Narrative on film: The many layers of the story

By Nancy Cantu Harris

Think of the most compelling movie you have seen recently. Can you pinpoint what made it so poignant? Was the situation that the characters faced relatable to you, or was the way in which the events were told what kept you drawn into their lives?

Throughout the history of humanity, stories are prevalent in our understanding of the world. We communicate and relate to each other by sharing experiences; therefore, we tend to see the narrative as the backbone of films.

On their book, Film History: An Introduction, David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson deconstruct this key element of a movie production, starting from the definition of narrative as “a chain of events in cause-effect relationship occurring in time and space.” (1) Its components are: causality, time, and space.

The authors also explain that, although closely related, story and plot are not the same. While the story is the set of all the events (explicit and inferred) in a narrative; the plot is everything visibly and audibly present in the film before us. Narrative is where the worlds of diegesis (the total world of the story action) and nondiegetic elements (like music and credits) collide.

Story and plot are closely related and overlap.

But what exactly are the explicit and inferred events? Imagine that you are people watching at Starbucks, and you see a couple sitting across from each other, holding hands and having what appears to be an intimate conversation. The explicit event in this situation is the scene which we are witnessing; the inferred event would be the fact, that based on their attitude and behavior, we assume that they are romantically involved. If they suddenly break apart, we may infer that they are having a disagreement.

The same example applies to the nature of the events from a movie: actions that we see on the screen are explicit, those that we don’t see but can interpret from the performed scenes are inferred. These two constitute the story.

The plot, on the other hand, includes all the events directly depicted in the film, as well as material extraneous to the story world, what we call nondiegetic, like the music that intensifies the suspense in some scenes, or the titles that help the viewer identify the city or place where the action is taking place.

Further in their effort to define the elements of narrative, Bordwell and Thompson explain cause and effect. Characters are usually the force that drives the development of actions. By triggering and reacting to events, they play roles within the film’s formal system.

It is through this constant of cause and effect that the narrative unfolds in a movie. Through watching the characters face adversity in their pursuit of a goal, we feel sympathetic towards the protagonists’ cause and stay put to see them either succeed or fail.

In the realm of cinema, “time shapes our understanding of narrative action.” (2) Unconsciously, we try to order the events presented in a chronological sequence in order to make sense of what is happening on the screen.

Time as an element of narrative can be broken down in three categories: temporal order (even if presented in the middle of the movie, flashbacks are always ordered in our mind as belonging to the past of the characters), temporal duration (the story duration, plot duration, and screen time or screen duration), and temporal frequency (when a specific event is presented more than once during the movie, for instance, when a movie opens with a crime scene and goes back in time to solve the mystery of the murder, in order to end up at the start with the crime scene coming full circle.)

According to Bordwell and Thompson, a film does not just start, it begins. This opening sets out the premise for what we expect to happen next and initiates us into the narrative, and we refer to this part of the plot as exposition.

There are a few common general plot patterns that are widespread on films, like the change in knowledge (where the characters are about to uncover some information what will change the direction of their lives), goal-oriented, and, in some cases, space can become the basis for a plot. A classic example of this one is The Wizard of Oz, where the whole movie revolves around Dorothy trying to leave Oz in order to get back to Kansas.

Since “a film does not simply stop; it ends” (3), the narrative will typically resolve its causal issues by bringing closure to the protagonist’s pursuit. 

The plot’s way of distributing story information in order to achieve specific effects is called narration. Depending on the range of narration, a film may make use of omniscient narration, where the viewer has access to different points of view, or restricted narration, where our knowledge is limited to that of the protagonist.

As a side note, the authors describe the Classical Hollywood Cinema as a conventional narrative mode that depends on the assumption that the action will derive primarily from individual characters who are the causal agents, and there is always a desire, or goal, which sets the plot into motion.

At the end of this dissertation about narrative as a formal system, Bordwell and Thompson dissect the movie Citizen Kane applying the concepts and terminology previously explained, so that the reader can better understand how those elements come together to bring a story to life on the screen, in the same way that all the instruments in an orchestra play an important and vital part in a symphony.

I remember watching Citizen Kane once a few years ago. Of course, by the time I saw it, I knew that this piece of American cinema is considered one of the most relevant works in the history of film, and yet, it failed to impress me.

I suppose that my reading of this title was just not fair considering that, as a viewer, I am used to seeing movies that have been made with much more functional technology and resources that were available in 1941, when it was released. Also, influenced by the Classical Hollywood Cinema, I am accustomed to more linear ways of story-telling.

After reading the examination of Citizen Kane made by the authors, I have reconsidered my opinion about Orson Wells’ masterpiece. This is a movie that broke paradigms in its era, and the development of the plot certainly challenges the viewer into exploring a character’s passions and tribulations without the obvious pursuit of a goal. It should be read or analyzed in its context more than compared to current works of cinema. And that’s exactly what I’ll do next time I get it from the library.

1)      Film History: An Introduction. David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson. McGraw-Hill, 2009. Page 60.

2)      Film History: An Introduction. David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson. McGraw-Hill, 2009. Page 66.

3)      Film History: An Introduction. David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson. McGraw-Hill, 2009. Page 69.