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Introduction to Film Studies

Introduction to Film Studies. Film Form and Film Style. 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

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Introduction to Film Studies

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  1. Introduction to Film Studies Film Form and Film Style

  2. Narrative Analysis • Five foci in the narrative analysis of Gérard Genette’sNarratology. 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 reveals

  3. 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.

  4. Order • Flashforward– a scene that takes the narrative forward in time from the current time of the plot • NicholaRoeg’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.

  5. 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.

  6. Frequency • Peter Howitt’sSliding 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.

  7. 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 time

  8. 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 minutes

  9. Duration • Elipsis: the omission of a large section of a narrative • OzuYasujiro’sTokyo Story - the scene of mother lying in coma cut to the morning scene, in which she is already passed away.

  10. Duration • In some films discourse time, plot time last as long as narrative time or real time. • Andy Warhol’s Empire (1964) • CezareZavattini’s experimental omnibus film, Love in the City (1953) Tre ore di paradiso

  11. Duration • In the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games, AbebeBikila won the gold medal in marathon, with 2 hours12 minutes and 11 seconds (narrative time) but KonIchikdawa showed the race in about 8 minutes (discourse time). Tokyo Olympiad (1965) marathon

  12. Duration • Rarely 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 Olympiade

  13. 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)

  14. 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 narrating

  15. 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.

  16. 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

  17. 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.

  18. MoodLady in the Lake • First-person perspective – the camera become the viewpoint of the film as well as a character • Cinema version of the first-person narrative in Lady in the Lake (1947) the distance between a narrator and what he narrates is so close.

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