French structuralist narrator Tzvetan Todorov proposed two concepts of "histoire" (histoire) and "discourse" (discours) to distinguish expression objects and expression forms in narrative works [1]. The same story content, if different expressions are used, will produce different effects, and more importantly, the reader's degree of participation will also be different. Similar "discourse" is applied to film language to form the narrative form of film (narrative form), that is, how the film tells the story. According to the definition in the book "Film Art", "A narrative begins with a situation, and then causes a series of changes according to the pattern of causality; finally, a new situation is produced, giving the narrative an ending. And we are involved in the story. The degree of this depends on whether we understand the change and stability, the causal relationship, and the pattern of time and space" [2]. What I want to discuss today is the causality (one of the core elements of the narrative) in the suspense movie narrative.
The origin of the story will show the origin of the whole story, which is an indispensable part of the film narrative. It can be said that a movie can have no results (open ending or meaningful ending), but it is difficult to have no cause. The occasion where the cause appears in the story is also very important. Similar to the creation of a novel, the film narrative also has multiple narrative forms such as forward narrative, flashback, and interlude. Therefore, the cause may appear at the beginning, middle or end of the movie, depending on the movie. The type and narrative need to be determined. Some movies will leave a foreshadowing of causal motivation in the narrative process. For example, in "The Wizard of Oz", the three farmers that Dorothy met in real life turned into three cartoon characters in her dreams. This is a psychological hint of cause and effect. motivation. It should be noted that a huge narrative will contain many branches, and these branches will also have some trivial causal motives. For example, the Hong Kong thief Mike played by Lian Jin in "Crazy Stone" is buying a rope, and he finally The scene of stealing forms a set of causal relationships.
"Crazy Stone" 2006
In detective movies (inferring novels), it is a typical narrative form that puts the cause of the story at the end, that is, the order in which the story occurs is:
a. The motive of the crime triggers
b. The crime is planned
c. The crime is committed
d. The crime is discovered
e. The detective starts investigating
f. Detective reveals abc [3]
Ordinary detective movies (mystery novels) will start with d. discover the crime and uncover the mystery step by step until discovering abc (the cause and course of the case), so that the audience with strong curiosity ( Readers) participated in the process of revealing the secrets together with the detectives. Many movie stories use this method of retaining the motivation for the cause of the accident to stimulate the audience’s curiosity and increase the audience’s participation. This can also explain why "White Night" has been criticized after being adapted into a TV series, because the TV series not only changed the relationship between characters (more emphasis on pure love relationship), but also changed the motives, tools and process of the crime (the last chapter of these originals) The important details that will be designed) are all spoiled in the first episode. This is somewhat similar to when someone circled the first page when watching Conan comics: TA is the murderer, so that later readers and viewers completely lose the fun of understanding the mystery. However, there are occasional exceptions. For example, in Keigo Higashino’s "Devotion of Suspect X", the audience (reader) was told who the murderer was from the beginning, but another part of the key information was retained, forming a kind of audience (reader) that is better than the detective. A wonderful experience that knows more but is as clueless as a detective.
The suspense narrative uses a similar information supply method to narrate. For example, in Hitchcock’s suspense film, the director is undoubtedly the omniscient and omnipotent character in the story, but he will never shake out all the background materials of the story in the first time , But as the plot continues to unravel the mystery. It is worth noting that mystery novels (movies) often have as much information as the readers know about the characters in the story, while the narrative language of mystery novels (movies) often gives readers (audiences) more information than the characters in the story. To create suspense (similar to but different from "The Devotion of Suspect X").
For example, in "North by Northwest" (1959), Roger Thornhill was inexplicably mistaken for a person named "George Kaplan" and was accused by some suspected gangsters " After being kidnapped and drunk, he was put on a (stolen) car with a brake failure and almost died. In order to find out who "Keplin" is and prove his innocence (no car stealing, drunk driving, high-speed driving), he started a series of tracking and searches. During the search, he was framed for homicide. Therefore, Roger was hunted down by both the police and the mysterious organization at the same time. Note that the audience at this time still has the same information as Roger in the film. We don't know why Roger was mistaken for Kaplan. We only know that Roger was involved in a weird and mysterious incident. Soon, we learned through the higher-level police meeting that "Kaplan" was just a fictional character (bait) set up by the higher-level police to hunt down criminal gangs. At this time, the police who could not reveal the target were unable to come forward to rescue Roger Thornhill. The audience knew that Roger had been "abandoned" by the higher-level police, and he was now in danger of losing his life at any time, but Roger himself had no idea about it. At this time, the audience knows more information than Roger. We know that Roger’s situation is very dangerous, but we don’t know what specific dangers Roger will encounter, and the director deliberately set up some links to hinder him. Jie gets the key information, so the audience has been worried for Roger.
The direct effect of such a narration is to create suspense. The creator knows the facts but does not participate in the story narrative, but adopts a kind of onlooker narrative, and the amount of information obtained by the audience is higher than that of the characters in the play, thereby helping to produce a strong suspense effect. Hitchcock once said to Lu Fu:
like we are now, we are chatting everywhere . Suppose there is a bomb under the table. At first nothing happened, then suddenly "Boom!" exploded. The audience was startled, and before being frightened, there were usually no special signs. Now, change to a suspenseful scenario: the audience knows that there is a bomb under the table, (omitted) the audience knows that the bomb will explode at one o'clock, there is a clock on the fireplace, and the hands indicate that there are only 15 minutes left. Then we chat so it becomes very interesting, because the audience has been put into the plot, would like to warn dramatis personae: "Hurry stop these big talk trivial things right, there is a bomb to blow it under the table !!"
section In an explosion situation, we can give the audience a 15-second startle effect. But in the second case, we provide the audience with 15 minutes of suspense. [4]
Many stories that grasp the hearts of the people actually use narrative methods (restrictive narrative or non-restrictive narrative) to increase the participation of the audience (readers). When we watch a movie, we can think about whether we are better than in the movie. Of people know more, less or the same? (Non-restrictive narrative: the amount of information for the audience is higher than the characters in the play; restrictive narrative: the amount of information for the audience is equal to the characters in the play; or between the unrestricted narrative and the restrictive narrative: such as "Suspect X's Devotion" And "North by Northwest"). We can also judge the level of art of the work through narrative methods.
[1] Shen Dan, Wang Liya. "Western Narratology: Classics and Post-Classics". Peking University Press. 2013. p14.
[2] David Bordwell ([美]David Bordwell), Christine Thompson. "Film Art" · Form and Style (Illustration Revised 8th Edition) Translated by Zeng Weizhen. "Film Academy" Editorial Board School. Beijing United Publishing Company. 2016.p90.
[3] Same as above. p95.
[4] Francois Truffaut , Hitchcock (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967), p.52.
This article was originally published in Xu Qi and my public account:
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