Narrative Form

We started last week by discussing narrative form which is the structure of a story and the way in which it is told in a film. The audience derive meaning from the story through things such as their experiences and knowledge of previous texts (such as films, books or art).

It was brought to my attention (this may reveal my ignorance..) that there is a difference between story and plot:  

a story is made up of inferred events and explicitly presented events; the plot includes explicitly presented events as well as non-diegetic elements.

The thing that stood out to me was how the story goes beyond the plot in suggesting events which are never seen (ie. inferred events) but are still vital to the story. This is something that we do every time we watch a film, but something which we’re not aware of doing or at least for me it’s something that I never put much thought into.

So watching the introduction of Hitchcock’s North by Northwest with this knowledge in mind made it quite interesting to see just how many small things we pick up on, make connections to and then draw conclusions from. The music creates a hectic atmosphere and its combination with the images of crowds, congested traffic and sky scrapers leads us to believe that it is rush hour in the city. Roger Thornhill enters dictating a memo to a woman – we realise that this is his secretary and he is a successful and busy executive, and we assume inferred events, for example the dictation began in an office and then the two made their way to the foyer where we first see them.  I think it’s fascinating the things we’ve assumed from just a few moments into the beginning of a film.

On a side note – re-watching the titles of North by Northwest reminded me somewhat of the titles of Mad Men which I’ve just started watching (yes, I am slightly behind) and will probably post about it when I’ve seen a few more episodes, but I’m loving it so far! 



  References
- Film Screening Lecture 7/3/2011