Film Form and Film Style Narrative Analysis Five foci in the narrative analysis of Gérard Genettes Narratology Narrative Discourse An Essay in Method 1980 Order frequency duration voice and mood ID: 349154
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Slide1
Introduction to Film Studies
Film Form and Film StyleSlide2
Narrative Analysis
Five foci in the narrative analysis of Gérard
Genette’s
Narratology
. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method
(1980)
Order, frequency, duration, voice and mood
Order: an order of event units being told
Chronological order: telling events following one after another in time; from the oldest to the most recent event
(a) crime
conceived (b) crime planned (c)crime committed (d) crime discovered (e) detective investigates (f) detective
revealsSlide3
Order
Citizen Kane
(1941) begins with the death of the newspaper magnate.
A journalist interviews Kane’s friends and associates and unfolds his story in
flashbacks
. Slide4
Order
Flashforward
– a scene that takes the narrative forward in time from the current time of the plot
Nichola
Roeg’s
Don’t Look Now
A man sees his wife in black on a boat, though she is supposed to be away. At the end of the film, it is revealed that she is with her husband’s coffin. Slide5
Frequency
An event can occur once and be narrated once (singular) Today I went to the bar.
An event can occur
n
times and be narrated once (iterative) I used to go to the bar.
An event can occur once and be narrated
n
times (repetitive) I went to the bar. Different people saw me going to the bar.
An event can occur
n
times and be narrated
n
times (multiple) I used to go to the bar and other people saw me going to the bar a number of times. Slide6
Frequency
Peter
Howitt’s
Sliding Doors
(1998) – a young woman gets fired from her public relations job. After she heads for a London Underground station, the plot splits into two: one in which she catches the train, the other in which misses it.
The action of her descending into a tube station shown twice. Slide7
Duration
Difference between discourse time and narrative time
Discourse time –
time spent to narrate
the
event
Narrative time – real time that has passed for an
event to take place
‘5 years later’ a lengthy narrative time, but it could be a matter of second in discourse timeSlide8
Duration
Narrative time is normally shorter than discourse time
Several million years are covered in
Space Odyssey
by 161 minutes
Kane’s life covered in Citizen Kane
in 119
mins
.
Many years covered in Amadeus by 138 minutes
Four days covered in
North by Northwest
by 136 minutes
One day covered in
Hiroshima,
mon
amour
by 90 minutesSlide9
Duration
Elipsis
: the omission of a large section of a narrative
Ozu
Yasujiro’s
Tokyo Story
- the scene of mother lying in coma cut to the morning scene, in which she is already passed away. Slide10
Duration
In some films discourse time, plot time last as long as narrative time or real time.
Andy Warhol’s
Empire
(1964)
Cezare
Zavattini’s
experimental omnibus film,
Love in the City
(1953)
Tre
ore di
paradisoSlide11
Duration
In the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games,
Abebe
Bikila
won the gold medal in marathon, with 2 hours12 minutes and 11 seconds (narrative time) but
Kon
Ichikdawa
showed the race in about 8 minutes (discourse time).
Tokyo Olympiad
(1965)
marathonSlide12
Duration
R
arely discourse time is longer than narrative time
Bob Hayes won the 100 meter with 10.00 seconds but the race is shown in 30 seconds
Tokyo
OlympiadeSlide13
Voice
Voice is connected with
who
narrates and
from where
Where the narration is from:
Intra-diegetic: inside the text (narrated from
the film narrative)
Extra-diegetic: outside the text (narrated from
outside film narrative)Slide14
Voice
Who narrates
:
Hetero-diegetic: the narrator is not a character
in
a
film
Homo-diegetic: the narrator is a character in a
film
First person narrating and third person narratingSlide15
Voice
Intra-diegetic, homo-diegetic first person narrating
David Lean’s
Brief Encounter
(1945) – a housewife who is having an affair with a married doctor whom she met in a station is narrating what is going on inside herself. Slide16
Voice
Extra-diegetic, hetero-diegetic third person narrating: the speaker speaks from outside the story never using ‘I
’
Stanley Kubrick’s
Barry Lyndon
is narrated by Michael
Hordern
Slide17
Mood
Mood – the various degree of ‘distance’ created between the narrator of a film and what she narrates.
Distance helps the viewer to determine the degree of precision in a narrative and the accuracy of information conveyed.
Unreliable narrator: the distance between a narrator and what he narrates is wide:
The narrator in
Citizen Kane –
a journalist gathering information about who Kane really is and what ‘rose bud’ really means.Slide18
Mood
Lady in the Lake
First-person perspective – the camera become the viewpoint of the film as well as a character
C
inema
version of
the
first-person narrative
in
Lady in the Lake
(1947
) the distance between a narrator and what he narrates is
so close.