, and the characters and spectator alike are encouraged to assume that the woman who left the apartment was Mrs. Thorwald. Only toward the end of the film do the characters and spectators discover it was not Mrs. Thorwald leaving the apartment, but instead was Mr. Thorwald’s new love interest, and Thorwald did after all murder his wife, cut up her body, and carry it out of the apartment in his case. This book presents the thesis that the success or failure of a film such as Rear Window is determined by the effectiveness of its storytelling. The theory presented in the following chapters identifies the basic components of cinematic storytelling across several filmmaking practices and explains how they contribute, either singly or in combination, to a film’s overall design. However, making a successful film is not simply a matter of using a particular storytelling component or not. Instead, a film’s success is determined by how it creates a well-formed narrative structure and the way it limits and discloses that narrative to spectators. A film with popular stars, famous directors, and high production values can still fail if its storytelling components are not well formed—if they do not effectively contribute to the film’s overall design. But well-formedness is not the whole story. All theories of storytelling go beyond the immediate surface of films and identify the underlying components and structures that make them meaningful. While certain components of storytelling simply shape films into a pleasing aesthetic pattern, creating a sense of unity, balance, and coherence, other components organize films through oppressive ideological values—patriarchy, racism, inequality, homophobia. Remaining on the surface will not lead to an adequate understanding of ideology nor will it inspire screenwriters (and storytellers more generally) to challenge and replace it with an alternative. This is why theories that identify the underlying components of storytelling and expose their ideological values are fundamental to the study of filmmaking.

viii

PREFACE

The terminology used to study storytelling is notoriously complex and contradictory. But the terminology is less important than the conceptual distinctions the terms try to identify. Robert Burgoyne provides some clarification when he asserts that “narrative analysis . . . distinguishes such elements as story outline and plot structure, the roles played by the characters or actors, the way narrative information is channelled through point of view, and the relationship of the narrative discourse to the inhabitants and events of the fictional world” (1990, 3). More specifically, theoreticians of narrative make the following conceptual distinctions: 1. a chronological sequence of character-centered actions and events; 2. the rearrangement or reorganization of those actions and events; 3. agents (narrators, authors, and enunciators) who control the spectator’s access to the sequence of actions and events; and 4. the manifestation of actions, events, and agents in a particular medium. These distinctions form the core of this book and are introduced in part 1: “The Basics.” A sequence of character-centered actions and events is a product or object, and is called a variety of names, including “narrative” or “story.” Chapter 2 focuses on the seminal work of Vladimir Propp (1968), Umberto Eco (1979), and Peter Wollen (1982), who reduce narrative to its system of preexisting elements and their rules of combination. This work is independent from any specific practice of filmmaking; it not only enables film scholars to identify the conventions of classical Hollywood cinema, to define it as the dominant mode of filmmaking, but also assists in identifying and defining the strategies of alternative filmmaking practices. The process that rearranges narrative and filters it through the characters and narrators is usually called “narration” or “plot.” Its function is threefold: to reorganize narrative actions, to control spectators’ access to those actions, and to filter those actions through characters and narrators. These three aspects of narration are discussed in chapter 3 and illustrated with examples from Gone Girl (David Fincher, 2014), beDevil (Tracey Moffat, 1993), and Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993).

ix

PREFACE

A key component of narration is the narrative agent. A narrative agent (such as a narrator, an author, or enunciator) controls the process of narration and its manifestation in a medium. A film will either attempt to conceal its narrative agent and process of production/enunciation, as is typical of classical films, or draw attention to that process, making the film reflexive (chapter 4). Film manifests narrative and narration via a specific combination of materials of expression—techniques such as camera placement and movement, shot framing, lighting, editing, and sound design. These techniques are discussed throughout the book. Although narrative and narration are generally regarded as independent of media, “narration” is sometimes defined as a combination of narration and medium-specific techniques. The book opens with a brief discussion of the emergence of narrative, narration, and narrative agents in early cinema (chapter 1). It aims to demonstrate how filmic space and time are manipulated in order to narrate stories and to absorb spectators into a film’s fictional world. Part 2, “Types of Storytelling,” employs and develops the concepts presented in part 1 to examine specific practices of narrative cinema. Rather than present a complete, definitive survey of film narrative across the entire history of cinema from around the world, this part identifies a handful of significant trends prominent in the current cinematic landscape: the issue of feminist narratives and women filmmakers (chapter 5); the continuing importance of art cinema as a niche film practice (chapter 6); the emergence of a distinct mode of storytelling based on unreliable narration and puzzle plots (chapter 7); and the development of a small group of films influenced by videogame logic (chapter 8). These specific case studies show how to identify and analyze any filmmaking practice from a storytelling perspective. As well as presenting theories of narrative, narration, and narrative agents, this book introduces a set of methods. A method offers a framework to guide film analysis. Methods are important because they act as a constant reference point—a set of standard, shared practices—that guides the analysis of a particular film or sequence of film. Following a method also informs the reader exactly how the film analysis was carried out and how the results were achieved. Referring to theories and methods therefore makes the analysis of film an open and reflexive process. Furthermore, each theory and its method necessarily examine one aspect of film

x

PREFACE

while eliminating other aspects. This is not a weakness; instead, it makes the research focused. This book attempts to demonstrate that narrative, narration, and narrative agents are fundamental both to the cinema and to the study of cinema. Some of the many key books and essays I draw from include (in alphabetical order): Raymond Bellour, The Analysis of Film (2000) David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film (1985) Edward Branigan, Narrative Comprehension and Film (1992) Nick Browne, The Rhetoric of Filmic Narration (1982) Seymour Chatman, Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (1978) Teresa de Lauretis’s seminal essay “Desire in Narrative” (in 1984, 103–57) Thomas Elsaesser’s essays on Hollywood written in the 1970s and 1980s, collected in The Persistence of Hollywood (2012) André Gaudreault, From Plato to Lumière (2009) Stephen Heath’s essay “Narrative Space” (1976) Sarah Kozloff, Invisible Storytellers: Voice-Over Narration in American Fiction Film (1988) Christian Metz, Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema (1974) George M. Wilson, Narration in Light (1986), and Peter Wollen’s essays collected in part 1 of Readings and Writings (1982). More recent general approaches to narrative and narration include Kristin Thompson’s Storytelling in the New Hollywood (1999) and Peter Verstraten’s Film Narratology (2009). In addition, a series of books presents narrowly focused theories of specific aspects of film: the emergence of narrative in early cinema (see chapter 1); point of view (Edward Branigan’s Point of View in the Cinema [1984]); film suspense (Vorderer, Wulff, and Friederichsen’s Suspense: Conceptualizations, Theoretical Analyses, and Empirical Explorations [1996]); complex storytelling, including puzzle films and mind-game films (Buckland 2009, 2014; Cameron 2008; Elsaesser 2018; Hven 2017; Kiss and Willemsen 2017; Littschwager 2019); postclassical narration (Eleftheria

xi

PREFACE

Thanouli’s Post-Classical Cinema: An International Poetics of Film Narration [2009b]); female characters in contemporary narrative cinema (Hilary Neroni’s The Violent Woman: Femininity, Narrative, and Violence In Contemporary American Cinema [2005], Agnieszka Piotrowska’s The Nasty Woman and The Neo Femme Fatale in Contemporary Cinema [2019]); the study of film narrative through the orality-literacy paradigm (Sheila J. Nayar’s Cinematically Speaking: The Orality-Literacy Paradigm for Visual Narrative [2010]); the role of music (Guido Heldt’s Music and Levels of Narration in Film [2013]); and numerous books on film, cognition, and emotion, including Joseph Anderson and Barbara Fisher Anderson’s Narration and Spectatorship in Moving Images (2007), Nitzan Ben-Shaul’s Cinema of Choice: Optional Thinking and Narrative Movies (2012), Kathrin Fahlenbrach’s Embodied Metaphors in Film, Television, and Video Games: Cognitive Approaches (2018), Carl Plantinga’s Screen Stories: Emotion and the Ethics of Engagement (2018), Greg M. Smith’s Film Structure and the Emotion System (2003), Murray Smith’s Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema (1995), Ed Tan’s Emotion and the Structure of Narrative Film (1996), and Peter Wuss’s Cinematic Narration and Its Psychological Impact: Functions of Cognition, Emotion and Play (2009). In this book I can only engage with a fraction of this rich array of scholarship. But the existence of an extensive range of assorted theories and methods demonstrates the significance film scholars attach to the study of storytelling across numerous filmmaking practices, from classical and contemporary Hollywood to art cinema, puzzle films, and feminist cinema.

xii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many chapters have been “tested out” on students in various classes over the years at Oxford Brookes University—but especially in Film Theory (U64083) and Independent American Cinema (U64033). I wish to thank the students who responded to the lectures, seminars, and films screened; your responses helped to shape the following chapters. Colleagues in film studies have also read chapters and provided feedback, especially Pete Boss, Edward Branigan, Thomas Elsaesser, Agnieszka Piotrowska, Lindsay Steenberg, and Francesco Sticchi. Although a few chapters have appeared in print before, they have been rewritten and reformulated for this volume. Sections of chapters 2 and 3 (on narrative and narration) were presented at a workshop at the University of Bedfordshire in May 2019 at the invitation of Agnieszka Piotrowska. The analysis of Gone Girl (in chapters 3 and 5) was presented at Jagiellonian University, Kraków, in June 2019 (in a joint presentation with Agnieszka Piotrowska) at the invitation of Barbara Szczekała. A different version of chapter 8 (on videogame logic) was presented at the conference “Fast, Slow and Reverse: Faces of Contemporary Film Narration” at the University of Gda sk in May 2017. I wish to thank Mirosław Przylipiak for the invitation to give a keynote presentation at the conference. This book is dedicated to the memory of two mentors who shaped my ideas and offered me constant support over the previous three decades: Edward Branigan (1945–2019) and Thomas Elsaesser (1943–2019).

xiii

N A R R AT I V E A N D N A R R AT I O N

PART I THE BASICS

1

THE EMERGENCE OF NARR ATIVE, NARR ATION, AND NARR ATIVE AGENTS IN EARLY CINEMA ( The Gay Shoe Clerk)

The development of cinema into a storytelling medium was not inevitable. Narrative (a linear causal temporal logic), narration (the recounting of narrative events), and narrative agents are not pregiven elements of film but were imposed upon film form in its early years of development. Cinema began by adopting one mode, the “cinema of attractions,” but gradually embraced a different mode, a cinema of “narrative integration” (Gaudreault and Gunning 2006; Gunning 1986, 1991). The cinema could have remained a specialized scientific instrument, or a fairground amusement, but in the early part of the twentieth century it transformed into a popular medium of mass entertainment, a commodity with commercial potential driven by visual pleasure and desire. Narrative, narration, and narrative agents are fundamental to cinema’s transformation into a form of mass entertainment. But how did the cinema develop into a narrative medium? To study the emergence of film as a storytelling medium involves exploring how narrative, narration, and narrative agents were imposed on and integrated into film form. More specifically, it involves studying how film form (editing, lighting, camera movement, camera placement, etc.) serves the logics of visual pleasure and of storytelling. Early cinema is not an inferior type of narrative film, but instead has its own distinct aesthetic system—a detached, presentational mode of address whose purpose is to show and to exhibit, to present to spectators a series of spectacles or attractions. Tom Gunning implies that showing and exhibiting are film’s specific

3

THE BASICS

qualities, and that early cinema exploits these qualities. Narrative cinema also has its own distinct aesthetic system—a representational mode of address whose purpose is to transform spectacles or attractions into stories. Narrative film manipulates filmic space and time in order to tell rather than show, which results in a new mode of spectatorship: rather than observe a spectacle from a detached perspective, spectators are absorbed into the film’s fictional diegesis or storyworld. This process of absorption is fueled by visual desire or voyeurism, which replaces observation and exhibitionism. This chapter outlines the transformation of the “cinema of attractions” into the cinema of “narrative integration” using a celebrated example, The Gay Shoe Clerk (Edwin S. Porter, 1903), in order to discuss the way narrative, narration, narrative agents, and voyeurism began shaping film form in early cinema. The chapter ends with a short discussion on the role of the film narrator. The Cinema of Attractions Tom Gunning uses the word attraction to identify the specific qualities of early cinema (from 1895 to around 1907). He identifies the origin of the term in the work of Sergei Eisenstein: In his search for the “unit of impression” of theatrical art, the foundation of an analysis which would undermine realistic representational theater, Eisenstein hit upon the term “attraction.” An attraction aggressively subjected the spectator to “sensual or psychological impact” [Eisenstein]. According to Eisenstein, theater should consist of a montage of such attractions, creating a relation to the spectator entirely different from the absorption in “illusory imitativeness” [Eisenstein]. (1986, 66) For Eisenstein, an attraction employs shock as an aesthetic and political strategy: it assaults spectators’ senses in order to change their political consciousness. Eisenstein’s theory is based on the attraction’s impact: one cannot separate out an attraction and its impact on the spectator. This in turn became the principle behind his montage theory, in which the juxtaposition of two attractions creates a third meaning, which is not

4

THE EMERGENCE OF NARRATIVE

contained in the attractions themselves but is actively constructed by the spectator (who is nonetheless strongly guided by the film). Eisenstein borrowed the term attraction from the circus—specifically, from the fairground attraction (Gunning 1986, 66). In general terms, the attraction refers to a type of experience specific to the turn of the twentieth century. An attraction is nonillusionistic, nondeceptive, and nonvoyeuristic. Instead, it declares its intentions; it is exhibitionistic and aims to astonish rather than deceive. The term attraction therefore means an act of display, of showing and exhibiting. Gunning argues that early cinema is special because it exploits this act of showing in undiluted form—these specific qualities become the dominant trait in most films prior to 1907. After that date, narrative began to dominate filmmaking. But he also makes it clear that narrative cinema does not simply replace the cinema of attractions, but absorbs it, as can be seen in prolonged moments of spectacle, such as song and dance sequences in musicals, or, more generally, in cinema’s tendency to put women on display for the male gaze (see chapter 5). Rather than set up a relation of opposition between early and narrative cinema, Gunning establishes a relation of inclusion (before 1907 early cinema existed by itself; thereafter it becomes an element of narrative cinema). Gunning also employs the concept of the attraction to explore the relation between early cinema and the avant-garde (or avant-gardes—French Impressionism, German Expressionism, Soviet montage, Surrealism, and the American avant-garde). He links early cinema to these avant-garde movements by defining early cinema as a mainly nonillusionistic, nondeceptive, and nonvoyeuristic cinema of attractions based on “exhibitionist confrontation rather than diegetic absorption”: “I believe that it was precisely the exhibitionist quality of turn of the century popular art that made it attractive to the avant-garde” (66). Here Gunning links early cinema and the avant-garde to modernity, characterized by experiences of fragmentation, shock, distraction, and alienation, brought about by the development of modern industrial civilization and its scientific-technological advances. He also links the cinema of attractions to contemporary blockbusters. He argues that “recent spectacle cinema has reaffirmed its roots in stimulus and carnival rides, in what might be called the Spielberg-Lucas-Coppola cinema of [special] effects” (70)—or “tamed attractions,” as he writes in the next sentence. The attractions are tamed because they have lost their

5

THE BASICS

political shock value, leaving only an aesthetic shock. But are special effects in contemporary cinema pure spectacle—that is, nonillusionistic, nondeceptive, and nonvoyeuristic? Linda Williams emphasizes the differences between early and contemporary blockbusters: “The point of invoking the term ‘attractions’ . . . is not to argue that contemporary postmodern American cinema has reverted to the same attractions of early cinema. While there is certainly an affinity between the two, this new regime entails entirely different spectatorial disciplines and engages viewers in entirely different social experiences” (2000, 356). The Gay Shoe Clerk

Gunning uses the notion of attraction to revise what previous film historians have written about early cinema. To give just one example: The Gay Shoe Clerk, made by Edwin S. Porter for the Edison Film Company in 1903. The Edison catalogue describes the film in the following way: Interior of shoe-store. Young lady and chaperon enter. While a fresh young clerk is trying a pair of high-heeled slippers on the young lady, the chaperon seats herself and gets interested in a paper. The scene changes to a close view, showing the lady’s foot and the clerk’s hands tying the slipper. Her dress is slightly raised, showing a shapely ankle, and the clerk’s hands begin to tremble, making it difficult for him to tie the slipper. The picture returns to the previous scene. The clerk makes rapid progress with his fair customer, and while he is in the act of kissing her the chaperon looks up and proceeds to beat the clerk with an umbrella. Then she takes the young lady by the arm, and leads her from the store. (IMDB.com) For film historians, the close-up of the woman’s ankle signifies Porter’s attempt to develop a narrative scene. But Gunning argues that the closeup is an attraction because its function is to display a woman’s ankle. In his turn, Gunning has been criticized for misclassifying the close-up shot. According to Charles Musser, the close-up in The Gay Shoe Clerk is an attraction integrated into “a quite complex narrative unfolding” because it maintains the illusion of the fourth wall and sets up different spaces of awareness between the lovers and the chaperone (1994, 210).

6

THE EMERGENCE OF NARRATIVE

Judith Mayne (1990, 157–83) explores how narrative, narration, narrative agents, and patriarchal values began to infiltrate early films. She charts the transformation in early cinema from exhibitionism to voyeurism. Mayne agrees with Gunning that exhibitionism was key to the cinema of attractions but argues that this gender-neutral form of looking and display was soon replaced with voyeurism—that is, with processes that generate visual pleasure for male spectators. Referring to John Hagan’s essay “Erotic Tendencies in Film, 1900–1906” (1982), Mayne shows that the scenario in The Gay Shoe Clerk was a common theme in early cinema, with many films transgressing nineteenth-century societal norms by incorporating close-up shots of women’s ankles and legs. From Mayne’s perspective, the close-up of the woman’s ankle in The Gay Shoe Clerk is not simply a neutral attraction but is driven by and serves male sexual desire—the desire of the male shoe clerk in the film but also of the film’s audience, who are positioned (particularly with the use of the close-up) as male voyeurs. Other films make the act of voyeurism their primary action or subject matter, in which male characters spy on unsuspecting female characters. Mayne mentions Peeping Tom (1901), Pull Down the Curtains, Suzie (1903), Un coup d’oeil par étage aka Scenes on Every Floor (1904), and The Inquisitive Boots (1905). Spectators are absorbed into the storyworld of these films because they establish different levels of awareness, a hierarchy of knowledge between (a) the characters who are spied upon and (b) the film spectators in collusion with the characters who are spying. In other words, spectators are not simply watching an attraction; instead, they identify with the voyeuristic character, because they share the same information and have the same power over the object of their look. The close-up in The Gay Shoe Clerk is not, however, purely voyeuristic, because the woman participates in exposing her ankle to the clerk (and they soon kiss each other). Her activity is therefore exhibitionistic. But the selection of the topic (the woman’s ankle shown in close-up) is aimed at satisfying male desire, which positions the film’s spectator as a voyeur. Cinematic Narrators In the early part of the twentieth century, many early films containing multiple shots were accompanied by a lecturer standing beside the screen, an announcer or master-of-ceremonies providing continuity—by narrating the

7

THE BASICS

actions, filling in gaps, and guiding the spectator’s attention (Gaudreault 2009, 129–34). The lecturer’s presence drew attention to the deficiency of the images on screen for they had to be explained with a narrative commentary that, furthermore, could be idiosyncratic or misleading. As Gunning points out, “A lecturer’s commentary undermined an experience of the screen as the site of a coherent imaginary world in which narrative action took place” (1991, 92). The role of the lecturer needed to be standardized and integrated into the film. One solution was to eliminate the lecturer and instead edit intertitles into films. This made the commentary consistent, although it still existed outside the narrative’s storyworld. Mayne identifies another solution in a series of films in which the lecturer (which she calls the “primitive narrator”) was placed inside the image but served the same master-of-ceremonies function of directing the spectator’s attention: “The most obvious example of the ‘primitive narrator’ is the figure of the conjuror or magician, most common in the films of Méliès. . . . In La Cartes vivantes (The Living Playing Cards [1905]), Méliès plays a magician who transforms playing cards into living human beings. Here, as in other of his films, Méliès looks directly at the camera, accentuating his role as solicitor of the audience’s attention” (1990, 168). A third solution, mentioned above, involved the deployment of voyeur-characters whose function was to direct the spectator’s attention and motivate the point-of-view shots, but without playing the role of an announcer who directly addresses the spectator. Instead, their role at guiding the spectator’s attention is more implicit, for they are integrated into the action in the form of a character who psychologically motivates the action rather than one who stands outside it. These three solutions (intertitles, primitive narrators, voyeur-characters) contribute to the transition from the cinema of attractions to the cinema of narrative integration. Tom Gunning identifies this process of narrativization (which he calls the “narrator system”) across the whole of film form: The narrator system works as a sort of interiorized film lecturer. It not only involves strategies to make the narrative legible, but it also provides the psychological motivation and more complex characterization that the new, more sophisticated narratives demanded. Furthermore, the narrator system created an intervening narrator who comments on the action of the film through the

8

THE EMERGENCE OF NARRATIVE

form of the film itself. . . . This narrator was not located off-screen, but was absorbed into the arrangement of the images themselves. The narrator system seems to “read” the images to the audience in the very act of presenting them. This narrator is invisible, revealing its presence only by the way images are revealed on the screen. (1991, 93) Within the narrator system, the lecturer-magician-narrator role no longer needs to be personified (either outside or inside the film), for it is fully integrated into the form of the film itself. Yet, as Gunning points out, the narrator has not disappeared; its existence is indirectly revealed in the way images are arranged and presented on screen. For example, the narrator system is evident in skeletal form in The Gay Shoe Clark to the extent that a narrating agent has set up a series of actions that motivates the exposure of a woman’s ankle. The narrator then cuts to a close-up of the ankle to ensure it is fully visible on screen—a visual attraction embedded in a male fantasy scenario. In the sound film, the use of voiceover narration represents a return to the lecturer-magician-narrator explaining images to spectators. This is why the voiceover is frequently criticized, because the process of narration is not fully integrated into the images. Sarah Kozloff explores this prejudice against voiceover narration in her book Invisible Storytellers (1988). She argues that such prejudices are based on the belief that film is essentially a universal visual language that should tell stories without much assistance from verbal language—especially a voiceover supposedly interrupting the images, telling spectators what to think and feel. The voiceover, she continues, is perceived as a literary device not suitable for the so-called “pure” visual medium of film. Kozloff challenges such purist arguments and presents a counterargument that voiceover provides exposition, condenses time, motivates flashbacks, underscores character flaws, parodies other texts, and provides connection and intimacy between film and spectators (1988, 128). In a complex argument, André Gaudreault provides precise terminology for identifying narrators. He distinguishes the “underlying narrator” from the “delegated narrator.” The underlying narrator is primary—an implicit, omniscient agent outside the narrative who controls what happens within it: “the underlying narrator . . . is not a person but, precisely,

9

THE BASICS

an agent, one that arranges and puts things in place. . . . We should assume that such an agent exists in every narrative” (2009, 120, emphasis in the original). In contrast, the delegated narrator is secondary, and is personified in the narrative; in other words, they are character-narrators, characters who tell stories to other characters (and directly or indirectly to the film spectator), but who are ultimately controlled by the underlying narrator outside the narrative. Controversially, Gaudreault argues that the underlying film narrator becomes visible to spectators, not in the act of arranging and presenting images as such, but through one specific act of arranging and presenting—namely, editing, because editing has the potential to manipulate time and to move instantaneously through space (see Gaudreault 2009, 86–87, 91, 150). Within Gaudreault’s more narrowly focused definition, the underlying implicit narrator only becomes evident in The Gay Shoe Clerk with the cut to the close-up, for the cut marks an instantaneous change in distance from the filmed object, which breaks with the activity of showing (or monstration, as Gaudreault calls it). In other words, for Gaudreault, the break created via the cut introduces the work of the underlying narrator and their activity of narrating. In terms of the single shot, the narrator is not present; instead, Gaudreault invents the name of “the monstrator,” a figure who shows rather than narrates (the word monstrator derives from the French word montrer, “to show”). The monstrator is therefore unable to manipulate time or put images into sequences, for that is the task of the underlying narrator. But, just as the cinema of attractions does not disappear in the cinema of narrative integration, so the monstrator does not disappear in edited films. Gaudreault therefore develops a dual account of storytelling in film: in narrative film “there is both a monstrator and a narrator. In this sense, cinema ‘monstrates’ and ‘narrates’ at one and the same time” (2009, 83). The monstrator and narrator are integrated into narrative film, and this chapter has aimed to chart the historical stages of integration. Additional Reading Film scholars and historians have charted cinema’s historical development into a narrative medium in meticulous detail—see, for example, Bordwell, Staiger, and Thompson 1985, Bowser 1994, Burch 1990, Elsaesser 1990, Gaudreault 2009, Gunning 1991, Musser 1990, and Salt 2009.

10

2

NARR ATIVE STRUCTURE IN CLASSICAL AND CONTEMPOR ARY HOLLY WOOD (Hitchcock and James Bond)

Narrative is a dominant type of representation in mainstream cinema because it offers an effective logic with which to organize a film. Yet, despite narrative’s omnipresence, it was absent from films made during cinema’s first decade (see chapter 1) and is absent from nonrepresentational cinema. In the 1970s, for example, modernist avant-garde filmmaker and theorist Peter Gidal developed a polemical critique of representational narrative cinema. He argued that its narrative structure passively projects viewers into an illusory world and encourages them to identify with fictional characters, processes he (and many other avant-garde filmmakers and theorists, such as Laura Mulvey [1989, 111–26]) defined as ideological and mystifying, while feminist scholars define narrative as patriarchal (see chapter 5). In his essays and films, Gidal promoted Structural/ Materialist filmmaking, a radically nonnarrative, nonillusionistic, nonrepresentational, reflexive practice that aims to destroy cinema’s fictions and illusions, and instead endeavors to present on screen nothing more than film’s form, materiality, and process (see Gidal 1989). Whether we think of narrative as an effective logic for organizing texts and experiences or denounce it for creating illusory mystifying oppressive experiences, we need to investigate what it is. This chapter focuses on three main components of narrative structure: characters, actions, and the connections between those actions (as well as between actions and characters). It then presents a summary of Peter Wollen’s (1982) narrative

11

THE BASICS

analysis of Hitchcock’s classical Hollywood films North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), and Marnie (1964). The chapter ends by outlining Umberto Eco’s study of the James Bond narrative structure (1979), a study tested by analyzing the British-North American coproduction Quantum of Solace (Marc Forster, 2008). Narrative Elements The study of narrative begins by identifying and analyzing its properties— its fundamental elements plus their relations, the way they are organized. These elements and their organization exist in a virtual system, which represents all the possible ways a narrative can be created. In any given narrative, some of these possibilities are realized: elements are selected from the virtual system, combined in a sequence, and then manifest in different media texts (literature, film, comics, etc.). The theoretician of narrative identifies in these texts the narrative elements and their rules of combination. After analyzing numerous texts, the theoretician is able to understand what narrative is “in itself” and construct the virtual system that governs the creation of all conceivable narratives. Informally, a narrative is a linear, temporal sequence of actions and events carried out by characters that form a self-enclosed, unified whole. More formally, narrative theoreticians define characters as “actantial roles” and different actions as “functions,” which are ordered into an internally cohesive structure (an “actant” is an agent that carries out an action). This change in terminology is important because a human character is just one possible way to manifest an abstract actantial role. The same role can be carried out by multiple characters or by nonhuman forces, and a single character can manifest multiple roles. For example: “The little iron peasant who asks to be let out of a tower, thereupon rewarding Ivan with strength and a magic tablecloth, but who eventually also aids in killing the dragon, is simultaneously both a donor and a helper” (Propp 1968, 80). And in the Quantum of Solace, the actantial role of the “Bond woman” is shared by two characters—Camille and Fields. Narrative theoreticians identify the range of actants and functions that form the core properties of narrative. Vladimir Propp began this process in Morphology of the Folktale (1968, first published in 1928), where he abstracted from one hundred Russian folktales what he considered to be

12

NARRATIVE STRUCTURE IN HOLLYWOOD

their common invariant elements: seven actants (character types) and thirty-one narrative functions (or actions), ordered in the same invariant chronological order. Propp separated form from the physical substance in which it is manifest in order to isolate narrative’s fundamental properties. He recognized that narrative is an abstract formal system and should not be confused with its manifestation in various texts in different media. Graeme Turner (1988, 82) mapped Propp’s seven character types directly onto the characters of Star Wars (1977) (see table 2.1). The actants are defined not by intrinsic qualities (“the hero is strong,” their gender identity, etc.) but in terms of their structural relations to other actants: the hero is defined in opposition to the villain and is conferred the task of rescuing the princess. Through the process of abstraction, Propp identified thirty-one narrative functions, which he defined in terms of single actions (such as absentation, interdiction, prohibition, violation, villainy, etc.; see table 2.2). These functions form the “constant elements” or “fundamental components” of a tale (1968, 21, emphasis in the original). Furthermore, “the sequence of elements . . . is strictly uniform” (1968, 22, emphasis in the original). The one hundred folktales therefore have different content but the same structure. Functions are defined according to which actants carry them out. Propp uses the term spheres of action to name the functions that coalesce around actants (1968, 79–83). For example: “The sphere of action of the hero. Constituents: departure on a search; reaction to the demands of the donor; wedding. The first function [departure on a search] is characteristic

Table 2.1: Propp’s Seven Character-Types Mapped Onto the Characters of Star Wars (1977) Propp’s seven character-types

Character-types in Star Wars (1977)

The Hero Villain Donor Helper Princess Dispatcher False Hero

Luke Skywalker Darth Vader Obi-Wan Kenobi Han Solo Princess Leia R2-D2 Darth Vader

13

THE BASICS

Table 2.2: Propp’s Thirty-One Functions I. Absentation IV. Reconnaissance VII. Complicity X. Beginning counteraction XIII. Hero’s reaction XVI. Struggle XIX. Liquidation XXII. Rescue XXV. Difficult task XXVIII. Exposure XXXI. Wedding

II. Interdiction V. Delivery VIII. Villainy XI. Departure XIV. Receipt of magical agent XVII. Branding XX. Return XXIII. Unrecognized arrival XXVI. Solution XXIX. Transfiguration

III. Interdiction is violated VI. Trickery IX. Mediation XII. First function of the donor XV. Guidance XVIII. Victory XXI. Pursuit XXIV. Unfounded claims XXVII. Recognition XXX. Punishment

of the seeker-hero; the victim-hero performs only the remaining functions” (1968, 80; symbols for the functions have been omitted). The term spheres of action places emphasis on actions and functions, which demonstrates that for Propp the actions-functions are primary and the actants secondary. Finally, not all functions and actants are manifest in each folktale, but Propp argued that the functions that are manifest always appear in the same fixed relative order. Propp therefore abstracted from a potentially infinite number of surface narratives the finite number of underlying elementary narrative elements and their ordering. This means that the same narrative elements are used again and again (recursively) but are “filled in” with different content. Propp presents following example: 1. A tsar gives an eagle to a hero. The eagle carries the hero away to another kingdom. 2. An old man gives Sucenko a horse. The horse carries Sucenko away to another kingdom. 3. A sorcerer gives Ivan a little boat. The boat takes Ivan to another kingdom. 4. A princess gives Ivan a ring. Young men appearing from out of the ring carry Ivan away into another kingdom, and so forth. (Propp 1968, 19–20)

14

NARRATIVE STRUCTURE IN HOLLYWOOD

This example illustrates the same structure but four different types of content (or four different manifestations of the same structure) and, most importantly, it emphasizes that the object of analysis is the underlying invariant structure. However, in attempting to analyze the invariant elements of narrative, Propp still tended to define them in terms of contingent surface features. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tzvetan Todorov, and A. J. Greimas have separately identified and reduced Propp’s study to its essential actants and functions. For Lévi-Strauss: “Among the thirty-one functions that he distinguishes, several are reducible to the same function reappearing at different moments of the narrative but after undergoing one or a number of transformations” (1978, 136, emphasis in the original). For example: Several of Propp’s functions would constitute groups of transformations of one and the same function. We could treat the “violation” as the reverse of the “prohibition” [interdiction] and the latter as a negative transformation of the “injunction.” The “departure” of the hero and his “return” would appear as the negative and positive expressions of the same disjunctive function. The “quest” of the hero (hero pursues someone or something) would become the opposite of “pursuit” (hero is pursued by something or someone), etc. (1978, 137) Lévi-Strauss reduces Propp to a small number of functions organized into a series of variations. For Todorov (1971), the following pared-down sequence of functions is essential to the definition of a narrative: an initial equilibrium; an external force disrupting that equilibrium; restoration of equilibrium—but one that transforms the initial equilibrium. In addition, an actant (character) motivates and carries out the narrative functions. Todorov argues that “it is not true that the only relationship between the units is one of succession; we can say that the relationship of the units must also be one of transformation. Here we have the two principles of narrative” (1971, 39). Propp already established succession as a principle of narrative. Todorov’s innovation (echoing Lévi-Strauss) was to add “transformation” to the definition of narrative.

15

THE BASICS

In a complex conceptual reading of Propp, A. J. Greimas (1983, chapters 10 and 11) reduced Propp’s character types to a more general, abstract, universal narrative structure: six actants organized into three binary oppositions (subject/object, sender/receiver, helper/opponent). Like LéviStrauss, he also reduced Propp’s sequence of thirty-one functions to a network of paired functions (interdiction vs. violation, villainy vs. lack, etc.), and redefined their structure, replacing Propp’s sequential causal relations with a more abstract network of three relations—negation, opposition, and contradiction. Connections Between Narrative Elements Functions are not autonomous narrative elements but are logically connected and defined in relation to each other, and it is these interconnections that create the narrative’s structure. Different connections create different narrative structures. The dominant connection is cause-effect logic. A cause is “a single set of forces operating in such a way as to bring about the occurrence of the events comprising the sequence” (Jonnes 1990, 64). A cause therefore names a determinate (that is, strong) linear connection between elements. This connection can be stated in a “conditional” way: “if A, then B,” which means an effect (B) is dependent on a cause (A). In other words, the cause (A) is prior to and is the condition for the production of the effect (B). Cause-effect logic explains what actions belong together, and how actions progress and transform along a sequential chain. Propp argued that, “if we read through all of the functions, one after another, we observe that one function develops out of another with logical and artistic necessity” (1968, 64). Classical Hollywood films are defined as “classical” precisely because the elements of their narrative structure are bound together by a strong causal logic. Yet, a cause-and-effect chain is not the only way that actions are connected in a narrative structure. In Narrative Comprehension and Film, Edward Branigan identifies several other narrative connections (1992, 26–27): 1. Consecutive (the ordering of narrative elements is arbitrary or optional) 2. Chronological (order is only governed by duration)

16

NARRATIVE STRUCTURE IN HOLLYWOOD

3. Conventional (elements appear together conventionally, by following generic practices) 4. Mediated cause (the relation between elements is indirect, mediated through intervening events and causes) 5. Necessary or enabling cause (the appearance of one element is dependent on another) 6. Direct cause (the appearance of one element is sufficient for the appearance of another) 7. Unique cause (the appearance of one element is necessary and sufficient for the appearance of another). The relation between narrative elements can be loose (categories 1–4) or strong (categories 5, 6, 7). If loose, the spatial and temporal order is weak or slight. A strong relation, on the other hand, signifies a significant dependency between the narrative elements, one of the defining characteristics of classical narratives. When speaking of these narrative relations, Branigan (with reference to L. B. Cebik [1984]) expands the vocabulary beyond “one element causes another” to include one element “anticipates,” “accompanies,” “gives reason for,” “assists in achieving,” “motivates,” “shifts attention to,” “unintentionally causes,” and “comprises evidence for” another element. Simply describing actions linked in a chain of causes and effects is too simplistic and misses the more subtle and indirect links between them. Some of these indirect links will be explored in chapter 6, on art cinema, and chapter 7, on puzzle films. Additional Narrative Structures A narrative can also be organized by the structures of a dual-focused chain of actions, turning points, obstacles, deadlines, exposition, and description, while Kristin Thompson (1999) divides narrative structure into four main movements: setup, complicating action, development, and climax. We will look at each structure in turn. Many classical narratives are dual-focused, intertwining a genre narrative and a romance narrative. The crisscrossing from one to the other not only shifts attention to one at the expense of the other; it also creates the anticipation that the resolution of one narrative (catching the spies, for example, in North by Northwest) leads to (indirectly causes) the resolution

17

THE BASICS

of the romance narrative (after the spies are caught, Roger Thornhill and Eve Kendall are able to marry). A decisive change in direction within a line of action is called the narrative’s “turning point” (Thompson 1999, 29–35). Todorov’s model of narrative is based on turning points: an initial state of affairs is introduced but is disrupted. The narrative is then driven by attempts to restore the equilibrium, which is finally achieved at the end (complete with a transformation). The obstacle stands in the way of the characters reaching their goal (lack of money, or they fall in love with someone who is married, or they need to travel enormous distance, etc.). The deadline is simply a time limit placed on a protagonist to accomplish a goal. Exposition fills in the back-story of the characters and their situation. Exposition is sometimes revealed in voiceovers, title cards, or dialogue. The aim of a descriptive (as opposed to a narrative) sequence of shots is to establish a space or location rather than create causal or temporal relations between the events depicted in the shots. Christian Metz called such a sequence of shots a descriptive syntagma: “In the descriptive syntagma, the only intelligible relation of coexistence between the objects successively shown by the images is a relation of spatial coexistence” (1974, 127–28). He gives the following example: “the description of a landscape (a tree, followed by a shot of a stream running next [to] the tree, followed by a view of a hill in the distance, etc.)” (127). It is common for most narrative films to contain such moments of description. Finally, in Storytelling in the New Hollywood, Thompson charts a narrative film’s progression across four large-scale movements: setup (which establishes the film’s initial situation, that is, the character’s circumstances and goals), complicating actions (problems, conflicts, and obstacles that take the action in a new direction), development (characters work to overcome the problems, conflicts, and obstacles), and climax (the final resolution), with each movement marked by turning points. In the book’s opening chapter Thompson offers a succinct analysis of Jaws (Spielberg, 1975). In the setup, Sheriff Brody desires to solve the shark problem revealed in the opening attack, and he needs to fit into the community he has just joined. The film’s primary complicating actions include Brody closing the beaches, his conflict with shark expert Hooper, and arguments with the mayor, but the third shark attack forces the mayor to hire Quint to kill the shark. In the film’s development section, Brody, Hooper, and Quint set out on the open sea, but argue about tactics; however, they reconcile

18

NARRATIVE STRUCTURE IN HOLLYWOOD

just before the final attack. The film’s climax consists of the death of both Quint and the shark (1999, 33–35). Hitchcock’s Narrative Structures In film studies, several authors have applied Propp to narrative films— including Patricia Erens (1977) to Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950), Graeme Turner (1988) and Arthur Berger (2012) to the Star Wars franchise, and Wollen (1982) to Hitchcock. In a series of essays collected in his anthology Readings and Writings, Wollen employed Propp to carry out a detailed analysis of one Hitchcock film, North by Northwest (1982, 18–33), and to study the close formal relations between three Hitchcock films— North by Northwest, Psycho, and Marnie (1982, 34–39). He then revisited his analysis of North by Northwest, supplementing Propp with Roland Barthes’s concept of the “hermeneutic code” (1982, 40–48). Wollen adopted Propp’s formal and abstract way of thinking about narrative and analyzed Hitchcock’s narratives in a rigorous manner, generating insights not only on the films but also on Propp’s theory. Analysis, as we have seen, involves abstraction, which separates narrative actions and characters from the contingent physical substances that manifest them, and reduces them to their form and function. However, as Greimas and LéviStrauss argued, Propp’s theory is not sufficiently abstract, for it remains too close to the surface of the folktales, with their numerous variations and subplots. Greimas and Lévi-Strauss continued the process of abstraction, of refining and simplifying Propp’s theory. Wollen’s three essays, especially the third one, demonstrate his agreement with Greimas and Lévi-Strauss, and his insistence that one must modify and update Propp’s work when applying it to film. Although Wollen employed Propp’s work to identify an invariant narrative structure, crucially he attempted to analyze a structure specific to one director. Propp did not focus on the author of a narrative but on the linear ordering of narrative functions in themselves. Wollen therefore integrates an “external cause” (the director/author/auteur) into Propp’s framework: that is, he introduces choice, style, and expression into the study of invariant structures. Implicit in Propp’s work is the thesis that the preparatory section of a narrative establishes the villain’s superiority and that the next stage,

19

THE BASICS

complication, represents the reestablishment of the hero’s superiority, due to the assistance of the donor. However, in North by Northwest and other classical Hollywood films, Wollen notes that this stage is delayed until the end. The following is a brief summary of Wollen’s analysis of North by Northwest, a summary that emphasizes the Proppian concepts that Wollen employs. (Wollen’s analysis is more nuanced than this summary suggests.) The film begins with absentation (I)—the main hero-actant Roger Thornhill leaves his office. He speaks about his mother’s prohibition (II) against his drinking and then immediately violates that prohibition (III) by going to drink with friends at the Oak bar (Propp reminds us that, in narratives, prohibitions exist in order to be violated; the two functions are strongly linked). But soon after arriving, Thornhill absents himself (I) to write a telegram to his mother. The villains (VanDamm’s henchmen) kidnap him, mistaking him for “Kaplan,” and take him to see VanDamm (IV: villain’s reconnaissance with the hero). Wollen defines the meeting with the villain in term of “interrogation by helper” (who seeks information [V] and offers a choice: reward/punishment). Because Thornhill does not provide the information, the villain tries to kill him. This sets up a riddle for Thornhill to solve—he is “set up” (in typical Hitchcock fashion) as the wrong man (misidentified as Kaplan) and needs information to resolve this misidentification (needs to overcome a lack: VIIIa). In other words, he becomes an investigator. Wollen uses Propp’s terms (1968, 36–39) to identify Thornhill as initially a “victim-hero” (he is the main dramatis personae who has negative actions performed against him) who is transformed (by the need to solve the riddle) into a “seeker-hero” (he becomes an active dramatis personae on a quest). But at the United Nations he is “set up” a second time—as a murderer (of Townsend). This causes the next function: dispatch-departure (XI). The hero goes on a journey in search for information about Kaplan. But at the same time the police are pursuing him. Wollen points out that “the same journey is both quest and flight, the hero is both seeker and victim” (1982, 28). On his quest and flight, he meets Eve, who appears to be a donor-helper (XII)—but initially a false helper, for she is linked to the villain. Propp informs us that donors have magical powers (XIV); we see this at work when Eve enables Thornhill to escape detection by making him invisible (three times). As well as donor-helper, Eve also plays the contradictory roles of princess and villain. After

20

NARRATIVE STRUCTURE IN HOLLYWOOD

Thornhill’s pursuit for information ends in his arrest, the CIA professor intercepts, and informs Thornhill who Kaplan is (a decoy CIA operative, that is, liquidation of lack: XIX) and Eve’s true status (the real CIA operative), leading to a quest to save her: “The quest (spatial transfer [XV], reconnaissance [IV], information [V]) begins again, this time approaching its climatic conclusion” (1982, 30). According to Propp, toward the end of a narrative an imposter is exposed and punished (1968, 62). In North by Northwest, however, it is Eve (the false villain, the princess) who is exposed as an imposter (XXVIII). But she is rescued by the seeker-hero, who helps to defeat the villain (XVIII) and as a reward he marries the princess (XXXI). For Wollen: “North by Northwest follows in many respects the typical structure of fairy-tales as described and analyzed by Propp. The hero sets out on a quest, and after various tests and adventures, receiving help and hindrance from those he meets, succeeds in penetrating the ogre’s [villain’s] lair and rescuing the princess” (1982, 34). Propp’s theory enables Wollen to identify the key components of this classical Hollywood film. Nonetheless, he does identify several key differences. I have already mentioned that, unlike the folktale, in Hitchcock’s films (and narrative films more generally) the reestablishment of the hero’s superiority is delayed until the end. Furthermore, “certain elements, particularly those involving deceit, misrecognition, imposture, masquerade, are much more prominent than in the tales Propp analysed” (1982, 31). For Wollen, film narratives are closer to trickster stories. In addition, “There are more red herrings and also a fairly constant reiteration of the pursuit function—which may well have something to do with the nature of the medium” (31). The narrative is based not just on a search for a lost object (a quest story), but also on the hero’s lack of knowledge (a mystery story, an investigation). Finally, within film narrative contracts are broken: an agreement or reward for a task accomplished may not be honored in film (e.g., the Professor does not reward Thornhill for helping him out at Mount Rushmore). Wollen does not dwell on the film’s deviation from Propp’s fixed relative order, or on the repetition of functions. But his analysis nonetheless implicitly reveals that Propp’s fixed sequencing of functions is too deterministic. In his second Proppian essay in Readings and Writings (1982, 34–39), Wollen demonstrates underlying similarities between three seemingly different Hitchcock films: North by Northwest, Psycho, and Marnie. Although Hitchcock did not write his screenplays, he chose to film screenplays that

21

THE BASICS

attracted his interest—because of their narrative structure (the functions they emphasize and the way they are organized), the characters, the themes, etc.—or he asked screenwriters to rewrite stories to follow his preferred structure. The murderer in all three films is misidentified—Thornhill is accused of murdering Townsend (North by Northwest), Norman’s mother is accused of murdering Marion (Psycho), and Marnie’s mother is accused of committing a murder in the distant past (Marnie). Furthermore, Thornhill, Marion, and Marnie take on new names and identities. More significantly, the three films appear to share the same underlying narrative structure: “In each case an introductory section motivates the journey (flight as a result of crime). During the journey the protagonist meets a stranger. . . . Each encounter has both erotic and threatening overtones” (35). Once the threat is realized, the narrative shifts to the rescue of the princess—or, in the case of Psycho, to the discovery of her murder. (The elimination of Psycho’s main protagonist in the first half breaks the film’s adherence to the classical Hollywood narrative structure.) Wollen concludes his short essay by explaining the ending of Psycho in more detail, for the ending separates it out from the other two films (and from Propp’s analysis of the fairy tale). Psycho is focused around a fundamental symbolic lack that cannot be resolved: “[Psycho] centres not on the kind of lack Propp described, the lack of money or of a microfilm, or even of a wife, or a princess, but on a symbolic lack that cannot be liquidated, so that instead of the liquidation of the lack we get the liquidation of the princess” (1982, 39). Here, Wollen identifies a form of indirect or mediated causal link between this symbolic lack and the elimination of the princess-actant. In his third Proppian essay (1982, 40–48), Wollen returns to his analysis of North by Northwest and supplements it with Roland Barthes’s discussion of the proairetic code and the hermeneutic code. Both are codes of the narrative sequence: the proairetic governs the linear chronological ordering of actions, linked together to create a unified sequence whereas the hermeneutic manipulates the sequence of action by withholding information, creating enigmas, and delaying the solution. The proairetic code structures the basic sequencing of narrative actions and events, what Émile Benveniste called “story,” in which the actions and events unfold so effortlessly that they seem to narrate themselves (Benveniste’s work is discussed in chapter 4). The hermeneutic code, on the other hand, belongs to the realm of discourse, to plot or narrational manipulation. Wollen

22

NARRATIVE STRUCTURE IN HOLLYWOOD

evokes the hermeneutic code because he discovered “certain elements, particularly those involving deceit, misrecognition, imposture, masquerade,” at work in Hitchcock’s films, and Propp’s narrative theory is limited to the realm of story events, not to the narrational re-presentation (rearranging, manipulation) of those events. I will therefore discuss Wollen’s essay on the hermeneutic code in the next chapter, although I will note here that he attempts to mediate between Propp’s impersonal approach to narrative structure (the focus on story), on the one hand, and a traditional auteur critic’s interest in identifying a director’s unique vision, on the other, by analyzing narrational structures prominent in the films of an individual director, for these narrational structures reveal authorial design. (Wollen therefore continues the pursuit of auteur structuralism he began in Signs and Meaning in the Cinema [Wollen 1972, chapter 2].) The James Bond Narrative Structure The James Bond film series was rebooted in 2006 (with a new timeline etc.), beginning with a remake of Ian Fleming’s first novel, Casino Royale (2006), followed by Quantum of Solace (2008). The reinvention of the franchise reworked some of the narrative functions, themes, and characters found in previous Bond films (which are at times racist, sexist, and colonialist). In “Narrative Structures in Fleming” (1979), Umberto Eco analyzed the first ten Ian Fleming novels, up to You Only Live Twice, in order to find their formal similarities, or their shared invariant narrative units (characters and actions) and their rules of combination. He found these elements in Fleming’s first novel: “In Casino Royale there are already all the elements for the building of a machine that functions basically on a set of precise units governed by rigorous combinational rules” (1979, 146). Although he takes a similar approach to Propp, Eco devises his own terms in his analysis of the Bond narrative and, like Greimas and Lévi-Strauss, presents a pared-down (more abstract) narrative theory. He begins by identifying a series of character oppositions, which he calls invariant features of the Bond narrative. The first four oppositions involve the core characters: 1. Bond-M; 2. Bond-Villain;

23

THE BASICS

3. Villain-Woman; 4. Woman-Bond. (Eco 1979, 147) This nexus of oppositions defines each character. The first opposition, Bond-M, is key to defining Bond, for M is the dominant actant who delineates the scope and boundary of Bond’s role. In Propp’s terms, M sets the interdictions (prohibitions) upon Bond, who then violates those interdictions. But, in the reboot, is M still dominant? Or has M’s role changed? Bond’s relation to the villain is a simple opposition based on conflict, while Eco defines the Bond woman in the following terms: “The general scheme is: (i) the girl is beautiful and good; (ii) she has been made frigid and unhappy by severe trials suffered in adolescence; (iii) this has conditioned her to the service of the Villain; (iv) through meeting Bond she appreciates her positive human ‘chances’; (v) Bond possesses her but in the end loses her” (154). Eco also identified the basic relationships between the characters: “The novel, given the rules of combination of oppositional couples, is fixed as a sequence of ‘moves’ inspired by the code and constituted according to a perfectly prearranged scheme” (1979, 156). The Bond narrative consists of a sequence of actions/ functions: A. M moves and gives a task to Bond; B. Villain moves and appears to Bond (perhaps in vicarious forms); C. Bond moves and gives a first check to Villain or Villain gives first check to Bond; D. Woman moves and shows herself; E. Bond takes Woman (possesses her or begins her seduction); F. Villain captures Bond (with or without Woman, or at different moments); G. Villain tortures Bond (with or without Woman); H. Bond beats Villain (kills him, or kills his representative, or helps at their killing); I. Bond, convalescing, enjoys Woman, whom he then loses. (1979, 156) These nine actions represent the kernel (the core functions) of the Bond narrative. Eco distinguishes this core from ancillary actions and

24

NARRATIVE STRUCTURE IN HOLLYWOOD

events: “Occurring alongside the sequence of fundamental moves are numerous side issues which enrich the narrative by unforeseen events, without, however, altering the basic scheme” (157). (This is a general principle with all narratives.) Eco points out that the characters and actions are invariant in that they are present in every Bond narrative, although the sequencing of each narrative need not be identical, for there are inversions, variations, repetition of key elements, etc. (This is where narrative becomes narration/plot, in the sense that emphasis is placed on the reorganization of the chronological narrative functions.) Quantum of Solace

Eco developed his narrative analysis from Ian Fleming’s novels. We can use his work to determine if the Bond film franchise reboot conforms to or deviates from the novels. Quantum of Solace is the second film in the rebooted franchise. It is based on an Ian Fleming short story, but the key issue is whether the Bond narrative in general has been transformed in the reboot. In the film’s prologue, Bond delivers Mr. White to M (bringing to a close the narrative of the previous film, Casino Royale). A: M gives a task to Bond In this reboot, Bond has more autonomy than in the original narratives. Furthermore, M (now a woman) is not all knowing; she does not know what is going on and is accountable to government committees. But she does set limits—tells Bond to act in accordance with duty, not revenge (setting up the duty/revenge binary opposition). She limits his credit cards and comments on his sexual activity. M (implicitly) sends him to Haiti. D: Woman appears and shows herself to Bond Camille collects Bond from the hotel in Haiti, thinking he is someone else (Slate; but even Slate was a cover, since he is a hitman meant to kill Camille). Does Camille fit the five stages identified by Eco?

25

THE BASICS

(i) Camille is a typical Bond woman; she is on the right side of the law; (ii) Bolivian General Medrano murdered Camille’s family; (iii) she is linked to the villain, Greene; (iv) Bond helps her to achieve her revenge; (v) he does not possess her; she walks away (is not killed). In this reboot, the first four categories apply to Camille. B: Villain appears to Bond The main villain is Dominic Greene (an environmentalist, a cover for his real identity). Greene assists General Medrano in overthrowing his government, in exchange for a piece of barren desert. Oil is mentioned as a reward, until water eventually replaces it (setting up the binary opposition: oil/water). Camille leads Bond to Greene. C: Bond vs. Villain Bond rescues Camille from Greene, which appears to initiate his seduction of her (or perhaps he is still thinking of Vesper). More significantly for this narrative, Bond and Greene become aware of each other. Bond begins to investigate Greene and his organization. D: (Another) Woman (Fields) appears and shows herself to Bond Fields fits characteristics (i) and crucially (v) of Eco’s schema. E: Bond seduces Woman (Fields) C: Bond vs. Villain Bond rescues Camille from Greene (again) and confronts Greene. Bond discovers that Greene’s plan is to own water, not oil (oil/ water confusion). F-G: Villain captures Woman Villain tortures Fields (but not Bond) and kills her.

26

NARRATIVE STRUCTURE IN HOLLYWOOD

H: Bond beats Villains Bond sends Greene out into the hot dry desert with a can of oil— oil/water opposition (and the confusion of the two) again dominates. He then tracks down Vesper Lynd’s former lover, Yusef Kabira, in cold Russia. This change in location sets up an opposition between hot (desert)/cold (snow). I: ? Bond overcomes his need for vengeance for Vesper’s death. (He lost her in the previous film.) Quantum of Solace contains the same web of core characters and its narrative fits the sequence of moves Eco identifies in Fleming’s novels—but with significant differences. M’s role is weakened (and is played by a woman); the role of the Woman is split between Camille and Fields, with the five characteristics split between them rather than being embodied in one character. This directly affects the ending, which is familiar in the sense that Bond is alone and mourning the loss of a woman, but the loss occurred in the previous film, and the driving force of Bond’s character in Quantum of Solace is vengeance. Propp’s way of thinking, which influenced Eco and Wollen (among many other theoreticians of narrative), enables us to develop a deeper understanding of creativity and artistic production. (Chapter 5 employs some of Propp’s categories to analyze Gone Girl.) New films, novels, short stories, etc. continue to be written and made year after year, but they are not completely new: they recycle the same narrative functions and actants, sometimes in a slightly different order, with new surface details (new production values, new actors filling in the roles, etc.). “Creativity” and “originality” can be understood in three senses: rule-following (e.g., routine production of new artifacts guided by preexisting rules); rule-changing (inventive production of novel artifacts guided by the innovative use of rules, or deliberate breaking of them); and free unfettered invention. The first sense is traditionally aligned to craft, and the second to art. The third (Romantic

27

THE BASICS

and existential) sense reduces creativity to mysticism, to the random contingent acts of isolated individuals unaffected by history, society, or tradition. In contrast, the first two definitions conceive creativity as an intelligent activity, the effect of the specific selection and combination of preexisting codes and structures, a view articulated by Lévi-Strauss: “[Humans] never create absolutely: all they can do is to choose certain combinations from a repertory of ideas which it should be possible to reconstitute” (LéviStrauss, quoted in Miriam Glucksmann 1974, 89). The “code user” (speaker, writer, filmmaker) therefore submits to a preexisting system of codes and conventions but is still able to produce new meanings through the creative reworking and transformation of those preexisting codes. A particular film (or novel or other work) can be described as inventive or specific not if it is completely original and unique (an impossibility) but according to what actants and functions the filmmaker emphasizes, which ones he or she leaves out, and how the film’s narration creatively reorganizes those actants and functions. Creativity is found in the new combination and reorganization of existing actants and functions, leading to the production of a variation of an existing narrative or, more fundamentally, its transformation: “new tales,” Propp argues, “will always appear merely as combinations or variations of older ones” (1968, 112). When we shift focus to the way narrative structure is reorganized and conveyed to the spectator/reader, we need additional theories—a series of concepts focused on narration. Additional Reading Seymour Chatman’s Story and Discourse (1978) provides a comprehensive overview of narrative structure. For general overviews of narrative theory, see Cobley 2014 and Keen 2015.

28

3

NARR ATION ( Gone Girl, beDevil, and Jurassic Park )

In contrast to the study of narrative (see chapter 2), in the study of narration, “the focus of inquiry shifts from ‘what happens’ to the ‘how and when’ of our knowing what happens” (Branigan 1992, 86). In other words, whereas the study of narrative focuses on sequences of actions and events performed by characters, the study of narration focuses on how narrative actions are reorganized, when spectators receive information about those actions, and how those actions are filtered through characters and narrators before reaching readers or spectators. Filmic narration therefore mediates between the narrative and the spectator: Spectator £ Narration £ Narrative It rarely presents the narrative “straight” and unmediated—as a chronological, linear series of actions linked by a (cause-effect) logic. Instead, narration controls the spectator’s access to narrative information. This chapter examines two fundamental elements of narration: (1) techniques that organize and manipulate the presentation to film spectators of narrative information, and (2) narrative agents. The two elements

29

THE BASICS

are linked, for narration presents narrative information primarily through the subjectivity of agents—characters, narrators, the author. The narration’s manipulation of narrative information can sometimes be extreme, presenting it in a deceptive and uncommunicative way. Narration can be deceptive by conveying a character’s experiences or story events unreliably, or it can present a character’s unreliable experiences/story events (fantasies, dreams, lies) as if they were actual. Narration is not necessarily reliable and communicative. The following chapter is based on two key scholarly works devoted to filmic narration—Peter Wollen’s essay “The Hermeneutic Code” (1982, 40– 48) and Edward Branigan’s book Narrative Comprehension and Film (1992). To develop a broad overview of filmic narration, examples are drawn from Hitchcock’s classical Hollywood films, the contemporary Hollywood films Gone Girl (David Fincher, 2014) and Jurassic Park (Spielberg, 1993), and the highly stylized narration of beDevil (Tracey Moffatt, 1993). Elements of Narration The fundamental purpose of narration is to select and reorganize narrative actions, to rearrange them in terms of space and time. In his grande syntagmatique, Christian Metz (1974, 119–33) identifies eight different types of image sequences, or syntagmas. Each type establishes a distinct spatial and temporal relation between the events depicted in the images. In chapter 2 we already encountered the “descriptive syntagma,” whose distinctive characteristic is that it creates spatial coexistence and temporal simultaneity between the events shown in the images. In contrast, the “scene” organizes events in terms of spatial coexistence (the events shown in each shot exist in the same space) and temporal succession (there is a continuous progression in time from one shot to the next), leading to a unified continuous series of events, while the “episodic sequence” links together a number of very brief events in chronological order but with substantial temporal breaks between them. Metz gives an example from Citizen Kane: “In Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941), the sequence portraying the gradual deterioration of the relationship between the hero and his first wife shows a chronological series of quick allusions to dinners shared by the couple in an atmosphere that is decreasingly affectionate; the scenes, treated in a succession of pan shots, are connected over

30

NARRATION

intervening periods of months” (1974, 133). Metz’s grande syntagmatique analyzes just one aspect of the narration’s organization of narrative events, their spatial and temporal relations. Narration also places actions out of temporal sequence (creating unusual juxtapositions) and withholds vital information (leading to gaps in the narrative). In other words, narration’s organization of narrative events also involves a process of manipulation. Narration chooses what events and characters to focus on and what to leave out; it decides the length and juxtaposition of scenes, determines the selection of the story’s temporal span, and decides the perspective the narrative will be seen from (one character, several characters, no characters) and when to change perspective. The key to studying narration is to focus on its process of manipulation. The Hermeneutic Code Peter Wollen (1982, 40–48) borrows the term hermeneutic code from Roland Barthes (1974), who defined it as one of two codes of narrative, together with the “proairetic code.” Both codes organize the linear temporal structure of narrative, but the proairectic belongs to narrative and the hermeneutic belongs more to narration. The word proairetic comes from the Greek, meaning “brought together” and “choices”: the actions and events following on from each other are brought together as the result of a series of choices. The proairetic code is, therefore, simply a technical name for the linear series of linked narrative actions and events. Hermeneutics means interpretation or, more specifically, revealing what is concealed. The hermeneutic code is important for understanding how successful narrative films work: they do not simply present a chronological series of actions (“this happened, then this happened, and then this happened,” etc.); in other words, they do not simply employ the proairectic code. According to Barthes (1974, 209–10), the hermeneutic code structures narrative actions in terms of multiple elements, including a theme, a proposal, delay, and disclosure. The theme names the object of the narrative, while the proposal sets up an enigma around the theme. The answer to the enigma (its disclosure) is inevitably delayed in order to maintain the reader’s interest in the story. Barthes also identifies several types of delaying devices (1974, 75–76), ranging from the snare (a

31

THE BASICS

deliberate evasion of the truth) to partial answers and jamming (an acknowledgment that there is no solution). Following the work of Meir Sternberg (1978), David Bordwell (1985) catalogues the different types of gaps and omissions that conceal narrative information. Only part of an event is shown on screen; important information and character motives are hidden. These gaps and omissions may be temporary or permanent, suppressed or flaunted, micro or macro, diffused or focused. A temporary gap is filled in by the end of the film, whereas a permanent gap remains open. A gap may be noticeable (flaunted), or later spectators may discover that crucial narrative information was suppressed, and the suppression was not conveyed to them. The gap may only affect a film for a few minutes (a micro gap) or it may affect several scenes or even the whole film (macro). And a diffused gap is open ended, which can be completed in many ways, whereas a focused gap is clearly defined and can be completed in a few ways only. A diffuse gap introduced at the beginning of a film can be gradually brought into focus as the film progresses. Yet, even this concealment and discovery of information are insufficient to explain the success or failure of a narrative film. In addition, characters may pretend they know or do not know, and they may deceive or be deceived. A narrative agent’s pretense and deception in relation to the secret are a fundamental part of narration. Wollen develops the concept of the hermeneutic code by analyzing Edgar Allan Poe’s famous short story “The Purloined Letter.” This story revolves around two key scenes, which are important for what the characters see, what they know, and what they do. In the first key scene are three characters: the Queen, the King, and a Minister. The Queen reads a secret letter (the story’s main theme), which the King does not notice. However, the Minister notices the letter; he also notices the Queen’s attempt to conceal it, and the King’s lack of awareness. In the course of a conversation with the King, the Minister puts one of his own letters on the table, talks with the King, and picks up the Queen’s letter when he leaves. In the second key scene, detective Dupin visits the Minister, sees the Queen’s letter in full view in the letter rack, and substitutes one of his letters for the Queen’s letter. Between these two scenes the Queen hires detectives to search the Minister’s apartment, but they were unable to find the letter. In the first scene the Minister ensures that the Queen sees him take her letter

32

NARRATION

(enabling him to have power and influence over her) while in the second scene Dupin switches the letters when the Minister is not looking. The letter is set up as an enigma (as a mysterious object) because the Queen tries to conceal it. The detectives are unable to find the letter (delay, or perhaps jamming) because they assume that its appearance remains the same and that it was hidden (concealed). But the Minister had changed its appearance and kept it in plain sight in his letter rack. However, detective Dupin sees the Queen’s letter in the Minister’s letter rack (disclosure). The story is not simply about “what happened.” Instead, it is about what characters see, what they know, and what they reveal to or conceal from others. For it is these relationships that determine what actions characters carry out. In the first scene of Poe’s story, a hierarchy of knowledge exists between the characters: the King sees and knows nothing about the letter; the Queen thinks she successfully conceals it from the King, and the Minister sees this attempt at concealment and takes the letter. Three types of look are associated with these three types of knowledge: blind (the King in the first key scene; the detectives looking for the letter), partial (the Queen in the first key scene, the Minister in the second key scene), and full (the Minister in the first key scene, Dupin in the second key scene). (See table 3.1.) Table 3.1: Characters, Their Relation to the Letter, and the Types of Look in “The Purloined Letter” First Key Scene Character

Relation to the Letter

Type of Look

King Queen Minister

Sees nothing Tries to conceal it Sees the Queen hiding it and takes it

Blind Partial Full

Detectives plus Second Key Scene Character

Relation to the Letter

Type of Look

Detectives Minister Dupin

See nothing Tries to disguise it Sees the letter and takes it

Blind Partial Full

33

THE BASICS

Within the story, characters change position. For example, the Minister was initially in the position of full knowledge but is relegated to the position of partial knowledge, for Dupin usurps the Minister’s position. All the characters are defined in relation to the letter—like narrative structure, the letter serves to define the role of the actants, even though the content of the letter is unknown. It is not the substance (the content of the letter) that matters; instead, the letter represents the secret, the enigma, and the important part of the story is the structural relations set up between the actants. The characters who fill in the actantial roles in the structure are secondary (and are to some extent interchangeable). An additional level of drama is added when characters pretend or believe they occupy a different position of knowledge. Wollen calls this the trick element, “whereby secrets and discoveries are fabricated and simulated, so that characters who believe themselves to be in one position are in fact in another, because of a secret theatre that they have not discovered and of which, in their blindness, they are the dupes” (1982, 46). At the end of “The Purloined Letter” the Minister believes he is still in the dominant position, but he does not know that Dupin has usurped that position by replacing the Queen’s letter with a substitute. Wollen gives a more complex example from North by Northwest (Hitchcock, 1959)—the scene in the Mount Rushmore cafeteria. The scene in itself appears to present the following: Thornhill makes an . . . attempt to blackmail VanDamm into letting him have Eve by threatening to reveal the secret of the MacGuffin (the microfilm hidden in the sculpture) to the Professor (representative of the Law). He is then . . . shot by Eve. From the point-ofview of VanDamm the Law is still blind (the dupe), he is the holder of a secret and Thornhill has gained knowledge of the secret enabling him to blackmail VanDamm. (45–46) This is what the scene shows, and this is what VanDamm believes has happened. But it is not what the scene is about. I have removed from this quotation Wollen’s words “illusory” and “apparently”; when they are placed back into the quotation, it indicates that what is seen on screen is a staged scene, a setup: Thornhill’s blackmail attempt is illusory and he is shot with blanks. What “really” happened is the following: “In reality the

34

NARRATION

Law (the Professor, who is a witness of the whole scene, unknown to VanDamm) already knows [the secret] and it is VanDamm who does not know the secret and is blind to Eve’s identity” (46). VanDamm believes he is in the dominant position of full knowledge; he thinks that Thornhill (whom he mistakenly believes is Kaplan) is in the position of partial knowledge and that the Law is blind. But in fact the Law, Thornhill, and Eve are in the dominant position and VanDamm in the partial position (he does not know that Eve is a CIA agent and that Kaplan is a nonexistent decoy agent). The microfilm is equivalent to the Queen’s letter in “The Purloined Letter”: spectators do not know what is on the microfilm; all they know (all they need to know) is that it is a secret, an enigma. The reader’s or spectator’s position is also fundamental to the functioning of narration. In “The Purloined Letter” the reader is positioned in relation to the character who occupies the dominant position—the Minister in the first key scene and Dupin in the second. The reader could have been relegated to the partial position—that of the Queen (who tries to conceal the letter from the King) and then the position of the Minister when Dupin visits him. But, instead of being placed in this inferior position, the reader is placed in the dominant position. In the cafeteria scene in North by Northwest, the spectator is placed between the partial position (occupied by VanDamm) and the dominant (the Professor, the Law)—spectators know that VanDamm is being setup, but they do not know the details. Eve, Thornhill, and the Professor pretend they know less than they actually do, whereas VanDamm believes he knows more than he actually does know. Wollen names the spectator’s different positions in the hierarchy using the terms suspense, mystery, and shock (see also Vorderer, Wulff, and Friederichsen 1996). In the first position, blindness, the spectator knows nothing about the secret and will be shocked or surprised if it is revealed. The second position, partial knowledge, creates mystery, for the spectator knows that there is a secret to be discovered, and usually identifies with a character who also pursues the secret. And the third position, the position of sight and knowledge, leads to suspense, for the spectator knows more than some of the characters, creating a superior position of knowledge. This superior position leading to suspense is also called omniscient narration and the other two positions conform to restricted narration. In “The Purloined Letter,” for example, the reader is placed in this superior

35

THE BASICS

omniscient position. In North by Northwest and many other Hitchcock films, the spectator’s position varies from shock to mystery to suspense. Each film modulates these positions differently, and its success is based in part on what types of narration it uses and when it switches from one type to another. So far we have established the following elements of narration: 1. Narration functions to organize space, time, and narrative actions; 2. It conceals significant information by creating gaps, generating secrets/enigmas; 3. It sets up a hierarchy of seeing and knowing between characters, organized into three levels defined in terms of looks: blind/ partial/all-knowing; 4. It positions the spectator in relation to the three levels (omniscient/two types of restricted narration); 5. The spectator’s position changes from one of shock (restricted narration) to mystery (restricted narration) to suspense (omniscient narration); 6. Narration confers pretense and beliefs onto characters (they pretend they are on a lower level, or believe they are on a higher level); 7. Narration can be uncommunicative to the extent that it conveys to spectators a character’s reliable experiences or actions unreliably, or it presents a character’s unreliable experiences/story events (fantasies, dreams, lies) as if they were actual. In the following sections these elements of narration will be discussed in relation to specific examples. (Unreliable narration is discussed in more detail in chapter 7.) The Narration of Gone Girl Gone Girl is not simply a narrative, a linear series of actions and events. In addition, the narration organizes these actions (a) through the manipulation of space and time, and (b) by focusing the narration around an enigma—Amy’s disappearance.

36

NARRATION

(a) Firstly, in terms of spatiotemporal ordering, the narration begins with a descriptive syntagma, a series of shots of (the fictional town of) North Carthage, Missouri, before focusing on Nick Dunne and his everyday routine. This routine is disrupted, brought into disequilibrium, when he discovers his wife, Amy Dunne, has disappeared. The narrative initially unfolds in a linear manner and is restricted to what Nick knows, but is then interrupted with flashbacks to the previous events in the lives of Nick and Amy. Sixty minutes into the film, the narration doubles up by revealing a second narrative—Amy escaping from her husband, setting him up as a murderer, and disguising herself. This second narrative discloses the enigma of the first narrative to be a lie. It initially unfolds in a linear manner, but like the first it is interrupted with flashbacks showing Amy planning and carrying out her own disappearance. The narration then alternates between the two narratives: Nick and the detectives searching for Amy and Amy’s escape. (b) Secondly, the enigma. Amy’s disappearance is initially limited to what Nick knows; her absence is a focused flaunted gap in the narrative. The narration sets up Amy as the narrative enigma to be solved, formulated around a few specific questions: Where is Amy? Was she kidnapped? The spectator is initially positioned with Nick and the police, which means the film conforms to the genre conventions of detective fiction. Detective fiction is organized around a crime and its investigation, which emphasizes the investigation and its gradual unveiling of a prior crime, the criminal, and his or her motives. The detective’s investigation is therefore a manifestation of the hermeneutic code, the unfolding of the enigma, conveyed to the spectator via restricted narration. At best, spectators only know as much as the detective (leading to mystery) or may know less, leading to surprise and shock when the concealed information (the suppressed gap) is eventually revealed. Amy is similar to the purloined letter: like the letter she is set up as the enigma, the lost object, displaced from her “proper” position, and detectives are called in to find her and restore her place. Like the detectives in Poe’s story, the police are unable to locate Amy. The narration follows their investigation but also Nick’s own investigations, which are more successful. But the narration reveals far more information to spectators than the police or Nick know.

37

THE BASICS

Detective fiction is different from the suspense thriller. The latter is based on a hierarchy of knowledge, in which spectators take up an omniscient position and are therefore privileged into receiving more information than the characters (generating suspense). Gone Girl shifts to the suspense thriller the moment it fills in its temporary focused flaunted macro gap: it reveals that Amy planned her own disappearance. In showing spectators Amy enacting her plan, the narration privileges them over the police and Nick. The narration then alternates between the two storylines—the police and Nick in one story, and Amy in the other. When the narration returns to the police and Nick, spectators no longer identify with them due to the additional knowledge they have received regarding Amy’s escape plan, an omniscient position that creates suspense. Nonetheless, Nick goes beyond the reasoning of the police and guesses correctly that Amy “purloined” herself and is hiding in plain sight, in disguise (just like the disguised purloined letter). On television he therefore convinces her to return home. Pretense and deception are dominant elements of Gone Girl’s narration. Amy deceives everyone into believing that she has been kidnapped and that Nick has killed her. She pretends to be missing. The narrative or, more specifically, the narrative agents (Nick, the police) are then motivated to discover the secret and, in Nick’s case (for he has been set up as the “wrong man”), to uncover Amy’s deception and pretense. When Amy returns home, Nick is no longer a suspect. But in order to return home and live again with Nick, Amy had to kill her former lover Desi Collings and blame him for kidnapping her. The film ends with this pretense still in place—Amy’s fake kidnapping narrative, in which Desi kidnapped her and kept her prisoner, is believed by the FBI and by the general public, who follow the kidnapping story on television. Only Nick, his sister, their lawyer, and detective Boney know about the fake narrative but they can do nothing about it. Nick becomes complicit in upholding the deception. Identification and Focalization The key to a film’s narration is the way spectators are placed in relation to the narrative action and agents. Several terms have been devised to account for the way narration positions spectators: identification, point of view, and focalization.

38

NARRATION

Identification with a character is not just about visual likeness—it is a false idea that spectators need to look similar to the character on screen. Identification is also created via the sharing of the same information about the narrative actions and events, via being positioned on the same level of knowledge. Identification is therefore a matter of narration. In “The Purloined Letter,” the reader identifies with the Minister in the first key scene because the narration positions the reader and the Minister on the same level of knowledge. This does not mean the reader needs to agree with the Minister’s actions; it is possible to say the reader simply identifies with the Minister by sharing his point of view. But the term point of view is too vague. The reader may be aligned with the Minister but does not need to share an allegiance with him (Smith 1995). For Edward Branigan (1992, 100–107) this issue of identification is more accurately a matter of focalization. A character can become the source of the narrative actions, in the sense that the actions are filtered (or focused) through the character’s awareness or experience of those actions, or through their memories, dreams, or fantasies about those actions. From Branigan’s theory we can identify four types of focalization manifest in shots: 1. Objective shots (not focused around the consciousness of any character within the film’s narrative); 2. Externally focalized shots (shots focused around a character’s awareness of narrative events, such as over-the-shoulder shots); 3. Internally focalized shots (surface)—represent a character’s visual and aural experience of narrative events, as in point-ofview (POV) shots (that is, optical POV shots); 4. Internally focalized shots (depth)—represent a character’s internal events, such as dreams and hallucinations. Almost any shot in a narrative film can be categorized as one of these four types. Focalization avoids the ambiguity of the term point of view (it divides point of view into [1] unfocalized, [2] awareness, [3] perception, [4] inner experiences). These categories are not mutually exclusive. For example, in a dream sequence (level 4) the narration may present a (dream) character’s optical point of view (level 3).

39

THE BASICS

Narrators in beDevil In the previous section, objective shots were defined negatively, as not focused around the consciousness of any character within the film’s narrative. The key term here is within, for such shots are still filtered and focused around an agent, but an agent who exists outside the narrative—what André Gaudreault calls the underlying narrator (see chapter 1). Underlying narrators exist outside the narrative’s storyworld and directly control the objective shots, but they also decide when to delegate a shot to a character (to focalize a shot through him or her). Nonetheless, even within focalized shots the underlying narrator is still at work, although implicitly. In contrast to underlying narrators, a character-narrator tells a story but from within the narrative. Character-narrators are characters within the film performing a series of actions, but they also narrate the actions, sometimes in voiceover. At times they may even stop carrying out actions, face the camera, and address the spectator directly. In Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson, 2012), for example, the character appropriately called “The Narrator” occasionally appears on screen and delivers a monologue directly to the camera. (See also the analysis of narrators in The Grand Budapest Hotel presented in chapter 4.) The Aboriginal artist Tracey Moffatt employs narration and characternarrators creatively and reflexively in her feature film beDevil (1993). Corinn Columpar discusses the film’s themes: “In the broadest of terms, the film is about ghosts and the multicultural communities that they haunt, but given the way it is constructed, it is also a nuanced examination of the act of narration that takes a step further the self-reflexive strategies that Moffatt typically employs” (2009, 153). She adds: “beDevil explicitly thematises the process of narration,. . . calling attention to the means by which (hi)stories are recounted and knowledge is produced” (154). In terms of narrative structure, the film consists of three separate ghost stories: the first takes place on Bribie Island (North of Brisbane) with the building of a cinema over a swamp, which is haunted by the ghost of a World War II American soldier who drove his tank into the swamp and was killed. In the second story, a house next to the train tracks is haunted by the spirit of a blind girl hit by a train. And in the third, a couple who mysteriously died in a warehouse continue to haunt it.

40

NARRATION

These stories are narrated by characters in the film long after the events have taken place. The first story (the main focus here) is told by two characters: Rick, an Aboriginal man in prison, recounts his childhood experiences of living near the swamp, encountering settlers, being haunted by the ghost of the American soldier, and being beaten by his step-uncles. The second character, Shelley, is a white settler who also lived near the swamp and who regularly encountered Rick as a boy. The film therefore presents two contrasting accounts of the same events from radically different cultural and gendered perspectives. The narration shifts several times from one account (Rick) to the other (Shelley) and, within each act of narration, it shifts numerous times from the present act of narration to the past events. The narration therefore radically reorganizes the temporality of the narrative and filters it through multiple character agents rather than presenting it in a strict, linear chronological order. Additionally, the past (shown in flashbacks) is filmed in a highly stylized nonnaturalistic manner (artificially vibrant color schemes, surreal sets, expressive shadows, loud musical underscoring, complex sound mix). Moffatt also films Rick and Shelley recounting their pasts using the “fake” documentary technique of the interview, in which the fictional characters directly address the camera/the spectator. The actions and events of the story are therefore mediated through the director’s highly stylized and unusual filmic techniques, through character-narrators directly addressing the camera, and through the characters’ memories of the distant past. The highly stylized filmmaking results in an anti-illusionistic, reflexive, ambiguous film. The stories are also inconclusive, for they are told in fragments and are therefore full of permanent gaps. The narration’s access to the narrative is limited by the restricted viewpoints and memories of the two characters, although the spectator has access to both viewpoints and can therefore compare them and build up a more complex representation of the past than each character can (thereby setting up a hierarchy between what each character knows and what the spectator knows). Additionally, the underlying narrator, implicit and outside the storyworld, portrays the characters’ pasts in a surreal manner. Although beDevil is a formally creative experiment in storytelling, it also emphasizes that the camera cannot simply present an unambiguous, unmediated image of a culture (or its past) but is always a construction grounded in a specific perspective

41

THE BASICS

defined in terms of culture, gender, race, and memory. Catherine Summerhayes interprets the fake documentary techniques as a “critique of anthropology and ethnographic filmmaking” (2004, 20)—specifically, a critique of documentaries that simply perpetuate stereotypical images of Aboriginal culture from a colonialist perspective. Narrational Manipulation in Jurassic Park This chapter has outlined several elements of narration that manipulate narrative information. In this final section narration is examined in one scene from Jurassic Park, the “fence-climbing” scene that alternates between one group of characters trying to switch on the electricity in the park, including the electric perimeter fence, and, at the same time, another set of characters climbing the fence to escape from dinosaurs. Narration is discussed in this section in relation to filmic techniques that withhold and release information about the narrative action and events. Narration’s techniques for withholding information include • Limiting perspective to the focalization of one character (restricted narration) • Cutting away from a scene before an action is complete • Obscuring the action in darkness or offscreen • Directing spectators to the wrong information. Narration’s techniques for releasing information include • Creating suspense by providing spectators with more information than any single character (omniscient narration) • Granting access to the character’s vision, or mind (internal focalization). In the fence-climbing scene the implicit nondiegetic narrator sets up three spaces—Grant and the children (Tim and Lex) begin to climb the electrified fence, with the off-screen sound of a dinosaur suggesting that they are in imminent danger; Sattler is in the electricity maintenance room, while Ian and Hammond are in the park’s control center, communicating with Sattler via walkie-talkies, trying to switch on the electricity.

42

NARRATION

Each part of the scene is based on either objective shots or external focalization. Grant and the children do not know that Sattler, Ian, and Hammond are trying to switch on the electricity, and Sattler, Ian, and Hammond do not know that Grant and the children are climbing the fence. Only the spectator knows what all the characters are doing. The scene is therefore based on omniscient narration (with one notable exception): it sets up a hierarchy of knowledge, placing the spectator in the most knowledgeable position, which creates suspense. As soon as they begin climbing (figure 3.1), the film cuts away from Grant and the children, to Sattler in the maintenance room looking for the box of circuit breakers (a moment based on a delay of resolution, for she is lost). The narration cuts back to Grant and the children climbing the fence. Lex challenges Tim to race over the fence, but Grant urges caution, saying, “it’s not a race.” This comment, of course, emphasizes the discrepancy in knowledge between spectator and character—it emphasizes Grant and the children’s restricted knowledge and the spectator’s omniscient knowledge, since the spectator knows that it is a race against time. At the same time, the camera glides effortlessly under the fence to the safe zone, an objective shot controlled by an external agent (the camera at this moment

Fig. 3.1: Grant, Tim, and Lex Climb the Perimeter Fence (Jurassic Park) © 1993 Universal Studios

43

THE BASICS

can transcend the space in the scene because it is not tied to a character). The narration cuts back to Sattler, who has to follow a series of procedures (delaying tactics) to turn the electricity back on. When the scene returns to the fence, the spectator sees that Grant and Lex have climbed over, whereas Tim has become stuck. All three characters at the fence see the danger lights flashing, finally allowing them to catch up with the spectator into realizing that the electricity is being turned back on. There is therefore a partial reduction of the discrepancy in knowledge produced by the omniscient narration: three characters at the fence catch up with what everyone else knows. But the suspense is maintained—and indeed is heightened—since a discrepancy in knowledge stills exists for Sattler, Ian, and Hammond (they do not know about the characters climbing the fence). This discrepancy in knowledge keeps the spectator engaged in the scene. Suspense is heightened because timing becomes a dominant factor. An emotional contrast also dominates the scene at this moment: Tim’s anxiety, manifest in his inability to move, is sharply contrasted with Sattler’s animated delight in being able to turn the electricity back on. The timing of the scene reaches its climax when Tim decides to count to three and jump into Grant’s arms, and Sattler begins to switch on the park’s individual electrical systems. The button switching on the perimeter fence is the bottommost button, which will be switched on last (another delaying tactic—but the spectator wants these delaying tactics, because they may save Tim). As Sattler switches on the topmost buttons (figure 3.2), the camera disengages from her actions and awareness (external focalization) and tilts down to the bottommost button, clearly labeled “perimeter fence.” This is a moment of omniscient narration and is also objective, not focalized around her awareness but controlled directly by the implicit underlying narrator outside the storyworld; it emphasizes the discrepancy in knowledge between Sattler and the spectator, because the location of the perimeter fence button for Sattler has no significance, whereas it is of paramount importance to the spectator (and Tim). The rate of cutting between the two spaces increases (or shot length decreases) as Tim begins to count and Sattler gradually reaches the perimeter fence button, which she switches on before Tim has

44

NARRATION

Fig. 3.2: Sattler Turns the Electricity Back on (Jurassic Park) © 1993 Universal Studios

counted to three. The surge of electricity hurls Tim from the fence into Grant’s arms, unconscious. Grant then attempts to revive him. But the narrative tension in this scene does not end there, since it is also based on a reversal of expectations, foreshadowing/forewarning, restricted narration, a suppressed gap, and a delay of resolution. Just as Sattler begins to relax after switching on the electricity, a velociraptor suddenly crashes through a wall of the maintenance room and chases her. This is a reversal of expectations since we expected Grant and the children to be attacked, but not Sattler. The forewarning about the imminent dinosaur attack on Grant and the children (signified through off-screen sound) is not fulfilled. Instead, Sattler is attacked without any forewarning given— either to Sattler or to the spectator. The underlying narrator has withheld this information from both in order to create surprise-shock. The spectator’s position in this scene was not, therefore, completely omniscient and it was lacking a vital piece of information. At the moment the velociraptor enters the scene, the spectator identifies with Sattler—not because of her appearance, her gender, etc., but because the spectator shares the same limited perspective as she does and the same emotional reaction. Finally, the scene is based on a delay of resolution because the spectator is not informed of the outcome of Tim’s electrocution (the spectator only finds out two scenes later, after Sattler has escaped from the velociraptor). The

45

THE BASICS

threat to Grant and the children does not come from dinosaurs, but from the electric fence, switched on by Sattler. The flow of story information in this scene is very precise. This is not a cinema of attractions that spectators simply experience on the surface—it is always a mistake to say Spielberg creates spectacles or “roller-coaster” rides; instead, he creates carefully crafted narrated events. The success of the fence-climbing scene is based on the skillful combination of restricted and omniscient narration withholding and releasing story information to spectators, plus timing, a reversal of expectations, foreshadowing, a suppressed gap, and a delay of resolution. Additional Reading See Browne 1982 for detailed analyses of film sequences in terms of narrational agents, perspective, and point of view. See Buckland 2006 for other examples of narration in the films of Steven Spielberg.

46

4

ENUNCIATION AND REFLE XIVIT Y ( The Grand Budapest Hotel and Marnie )

A film takes shape through a process—the act of enunciation. Chapter 3 defined narration as the organization of space, time, character experiences, and narrative actions. The standard theory of enunciation examines the external “forces” (agents, narrators, etc.) that create a text and organize it, and also identifies the internal (textual) marks of enunciation— marks that signify those processes of creation and organization. To understand film from the perspective of enunciation, this chapter presents a series of concepts—not only “enunciation,” but also “marks of enunciation,” “utterance,” “discourse,” “story,” and “reflexivity”—and returns to the concept of the “narrative agent” introduced in chapter 1. Christian Metz’s book Impersonal Enunciation, or the Place of Film (2016, first published in 1991) is the main point of reference, and Wes Anderson’s film The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) the main object of analysis. Metz’s theory of impersonal enunciation downplays the role of the external forces generating and organizing the narration and focuses on the internal material marks of enunciation, which he defines as reflexive: “Enunciation is the semiological act by means of which certain parts of a text speak to us of that text as an act” (Metz 2016, 10). What this indicates is that a text not only communicates a meaning, it also signals that it is communicating; the act of communicating becomes part of the message. The chapter ends by discussing Raymond Bellour’s essay “Hitchcock, the Enunciator” (1977, reprinted in Bellour 2000) to investigate the film director conceived as an

47

THE BASICS

enunciator, which emphasizes the external agent that Metz marginalized in his impersonal theory of enunciation. The Theory of Enunciation The term enunciation names the activity of producing an utterance (énoncé), and the phrase marks of enunciation refers to traces in the utterance that signify its production. In verbal language, these marks of enunciation include pronouns such as I and You and adverbs such as here and now. I and You are textual traces that formally represent the speaker who produced the utterance and the addressee who received it, and here and now formally represent the specific place and particular moment the speaker produced the utterance. These formal marks of enunciation are deictic, which means they point to something outside the utterance—to the actual speaker, to the addressee, and to the context of the utterance. Linguist Émile Benveniste (1971) distinguished two types of utterance— discourse (discours) and story (histoire). Discourse is an utterance in which its marks of enunciation are visible, whereas story is an utterance in which its marks of enunciation are concealed or effaced (it is “unmarked” or “indefinite”). More generally, marks of enunciation represent subjectivity, and their effacement attempts to make the utterance objective, or neutral. Following Benveniste, Francesco Casetti defined filmic enunciation as “the traces within a cinematic discourse of the act of generating that discourse” (1998, 135). These traces are the material marks of a film’s actual production and reception, such as the camera’s look, its act of framing, camera movement, editing, optical effects (fades, dissolves), voiceover—in fact, all technical choices involved in the production of the finished film. For Metz, “enunciation is coextensive with film and . . . it plays a part in the composition of every shot, so while it is not always marked, it is active everywhere” (2016, 23). Enunciation is therefore very similar to André Gaudreault’s concept of the underlying narrator who exists in every narrative (see chapter 1). For Metz, all films contain marks of enunciation, formal traces of their actual production, but some films try to conceal those traces. Benveniste’s concepts of discours and histoire clarify this distinction. Firstly, film as discours: this means its marks of enunciation are visible. The film acknowledges its coming into being, its process of production

48

ENUNCIATION AND REFLEXIVITY

(the marks signal the presence of the film’s enunciator), and its reception (the spectator’s act of viewing and hearing the film). This acknowledgment makes the film reflexive. Casetti used personal pronouns to discuss marks of filmic enunciation, treating film like a linguistic utterance, but Metz argued that the film is a text that cannot be discussed in terms of personal pronouns (see Casetti 1998 and Metz 2016). Secondly, film as histoire: marks of enunciation are concealed. The film’s process of production is elided and thereby mystified, for the subjective traces of the activity of its creation and reception are hidden; the film appears to be an autonomous object in which the events speak for themselves. The classical film is called classical because its techniques—editing, eyeline matches across cuts, match on action cuts, motivated camera movements, actors ignoring the camera’s presence—attempt to conceal its marks of enunciation, which results in the illusion of “realism.” The difference between histoire and discours is not absolute because both types of film contain marks of enunciation; the difference is that classical mainstream films, films as histoire, attempt to conceal those marks. But those marks (such as an edit) are still present; they are disguised by character and narrative motivation (for example, a character looking off screen motivates a cut to off-screen space). However, film as discours may employ a number of techniques that intensify the enunciative process of production—such as slow and fast motion, the look at the camera, and the freeze frame. In regard to slow and fast motion, Bertrand Augst argues that “As the projection speed is altered, slower or faster, the presence of the apparatus and its specific operations intrude with greater or lesser insistence. . . . A speed variation of a few frames per second is enough to reveal the ever threatening presence of machination in cinema” (1977, 94– 95). Slow and fast motion therefore draws attention to a film’s discursive level and its marks of enunciation. Bertrand Augst’s phrase “reveal the . . . presence of machination in cinema” is another way of saying the film’s marks of enunciation become noticeable. More generally, modernist art draws attention to its discursive level and marks of enunciation, its actual mode of production. Rather than trying to conceal its discursive status, modern art’s act of construction is on display, which makes it reflexive: “A [modernist] film speaks to us about itself or about cinema or about the position of the spectator” (Metz 2016, 10). In modernist films, cutting, camera movement, etc. remain visible

49

THE BASICS

because they are not strongly motivated by characters or narrative events. A major outcome of reflexivity is that it challenges the classical text’s illusion of realism: “Reflexive procedures are generally used to suppress the illusion effects created by aesthetic conventions. The result of artistic selfreflection is that the artificial nature of the artifact is laid bare” (Kovács 2007, 224). This is because “reflexivity” is a structural relation—it names the relation between a textual element and itself. In other words, the element refers to itself rather than to something outside itself. Instead of “reflexivity,” Roman Jakobson (1960) used the term poetic function to name a textual element that refers to itself. Political modernist art draws attention to texts as discourse for political reasons. Concealing marks of enunciation in a classical text is an ideological act. The classical text is ideological because it speaks from a specific political perspective but attempts to suppress its perspective (its marks of enunciation) in order to appear objective and neutral. Political modernist texts (represented in modernist theater by Brecht and in early modernist films by directors such as Dziga Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein, by the late modernist films of Jean-Luc Godard, and by avant-garde movements such as the Structural-Materialist school of filmmaking) challenge this neutral representation as nothing more than an ideological illusion. Political modernism acknowledges that all texts are discursive, are enunciated from a specific perspective. By concealing its marks of enunciation, classical mainstream film tries to present its specific values as universal and natural. Feminist film scholars, for example, challenge the male pleasures perpetuated in mainstream cinema. By exposing these marks of enunciation (especially the voyeuristic look, the preeminent enunciative mark, for the look is the origin of all images), feminists reveal that the narrative and narration of mainstream films are generated and organized (edited, segmented, rearranged) according to a certain perspective, that of patriarchy, while trying to conceal that perspective. Political modernist filmmaking is a practice that exposes its own marks of enunciation, thereby presenting an internal critique of film. As Metz says, “enunciation that lets itself be ‘seen’ is like a double agent: it denounces the cinematic illusion but is part of it” (2016, 30). However, in contemporary “postmodern” cinema, exposing the marks of enunciation does not so much represent a political gesture, that is, does not expose the actual material nature of the cinema, but instead

50

ENUNCIATION AND REFLEXIVITY

constitutes a stylistic pattern. Whereas modernist cinema sets up an opposition between narrative illusion and material reality, in which reflexivity draws attention to the artifice of narrative illusion by exposing the material reality of film (its marks of enunciation), postmodern cinema’s reflexivity simply creates a noticeable stylistic signature. The next section of this chapter uses Metz’s theory of impersonal enunciation to explore Wes Anderson’s marks of enunciation, reflexive marks that provide the grounds for identifying his stylistic signature. Impersonal Enunciation: The Grand Budapest Hotel In Impersonal Enunciation, Metz identifies eleven types of filmic enunciation and defines them as reflexive. (In the following analysis, my numbering and ordering of the types of enunciation differ slightly from Metz’s own numbering and ordering.) In Wes Anderson’s films, especially The Grand Budapest Hotel, reflexivity is a dominant technique. This means that Wes Anderson’s films continually draw attention to their own act of enunciation. 1. The Voice-In

This concept names a voice of address located in the image: an on-screen character (by definition part of the storyworld or diegesis) looks at and addresses the camera (a stand-in for the spectator). The camera and the spectator are acknowledged rather than concealed. This is common in nonfiction film and television, but rare in fiction films. 2. and 3. Voice of Address Outside the Image

There are two types of voice of address outside the image: the “I-voice” and the “narrator.” Firstly, the I-voice (which usually accompanies a flashback): a character-narrator (by definition part of the storyworld) recounts the events from a different space and time to the events on screen. Secondly, a noncharacter narrator (by definition not part of the storyworld) recounts the events on screen. There is no detour through the narrative; the underlying narrator addresses the spectator directly (Metz 2016, 44). In both types of vocal address, the film spectator becomes aware that the film’s story does not speak for itself but is narrated by an enunciator.

51

THE BASICS

The opening of The Grand Budapest Hotel employs the first two types of address (the voice-in and the I-voice). The film begins at the grave of “the author.” It then moves back in time, to the elderly author, alive and well, looking at and speaking directly to the camera/spectator (type 1 address: the voice-in) (see figure 4.1). The film again moves back in time, this time to the Grand Budapest Hotel in 1968. The author continues narrating, but he now becomes type 2, the I-voice, because he is located in a different space and time from the events on screen. Note the unusual change in voice, from his older self to his younger self. This particular move back in time is a memory flashback motivated by the author’s act of remembering. The author is both the source of the enunciation (he is speaking) and the topic of enunciation (the subject under discussion). The I-voice is therefore autobiographical. The author meets Mr. Zero Moustafa, who owns the hotel. At dinner Zero’s voice becomes an I-voice when he recounts to the author how he began working at the hotel in the 1930s, events that are shown on screen in flashbacks. Note that in The Grand Budapest Hotel Wes Anderson does not use the third type of address, the voice of a noncharacter narrator, but he does use it in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)—the voice comes from someone outside the storyworld, a narrator the spectator never sees.

Fig. 4.1: Voice-In: The Author Addresses the Camera (The Grand Budapest Hotel) © 2014 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

52

ENUNCIATION AND REFLEXIVITY

The film has four time zones: (i) the author’s grave in the present; (ii) the elderly but alive author; (iii) the young author and the elderly Zero in 1968; and (iv) the young Zero in the 1930s. A photograph of the author on the back cover of his book in zone (i) motivates the first transition back in time to (ii); the second transition occurs when the elderly author in (ii) recounts his visit to the hotel in 1968, where he meets Zero. And the third transition back in time takes place when the elderly Zero in zone (iii) recounts to the author the story of his younger self in the 1930s (time zone [iv]). Both I-voices are also what Gerard Genette (1980) called “homodiegetic,” because the characters experienced the events they recount. The author’s look at the camera and his speaking to it in time zone (ii) breaks the fourth wall. Wes Anderson appears to use the look at the camera at other moments in his films, but this interpretation could lead to an incorrect understanding of this technique. In the opening of The Royal Tenenbaums, each character appears to look into the camera. But they are not breaking the fourth wall, for they are looking at themselves in a mirror, and the camera takes the place of the mirror. This look at the camera remains within the storyworld; the camera sees what the characters see in a mirror—the characters looking at themselves. Wes Anderson uses the same technique in The Grand Budapest Hotel: When Zero begins working as the lobby boy, we see him getting up in the morning. He faces the camera as if it is a mirror. His look remains within the storyworld or diegesis. 4. Written Modes of Address

Title cards are not part of the storyworld, but are outside it, on the level of discourse, providing the spectator with information; similarly, writing placed over the image is discursive, not part of the story. Wes Anderson divides up The Grand Budapest Hotel into five sections, and each section is announced with a title card: Part 1: “M. Gustave”; Part 2: “Madame C.V.D. d. T.”; Part 3: “Check-Point 19 Criminal Internment Camp”; Part 4: “Society of the Crossed Keys”; Part 5: “The Second Copy of the Second Will.”

53

THE BASICS

However, Wes Anderson does occasionally place the film’s title within the storyworld. The title of The Grand Budapest Hotel does not appear over the image, on the discursive level, as is traditional, but appears on the cover of a book in the image. Wes Anderson employed the same structuring principles in The Royal Tenenbaums, which is divided into book chapters, with the film’s title appearing in the film, on a library book. 5. Secondary Screens

Secondary screens are frames within the film that draw attention to the film’s frame: “The internal frame, a second frame, has the effect of drawing attention to the main frame” (Metz 2016, 53) (see figure 4.2). The frame also generates a bounded space in the image: it creates a flat screen within the film that duplicates the flat screen (or surface) onto which the film is projected. Wes Anderson also draws attention to the flat screen by using lateral tracking shots: the camera is placed on a track and moves sideways in a straight line; objects appear from the left or right side of the screen, move across it, and disappear on the other side of the screen. He

Fig. 4.2: The Frame Within the Frame (The Grand Budapest Hotel) © 2014 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

54

ENUNCIATION AND REFLEXIVITY

also uses a crane shot to move the camera laterally up and down the filmed objects. The opening sequence of Moonrise Kingdom (2012) presents a virtuoso display of lateral tracking and craning shots. In sum, part of the enunciative activity of creating an image (framing, projecting it onto a flat surface) is represented in the film. 6. Mirrors

The mirror consists of a frame plus a reflective screen, one that can be used in a film to represent on screen a fragment of off-screen space. In The Grand Budapest Hotel, a mirror is used effectively in the train carriage after Gustave and Zero decide to take the painting “Boy with Apple” from Madame D.’s house after her last will and testament is read out. This shot (see figure 4.3) shows Gustave screen left, the painting in the center, and a small round mirror on the right. The mirror is initially empty, but Gustave addresses Zero, whose face then appears in the mirror. Zero is off screen,

Fig. 4.3: A Mirror (and Frame) Within the Frame (The Grand Budapest Hotel) © 2014 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

55

THE BASICS

but his face is momentarily reflected in the mirror on screen. The mirror image serves the same function as a reverse shot but without the need to cut to another shot or move the camera; the reverse shot appears in the shot with the aid of the mirror. 7. Exposing the Apparatus

This specialized category does not occur in The Grand Budapest Hotel. “Exposing the apparatus” does not so much mean representing a camera, but more radically the camera and other equipment used to generate the image on screen. This occurs in Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929) when the cameraman films himself in a mirror. 8. Films Within Films

In this category a film is shown within the film—the characters may go to the cinema, watch television, or watch home movies, and a fragment of film will appear on screen. Or a film may consist entirely of fragments of other films—most famously, Christian Marclay’s twenty-four-hour video installation The Clock (2010), which consists of shots of clocks and watches from other films edited together in temporal order to signify the progression of time over a twenty-four-hour period: “The video is synchronised to local time wherever it is on display so that The Clock transforms artificial ‘cinematic time’ into the thrilling sensation of real-time inside the gallery” (Tate Modern 2017). Of course, the clocks inside the video are simulating real time outside it—the video is constructed to accurately measure the passing of time (a matter of the video’s internal textual construction) but it is artificially synchronized with the spectators’ real time (it is not deictic). 9. Subjective Images (and Sounds)

Marks are placed over an image to signify a character’s optical point of view. If the character looks through binoculars, the following image may be masked with two overlapping circles. Binoculars are key props in Wes Anderson’s films (especially Moonrise Kingdom [2012], but they are also

56

ENUNCIATION AND REFLEXIVITY

used at the beginning of Bottle Rocket [1996], in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou [2004], in Fantastic Mr. Fox [2009], and in The Grand Budapest Hotel—when the police spot M. Gustave and Zero in the snow). Or if a character is drunk, the image may be put out of focus. The masking or images or putting them out of focus are enunciative marks imposed on the images to signify a character’s subjectivity. An aural point of view can be signified in the same way, especially distortion of sound. 10. Neutral Images

There are no neutral images, for so-called “neutral” images are nondiscursive; they present a pure story with zero-degree style: “There are no neutral images. Every visual or sonic element in film, even if it does not fit into the main categories such as voice-off, mise-en-abyme, and so on, even if it is really one of the most ‘ordinary’ types, is built on multiple decisions implying an activity” (Metz 2016, 136). The neutral image constitutes an imaginary ideal. 11. Enunciation and Style (Including the Style of an Auteur)

Metz argues that enunciation and style are close to each other, but that they are not the same. He presents four complex differences between style and enunciation: 1. Style belongs to a given auteur or school, whereas enunciation anonymously signals the film or cinema as event; 2. Style can be found anywhere within a work, while enunciation follows one of a certain number of established paths, which are relatively varied but finite. In addition, style can make its mark at the point where enunciation shies away; 3. Style can be linked to concrete characteristics of the work or to its content, while figures of enunciation are always logical constructions; 4. The marker of enunciation signals discourse and for that reason remains distinct from it, while style is embodied within discourse and suffuses it into its mass. (2016, 127)

57

THE BASICS

These four differences are marked by a constant issue: style is a material quality on the film’s surface, whereas enunciation is an underlying abstract force that can be manifest in many different ways in a text. Nonetheless, Metz discusses marks of enunciation in terms of the way they are manifest in film’s material of expression. Auteur critics attempted to identify and praise directors within classical Hollywood cinema who were able to impose their distinctive style on the films assigned to them. The Hollywood studio system promoted story over discourse and auteur critics celebrated directors (such as Howard Hawks, Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock, and Nicholas Ray) who were nonetheless able to create a signature style. Metz mentions a famous example: “a certain type of tilted framing, of ceiling shots, of wide angle shots, immediately means Orson Welles” (124). Similarly, static tableau shots (groups or individuals facing the camera), combined with centered framing, overhead shots (in which the direction of the camera’s look is perpendicular to the horizon), lateral tracking shots, ninety-degree whip pans, slow-motion shots, and montage sequences accompanied by rock music, are enunciative markers that collectively signify Wes Anderson’s signature style (see Lee 2016). But is enunciation limited to an abstract anonymous external cause that only draws attention to the film as such, as Metz argues (see especially 2016, 124), or can it be “personified” in the figure of the directorauteur? The final section of this chapter discusses this question through Raymond Bellour’s essay “Hitchcock, the Enunciator” (1977). Director-Auteur-Enunciator András Bálint Kovács argues that “the ultimate goal of reflexive procedures is to create a direct discursive relationship between the auteur and the audience, whereby the auteur may say something not only according to the aesthetic rules of a genre but also about the rules themselves” (2007, 225, emphasis in the original). Raymond Bellour’s work, rooted in Benveniste’s theory of enunciation rather than Metz’s impersonal approach, conceives the auteur as an enunciator, an external cause whose activity leaves subjective traces on the resulting film. A director, auteur, and enunciator all share one thing in common: they debunk the idea that stories appear to narrate themselves by drawing

58

ENUNCIATION AND REFLEXIVITY

attention to the creative force behind them. That is, they all challenge the idea of the anonymous mass-produced text by reintroducing its source. But an enunciator is fundamentally different from a director and an auteur. A “director” is an industry category; “auteur” is a term that critics invented to define a select number of directors as author-artists; and an “enunciator” designates the subject of discourse. The director and the auteur share a number of characteristics. Karel Reisz explains that “the director should normally be in charge. It is he [or she] who is responsible for planning the visual continuity during shooting, and he is therefore in the best position to exercise a unifying control over the whole production” (1968, 58). Auteur criticism shares the industry’s concern for the director’s “visual continuity” and “unifying control over the whole production.” More specifically, auteur critics argue that a small number of directors whose films manifest “visual continuity” and “unifying control” can become auteurs, for these qualities (achieved via mastery of the medium) confer upon their films a distinctive quality, an added value—namely, a recognizable style and consistency of thematic preoccupations. Both also emphasize creativity and self-expression. In contrast, to conceive the director or the auteur as an enunciator is to place emphasis on language, discourse, and unconscious operations (dream logic, fantasy, male ego defenses such as voyeurism and fetishism) as the ultimate source of meaning. At one extreme of this debate is the semiotic-structuralist-psychoanalytic theory of the enunciator, which emphasizes that meaning is generated primarily from language, narrative, unconscious processes, and the medium of film, with the enunciator’s role limited to recombining preexisting signs (this position was spelled out at the end of chapter 2). At the other extreme is the Romantic idea of self-expression and invention, privileging directors as authors and artists who create something completely new and original. From this perspective, meaning derives directly from the artist (from their “imagination” or their “soul”), not from language or narrative or the unconscious or the medium. For Bellour, the fundamental act of enunciation in film is the look, for each image in a film is the end result of the act of looking. To quote one of Metz’s early examples: “A close-up of a revolver does not mean ‘revolver’ . . . but at the very least, and without speaking of the connotations, it signifies ‘Here is a revolver!’ ” (1974, 67). This example demonstrates that each image implicitly draws attention to the enunciator’s act of

59

THE BASICS

showing the viewer an image (“here is . . .”); in other words, the enunciator’s act of communicating is an integral part of the image. In “Hitchcock, the Enunciator” (1977), Bellour analyzed several scenes in Marnie (Hitchcock, 1964) that draw attention to the function of the male look in generating images—a look governed by unconscious male processes such as voyeurism and fetishism. The camera’s look signifies the enunciator’s control of the space on screen and, beyond the frame lines, of the whole storyworld. In Marnie, Hitchcock is the enunciator, the agent who masters the look and then segments the narrative into shots and scenes and organizes them— not in a neutral way (there are no neutral images) but according to a particular perspective, the logic of patriarchal desire. In the film’s opening shot, a woman on a train station platform carrying a yellow handbag is filmed in the center of the image. She has her back to the camera and walks away from it. The camera begins to follow her, but then it slows down and eventually stops. The woman, still with her back to the camera, continues walking; she becomes a smaller figure in the image, although she remains centered by the frame, and eventually stops in the distance. Bellour argues that this shot draws attention to patriarchal desire and to the enunciator (Hitchcock) generating and organizing the image, because the camera movement, character movement, centered framing, and lack of music or sound—except the woman’s footsteps— present the woman as an enigma. This shot exaggerates the role of the look in trying to fix the image of the woman on screen. The woman’s relation to the camera (plus the contents of her yellow handbag, first shown in close-up) is the primary focus or point of this opening shot. In the following scene, this lack of visual access to the woman’s face and to the contents of her yellow handbag is verbally filled in. The bank manager Strutt explains to the police how one of his women employees (whose physical appearance he describes in great detail) stole money from the bank. The scene ends on a shot of Mark Rutland, a wealthy client of the bank, looking off screen and daydreaming about the woman Strutt has just described. A new scene begins with a shot of the same woman (presumably Marnie) walking down a hotel corridor, centered by the camera. Bellour comments that this specific generation and organization of shots—from the shot of Mark imagining-daydreaming about Marnie at the end of scene 2 to the real shot of Marnie in the first shot of scene 3—“occurs as if to materialize [Mark’s] thoughtful look, taking the place of the

60

ENUNCIATION AND REFLEXIVITY

traditional subjective shot” (1977, 71). Whereas the film’s opening shot was framed by Hitchcock’s camera, this formally similar shot opening scene 3 (Marnie walking down a hotel corridor with her back to the camera) is framed by Mark Rutland, looking off screen and daydreaming. The enunciator’s male look outside the film in the opening shot is now part of the film’s diegesis: in other words, the enunciator’s look has also become a character’s look. Bellour then analyzes what happens next in the opening shot in the hotel corridor: And that’s not all. On the left, out of one of the hotel rooms, his back turned 3/4, in the exact axis which permits him to observe Marnie walking away, enter Hitchcock. He then turns toward the spectator staring at the camera which he is, whose inscription he duplicates. The spectator in turn (re) duplicates this inscription through his identification with both Hitchcock and the camera. . . . He formulates, in the full sense of the term, his position of enunciation by inscribing himself in the chain of the look at the exact point which permits him to determine the structuring principle. (73) Hitchcock, the enunciator outside the film controlling the male look that frames the woman Marnie, momentarily becomes a character in the film; he looks at Marnie and then at the (or his) camera and, beyond that, toward the spectator, who is also looking at this image of Marnie, an image generated by the male look. The look at the camera is a clear mark of enunciation, which is exaggerated because it is the director who is on screen looking at his own camera. (Hitchcock’s look also harks back to the early peeping tom films discussed in chapter 1, in which a character on screen guides the spectator’s look.) The director is part of the cinematic machinery, and Hitchcock’s appearance on screen—looking at the woman and then at his camera that is attempting to create a patriarchal image of her—is a form of address that exposes the apparatus and the patriarchal logic controlling it. Hitchcock’s camera then enters Marnie’s hotel room, where she reveals the contents of her yellow handbag (the stolen money) and then changes her identity card and her appearance. If she is to be defined

61

THE BASICS

within a patriarchal society only in terms of her name and appearance, she decides to exploit that weakness of patriarchy by stealing and then evading punishment by changing her name and image. After dying her hair, she looks into the camera, which takes on the role of mirror—as it does in a number of Wes Anderson’s films, although Bellour argues that the camera and mirror are not exactly aligned (80–81). Marnie’s face (hidden in scene 1, described verbally from a male perspective in scene 2, and hidden again at the beginning of scene 3) is now presented directly to the camera, but it also represents Marnie’s view of herself (her mirror image) as well as the enunciator looking at her: Marnie is both subject and object of the image. These complex issues will be explored further in the chapter on women and narrative cinema (chapter 5). This chapter marks the end of part 1 of this book, which has introduced narrative (a chronological sequence of character-centered actions and events), narration (the rearrangement or reorganization of those actions and events), and narrative agents (narrators, authors, and enunciators) who work in conjunction with narration to control the spectator’s access to the narrative, and has discussed along the way how narrative, narration, and narrative agents are manifest in film. Part 2, “Types of Storytelling,” presents a series of case studies that outline the narrative and narrational practices prevalent in the current cinematic landscape—from feminist narratives and women filmmakers to art cinema, puzzle films, and a small group of films influenced by videogame logic. Additional Reading Sandy Flitterman-Lewis’s book To Desire Differently (1996) examines three French women filmmakers (Germaine Dulac, Marie Epstein, and Agnes Varda) from the perspective of a sophisticated theory of enunciation.

62

PART II T YPES OF STORY TELLING

5

FEMINISM, NARR ATIVE, AUTHORSHIP ( Gone Girl and Orlando )

“Feminism begins,” argues Jill Dolan, “with a keen awareness of exclusion from male cultural, social, sexual, political, and intellectual discourse. It is a critique of prevailing social conditions that formulate women’s position outside of dominant male discourse” (1991, 3). Second-wave feminism, beginning in the 1960s, addressed women’s exclusion and marginalization from dominant male discourse and institutions from a dual standpoint: an oppositional position that critiques those institutions, and a position of self-determination—of women constructing their own identity. This chapter examines the way second-wave feminist film theorists developed this dual standpoint. Firstly, they analyzed the patriarchal values embedded in the institution of commercial narrative cinema, but especially classical Hollywood. They argued that patriarchy is deeply entrenched in narrative structure, with the Oedipal story standing in as the prototypical narrative. Second-wave feminists also attempted to disentangle patriarchy from narrative in order to identify and create new nonpatriarchal forms of narrative. This second step promotes self-determination in the form of authorship, of women authoring their own narratives rather than conforming to preexisting patriarchal narratives. The chapter investigates the possibilities and difficulties involved in developing a theory of women directors as auteurs. Several films are discussed, including Gone Girl (2014), directed by a man (David Fincher) but written by a woman (Gillian

65

TYPES OF STORYTELLING

Flynn), and Orlando (1992), directed by a woman (Sally Potter) and based on Virginia Woolf’s famous novel. Second-Wave Feminism and Gone Girl In the first part of his essay “Symbolic Blockage” (2000, 77–105), Raymond Bellour examines the patriarchal values entrenched in the classical Hollywood narrative film North by Northwest (Hitchcock, 1959). For Bellour, as for numerous film and cultural theorists, narratives are primarily Oedipal. What this means is that the narrative represents the male hero’s desire, his quest for and attainment of a stable sexual identity. North by Northwest, as with most mainstream narrative films, represents the hero’s (Roger Thornhill’s) quest for a wife and for a heterosexual identity, which he achieves by overcoming a series of tests set by father figures (an idealized father [the villain VanDamm] and a symbolic father [the CIA Professor]). These tests involve overcoming obstacles, unearthing deceptions, defeating the idealized father, and solving enigmas (Kaplan’s identity, Eve’s true identity, the location of the microfilm containing government secrets). The place assigned to women in Oedipal narratives is to act as potential objects—the reward—of the male hero’s desire (see also de Lauretis 1984, 133; Mulvey 1975). Thornhill’s mother is present at the beginning of the film but is then marginalized as her son begins his Oedipal journey, which leads him to Eve Kendall as the ultimate reward. However, the narrative also tests her to ensure she is nonthreatening and conforms to and upholds patriarchal values. Like other patriarchal narratives, North by Northwest ends once the male hero successfully resolves the enigmas and collects “the woman” as his reward. For second-wave feminist film theory, narrative constructs a limited number of roles and narrative functions for female characters, roles that are defined in relation to the logic of patriarchy, the logic of masculine desire. The female character needs to fit the role predefined by masculine desire—an object defined by masculine desire and controlled by the male character. Oedipal logic constructs the woman either as “obstacle” (a barrier, an antagonist) or as “object,” but not as “subject” of desire (de Lauretis 1984, 119–23). As obstacle, she needs to be defeated; as object, she is controlled and dominated by masculine desire. In Mulvey’s (1975)

66

FEMINISM, NARRATIVE, AUTHORSHIP

well-known argument, woman is fetishized by the image and sadistically investigated by the narrative. Desire drives narrative forward—desire to fulfill primal unconscious wishes, to know what happens next, desire for closure. For second-wave feminism, narrative dramatizes (is oriented around and enacts) masculine desire. Is the solution to place an active female character at the center of narrative? Even if a female character drives the narrative, this could simply be a requirement (an essential component) of patriarchal narrative logic (its liminal, transgressive phase). In other words, feminine desire is not represented simply by placing a woman at the narrative’s center, for this does not automatically constitute her as an active, desiring agent-subject. For example, in her analysis of Coma (Michael Crichton, 1978), Elizabeth Cowie (1997, 36–71) examines the role of the main female character, Dr. Susan Wheeler, in terms of her underlying narrative trajectory (Wheeler’s function in the narrative, her structural relation to other characters). Wheeler investigates the unusually high number of patients (in the hospital where she works as a surgeon) who fall into a coma. Cowie argues that, although Wheeler is positioned as active investigator and is therefore in a position of knowledge, she asks the wrong questions and is continually undermined and, at a crucial moment in the film, she fails to identify the villain (Dr. George Harris) and needs to be rescued from him (1997, 40). In this example, Dr. Wheeler’s desire is not feminine desire, but a masculinedefined feminine desire. Is Gone Girl another normative narrative following the patriarchal logic of Oedipus, or does the film work against classical patriarchal narratives? Eliana Dockterman’s article in Time magazine “Is Gone Girl Feminist or Misogynist?” epitomizes the tone of this dispute: “The highly anticipated film adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl is out, and nobody can agree if it’s a sexist portrayal of a crazy woman or a feminist manifesto. The answer is it’s both, and that’s what makes it so interesting” (2014). Amy Dunne is the driving force of Gone Girl’s narrative. How is her narrative role defined? In Vladimir Propp’s terms (see chapter 2), she is initially the hero-victim, kidnapped from her home; she is the lack that gets the narrative underway, the sought-for object. Her husband Nick is positioned as the seeker-hero, a rather reluctant one at first, assisted by his twin sister, the police, and Amy’s parents. Whereas a victim-hero is passive and is forced to leave

67

TYPES OF STORYTELLING

home, the seeker-hero is more active, driven by the quest to liquidate the lack the narrative has set up, and is rewarded with marriage if successful. From this perspective, the narrative initially defines Amy from a traditional patriarchal perspective: as object of Nick’s desire. But later she discovers she is not even that. She therefore seeks to become the object of desire again—by positioning herself as a missing object, the victim-hero. She attempts to reposition herself as object of desire—until Nick hits her and she later sees him kissing another woman, Andie. Amy then creates an elaborate plan to destroy him. When the narration reveals that Amy staged her own kidnapping (see chapter 3), her function shifts from a passive victim-hero to an active agent—she becomes a villain/trickster/deceiver disguised as a victimhero. She aims to trick the hero (and the police investigation) in part through disguise and deception (and, crucially, through a fabricated narrative—her diary). Nick (and the police) submits to the villain’s deceptions. The villain/trickster/deceiver sets a riddle for the seeker-hero, a series of tests. The “treasure hunt” that Amy holds every wedding anniversary for Nick is an overt test. But the fifth anniversary is different: she sets him a more dangerous test, by framing him for her murder. As the seekerhero, he is further tested and interrogated via questioning—by the police, by his lawyer Tanner Bolt, and then on television. Unlike a victim-hero, Amy was not in a passive position when she left home, but neither was she acting voluntarily. She acted out of frustration and rage, as Agnieszka Piotrowska argues in her analysis of Gone Girl: Amy becomes “menacing, cruel and horrifically violent in the fantasy of regaining [her] lost identity and power” (2019, 48). She threatened to kill herself and to let her husband be killed by the state, but she changes her plan and instead kills her former lover Desi Collings and returns to her husband, blaming Desi for her disappearance (thereby saving herself and her husband). Two turning points are fundamental to Amy’s narrative position: the first, already mentioned, consists of two events, shown in quick succession—when Nick hits Amy and when she sees him kissing Andie. The second turning point takes place when Amy sees Nick interviewed on television; she then reverses her decision made at the first turning point and plots her return to Nick. However, the only option open to her is to kill Desi. On her return, the lack that initiated the narrative is liquidated, but the narrative is unable to end conventionally—with punishment of the

68

FEMINISM, NARRATIVE, AUTHORSHIP

villain and a marriage. Instead, it moves to another form of villainy. In Propp’s terms, “an initial villainy is repeated” (1968, 58). Amy introduces a new form of villainy into the narrative—as well as murdering Desi, she blackmails Nick, and enacts what Propp calls “forced matrimony” (34). Marriage is still presented as a resolution for the film’s narrative, but as a threat, not a goal, for Amy is defined as the villain. Amy disguises her villainy and instead presents herself deceptively as a victim-hero and makes unfounded claims (that Desi kidnapped her). Crucially, for Propp, whereas the villain is exposed and punished, in Gone Girl Amy is not exposed and punished. For Propp, the key to narrative resolution is punishment of the villain and marriage of the seeker-hero (functions XXX and XXXI). Amy is positioned as the villain but is not punished. Instead, she returns to her husband and enacts a form of remarriage. Propp labels this narrative element a resumed marriage: “a married hero loses his wife; the marriage is resumed as the result of a quest” (64). But the resumption of the marriage in Gone Girl is far more complex and deceptive than anything Propp encountered in Russian folktales. Why this narrative structure? Most of Amy’s roles and functions are coded within Propp’s conventional narrative model. Gone Girl appears to conform to many traditional patriarchal values, especially Amy’s turning points and limited narrative roles—victim-hero, villain, trickster. She is a character written with two possible narrative trajectories: wife and mother at home or a transgressor who sets up her husband for murder. She begins in the first position but her desire for motherhood is thwarted by her husband’s indifference and infidelity. Although she wants the first option, she is forced to choose the second option. Amy’s narrative role as an active character emerges only when she transgresses her position within the patriarchal symbolic order. But is Amy exercising agency? If a character has no choice but to carry out a particular action (for example, if factors beyond the character’s control determine her actions) there is no agency. Amy has agency because she does decide to set up her husband for murder, but she does not make the decision freely. Her agency is therefore compromised. To return to the first trajectory and to restore her initial position within the symbolic, she needs to become a villain who commits murder, but this transforms the first trajectory into a deception, a lie. Teresa de Lauretis spells out these two positions that the symbolic assigns to women:

69

TYPES OF STORYTELLING

[The female character] may resist confinement in that symbolic space by disturbing it, perverting it, making trouble, seeking to exceed the boundary—visually as well as narratively—as in film noir. Or again, when the film narrative centers on a female protagonist, in melodrama, in the “woman’s film,” etc., the narrative is patterned on a journey, whether inward or outward. . . . In the best of cases, that is, in the “happy” ending, the protagonist will reach the place (the space) where a modern Oedipus will find her and fulfill the promise of his (off-screen) journey. (1984, 139–40) Gone Girl contains both positions—a transgression, then the happy ending. Can the woman character resist her passive object status and become an active protagonist? De Lauretis reminds us that, in classical film noir, “she may resist confinement in that symbolic space by disturbing it, perverting it, making trouble, seeking to exceed the boundary,” but this “transgression” leads to punishment. Fincher’s film is a film noir to the extent it is structured around a duped male (Nick) and a femme fatale (Amy)—but, crucially, a neo femme fatale who is not punished (Piotrowska 2019, 57). The film ends with a resumed marriage, but this narrative function is inverted, for it is Amy who is actively seeking to create narrative closure. However, she can only create closure by undermining the illusions of the perfect marriage: she outwardly presents her marriage deceptively, as perfect, but behind closed doors she also exposes its illusory nature. The narrative therefore confers agency onto Amy in the form of her violent revenge against patriarchy while maintaining a semblance of conformity to its oppressive values. Authorship One potential solution to combating patriarchal narratives, as we have just seen, is to place a woman at the center of a narrative. But, as Coma and Gone Girl demonstrate, a woman-centered film is not automatically nonpatriarchal. These two films (to a greater or lesser extent) position a female character within a preexisting patriarchal narrative structure. A film needs to be more radical and replace the patriarchal narrative structure with an alternative structure. Another solution is to hire a woman screenwriter or director. Piotrowska asserts that “In the construction of the characters and

70

FEMINISM, NARRATIVE, AUTHORSHIP

the stories by the female auteurs, their steadfastness is not that of a helpless hysteric ready to perish but rather is that of a powerful descendant of Antigone, quite ‘nasty’ but also perhaps commanding respect if not affection on the part of the viewer” (2019, 19). Female writers and directors can construct proactive female characters who challenge patriarchal values and create alternative structures. Yet, the same argument applies: a film written or directed by a woman is not automatically a nonpatriarchal film. Both Elisabeth Lyon and Sandy Flitterman-Lewis have separately spelled out the issue: “the fact that a woman may be behind the camera does not necessarily mean that she will produce a film which could be described as specifically ‘feminine’ or ‘feminist’ ” (Lyon 1979, 14). And “a film made by a woman (even one with strong female models) might still organize its vision according to masculine structures” (Flitterman-Lewis 1996, 20). This suggests that there is no direct causal relation between the director’s gender and the resulting film, for women directors can adopt the default position, that of patriarchal narrative structures; furthermore, male directors can also challenge and work against oppressive patriarchal structures. The link between film and director (or writer) is therefore tenuous and indirect. Nonetheless, Judith Mayne emphasizes that, “no matter how tenuous, fractured, or complicated, there is a connection between the writer’s gender, her personhood, and her texts” (1990, 90). Here we can continue the discussion from the end of chapter 2—the opposition between a semioticstructuralist-psychoanalytic position, which emphasizes that meaning is generated from language etc., and a Romantic idea of self-expression, in which meaning derives directly from the director as artist. In terms of gender, the Romantic idea leads to essentialism, for it posits a direct, unmediated link between artists (including their gender) and their work. Piotrowska, Lyon, and Mayne are not adopting these extreme positions, although Lyons’s statement is close to semiotics-structuralism-psychoanalysis, while Piotrowska and Mayne reintroduce some subjectivity and creativity back into the discussion, emphasizing not only that an author creates, but that an author’s gender plays some role in the act of creation. Mayne adds: “Virtually all feminist critics who argue in defense of female authorship as a useful and necessary category assume the political necessity for doing so” (1990, 97). In what ways can women write and direct films differently from men? The activity does not happen automatically but involves processes of rethinking and working-through. From the

71

TYPES OF STORYTELLING

work of de Lauretis (1985), Doane (1981), Flitterman-Lewis (1996), Kaplan (1983), Mayne (1990), Kuhn (1982), and Silverman (1988), it is possible to identify a series of characteristics that inscribe “femininity” into a film: 1. Themes Women-centered themes: Emphasis on relationships between women (friendship, erotic relationships, communities) as a way to focus the narrative on women’s experiences and conflicts under patriarchy. A woman-themed film is necessary but not sufficient in itself. The images, narrative, and film style that convey these themes must also change. 2. Autobiography and self-representation This is a subcategory of women-centered themes: a filmmaker takes her own experiences as the subject matter of her films. Within second-wave feminism, autobiography does not conform to a Romantic notion of introspection and individual creativity, but is a reflexive practice that investigates a director’s gendered self in relation to dominant patriarchal values. 3. Narrative and narration Feminist films can employ narrational techniques to create complex, nonlinear stories that go beyond the linear, closed Oedipal narrative. Instead of a linear, fixed, closed narrative relentlessly moving forward, feminist narratives tends to be indeterminate, ambivalent, and open ended (Kuhn 1982, 169). In particular they reject the “formation of the heterosexual couple” as the “natural” or inevitable ending for a film. Referring to Lizzie Borden’s independent film Born in Flames (1983), de Lauretis emphasizes that “the film’s narrative remains unresolved, fragmented, and difficult to follow” (1985, 168). For Mary Ann Doane, “the most interesting and productive recent films dealing with the feminist problematic are precisely those which elaborate a new syntax, thus ‘speaking’ the female body differently, even haltingly or inarticulately from

72

FEMINISM, NARRATIVE, AUTHORSHIP

the perspective of a classical syntax” (1981, 34). Doane mentions the slow circular camera movements in Riddles of the Sphinx (Mulvey and Wollen, 1977): “The film effects a continual displacement of the gaze which ‘catches’ the woman’s body only accidentally, momentarily, refusing to hold or fix her in the frame. The camera consistently transforms its own framing to elide the possibility of a fetishism of the female body” (1981, 34). 4. Exaggeration Patriarchy can be deconstructed by exaggerating its values— inflating and exposing its constructions (images, narrative trajectories) as artificial and contingent, not natural and inevitable. Teresa de Lauretis calls this “Oedipal with a vengeance” (1984, 157). 5. The fourth look Mulvey (1975, 17) identified a series of looks in the cinema: (1) the spectator looks at the film; (2) the film camera looks at the film’s storyworld; (3) male characters in the storyworld look at women characters. Feminist films can replace the third look with an exchange of looks among women. More radically, it can also challenge looks (1) and (2) with a fourth look—female characters return the look by looking at the camera. Mulvey and Wollen did this in a literal manner in Amy! (1980), in which the Amy Johnson character spots the camera following her; she then looks back and confronts it. 6. Intersectional feminism Intersectional feminism reacts against second-wave feminism’s universal category of “woman,” identifying it as a specific category (the white Western liberal middle-class feminist) that was raised to the universal level. Intersectional feminism replaces this generic universal category with multiple overlapping vectors of identity— race, class, ethnicity, religion, national identity, sexual orientation. Second-wave feminists had already identified the need to

73

TYPES OF STORYTELLING

challenge this “universal” category (see de Lauretis 1985, 166–75; Kaplan 1989; and Mayne 1990, 116). 7. Lesbian irony Discussing the Hollywood films of Dorothy Arzner, Mayne mentions “marginal lesbian gestures” (1990, 113) embedded in her films, which do not fit into classical narrative structure. Mayne argues that tension between the dominant patriarchal values and incompatible lesbian gestures creates irony (1990, 115). 8. Antirealism and avant-garde filmmaking Feminism is strongly associated with avant-garde film practice, which challenges classical (“realist”) notions of narrative, storyworld, and character. Feminist film practice is associated with either a negative destructive aesthetics or the construction of a new aesthetics/another vision. Mulvey stated the destructive impulse in her “Visual Pleasure” essay, where one section is labeled “Destruction of Pleasure as a Radical Weapon” (1975, 7). But in reaction to this statement, Teresa de Lauretis argued that “The project of women’s cinema . . . is no longer that of destroying or disrupting man-centered vision by representing its blind spots, its gaps or its repressed. . . . The effort and challenge now are how to effect another vision: to construct other objects and subjects of vision, and to formulate the conditions of representability of another social subject” (de Lauretis 1985, 163). 9. A feminist deaesthetic For Teresa de Lauretis: “There is a certain configuration of issues and formal problems that have been consistently articulated in what we call women’s cinema. The way in which they have been expressed and developed, both artistically and critically, seems to point less to a ‘feminine aesthetic’ than to a feminist deaesthetic” (1985, 175, emphasis in the original). The deaesthetic deglamorizes the female body and focuses on everyday incidents and gestures.

74

FEMINISM, NARRATIVE, AUTHORSHIP

Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) is often cited as the archetypical example (de Lauretis 1985, 159–60; Doane 1981, 34–36). Discussing mainstream and women’s films in terms of these nine characteristics goes far beyond the limited activity of determining if female characters are portrayed positively or negatively. Instead, focus on these nine characteristics together takes a more holistic view by attempting to determine whether and how women’s films construct an entire storyworld cut (to rephrase Mulvey) to the measure of female desire. Furthermore, according to de Lauretis, a film constructed around female desire creates a female form of address: “The idea that a film may address the spectator as female, rather than portray women positively or negatively, seems very important to me in the critical endeavor to characterize women’s cinema for, not only by, women” (de Lauretis 1985, 163). In reference again to Born in Flames, de Lauretis argues that its address is feminist and intersectional: “the spectator is addressed as female in gender and multiple or heterogeneous in race and class” (1985, 173–74). Sally Potter’s Orlando Second-wave feminism promoted women directors marginalized from film history—for example, Claire Johnston’s book on Dorothy Arzner (1975), E. Ann Kaplan’s Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera (1983), and Sandy Flitterman-Lewis’s To Desire Differently (1996). This refocus on women directors has accelerated recently (see the additional reading at the end of this chapter). Sally Potter made avant-garde feminist films in the 1970s, including Thriller (1979) (see Fowler 2008, 33–44; Kaplan 1983, 154–61; Mayer 2009, 27–52). As Fowler points out, “Orlando represents a movement in Potter’s practice from the avant-garde to art cinema” (2008, 63), and displays a constant tension between narrative and antinarrative. The film portrays four hundred years in the life of the main character, Orlando, who does not age but who changes from a man into a woman halfway through the story. These rather unusual character traits have significant consequences for the film’s structure (discussed later). The film also displays a tension between a radical feminist politics and a more liberal sexual

75

TYPES OF STORYTELLING

politics: it embodies the radical perspective of second-wave feminism, but it also tends to downplay lesbian themes in Woolf’s novel. The following discussion examines Orlando from the perspective of the nine characteristics presented earlier. The film’s themes are focused on social restrictions placed on women through the centuries regarding marriage, inheritance, their role in society, customs, and dress. The film exposes these restrictions as arbitrary conventions by suddenly applying them to Orlando once he has changed into a woman. That is, the sudden change in attitude to Orlando—her legal status, marital status, her rights (or lack of them) to hold property—is exposed as random, for she is still the same person. It is not her change in sexual identity that perplexes Orlando; it is the subsequent change in social attitude toward her. The film is not autobiographical in any direct sense, but a woman filmmaker is privileging experiences, conflicts, and contradictions women have endured throughout Western history. Nonetheless, Virginia Woolf’s novel upon which the film is based is autobiographical: it is called Orlando: A Biography (1928), and is generally regarded to be an idealized, fictionalallegorical portrait of Woolf’s love for the writer Vita Sackville-West. And within the film’s fictional storyworld the spectator encounters Orlando’s desire to write; he-she begins writing poetry but ends up writing an autobiography, which is presented to a publisher toward the end of the film. The film challenges conventional understanding of story space, time, and character, especially in terms of coherence. The narrative deviates from conventional unified linear structure, the traditional formation of the couple is thwarted, and the film follows art cinema conventions for it has a disjointed, episodic structure (see chapter 6 for an outline of art cinema conventions). Furthermore, Orlando is not defined in terms of stable character traits (age, sexual identity). The narrative is nonetheless focused around this unusual character, who offers (primarily from a woman’s perspective) a condensed guide to different periods of British history. The film presents a deliberately excessive, utopian ending, in the form of an angel suspended in the air singing about gender: the lyrics speak of the unity of man and woman (“we are joined we are one with the human face”) and challenges binary oppositions. That unity is achieved in the character of Orlando, a character who starts off as a man, but changes into a woman halfway through.

76

FEMINISM, NARRATIVE, AUTHORSHIP

The previous examples demonstrate that exaggeration is a dominant trope in the film, especially in terms of romance, gender, and costume. (Gender and costume are exaggerated in a significant scene where Orlando changes into restrictive women’s clothing and attempts to navigate interior spaces in her home.) The fourth look is also dominant: at key moments in the film Orlando looks at the camera/the specatator and occasionally addresses it directly (see figure 5.1). The look into the camera is a reflexive gesture, a marker of enunciation (see chapter 4). Julianne Pidduck briefly considers the film’s intersectional politics (1997, especially 186–89). She argues that “part of the narrative uncertainty of Orlando . . . springs not only from indeterminate gender but also from a certain ‘stuckness’ which extends beyond feminism into bourgeois imperialist history proper: How now are westerners to represent critically the project of empire?” (1997, 187). In purely feminist terms, Orlando represents an (indeterminate) narrative of female agency, a quest for selfexploration. But in colonial terms, Pidduck suggests that the film presents Uzbekistan (where Orlando is posted for several years) as an exotic backdrop for white English colonialists to “find themselves,” which tends to undercut the film’s radical political aspirations. Nonetheless, Pidduck does not consider the way Archduke Harry (representative of British

Fig. 5.1: The Fourth Look (Orlando) © 1992 Sony Pictures Classics

77

TYPES OF STORYTELLING

colonialism) is portrayed in a comical manner, undermining his authority, or the way he is contrasted to the Khan, leader of Uzbekistan (a character invented for the film), who is portrayed as an articulate, knowledgeable, regal character. Unlike the films of Dorothy Arzner, Orlando was not made within a classical Hollywood narrative system, which means that lesbian gestures do not need to be embedded in the margins of the film, for lesbianism is instead one of the story’s themes. Nonetheless, Karen Hollinger and Teresa Winterhalter (2001) suggest that, in adapting Orlando to the screen, Potter emphasized androgyny at the expense of the lesbian themes evident in Woolf’s novel, indicating that liberal sexual politics dominate in the film over radical sexual politics. In terms of avant-garde filmmaking, Orlando is a narrative film that nonetheless goes beyond narrative conventions by incorporating disruptive elements (the ending, exaggerations, the fourth look, a central character who lives through four hundred years of British history and changes sexual identity). In doing so the film challenges codes of cinematic realism. Rather than make a faithful historical costume drama with authentic details, Potter instead represents British history (especially location, interior sets, costume, legal system) in an excessive, ironic, and satirical manner. Finally, whereas Potter’s earlier low-budget avant-garde film Thriller epitomizes the deaesthetic tendency, Orlando is a more lavish production. Although it appears to be a traditional heritage costume drama, drawing upon its codes and conventions, the characteristics of Orlando already discussed deconstruct the conventions of the genre, which was popular in Britain in the 1980s–90s (when Orlando was made) with films such as Chariots of Fire (1981), Another Country (1984), A Passage to India (1985), A Room with a View (1985), and Howards End (1992). By discussing the film through these nine features, it is evident that Orlando not only presents a negative aesthetic that critiques patriarchy; it also constructs “another vision,” a storyworld that privileges femininity. The film therefore successfully fulfills the dual agenda of second-wave feminism—a critique of patriarchy and the construction of a different vision based on feminist values. Overall, this analysis of the film’s aesthetics, narrative, and sexual politics suggests that it is dominated by liberal rather than radical feminist values. In sum, the nine features present a

78

FEMINISM, NARRATIVE, AUTHORSHIP

framework for identifying both textual markers of feminist auteurs and feminist forms of address. Authorship Revisited Chapter 4 spelled out that “director,” “auteur,” and “enunciator” are different. Whereas the first two concepts emphasize the Romantic conception of individual creativity, the concept of the enunciator places emphasis on language and discourse as the source of meaning. Should feminism adopt or try to conform to the auteur critic’s Romantic way of thinking and simply identify a canon of female artists? This has the advantage of restoring marginalized women to film history and asserting female agency. For example, Sandy Flitterman-Lewis developed a theory of feminine authorship by analyzing the films of Germaine Dulac, Marie Epstein, and Agnès Varda: “In my efforts to illustrate the ways in which Dulac, Epstein, and Varda have redefined filmmaking from a feminine perspective, I argue that . . . Dulac is concerned with woman’s desire, Epstein defines a female gaze, and Varda formulates a feminine discourse” (1996, 322). But is female authorship to be defined in imitation of male authorship? This is a complex issue that has received multiple responses. Flitterman-Lewis argues that “to ignore sexuality in considerations of authorship is to, in essence, support the masculine status quo” (1996, 19), while Mayne argues that “the privileging of female authorship risks appropriating, for women, an extremely patriarchal notion of cinematic creation” (1990, 94–95). In other words, auteur criticism privileges the director as the film’s transcendental origin, as the film’s ultimate source of meaning. In building a feminist alternative to patriarchy, Flitterman-Lewis suggests that feminism needs to work within and through patriarchy, to initially adopt its ways of thinking, but also identify patriarchy’s contradictions and transform its concepts. She asserts that authorship “must be conceived in a different way when the female is taken into account” (1996, 19, emphasis in the original), which involves redefining authorship within a theory of enunciation (see the previous chapter). In other words, the Romantic idea of the auteur will eventually need to be transformed into the discursive theory of enunciation in order to construct a theory and history of women directors.

79

TYPES OF STORYTELLING

Additional Reading For a representative sample of work by second-wave feminist film theorists, see Cowie 1997, Doane, Mellencamp, and Williams 1984, Kaplan 1983, Kuhn 1982, Mulvey 1989, and Penley 1988. For recent studies of women filmmakers, see Cobb 2015, Meek 2019, Montanez Smukler 2019, Paszkiewicz 2018, Ulfsdotter and Backman Rogers 2018, and White 2015. Individual directors have also been subject to book-length studies, including Sally Potter (Fowler 2008, Mayer 2009).

80

6

ART CINEMA NARR ATION ( Alice in the Cities and Inland Empire )

“Art cinema” is a diffuse, heterogeneous label that applies to many historical periods and types of filmmaking. Yet, one of the best-known types, the European art cinema of the 1950s–1970s, is easily recognizable, defined in opposition to Hollywood’s domination of film production methods, aesthetic practices, and film markets. This chapter focuses on David Bordwell’s short but dense essay “The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice,” a seminal statement on art cinema’s techniques of narrative and narration, first published in 1979 (Bordwell 1999, originally published in 1979) and expanded into a long book chapter (1985, chapter 10). The original essay was then updated in 2008 (Bordwell 2008, chapter 5). Bordwell’s idea of the art cinema has been subjected to critique (see Kovács 2007 and Thanouli 2009a, 2009b), although this chapter will focus on its strengths and value in analyzing the art film’s narrative and narration. After outlining Bordwell’s concepts, this chapter briefly employs them to discuss a representative European art film—Alice in the Cities (1974) by New German filmmaker Wim Wenders. The chapter then employs Bordwell’s concepts to understand a more extreme form of art cinema—David Lynch’s complex independent American film Inland Empire (2006).

81

TYPES OF STORYTELLING

“The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice” David Bordwell examines the “art cinema” as a distinct mode of film practice. He defines a film practice according to three criteria (1999, 716): • Historical existence (defined in terms of time and place) • Set of formal conventions (film style, narration, narrative structure) • Implicit viewing procedures (= reading strategies, expectations). Bordwell focuses primarily on the European art film of the 1950s and 1960s, many of which he lists in the essay’s opening paragraph: “La Strada, 8 ½, Wild Strawberries, The Seventh Seal, Persona, Ashes and Diamonds, Jules et Jim, Knife in the Water, Vivre sa vie, Muriel” (1999, 716). He concentrates on Italian, Swedish, Polish, and French films, to which we should add the New German Cinema and the Czech New Wave. The first art cinema characteristic Bordwell discusses is its loosening of cause-effect logic. He briefly outlines the conventions of classical Hollywood cinema (which he has developed elsewhere [see Bordwell 1985, chapter 9; and Bordwell, Staiger, and Thompson 1985]), and then defines art cinema in opposition to these conventions: “the art cinema defines itself explicitly against the classical narrative mode, and especially against the cause-effect linkage of events. These linkages become looser, more tenuous in the art film” (1999, 717) (but not of course 100 percent opposition, since the two types of cinema do overlap). The art cinema’s narrative is episodic (a series of separate episodes) rather than continuous and unified. What motivates the loosening of the classical conventions? Bordwell argues that “The art cinema motivates its narratives by two principles: realism and authorial expressivity” (718). From Bordwell’s essay we can identify three forms of “realism” in the art cinema: two types of “objective” realism and “subjective” realism. The first type of objective realism (realism [a]) is defined by the film’s grounding in an actual, specific, recognizable location (an influence from neorealism). We can identify a film’s objective realism (a) in its reliance on location filming and available light and its temps morts, or dead time (moments where no narrative actions or events take place). In contrast, objective realism (b) refers to the storyworld’s complex, conflicting, and unpredictable nature.

82

ART CINEMA NARRATION

Subjective realism is dominated by psychologically complex characters, who usually suffer from alienation or mental illness. These characters “lack defined desires and goals. Characters may act for inconsistent reasons . . . or may question themselves about their goals” (718). In contrast, “The Hollywood protagonist speeds directly toward the target” (718). In art cinema, because characters do not always have clear-cut goals and objectives, they instead “express and explain their psychological states. Slow to act, these characters tell all. The art cinema is less concerned with action than reaction” (718). Dialogue is important for expressing a character’s state of crisis, alienation, and anxiety, although a film’s subjective realism is also apparent in its reliance on flashbacks and flash-forwards and, more generally, its privileging of character experiences. A particular film will usually combine these three types of realism—but one type typically dominates. Bordwell defines subjective realism as the most important type of realism in the art film, although the other two are still relevant and important. The term authorial expressivity refers to a form of commentary imposed on the storyworld by an agent outside that world. In the art film, the process of telling a story no longer tries to conceal itself (as in classical cinema) but instead draws attention to itself. Bordwell writes: “What is essential is that the art film be read as the work of an expressive individual” (720). It is no coincidence that the Romantic conception of the auteur became popular in the 1950s and 1960s when European art cinema was a dominant mode of filmmaking. Authorial expressivity informs the art cinema’s implicit viewing procedure: “The competent viewer watches the film expecting not order in the narrative but stylistic signatures in the narration” (720). A competent viewer is an expert connoisseur who adopts a specialized reading strategy when watching art films. The viewer’s strategy involves identifying stylistic signatures in the narration (that is, in the way the narrative is told), a focus on how an auteur makes their films expressive. Expressivity works on two levels: style and plot (or narration). Firstly, film style: “an unusual angle, a stressed bit of cutting, a prohibited camera movement, an unrealistic shift in lighting or setting—in short any breakdown of the motivation of cinematic space and time by cause-effect logic—can be read as ‘authorial commentary’ ” (720). Stylistic expressivity is conceived in terms of the auteur, whose expressivity needs to be consistent to count as a signature. Secondly, plot: “In the art cinema, the puzzle

83

TYPES OF STORYTELLING

is one of plot: who is telling this story? How is this story being told? Why is this story being told this way?” (720–21). In this form of expressivity, emphasis is placed on the role of the external underlying narrator in shaping the film. For Bordwell, realism and authorial expressivity function to unify the art film. However, he argues that they are contradictory forces that work against each other. Why contradictory? Because one derives from within the film (objective-subjective realism) and the other from outside the film (authorial expressivity). He concludes that “The art cinema seeks to solve the problem in a sophisticated way: by the device of ambiguity” (721). A film’s ambiguity may result from conflict between (1) the unpredictable world the characters inhabit (objective realism [b]), (2) the character’s unstable, complex psychology (subjective realism), or (3) the auteur’sunderlying narrator’s intervention in telling the story (authorial expressivity). Art films waver between these three factors, sometimes presenting all three as possibilities. The outcome is an ambiguous, open-ended film. “The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice” is represented schematically in table 6.1. The remainder of this chapter examines two films within the framework of Bordwell’s essay: a brief discussion of the art cinema credentials of Alice in the Cities, followed by a more detailed analysis of Inland Empire. Alice in the Cities Alice in the Cities (Wim Wenders, 1974) is a quintessential European art film. Its narrative, narration, and style are organized around the writer Philip Winter as he leaves the United States and travels back home to Germany. A German woman he meets in New York asks him to accompany her daughter, the nine-year-old Alice, to Amsterdam, where she will join them later. However, the mother fails to turn up so Philip and Alice travel to Germany to try to find Alice’s grandmother. Alice in the Cities is about traveling and observing; it is constructed from a series of low-key episodic events loosely linked together by a travel itinerary. The film is anchored in specific locations—Philip drives from Surf City, South Carolina, to New York City before flying with Alice to Amsterdam and driving around the German cities of Wuppertal and Essen before catching a

84

ART CINEMA NARRATION

Table 6.1: Summary of “The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice” Summary of “The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice” Art cinema consists of seven main characteristics: a loose cause-effect logic, three types of realism, two types of authorial expressivity, and ambiguity. Cause-Effect Logic 1. Art cinema defines itself against the continuous, unified cause-effect logic of classical narrative by loosening this logic and emphasizing episodic structure. Realism 2. Objective realism (a): the film is grounded in a specific location; 3. Objective realism (b): the storyworld is complex, conflicting, unpredictable; 4. Subjective realism: characters are psychologically complex and usually suffer from alienation, mental illness, etc. Authorial Expressivity An external agent imposes meaning on a film via 5. Unusual style, or 6. Unusual plot structure. Ambiguity 7. Realism + Authorial Expressivity = Ambiguity (open-ended narratives, etc.).

train to Munich. In an interview Wenders emphasized the importance of place in his films: “I work very much from a sense of place. That’s sort of a driving force in all my films. Most of my films have started with a desire to shoot in a certain city or in a landscape and let that place tell its story through the actors and the characters” (in Anderson 2006). The film’s reality is unpredictable to the extent that it brings together by chance two unlikely characters, Philip and Alice, who do not have a clear plan after failing to meet up with Alice’s mother. A wandering rootless character, Philip has no clear goal except to return to Germany after failing to write a commissioned article. The responsibility of looking after Alice is foisted upon him, although in the end the responsibility helps him to write. In

85

TYPES OF STORYTELLING

regard to subjective reality, Alice feels a sense of abandonment and isolation, while Philip looks depressed, loses touch with his career and his friends, and (initially at least) is dislocated from both German and American culture. The film focuses on the contrasting personalities and worldviews of Philip and Alice. Organized into a loose, linear episodic plot, Alice in the Cities is an early road movie, one of many Wenders made throughout his career. He emphasizes observation (expressed in many optical point-of-view shots) and character detachment (characters observe the world through car windshields, hotel windows, and camera viewfinders), a stylistic mark of authorial expressivity common to Wenders’s films. Alice in the Cities goes further by instantly fixing the detached look in an image, made with a Polaroid camera that Philip carries with him everywhere he goes. The road trip motif privileges subjective motion, the world seen from a moving vehicle, with nothing happening in the image except the observation of movement itself. This “dead time” creates space for reflection rather than a relentless focus on action. Inland Empire The following discussion of Inland Empire assumes you have seen the film (giving a plot synopsis would be complicated!). I will apply the seven characteristics of the art film as defined in Bordwell’s essay and will only focus on the first fifteen minutes of this long and complex film. Loosening of Cause-Effect Logic

There are two logics at work in Inland Empire: • A cause-effect narrative logic (the story of the making of a film, On High in Blue Tomorrows); and • Nonlogical links between scenes created via associations (symbolic, conceptual, sonic, dream logic, etc.) where the links are indirect and implied. In the opening fifteen minutes the nonlogical links dominate. Causeeffect logic is present but fragmented; after that, cause-effect logic structures

86

ART CINEMA NARRATION

the storyline about the making of a film but is intertwined with the nonlogical associational links. Inland Empire’s overall logic can be understood metaphorically as a labyrinth. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “labyrinth” as a “structure consisting of a number of intercommunicating passages arranged in bewildering complexity, through which it is difficult or impossible to find one’s way without guidance; a maze.” Three phrases from this definition are pertinent to Inland Empire: • Intercommunicating (that is, spatially linked) passages • Bewildering complexity (a challenge to map out) • Difficult or impossible to find one’s way without guidance (creating disorientation). These three features help explain the structure of Inland Empire, where characters continually enter new and unexpected spaces, and quickly become lost. The spectator identifies with characters (especially Nikki Grace, played by Laura Dern) as they explore space and become disoriented. This applies especially to the film’s first fifteen minutes, which consists of the following scenes: (1) credit sequence; (2) prologue; (3) two Polish people (a man and a woman) go into a hotel room; (4) the woman in the hotel room watches television; (5) on television appears a sitcom populated by people dressed as rabbits; (6) one of the rabbit characters walks into a palatial room, where two men talk to each other in Polish; and (7) conversation between Nikki Grace and a woman called visitor no. 1. The credit sequence emphases light: a light beam streams across a black screen; black letters spelling out the film’s title emerge from the black screen and are struck by the light beam, which makes the lettering visible. The prologue emphases sound; a close-up of a disc and needle are accompanied by a radio voice announcing “Axxon N. The longest running radio play in history. Tonight, continuing in the Baltic region, a grey winter day in an old hotel.” The voice is doubly mediated: we hear the voice through the radio and recorded on disc. The credit sequence and prologue are linked conceptually: emphasis on light/emphasis on sound. This conceptual link can also be read reflexively, for it draws attention to cinema’s key ingredients—light piercing the darkness and recorded-mediated sound.

87

TYPES OF STORYTELLING

Is there a link between the prologue and hotel (where the two Polishspeaking characters, their faces blurred, enter a hotel room)? Is the hotel scene visualizing the radio voice from the prologue? The voice mentions a hotel and the Baltic region of Europe (which includes Poland), which means there are loose, tenuous links between the prologue and the hotel room. In the hotel room a woman (called the “lost girl” in the credits) looks at a television showing static; a point-of-view shot shows the static on the screen, but then dissolves into the television sitcom; within the sitcom, a male humanoid rabbit enters the living room, talks to two female humanoid rabbits, and then exits. In the next shot it unexpectedly walks into a palatial room (where it “fades out” when the lights are turned on). A few additional images appear on the television screen, including high-speed shots of a woman walking. These images come from the next scene of Inland Empire; they therefore constitute one of art cinema’s unusual plot manipulations—the flash-forward. But why does the director use a flash-forward at this moment in the film? What motivates its use? Does the lost girl see these images on the television screen, or does she only see static? There are too few cues to give a definitive answer; the moment remains inherently ambiguous. The woman in the flash-forward is called visitor no. 1. In the next scene she introduces herself to Nikki and seems to know a great deal about her (that she will be awarded a role in an upcoming film, what this new film is about). She also tells Nikki a few stories and fragments of information that come true in the remainder of the film. Visitor no. 1 is therefore a character who acts like an underlying narrator who possesses knowledge of the film’s future actions and events. She indirectly provides the spectator with fragments of exposition. Objective Realism (A)

Just like Lynch’s previous film Mulholland Dr. (2001), Inland Empire is named after a specific location in California. “Inland empire” refers to an urban area of Southern California encompassing parts of Riverside County and San Bernardino. However, for the most part Lynch does not set the film in this part of California; like Mulholland Dr., it takes place in the more familiar parts, including Hollywood. Additional scenes are set in Poland.

88

ART CINEMA NARRATION

Objective Realism (B)

Inland Empire disrupts standard rules of space, time, and causality; the storyworld contains unusual and impossible events. But the narration increases the mystery by restricting access to this storyworld and creating an unusual juxtaposition of events: the film transitions from a radio play to a hotel room in Poland to a rabbit sitcom on television to a Hollywood film star’s mansion to a television talk show to a film set and then to the fictional universe of the film being made on that set. The film’s unusual world can in part be explained in relation to character psychology. Subjective Realism

The film eventually restricts itself to Nikki Grace’s perspective and to her disturbing experiences, including those of her fictional character Susan Blue. We cannot always distinguish between Nikki and Susan—and, crucially, neither can Nikki. The first scene where Nikki’s state of mind is questioned is in her conversation with visitor no. 1. As their unusual conversation ends, visitor no. 1 points to the opposite end of the room and says to Nikki, “If it was tomorrow, you would be sitting over there.” Nikki looks off screen (figure 6.1), followed by a shot of the other side of the room (figure 6.2), where she sees herself and her friends. Is this the next day? Following the conventional grammar of the point-of-view sequence, the sequence cuts back to the character looking (figure 6.3); however, Nikki has disappeared. In a rather unusual manner, the film transitions to the next day in the middle of a point-of-view sequence of shots. This uncommon shot transition draws attention to Nikki’s state of mind but also to the film’s unusual storyworld, which does not conform to everyday reality for it contains unusual behavior, strange dialogue, and characters who (like an underlying narrator) possess knowledge of future story events. As the film progresses, Nikki becomes more psychologically disturbed, in part because she fears her husband, in part because she is unable to disengage from her character, and in part because the film she is making (On High in Blue Tomorrows) is described on several occasions as a cursed story. She continually explores new spaces, which magically appear, and

89

Fig. 6.1: Nikki Looks Off-Screen (Inland Empire) © Bobkind Inc/Studio Canal

Fig. 6.2: The Object of Nikki’s Point of View (Herself and Her Friends) (Inland Empire) © Bobkind Inc/Studio Canal

Fig. 6.3: Return to Nikki Looking Off-Screen (but She Has Disappeared) (Inland Empire) © Bobkind Inc/Studio Canal

ART CINEMA NARRATION

do not fit together into a coherent storyworld. But the construction of space is not random; it is focused around Nikki and bound together with indirect associational links. Authorial Expressivity: Style

If actions, events, style, etc. cannot be motivated within the film, we need to look outside the film for motivation. One reading strategy involves understanding deviations in style and plot as marks of an external agent’s presence (“underlying narrator,” “noncharacter narrator,” “auteur,” or “enunciator,” depending on one’s theory). The external agent’s intervention in the opening scenes of Inland Empire includes the blurred faces of the two characters in the hotel. This is a bizarre and disruptive stylistic technique to use in a fiction film. The blurring is obviously a technique the director applied to the image (it does not exist in the storyworld). One possible motivation for the blurring is to signify character psychology: the woman entering the hotel room is unsure where she is or what she is doing. The external agent has therefore used a blunt filmic technique to represent her indistinct state of consciousness. Another stylistic mark is the sudden shift in the hotel room from filming in black and white to filming in color (the switch does not appear to be motivated by character psychology, although it can be tenuously linked to the woman’s change in consciousness, from indistinct to clear). More generally, the “awkward” filming (the way the wide-angle lens films faces in close-up, distorting them, or the way it occasionally goes out of focus) draws attention to the camera and the director. (In this film, Lynch was the camera operator, filming on a prosumer digital camera, the Sony DSR-PD150.) Authorial Expressivity: Plot

The fast-motion flash-forward television images of visitor no. 1 constitute another mark of authorial presence. The speeding-up of the images is a stylistic intervention and their status as a flash-forward is a manipulation of plot, for only Lynch the enunciator knows these images are in the next scene and chooses to insert them into the previous scene. More generally, we have already seen that the film consists of mere fragments of a causeeffect plot plus nonlogical links between scenes created via associations.

91

TYPES OF STORYTELLING

Nonetheless, the film does have some coherence, because it follows one character, Nikki, entering different spaces, different levels of reality, and different states of mind, and it frequently shares her point of view. But, because the scene transitions are so unexpected, the storyteller’s presence behind the film becomes noticeable. To emphasize again Bordwell’s point about art cinema narration—it is not invisible but draws attention to itself: “In the art cinema, the puzzle is one of plot: who is telling this story? How is this story being told? Why is this story being told this way?” (Bordwell 1999, 720–21). Ambiguity

One way the director creates ambiguity is by depicting subjective reality as if it were objective: the director outside the storyworld presents the character’s subjective delusions as if they were actual. To return to Nikki’s point-of-view shot: does it represent a disturbing characteristic of the film’s storyworld, is it entirely attributable to character subjectivity, or has the director manufactured it? Ambiguity can be attributed to the unpredictable reality of the film’s storyworld, to the film’s characters, or to the director outside the film. Ambiguity is therefore created from these three possibilities. I will end by formulating questions that ask how subjective realism, objective realism (b), and authorial expressivity create ambiguity in Inland Empire. Firstly, regarding the camera movements, angles, cuts, and unusual juxtapositions of spaces and actions discussed earlier: do they represent Nikki’s state of mind (= subjective realism), are they objective (realism [b]), or are they motivated only by the director (authorial expressivity)? Secondly, sound: regarding the electronic mechanical sounds on the soundtrack, are they ambient diegetic sounds emanating from the storyworld, are they coming from inside the character’s head, or are they nondiegetic? Thirdly, the lighting (and the use of darkness): can the light and darkness be attributed to character perception, to the nature of the storyworld, or to the director’s direct manipulation of events? (The issue of the director controlling the lighting is a theme played out in the film.) Finally, why does Lynch privilege the disembodied voice? The film opens with a disembodied radio voice; in the hotel, we cannot definitively link the conversation between the two people to their bodies because we

92

ART CINEMA NARRATION

cannot see their mouths, due to the blurring of their faces; and we cannot see the mouths of the humanoid rabbits even though they are talking (evident from their gestures). This disembodiment creates ambiguity, which we may be unable to solve, but at least we can see Lynch creating his storyworld via a consistent set of directorial choices. Bordwell’s essay creates a clear strategy for analyzing art films: Begin by looking within the film, at the status of the reality in the storyworld (realism [b]) and the status of the main character’s subjectivity. Bring in authorial expressivity if there is no clear, unambiguous internal motivation to actions, events, plot structure, or film style. This approach to art cinema does not tell us what a film means, but how it means (it constitutes a poetics, not a hermeneutics). What Inland Empire means is inherently ambiguous, so we should study that ambiguity, analyze how it is created, rather than artificially trying to fix one meaning onto the film, a position that assumes the film is not ambiguous. Additional Reading Since the 2000s, many authors have analyzed art cinema from several perspectives—including Andrews 2013, Betz 2009, Elsaesser 2005, Galt and Schoonover 2010, Kovács 2007, Nayar 2010, Thanouli 2009a, 2009b, and White 2017.

93

7

UNRELIABLE NARR ATION AND PUZZLE FILMS ( You Only Live Once, Stage Fright, and The Butterfly Effect )

Chapter 3 examined the way narration reorganizes narrative actions and how it controls spectators’ access to those actions by filtering them through characters and narrators. The narration can give reliable access to narrative actions—by guiding spectators through the storyworld, clearly signaling when access is denied (for example, by cutting to the next scene before the action is completed in the current scene) or if information is ambiguous. Or it can act unreliably—by secretly withholding important story information, through misdirection, or by covertly presenting false information as if it were true. The first half of this chapter presents the concept of unreliable narration and discusses a number of key scenes in You Only Live Once (Fritz Lang, 1937), drawing upon George M. Wilson’s work (1986), and Stage Fright (Hitchcock, 1950), drawing upon Kristin Thompson detailed analysis (1988, 135–61). Unreliable narration is just one (but a key) component of the puzzle film. Puzzle films are a fairly extreme form of representational cinema. Like art cinema (see chapter 6), puzzle films also enrich and renew storytelling, but they go further: they challenge deep-seated cultural conceptions about agency, identity, memory, and time. Art cinema and puzzle films share a number of features, but puzzle films are distinct in that they carry out additional filmmaking tasks that cannot be conveyed in classical or art cinema, yet they do not completely reject narrative and narration the way avantgarde films do. The second half of this chapter discusses puzzle films and

94

UNRELIABLE NARRATION AND PUZZLE FILMS

analyzes a number of key scenes in The Butterfly Effect (Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber, 2004), drawing upon Edward Branigan’s (2014) analysis of the film. Before analyzing puzzle films, the chapter discusses the way unreliability is created outside the storyworld, on the level of narration and the implicit underlying narrator (for Gaudreault [2009], the primary level), and within the storyworld by unreliable character-narrators (the secondary level). Unreliable Narration: You Only Live Once The distinction between reliable and unreliable narration is not an opposition between complete or partial access to narrative actions, for narration always presents a partial and limited view on the narrative. The issue is whether the narration presents a view on narrative information that is trustworthy and consistent, or whether the narrative events are misleadingly presented. Reliable narration is trustworthy in the sense that it is co-operative and communicates information consistently and efficiently. Crucially, this includes communicating to spectators when access to significant information is restricted or suppressed, or if the information’s status is questionable (for example, whether a story event is a dream or is actual). Like reliable narration, unreliable narration also withholds (restricts and suppresses) access and presents questionable information—but with the difference that it does not communicate to spectators that some important information is hidden or concealed, nor does it always convey the status of questionable information. Nonetheless, spectators eventually discover that the narration is unreliable because of the effects it produces—spectators are unable to comprehend the storyworld as coherent because the narration provides insufficient or inconsistent information (although these effects may not be evident immediately). The difference between reliable and unreliable narration is therefore not a matter of one type using a specific set of storytelling techniques that the other does not use. Instead, the difference is whether the narration does or does not communicate to the spectator that it is withholding (restricting and suppressing) access to significant narrative information and whether or not it is presenting questionable information. You Only Live Once is centered on an ex-convict, Eddie Taylor, and his attempts to leave behind a life of crime. He is released from prison,

95

TYPES OF STORYTELLING

marries, buys a house, and gets a job as a truck driver. But he loses his job and is seen in the company of his former cellmate Monk, who invites him to rob banks. Eddie is accused of and then sentenced to death for holding up an armored truck and killing six people. Convicted in what appears to be a miscarriage of justice, Eddie receives a pardon just before his execution because Monk’s body and the armored truck are discovered in a river. But Eddie does not believe the news; instead, he shoots the prison priest, Father Dolan, escapes from prison, and becomes a criminal on the run. George M. Wilson (1986, chapter 2) argues that the issue of whether Eddie is innocent or guilty of the robbery is not clear cut. The narration’s selection and juxtaposition of events initially create the impression that Eddie is guilty: the narration juxtaposes Eddie’s need to find a deposit to secure a house with a scene where he loses his job. This is followed immediately by a scene where Eddie is seen with his gangster friend Monk, followed by a scene where Eddie hits his former boss (for refusing to give him back his job), saying to him: “And I wanted to go straight.” This is followed immediately by the robbery. The mere juxtaposition of these scenes implies that Eddie carried out the robbery. The narration in the robbery scene is restricted: A pair of eyes looks out the back of a car just before the robbery. The car driver has a suitcase containing a gas mask and smoke bombs; he puts on the gas mask (obscuring his identity) and uses the smoke bombs to create confusion as he takes an armored car full of money. Eddie’s hat is left at the crime scene (although Eddie claims that it was stolen). This is what the narration shows, but is it reliable? The robbery scene is based on restricted narration, as indeed are many scenes. The issue is whether the narration also suppresses information and creates misdirection. Wilson argues that it does. Eddie’s hat at the site of the robbery (together with his previous criminal record) is flimsy circumstantial evidence that helped to convict him. But, Wilson argues, the evidence that frees Eddie is equally flimsy and circumstantial: just because Monk’s body was found in the armored truck does not mean that Eddie is innocent, for he could have participated with Monk. Wilson examines closely the narration in the robbery scene. Because the narration does not reveal if one or two people carried out the robbery, he wonders if the eyes looking out the back of the car (which quickly dart back and forth) belong to Eddie while Monk is in the front seat putting on the gas mask. The close-up filming

96

UNRELIABLE NARRATION AND PUZZLE FILMS

does not reveal the car interior or how many people are inside. Wilson suggests that the eyes shown in close-up belong to Eddie. His evidence derives from later scenes, when Eddie’s eyes, quickly darting back and forth, are filmed again in close-up but in conjunction with shots of his face. Furthermore, Eddie also has an identical suitcase to the one used in the robbery. Wilson concludes that the film’s narration presents conflicting evidence from which no decision can be made: “Neither the jury in the film nor the ‘jury’ in the audience is in a position to render a verdict on Eddie Taylor’s essential guilt or innocence” (1986, 22). Nonetheless, Wilson argues that the film appears to cohere around the idea that, ultimately, Eddie did not commit the robbery. On the surface—that is, in terms of the film’s preferred reading strategy—the film sets up Eddie as a guilty man but then reveals (too late) that he is innocent. Wilson’s analysis instead attempts to demonstrate that this preferred reading collapses when the film is examined more closely, for unreliable narration presents conflicting information that undermines the film’s surface coherence. Unreliable Character-Narrators: Stage Fright In his analysis of You Only Live Once, Wilson argues that he has identified a form of unreliable narration: “the source of unreliability in this film seems to be the very mechanism of classical film narration itself” (1986, 39) rather than a distinct character-narrator in the film. In other words, the film’s standard narrational techniques are used in an unreliable manner. Whereas the unreliability in You Only Live Once operates on the level of narration, the unreliability in Stage Fright (Hitchcock, 1950) operates on two levels—narrative and narration. More specifically, Stage Fright is a paradigmatic example of collusion between an unreliable character and unreliable narration in film. The film begins with Jonathan Cooper and Eve Gill driving fast out of London. Jonathan tells Eve about how a friend of his, the famous actress Charlotte Inwood, murdered her husband and how he helped her to conceal the murder. But their plan misfired, for the police accuse him of the murder. The narration then faithfully illustrates Jonathan’s words on screen in a flashback. Jonathan appears to be the typical Hitchcockian “wrong man” fleeing from the police. Only toward the end of the film does the narration reveal that Jonathan was lying, that it was he who killed Charlotte’s husband. In the opening scene the narration

97

TYPES OF STORYTELLING

represents a character’s lie in a flashback, but initially conceals the fact that the flashback represents a lie. The veracity of the flashback therefore remains unchallenged until the last scene when Jonathan is punished (he is crushed by the safety curtain in a theater). This lying flashback, a form of unreliable narration, has been examined in detail by film scholars (see the additional reading at the end of this chapter). These authors can be distinguished according to the way they attribute unreliability—either to the level of the narrative, including characters, or to the level of narration. Most authors, in fact, consider unreliability as a combination of the two levels. Kristin Thompson (1988) discusses the lying flashback in Stage Fright in terms of the hermeneutic code and delaying tactics, and in terms of deceptive narration. She groups lying narration with deception, studies how the lying is motivated, and asks how reliable the narration is in acknowledging its deception. She argues that the effective use of deception in narration is dependent on how it is motivated, for all stories centered on an enigma (the hermeneutic code) must deceive in order to set up and then maintain the enigma. Thompson points out that not all of the flashback is untrue (1988, 142): the flashback lasts just over thirteen minutes and contains many actual events. In terms of the hermeneutic code, the flashback correctly identifies the theme (Charlotte’s husband is murdered) and presents disclosure elements (Charlotte murdered him, which later turns out to be false). The enigma the flashback sets up is not “who was murdered?” or “who was the murderer?” but “how to clear the name of an innocent man who has been falsely implicated?” The issue of whether Jonathan is in fact the murderer is not initially raised. The task to clear Jonathan’s name (led primarily by Eve) takes up most of the narrative, for both Eve and the spectator accept it as true. Almost the entire film is therefore based around a lie, for the status of the lying flashback remains concealed until the last moments. In trying to clear Jonathan’s name, Eve eventually shifts the status of the enigma by discovering that Jonathan is the real murderer. In other words, her investigation of the enigma does not resolve it but instead exposes it as false (see also the investigation of Amy’s disappearance in Gone Girl, discussed in chapter 5). What is clear is that the lie is told on the narrative level by one character (Jonathan) to another (Eve). But this is uncontroversial and is not the issue. The issue about the flashback in Stage Fright is the role of film narration (or

98

UNRELIABLE NARRATION AND PUZZLE FILMS

its underlying narrator) in presenting the lie on screen as a flashback: the narration colludes with the character Jonathan in making the lie appear credible. What the narration shows (including the contents of a flashback) is assumed to be an actual event within the storyworld unless indicated otherwise. The narration does not initially draw attention to the flashback as a lie—its actual status (or the identity of the real murderer) is initially concealed. The narration therefore strategically deceives the spectator. The flashback has a different status from the rest of the story, but the narration initially presents it as having the same status. At the end of the film the narration invalidates the flashback by replacing it with a different version of events. Although the lying flashback represents an extreme form of unreliable narration, Stage Fright is never incoherent or contradictory, for the narration replaces one story with another, thereby maintaining textual coherence. Defining the Puzzle Film In the introduction to Puzzle Films (Buckland 2009), several narrational properties of puzzle films are identified: Puzzle films embrace nonlinearity, time loops, and fragmented spatio-temporal reality. These films blur the boundaries between different levels of reality, are riddled with gaps, deception, labyrinthine structures, ambiguity, and overt coincidences. They are populated with characters who are schizophrenic, lose their memory, are unreliable narrators, or are dead (but without us—or them— realizing). (6) This definition employs terms discussed in chapter 3: narration introduces complexity by reorganizing and manipulating narrative information, filtering it through (stable) narrative agents such as characters. Narration is therefore key to the puzzle film just as it is key to narrative films in general. But there is a crucial difference: the puzzle film’s reorganization of narrative actions and its filtering through narrative agents are not just complex, but complicated and perplexing; the actions and events are not simply interwoven but entangled, and the characters are not stable. “Complicated,” “perplexing,” “entangled,” and “unstable” all imply a higher level of disorganization and confusion than the more straightforward term complex.

99

TYPES OF STORYTELLING

Edward Branigan presents one version of the puzzle film’s distinctive narrational properties with his concepts of the “nearly true” and “multiple drafts” (2002). He reminds us that the end of a narrative is known at the beginning. This is because the act of narration does not take place immediately, at the same time as the events take place. Instead, the act of narration takes place after the narrative actions and events have been concluded. As a film unfolds, the events appear to take place in the present but they are narrated from the future: “the end of the story is already known at the beginning of the film; that is, the beginning of the film, in effect, is already past with respect to the film’s narration, which proceeds from the future” (2002, 107). Although the narration knows everything in advance, it functions by gradually revealing to the spectator the right information at the right time. A spectator following the film as it unfolds gradually catches up with the narration in knowing the relevant information about the narrative; this is the moment a classical narrative film concludes. In other words, a classical narrative film typically ends with the formation of a complete (single, fixed, coherent) storyline, with all the relevant information equally shared between protagonists and spectators, and the suppression of parallel and alternative storylines. Branigan draws attention to these alternative storylines: “Within any film narrative lie alternative plots and failed stories whose suppressed realization is the condition for what is seen to be more safely offered in the explicit text. Thus I believe that one of the valuable tasks of interpretation is the uncovering of these . . . nearly true versions (or drafts) of the plot” (110, emphasis in the original). Even in classical film, these alternative or “nearly true” drafts of plots are present, although suppressed. Branigan asserts that “at every moment films . . . prompt us to entertain many sorts of hypothetical situations” (111). One feature that makes puzzle films distinctive is that parallel and alternative “nearly true” drafts of narrative actions and events are not suppressed but play an integral role in their structure. The Butterfly Effect takes that idea to the extreme. The Puzzle Elements of The Butterfly Effect A puzzle film such as The Butterfly Effect cannot be understood merely in terms of the narration’s reordering of narrative actions and events. Instead, this film uses the science fiction trope of time travel to integrate alternative

100

UNRELIABLE NARRATION AND PUZZLE FILMS

“nearly true” drafts of narrative actions and events into its storyworld, conferring on those drafts equal status to so-called actual events. In The Butterfly Effect the main character Evan is able to travel back in time and alter a past event. But each alteration creates additional and unintentional effects, which he tries to correct by traveling back in time again. However, every time he goes back in time he creates additional unintended consequences, especially for his friends and his first love, Kayleigh. As the film unfolds, Evan visits several events from his past and alters many of them, and each time he alters an event he creates a new timeline. Branigan identifies eight levels of reality in the film (which he maps out in a series of charts and diagrams [2014, 238–39]), where each level represents an alternative timeline. Evan is aware of each timeline and the unintended consequences he causes because he accumulates memories of the old events as well as their new version. Furthermore, on first viewing the spectator witnesses a series of events that look unusual: for example, Evan’s father suddenly attacks Evan and tries to kill him, apparently for no reason, or Evan is seen in the kitchen holding a knife menacingly. But these events make sense when Evan travels back in time and revisits them. When these events are seen for the first time the spectator does not realize that Evan has already traveled back in time. In the scene with his father, Evan has traveled back and has asked his father how to control the time travel. His father (who can also time travel) tells him it is a curse and a dangerous activity, and he must stop using it; he attacks Evan in order to try to end the curse. By the end of the film (at least in the director’s cut), Evan agrees that the time traveling is a curse, and he decides to kill himself before he is born. Branigan asks, in relation to Evan, the film’s central character: “Is there, then, a single Evan? How do his various bodies, memories, and environments make up an identity?” (2014, 237). Branigan speculates that the film has no fixed temporal structure: “there may not be an essential, fixed timeline. . . . What counts as the ‘present’ would be an arbitrary designation, dependent on the choice of a starting point” (2014, 237). In other words, no single timeline is the primary one; all eight timelines are alternatives or possibilities in relation to one another. Branigan’s analysis demonstrates that The Butterfly Effect is a typical puzzle film because its narration presents a nonlinear, fragmented spatiotemporal storyworld (consisting of multiple incomplete drafts of alternative timelines) where

101

TYPES OF STORYTELLING

the boundaries between the different drafts or different levels of reality are blurred, and its main character (Evan) could be schizophrenic or delusional, and (at least in the director’s cut) ends up—or starts out—as a dead character. Extending the Puzzle Film Since the publication of Puzzle Films (Buckland 2009), the notions of “puzzle films” and “complex storytelling” have been developed via innovative revisions, expansions, and new directions. Maria Poulaki (2014) attempts to rethink puzzle films in terms of systems theory. She argues that It is no longer enough to show how complex films are not conventional narratives; the need for a positive definition and description of their processes has become apparent. In films characterized as “complex narratives,” such as the puzzle films, it is more the “complex” than the “narrative” that can bring fresh insight into their structure, through the introduction of an alternative theoretical framework: not the one of narratology but that of complex systems theory. (37) Poulaki proposes a systems-theoretical framework (based on sociologist Niklas Luhmann’s theory of self-reference) to examine the complexity of puzzle films. This is relevant, she argues, for analyzing those many puzzle films (such as Source Code [2011]) that are based on infinite loops rather than linear narratives. Similarly, Pepita Hesselberth argues that we need to identify “ordering principles other than (or at least in addition to) narrative if we want to come to grips with the complexity of contemporary cinematics and the kind of viewer engagement it demands” (2012). She returns to concepts such as “presence” and “deixis” and uses the new term tangibility to supplement the narratological approach to puzzle films (see Hesselberth 2012, 2014). Miklós Kiss and Steven Willemsen’s Impossible Puzzle Films has a twofold agenda: it sets out to study the “formal-structural dissonance in puzzle films” and also “to apprehend viewers’ understanding of and response to these films’ dissonant narrative scenarios” (2017, 70). They contrast

102

UNRELIABLE NARRATION AND PUZZLE FILMS

“impossible puzzle films” to films that are “deceptively unreliable” and “disorienting but solvable puzzles.” They limit “deceptive unreliability” to a momentary surprise (the twist ending, etc., evident in films such as Stage Fright). “Disorienting but solvable puzzle films” present sustained but temporary disorientation before offering solutions to the complex story events that led to the disorientation. “Impossible puzzle films” create unresolvable contradictions or ontological incongruities that cannot be attributed to a character in the story. Kiss and Willemsen argue that impossible puzzle films employ classical storytelling techniques (narration, character identification, genre, continuity editing) to reduce the cognitive dissonance the impossible storyworld evokes. This means they believe the puzzle element in impossible puzzle films refers primarily to the story level, thereby downplaying the narration’s ability to lie, to be unreliable, and to be deceptive. Finally, Thomas Elsaesser’s broad concept of the “mind-game film” (2009, 2018) contains a number of arguments about narrative unreliability and deception. He argues that Mind-game film sets the viewer a number of narratological problems or puzzles: Mind-game films at the narrative level, offer—with their plot twists and narrational double-takes—a range of strategies that could be summarized by saying that they suspend the common contract between the film and its viewers, which is that films do not “lie” to the spectator. (2009, 19, emphasis in the original) In this argument, mind-game films challenge the distinction between truth and lies (as well as the actual and the virtual, the subjective and the objective), which induces a crisis in the spectator-film relation. This crisis is also evident in the characters (and character-narrators) who inhabit mind-game films, for they are typically suffering from schizophrenia, paranoia, or amnesia (2009, 24–29). Elsaesser emphasizes that the narration of these mind-game films does not frame and observe these characters from a stable perspective, that is, does not represent them using classical forms of narration; instead, the narration is organized around the character’s pathology—the narration itself becomes schizophrenic or paranoiac or amnesiac. For example, the narrational structure of Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000), in which the actions and events are narrated backward,

103

TYPES OF STORYTELLING

enacts the anterograde amnesia of the main character, Leonard Shelby, who cannot form new memories: “the film, as it were, wipes out its own memory, by being told in short segments that precede each other, rather than follow each other” (2009, 20). By narrating the events backward, Memento mimics Leonard’s anterograde amnesia, for he has no memory of what happened moments before. Similarly, when watching the film unfold, the spectator does not know what happened in the storyworld’s recent past, because the narration has not yet narrated past events; it only narrates that past in later scenes. (For a narratological analysis of Memento, see Ghislotti [2009].) The three main examples discussed in this chapter (You Only Live Once, Stage Fright, and The Butterfly Effect) derive from Hollywood. Hollywood cinema—both classical and contemporary—is not uniform or monolithic but displays innovation and experimentation, a trend that continues to this day. For example, a small number of Hollywood filmmakers from the 1990s onward have appropriated some of the narrative innovations of the puzzle film and employ those innovative techniques to express current themes about the artificial manipulation of identity and the technological transformation of the human/nonhuman and the self/other boundaries. These themes are found in many Hollywood puzzle and mind-game films, from Source Code (Jones, 2011) to Shutter Island (Scorsese, 2010), Déjà vu (Tony Scott, 2006), Premonition (Yapo, 2007), Inception (Nolan, 2010), and, as Elsaesser (2014) has demonstrated, numerous adaptations from the fiction of Philip K. Dick, such as Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982), Total Recall (Verhoeven, 1990), Minority Report (Spielberg, 2002), A Scanner Darkly (Linklater, 2006), and The Adjustment Bureau (Nolfi, 2011). Additional Reading Wayne Booth developed the concept of unreliable narration in literature in The Rhetoric of Fiction (1983). For discussions of the lying flashback in Stage Fright (Hitchcock, 1950), see Bordwell 1985, Burgoyne 1990, Chatman 1978, 1990, Casetti 1998, Currie 1995, Thompson 1988, and Turim 1989. For an embodied theory of puzzle films and mind-game films, see Littschwager 2019.

104

8

VIDEOGAME LOGIC ( The Fifth Element, Inception, and Source Code )

Digital technology has transformed both the photographic film image and film narrative. In terms of the film image, digital technology can create a seamless blend of live action and digital animation. For example, in Steven Spielberg’s The Lost World (1997) Ian Malcolm’s team go to the dinosaur-infested Isla Sorna to find Sarah. Early in their search they encounter a herd of stegosauruses, which passes both behind and in front of the humans, creating a strong impression that the dinosaurs (created digitally) and the humans (represented photographically) are in the same space and can interact with one another. This chapter explores another way in which digital technology has transformed film—specifically, film’s narrative structure. A small group of recent films (mainly science fiction blockbusters) combines narrative with a digital—or, more specifically, a videogame—logic. This chapter presents a concise overview of this hybrid narrative-videogame logic. The first section outlines the various rules of videogame logic; the second presents several short discussions of films whose narrative is combined with videogame logic; and the third discusses videogame logic within the broader context of theories of unnatural and impossible storyworlds (in which the videogame logic makes the storyworld unnatural-impossible). This chapter aims to identify the role of videogame rules in structuring these narrative films. The Fifth Element (1997), Source Code (2011), and Inception (2010) are hybrids where the rules from both narrative logic and videogame logic become entangled. A

105

TYPES OF STORYTELLING

conventional narrative analysis of these hybrid films misses crucial dimensions of their structure, particularly the distinctive way narrative and videogame logic become entangled. (The label “videogame logic” designates a logic characteristic of but not unique to videogames.) Other films are potentially hybrids of narrative and videogame logic, although each film remixes narrative and videogame logics in specific ways, with some containing only minor elements of videogame logic, while others remix both logics equally: The Lawnmower Man (1992), The Matrix (1999), Looper (2012), Edge of Tomorrow (2014), eXistenZ (1999), and numerous Philip K. Dick adaptations, including Total Recall (1990), Minority Report (2002), A Scanner Darkly (2006), and The Adjustment Bureau (2011). It is easy to look at the content of these films and identify the rules of videogame logic metaphorically: for example, The Fifth Element’s cityscape metaphorically represents the film’s different levels of play, or the scene in which the mangalores shoot down the spaceship carrying the fifth element metaphorically represents the game user’s interactivity. Or in Source Code, Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) is the game player in his capsule and his avatar is the schoolteacher Sean Fentress on the train. (Although the film is more complex, because Colter is also duplicated: he is an avatar in his capsule linked to his real injured self, sealed in an airtight container; and the game world is also duplicated.) However, these films are fascinating not because their visuals or content can be read metaphorically as a videogame, but primarily because their visuals and content are organized according to a hybrid of narrative and videogame logic. The Rules of Videogame Logic Videogame rules are reliable in that they are systematic and unambiguous and are not constrained by the laws of the actual world (or by the conventions of realism). Game play involves the mastering of these rules, that is, mastering the game’s logic. The player’s desire to attain mastery makes videogames addictive, which at times can lead to the player’s total absorption into the game’s rules and environment. The most common videogame rules are listed in table 8.1. But why these rules specifically? In outlining the Russian Formalist method, Boris Eichenbaum wrote: “We posit specific principles and adhere to them insofar as the material justifies them. If the material demands their refinements or change, we change or refine them”

106

VIDEOGAME LOGIC

Table 8.1: Rules of Videogame Logic 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

In-game tutorial level Serialized repetition of actions (to accumulate points and master the rules) Multiple levels of adventure Space-time warps Magical transformations and disguises Immediate rewards and punishment (which act as feedback loops) Pace Interactivity The game’s environment can be open or closed, linear or nonlinear The game needs to remain balanced Some games consist of a foldback story structure In role-playing games, players can usually choose or customize their avatar The avatar possesses a series of resources and entities Typical gaming skills a player needs are strategy and tactics Most games (unintentionally) have an exploit Many games include a sandbox mode

(1965, 103). My formulation of this list of rules began inductively and was dictated by the films under analysis and by the content of videogame manuals. An in-game tutorial level offers players a quick, partial, introductory experience of a game’s design and, more generally, of gameplay (informing the player of the skills necessary to take on the game’s challenges, how to use the controls and navigate the space, and so on). Films combining narrative logic and videogame logic usually include a tutorial level. The Matrix (1999), for example, consists of tutorial levels, as Neo learns (and bends) the rules in the matrix, the film’s game world. Videogames are organized around the serialized repetition of actions for several reasons, including the accumulation of points and the opportunity to master the rules of the game. Players are keen to refine their newly acquired gameplay competence by applying and testing it in similar but more difficult levels (which keeps the game in balance). Space-time warps represent an alternative way to reach another level. They are the video’s equivalent of the hypertext link, for they enable the player to be immediately transported to an alternative space (and time), leading to multiple fragmented spaces, with immediate transportation between them.

107

TYPES OF STORYTELLING

The user’s accumulation of points acts as a feedback loop to master the rules, since it represents a reward for good gameplay, and confers upon the user the sense that his or her competence improves as the game progresses. In similar fashion, the loss of points or a life acts as an immediate punishment for failing to master the rules. A repetition of this punishment leads to the user’s premature death and an early end to the game, or a return to its beginning. Serialized repetition therefore involves repeating the same stages of the game—usually at a faster pace or moving up to another similar (but more difficult) level. The player controls the pacing via interaction, which confers upon the player the feeling of control—the manipulation of a character in a usually hostile digital environment. Of course, no interactivity exists in narrative films—they are fixed, predetermined texts. Nonetheless, fans participate outside the text by treating the film as a cult object. In Fundamentals of Game Design (2007), game developers Ernest Adams and Andrew Rollings map out the various environments or layouts a game designer can adopt, from open layouts that allow for a player’s unconstrained movement within a game to closed layouts (usually interior spaces) (2007, 405–10). The open layout has little linear structure, while closed spaces have single or multiple paths the player needs to follow. Balance is a key game design concept (Adams and Rollings 2007, chapter 11). As the game progresses, game play becomes easier, because the player gains game experience (if the game becomes too easy, the player becomes bored). To keep the game in balance and to avoid boredom, tasks and challenges must progressively become more difficult. In the foldback story structure, “the plot branches a number of times but eventually folds back to a single, inevitable event” (Adams and Rollings 2007, 200). In other words, several ways exist for reaching the same unavoidable endpoint. This story structure is usually combined with serialized repetition of actions, for a player within each repetition takes a different path to reach the same endpoint. The foldback story structure can also be defined in terms of game design. Games of emergence offer the player huge variations, improvisation, and open play in order to reach the endpoint, whereas games of progression are more linear and closed, thereby limiting the player’s ability to stray from the predetermined path. Games of emergence therefore have a stronger foldback structure than games of progression. Because a narrative film is noninteractive in the videogame

108

VIDEOGAME LOGIC

sense of the term, it has no foldback structure at all, for the film’s structure is predetermined. Game designers enable players to construct or modify their avatar, and also confer on it a series of resources. A strategy involves constructing a game plan on the available knowledge of the rules and the opponents in the game. Because a game conceals information, the player relies on probability and skill to succeed (Adams and Rollings 2007, 298). A strategy is implemented through tactics, which carry out a strategy through various actions. Both strategy and tactics need a clear, measurable outcome, although tactics can try to subvert and find short cuts to the strategy, ultimately leading to exploits. An exploit refers to an unexpected action the player uses to gain advantage within a game. The player usually exploits a weakness, glitch, or bug in the game’s design. Finally, the sandbox mode allows free play, or the player to explore the game without constraints. The player can experiment without devising a strategy or achieving a goal. In this mode, emergence is predominant while progression is insignificant. A player’s immersion in a game is therefore not simply a matter of a heightened stimulation generated by high-quality graphics, audio, and animation, but is also a function of structure, the player’s success at mastering these abstract rules. Film Analyses This section focuses on the videogame logic in three films: The Fifth Element, Source Code, and Inception. The Fifth Element (Luc Besson, 1997)

The first half of the film sets up the characters, their relationship, and their aim—to obtain the four stones representing the four elements and to save/destroy the Earth. Korben Dallas is the primary protagonist, aided by Cornelius, Leeloo (the fifth element), and “the Federation.” Zorg is the main antagonist who works directly for “Mr. Shadow” (the representation of pure evil), and is initially aided by an alien race, the mangalores, who later set out on their own quest to obtain the stones. There are a few

109

TYPES OF STORYTELLING

videogame moments in the first half of the film: for example, like a videogame character, Leeloo is magically reconstructed/transformed (she gains another life); the mangalores seem to have won the game early on by stealing the case of stones (the four elements) for Zorg; however, when Zorg opens the case, it is empty, which then initiates a serialized repetition of the action to capture the stones; as immediate punishment, Zorg blows up the mangalore leader (or allows him to blow himself up). The mangalores and Zorg have not mastered the rules of the game at this stage, and so they are punished (Zorg is empty-handed, the mangalore leader blows himself up). Once the characters and their aim have been established, more prominent elements of videogame logic become apparent. Approximately fifty minutes into the film, the stones are revealed to be with the Diva on the paradise planet. This planet represents the film’s next level of adventure, and the immediate aim is for the protagonists and antagonists to get on the crowded flight that goes to the next level. A competition to win two tickets to the planet is rigged by the Federation so that Dallas wins. Upon hearing this news on the radio, Cornelius and Leeloo visit Dallas at his apartment. Leeloo removes Dallas’s nametag from his door and puts it on the neighbor’s door. Soon afterward the police, acting under Zorg’s instructions, attempt to arrest Dallas (Zorg has obviously found out as well that Dallas has two tickets to the planet). But because Leeloo put Dallas’s nametag on the neighbor’s door, the neighbor is arrested. The mangalores in turn kidnap “Dallas” from police custody. Soon afterward, Cornelius steals the tickets from the real Dallas, goes to the airport, and gives the tickets to his assistant David and to Leeloo. David pretends to be Dallas, but Dallas turns up at the airport to take his rightful place. A mangalore then turns up at the airport and pretends to be Dallas. Significantly, he has changed his appearance, and looks like Dallas’s neighbor. The mangalore has disguised himself—but as the wrong person! He fails to get onto the plane and must run from the police (who presumably think he is Dallas). Then Zorg’s helper turns up at the ticket desk also pretending to be Dallas. The flight assistant, who by this time is becoming a little weary of this serialized repetition of action and disguises, prevents Zorg’s helper from getting onto the plane. Upon hearing this news Zorg immediately punishes him by killing him. Meanwhile, Cornelius becomes a stowaway on the plane. The plane takes off, transporting Dallas and Leeloo (both disguised

110

VIDEOGAME LOGIC

as tourists) and Cornelius at the speed of light to the next level of the game. These scenes in the film are then dominated by the following rules of videogame logic: serialized repetition, disguises, the attempt to move up to the next level, a feedback loop (in which unsuccessful characters are immediately eliminated and successful ones rewarded), and a space warp. However, once at this new level, spectators discover that the mangalores are there already (the leader, who blew himself up earlier, is now disguised as a waiter). Zorg also travels to the planet in his own ship. The same quest that took place on the previous level (locate the four stones) now takes place on the new level. How the mangalores get there, how the mangalore leader survived the explosion earlier in the film, why Zorg has Dallas arrested when Zorg can make his own way to the paradise planet, why Leeloo changes the nametag on Dallas’s door, and why there was such a fuss at the airport are only of concern to those who read the film in classical narrative terms. Within videogame logic, the film makes sense. The game play on the first level is going to be repeated on the next level with essentially the same characters—except that now it is going to be played at a faster pace. Only one narrative event takes place on the paradise planet—the protagonists retrieve the stones and return to Earth (the film’s final level: returning to earth to save it gives the film a foldback structure). But this event is subordinated to the action sequences and to the Diva’s singing. Furthermore, those unsuccessful at retrieving the stones are killed before the next level is played out. Zorg suddenly turns up and steals the box from the Diva’s room as she is singing. He plants a bomb, departs the planet, and opens the box to find it empty. This is a repetition of action performed earlier, when the mangalores delivered the (empty) box to Zorg. Zorg returns to the planet again, but this time is punished for his lack of success—although he switches off his own bomb, he is killed by a bomb left by the mangalores (which presumably kills all the mangalores as well). The film ends in a conventional narrative manner—the formation of a heterosexual couple. But the ultimate objective of the narrative is not the transformation of characters, but survival—as is the case with videogames. Character identification is achieved primarily by means of action— again, as in videogames—rather than narrative development (there are

111

TYPES OF STORYTELLING

few enigmas in the film once the identity of the fifth element is disclosed). Dallas does not so much develop as a character; he masters the rules of the game and proceeds to the next level, cashes in his points, and wins the ultimate prize—the perfect woman. Source Code (Duncan Jones, 2011)

The premise of the film is that Captain Colter Stevens, depicted in a capsule, is transferred to a train where he (or his avatar, Sean Fentress) exercises typical gaming skills—strategy and tactics—to identify a bomber who plans to blow up the train. The film therefore replicates a role-playing game—it uses an avatar to represent the player (in this instance, Colter) within the game world. The train carriage is a game environment to the extent that Colter enters it on eight occasions via an avatar, and he needs to perform in there a series of tasks. It is a closed space with limited freedom of movement. The film also replicates interactivity, for Colter moves around the game space and interacts with it via his avatar. But there is more to the film than these immediate similarities between the film and a videogame. The whole of Source Code is based on the serialized repetition of action. With each repetition, a form of replay, Colter (via his avatar, Sean) learns the rules of the game and becomes more proficient. He receives punishment when he fails (the bomb explodes) but also rewards (once he has identified the bomber, he can phone his father and save Christina, a passenger on the train). The transition from capsule to train is not smooth, but is dramatic, and involves a space-time warp (or, at least, a space warp), since he travels between two radically different locations—the actual world and possible worlds. These transition shots show Colter’s digital transformation as he is manipulated algorithmically, rendered or compiled by the source code technology into digital bits, and sent to an alternate universe. The pace increases from one repetition to the next—the editing is more elliptical, and Colter becomes more frantic, because he is working against a deadline. As with videogames, he has several attempts at winning, and he dies in the game, which simply takes him back to the beginning. At the same time, he accumulates in-game experience, and chooses different options

112

VIDEOGAME LOGIC

that the game presents to him. But he has few options and few tasks: his strategy is to find the bomb and identify the bomber. Colter learns to play the game by dying, which, according to Adams and Rollings (2007, 372), is an old method of learning in the videogame environment (this is also key to the film Edge of Tomorrow [Doug Liman, 2014], which is similarly structured via a serialized repetition of action). The bomb kills Colter several times, but at least this helps him locate it (since he remembers the direction of the blast). After the blast, he is thrown out of the game; when he returns, he goes back to his initial or default position—sitting opposite Christina. Colter follows different “paths” each time to reach the final endpoint— locating the bomb and identifying the bomber. The film therefore has a foldback structure. Colter perceives that the game becomes a little easier on subsequent attempts, because he builds up knowledge of in-game play (the game’s perceived difficulty decreases). That is, Colter becomes more successful at implementing the strategy—his tactics improve as the game progresses. To keep the game in balance (a key concept for Adams and Rollings), the tasks must become harder. In Source Code, tasks are made more difficult as the film progresses (finding the bomb was quite easy, identifying the bomber much harder). Colter then sets himself two further goals, which are not part of the game’s strategy—to contact his father, and to save the people on the train. Both goals go against the rules of the game, and he is told that they are impossible to achieve, because the world of the train is in the past and therefore no longer exists: the train has already been destroyed, and the source code technology simply sends Colter to an alternate reality in order to identify the bomber (who plans to detonate a second, larger bomb). Colter subverts the game’s strategy with his own tactics in order to map out his own trajectory within the game. Colter has very few resources, and therefore few entities. He has multiple lives and the ability to reenter the game once he is killed, but the film does not quantify this resource (although there is a strict deadline, since the bomber needs to be identified in order to halt his second bomb). Colter relies on his skills and tactics rather than specific resources. Colter finds and uses an exploit, a glitch that shifts the game from a limited rule-following activity to a free-play sandbox mode, where he can

113

TYPES OF STORYTELLING

explore the game world without remaining confined in its closed space and without following any specific rules or game plan. (The way the exploit works is obscure.) This exploit and move into the free-play game mode enable Colter to save everyone on the train from the terrorist attack, and to construct a stable future for himself and Christina—at least in an alternate, parallel universe where he exists only as his imaginary avatar. Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010)

Inception’s main gameplay centers on the invasion and inception of Robert Fischer’s mind, to encourage him to break up his father’s company. The film is structured around the following rules of videogame logic: two ingame tutorials (the opening scenes showing Dom Cobb’s team attempting to steal secrets from Saito’s mind introduces the game rules to film spectators by showing them how the game is played, and Ariadne enters a dream space with Cobb, where he spells out the game rules to her while she learns to manipulate the environment); the serialized repetition of action (this film is structured around a nested or embedded repetition as the characters move to different dream levels, with each move constituting a space warp); immediate punishment for not mastering the rules of the game during gameplay (in which characters either wake up or enter limbo); an emphasis on strategy and tactics (and the need to change strategy quickly, especially when unexpected problems occur, which happen on all levels of the film); a successful balancing of the game and an increase in its pace, in which tasks become harder and the risks higher as the game progresses; an emphasis on constructing the game’s environment (designed by Ariadne as labyrinths, with a mix of open and closed spaces); plus a significant emphasis conferred on the limbo level, Inception’s equivalent of the videogame’s sandbox mode. In addition, there is a game resource (Somnacin), a small use of disguises, and one use of an exploit. Unnatural/Impossible Storyworlds The films discussed in the previous section create unusual fictional worlds, not just an unusually structured sequence of narrative events. The next stage in studying these hybrid films involves moving from the syntactic

114

VIDEOGAME LOGIC

to the semantic level, where “reference” is introduced into the theory, but reference to an imaginary or possible world, not the actual world. Storyworld is predominately a cognitive concept, while fictional world is a semantic concept. In his book Building Imaginary Worlds (2012), Mark Wolf prefers what he calls the broader, less theoretical, and more neutral term imaginary world. A story or fictional world is an imagined totality that is only partly manifest as narrative events in a text. In chapter 3 Wolf outlines the nonnarrative parameters of these worlds, ranging from their specific timelines (their entire network of past and future events) to their spatial geography, plus their own symbolic systems of kinship, language, mythology, and moral values, all of which need to be designed. In the hybrid films under discussion, the videogame logic pushes the films beyond mimeticism toward an unnatural or impossible world, depending in each instance on the combination of videogame rules entangled with the film’s narrative logic. (The videogame rules can momentarily or permanently create unnatural or impossible storyworlds.) Storyworlds create an imaginary world distinct from the actual world. Marie-Laure Ryan’s “principle of minimal departure” states that the starting point or default stance toward storyworlds is to comprehend them in the same way as the actual world until instructed otherwise (1991, 51). Until instructed otherwise: this phrase is fundamental, for storyworlds do not need to conform to the actual world or to literary realism in all its forms (naturalism, verisimilitude). In “Impossible Storyworlds—and What to Do with Them,” Jan Alber argued that “Many narratives confront us with bizarre storyworlds which are governed by principles that have very little to do with the real world around us. . . . Many narrative texts teem with unnatural (i.e., physically or logically impossible) scenarios that take us to the limits of human cognition” (2009, 79). For Alber physical impossibility and logical impossibility are key, while other narrative theorists such as Brian Richardson develop a broader definition of the unnatural using implausibility (involving incongruous/absurd activities) rather than impossibility: “An unnatural narrative is one that contains significant antimimetic events, characters, settings, or frames. By antimimetic, I mean representations that contravene the presuppositions of nonfictional narratives, violate mimetic conventions and the practices of realism, and defy the conventions of existing, established genres” (2015, 3). Despite these different definitions, what is common to the concept of the unnatural/impossible/

115

TYPES OF STORYTELLING

implausible storyworld is its radical departure from the genre conventions of realism (psychological or physical), mimesis, and verisimilitude. Within a mimetic framework, the construction of an unnatural fictional world is foregrounded. In other words, world building becomes a theme or subject matter of these films, and characters become aware that the world they inhabit does not conform to the actual world but is a manufactured world. Because world building becomes a theme, it means the constructed world has a boundary that the characters enter and exit. The constructed worlds are contained or embedded within the mimetically defined film world. This is where the in-game tutorial becomes crucial in films such as The Matrix, Source Code, and Inception: The new character (and, of course, the film spectator) is taught the unnatural rules of the fictional world. The new character becomes a plot device to introduce the process of constructing storyworlds and the unnatural rules of that storyworld. Additional Reading King, Geoff and Tanya Krzywinska 2006.

116

CODA

Part 1 of this book has presented a concise overview of narrative, narration, and narrative agents. It has charted their historical development, identified their properties, and explained how they are manifest in film. Part 2 employed the concepts from part 1 to examine storytelling in four specific cinematic practices. In both parts, narrative, narration, and narrative agents were presented as fundamental to cinema’s transformation into a form of storytelling, with classical Hollywood cinema as the paradigmatic ideal. Contemporary Hollywood films, feminist films, global art cinema, puzzle films, and films dominated by videogame logic offer alternative modes of storytelling to the normative classical Hollywood paradigm. The preface discussed the narration of a quintessential classical Hollywood film—Rear Window (1954). In this coda we can briefly consider how the narration works in relation to the film’s other storytelling properties. The narration facilitates and hinders the construction of Rear Window’s narrative, a linear causal chain of actions and events consisting of exposition (e.g., details about the career and lifestyle of the main heroactant, Jeff, his accident, his relation to Lisa); deadlines (the imminent departure of the villain, Thorwald, the attempt of a helper, Doyle, to save Jeff from Thorwald); turning points that create disequilibrium (including a suspected murder, the killing of the neighbor’s dog, Lisa’s arrest, and Thorwald’s arrest); a dual-focused narrative involving the solving of a crime (overcoming a lack or enigma, the disappearance and murder of

117

CODA

Mrs. Thorwald), which indirectly causes the formation of a romantic couple (Jeff and Lisa); and transformation, in which the formation of the couple and restoration of equilibrium are dependent on the resolution—apparent or real—of the conflicts between Jeff and Lisa. From a feminist perspective, Laura Mulvey has identified the oppressive dimension of Rear Window’s narrative practice, in which Jeff is the quintessential male voyeur whose visual desire drives the narrative forward, with Lisa established as the ultimate object of desire, the hero’s reward who is set up as a visual spectacle in terms of the way she dresses, but also in how she is narratively established as a guilty intruder who breaks into Thorwald’s apartment and needs to be rescued. Rear Window continues the trend of peeping tom films from early cinema to the extent that it integrates into the film’s storyworld a voyeur-character who directs the spectator’s attention via numerous point-of-view shots. The film is notable for its reflexivity: its theme is the voyeurism of film viewing, with Jeff the spectator confined to his chair looking out at his neighbors’ windows. His vision is conveyed via a series of subjective (internally or externally focalized) shots, sometimes aided by binoculars or a camera, in which the neighbors’ windows function as secondary screens and frames that draw attention to the film screen and frame. Returning to the narration, we can see that it is unreliable in places. When Jeff falls asleep, the narration disengages from him and becomes nonfocalized or objective. The narration then privileges spectators by showing them additional story events—Mr. Thorwald and a woman (whom the spectator infers to be Mrs. Thorwald) leaving the apartment. Jeff does not see the woman leaving Thorwald’s apartment, and in the morning, he infers that Thorwald murdered his wife. The spectator, given more story information (of Thorwald and a woman leaving the apartment), infers that she has not been murdered but has gone traveling (for Thorwald later returns to the apartment alone). However, this additional information is misleading and the resulting inference the spectator generates from it is eventually discovered to be incorrect. The key to Rear Window’s narration is that it deceives while apparently privileging spectators: it presents them with additional story information (the woman leaving Thorwald’s apartment) but at the same time it covertly suppresses other story information (the woman entering the apartment) that would have enabled spectators to understand that privileged information correctly.

118

CODA

The narration of Rear Window skillfully deceives spectators by manipulating their access to story events. Or, more accurately, a concealed narrative agent (what Raymond Bellour calls “the enunciator,” Tom Gunning calls the “narrator system,” and André Gaudreault calls the “underlying narrator”) is at work, controlling the spectator through the narration. The narration (or its concealed agent) encourages spectators to generate wrong inferences before correcting their error at the end of the film. More broadly, the narration chooses what narrative actions and characters to focus on and what to leave out; it decides the length and juxtaposition of scenes, determines the selection of the story’s temporal span, and decides the perspective the narrative will be seen from (one character, several characters, no characters) and when to change perspective. Many other topics, not explored here, are relevant and significant to theorizing cinematic storytelling. These include spectators’ emotional engagement with characters, their identification with antiheroes, the narrational role of dialogue and music, the narration’s contribution to a film’s overall tone and mood, the ethics of storytelling, a director’s creation of a distinctive storyworld across all their films, the process of adaptation, the distinctive storytelling properties of short films, and the role of narrative, narration, and narrative agents in documentary film. These and many other topics are discussed in the extensive list of books and essays mentioned in the preface.

119

WORKS CITED

Adams, Ernest, and Andrew Rollings. 2007. Fundamentals of Game Design. New Jersey: Pearson. Alber, Jan. 2009. “Impossible Storyworlds—and What to Do with Them.” StoryWorlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies 1:79–96. Anderson, Jeffrey M. 2006. “Director Wim Wenders Returns to the Never-Ending Road Movie.” East Bay Times (March 24): www.eastbaytimes.com/2006/03/24/director -wim-wenders-returns-to-the-never-ending-road-movie/. Anderson, Joseph, and Barbara Fisher Anderson, eds. 2007. Narration and Spectatorship in Moving Images. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars. Andrews, David. 2013. Theorizing Art Cinemas: Foreign, Cult, Avant-Garde, and Beyond. Austin: University of Texas Press. Augst, Bertrand. 1977. “The Défilement Into the Look . . .” Camera Obscura 2:93–103. Barthes, Roland. 1974. S/Z: An Essay. Translated by Richard Miller. New York: Hill and Wang. Bellour, Raymond. 1977. “Hitchcock, the Enunciator.” Camera Obscura 2:67–91. ——. 2000. The Analysis of Film. Edited by Constance Penley. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Ben-Shaul, Nitzan. 2012. Cinema of Choice: Optional Thinking and Narrative Movies. New York: Berghahn. Benveniste, Émile. 1971. Problems in General Linguistics. Translated by Mary Elizabeth Meek. Coral Gables: University of Miami Press. Berger, Arthur. 2012. “Is Star Wars a Modernized Fairy Tale?” In Myth, Media, and Culture in Star Wars: An Anthology, edited by Douglas Brode and Leah Deyneka, 13–19. Lanham: Scarecrow. Betz, Mark. 2009. Beyond the Subtitle: Remapping European Art Cinema. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

121

WORKS CITED

Booth, Wayne C. 1983. The Rhetoric of Fiction. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bordwell, David. 1985. Narration in the Fiction Film. London: Methuen. ——. 1999. “Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice.” In Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, 5th ed., edited by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, 716–24. New York: Oxford University Press. ——. 2008. Poetics of Cinema. New York: Routledge. Bordwell, David, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson. 1985. The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960. London: Routledge. Bowser, Eileen. 1994. The Transformation of Cinema, 1907–1915: History of the American Cinema, vol. 2. Berkeley: University of California Press. Branigan, Edward. 1984. Point of View in the Cinema: A Theory of Narration and Subjectivity in Classical Film. Berlin: Mouton. ——. 1992. Narrative Comprehension and Film. New York: Routledge. ——. 2002. “Nearly True: Forking Plots, Forking Interpretations: A Response to David Bordwell’s ‘Film Futures.’ ” SubStance 31 (1): 105–14. ——. 2014. “Butterfly Effects upon a Spectator.” In Hollywood Puzzle Films, edited by Warren Buckland, 233–64. New York: Routledge. Browne, Nick. 1982. The Rhetoric of Filmic Narration. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press. Buckland, Warren. 2006. Directed by Steven Spielberg: Poetics of the Contemporary Hollywood Blockbuster. New York: Continuum. ——, ed. 2009. Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. ——, ed. 2014. Hollywood Puzzle Films. New York: Routledge. Burch, Noël. 1990. Life to Those Shadows. London: BFI. Burgoyne, Robert. 1990. “The Cinematic Narrator: The Logic and Pragmatics of Impersonal Narration.” Journal of Film and Video 42 (1): 3–16. Cameron, Allan. 2008. Modular Narratives in Contemporary Cinema. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Casetti, Francesco. 1998. Inside the Gaze: The Fiction Film and Its Spectator. Translated by Nell Andrew with Charles O’Brien. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Caughie, John, ed. 1981. Theories of Authorship: A Reader. London: BFI. Cebik, L. B. 1984. Fictional Narrative and Truth: An Epistemic Analysis. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Chatman, Seymour. 1978. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ——. 1990. Coming to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Cobb, Shelley. 2015. Adaptation, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Cobley, Paul. 2014. Narrative. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. Columpar, Corinn. 2009. “At the Limits of Visual Representation: Tracey Moffatt’s Still and Moving Images.” In There She Goes: Feminist Filmmaking and Beyond, edited

122

WORKS CITED

by Corinn Columpar and Sophie Mayer, 146–59. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Cowie, Elizabeth. 1997. Representing the Woman: Cinema and Psychoanalysis. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan. Currie, Gregory. 1995. Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy and Cognitive Science. New York: Cambridge University Press. De Lauretis, Teresa. 1984. Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. ——. 1985. “Aesthetic and Feminist Theory: Rethinking Women’s Cinema.” New German Critique 34:154–75. Doane, Mary Ann. 1981. “Woman’s Stake: Filming the Female Body.” October 17:23–36. Doane, Mary Ann, Patricia Mellencamp, and Linda Williams, eds. 1984. Re-Vision: Essays in Feminist Film Criticism. American Film Institute Monograph Series 3. Frederick, MD: University Publications of America. Dockterman, Eliana. 2014. “Is Gone Girl Feminist or Misogynist?” Time, October 6. https://time.com/3472314/gone-girl-movie-book-feminist-misogynist/. Dolan, Jill. 1991. The Feminist Spectator as Critic. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Eco, Umberto. 1979. “Narrative Structures in Fleming.” In The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts, 144–73. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Eichenbaum, Boris. 1965. “The Theory of the ‘Formal Method.’ ” In Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays, edited by Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis, 99–139. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Elsaesser, Thomas, ed. 1990. Early Cinema: Space-Frame-Narrative. London: BFI. ——. 2005. European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. ——. 2009. “The Mind-Game Film.” In Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema, edited by Warren Buckland, 13–41. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. ——. 2012. The Persistence of Hollywood. New York: Routledge. ——. 2014. “Philip K. Dick, the Mind-Game Film, and Retroactive Causality.” In Hollywood Puzzle Films, edited by Warren Buckland, 143–64. New York: Routledge. ——. 2018. “Contingency, Causality, Complexity: Distributed Agency in the Mind-Game Film.” New Review of Film and Television Studies 16 (1): 1–39. Erens, Patricia. 1977. “Sunset Boulevard: A Proppian Analysis.” In Film Reader 2, edited by Patricia Erens and Bill Horrigan, 90–95. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Fahlenbrach, Kathrin, ed. 2018. Embodied Metaphors in Film, Television, and Video Games: Cognitive Approaches. New York: Routledge. Flitterman-Lewis, Sandy. 1996. To Desire Differently: Feminism and the French Cinema. Expanded ed. New York: Columbia University Press. Fowler, Catherine. 2008. Sally Potter. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Galt, Rosalind, and Karl Schoonover, eds. 2010. Global Art Cinema: New Theories and Histories. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

123

WORKS CITED

Gaudreault, André. 2009. From Plato to Lumière: Narration and Monstration in Literature and Cinema. Translated by Timothy Barnard. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Gaudreault, André, and Tom Gunning. 2006. “Early Cinema as a Challenge to Film History.” In The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded, edited by Wanda Strauven, 365–80. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Genette, Gérard. 1980. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Translated by Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Ghislotti, Stefano. 2009. “Narrative Comprehension Made Difficult: Film Form and Mnemonic Devices in Memento.” In Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema, edited by Warren Buckland, 87–106. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Gidal, Peter. 1989. Materialist Film. London: Routledge. Glucksmann, Miriam. 1974. Structuralist Analysis in Contemporary Social Thought. London: Routledge. Greimas, A. J. 1983. Structural Semantics: An Attempt at a Method. Translated by Daniele McDowell, Ronald Schleifer, and Alan Velie. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Gunning, Tom. 1986. “The Cinema of Attraction: Early Cinema, Its Spectator, and the Avant Garde.” Wide Angle 8 (3/4): 63–70. ——. 1991. D. W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film: The Early Years at Biograph. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Hagan, John. 1982. “Erotic Tendencies in Film 1900–1906.” In Cinema 1900–1906, edited by Roger Holman, 231–37. Brussels: International Federation of Film Archives. Heath, Stephen. 1976. “Narrative Space.” Screen 17 (3): 68–112. Heldt, Guido. 2013. Music and Levels of Narration in Film. Bristol: Intellect. Hesselberth, Pepita. 2012. “From Subject-Effect to Presence-Effect: A Deictic Approach to the Cinematic.” Necsus: European Journal of Media Studies 2: www.necsus - ejms . org / from - subject - effect - to - presence - effect - a - deictic - approach - to - the -cinematic/. ——. 2014. Cinematic Chronotopes: Here, Now, Me. London: Bloomsbury. Hollinger, Karen, and Teresa Winterhalter. 2001. “Orlando’s Sister, or Sally Potter Does Virginia Woolf in a Voice of Her Own.” Style 35 (2): 237–56. Hven, Steffen. 2017. Cinema and Narrative Complexity: Embodying the Fabula. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Jakobson, Roman. 1960. “Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics.” In Style in Language, edited by Thomas Sebeok, 350–77. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Johnston, Claire, ed. 1975. The Work of Dorothy Arzner: Towards a Feminist Cinema. London: BFI. Jonnes, Denis. 1990. The Matrix of Narrative: Family Systems and the Semiotics of Story. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Kaplan, E. Ann. 1983. Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera. London: Methuen. ——. 1989. Looking for the Other: Feminism, Film and the Imperial Gaze. New York: Routledge.

124

WORKS CITED

Keen, Suzanne. 2015. Narrative Form. 2nd ed. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. King, Geoff, and Tanya Krzywinska. 2006. Tomb Raiders and Space Invaders: Videogame Forms and Contexts. London: I. B. Tauris. Kiss, Miklós, and Steven Willemsen. 2017. Impossible Puzzle Films: A Cognitive Approach to Contemporary Complex Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Kovács, András Bálint. 2007. Screening Modernism: European Art Cinema, 1950–1980. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kozloff, Sarah. 1988. Invisible Storytellers: Voice-Over Narration in American Fiction Film. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kuhn, Annette. 1982. Women’s Pictures: Feminism and Cinema. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Lee, Sunhee. 2016. “Wes Anderson’s Ambivalent Film Style: The Relation Between Mise-en-Scène and Emotion.” New Review of Film and Television Studies 14 (4): 409–39. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1978. Structural Anthropology 2. Translated by Monique Layton. New York: Penguin. Littschwager, Simin Nina. 2019. Making Sense of Mind-Game Films. New York: Bloomsbury. Lyon, Elisabeth. 1979. “Discourse and Difference.” Camera Obscura 3/4:14–20. Mayer, Sophie. 2009. The Cinema of Sally Potter: A Politics of Love. London: Wallflower. Mayne, Judith. 1990. The Woman at the Keyhole: Feminism and Women’s Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Meek, Michele. 2019. Independent Female Filmmakers: A Chronicle Through Interviews, Profiles, and Manifestos. London: Routledge. Metz, Christian. 1974. Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema. Translated by Michael Taylor. New York: Oxford University Press. ——. 2016. Impersonal Enunciation, or the Place of Film. Translated by Cormac Deane. New York: Columbia University Press. Mulvey, Laura. 1975. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16 (3): 6–18. ——. 1989. Visual and Other Pleasures. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Musser, Charles. 1990. The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907. Berkeley: University of California Press. ——. 1994. “Rethinking Early Cinema: Cinema of Attractions and Narrativity.” Yale Journal of Criticism 7 (2): 203–32. Nayar, Sheila J. 2010. Cinematically Speaking: The Orality-Literacy Paradigm for Visual Narrative. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton. Neroni, Hilary. 2005. The Violent Woman: Femininity, Narrative, and Violence in Contemporary American Cinema. Albany: State University of New York Press. Paszkiewicz, Katarzyna. 2018. Genre, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Penley, Constance, ed. 1988. Feminism and Film Theory. New York: Routledge. Pidduck, Julianne. 1997. “Travels with Sally Potter’s Orlando: Gender, Narrative, Movement.” Screen 38 (2): 172–89.

125

WORKS CITED

Piotrowska, Agnieszka. 2019. The Nasty Woman and The Neo Femme Fatale in Contemporary Cinema. London: Routledge. Plantinga, Carl. 2018. Screen Stories: Emotion and the Ethics of Engagement. New York: Oxford University Press. Poulaki, Maria. 2014. “Puzzled Hollywood and the Return of Complex Films.” In Hollywood Puzzle Films, edited by Warren Buckland, 35–53. New York: Routledge. Propp, Vladimir. 1968. Morphology of the Folktale. 2nd ed. Translated by Laurence Scott. Revised by Louis A. Wagner. Austin: University of Texas Press. Reisz, Karel, with Gavin Millar. 1968. The Technique of Film Editing. 2nd ed. London: Focal. Richardson, Brian. 2015. Unnatural Narrative: Theory, History, and Practice. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Ryan, Marie-Laure. 1991. Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Indiana: Indiana University Press. Salt, Barry. 2009. Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis. 3rd ed. London: Starword. Silverman, Kaja. 1988. The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Smith, Greg M. 2003. Film Structure and the Emotion System. New York: Cambridge University Press. Smith, Murray. 1995. Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema. Oxford: Clarendon. Smukler, Maya Montanez. 2019. Liberating Hollywood: Women Directors and the Feminist Reform of 1970s American Cinema. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Sternberg, Meir. 1978. Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Summerhayes, Catherine. 2004. “Haunting Secrets: Tracey Moffatt’s beDevil.” Film Quarterly 58 (1): 14–24. Tan, Ed. 1996. Emotion and the Structure of Narrative Film. Translated by Barbara Fasting. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. Tate Modern. 2017. “Christian Marclay’s The Clock to Be Shown in Free 24-Hour Screenings at Tate Modern.” Press release. www.tate.org.uk/press/press-releases/christian -marclays-clock-be-shown-free-24-hour-screenings-tate-modern. Thanouli, Eleftheria. 2009a. “ ‘Art Cinema’ Narration: Breaking Down a Wayward Paradigm.” Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television Studies: www.nottingham .ac.uk/scope/documents/2009/june-2009/thanouli.pdf. ——. 2009b. Post-Classical Cinema: An International Poetics of Film Narration. London: Wallflower. Thompson, Kristin. 1988. Breaking the Glass Armor: NeoFormalist Film Analysis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ——. 1999. Storytelling in the New Hollywood. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Todorov, Tzvetan. 1971. “The Two Principles of Narrative.” Diacritics 1 (1): 37–44. Turim, Maureen. 1989. Flashbacks in Film: Memory and History. New York: Routledge.

126

WORKS CITED

Turner, Graeme. 1988. Film as Social Practice. 3rd ed. London: Routledge. Ulfsdotter, Boel, and Anna Backman Rogers. 2018. Female Agency and Documentary Strategies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Verstraten, Peter. 2009. Film Narratology. Translated by Stefan Van Der Lecq. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Vorderer, Peter, Hans Wulff, and Mike Friederichsen. 1996. Suspense: Conceptualizations, Theoretical Analyses, and Empirical Explorations. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. White, John. 2017. European Art Cinema. New York: Routledge. White, Patricia. 2015. Women’s Cinema, World Cinema. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Williams, Linda. 2000. “Discipline and Fun: Psycho and Postmodern Cinema.” In Reinventing Film Studies, edited by Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams, 351–78. London: Arnold. Wilson, George M. 1986. Narration in Light: Studies in Cinematic Point of View. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Wolf, Mark. 2012. Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation. New York: Routledge. Wollen, Peter. 1972. Signs and Meaning in the Cinema. Rev ed. London: Secker and Warburg/BFI. ——. 1982. Readings and Writings: Semiotic Counter-Strategies. London: Verso. Woolf, Virginia. 1928. Orlando: A Biography. London: Hogarth. Wuss, Peter. 2009. Cinematic Narration and Its Psychological Impact: Functions of Cognition, Emotion and Play. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars.

127

INDE X

Adams, Ernest, 108–9, 113 Akerman, Chantal, 75 Alber, Jan, 115 Alice in the Cities (Wenders, 1974), 81, 84–86 Amy! (Mulvey and Wollen, 1980), 73 Anderson, Barbara Fisher, xii Anderson, Joseph, xii Anderson, Wes, 40, 47, 51–57 Arzner, Dorothy, 74, 75, 78 Augst, Bertrand, 49 Barthes, Roland, 19, 22–23, 31–32 beDevil (Moffat, 1993), ix, 30, 40–42 Bellour, Raymond, xi, 47, 58–62, 66, 119 Ben-Shaul, Nitzan, xii Benveniste, Émile, 22, 48–49, 58 Berger, Arthur, 19

Besson, Luc, 105, 106, 109–12 Booth, Wayne, 104 Borden, Lizzie, 72, 75 Bordwell, David, xi, 32, 81–85, 92, 93, 104 Born in Flames (Borden, 1983), 72, 75 Branigan, Edward, xi, 16–17, 29, 30, 39, 95, 100–2 Browne, Nick, xi, 46 Burch, Noël, 10 Burgoyne, Robert, ix, 104 Butterfly Effect, The (Bress and Gruber, 2004), 95, 100–2 Casetti, Francesco, 48–49, 104 Chatman, Seymour, xi, 28, 104 Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941), 30–31 Clock, The (Marclay, 2010), 56 Cobley, Paul, 28 Columpar, Corinn, 40 Coma (Crichton, 1978), 67, 70

129

INDEX

Cowie, Elizabeth, 67 Currie, Gregory, 104 De Lauretis, Teresa, xi, 66, 69–70, 72, 73, 74, 75 Doane, Mary Ann, 72, 75 Dockterman, Eliana, 67 Dolan, Jill, 65 Eco, Umberto, ix, 23–27 Edge of Tomorrow (Liman, 2014), 113 Eichenbaum, Boris, 106 Eisenstein, Sergei, 4, 50 Elsaesser, Thomas, xi, 10, 103–4 Erens, Patricia, 19

Godard, Jean-Luc, 50 Gone Girl (Fincher, 2014), ix, 27, 30, 36–38, 65–70 Grand Budapest Hotel, The (Anderson, 2014), 40, 47, 51–57 Greimas, A. J., 15–16, 19, 23 Gunning, Tom, 3–9, 119 Heath, Stephen, xi Heldt, Guido, xii Hesselberth, Pepita, 102 Hitchcock, Alfred, vii–viii, 12, 17–18, 19–23, 34–36, 60–62, 66, 94, 97–99, 103, 117–19 Inception (Nolan, 2010), 105, 114 Inland Empire (Lynch, 2006), 81, 86–93

Fahlenbrach, Kathrin, xii Fifth Element, The (Besson, 1997), 105, 106, 109–12 Fincher, David, ix, 27, 30, 36–38, 65–70 Fleming, Ian, 23–27 Flitterman-Lewis, Sandy, 62, 71, 72, 75, 79 Flynn, Gillian, 65, 67 Forster, Marc, 12, 23–27 Fowler, Catherine, 75

Jakobson, Roman, 50 Jaws (Spielberg, 1975), 18–19 Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Akerman, 1975), 75 Jones, Duncan, 102, 105, 106, 112–14 Jurassic Park (Spielberg, 1993), ix, 30, 42–46

Gaudreault, André, xi, 3, 8, 9–10, 40, 48, 95, 119 Gay Shoe Clerk, The (Porter, 1903), 3, 4, 6–7, 9, 10 Genette, Gerard, 53 Gidal, Peter, 11

Kaplan, E. Ann, 72, 73, 75 Keen, Suzanne, 28 Kiss, Miklós, 102–3 Kovács, András Bálint, 50, 58, 81 Kozloff, Sarah, xi, 9 Kuhn, Annette, 72

130

INDEX

Lang, Fritz, 58, 94, 95–97 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 15–16, 19, 23, 28 Liman, Doug, 113 Littschwager, Simin Nina, 104 Lost World, The (Spielberg, 1997), 105 Lucas, George, 13 Lynch, David, 81, 86–93 Lyon, Elisabeth, 71 Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov, 1929), 56 Marnie (Hitchcock, 1964), 12, 21–23, 60–62 Matrix, The (The Wachowskis, 1999), 107 Mayne, Judith, 7, 71, 72, 73, 79 Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000), 103–4 Metz, Christian, xi, 18, 30–31, 47, 49, 50, 51–59 Moffatt, Tracey, xi, 30, 40–42 Moonrise Kingdom (Anderson, 2012), 40, 55 Mulholland Dr. (Lynch, 2001), 88 Mulvey, Laura, 11, 66–67, 73, 118 Musser, Charles, 6 Nayar, Sheila J., xii Neroni, Hilary, xii Nolan, Christopher, 103–4, 105, 114 North by Northwest (Hitchcock, 1959), 12, 17–18, 20–22, 34–36, 66

Orlando (Potter, 1992), 66, 75–78 Pidduck, Julianne, 77 Piotrowska, Agnieszka, xii, 68, 70–71 Plantinga, Carl, xii Poe, Edgar Allan, 32–34 Porter, Edwin S., 6–7 Potter, Sally, 66, 75–78 Poulaki, Maria, 102 Propp, Vladimir, ix, 12–16, 19–23, 27, 28, 67–69 Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960), 12, 21–23 Quantum of Solace (Forster, 2008), 12, 23–27 Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954), vii–viii, 117–19 Reisz, Karel, 59 Richardson, Brian, 115 Riddles of the Sphinx (Mulvey and Wollen, 1977), 73 Rollings, Andrew, 108–9, 113 Royal Tenenbaums, The (Anderson, 2001), 52, 53, 54 Ryan, Marie-Laure, 115 Salt, Barry, 10 Silverman, Kaja, 72 Smith, Greg M., xii Smith, Murray, xii, 39 Source Code (Jones, 2011), 102, 105, 106, 112–14

131

INDEX

Spielberg, Steven, ix, 18–19 30, 42–46, 105 Stage Fright (Hitchcock, 1950), 94, 97–99, 103 Star Wars (Lucas, 1977), 13 Sternberg, Meir, 32 Summerhayes, Catherine, 42 Tan, Ed, xii Thanouli, Eleftheria, xii, 81 Thompson, Kristin, xi, 17–19, 94, 98–99, 104 Thriller (Potter, 1979), 75, 78 Todorov, Tzvetan, 15, 18 Turim, Maureen, 104 Turner, Graeme, 13

132

Verstraten, Peter, xi Vertov, Dziga, 50, 56 Welles, Orson, 30–31, 58 Wenders, Wim, 81, 84–86 Willemsen, Steven, 102–3 Williams, Linda, 6 Wilson, George M., xi, 94, 96–97 Wolf, Mark, 115 Wollen, Peter, xi, 11–12, 19–23, 27, 30–35, 73 Woolf, Virginia, 66, 76, 78 Wuss, Peter, xii You Only Live Once (Lang, 1937), 94, 95–97

SHORT CUTS INTRODUCTIONS TO FILM STUDIES BRITISH SOCIAL REALISM: FROM DOCUMENTARY TO BRIT GRIT Samantha Lay NEW GERMAN CINEMA: THE IMAGES OF A GENERATION Julia Knight AVANT- GARDE FILM: FORMS, THEMES AND PASSIONS Michael O’Pray PRODUCTION DESIGN: ARCHITECTS OF THE SCREEN Jane Barnwell MELODRAMA: GENRE, STYLE, SENSIBILITY John Mercer and Martin Shingler FEMINIST FILM STUDIES: WRITING THE WOMAN INTO CINEMA Janet McCabe FILM PERFORMANCE: FROM ACHIEVEMENT TO APPRECIATION Andrew Klevan NEW DIGITAL CINEMA: REINVENTING THE MOVING IMAGE Holly Willis WOMEN’S CINEMA: THE CONTESTED SCREEN Alison Butler FILM EDITING: THE ART OF THE EXPRESSIVE Valerie Orpen THE HORROR GENRE: FROM BEELZEBUB TO BLAIR WITCH Paul Wells THE STAR SYSTEM: HOLLYWOOD’S PRODUCTION OF POPULAR IDENTITIES Paul McDonald SCIENCE FICTION CINEMA: FROM OUTERSPACE TO CYBERSPACE Geoff King and Tanya Krzywinska EARLY SOVIET CINEMA: INNOVATION, IDEOLOGY AND PROPAGANDA David Gillespie READING HOLLYWOOD: SPACES AND MEANINGS IN AMERICAN FILM Deborah Thomas THE WESTERN GENRE: FROM LORDSBURG TO BIG WHISKEY John Saunders NEW CHINESE CINEMA: CHALLENGING REPRESENTATIONS Sheila Cornelius, with Ian Haydn Smith COSTUME AND CINEMA: DRESS CODES IN POPULAR FILM Sarah Street ANIMATION: GENRE AND AUTHORSHIP Paul Wells PSYCHOANALYSIS AND CINEMA: THE PLAY OF SHADOWS Vicky Lebeau MISE- EN- SCÈNE: FILM STYLE AND INTERPRETATION John Gibbs EARLY CINEMA: FROM FACTORY GATE TO DREAM FACTORY Simon Popple and Joe Kember THE MUSICAL: RACE, GENDER, AND PERFORMANCE Susan Smith FILM NOIR: FROM BERLIN TO SIN CITY Mark Bould TEEN MOVIES: AMERICAN YOUTH ON SCREEN Timothy Shary ITALIAN NEOREALISM: REBUILDING THE CINEMATIC CITY Mark Shiel WAR CINEMA: HOLLYWOOD ON THE FRONT LINE Guy Westwell THE NEW HOLLYWOOD: FROM BONNIE AND CLYDE TO STAR WARS Peter Krämer DOCUMENTARY: THE MARGINS OF REALITY Paul Ward FILM GENRE: FROM ICONOGRAPHY TO IDEOLOGY Barry Keith Grant DISASTER MOVIES: THE CINEMA OF CATASTROPHE Stephen Keane SPECTATORSHIP: THE POWER OF LOOKING ON Michele Aaron ROMANTIC COMEDY: BOY MEETS GIRL MEETS GENRE Tamar Jeffers McDonald THE FRENCH NEW WAVE: A NEW LOOK Naomi Greene CRIME FILMS: INVESTIGATING THE SCENE Kirsten Moana Thompson SHAKESPEARE ON FILM: SUCH THINGS AS DREAMS ARE MADE OF Carolyn Jess- Cooke CINEMA AND HISTORY: THE TELLING OF STORIES Mike Chopra- Gant GERMAN EXPRESSIONIST CINEMA: THE WORLD OF LIGHT AND SHADOW Ian Roberts RELIGION AND FILM: CINEMA AND THE RE- CREATION OF THE WORLD S. Brent Plate FILM AND PHILOSOPHY: TAKING MOVIES SERIOUSLY Daniel C. Shaw CONTEMPORARY BRITISH CINEMA: FROM HERITAGE TO HORROR James Leggott BOLLYWOOD: GODS, GLAMOUR, AND GOSSIP Kush Varia

THE VAMPIRE FILM: UNDEAD CINEMA Jeffrey Weinstock HERITAGE FILM: NATION, GENRE, AND REPRESENTATION Belén Vidal QUEER CINEMA: SCHOOLGIRLS, VAMPIRES, AND GAY COWBOYS Barbara Mennel THE SPORTS FILM: GAMES PEOPLE PLAY Bruce Babington THE HEIST FILM: STEALING WITH STYLE Daryl Lee INTERNATIONAL POLITICS AND FILM: SPACE, VISION, POWER Sean Carter and Klaus Dodds FILM THEORY: CREATING A CINEMATIC GRAMMAR Felicity Colman BIO- PICS: A LIFE IN PICTURES Ellen Cheshire THE GANGSTER FILM: FATAL SUCCESS IN AMERICAN CINEMA Ron Wilson POSTMODERNISM AND FILM: RETHINKING HOLLYWOOD’S AESTHESTICS Catherine Constable FILM PROGRAMMING: CURATING FOR CINEMAS, FESTIVALS, ARCHIVES Peter Bosma THE ROAD MOVIE: IN SEARCH OF MEANING Neil Archer ADVENTURE MOVIES: CINEMA OF THE QUEST Harvey O’Brien PRISON MOVIES: CINEMA BEHIND BARS Kevin Kehrwald SILENT CINEMA: BEFORE THE PICTURES GOT SMALL Lawrence Napper THE CHILDREN’S FILM: GENRE, NATION, AND NARRATIVE Noel Brown TRASH CINEMA: THE LURE OF THE LOW Guy Barefoot FILM AND THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT: ELEMENTS AND ATMOSPHERES Adam O’Brien THE HOLLYWOOD B- FILM: CINEMA ON A SHOESTRING Kyle Edwards SUBURBAN FANTASTIC CINEMA: GROWING UP IN THE LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY Angus McFadzean FILM CENSORSHIP: REGULATING AMERICA’S SCREEN Sheri Chinen Biesen TWENTY- FIRST- CENTURY HOLLYWOOD: REBOOTING THE SYSTEM Neil Archer THE CONTEMPORARY SUPERHERO FILM: PROJECTS OF POWER AND IDENTITY Terence McSweeney