Copyright © 2003-08 Lewis Jay Spence. All rights reserved. Always list your sources.
I wrote this essay as part of my B.A. (Hons) Film Studies degree in 2003. It is the esay of which I am proudest, not only because I received my highest mark for it, but also because my intent was recognised, no matter how it may irritate essay connoisseurs...
Following is the Tutor's Comment, from Jacqueline Furby of Southampton Institute (now Southampton Solent University):
This is confident and authoritative, and nicely controlled. Given the strength of the foregoing argument, the conclusion is weak and lets the essay down, through a lack of closure, suggested in your opening statement about narrative structure of essays. A generous interpretation might be that you have apoted the post-classical technique of open endings. So, with reservations, I give this a high mark. 74%
What is a classical Hollywood narrative? What (ideological, textual, cultural) criticisms can be made of the way classical Hollywood cinema tells its stories?
The world is made up of narratives, in the sense that narratives help us to understand the world around us. Narratives can be used to entertain, inform, and even persuade. I will be taking the last of these options with the narrative I will be presenting to you here.
This essay is, after all, a narrative form in the sense that it has its problem introduced at the beginning, which is elaborated upon in the main body of the essay, with (hopefully) a resolution of the argument at the end.
My narrative will be about a type of narrative - one of the most dominant types of narrative that can be found in film, courtesy of one of the most dominant film industries. The "classical Hollywood narrative" is used in most Hollywood films made from the 1920s to the end of the classical Hollywood era around 1960 and, certainly according to any scriptwriting manual, is still the most dominant form of storytelling today.
What this narrative will examine is the structure of the classical Hollywood narrative, and why "it is able to convince viewers that it is one and the same with the physical world - thus its famous 'realistic effect'." (Gaines 1992: 1). But, once this narrative about narrative has been established, the complications will be introduced - examining why there have been many criticisms of this form of narrative, such as its powerful ability to "reinforce gender positions in society." (Gaines 1992: 1)
To start, an explanation of the classical Hollywood narrative needs to be established, with the aim of dissecting it to examine the structure of this form of narrative. According to Gaines, classical Hollywood narrative characterises a product of classical Hollywood cinema as
The world is made up of narratives, in the sense that narratives help us to understand the world around us. Narratives can be used to entertain, inform, and even persuade. I will be taking the last of these options with the narrative I will be presenting to you here.
This essay is, after all, a narrative form in the sense that it has its problem introduced at the beginning, which is elaborated upon in the main body of the essay, with (hopefully) a resolution of the argument at the end.
My narrative will be about a type of narrative - one of the most dominant types of narrative that can be found in film, courtesy of one of the most dominant film industries. The "classical Hollywood narrative" is used in most Hollywood films made from the 1920s to the end of the classical Hollywood era around 1960 and, certainly according to any scriptwriting manual, is still the most dominant form of storytelling today.
What this narrative will examine is the structure of the classical Hollywood narrative, and why "it is able to convince viewers that it is one and the same with the physical world - thus its famous 'realistic effect'." (Gaines 1992: 1). But, once this narrative about narrative has been established, the complications will be introduced - examining why there have been many criticisms of this form of narrative, such as its powerful ability to "reinforce gender positions in society." (Gaines 1992: 1)
To start, an explanation of the classical Hollywood narrative needs to be established, with the aim of dissecting it to examine the structure of this form of narrative. According to Gaines, classical Hollywood narrative characterises a product of classical Hollywood cinema as
the protagonist-driven story film,
valued for the way it achieves
closure by neatly resolving all of
the enigmas it raises as well as
for the way it creates this perfect
symmetry by means of ingenious
aesthetic economies. (Gaines 1992: 1).
The narrative is identified as one with a clear story that originates from a single character. The protagonist is "the principal causal agent, the target of any narrational restriction, and the chief object of audience identification." (Bordwell 1985: 157). The story is related to the audience via the (usually) subjective viewpoint of the sympathetic protagonist. (However, such a subjective viewpoint will be contested in this essay later.)
However, as David Bordwell points out, the position of a protagonist in a classical Hollywood narrative parallels another part of the Hollywood filmmaking process, as "the star system has as one of its functions the creation of a rough character prototype for each star who is then adjusted to the particular needs of the role." (Bordwell 1985: 157) As an example of this function at work, the American "Everyman" image of James Stewart is evident in films as thematically, and ideologically, apart as It's a Wonderful Life (1947, US, Frank Capra) and Vertigo (1958, US, Alfred Hitchcock). This creation of a "star image" enhances audience identification with the protagonist in terms of providing a shorthand for the character of the protagonist, thereby reducing the time needed for character exposition.
The "story" in a classical Hollywood narrative is a causal one. Taking the idea of the protagonist as a causal agent, the narrative will progress because of the "decisions, choices and traits of character" of the protagonist (Bordwell et al 2001: 76), rather than "deus ex machina"-type events due to natural causes or society as a whole. Due to the result of one decision, the story will progress to another point where another decision will be made, until the problem is ultimately solved. The character must have a motivation driving his, or her, decisions.
The structure of this story is usually the same across most films in terms of its components. Because of the above explanation of characters making choices as part of the story, an event must happen which puts the characters in a position where they must make choices. This means that, eventually, the problem with which the characters are in conflict will be resolved. This is the basis of a "three-act structure" - a plot which "consists of an undisturbed stage, the disturbance, the struggle, and the elimination of the disturbance" (Bordwell 1985: 157) which you will find in most stories of any kind. As David Bordwell points out, Hollywood owes this form of story to "specific historical forms" such as plays and 19th-century short stories (1985: 157). This factor as part of the evolution of the classical Hollywood narrative can be seen in a pre-classical Hollywood film such as Broken Blossoms (1919, US, D.W. Griffith), which has intertitles that read like a novel.
Referring back to Gaines' definition, the reference to "ingenious aesthetic economies" (1992: 1) may be techniques with which the narrative is presented to the viewer through a "filmic language" - the shot, the scene, the sequence, and so on. The scene represents a period where one decision will be made by a character, but "...one line of action must be left suspended, in order to motivate the shifts to the next scene." (Bordwell 1985: 158). This, says David Bordwell, is the linearity of classical narrative construction (1985: 158).
The classical Hollywood narrative aims to leave viewers with a complete experience, having a strong degree of closure - "leaving few loose ends unresolved, these films seek to complete their causal chains with a final effect." (Bordwell et al 2001: 77).
The above is an overview of the main characteristics of a classical Hollywood narrative - a linear, causal, three-act storyline, with psychologically defined characters working to resolve a problem in scenes of conflict. As it is an often-used structure, certain ways of interpreting this type of narrative have arisen on the part of both film makers and film scholars, which has meant that it is an often-contested issue in film studies. It is necessary to discuss further components and uses of classical Hollywood narrative in conjectures that have been levelled at such uses.
An example of classical Hollywood narrative being used in an increasingly standard way is in its endings. They can be said to be "purely conventional, formal, and often, like the charade, of an infantile logic." (Tyler 1970: 177). It could be that the action in a classical Hollywood film must be wrapped up at some point - open endings, the most famous example of which is found in The 400 Blows (1959, France, François Truffaut), are non-existent.
What is more, those endings usually involve the uniting of a couple - the main plotline in a classical Hollywood film usually "...involv[es] heterosexual romance (boy / girl, husband / wife)" (Bordwell 1985: 157). David Bordwell notes that, out of a random sample of a hundred Hollywood films, 60% would end with "a display of the united romantic couple... and many more would end happily." (1985: 159). There can be speculation that it is an easy happy ending - a happy ending which re-affirms the institution of marriage, but also a happy correlate with moral values in the Production Code:
No plot theme should definitely
side with evil and against good...
No plot should be so constructed as
to leave the question of right or
wrong in doubt or fogged. (Docherty
1999: 352)
Therefore, a classical Hollywood ending would be inclined to be unambiguous in its moral stance, and would generally favour the good side of an ending.
The notion of the heterosexual romance also relates to criticism of classical form as a whole. Classical Hollywood cinema has often been accused of reflecting a dominant ideology. Laura Mulvey states that the dominance of this film form for such a long time, highlights "...the ways in which its formal preoccupations reflect the psychical obsessions of the society which produced it" (2000: 240). This is part of Mulvey's essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", which examines the female as the subject of the gaze - the male protagonist looking on. Mulvey thinks this stance between male and female was due to the "unchallenged" manipulation of visual pleasure by the "dominant patriarchal order" (2000: 240). Though this is to do more with story content than with narrative form, the theme of the heterosexual romance and the male gaze are closely linked parts of the Hollywood form, of which narrative is a part. Such barriers would come down in due course, but, as Mulvey says, "it can still only exist as a counterpoint." (2000: 240).
As mentioned earlier, because of the presence of a protagonist in a classical Hollywood narrative, the viewpoint of the narrative may be subjective on the part of that protagonist. However, that subjective viewpoint is often not the case, as the story reality in most films is "objective", "against which various degrees of perceptual or mental subjectivity can be measured." (Bordwell et al 2001: 77). It can be said, then, that the only true subjective viewpoint in a classical Hollywood narrative is that of the audience, which also has access to scenes of which the protagonist will not be aware (Bordwell et al 2001: 77).
Because classical Hollywood cinema can exploit a number of different types of narration in its films, another area where classical Hollywood narrative can encounter criticism is realism. Through a combination of verisimilitude, causality, psychological realism, linearity and compositional unity, a "reality" can be created within the film where "fidelity to the nature of the subject itself is more important than the director's attitude towards it." (Cook 1996: 971).
However, in a world that can now be described as a postmodern world, the reality that classical Hollywood narrative creates is under attack from different perceptions of that reality - this leads to the unearthing of a classical Hollywood film as an artificial structure. "The classic realist formula is designed to keep us inattentive to those tensions that will destroy its smooth, polished surface of 'the way things are.'" (Natoli 1997: 33). Yes, the classical Hollywood cinema relies on the audience willing to suspend their disbelief, but it can be said that audiences, after seeing many Hollywood narratives, can begin to identify the structure of those narratives. This has only been remedied in the post-classical era, when films such as Psycho (1960, US, Alfred Hitchcock) have played with narrative structure - and, therefore, audience expectations (for example, in the case of Psycho, by killing the protagonist at the film's half-way point).
It can be said that the classical Hollywood narrative is universal to all Hollywood films in that era. However, by implying that, you could also say that all Hollywood films are the same - the fact that Hollywood had become a series of processes, involving vertical studio set-up, the star system, the contract system, and so on, would seem to bear that out.
However, the theory of the auteur, that became popular around the end of the classical Hollywood era, would have us believe that there are filmmakers that have their own themes and innovations, and can work outside the "norm of simplicity, efficiency and 'invisibility'" (Bordwell 1985: 203) of classical Hollywood. However, classical Hollywood narrative is better to be understood as a structure that filmmakers can use as a starting point - "...not a recipe, but a range of choice, a paradigm." (Bordwell 1985: 204) David Bordwell goes on to say that the choices made by filmmakers in terms of their narrational strategies can be made, which would go against the idea of a universal narrative - "Hitchcock's and [Samuel] Fuller's films, are more self-conscious than, say, those of Hawks and Preminger." (1985: 204)
If the auteur theory is correct, therefore, classical Hollywood narrative is not a system to which Hollywood films rigidly adhere - it may be a product of an evolution in Hollywood films, where innovations have recurred in other films and have become motifs and strategies which have been picked up by other filmmakers: "It is necessary to defend the idea of a pluralism of forms, of styles, against a withered classicism which had never existed in the minds of American filmmakers." (Mardore 1965: 30).
valued for the way it achieves
closure by neatly resolving all of
the enigmas it raises as well as
for the way it creates this perfect
symmetry by means of ingenious
aesthetic economies. (Gaines 1992: 1).
The narrative is identified as one with a clear story that originates from a single character. The protagonist is "the principal causal agent, the target of any narrational restriction, and the chief object of audience identification." (Bordwell 1985: 157). The story is related to the audience via the (usually) subjective viewpoint of the sympathetic protagonist. (However, such a subjective viewpoint will be contested in this essay later.)
However, as David Bordwell points out, the position of a protagonist in a classical Hollywood narrative parallels another part of the Hollywood filmmaking process, as "the star system has as one of its functions the creation of a rough character prototype for each star who is then adjusted to the particular needs of the role." (Bordwell 1985: 157) As an example of this function at work, the American "Everyman" image of James Stewart is evident in films as thematically, and ideologically, apart as It's a Wonderful Life (1947, US, Frank Capra) and Vertigo (1958, US, Alfred Hitchcock). This creation of a "star image" enhances audience identification with the protagonist in terms of providing a shorthand for the character of the protagonist, thereby reducing the time needed for character exposition.
The "story" in a classical Hollywood narrative is a causal one. Taking the idea of the protagonist as a causal agent, the narrative will progress because of the "decisions, choices and traits of character" of the protagonist (Bordwell et al 2001: 76), rather than "deus ex machina"-type events due to natural causes or society as a whole. Due to the result of one decision, the story will progress to another point where another decision will be made, until the problem is ultimately solved. The character must have a motivation driving his, or her, decisions.
The structure of this story is usually the same across most films in terms of its components. Because of the above explanation of characters making choices as part of the story, an event must happen which puts the characters in a position where they must make choices. This means that, eventually, the problem with which the characters are in conflict will be resolved. This is the basis of a "three-act structure" - a plot which "consists of an undisturbed stage, the disturbance, the struggle, and the elimination of the disturbance" (Bordwell 1985: 157) which you will find in most stories of any kind. As David Bordwell points out, Hollywood owes this form of story to "specific historical forms" such as plays and 19th-century short stories (1985: 157). This factor as part of the evolution of the classical Hollywood narrative can be seen in a pre-classical Hollywood film such as Broken Blossoms (1919, US, D.W. Griffith), which has intertitles that read like a novel.
Referring back to Gaines' definition, the reference to "ingenious aesthetic economies" (1992: 1) may be techniques with which the narrative is presented to the viewer through a "filmic language" - the shot, the scene, the sequence, and so on. The scene represents a period where one decision will be made by a character, but "...one line of action must be left suspended, in order to motivate the shifts to the next scene." (Bordwell 1985: 158). This, says David Bordwell, is the linearity of classical narrative construction (1985: 158).
The classical Hollywood narrative aims to leave viewers with a complete experience, having a strong degree of closure - "leaving few loose ends unresolved, these films seek to complete their causal chains with a final effect." (Bordwell et al 2001: 77).
The above is an overview of the main characteristics of a classical Hollywood narrative - a linear, causal, three-act storyline, with psychologically defined characters working to resolve a problem in scenes of conflict. As it is an often-used structure, certain ways of interpreting this type of narrative have arisen on the part of both film makers and film scholars, which has meant that it is an often-contested issue in film studies. It is necessary to discuss further components and uses of classical Hollywood narrative in conjectures that have been levelled at such uses.
An example of classical Hollywood narrative being used in an increasingly standard way is in its endings. They can be said to be "purely conventional, formal, and often, like the charade, of an infantile logic." (Tyler 1970: 177). It could be that the action in a classical Hollywood film must be wrapped up at some point - open endings, the most famous example of which is found in The 400 Blows (1959, France, François Truffaut), are non-existent.
What is more, those endings usually involve the uniting of a couple - the main plotline in a classical Hollywood film usually "...involv[es] heterosexual romance (boy / girl, husband / wife)" (Bordwell 1985: 157). David Bordwell notes that, out of a random sample of a hundred Hollywood films, 60% would end with "a display of the united romantic couple... and many more would end happily." (1985: 159). There can be speculation that it is an easy happy ending - a happy ending which re-affirms the institution of marriage, but also a happy correlate with moral values in the Production Code:
No plot theme should definitely
side with evil and against good...
No plot should be so constructed as
to leave the question of right or
wrong in doubt or fogged. (Docherty
1999: 352)
Therefore, a classical Hollywood ending would be inclined to be unambiguous in its moral stance, and would generally favour the good side of an ending.
The notion of the heterosexual romance also relates to criticism of classical form as a whole. Classical Hollywood cinema has often been accused of reflecting a dominant ideology. Laura Mulvey states that the dominance of this film form for such a long time, highlights "...the ways in which its formal preoccupations reflect the psychical obsessions of the society which produced it" (2000: 240). This is part of Mulvey's essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", which examines the female as the subject of the gaze - the male protagonist looking on. Mulvey thinks this stance between male and female was due to the "unchallenged" manipulation of visual pleasure by the "dominant patriarchal order" (2000: 240). Though this is to do more with story content than with narrative form, the theme of the heterosexual romance and the male gaze are closely linked parts of the Hollywood form, of which narrative is a part. Such barriers would come down in due course, but, as Mulvey says, "it can still only exist as a counterpoint." (2000: 240).
As mentioned earlier, because of the presence of a protagonist in a classical Hollywood narrative, the viewpoint of the narrative may be subjective on the part of that protagonist. However, that subjective viewpoint is often not the case, as the story reality in most films is "objective", "against which various degrees of perceptual or mental subjectivity can be measured." (Bordwell et al 2001: 77). It can be said, then, that the only true subjective viewpoint in a classical Hollywood narrative is that of the audience, which also has access to scenes of which the protagonist will not be aware (Bordwell et al 2001: 77).
Because classical Hollywood cinema can exploit a number of different types of narration in its films, another area where classical Hollywood narrative can encounter criticism is realism. Through a combination of verisimilitude, causality, psychological realism, linearity and compositional unity, a "reality" can be created within the film where "fidelity to the nature of the subject itself is more important than the director's attitude towards it." (Cook 1996: 971).
However, in a world that can now be described as a postmodern world, the reality that classical Hollywood narrative creates is under attack from different perceptions of that reality - this leads to the unearthing of a classical Hollywood film as an artificial structure. "The classic realist formula is designed to keep us inattentive to those tensions that will destroy its smooth, polished surface of 'the way things are.'" (Natoli 1997: 33). Yes, the classical Hollywood cinema relies on the audience willing to suspend their disbelief, but it can be said that audiences, after seeing many Hollywood narratives, can begin to identify the structure of those narratives. This has only been remedied in the post-classical era, when films such as Psycho (1960, US, Alfred Hitchcock) have played with narrative structure - and, therefore, audience expectations (for example, in the case of Psycho, by killing the protagonist at the film's half-way point).
It can be said that the classical Hollywood narrative is universal to all Hollywood films in that era. However, by implying that, you could also say that all Hollywood films are the same - the fact that Hollywood had become a series of processes, involving vertical studio set-up, the star system, the contract system, and so on, would seem to bear that out.
However, the theory of the auteur, that became popular around the end of the classical Hollywood era, would have us believe that there are filmmakers that have their own themes and innovations, and can work outside the "norm of simplicity, efficiency and 'invisibility'" (Bordwell 1985: 203) of classical Hollywood. However, classical Hollywood narrative is better to be understood as a structure that filmmakers can use as a starting point - "...not a recipe, but a range of choice, a paradigm." (Bordwell 1985: 204) David Bordwell goes on to say that the choices made by filmmakers in terms of their narrational strategies can be made, which would go against the idea of a universal narrative - "Hitchcock's and [Samuel] Fuller's films, are more self-conscious than, say, those of Hawks and Preminger." (1985: 204)
If the auteur theory is correct, therefore, classical Hollywood narrative is not a system to which Hollywood films rigidly adhere - it may be a product of an evolution in Hollywood films, where innovations have recurred in other films and have become motifs and strategies which have been picked up by other filmmakers: "It is necessary to defend the idea of a pluralism of forms, of styles, against a withered classicism which had never existed in the minds of American filmmakers." (Mardore 1965: 30).
Classical Hollywood narrative is a structure which has built up over time, itself an evolution from literary narrative form, which attempts to tell a causal storyline using psychologically-defined characters in a realistic setting, using the language of film form (shots, scenes, sequences, as well as cuts, fades, dissolves, and so on) to convey the narrative to the audience. But, as shown here, the classical Hollywood narrative is at odds with theories that say this narrative form has an objective viewpoint, is paternalistic, is setting itself up as a "artificially realist" narrative against what the audience may perceive to be real, and is against the creativity displayed by filmmakers during the classical Hollywood era.
However, all these views have come since the end of that era. While such a narrative structure exists, and is relayed through film criticism and scriptwriting manuals, it is not the only way of telling a story, as the examples of the breaking of classical narrative structure in Psycho, and the open ending of The 400 Blows, has proven. Narrative need not be causal, as shown by "...the chance meetings in Truffaut's films, the political monologues and interviews in Godard's films... the transitional shots in Ozu's work, and so on." (Bordwell et al 2001: 78)
It may be that the classical Hollywood narrative is a paradigm that has, while assimilating motifs of storytelling during the classical Hollywood era, it has now itself become a motif which filmmakers can use in their films. For example, the ending to Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1963, UK, Stanley Kubrick), has an ending which does not suggest that a status quo has been reached, or does it have a "happy" ending - use of an ironic narrative form by contrasting a happy song with pictures of detonating atomic bombs belies the darker ending (the population of the world being wiped out by atomic bombs) that Kubrick wants to convey. A paradigm becomes a tool.
Bibliography
* Bordwell, D. (1985) Narration in the Fiction Film. London: Routledge.
* Bordwell, D. et al (2001) Film Art: An Introduction. 6th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.
* Cook, D.A. (1996) A History of Narrative Film. 3rd. ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
* Docherty, T. (1999) Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality and Insurrection in American Cinema 1930-1934. New York: Columbia University Press.
* Gaines, J.M. (1992) "The Family Melodrama of Classical Narrative Cinema" in Gaines, J.M. (ed.) Classical Hollywood Cinema: The Paradigm Wars. Durham: Duke University Press.
* Mardoe, M. "Vingt ans après" in Cahiers du Cinema no. 30 (November 1965). p.30.
* Mulvey, L. (2000) "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" in Hallows, J. et al (ed.) The Film Studies Reader. London: Arnold.
* Natoli, J. (1997) A Primer to Postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell.
* Parker, T. (1970) The Hollywood Hallucination. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Filmography
* Broken Blossoms (1919) film, dir. D.W. Griffith. United Artists / D.W. Griffith.
* Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1963) film, dir. Stanley Kubrick. Columbia / Stanley Kubrick.
* The 400 Blows (1959) film, dir. François Truffaut. Films du Carrosse / SEDIF.
* It's a Wonderful Life (1947) film, dir. Frank Capra. RKO / Liberty Films.
* Psycho (1960) film, dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Shamley / Alfred Hitchcock.
* Vertigo (1958) film, dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Paramount / Alfred Hitchcock.
