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Comentario de textos audiovisuales en lengua inglesa II

2º Grado en Estudios Ingleses

Facultad de Filosofía y Letras

Universidad de Zaragoza

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 FILM AND NARRATION I

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Syd Field was one of the many screenwriters that not only wrote for the screen but also for the
theory of screenwriting. The normal Hollywood film is approximately two hours long: 120 minutes
= 120 pages of screenplay.

Three part model:

- Act I: Beginning; the set up. The characters are introduced.
- Act II: Middle; the confrontation. Leads characters to confront a problem or an obstacle.
- Act III: End; resolution. The characters resolve that problem or overcome the obstacle.
Around minute 30 the plot point I is presented, around minute 60 the midpoint takes place, and
the plot point II takes place approximately around minute 80.

Another more sophisticated structure is provided by Christine Thompson, The five-part model:

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- Setup: established the character’s world, his/her goals, and it culminates in a turning point
(a plot point for Field) that sets the action going.
- Complicating action: the principal conflict develops, usually complicated by new situations.
New goals.
- Development: shows the protagonist’s struggle towards his/her goal. Ends in a crisis, the
“darkest moment”.
- Climax: goals are achieved or not, typically they will be.
- Epilogue: confirms the stability of the situation.

Another structure of narratives is a more theoretical ones. Narrative is said to have two levels: fabula
and syuzhet.
- The fabula (story): all the events of the narrative as they occur in chronological order from
beginning to end, included not only those that are presented explicitly, which we see and
hear, but also those we infer.
- On the other hand, the syuzhet (plot) are explicitly-presented story events arranged in a
certain order (which of course does not need to be chronological). We as spectators only
watch the syuzhet. The purpose is because not all the events fit the length of the film,
around two hours, and also because the rearrangement of events is produced in order to
make the audience react in a certain way.

Effects of the syuzhet

- Retardation: delaying the important moment. e.g.: How I Met Your Mother

An important element are the credits, where all the people involved in the creating process and the
developing of the film is introduced to us spectators. It is an addition to the syuzhet.

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 FILM AND NARRATION II: Time
Events, in life and in films, take time to occur. Duration is the length of time. Basically, we have
- Fabula (story) duration: duration of the fabula.
- Syuzhet (plot) duration: duration of the syuzhet.
- Screen duration: duration of the film.

Durational relationships
- Equivalence: fabula durations equals syuzhet and screen duration. Not very usual. e.g: TV

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series 24.
- Reduction: fabula duration is narrated in abbreviated fashion. The fabula is longer than the
syuzhet. Nevertheless, this is the most common relationship between fabula time and
syuzhet time in films. This is done by avoiding unnecessary elements of the fabula, also
known as ellipsis. e.g: Rope’s Alfred Hitchcock, or Before Sunset. For instance, at the
beginning of the film Up, we presence a montage sequence
- Expansion: syuzhet duration expands that of the fabula. e.g.: in The Untouchables we have
an expansion of the fabula by slow motion, so the syuzhet is longer.

Temporal manipulations
There are some sources of temporal manipulation as ellipses, flashbacks or flash-forwards, or

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repetitions. In addition, we have gaps, which is information or an event which is not in the syuzhet
but which, nevertheless, the syuzhet considers relevant, and, so, we spectators consider it important
too.

The film 500 Days Of Summer uses scrambled temporality, so it means that we have different jumps
in time and ellipses. By these resources, we have a reduction of the fabula. Every section of the film
begins with a title and a number, which guide the viewer through the time of the fabula.

282: resource of ellipsis. In this part they are looking for sinks, but Summer seems serious.
34: they are looking for a couch and when they sit on one they pretend they are on their
house. They go from the couch, to the kitchen and then to the bed. The resource of the Chinese
family adds comedy to the romantic comedy. When they are laying in bed she says that she is not
looking for nothing serious. After they had sex he seems more happy than before; he interacts with
everyone around him.
303: we go from a happy and comedy point to a more serious and melancholic one. They
are not together anymore and she wants to be friends.
45: they are happy again.

The main objective is to show the different stages of their relationship.

Before Sunset

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 FILM AND NARRATION III: Space, Classical Narrative
The fabula space is the totality of the space in which the action takes place (both shown and not
shown). On the other hand, the syuzhet space is the space we see on the screen.
In addition, the screen space are the contents of the frame (mise-en-scène, framing…). What makes
cinema different is the screen space, since is only in cinema where we have this kind of space. In the
omniscient space the audience has access to all the spaces of the fabula.

Classical Hollywood narrative

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The classical Hollywood film presents psychologically defined individuals who struggle to solve a
clear-cut problem or to attain specific goals. In the course of this struggle, the characters enter into
conflict with other or with external circumstances. The story ends with a decisive victory or defeat,
a resolution of the problem and a clear achievement or non achievement of the goals.

Redundancy means that one idea is not presented in one way, but it is presented in different ways.

Contemporary narratives are not necessarily classical although they come from Hollywood, now
sometimes they differ from the typical narrative.

Sometimes the use of restrictive space, we are omitted to some places of the scene that we do not

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get to see, maybe this is used to create a plot twist or surprise. e.g: The Lunch Date (1989, Adam
Davidson).

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 2.- FOCALISATION AND POINT OF VIEW
Films usually tell a story through point of view (focalisation + range of knowledge). Focalisation itself
is when the action is shown though the look of the camera and the look of the characters. There are
two types of focalisation.
— External: it is the look of the camera, not attributed to any character. Useful to describe
places and psychology (when a character’s looks is activated it creates subjectivity). Is
apparently objective, but not usually so.
— Internal: it allows us to have access to what a specific character is seeing. It creates

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subjectivity, revealing character’s feelings and opinions about what they see. Some
strategies that associate characters with the people or objects they look at are editing
(eyeline match, shot/reverse shot, or POV shot), camera movement and composition of the
shot.
Characters in films are looked and looked at. They can be both “focaliser” and “focalised”. In some
cases, one of these two roles prevails over the other. When internal focalisation operates, we find
information about the focalised, but also about the focaliser.

Focalisation does not only refer to the activity of looking but to perception in general. Perception in
cinema also works through sound; aural focalisation.

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External focalisation is necessary for identification with the character. For us to identify with a
character we need external focalisation.

Range of Knowledge and Point of View

A second dimension of point of view is the range of knowledge. In films a story is told through a
range of knowledge. Films control the amount of information they offer to spectators:
- Restricted: limited to the knowledge of a character, so we know what a character knows.
- Omniscient: spectators know more than the characters; the films offer us more information
than the characters have. This omniscience that the audience has gives a feeling of closure
with the film.

• Focalisation + Range of Knowledge = Point of view

The point of view is basic for identification, so it is essential for cinema. The audience needs to
identify with characters and the story in order to get interested on it and follow the narrative. The
perspective of the point of view may be:
- Objective: Barry Lindon (S. Kubrick, 1975).
- Subjective: Spellbound (A. Hitchcock, 1945).

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 3.- NARRATORS
Films: a narrative without a narrator
Unlike oral or written narratives, films do not need narrators. A film is a visual medium, which means
that stories are not narrated but “shown” through images and sounds. What we usually have in
cinema is an “activity of narration”, a narrative without a narrator. It is important to remember that
film narratives rely on the act of looking.
In films there is no need for a narrator that tells stories. What we need in a film is one or several,
internal or external, points of view, but not necessarily a telling agent. However, some movies use

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narrators, and we need to evaluate how and the ways in which narrators contribute to the
development and to our understanding of the story. Narrators bring together a personal perspective
and a form of interpellation: the spectator is implicated by a narrator who offers his/her perspective
on the events.
Narrators will be considered (1) according to their relationship with the diegesis, (2) to their degree
of knowledge and (3) to their attitude towards the events narrated.

According to their relationship with the diegesis

External narrators (non-character actors): they can only address and external narratee.
Internal narrators (characters within the story):
- Direct internal narrators: narrators who address the spectator directly, breaking the “fourth

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wall.” E.g. Annie Hall.
- Dramatized narrators: characters who address their stories to other characters. E.g. The
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
- Mindscreen: the resource through which characters, tell a story mentally to themselves
(instead of directly addressing the spectator or telling the story to other characters). E.g.
Adaptation.
- Written narrators: characters whose narration consists in the writing of letters or diaries.
E.g. Letter from an Unknown Woman.

According to their degree of knowledge

Omniscient narrators: they know everything, even events that they did not witness.
Restricted narrators: they know (and tell) only one part of the story.

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 4.- Performance
Effective acting may appear effortless, but it is actually the product of (1) a performer’s careful
labor and (2) changing conventions in performance styles, which are continually transformed by
technological, industrial, and social developments.

Acting techniques have developed alongside industrial, technological, and social changes. For
example:
− In the early film era, technology excluded the actor’s voice and staging relied on tableau

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imagery (static long shot). Thus, actors relied on a gestural style that made dramatic use
of their bodies and facial expressions. They drew on the tradition of theatre and adapted
it to the screen.
− As editing, close-ups and dolly shots were introduced and the camera moved closer to
the action, actors modified the heightened physicality of their gestural style and acting
became more restrained and subtle.
− When sound was introduced in the late 1920s, actors modified their style for a more
“realistic” approach.
− When the studio system consolidated itself (review the studio system from CTAI) a new
acting style emerged (influenced by the contractual relationship between studio and

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actors and by the genre approach to filmmaking) that has been labeled “the Hollywood
studio style.”

Acting is always mediated and informed by its historical moment as well as by institutional and
social conditions and suppositions. Acting lies at the intersection of art, technology, and culture.

What is a good performance?

The standards by which we evaluate a good performance have changed and will continue to be
modified. Good acting is a relative concept described differently over time. What is considered
a great performance is a product of changing tastes and individual preferences. We must go
beyond evaluating the quality of actors’ performances to analyse the way acting functions within
a film’s entire formal system.

A performance does not take place in a vacuum; an actor’s individual technique – the
presentation of body and voice – is a central factor in the film’s creation of meaning, but it is
also part of a complex arrangement of cinematic techniques involving the setting, the lighting,
the costumes, cinematography, editing, and sound, and it is inflected by the requirements of
particular genre or narrative conventions in addition to a director’s working methods.

Introduction: Performance styles

In the 19th century, François Delsarte, a French instructor, attempted to create a categorisation
of gestures, associating each gesture with its corresponding emotion. This “mechanical
application” was taken up by stage actors in Europe and the U.S. and resulted in melodramatic
gesturing.

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 During the early 20th century, a Russian theatre director, Constantin Stanislavski, developed an
approach based on internalisation; he encouraged actors to “inhabit” a character by drawing on
their imaginations and emotions to empathise with and embody their characters’ actions. The
actors, in a sense, became their characters. At the time was seen as a more realistic technique.

His teachings inspired the school of Method acting popularised in New York by the Group
Theatre in the 1930s and by Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg (Actors Studio), among others, in the
1940s and 1950s. This would transform how people understood realistic acting in film during

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the 1950s.

In contrast to internalisation, the German playwright, poet, and theorist Bertolt Brecht
advocated a modernist approach that sought to expose the artificiality of drama and its
characters: distanciation. He promoted an acting style that distance the audience in order to
encourage contemplation of a play’s social implications. He wanted to make audiences aware of
social issues and injustices. His objective was to prevent audiences from being mindlessly
absorbed in the play. The actors acknowledged the presence of the audience, by speaking
directly to them or by carrying signs that commented ironically on the plot.

Brecht’s distanciation techniques exist in comedies, films with highly stylised aesthetics such

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musicals, films with loose characterisations such as the films from the French New Wave, or,
more recently, films from the movement Dogme 95 films.

All these techniques are not antagonistic or mutually exclusive; contemporary film acting tends
to combine elements of all of them.

Anybody appearing in a film (in any kind of film, even a documentary) can be said to be
participating in an “act.” However unplanned the performance, we interpret onscreen gestures,
mannerisms, facial expressions, and vocal inflections as signs, attaching significance to minor
details.

In the early films, people were simply captured on film, they were not acting in the sense of
having prepared in advance to perform a role but once they have been captured on film, they
are turned into signifiers that evoke responses from the spectators. Little by little people who
were filmed took control over their performances.

If performance styles are determined by the cultural, social, industrial and technological forces
that characterise their historical moment, before we move on, we need to have a general idea
of the history of cinema, the factors that determined its evolution and how they relate with
acting.

Consider the following periods and turning points:

• The silent era.
• The early studio years: production during the studio system.
• Classical Hollywood (ca. 1928-1948).
• Post-war Hollywood (ca. 1948 -1967) and late classicism.

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 • Film production since the 1960s: The spread of realism:

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– The new wave in Europe and in the US
– The New American Cinema
– The “Hollywood Renaissance”
• The rise of the blockbuster in the 1970s and 1980s.

Sustained film acting emerged with the introduction of storytelling. The turn from the early films
(novelties) to fiction and narrative and a more absorbing psychological experience: new
techniques like editing, close-ups, dolly shots and expressive use of lighting. The star system
appeared. Tableau imagery gave way editing and closer framings. Filmmakers like D. W. Griffith
gave films an interior human life. He used techniques to give films more emotional subtlety; he
collaborated with actresses to minimize their gestures.

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In the U.S., production moved to Hollywood and the studio system was created: studios
established a standardized mode of production; promotion, advertising and the star system
became an integral part of the industry (companies went from branding themselves to brand
the actors and actresses in their films). The studios became vertically integrated monopolies that
controlled production, distribution, and exhibition.

The studio system was a stable, rational, and economical way of producing films; the objective
was to maximize the profitability of the industry and supply the level of demand in the market.
Actors signed long-term contracts to work exclusively for one studio. Actors had little control
over their careers. Studios developed an identity based on the filmmakers and actors on their
payroll.

Every aspect of the industry was affected by the star system. As the public became interested in
the stars, moviemakers had to learn ways to tell the audience what the characters were feeling
or thinking, and this meant seeing their faces clearly. If the audience could understand what the
actors were thinking and feeling, they would be drawn into the story. US films started to include
increasingly closer framings. All this influenced performance.

The industrial nature of the studio system and the contractual relationship between studio and
actors determined the performance style that dominated during the studio era: actors and
actresses underwent a screen test, which typically had two parts, a silent session to assess
whether they photographed well and a scene with sound to assess acting skills. Producers and
directors watched the tests within a few days and decided whether to offer a contract. The
studio would also decide whether to change their name and how to clothe and style them, even
to change their physical appearance.

Classical Hollywood (1928 – 1948)

The studio system consolidated itself as an industry; genres rose to prominence; a particular
acting style emerged that has been labelled “the Hollywood studio style.” Studios made
standardized genres the core of commercial production, and they played a central role in
determining acting styles.

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 Studios exercised firm control over actors and over their offscreen lives. Yet, the scandals
resulted in the Hays code (a form of self-censorship). Actors developed a screen persona. Acting
was based on traditional screen charisma.

Due to the pressure from religious lobbies, Hollywood producers created a self-regulatory
organization, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) in 1922, and
appointed Will Hays – an ultraconservative Republican – to head this body. The Production Code
Administration (or Hays Office) began to regulate the content of Hollywood films in July 1934.

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For three decades films were subject to censorship – it was a form of self-censorship to keep the
state (and pressure groups) happy and away from Hollywood.

The censorship of the Motion Picture Production Code limited the expressive range of actors.
Many actors whose performance had depended on wisecracks and sexuality were constrained.
This was the case, for example, of Mae West (left) and the Marx Brothers.

Post-war Hollywood (1948 – 1967) and late classicism

The Paramount case and the decline of the studio system: In 1948 the US Supreme Court ruled
that the major studios’ control of distribution was an illegal monopoly and ordered the
separation of exhibition from production and distribution. The large studios became distribution

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companies. This signalled the end of the studio system of production, and the beginning of the
end of Classical Hollywood cinema.

The Paramount decision changed the way Hollywood films were made in the following years.
Two issues were particularly relevant for performance:
− Instead of producing many formulaic (genre) movies, they invested in fewer, more
expensive, extravagant productions with multiple-star casts.
− Each production was a one-off event; long-term contracts for actors gradually
disappeared and actors were hired for one particular production.
− Studios lost their identity (based on genres and the personnel on their payroll).

By the mid-1950s cracks appeared in the implementation of the Hays code and films started to
deal with new issues.

Social changes also changed the characterization of minority groups. If before African Americans
had to conform to a limited range of character types that dated back to 19th century minstrel
shows, starting in the 1960s they broke with these stereotypes.

In the 1950s and 1960s censorship was gradually lifted, which gave actors a wider expressive
range. A new crop of actors became associated with newly risqué content – among them Marilyn
Monroe and her sex kitten persona or Warren Beatty, who emerged as a sex symbol after
Splendor in the Grass (1961). Actors gained greater freedom to develop multidimensional
characters without the fear of censorship.

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 The New US Cinema: Film production since the 1960s
A group of new and mainly young directors took the opportunity provided by the situation of
uncertainty to produce a series of innovative and challenging movies:
− Wider range of permissible topics and approaches: nudity, homosexuality, extreme
violence, liberal political issues, less stereotypical roles for minorities, focus on the lives
and styles of the alienated and discontented, new lifestyles, working class issues…
− Ordinary characters; depiction of real problems and more realistic human relationships.
− More stylistic freedom and a more self-conscious style (attention directed to form, at

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odds with the invisible style of classical Hollywood).
− Documentary approach to fiction; less rigid/more spontaneous style.
− Borrowed ideas of the European New Wave.
− These (and other changes) changed the visual poetry and atmosphere of cinema.

Writing about performance is notoriously difficult due to the myriad components of each second
of screen time: each aspect of voice, posture, gesture, mannerisms, and facial expression, and
each interaction with settings, props, sounds, and other actors. To complicate matters,
spectators interpret neutral expressions on an actor’s face differently, usually depending on the
previous and subsequent shots in a sequence. (Remember the experiment of Soviet filmmaker
Lev Kuleshov).

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Three interrelated elements of acting
1.- “Performance signs” (Richard Dyer): the choices an actor makes in terms of voice, intonation,
gesture, body posture, body movements, and facial expressions. In this unit we will focus on
these (Elements of Performance).

2.- Formal cinematic elements that help structure performance: framing, editing, shot size,
props, lighting, etc.

3.- Essential forms that realism/naturalism and theatricality/non-realism take in the

performance (including genre issues).

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