Narrative film

Last updated

Narrative film, fictional film or fiction film is a motion picture that tells a fictional or fictionalized story, event or narrative. Commercial narrative films with running times of over an hour are often referred to as feature films, or feature-length films. The earliest narrative films, around the turn of the 20th century, were essentially filmed stage plays and for the first three or four decades these commercial productions drew heavily upon the centuries-old theatrical tradition.

Contents

In this style of film, believable narratives and characters help convince the audience that the unfolding fiction is real. Lighting and camera movement, among other cinematic elements, have become increasingly important in these films. [1] Great detail goes into the screenplays of narratives, as these films rarely deviate from the predetermined behaviours and lines of the classical style of screenplay writing to maintain a sense of realism. Actors must deliver dialogue and action in a believable way, so as to persuade the audience that the film is real life.

General

Probably the first fictional film ever made was the Lumière's L'Arroseur arrosé , which was first screened at the Grand Café Capucines on December 28, 1895. [2] A year later in 1896, Alice Guy-Blaché directed the fictional film La Fée aux Choux . Perhaps the best known of early fictional films is Georges Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon from 1902. [3] Most films previous to this had been merely moving images of everyday occurrences, such as L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat by Auguste and Louis Lumière. Méliès was one of the first directors to progress cinematic technology, which paved the way for narratives as style of film. [4] Narrative films have come so far since their introduction that film genres such as comedy or Western films, were, and continue to be introduced as a way to further categorize these films. [5]

Narrative cinema is usually contrasted to films that present information, such as a nature documentary, as well as to some experimental films (works such as Wavelength by Michael Snow, Man with a Movie Camera by Dziga Vertov, or films by Chantal Akerman). In some instances pure documentary films, while nonfiction, may nonetheless recount a story. As genres evolve, from fiction film and documentary a hybrid one emerged, docufiction.

Many films are based on real occurrences, however these too fall under the category of a “narrative film” rather than a documentary. This is because films based on real occurrences are not simply footage of the occurrence, but rather hired actors portraying an adjusted, often more dramatic, retelling of the occurrence (such as 21 by Robert Luketic). [5]

Unlike literary fiction, which is typically based on characters, situations and events that are entirely imaginary/fictional/hypothetical, cinema always has a real referent, called the "pro-filmic", which encompasses everything existing and done in front of the camera.

Since the emergence of classical Hollywood style in the early 20th century, during which films were selected to be made based on the popularity of the genre, stars, producers, and directors involved, narrative, usually in the form of the feature film, has held dominance in commercial cinema and has become popularly synonymous with "the movies." [6] Classical, invisible film making (what is often called realist fiction) is central to this popular definition. This key element of this invisible film making lies in continuity editing.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Documentary film</span> Nonfictional motion picture

A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in terms of "a filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception [that remains] a practice without clear boundaries".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dziga Vertov</span> Soviet director

Dziga Vertov was a Soviet pioneer documentary film and newsreel director, as well as a cinema theorist. His filming practices and theories influenced the cinéma vérité style of documentary movie-making and the Dziga Vertov Group, a radical film-making cooperative which was active from 1968 to 1972. He was a member of the Kinoks collective, with Elizaveta Svilova and Mikhail Kaufman.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of film</span> Chronology of branch of photography

The history of film chronicles the development of a visual art form created using film technologies that began in the late 19th century.

Film style refers to recognizable cinematic techniques used by filmmakers to create specific value in their work. These techniques can include all aspects of film language, including: sound design, mise-en-scène, dialogue, cinematography, editing, or direction.

Diegesis is a style of fiction storytelling which presents an interior view of a world in which the narrator presents the actions of the characters to the readers or audience.

<i>A Trip to the Moon</i> 1902 French short film

A Trip to the Moon is a 1902 French adventure short film directed by Georges Méliès. Inspired by a wide variety of sources, including Jules Verne's 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon and its 1870 sequel Around the Moon, the film follows a group of astronomers who travel to the Moon in a cannon-propelled capsule, explore the Moon's surface, escape from an underground group of Selenites, and return to Earth with a captive Selenite. Its ensemble cast of French theatrical performers is led by Méliès himself as the main character Professor Barbenfouillis. The film features the overtly theatrical style for which Méliès became famous.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alice Guy-Blaché</span> French film director

Alice Ida Antoinette Guy-Blaché was a French pioneer filmmaker. She was one of the first filmmakers to make a narrative fiction film, as well as the first woman to direct a film. From 1896 to 1906, she was probably the only female filmmaker in the world. She experimented with Gaumont's Chronophone sync-sound system, and with color-tinting, interracial casting, and special effects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Actuality film</span> Non-fiction film genre that uses footage of real events

Actuality film is a non-fiction film genre that, like documentary film, uses footage of real events, places, and things. Unlike documentaries, actuality films are not structured into a larger narrative or coherent whole. In practice, actuality films preceded the emergence of the documentary. During the era of early cinema, actualities—usually lasting no more than a minute or two and usually assembled together into a program by an exhibitor—were just as popular and prominent as their fictional counterparts. The line between "fact" and "fiction" was not as sharply drawn in early cinema as it would be after documentaries came to serve as the predominant non-fiction filmmaking form. Actuality is a film genre that remains strongly related to still photography.

Direct cinema is a documentary genre that originated between 1958 and 1962 in North America—principally in the Canadian province of Quebec and in the United States—and was developed in France by Jean Rouch. It is a cinematic practice employing lightweight filming equipment, hand-held cameras and live, synchronous sound that became available because of new, ground-breaking technologies developed in the early 1960s. These innovations made it possible for independent filmmakers to do away with large crews, studio sets, tripod-mounted equipment and special lights, expensive necessities that severely limited these low-budget documentarians. Like the cinéma vérité genre, Direct cinema was initially characterized by filmmakers' desire to capture reality directly, to represent it truthfully, and to question the relationship between reality and cinema.

A pseudo-documentary or fake documentary is a film or video production that takes the form or style of a documentary film but does not portray real events. Rather, scripted and fictional elements are used to tell the story. The pseudo-documentary, unlike the related mockumentary, is not always intended as satire or humor. It may use documentary camera techniques but with fabricated sets, actors, or situations, and it may use digital effects to alter the filmed scene or even create a wholly synthetic scene.

<i>The Conquest of the Pole</i> 1912 French film

The Conquest of the Pole is a 1912 French silent science fantasy film directed by and starring Georges Méliès. The film, loosely inspired by contemporary events and by Jules Verne's Voyages Extraordinaires, follows the comic misadventures of an international group of explorers on an expedition to the North Pole, where they encounter a man-eating frost giant and a dangerous magnetic needle.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Docufiction</span> Film genre

Docufiction is the cinematographic combination of documentary and fiction, this term often meaning narrative film. It is a film genre which attempts to capture reality such as it is and which simultaneously introduces unreal elements or fictional situations in narrative in order to strengthen the representation of reality using some kind of artistic expression.

Ethnofiction refers to a subfield of ethnography which produces works that introduces art, in the form of storytelling, "thick descriptions and conversational narratives", and even first-person autobiographical accounts, into peer-reviewed academic works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Georges Méliès filmography</span>

Georges Méliès (1861–1938) was a French filmmaker and magician generally regarded as the first person to recognize the potential of narrative film. He made about 520 films between 1896 and 1912, covering a range of genres including trick films, fantasies, comedies, advertisements, satires, costume dramas, literary adaptations, erotic films, melodramas, and imaginary voyages. His works are often considered as important precursors to modern narrative cinema, though some recent scholars have argued that Méliès's films are better understood as spectacular theatrical creations rooted in the 19th-century féerie tradition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Georges Méliès</span> French filmmaker and illusionist (1861–1938)

Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès was a French illusionist, actor, and film director. He led many technical and narrative developments in the earliest days of cinema.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Found footage (film technique)</span> Film genre

Found footage is a cinematic technique in which all or a substantial part of the work is presented as if it were discovered film or video recordings. The events on screen are typically seen through the camera of one or more of the characters involved, often accompanied by their real-time, off-camera commentary. For added realism, the cinematography may be done by the actors themselves as they perform, and shaky camera work and naturalistic acting are routinely employed. The footage may be presented as if it were "raw" and complete or as if it had been edited into a narrative by those who "found" it.

Non-narrative film is an aesthetic of cinematic film that does not narrate, or relate "an event, whether real or imaginary". It is usually a form of art film or experimental film, not made for mass entertainment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Georges Méliès in culture</span>

The life and works of the French filmmaker Georges Méliès (1861–1938), including his famous short film A Trip to the Moon, have been referenced many times in creative works, including the following examples.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Women's suffrage in film</span>

Women's suffrage, the legal right of women to vote, has been depicted in film in a variety of ways since the invention of narrative film in the late nineteenth century. Some early films satirized and mocked suffragists and Suffragettes as "unwomanly" "man-haters," or sensationalized documentary footage. Suffragists countered these depictions by releasing narrative films and newsreels that argued for their cause. After women won the vote in countries with a national cinema, women's suffrage became a historical event depicted in both fiction and nonfiction films.

References

  1. Brown, Blain, Lighting as story telling, Cinematography: Theory & Practice, Focal Press(2002)
  2. Alison McMahan, Alice Guy Blaché, Lost Visionary of the Cinema (New York: Continuum, 2002) p. 13.
  3. Rosalind Leveridge, “Fantastic voyages of the cinematic imagination: George Méliès’s Trip to the Moon” Early Popular Visual Culture (May 2012), 10 (2), pg. 197-199
  4. Rosalind Leveridge, “Fantastic voyages of the cinematic imagination: George Méliès’s Trip to the Moon” Early Popular Visual Culture (May 2012), 10 (2), pg. 197-199
  5. 1 2 Barsam, Richard Meran and Dave Monahan. Looking at Movies: An Introduction to Film. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2010
  6. Kaplan, E. Ann. Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera. New York: Methuen, 1988