The Narrative Strategies of the Films - Essay Example

Compare the narrative strategies of the following films: Vertigo (Hitchcock) Written in the Wind (Sirk) Persona (Bergman) A bout de souffle (Godard) with particular attention to the concept of narrative closure. The narrative strategies adopted by films have a great influence on the overall appreciation of the genre and narrative features such as narrative closure, character motivation, framing, plot motives and cause-effect chains indicate the narrative strategy of the particular film. A comparative analysis of the narrative strategies of the films such as Vertigo (Hitchcock) Written in the Wind (Sirk) Persona (Bergman) A bout de souffle (Godard) with particular attention to the concept of narrative closure can be useful in determining how the theory of Auteur developed in the Hollywood. The progress of Hollywood film has been a long journey from the primitive to the classical and the theory of Auteur had an important place in its development. The development of new wave theory and the theory of Auteur in France had a major influence in the growth of narrative strategies used in film. The revolutionary new way of understanding and interpreting films known as new wave theory is closely connected to the theory of Auteur. “An underlying assumption of auteur theory was Auteur’s idea that, despite film’s status as primarily a commercial entertainment medium, it could potentially be an art form as powerful in its means of expression as literature or poetry… According to the New Wave critics, it is the director and not the screenwriter whose artistic version is inscribed onto the film.” (Fabe 2004, P. 121). Certain directors such as Bergman, Bresson and Ozu who had a great deal of creative freedom in their works were recognized as artists only in the non-commercial art cinema of Europe and Japan. However, according to the French New Wave theorists, even in the most commercial realm, the works of certain filmmakers were marked by the director’s individual themes, psychological preoccupations, and stylistic patterns which determine the narrative strategy. This paper makes a comparative analysis of the narrative strategies of Vertigo (Hitchcock), Written in the Wind (Sirk), Persona (Bergman), and A bout de souffle (Godard) in relation to the concept of narrative closure, and the narrative features such as character motivation, framing, plot motives and cause-effect chains. The New Wave theorists realized filmmakers of the auteurs as directors whose unique style and vision marked their films and Alfred Hitchcock was one of the most important filmmakers of this group. According to the French auteur theorists and directors, Hitchcock is one of the greatest inventors of form in the history of film and “… Alfred Hitchcock, who devoted most of his career in Hollywood to making films in the popular genre of the suspense thriller, is considered a serious film artist, a quintessential auteur.” (Fabe 2004, P. 138). In his celebrated film Vertigo (1958), an American psychological thriller, Hitchcock offers convincing illustration of how he transformed his suspense thriller into a serious film in line with the auteur theory through his narrative closure, character motivation, framing, plot motives and cause-effect chains. “The constantly moving camera in Vertigo embodies Scottie’s melancholic search for the lost object, as well as the moving and fluctuating nature of Scottie’s bordering subjectivity which constantly transgresses the frontier between subject and object. The film bears witness to the protagonist’s traumatic loss of the love object and his failure to overcome that loss as well as his anxiety over losing something without being able to understand the nature of loss or its attendant anxiety.” (Bergstrom 1999, P. 208). Therefore, Hitchcock’s Vertigo has been one of the major contributions to the rise of the Hollywood Auteur. Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind (1956) has been vibrantly colourful melodramatic masterpiece by the director whose absorbing, flamboyant, overwrought pot-boiler films were recognised for their glossy and excessive style, and embroidered and impassioned emotions. “This film provides Sirk’s clear commentary and critique of the underlying hollowness and shallowness of American society in the placid 1950s, and misfit lives stunted and corrupted by mental anguish, alcoholism, sexual frustration, and corruptible materialistic wealth… This vivid, gaudy and slightly campy Technicolor film… centres on the frenzied dynamics within a self-destructing, filthy-rich (literally) Texas oil family named Hadley… The film includes such sordid subjects as nymphomania, alcoholism, murderous jealousy and rage, phallic power and infertility, miscarriage, back-stabbing emotional blackmail, and illusory materialistic happiness.” (Dirks). In his most challenging and experimental film, Persona, Ingmar Bergman provides one of the most convincing evidences to the how narrative strategy can be formative in the best portrayal of the psychological deconstruction within characters. Through Persona the director has been effective in making a challenging, highly cerebral, and artistically complex depiction of human frailty, cruelty, and identity. The narrative closure and other techniques help the director in easily indicting the theme of psychological deconstruction. “Bergman uses minimal composition and extremely tight close-ups to illustrate the theme of psychological deconstruction. Note the prevalent use of single camera shots throughout the duration of a scene. The lack of camera movement forces us to study the characters’ faces. Persona, after all, as the title suggests, is not about who the person actually is, but the different identities, or facades, that the person projects.” (Persona, 1966). A bout de soufflé, the first feature directed by Jean-Luc Godard, has been celebrated as one of the films introducing the French New Wave in the late 1950s and the narrative strategy adopted in the film illustrates the features of the French New Wave films. A bout de soufflé not only defines attitudes and concerns seen in Godard’s subsequent works, but serves as the best illustration of the French New Wave cinema. “In various ways the film exemplifies the conjunction of a number of factors contributing to the French New Wave cinema. This includes the use of relatively new cameras (a lightweight Eclair, easily handheld); working with low budgets, which promoted location shooting and stories with contemporary settings; and the use of new personnel, including the star Belmondo and cameraman Raoul Coutard.” (White). Significantly, Godard also brought a set of attitudes to filmmaking shared by his fellow New Wave directors and he believed that the director was the responsible creative individual behind a film. Therefore, it is important to make a comparative analysis of the narrative strategies of Vertigo (Hitchcock), Written in the Wind (Sirk), Persona (Bergman), and A bout de souffle (Godard) etc in relation to the concept of narrative closure, character motivation, framing, plot motives and cause-effect chains, etc, in realizing the rise of the Hollywood Auteur and the alternatives to classicism in European filmmaking that developed in Hollywood in the post-war scenario. “The early 1950s saw the most pervasive technological innovations in Hollywood since the late 1920s.” (Bordwell, Staiger, and Thompson 1988, P. 358). Significantly, the narrative strategies of Vertigo (Hitchcock), Written in the Wind (Sirk), Persona (Bergman), and A bout de souffle (Godard) illustrate the technological and artistic innovations in the Hollywood film industry. The narrative closure, character motivation, framing, plot motives and cause-effect chains, etc in these films indicate the rise of the Hollywood Auteur and establish Neo-realism as the first of the Post-war “trends” in film industry. Bibliography BERGSTROM, Janet. 1999. Endless night: cinema and psychoanalysis, parallel histories. University of California Press. P. 208. BORDWELL, David., STAIGER, Janet., and THOMPSON, Kristin. 1988. The classical Hollywood cinema: film style & mode of production to 1960. London: Routledge. P. 358. Dirks, Tim. [online]. “Written on the Wind (1956).” Filmsite. Last Accessed 15 November 2009 at: http://www.filmsite.org/writt.html FABE, Marilyn. 2004. Closely watched films: an introduction to the art of narrative film technique. University of California Press. P. 121. “Persona, 1966.” [online]. Ingmar Bergman. Strictly Film School. Last Accessed 15 November 2009 at: http://www.filmref.com/directors/dirpages/bergman.html#persona White, M. B. [online]. “A bout de soufflé.” Film Reference. Last Accessed 15 November 2009 at: http://www.filmreference.com/Films-A-An/A-Bout-de-Souffle.html Read More