OJ,F q3 AULs

HOLLYWEDD ONEvI
Iilmb4e ci Cdvlode Prodction fo196C
David Bordwell,Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson

THE ,L el^.e

ta
NervYork ColumbiaUniversity Press

Part One The classical Hollywoodstyle, 1917-60

DAYIDBORDWELL
Neither normative criticisms nor mophologica description aonewill eve give us a theory of le. I do not know if such a theory is necessa$ but if we want one we might do wotse than approach atistic solutions in terms of those specifrcaiions which are talen for granted in a given period,and to tist systematicaly, and even, if need be, pedantically, e prioritieB in the 'ecoociliation of conflicting demands.Such a procedure will give us a new espect fo the cassicabut will asoopen our minds to an ppeciation of non-classical solulions represenl,ing enlrely freshdiscoveries.l E.H Gombrich

An excesslvelvoovlous
^r

crnema

We all have a notion of the typic Holl,'lyood lm. The very label carries a Betof expecttions, often apparently obvious, bout cinematic forn and style. We ean delne that ide, test nd ground those expectticns, by using te conceptof group slyle. Histoians routinely speak of goup style in olhr arts: classicism or (he Baroque in music. Ipessionismor Cubismin painting, Symbolism o Imagsm in poetry.r Cinema has its own group styles; German Expressionism, Soviet montage cinema, and the French New Wave afford timehonoed instances-But to suggestthat Holywood cinema constitutes goup style seems moe risky. In other national schoos, a handful of filmmakers worked within shaply contained historical circumstanceslor ony a few yeas- But Hollywood,as an extensive commecia entrprise, ineuded hundreds of fimmakes nd thousands of fims, and it has existedfor ove sx If to definea decades. it is a daunting chalenge GermanExpressionist cinemaor a Neorcalistone, it might seem impossible to circumscibe a distinctiveHollywood'goupstyle.' The historical arguments for the existence of suchstyle ae examinedate in this book,At this point, a prma facie easefor a 'cassicaHo1'lvood upon criticaly exmininga bodyof style'depends films. Suppose that between 1917 and 1960 a style has dorointed distinct nd homogeneous American studio filmmaking - a stye whose pinciplesemain quite constantacossdecdes, genes, studios, and personne. My goal hee is to identify, at several levels of generality, to what extent Hollywood filmmaking dheres to integral and limited stylistic conventions. rive coud st with a desciption of the Hoywoodstyle derived from Holywood'sown that enomors discouse, bodyof statementsand to be found in trade jounals, assumptions

technical manuals, memoirs, and publicity handouts. We woud flnd that the Holywood cinema sees itsef as bound by rules that set stingen limits on individu innovation;that teling a story is the basic formal concem, which makes the fim studio .esembe the monastety's scrptorim, the site of the tanscription nd transmission of countessnaTatives; tat unity is a basic ttibut of frm form; that the Ho]'wood film pupots to be 'ealistic' in both an Aistotelian sense(tuth to the pobable)nd a natuaistic one (truth to histoical fact); that the Hoywood fim stives to conceal its a-tifice through techniquesof continuity and 'invisible' storlteing; that the fim shoud be comprc hensibleand unambiguous; nd that it possesses a fundamental emotiona appeal that tansceDds classand nation.Reitetedtielessly o at east seventy yeas, sch pecepts suggest that Hollywoodpctitionersecognized as themseves ceating distinct appoach to film form and techniquethat we cn justy abel 'cassical.' We ae not usedto cling products of American mass cutue 'classical'in any sense;the word appaetycomes easieto the Fenchspeaker. As early as 1925, a trench reviewer described Chaplin'sPoy Day \1922) as a epesentative of 'ci-qematiccssicism,'anil a year late,Jeii of Chaplin, Lubitsch, and Cai'e --funoir spoke Biw-rias contributorsto 'cassicl cinema'of the future, one 'which ovres nothing to t cks, wherc nothing is eft to chance, where the smalestdetai tkesits plceof impotance in the overal psychoogical It was schemeof the fr1m.'2 probaby Andr Bazin who gave the adjectivethe most curency; by 1939, Bazin deced, Hoywood filmmakng had acquired 'al the p.oper chamcteistics of a cassica art.' It seems to retin the term in Engish,sincethe p nciples which Holywood cimss its own ely on notions

II'IIE CISSICI HOLL\'WOOD STYLB, 191?.60

t i'.

of decoum, proportion, fomal harmony, tespect fo tladition, mimesis, sef-effacing catsmanship, and cool contro of the perceivels esponse - canons which citics in any medium usually cal'cassical.' To stess this collective nd conseving aspect of Holl)'wood filmmaking also aods a useful counteweight to the itdividualist emphases of auteu citicism. Bazin citicized his potgs at Cahcrs du cinmo by reminding them that the Americn cinema corld not be educed to an assemblyof variegated creators, each arrned with a Persona vision:4 What makes Holl]'wood so much bette an anyting else in the world is not only the quaity of ceain directors, but also the vitality and,in a cetain sense, the excellence of hadition. . . . The Americn cinem is a cssicalart, but r'hynot then admire in it wat is most admiable, i.e., not only the Lent of thisor that filmmakr, but the genius ofe system. the nchness of itseve-gorous tadition, and its fetility when it comesinto aontact with new elements.

erves wll because it swiftly conveys distinct aesthetia qualities (eegance,unity, ule-govemed craJtsmanship) and historica functions (Holly, wood'smle as the wod's mainstream frlm stye). Before there ae auteurs, therc are conshints; before there ae deviatons, there ae norms. Norms, paradigms, and standards In the final analysis,we oved the Amecan cinema becuse the films al resembledeach other. Franois Tr-uffaut7

The first, and crucia, step is to assume that classical frmmaking constitutes an aesthetic system that can chacterize salient featues of the indidral work. The system cannot determine every minute detail of the work, but it isoltes peferred pactices and sets imits upon invention. The problem is, in other wods, that of defining what Jan Mukaiovskj has cated aesthetic norrrs. Wen we thinh of a nom, especially in a ega sense, we tend to think of a codifiedand inflexible Bazin's pont stck the Cdiers wites nost rule. Vvhile Mukaiovskj recognizedthat the forcefully only alter his death, partly becausethe aesthetic nors of a period are often elt by aists decline of the studio system faced them with s constrints upon their freedom, he stressedthe mediocre vorks by such veneated filmmakes as noms' compaative Bexibility. He agued that the Mann, Ray, and Cuko. 'We said,' emked esthetic norm is chacterized by its non, Ttuffaut bitterly, 'lhat rhe Amprican cinema pactical naturc; the only goal of the aesthetic pleasesus, and its filmmakes ae slaves; what if norm is to permit at works to come into they were freed? And from the moment that they existence. This has important consequences; wee feed, they made shitty 6ms. Piee Kast disobeying the aesthetc nom is not necessaiy agreed:'Better a goocnmatle salare than a negtive act (may, indeed,be qute poductive); bad cinmad'auteur.'6 lt s lhe cinma de salnrie, and aesthetic norns can change rapidy nd at least in its enduring aspects,that rcpresents cosideaby. Mukaiovski goes on to inventory Hollywood's classicism. several diffetent kinds of norms, al of which Al of which is not to sy that Hol1,wood's tetMrinewithin the art work. There ae xorrns classicismdoes not have dispaate,even 'non- deriving fiom he materials ol the t wok. classical'soucesCertainy the Hoywoodstye Poety, fo instance, takes anguage as its seeks eflects that owe a good dea to, say, materia, but languagedoesnot comeraw to the romantic music or nineteenth-centuy meo- task; it irings alongsnoms of everydayusage. drama. Nor do Hollr.wood'sown assumptions Secondly, thee ae technial norms, basic ffaft exhaustively account for its pactice; the pactices such as metdca schemesand gene institutioD'sdiscourseshoudnot set our agenda mnventions. Thirdly.lhereare prorliral.or .ociofor anaysis. The point is simply that Holywood politica norms; e.g.,a characte'sethical vaues films constitute a faily coherent aesthetic repesentedin the work. linaly, Mukaiovskj tadition which sustains individua ceation.Fo speaks of oesreric noms as such,which seemto the purposes of this book, the abe tlassicism, be the basicprincpes ofatistic const.uction that

I EXCESfI!'DLY OBYIOUS CINEM

form the work. These woud include concepts of uity, deconrm,novelty, ad the like.3 Mukaiovskj's work helps us move to/ard defining the Hollywood cinema as an aesthetic system. Plainy, the Holll.wood stye has frDctioned historically as a set of norms. It might seem ash to claim that Holywood'snor'rnshave not dasticaly changedsince around 1920, but Mukaiovsk points out that periodsof,cassicism' tend towd harmony and stability. Moreover, the idea of mutiple norms impinging upon the same work helps us see that i is nikely that any Hollywood film wil perfectly embody all norms: 'Tle inte:reations among al these norms, which function as instrments for artistic devrees,are too complex, too differcntiated, and too unstabe for the positive value of the work to be abe to ppea s virtuay identical with the pefect fufillment of a noms obtainingwithin it.,e No Hollywood frm is the classical system; each is n 'unstableequiib um' of classica norms. Mukaovski's work also enablesus to anticipate the paicula noms which we wi encounte. Evidently, classica cinema draws upon pacticl o ethco-socio-political norms; I shal mention these only when the particular ways of appmpiating such norms e charcteristic of the classical stye. For example, heterosexual romnce is one vaue in Amerrcan society, but that vaue takes on an aesthetic function in the classica cinema {as, sy, the t]?ica motivation for the principa ine ofaction). Mterial norms are also presentin l,he cem; when we speak of the 'theatrical' spaeeof early films or of the Renaissnceepesentaton of the body as important for classica cinema, we ae assuming that cinema has absorbed certain mterial noms from other media. Simiary, I will spend considerbletine examining the technica normsofclassicafilmmaking,sinceto lage extent these pervasive and percistent conventions of form, technique, and gene constitute the Hoywood tradition. But in order to uderstand the underlying ogic of the classica mode,we must asostudy how that modedepoys fundamental aesthetic nors. How, specifrcally, doesHolywood use such principlesas unity and aestheticfunction?As all these points indicate, the chiefvirtue ofMukaiovsk's work is to enable us to think of a groupm style not as a monolith but a compex syslem of .pe.ific forcesIn

dynamicinteaction. My emphasis on norms should not be takeo to impy an iron-clad technical formula imtrrosed upon fllmmakes. Any gmup style offe$ a ronge of altematives. Classic fllmmaking is ot, strictly speaking, formuaic; there is always another way to do something. You can ight a scenehigh- o low-key, you can pan o tack, you cn cut apidly or seldom. A gop style thus establishes wht semioogistscal a paradigm, a se of elemets which can, ccoding to rules, substitut for one another. Thinking of the cassical style as a paadigm heps us retarn a senseof the choicesopento filmmakers thio the tadition.At the sametiDe. the slyle emains a unifred system because the paadigm offers bounded alernaliyes, If you ae a classical frmmaker, you cannot light a scenein sucha way as to obscure the locae entirely (cf. Godardin le go soooir);you cannotpan or tck without some na'rative or geneic motivtion; you cnnot make every sho[ one scond long cf. avant-garde woks).Both the atemativesand the limitations of the style remain elear if we think of the paradigm as creatig funl:tonal equiva,l.ent6. a cut-in may replacea tck-in, or colormay epace ighting as a way to demrcae volumes, because eachdevce fufllls the samerole. Basic principles govennot ony the eements in the pradigmbut also the ways in 'hich the elements may function. Our account of this paradigm mus! also ecogize how redundant it is. Not ony are individual devces equivaent, but they often appear togethe. For instance, there are several cuesor a flashbackin a classica Holllwood fllm: pensive character attitude, close-up of face, sow dssolve,voice-overnrration, sonic flashback,, music.In any given case, severaof thesewil be used togethe. In another mode of film pactice, such as that of the Eumpean'at cinema'of the 1960s, the same geneal paradigm governsa movement into flashback, but the conventiona cuesare not so edundant(e.g.,pensiveclose-up but with no music or dissolve)- The classical paradign, thus ofen ets the filmmaker choose how to be redundant,but seldomhow redundant to be. One more conception of Holywoodcinemaas a unifredsystempaysa pat in undestanding the clssicastye. This book wi aso eler to a

TIIO CTSSICALHOLLYOOD STYLE,IS1?,O

'standardized'fim stye. In genea, this suggests only adheence to norns. But the term aso irnplies that Holl].wood cinema has been made sringently uniform by iis dependenceupon a specific economic mode of film pmduction and consumption. Caing the Hollywood style 'standardized' oen implies that noms hve becomerecipes,routiney repeating a stereotyped poduct. Yet the avant-grde has o monopoly on quality, and violating a norm is not the ony way to achieve aesthetic value. I assmethat in any art, even those operating within a masspoduction system,te wok cn achievevaue by modifying or skillfully obeying the prernises of a dominant style.

Levels of generality If the classicastye is a set of norms, we need a way to distinguish greater and lesser degrees of abstraction in that set. A match-on-ctioncut is a classic convention; so is the pinciple of spatil cortinuity. But the fist convention is a particular appicationof the secondBroadly speaking,we can analyze the cassical Holywood sf,ye at three eves. 1 Devices. Many isolatedtechnicalelementsae charcteristicof cassicalHolywood crnema: thee-pointlighting, continuity editing,'movie music,'centered framings, dissolves, etc. Such devices are often what we think of as the style'itsei Yet we carnot 'Holyrvood stopwith simply inventoryingthesedevices. 2 Systems. As membesof a padigm,technica devices achieve significance only when we undestand thei functions.A dissolve between scenes cn conveythe passage of time; but so cn a cut. To say that the cassical Hollywood stye ceasedto exist when irost scenes were linked by cutsis to presume that a style is only the sum of its devices. A style consists not ony of recuent eementsbut of set of functions and reations deflned fo them. Thesefunctions and elationsare estblished by a system.Fo exampe,one cinemtic system invoves the constuctionof represented space.In classical filmmaking, ighting, sound, image composition, and editing all take as one task the ,

ticuation of space accoding to specifrc principes. It is this systematic quaity that mkes it possible fo one aleviceto do duty for anothe, o to epea information conveyedby anothe. Thus employing a cut to link scenes confoms to one function defined by classical premises; within this paradigm, there must be somecue for a time lapse between scenes,and a cut may do duty fo a dissolve (or a swish-pan, or a shot of a clock's moving haods). The systematic quality of fllm style also sets limits upon the paadigm; in repesenting space,for instance, ambiguous camera positions and discontinuous cutting ae unlikely to occur becausethey violate cetain pincipes of the system. In this book, we shall assume that any fictional narrative frm possesses thee systems: A system of native logic, which depends upon story events and cusal relations and parallelismsamongthem; A systemof cinematictime; aod A systemof cinematicspace. A given dece may work within any or all of these systems, depending on the functions that the systemassignsto the dece.lo 3 Reations of systems. If systems are reations arong elements, the tota style can be defined as the elation of those systems to each other. Narrative logic, tie, and 6paceinteact with one anothe. Doesone of them subodinatethe othes? Do a thee opeate independently? Hop arc the principes of one justifred or chlenged by another?In the Hollywoodstyle, the systemsdo not play equa oes: space and time e almost invariably made vehiclesfor narrative causality. Moreover, specific principles govem that prccess. At this teve, even iegda ties in the various systems can be seen as purposeful.For instance, if we do find a passage of discontinuous cuting, we can ask whether it is still serving a narrative ftrnction (e.g., to convey a sudden, shocking event). In such a case, the relatioll aurorg systemswoud emain consistent ven if the ndividual deviceor systemvaied fom nomal usage. We can, then, chaacteize the classica Holywoodstyle by its styistic eements,by its styistic systems, and, most abstactly, by the

N EXCESSWf,LY OB\'IOUS CINEMA

eations it sets up anong those systems. No single evel of descriptionwil wok. lt is too narow to defie classicl norms by deces, and it is unwarantably broad to define them solely by eations among systems. (The domination of namativelogic over cinemaljcrime and spcei. conmonto many styles.) Hencethe importance of the second level, the stylistic systems. The categoriesof causaity, time, and spceenable us both to pace individua deviceswithin functionl contexts and to see the classical stye as a dynamicinterplay of severalprinciples.Finay, no categorical explanaion of one eve1cn wholly swallow up another. The systematic principle of depicting spceunambiguousy does rot logically entail the use of three-point ighting. Those specific devices are the products of diverse histoicl processes;oer eements might do as wel. The specificity of the classical style depends upon all three leves of generaityMy ccount hee will constuct the cassical stylistic paradigm across several decades, emphasizing the continuity at the second and third levels. But by stressing continuity of function I do not impy that the sysr,ems paadigmatic range did not change somewhat. For example,befoe the mid-1920s, the use of high and low anges ws severelycodified:for ongshots (especiayof andscapes), for opticl pointof-vierp, or for shot/reverse-shotpattems when one person is higher than other. (In shov everse-shot editing, an imageof one eementin the scene, typiclly a persontaking, is folowed by a shot of another elementwhich is spatialy opposite the frst, typicaly, a person listening. Chapte 5 funishes a more systematicexpanation. Seethe exampes in figs 16-65and 16.66in Chapter 16.) A medium,shotof an object o a human figure would seldom be framed from a sharp high- or ow-ange. Yet in the lt 1920s, Holywood'sspatil paadigm widened a bit, pobaby as a resut ol the inlluence of cetain German fims, Examples can be foul in Bulliog Drummond(1929)nd *The Show(192?),which amaticlly use high and low anges(seefigs 1.1 and 1.2).With the comingosound,an occasiona odd angle coud compenste fo what ras felt to be an excessivey 'theatcal' scene(seefrg 1.3). Throughout the 1930sand 1940s,steep anges tookthei paces common functionalequivaents lor noma famings in many situations. Acoss

history, the paadigm develops chiefly through changes in the fist level of anaysis - that of deces. This process wil be examined in detail in Parts Three, Four, and Six. Viewers, sehemata, and mental 6ets Consideringthe clssicalcinema as a systemof norms opeating at different evels of generality can seemto ceate a eified object, a colossalbock of attributes tat sys little about how lm viewes see films. the language of objectivism is had to avoid, especialy when we apply spati metphors like 'levels.' How, then, e we to chacterizethe viewe's work, o what E.H. Gombrich calls 'the beholder's share,? An inticate and comprehensivetheoy of frlm viev/ng has yet to be constucted,and it is not within the scopeof this book to do it. Yet if we want to considerhow the Hollywood frlrn solicits a specifc way of being understood,we need to ecoglize at east how passive an 'ilrsionist' thmry makes the spetato. Iusionist theorists usualy insist thaonly avant-gardetexts make the viewer perfom an 'active' reading,or force the viewer to /ork to produce meaning.rr The Hoywoodspctato, it is claimed,is itrre more than a receptacle; few skils of attention,memory, discrimination,inferencedrawing, or hlTothesststing are equired. Now this is cleary too simple.Classical filrns call foh activitieson the pat of the spectator. These ctivities may be highy standardized and compaativeyeasy to lean, but we cannotassume that they ae simpe. Consider, as one probem, the Epeetatoras peceiver- Isionist theory emphasizesthe deceptive quality of projected movemento of shot space:the spectatoris duped into taking image for rcity. As No Burch pts it,'spectators experence the degeticword as envonment.'r2 But recent explorationsin estheic peception and cognition have shown that'ilusion' is not simply a matter of fooingthe eye.The specraror particpates $eating the ilusion- R.L. Gegory, for instanee,speaks of percepton as inferentiI, which makes'illusion dependent upon eos of inference: either biologica'mechanism' errors (e.g.,the pi phenomenon as creatingthe illusion of movement)o cogitive 'strategy' eom (e.g., assuming that the whole is consistent wth

THE CLSSICAL HOLLYWOODSA.8, 19r?,60

displayed parts)- Gombrich has lso shown that visual illusion denands tat the specramr popose, test, and discard perceptual hypoflreses based on expectation a-.rd pmbability.l3 Fo illusion to work, the spectato must meet the at wok at least half way. If pereeptual illusion reqes somespectatoil rtivity. even more is requiredfor rht iragina" tive involvement solicited by narative. No story tells al. Meir Sternbeg characterizesfolowing a tale as 'gap-filling,' and just as we project motion on to a succession of frames, so we fom hypolheses, make inferences, erecl expecttions. and drw conclusions aboutthe film s charactrs and actions.ra Again, the spectator must coopeatein fulfiling the film,s form. It is clear that the potocols which control this activity drive fom the system of norms operating in the classicalstyle. For example, insistenceupon the primacy of narrative causaity is a gener feture of rhe clssical systm; the viewer translates this norm into a tcit stategy for spotting the work's unifying features, distinguish, ing significant information from ,noise,' sorting the fim's stimui into the most comprehensive patten. Gombich desc bes this process in terms of 'schemata' and 'menta sets., Schemata are taditional formal patterns for rendeing subject matter. Gombdch points out tht the artist cannot simply copy eality; the artist ean ony ender the model in terms of one schema or anothe.Thus even new shapes ,il be assimited to categoies which the aist has lenedto handle. As Gombrich puts it, ,making precedes matching' the ceation of a schema precedes copying the rnodel.l5 After the making, the schema can be modifiedin echparticuar caseby he rlists purpose usually, the sorl of informaon thc adisl wantsto conveyr. So [ar. much ot thls rs conBnrent with Marovskj." argument: we might think ofthe atist,sschemata as Lechnical norrns and Lhe aist s purpuseas InvolviDg specific esthetjc norms.But Combrich goes on to show that the schemata and the pu'ose fnction for the viewer as \/el. The atist's taining is paaleledby the spectat,s pno experience of the visua world and, especialy, of othe at works. The panter's traditional schemataconstitutethe basis of the viewe'sexpectations or mentnlset:'A style,like a

cutue o climate of opinion, sets up a horizon of expecrtron, a mental set. which regislers devrafions and modificationsth exaggeated sensitity.'6 Fo Gombich, this mental set is defined in terms ofprobbilities: certain schemat ae more ikey to fit the data than oters. By pairing conceptsike schemata ancl menta st, we cn spell out the ways in which the classical film solicits{,hespertator.For instance, one,we'known schema of Hollywood film editing rs t he shourevese-shot pattem. The filmmaker . has ltus Feadyohand for represcnlingny two ngures, groups, or objects within the same Dlace. This s(hema can be fitted to many situaiions, whateve the diffcrencesof 6g!re placemnt, cameraheight, Iighting,or focus;whetherthe image is in widesceenratio or not; whethe the igues ae fcing one anothe or not; etc. Because of the traditionbehind the schema, the viewerin um expects to see the shovrevese_shotfieure. especiay if the rst shot of the combintion appears. If the next shot does not obey the schema.the spectlorthen applie" anoer, less probable. schem to Lhesecond shot.The soe('ralor of the classical film thus riffles rhroueh the l[ematives normalized by the stye, fom;osr to leasl, likely. Through schemata, ih" .ry,". norrn, nol ony impose their logicuponthe material bur also elcll,pariculr activitiesfrom the viewer. The result is that in describing the cassica sysfemwc re describing a ser of opeat_ions at tne vewe is expected to perform. To stress the tasks whi;h the fllm alloLsto ihe spectator aows1sto bandoncertainilusionsof ou own. We no onge need subscribe to coDv_ thoies ofcinma, whereby a cel{ain stylesimpil epllcatslhe real world or normal cts of perception; schemata, ted to historicalydefined purposes. always intervene ro gride us in gsping lhe film. Nor npcd wc imasinp a Svngli cinpmholdrngits audience in rhrall. The classica schematahave created a menta set that stil must be activatedby nd testedagainst any grven fim_ Of course, the cassicastye dfines cenain specttorial activiupsas salient. and the hjstoncal dominanc of lhl stylehas so accustomed us to those ctivities that audiences may find other schematamore burdensome. yet this dynamicconcept ofthe viewer'srole aowsus to explain the very pocessesthat seem so excessively obvious;as we shall see. even the

N EXCESSI\,'ELYOBVIOUSCINEM

spectaior's rapt absoption esults . from a hlaothesis-checking that requires the viewe to meet the film halfway. We can also envrsron altemative viewing praeiices,other activities that the spectato might b asked to perfom. The chapts that follow, then, suggest at seveal points how the norEs of the classical Hollywood stye encourage specic actities on the pa of the spectator.

Style in history Ifyou re not working for Brezhnev Sl.udioMosfilm, you are working fo Nixon-Paramornt. . . . Yo foget that this smemaster has been ordering the same film for frtftyyears. Wnd from the East To constuct the clssical Holllwood style as a coherent system, we also need to account fo the stye's histoica dimension.In one sense,this entie book tries to do that, by examining the Hoy'woodmode of production, the consolidaton of the stye in a specific peiod, and the chnges that the style undegos in subsequentyeas. At this point, I must indicate tht my oveall descrption of the cassical stye appliesto a set of films acrossan extensive period.What historical assumptions underlie such a broadly based analysis? The three eves of genemity indicate someof those assumptions.My enterpise assumesa historical continuity at the two most abstract levels of stye (systems and relations among systems); it assrmes,that the most distinct changestake place at the leve of stylistic devices. For exampe, though its history Holywood ciema seeks to epesent events in a tempoay continuous fashion; moeover, narrative logic has generaly woked to motivate this tempoa continuity. What chngesthough histoy are the various devices for representing tempoal continuity such as inter-titles, cuts, iises, dissolves, whip-pans, and wipes. By stssing the enduring principles of the cassica stye,we osesomespecific detail, In this part, I shall not rcconstuctthe choices avaiabe to fimmakers at any given moment. If I say that a scene cn begin by daring back from a signiicantfigure o object,that suggests tht n

iis, a cut, and a carnera movement are all paradigmatic alternatiYes- But in 191?, the most probable choice would have beenthe iris;.in 1925, te cut; in 1935, the cmra moveme1t. In discussingthe genera principles of cassical style, I sha often pmject the historically varible deces on to the same pane to show their functiona equjvlenr.e. Thjs bjrd s-eye vier.l enables us to map ihe basic and persistent features of the stye in histoy. The moe mtnut history of the devices themselvesforms the bulk of Pats Thee, Four, and Six. Historical analysis demands a concept of peodization. Since we are concemedhee with a stylistic history, we cannot presupposethat the periods used o wite political or socia histo-y will demacatethe history ol n t. That is, thee is no immediate compulsion to deflne a 'cinema of the 1930s'as dasticay different from that of,the 1940s,' or to distinguish pre-Word War II Holywood style from postwar Hollywood stye. What, then, wil eonstitute our gounds for periodization? Noms, yes; but aso the film indstry, the most proximate nd petinent insttution fo creting, egulting, and maintaining those norrns. This is not to say that film style and mode of production mach acoss decades in pefect s]'nchroniztion. Pats TVo and Five wil povide a peiodization for the Hollywoodmodeofproduction that whie congruentin some espects,cannot be simpy su!imposed upon stylistic history. Nevertheless, we have chosent fame ou study within the years 191760. The earier date is easie to justify. Styistically, fom 1917 on, the classicalrnodelbecame dominant,in the sense that mostAmericnfiction filns since that moment empoyedlundamently simia narutive, tempo,and spatil systems. At the sametime, the studio modeof production had become organized: detaieddivisionof abor, the continuity scipt, and a hieachica mnageil system became the pincipal filmmakng procedures. Parts Trvo and Thee detai how style and industy cmeto beso cosely synchmnized by 1917.But why halt an analysisof the cassica Holj'woodcinernain 1960? The date triggers suspicion. Styisticlly,thee no questionthat 'classical' lmsare stil being made, s Pat Sevenwill show.Variants of the Hollywoodmodeof prodetioncontinueas well.

10

THE CLASS1CLHOLLYWOODSTI.LE, 1917-60

tre ordinary work is gantd considerable importance, Aademicism,mainsteam,,{ork_s, the canon, trdition - the history of music, painting, and literature could not do without such cooceptions.I believe,' remarks RonranJa<obson, 'that a very important thing in anayzing trends in the cinema or the stucture of a film, is the necessity of considering the base, the bachground, of the spectato's habits. What lms is the spectator used to seeinE? To what forms is he accustomed?'r8 My analysis of e noms of the classical style tus gives prieged place not to the aberrant film that breaks o tests the ules but to the quietly conformist film that tries simpy to folow tem. Between 1915 and 1960, at least frfteen thousand leate films were producedin merica. It is impossibleto analyze such a copus. To constuct a model of the ordinary fim, we have selected in an unbiased fashion, 100 films om ths period. (Appendix explains the sampling pocedues and lists the films.) We studied each lm on a hoizontal viewing machine, ecodidg stylistic details of each shot and sumnarizing the film's action scene by scene. 1is body of data constitutes ou unbiased sample (abbeviated UnS), and when we cite such a film, an asteisk signas it. In the stylistic analysis of the cinema, the pactice of unbiasedsamping is lnpecedented, but we beieve it to be a sound way to detemine historical aorms. W1en the sampe tured up what might be regarded as auteu films, we accepted this as inevitable in a random sampe and treatedthesefilms exacty as we did othes. At least four-filhs of the sample, however, constitute a body of fairly obscue podrctions anging across decades, siudios, and genes. Futhemore, we have sought to test the conclusionsbout the UnS films by closely analyzing almost two hunded other Holywood ims of the 1915-60period- We chosemany of these fims for their quaity or historicl influence,bt many were as undistinguishedas The ordinary firrl ou UnS tems.We shal efe to this second set of fims as the Extended Sample(ES).My anaysisof Fim histodans have not generayacknowedged the classicalstyle takes the UoS films as the the place of the typrol work- In most film centra source of evdence and exampes, drawing hislorics, masterworksand innovtions rise upon ES films occasonaly. This meansthat many monumentaly out of a hazy terain whose of the films mentioned wi be unfamiliar to contous emain unknown.In othe arts, howeve, edes,businceI argue fo thei typicaity, the

There are thus compelling reasons to claim that 1960 is a pematue cutoff point. Oo te other hond, some critics may assert that this 'classical' period is far too oony; one can see any period aft 1929 as the breakdown' of the Hollywood cinema (the tensions of the Depession, the anguish ofwr and Cold War, and the competitive chenge of television). The yea 1960was chosen for reasons ofhistory and of convenience.In the fllm industry, it was widely believed tht ai the end of the decade Holllwood had reached the end of its mature existence.?,tis las Ilollyroood, the tite ofa 1960 book by pblicist Beth Day, summarizes many easons fo consideing the year as a tming point. Most production firms had converted their enegies to teevision, the dominant massenterainment form since the mid-1950s;many had reducedtheir holdingsin studio ea estate; stas had becomeftee agents; most poduces had becoareindependent;the B-film was viually dead.tT To Day'saccount we can add other signsof changeBy 1960, cetain technological state of the art had been reached: high-definition coor films, wide fomats, nd high-fidelity magnetic sound had set the standad of quality tht continues today. Moeove, other styes began to challenge the dominance of cassicism. The intemationaa't cinema,speaheaded by Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kosawa, certin Italian directors, and the Fench New Wave, offered a moe influentia and widely dissemnated altenative to Holywoodtha had ever existed before. Not that Hoywood ws signifrcantly shaken(Pat Seventries to show why), but the foceolthe classicl norm wasreduced somewhatDespite these reasons, it remains somewhat abitrary to see 1960 as closing the classicl period. We havechosen it paty because it makes ou reseach somewhatmanageabewhie still conveyingthe powerfu spread of the cassical cinema's authority.

AN EXCESSIWLY OB\,'IOUSCINEMA

11

eader vrill recognize qualities pesent rn many other films. Ir one sense,the concqpt of goup style simply makes manifest what we and Holywood itsetf lready know.' Concepts like noro, paradigm, stylistic altematives, levels of systmic function, periodization, and schemata ae, from tis pespective, simpy tools in making our habitual intuitions expicit. But these conceptsalso enable us'to reveal the pattmed and stable quatity of ou assurnpiions.The conceptscan show that the classica cinema has an underlying logic which is not apparent from our common-sense eflection upon the flms or fom Holywood's own discourse

about them. The theoretic co4ceptsintoduced in this chpter are iodispensible to gasping the classicl style's sytematic quaity. Armed with ttrem, ve can go on to examine how that style charctristically organizes cusality, time, and space.he next five chapters,then, should trigger cgrlaindjd r.ru: the readerwi recognize some familiar filnmaking practics.Bu these chpteF also seek to explain in a systpoaticway how these practices work togethe to ceate a distiocl filrn style which, like Poe,s purloined letter, 'escapes oservation by dint of being qxcessively obvious.'19

Storycausality and motivation

There are several ways of analyzing fictiona narative cinem; the approachtaken here can be broadlycaledformaist.As Chpte 1 poposed, a nanative fim consistso three systems:naatve ogic (defiaition of events, causa eations and parallelisms betweenevents),the representation of time (order, duation, epetition), and the epesentationof space(composition, oientation,etc.). Any given technica pamete (e.g., sound, editing) can function within any or a of these systems. Lighting or camera movemeDts ca emphasizea causalysignifi cantobjectwhile endowing the represented spacewith depth nd volume. Offscrcen soundcan oprteas a nartive cuse, can wok to specify dution, or can define an unseen space. In sho, whie this accounr srresses wha Mukaovsky calls technical norms, the techniquesare not simpy isolatd devicesbut athe functional components in the thee basic tma systems. narative frlm seldomteats its systemsas equals.The RussianFomaist critics suggested that in y text or t.adition, a certin component - tl],e dominnnt - subordinates others. ,The dominnt,' wites Jakobson,'may be defined as the focussing component of a wok of at: it rules, delermines, nd lransforms th remajning components. It is the dominantwhich gurantees the integrity of the stuctue., This integrity deseves to be seen as a dynamic one, with the sbordinatedfactors constanty pulling against the sway of the dominant.In Hollywoodtrnema,a specific sot of na-rativecausaityopeates as the dominant,making emporal and sptial systems vehces for it. Thesesystemsdo not always est quietly unde the sway of narative logic,but in geneal the causal dominant ceates a marked hierarchyof systems in the cassicalfirrr. Anothe distinction cuts acoss these thrce systems. Most film theoristsrecognize a difference
't2

between the naative mateial of a fim (the events o actions, the bsic story) and the manne in which that material is representedin the fllm. The Russian Formaist litary citics distinguished between fabula ('stny') and, syuzhet ('plot'),and thoughout this book,we will use the story/plot distinction in a senseakin to that of the Formaists.2 'Story' wil refer to the events of the narative n the pesumed spatil, tempora, and causal reations. 'Plot' w1l refe to th totality of formal and styistic mateias in the flm. The plot thus includes all the systems of trme, spce, nd causality actualymanifestedin the film; everylhing from a flashback slrucrure and subjective point-of-view to minutiae of lighting, cutting, and camemovement. The plot is, in effect, the fim before us. The stoy is thus ou mental construct, a strctue of infeclces we mal<eon the bsisof seected aspects of the plot. For example, the plot might presen certain events out oI chrcnoogica orde; to understand the flm, we must be able to reconstructthat chronoogica, o stoy, order. One virtue of this scheme is its acknowedgment of the viewe,s activity; if the vewer knows how a certain hadition of filmmaking habituly prcsents story, the viewe approaches the fim with what Gombrichcasa menta set. n the next chaDter. we shallbeableto specify cenintaskswhichrhe classicafim ssignsto the spcttor.The work at hand is to bing to ight basicprincipesof story causalityin the cssical Hollywood film. Oncewe have done this, wi be in position to understand how the classicastory cretes its particuar unity.

CausesaDd effects This extra is caledan acto.This actoris caled

STORY CUSIITY AND MOAVTION 13

of tesechaactes The adventues a chaacte, ae cseda frIm. Wndfron theEast in a 1920manua 'Plot,' writes Francis Paterson 'is a carefuland logic for aspiringscreen$/ite6, working out of the aws of causeand eflect, The mee sequence of events wil not mke a pot. Emphsismust be laid upon causality and te action ad eaction of the humn wi1.'3Herc in bef is the pemise of Hollywoodstory construction: causality, conseqenc, psychoogica motivtions, ihe drive loward overcomng obstaces and achievinggos,Chacte-centeed - i.e., personal or psychological - causaity is of the classical story. the armatue This sonds so obvious tbat we need to emember tht narrative causlity could be (floods, genetic imperson aswe.Naturalcauses could form te basisfo story ction, inheritance) and in cinemawe mighi think of the work of YasujiroOzu,which installs a :natura'rhythm or cycleo life at the centerof the ction.Causality of could lsobe conceived as socia - causity and group pocsses. Sovietfilms of institutions the 1920sremain the centra modelof cinematic ttempts to eprcsent just sch supmindividual histoiclcausality.O one could conceive of native caubaity as a kind of impersona and chance detminisrn, in which coincidence of persona leavethe individual ttle freedom ction. Th postw Euopenat cinem often elies pon this sot of narative causaity, as D;ory o/d Bazinindicats in elationto Besson's (1950): Contry Priest 'Eventsdo indeedolow older, yet one another cmrding to necessary withir a famwork of accidentalhappenings.'a Hol'wood frlms ol muse include cusesof these impersonal types, but they are amost invariaby subodinated to psychological causality.This is most evident in the cassic llm's use of histoical causality. Piere Sorlin points out that cassicafims truicay present histoical events as uncused;a wa simply breaksout, disxpting charcters' lives very much sa natualdisaslemighL. w}enhisloryjs seen s caused, that cause is traceableto a psychologicallydefinedindividua. ( chiefinstancehere is Thz Br'h of a Nalion [1915], which links fuconstructionabusesto the ambitionsof Austin Stoneman.) Thus the classic film makeshistory

unknowable apat rom ils effctsuponindividual charactes, s an od Russiangrsaysat the end of *Boalaka (1939): 'And to thin that it took the Revoutionto bring us together.' J Impersonacaussy initate o abuptly by atter a line of stoy ciion which then proceeds gloup persona of causes, A stom may maroona charactes, but then psychological causitytakes over. A war may sepaateove, but then they is must eact to tht condilion. Ccincidence and dangeous in this context, especialy Holravood rule-books insist upon confining coincidence to the initi situation. Boy and girl may meetby accident,but they cnnotrely upon chance to keepthei acqua.intnce alive. Theter in the lm a coincidence occus,the wekeit is; and it is very unikey that the story wil be by coincidence. We seehere the influence rcsoved that of te wel-madeplay (e.g., the mischnce tigges the inhigue in Scibe o Sadou)and the appelto Aristotelian notions of pausibility and pobability. Unmotivated coincidences do occasionay cmp up in Hollywood fins. *flre (197) dels with a Courageof Cornmonplace mnerr' strike, and the frm's protagonist, the He minesuperviso, wil not yied to the stikers. got to happen.' The next declarcs: 'Something's (A more day,a rnnecolapses by ntual causes. caiefil scenastwoud have made disgrunted foreman sabotgethe n)ine.) O, iL +Parachute (1933), to havethe Jurnper it is not unmotivated romanticcouplefist meet by accident,bt in the they meet. Most ast scene again by sheerchance. often, though,coincidence is motivated by genre (chance and encounters areconventions of comedy may be meiodrama). And 'coincidental'encounters preparedcausay. In +Porollder (1940),tle cmokedCrsydonmust encountethe govnment agents at a. cafe, so the sipt motivates the eneounteras probabe.His secetary asks why Crydoneatst the cfeso often, and he answeft: 'O fendsof the FBI eat herc.' If the chaacte must act as the pme causal agent,he or she rnust be defined as a bundle of qualties, or haits. Scenpaymnuals demand that a chacter'strats be clearly identiedand consistent th o)e another. Sourcesfor this pradice, of cose, go back very far, but the most pertinnt onesae the modelsfor characterization prcsent in iteratue and theate. From the nineteenth-{enturymeodrama'sstock chacter-

l{

II{E CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD ST"ILE, 19tr60

izations, Holywoodhas borrowedth need for about women and fate to a! adieDceof aalmiring shply deineated ard unambiguous tits.6 women. SoDetimes, as in ilorna Doone (1928\ (Some of melodrama'stjapes, such as certam and +Wuthaing Heights (r9A9), the m bo.os ethnic tnes, the old maid, nd the viinous the novelistic devic of intoducing us Lo Lhe lawyer, get reincamated in the Holywood chrattes in childhood; the lrdy.formed cinema.) From the nove comesrhat lan Watt pnnctpattrits we obsevewill crrv over into the cals a 'formal ealism': chractersare indiv! dul lives- More comnonly, the charact.s particular dualized wil.Jr traits.Lics, or taes.Wh slie trail.s are indicted - by an erpository highlighrs.fo instance. the impoftance of the nue, ty other characles,descriplion _ snd thp unrque poper nme (Micawber, Mol Flandes) htral appeaance ofthe chtacter conms these whichcreates a geal.er singlrlrity of personality lraits as salient. I such ways.the spectaror forms lhan t}le Etereotyped namesof the melodrama clea fisl impressions about the charcl,ers as (Paddy the Irishman, Jonathan the yankee). The homogeneousidentities. popular shofi story acted as malel for The mportance of characte consistency can be nrrowngsuchin.lividulizedcharactiztion to seen-ln.the slr sysLem. which ras a crucil factor fied limits. The nov.l can explore rrranl rn lot,y_wood hlm produclion. Ah,hough in the chaackrlraits and traceex!nsive.hracter unlted 5lts. the etical slar systcrn Bocs change, but the dominntaesthetic of the short Dcfiio-Lhe earty 1800s.it was not unlil the priod story in the y.. . 1900-1920 requied tht 191.2J917 that film companies bgdn consistendy the write cte chraclmwith few traits nd r0 orrlerentrate their products by mansof stars.s then focusthoseupona few key actions. The short Un the q,hole, the str reinforcpdthe i.endenry slory in a sense struck n avpmge belweenrhe towrd strongly profiled and unifred chacterxel characler lnes of rh melodram and the rzlion. Mx Ophuls prarsed Holjywood s abiliry densecomplexity of the reaist novel,nd this to Fve.t.he actor an al redy_ex isting peEonlrty average appeled t the cassical Iolywood lvth-virch to work rn Lhefilni.ro The stai, like cinemduring its formativeyears.(Chpter14 lhe ficl.ronal chrctr. lredy hd a seL ot sllcnt wil tracehow the populrshort storybecnre rils wbich coudbe matched a Lothe dmands ol. modelfor Hollywood dramaturgy.) It ws ous the story. ln describingthe minsof / tycs a possibe for Frank Borzage to cimn 1922tht Mole Wo..B.idp tlg4gt. Hawkssuggred rhat one 'Today in th picturswe have the od meo- scen drd not coalesceunti he discoveredthe dramaticsituations fitted out decently with tue scene's'attitude': .A mn ike Cay Grant woud characterizations.' be mused' - that is, the star,s taits anil the i' The classical film's presentation of character chaacte'straits becmeisomorphic.rt traits ikewise folows conventions estbshed n In his book Sars, Riard Dyer has shown hortr ealier theoretical and itsf forms. Characters the 'roundness' of the novelistic charcie is wi_be typedby occupation (cops ars !11yy, 2gg, lacking in Hollywood flm characferizationnd gender, and ethnic identity. To these J,?es, taces this lack to the need for berfect fi between indiridualizpd r.raits are added. MosL imporranL, stI and roe.2 It is also tire case hat the a .hara(Ler is made a consistpnt bundle of a fen cassicl film both lrades upon lhe pnor con. slienilrails, whichusuallydepend upon the noialionsof the srr and masksthese connola_ charactes nafaLive function. lt is thbusinessof tions, pesenting the sta as characte as f ,fo te film's erTosition to acquaint us with these the first ime-'13For exampe, the star rnay traits and to establish their consistency_ t the portmy chractr who grous into the sta,s beginning of *Soatnga (198't), a rrulous pe$oa. In Meet John Doe (1941) the selfish grandfathertels anothe chaacte (an us) how pitcher John Willoughby becomes the rusrrc hs dar-rghter hasbecome high and mighry srnre ideaist John De because Willoughby was, rn Bhewent l,oEurope. We seeher almostimmedt_ latent form, Gary Cooper to ben with. We ately, and her snootybehavioris consistentwith discove lhe Gary Cooper persona afresh. even his desciption.A the stat ol *Coso0948), whlle knowing (ht it was thee befoe the sLarl. police officers discuss Pepe,s susceptibiity to This is pehaps the most common wy to women; ue nerl scene pepe,singing epresent introducs chracter change n the cssical

STORY CUSLITY ND M(] TVATION 5

m the classicalfrlm poceed, as Bazinput it, .fmm the commonsense supposition tht a necessary nd unambiguous cusal reationship exrsts betrveenfeelings and their outwad manifesta, tions.'5 Hol).woodcineDa einforcesthe individuaury and consistecy of eeh chacter by means o recuent motiG-A charcterwill be taggedwith a detail of speech or behor that defrnes a xuJor trait. For example,the nouueau rirhe IJpshawn acong Hghbrux (1935)is associated vrfth his eraving for tomatojuic and eggs,a sign of his odinry tastes-The 'falen woman'in *Womano/ the Worl. (1925)is definedby her exotic awoo, executedat a ove'seq\esL..ln *Mr. Skeffrngton 1944i.Frnysflightiness iE ronveyed by her habit of mentioninga luncheonergagemBt wth another womanbut then lwaysstding he up. The motif may ssociate tit'rahaacte witl an objct o ocae.The heoineo +Th.e Tger.sCoat (1920) is associated with a paintingthat compares her to a 'tawny tige skin.' In *His Doube Life (1933), Fanell meetsa womanwho talks of her garden whie the soundtmck plays 'Country Gardens'; once he hasmied her;they arc seen sitting in her garden. Consistency of characte is conveyed by repeting the motif thoughthe m. With a minor chaacte,the motif may be a unning ggthat aidseasyidentifiction, as when is merelymotion. Action is usualytheoutward one soder (1949) in *f,e IlostJ JeoJ hs been expession of innerfelings. . , . For instance, cuious about what a Scotsman wears unde his onemightwite:'The whirring blades ofthe klts and at the endpeelsundethe kits to frnd electrc farcased thewndorv curiainsto out. ilutter. The mnsated at the mssivedesk For mjo chmcterc,the motif selvesto mak finished his momentous ette,seaed it, and significan stagesof siory action.In *.4 Losrrady hastned (1934), out to postit.' The whirring fan and the oldermantells Marionthat shemus the fluttering cutain give motion ony - the face ife 'with banners flying,' nd the motif man's writirg theletterandtking it outto dgfineshis pride and sets goafo her. Oncethey postpovides action. e mried,,the phasebecomes a bond beteen It is of action that photopays arewrougnr. them. At the film's close,after having decidecl not to leave him, Marion says:'Nothing io be afraid Palmer's scene provides a precise hnotheical of, no moe ghosts - bannes flying!' A simil alternative to the classicstyle (one tht Ozu useof anotherine, 'I cantake it on the chin,,uns wi actualizein his shoLs of objectsinterruptiDg thfough *S/b, Peopre (1928)tcing the heroine's pssages 'adion r. Holl).wood of character cincm, crer s a movie actess. In aPrnceof Plalers however, emphasizes ction, 'the outwad (1954), Junus Booth drlnkenly orders an expressionof inner feeling,' the litmus test of audiencto wait ten minutes and he,ll give them chrar[er consis(ency. Even a simplephysical 'the damnedestKing Lear you ever saw. The eaction - a gesture, an exprssion, a wideningof name is Booth!' Ater his son Ned becomes ar the eyes - corstucts charcrerpsychology in actor,he calDts an unuly crowdby pmmising,the ccordance with otler infomation- Most actiors damnedesl Richardyou ever saw.The namp is cinema, since it lfrns a bsic consistency of charackrhaitsor 'Guys like you end up in the stockadesooner lter.' singe ine in *Irom Here to Etemtl (1953) shows horv strongy classicl characte tmits are tied to ction.Fatso'sremark olows hs fight with Maggio,andsosumsup Maggio'sact of defianceBut the 'guysike you' assumes Maggio to be a 6xed identity, a prmanent t}?e (the hotheadedbucke of athorit . Moeover, that type is defined not only by traits but by deeds. Maggio will mntinue to act accoding to t]?e. That he does indeed wind up in the stockade does not make Fatso a pophet; his remak simply acknowledges the close caus elation between a characte's traits and ctions; tits ae only atent causes,actior$ the effects of taits. We eason,as screenwiting manualsemind us,from caus to effect and vice,versa; the writer's prccedueo'fo?shadowindis nothing morcthan preparing a causefor an eventua ffect. If charactcrs areto become agents of causty, their traits must be affirmed in speechand physicalbehavior, projections the obsewable of pesonality. \{hie films can ntirey do without peope. cinpmr rerpsupon a drsHoyrvood tinction betwen movenent and action. Movement, writesFreilerick Pamer,r!

16 Tnr CLASjSICAL HoLlyivooD syr.4 1917_60 Boo^thlWhen, t the film.s end. Ned dcides r.o nol. bsolrte, car.ters goals producc causl penormdespjttr his wifes death.he e4lains, fie cruns. Uharactersmay have romplementary or name s Btill Booth!, The tiny word !til, confirms j:fr":", soals. In rslu?epstahes Wintur that the father's defiant attitude prsists in the *"", Jenny comes inlo a bettjng parlor son,and Ned hs not changeda bit. l,_]l: aro arurounces,her goal to buy a race hor6e,,two Once defined as an individua thmugh trits routs seehow ht can serve their own a irns(to hx and motifs, the character assurnesa caLa roe money). ln .rndnaporis bcuse of his or he desires- Holywood :r-l, ""q.^:11k" p"ed] (1939), a racedriver's girtfriend wnts characters. especialy protagonists. arc goal_ o y a omcandfamily;htells hcr - hem desires that she,llgt oriented. The somethiDgnew to Do[n ller he has put his brother throu6l college hts/hrsitualion, or lhe hro seets to estore an uoals becometent eIeds in the cauial oiginal 6tate of affairs. This o\/es6omething s.ries: to sh"apeour expcttions by narrowing lat nineteenth-century theate, s seen rhe :l:y ln ange ol al{,emahveoutromesof the ction, terdinnd Brunetire,s dictum t]L the renlrar rual(rngpersooalchracle tits and gols lw of the drama is tht of confiict ising the fmm cuses o acionshas led [o a dramatic form obshres to the chacter's desirs That is fily v/hat specricto Holywood The classical fim has al may be called ill, to set up goal, anil to diect restwo ttnesof action, _ eveything both causally hnngihe toward it.tr pliny the sta system smegoupofcharactrs. Amost inviablr,one Isosupportcdthis tendencyby insisting upon 0r these ljnes of aclion invov.s heterosexuat strongly chaacterized protgoni. Te goat . is. of course, nor starttns onenLedhero, ncmated in DouglasFairbanks, :iT:",:".':1" Thrs. hundred y, ,1" one. fitmsin the UDS, Mry Piford, and-William S. Harl, wasqurckly l" nrnetyLive involvedomnce in at east onc lin(' )dentrlied s a distingxihing trait of thc o. aclron, while ighty-fivp mad at the A^mflcan cinema.In 1924,a Cermar critic wore pnnclpal-line of actron. Scrpenplay mnuals o! the Hot,)"/ood s{rss character as.ihe mnofdeeds. love as. th lhem with geareb[ humh appal rn rhe trsl ct his go is ser; in the lst act he Lnaracle ails arc ofLpnassigned long gnder eaches it. Everlthing that iniervenes between rnes,.$ving male and femalp chara"r rhose t'o acrs.is tst of stengii..r? Through qurrrlos ll:sc deemed 'appropnate.to thpir roles in l!y years,lh caim genery held eood.ln romance.To win the love of a man or wornan t.h" Kid t1929t, rho h"m resrves rn Dc.omes : ,.tt4.i.:hqin thp tsoal of many rhrctcsin ctassrcl nrs,fn rdhood ip to Alsk, makp a fotunp, ms. In thrs emphasis .Lo unon htrosxul lovc, and combck to mary his sweeri. Un ol r0rrywood conrinuFs .Sh! irdrLions stemming from the policemn in Thp Ocropar t93?/ !ows: rr chrvaln. romace,lhc bourgeois 'wF ro gonna novet,ano cl.h lhal O.topus ndget tha[ fifi_y ane Amercan meodrama. housand dollar rewad. JJe mmlganl We somtimesthink of a play,s scond pm{gonislof in rr.an Rom.,Lcp tin of (g44t has acLronzs n independenl subplor. such oumrng deslr to mnufacturesteel. s comrr a In ,My rovenrr belweefl sprvants. Classical houot?. Holywood Bruner.te {1947). th hero dclares:.All rlnm,ho!!ever, makesth second lin ot a.tin my llle I wantedto be a hrd_boiled detective..The cuslty retated to tle rcmntic .tion. Instead leenagehproineof "Crdger rI959) statsher of aim p11ng many (hamctcrs throughparlleltrnes ot attactng a hndsome boy on the beach. ol It is acr0n, LhpHoll],oodfilm involves fcw eBy to see_ characers in te goal_orienl.ed prol,gonista tn severarntc-nlependent ctions. For xample,in renec on o[ n deologf of American indivi_ "ftl,fros? 1933),the protgoni6t tries to solva oul|sm and enlerprise, bul it is lhe peculiar murder whre wooing one of the accomplrshmento[ the classicl cinema suspects. lo 0melrmes, as in Lhc love_Lringl translat this jdeology into rigomus story, the chaln of sccondtlne ol aclion also involvs romance.More cusend effect commonly, the second line of action Other charctes get defined by gols. involves Melo . nolhr sort o[ctivity _ busine"s, spying, oram'slormuls of hero versus villajn, never spots, too poltrcs.,crrme. sho\dbusiness_ ,ny u.iu,ty. ,n hory fo HollJ.wood, dependsupon ue ciash of sho, which can prode a goal for opposedpuposes. Even when the oppositious l.hchracLer. are Ln Sarologa rl93?,. the protgonisr Duke musl

STORY CAUSLT ND MOTIVTION 1?

n Col fmm her frncHatley and he mst he! her grandfather to obtain a successfu the son racehose. ln *SkarnooBil, Jr. (1928), fls in love with the daughter of the town entepreneuwhile tryng to showhis father tht he can save thei steambotlie. aHgh Tme (1960) pesents a middle-aged businessman setting out to pove that he can gduate from collegeand faling in love in the pmcess: in his vaedictoryspeech, he ooksot at the womanand says:'If thee's an,'thing man can't achieveby himsqlf h shouldn'tlesitateto join with someone else.'he tight binding of the second line of action to the ove interest is one of the most unusu qualities givingthe film a of the classica cinema, viety of actions nd a senseof compehenstve socia 'elism' that earie drarna achieved through the use of paralel, Ioosely eted subplots. This specific form of unity is well described by Allan Dwan: 'If I constrrcted a story and I had four chaactersin it, I'd put them down asdotsandif they didn't hook up intotriangles, if any of lhemwereeft dangling out therewithut a signiicantreationship [o any of the rest, I knew had to discrd them bcause they're a distraction.'r3 Psychologica causality, presented through definedcharacters cting to achieve announced gols,givesthe cassica frlm its characteistic progression. The tllvo lines of action advances chinso causeand elct.The hadition of the play, as reformuatedat the end of the wel-made nineteenth centry, survives in Hollywood scenarists'acdmic insistenceuponfomulas fo Exposition, Conflict, Compicaion, Crisis, and Denouement'fhe moe pedantic rulebookscite Ibsen, William Archer, Brander Matthews, rd Gustav Feytag. The more homely adce is to crcate poblemsthat the chaactesmust sove, showtlem trying to solvethem, and end with a defrnite resolution. The conventions of the wellmadeplay - stmngopening exposition, baftlesof wits, thrusts and counter-tusts, exteme everssof founes, and rapid denoemeDt - a rcappear in Hol)'wooddramaturgy, Jdal ae defined in elation to causeand effect.The fim progsses ike a staircse: 'Each sceneshoud make a definitimprcssion,accomplish oe thing, nd advance the narrative a step Deare the climax.'rs Actiontrig8es recl.ion: each slep has an effect which in turn becomes a new cause.2o+

Chpter6 1 showhow the construction of each scene dvancs each ine of action,but for row a singefilm wi stand as an instaDc o the overall dlmmica of causeand effect. aTheBla.h Hand (1949) beginsin New York Little Itly in 1900.The Maamrde a lae'yer, and his youngsonGio vo\,vs to 6nd the mudees. This becomes the oveching goal of the frlm. years Eight late, Gio retums from Italy and begirsto investigate.He goesto the hotel whee his father was kiled and is told that h can find the night clerk with the help of the banker Serpi. When Gio visits Seryi's bank, he meetsIsablla, and in a prolonged scene sevea goals get articulated: Gio decaestht he rvnts to be a lawye, she suggestsfoming a Citizen's League to fight the Black Hand, and a romantic attachment is defined between the coupe. Gio continuesto investigate the nght cle, but he findsthat the Mafia hve kiled him. The romance is here a $bsidiy ine of action; the two principa linesare Giosdrivefor revngc causa and the civic im of driving out the Ma6a. Bth lines are advanced when Gio and Isbelaform a Citizen'sl,agre.As Gio putE l 'If I havent got any eads, I' makesome.' This itiative spks an immediate eaction:the Maa captureand beat Cio, nd the Leagedissoves. The next Ma6aoutrage, the bombing plunges ofa shop, Gio nto an aince with the policeman BoeiThey bring the bombe to tial and Gio'slegataining tums upvidence that leads to thebomber's teing deported.Sine he is also one of the men who killed Gio'sfthe, Gio is brought stepcloseto his initial goal. The bombels trial causesGio to hit upon a new, legel wy to achievehis goal. He suggests that Borelli go to Ity to check on iegal immigration;, the information rill enablethe city to depo many Mafiosi. In Italy, Boreli finds that the banke Serpi has a eiminl record. ln nothe counterthust, the Mafia kil Boreli but not befoe he mails Gio th ncriminating evidence, Fom now on, carseand effect, action nd reaction, alternate swily- The New York gang kidnapsIsabella's brother Rudy in orde to silenceGio; remvedng Rudy ths becomes a new sho*-ange goa. Gio discoverslvhere Rudy is imprisoned,but he is himself captured-He now ealizs that Serpi arranged the murder of his fathe. Serpi'sgang acquire Borelli's documents,

r8 TIIECLSSICAI, t{ollr'trooD sTyLE, 1917 60 but beforefhey cn dstroythem, Gio mngs to touch off a bomb in thei hideout. In the melee, Gio fights th Seryi and rccoversthe evidence. At the filn1's end, Gio has achieved both his personal goaland the mmmuty'sgoa_ This was accomplished though a seriesof causally inked shot-term goals (aw studies, Citizen,s l,ague, immigration investigation,kidnapping)that grew out of several mutulydependent inesofaction. This process is at work in virtuly every clssic nartive fim. *The BIa Hand.exemplifies how the cassica story constiutes segment of a lrge cause, efect chain. The beginniDg, as ChapterB wil show,intoduces us to an ahedy-mong action which has first cause,a distant but specified (Gio'sTather source. is killed because he wanrs ro divrlge his knowedge of the Mafiato the police.) \{hat ofthe end? Theendingis, mostsimply,the ast effect. It too should bejustifred cusallyOre screenplay manual asks about the charactersi '\&hats their mentalattitudein the beginning of th story? Just what tlaits are responsibefo their stmggle and conflic{?How do thesetraits of chracter^_ d to the soving of the pot pobem?''?| Just as the scene r fre of the well, msd pay shows the hero tiumphiB over obstacles, the classica Hol1wood fim has a ,big scpnp w-herc mattFrs rcsetLId definitely oncc and tor all'zzln tlhe Blaeh Hard,rheromance tinpof actionis hardlyin doubt; the lstmoments simply ceebratethe couple'sunion. The same thing poirrt happens in the asttwo shots of*t Srord,s (1952): (1) The musketeels, having restoed the monchy, shout,'Longive the King!'; (2) Care and D'Artagnan embrace. In other films, suchas Hi Girl Fridalt (1939), the romncelne of ction is unresolveduntil the film's last moments.ln either case, the endingneednot be happy';it need onybe a definitcconclusion to the chainof cuse and eff.ct. Ths movement fuom cause to eect, in the sevice of overchinggos,partly expaiswhy Hollywood so pizescontinuity.Coincidence nd haphazardly linkedevents e believed to aw the film's unity and dsturb the spectator. Tight causaity yields not only consequence bul continuity, making the film progess,smoothl easily, with no js, no waits, no deay6.,23 A gowing bsoptionalso issuesfrom the stedily intensifying charactercausality, s the spectamr recails salientcuses ndanLicipas moreor less lrklyellcts. The ending becomes the cutmina tioDofthe spclal,ojis absorption, as all lhe causa gapsget filed. The fundmenl.l pleniludeand inearjty of Hol],.t,vood narrtjve cuminarern metaphors of Lnitting. linking,and filing. Lewis nernaneloquenUy sums up this esthetic Caemustbe lakenthatevery holejs pluggpd; [naD everyIoose stringis tiedtogeLher;that every.ent rance ndexitis fully motivated. and tnat theyare not mde forsome oboush contivedresoq that everycoinc,idence is sncientlymotivatdto makeit credible;tat thee is no conflictbt\peen what has eoneon bcfore. what is goingoncurren y, anwhar wil happen in [he future; that thereis complete consistency between preseDt dialoguend past action- that no baffiingquestion arks are let ove at the end ofthe pictureto detract fom the audiencet apprecition of it. What woud nrtive cinema without personlized causatiorbe like? We have sorie exmpes (in MiksJancs, Ozu,RobetBesson, Soet frlms of the 1920s), but we can frnd r.rr.ners. Erich Von Stroheirn,s Greed.0924) showsthat Naturaist causal scheme is incompatibe lvith the classical model: the characters cannot achieve theirgoas, and causaity is in the handsof nrue and nol pcople Frum anolhernglF. Brecht s -umnatrons upon Aistotelin damatugy suggestthat causlity coudbe taken out of the powerof the individual chaacter.,The attenrron and interest that the spectator brings to cusality must be diected iowad the law goveming me movements of the msses.,2s It is alsopossible to view Beeht's theoes s leading toward a na$ative ,arhich intemrpts the action to represent arlions lhct mighthave happened, thusrevaling lhe determinismthat underlies psychologically motvatd causalityin the cassical narr,rl,ive.26 Evenwhen personalcausation remainscentral to a film, however. there is still l,hepossibilityof ming it moe ambigxous and less lrnear; charactersmai lack clear<ut traits and definite goals, and the 6lm'seveot.s aybe loosely linkcd or efr open-ended. Chapter 30 will exminehow thesequalities become significantin the Dostwa Dumpen 'art cinema,'

STORY CAUSAUTY AND MMIVTION 19 Motivation Understanding cassical story cusaity takesus towardgrasping howa cassica 6lm unifies itself. Genenly speaking, this unity is a mtter of moriotion..Motivation s the prmess by which rrative justifies its story matei d te pot,s presentationof tht stoy matedal. If the frm depicts a fiashback, thejump backin time canbe attributed to a chacte's memory; the act of rememberjng thusmoivales the flashbck Mo[ivationmy be of severasots.z? One is compositanal: certain eements must bepresentif the story is to pmceed_ A story involng a theft requires a cause for the theft and an object to be stolen. The classicacausI factors we have eviewedconstitte compositionl motivaron. l secondsort of motivation is reolrstic motvation. Many nrative elements aejustifiedon gounds of verisimilitude. In a frlm set in ninetnthCenLuy l.ondon. lhe ss1s,p1ata,costumes, etc. wil typicaly be motivated reaisticaly. Reaistic motivation extendsto what we wil consider pausiblebout the nanadive action:in *e BlcF1ond, Gjo'squestfor rcvenge is presented as'relistc,' given hjs personity and crcumstances. Thirdy, we cn identfy ntertextLat motivation.He.e the stoy (o the pot'srepresentation of it) is jstifredon the gounds of the conventions of certincasses of art works.For example,we c.1en assumethat a Ho1"wood fim wlcndhappilv simpy b.cau"c ir is a Holywood film. The star can aso supply intertextual motivation: if Mrlene Dietrichis in the film, we cn xpcct lhat a sompojnt she will sing a cabet song. The moit common sort of rntertextua motivation is genefic. Spontaneous singing in film musical may have litte compositional o realistc motivation,but it is justifred by the conventions of the genre.23 Thre is, finally, a rat specia 6ot of motivation, arttstt: motuatinn, which I shal discusslater. It shorldbe edent that sevel tlTes of molivrion my coopte to JUst_ify any given item in th nnative. The flashback could be motivted compositionally (gtving us essential stoy iorntion), realisticaly (proceeding llom a chacter's memory), nd intertextually (occuning in a certin kind of frlm, say a 1940s 'woman'smelodrama'). Gio's searchfor reveugels ikewisejustified as compositionlly necessary, psychologicIy plausible, and genericaly conventionl-Multipe motivation is ore of the most charactristic qays that the classica film unifiesitsee TheHol\'woodfilm uses compositonal motivation o secure a bsic coherence. Compositiona motivtion is fumished by all the pinciples o causality I have !rcady mentioned - psychologicq traits, go orienttion, romance, and so on. Realistic motivtion tjTicaly cooperates with the compositionasort. When Fatso alludes to Maggioas 'Guys ike you,' the film appealsto the adience's sense of a cultuallycodilied t}?e. At cerDn moments, eafutic motivatiol carr overridecnslmotivation. In T-Men (!g4g), a Tteasury agent passing counteeit. money ls trapped becuse one conterfeiterrecognizes he bill as the work o a man in jail. This is coincidental, but the film's semidocumenty pmoguemotivatesthis as rcisticr it taly happened' n the casepon which the fim was modeled. More commonly, compositiona motvton outweighs realistic motivation.crard Genett hasexplained that in poetcs th classicl theory of he vrasemblable deperds upon a distinction between things s they are and things as they should idealy be;onythe lttcr are 6t for a isic imittion-2e In Hoywood cnema, verisimiitude trsually supports composition motivation by mkng the chain o causaityseem plausibe_ Reaism, writes onescenarists' manua,,eists in photoplay the merely as an auxiliary to significance - not as an object in itseifl,3o Frances Marion caims that the strongest illsion of eaity comesfrom tight crsamotivation: ,In ode that the motion picture my convey the illusion of rcality that audinces demand,the scenaiowiter stessesmotivation , tat is, he makes cea a chmcte,s eason fo doig whatevehe doesthat is important.rClassiea Hollr'wood narrative thus often usesteaism as an alibi, a supplementaryjustifiction for mateal aledy motivated causaly. When th pnotographer-heroof Feor l{rinlow (1954)is ttackd, he uses fiashbulbs to dazzle the intnrder: the ealistic motivtion (a photographer would 'natualy' think of flshbulbs) einfoces the cusalorre(he mst delay the attcker somehow). Or, as Hitchcock put it 'It's really a matter of

HOLLI'WOODSL1E, 191?-60 20 THE CLSSICAI-

utiling you mateial to the frIest damatic ertent,'32 htertertal, particularly generic, motivaton can also occasionallyrun afou of composition motivation. If Marlene Dietrich is expectedto sing, he song can be moe o less causly motivatd. I Bsby Bekeley's musicals, the story action ginds to hat when lvish genre nusicalnumbertakes over.The meodama logic and relies shameles often fiouts causal (1944),for tn +Mr. Sheffrngton upon coincidence. watcha wa newseel Fanny nd George instnce, ald just happen to see her lost bother in it. juatifreseven a noniegetic commentay, Comedy suchas the drawing of an egg usedto symboize the failed show in Thz Band.WogonO953). Yet obviously such operations do not radically disuify the films, since each genre createsits judgesny givn ovrnrues,and lhe sPectato of its appropriateness to the light in eemeDt genericconventions, On the x'hoe, gene c motvtion coopeates ae with carsal,o compositionI,unity. GeDes in one respectcertain kinds of stoies, endowed th l,heir own particular logi. Lht does nol' ' contest psychologiccasality o goal-orienttion. ('Ihe Westernerseeksevenge,the gangster hero seekspower and success,th chons gir works for the big beak.) Multiple motivtion by generic convention - s causal logcreinforced gain normal operating pocedure. A simpe example from the histoy o Hollywood lighting shows how compicated the interpay of various kinds of otivation cn be. Lighting was of course strongly motivated mmpositionally: saient causal factors - the charactels - had to be clealy visible, whie of a set) had minor elements(e-9.,the ear 'als t be lessprominent. As usua,this compositional were 'realism,' so that i8ht souces needoverode of such oftennot justified reaisticaly. iExamples unealistic lighiing \'ould be the edgelighting of guresor day-for-night shooting.)But aftr the geneiclyas weI. lighting wascoded mid-1920s, Comedywas lit trigh-kd (that is, with a high tio of key pus 6lI ight t fill light alone),whie 1're horror and crime 6lrns wre lit 'low-key.'33 pactrce was consideed tealistic,' latter morc sinceone could justify harsh lowkey lighting as comingfrom visible sourcesin the scene(e.g-,a lamp or candle). By meals of this generie

associationwith 'reaism,' frlmmaers began to apply low-key lighting to other genes-Sik'6 melodraDs of the 1950sare sometimes lit in a sombelow key, ivhie Billy Witde's l,ore in te Afcrnton (1957, elrctedconmentfor using lowkey lighting for a comedy.3a hus the ppealto tealism' changed somegeneic conventios. Specifyjng lhesethee rypeso[ motivation can caify 6ome muky naative issues id the cassica cinema. For exampe, overtly psycho, theapeutic films of the 1940s might seem 'unclassicl' in that they pesent inmnsistent chacte ction. The neuotic and psychotic chaactes of Shadaa of a Doubt (19431,ThE Lodger (1944\, Spe bound (\945), Ttu Locket \1946t, et 1., would-seem evidencefor less line,morecomplex relationbetween mind and behavior than that opeting in earlier cssic films. In his nalysisof'Feudian' fimsol the peiod, the &ench ctic Mac Vernet has shown that such lms none the less espcted classca dramaturgy.3s We can subsumehis explanations to the types of motivation we hve aeady considercd.First, psychonalj'ticexpanations of chaacter behvio were motivated as a new 'ealism,' a scientifrcally justified psychoogy. (That sucha teism' was itsef a vgarization o Freudian concepts does not ffect its sttus s verisimilitude for the period.)Secondly, certain aspects of psychoanalysis fitted generic models. Holywoodfilms stessedthe cathrtic methodof psychoanalyss (not important fo Feud afte 1890) becuse ofits anaogy to conventions olthe mystery film. The doctois qustioning recls police interrogations (the patient as witness o cook who woDt talk). L:ike the detective,the doeto must reveal the secret (the tuma) and extctthe confession. One couldaddto Vemets account that the subjective ponts of view and exFessionisticdistoions in many of thsefilms aso hark back to genecaly codifiedtreatments of madnessin the cinema of the 1920s.Most important, the nrlgarized psychoanalltrcconcepts in the fims o the 1940s respectedthe c.sal unity equied by compositional motivation. In The lnchet, Shudou of a Doubt, Guast n the House (1944\, Speltbound., Citian Kene (1941), and others,te chidhood tauma functionsas the fist cau6e in what Vemet calls 'a inear deteminismof chidhood hi6tory.'36 this is not to say that such. fims do not po6e impoant

CAUSUTY NDMOTIVATTON SIORY 2I

rrrtive problems. bt we needto ecognize tht much to cameramen as to Fed Astaire, Buste Hollyrvood'suse of Freudian psychologywas Keaton, or Sonja Henje.3sIn the silent cinema, highly sective and distorting, hirnming and complex and daring lighting effects; in the sound concepts thinning psychoanlytic to fit an xisting cinema, depth of 6ed nd byzantine camea model of clear chaacteizatonand causality. movements; in all peiods, exploitation of special This can be seen in &ings Rou (1942),which eects - all testify to a psit of virtuosity fo ovetly thematizes psychoanalysis s a acrence its om sake, even f only discening minority of (the protagonistgoes to Viennt study is new viewers might take notice. During the 1940s, fo discipline)and yet ends*ith chorussinging, 'I exampe, there was something ofa competitionto see holv compicated and engihy the cinemto am the master ofmy fate, I am the captainof my gaph coud mke his tcking shols.a0 This soul,' I have aready suggsted that compositional, impusecan be seennot only in famouslms like generic,and ealisaic motivtion do not lways ope (1948)but also in vey minor fims th one work in perfect unison,and I sha examinesome stiking shot, such as *Coso (1948), at the t]lica dissonances in Chapter?. But thesearc elimax of rdhich the came smoothly follo/s the Nomay, ny eementof a classica hero, moves down an airyort crowd, picks up the excepton. frm is justi6ed in one or more of theeway6. heoine (fig 2.1), foows her nio the pane (figs 2.2 to 2.4),and settlesdown besideher seat,while 1{hen t is not, it my be subs-mable to yet (if the heo gets arrested outside (fig 2.5). Ii is another sort of motivation, one usualy probable that such casua splendors offered by th awkwardly) called 'artistiC motivation- By this Holywood film owe a get deal to its mixed term, RussianFomlist critics meantto point out paentge in vadeville, meodram, and othe that component may bejustifred by its powerto spectcle{entered cal attenton to the systm within which it entertainments. Nevertheless, oprates.This in tun presupposes that caing digessionsnd llshes of virtuosity emain for ttntion t a work's oin artfulnessis oneaim of the most part mtivated by narrtive causality (the Casoexample) o genre (pagentry in the many a'tistic traditions - a presupposition that challenges the nofionthat Holywood creates hstorica fin, costume in ihe rnusica). If an 'invisibe' o'trrsprent' epesentatronal speclacle is not so molrvalcd, ils function as regime. Within specific limits,Holywood fimsdo artistic motivation wil be isolated and iterndeed artisticmotivation in oe, as the mittent. empoy Formists woud put it, t0 make palpble the Atistic notivation can emphsizeth altifr' conventionaity of art.37 cialty of other rt woks; this is usuly Hollywoodhas eageryemployed spectacle and accomplished through the venerabe practice of paody. Hol)'wood has, of course, neve shnk technica virtuosity as means of rtistic motivation. 'Sho\rman6hip' consists to a mnsider- liom parody.In nim{rl Croc?rs(1930),Goucho ppreciate Marx shows up the solioquys in Straage abeextent of mking the udience the riifrciaity of what is seen.Ea tlkies were Interlud,e, while Helizapoppn (1941), Olson proneto sp in a songfor the sightest and Johnsonmock Kdne Rosebudsled. In *M1 especialy reasons. A distant histoical periodoftenserves as Fawte Brpnette (194?), Ronne Johnson tels petext for pageanty, eowd scenes, and Sam McCoudhe wants to be a tough detective poducersallotted ike AIan Ladd; McCloud is payedby Aan Ladd. asciviousdancing. Hoywood Parody need not ways be so clearly comic. At time and monyto reateresponses suehas that triggered by the costumes in The Grcot ZiegfeLd the climax o ?ie Strrdo Murd.er Mrtery (1929), (1936): The designernd the producer of the the Hollywood montage sequence is parodied picture felt tht the erTenditue was more tn when the dircctor explains at gunpoint v/hat wi justifred when the first ppeance of the happen after he kils Tony: 'Quick fade out. Next, costues bmught exclamtionsof deight from headlines in the morning papers.' The foo/ing the audience.'33 exchange from The Locket (1946) parodies the !'lgrant technical virtuosity cn so aready mannered conventios of the psychocontribteto spectace. What Parker 'I!er caled n\"tic film of the 1940s. The doctols fe has Holll.wood's 'narcissism of energy' ppliess just retumed from a movie.

22 TIIECLSSICL OLLYWOOD STYLE, 191?-6{ Nancy: I hada wonderfu time.I'm l goose pimples-. Dr Blair: A meodrama? Nancy:Yes,it wsghastly.You oughtto see it, a schizophrenic whokills Henry. It's about know it his wife nd doesn't Dr Bat (lsughing)iI'm afid that woudn'tbe much of a treat for me. Nncy:That'swheeyoute wrong. You'dnever guesshow it turns out. Now it may not be soundpsychoogically, but the wife'sfatheis oneofthe. .. Dr Bair:Darling, doyoumind?Youcantell me ater. When an at wok usesartistic motivtion to cll ttention to its own paticular pineiplesof the process constructon, is called 'aying barethe dece.'a* Holll'woodfilrns oten flaunt aspects of their own working in ths way.a2 ln Anqet Oer roodu,ay(1940), a drunkenpywight agees to helpa sicidally incined manget money andthus to 'ewte' th man's'last act.' The plr.wright then ooksout at the audience and saysmusingly: 'Our presentpot problem is money:'ln von Stroheim's,Foos Wiues(1922), the susceptible Mrs Hughesreadsa book,Foolis,LVrues, oy one Erich von Stroheim.ln Hs GirI Frl.aj J939],, as Walte startsfast-taking Hidy into staying witl the nwspaper, she begins to mimic a uc tioneeJspattel tis not ony mocks Water but foregounds speech rhythm as a centa devrce m the filn. The show-businessmilieux of the muscafilm make it especiallylikey to bare ts devices. re 'You were meant fo me' numberin Singn'n thz Ran (1952) showsDon tockwood stginghis own spontaneous songlthe wyhe sets up romanticighting,mist, and backdrops calls attention to the conventiona staging of such songs. An evenmoreflagnt taing of this device occusin 'Somewhere there's a someone' in SroI Is Born (1954), Cssicalfils are especiallylikely to barethe cntral p nciple of causa lineaity- L *One Touchof Nature (191'71, whenthe hero succeeos as a bseball payer, an expository title dryy emarks: 'In the couse o humn events,we come ogiclly to the deeiding gameof a Woldt Series., In 'The Miraclc Wonrn {l93tr, a despairing lwiter is aboutto comitscidc becuse, hang eceiveda rejectionslip from Ziegler Company, he eclans: 'fve bied thern a lmm to Z. What come6fte Z?' He hers an evangeli6t'sradio broadcastand resolves to try againtWhat comes *A alter Z? A!' 'Ioman of the yorld. (1925), contans an arnusing image of the story,s o\,n urwinding.Nea the beginningofthe frlm, two old women siLoDporchrockes gossiping andknittitrg, wln thelr baltsol yn smaller eachtimc we see thm. A the film's end, e cDerashows te chis mcking, now empty,and the yam a gone. Hollywood'suse of arfistic motivation rmDts considerable alertness Lothe vicwer:in orerto appreciatecertain moments, one must know and emembeanothe film's story,o star's habitual role, o a 6tndad tedrnique- To some exrenL atistic motivation develops a connoisselship in yet mostatistic tralitiors the classicalspectato. showoff their fomal spcificityin someway. We must ask what limits classicalcinemaimru$eson afistic motivation. Generaly,momentsof pure atistic otivation se raie and brief in classical fims. Compositional motivationeavsitte room fo it, while gneic motivation tenrls to account fo flagrant istances. Indeed, bring th _mny devrcc has become anostronvenlionl in certam genres.Comedies re moretikely to contn such o/rp scns asthaLin f! e Rood to Utopn t1g4bt, in which Bing Crosby and Bob Hop.,.rr5l,;n* crossthe Alaskan wilds, seethe paramontloeo in the disl,nce. Likewise, the melodrama is likey io ronlina shorike lhat in Ttu Founrarnheo (1949), in whichtwo chacters standat opposDe edgesof the lrame (fig 2.6) whie the woman asses:This is not a tie but a grf between us.' In Hs Grl Firlay,W alet candescibe Buce (RalDh B.llamji as looking like RlphBpuamy. but in Sunris. ot Canpobcllo(tg60r, no on notices FDR's resemblance to the sameacto. Preston Stuge6's *Sin of Harold, Did.Iebock (1947) permts - us to watch compositionl motivtion tke artistic motivation fiImly rn hand.The opening scene of r,he film is sileni and is announced to be fom Harotd Llovdt ?z Freshman.B this faily ove.t reminder of the wok's conventionity i undemined by the cove inselio; o ots Dot fiom the orisinal fi.|m.Theseinterposed shots.fllmed by Sluiges, show.businessnan watrhingthe fool,ball game. lhe busDessmn is mmpositionlly neceb$ary, sincehe wi offerllrold a job in the next srene, but remotivating The Freshmans opening lo

SIORY CUS,{LTTY AND MOTIVI'ION 23

ceate shooth causlin betweenthe t1,o films torcs downthe silent segment's distinct, plply quaities. conventiona 1re classical cinema,then, doesnot serthtic motivation constDtlytllmugh the m, as Oru (1962)o s Srgei doesh An Autumn AfternoorL

Eisensteindoes in Ieun thz Terrible (1945\.tt lo.s not bare its dcesepetedlyand systematiclly, as Michael Snowdoes in La rgioncentmlc(196?) o Jn-LucCodaddoes (kt uz) qui peu.t iL go.uve (1980).Compositional motivation fo the ske of story cau6alitytemains dominant.

Classical narration

A fim's story does not simply shine foth; as viwers, we construct it on the basisof the plot, the materia actually before us. he cassical guidelines for this construction are those pdncipesof causality and motivtionalready sketchd out in Chapter2. A frn's plot usualy mkes those guideines appicabe by transmitting sty infomation.This aspect of pot I 6hallcall ndrrdrton. Holywood's own discouse hssought to imit nration to lh mnipullion o[ th.mpr, sin John Cromwe's remark that, he mosteIective way of teling a story on the screen is to use thq cameraas the stoy,teler.'lAnd the cassic film's nanation itself ncourages us to seeit as pesentingn apparenly soid fictionaword which has simply been fimed for our benefit. AndrBazindescribes the cssica fim s being like a photogtaphed pay;the storyevenis seem to existobjectivey, while the camer seems to do no morethal give us the best view and emphasize the ight things.u But narrationcanin facroraw uponany film technique as longas the technique can transmit stoy infomation_Convesations, figureposition, facaexpressions, andwel-timed encountes beteen characters al functionjust as narratonally as do cameramovements, cuts,or bumtsof music. Fom this standpoint, cassical narrationfals under the jurisdiction of al the types of motivation alredysrveyedIn a classcal fim, narrtionis motivatedcompositionaly; it works to constuct the story in specific ways.Nanation may also be motivated geneicaly, as wnen performers in a musica sing diectly to the spctatoor when a mystery filn v'ithhodssome cr1cilstory informtion. Nanation is lessoen motivated'realisticly,' althoughthe voice-over commenfry in semidocumentryfiction fiIms might insistthat the storyactionis based on fct.

rtisticay motivated narration s very rre in cassicl fiIms and never occusin a pure state. A non-classical director like Jean-LucGodardcan 'lay bare' a film's narrational princpes,as does the beginning of Tout Da ben(1972), in which nonymous pay th altemativeways of voices opening the fim, hifing cast and cew, nd financing the film. But {,hn a cassical 61m wantsto cal ttntionto the bapability'of its naration, it mustcrete a context that motivates baring th device by oter meansas we- For instance,in sceneafter stene of *Tfu Man Who Laughs (19281,the ;aration conceasGwyn,. plane's deformed mouth from us {by veis, stBtegicalyplcedfumiture, etc.).But in one scene, the narratior lays bethis very pttemDinghis stageact, Gwynplaine ooks out at us and delbemtey revealshis deformity;then a clowr in his act sowycovels it gan. The shot thussrages the act of revelation andconcealrnent that hasbeencental to the narratonthoughout. However, this bring of the devicis paty motivated by reaism (Gwynplaine is on stsge, revelinghis defomity to an udiene in the fiction) and by causal necssty (for the story to pruceed, a womanin the udience must seehis mouth nd take pity upon him)- We encounte agin th familia multipe motivationof the cassica text. We coudfollow lolywood's eadnd simpy label such ca.efuly motivated narrtion 'invisible.' Holywood's pridein conceled atisry implies that naation is impeceptibleand unoblrusive. Ediiingmustbe seamless, camerawork 'subodinatedto the luid thought of the drmtic action.'3Sometheoristshave called the clssicastyle transparent and illusionist, what Nol Burchhas called 'the zero-degee slyle of lming.'{ This is to saythat classical technique is usually motivated eompositionly. The chain of

CTSSCL NRMTION

25

cuse and eectdennis that we seea coe-up of a importnt object or that we follow characte into a room. 'lvisible' may suficeas a ough descriptionof how itte mosi viewe$ notice technique,but it does not get us vey far if we want to analjz how cl,ssical filtrs work. Suchconcpfs play down the corstructednatur of the style; transparent .not encouage eIectdoes s to pobebenethits smooth surlace. The term is also imprecrse_ 'Invisibiity' can refer to ho$rmuchte narton tels us, upon what authority it knowso tells, or in what way it els. tange of dierent pmblems of narration i5 packed into ths 'invisibility.' How:.thento chctezecassicalnarration? Meir Sternberyhas put foth a cler theoy that will prove useful.s Stenberg suggests that naration (o the narrato) cn be chaacterized ongthree specta.6A nrration is moe or less self-colJcious: that is, to a geto esserdege it dispays its recogition that it is pesenting information to an udience.'Call me Ishmae' maks the nanato as quite self,conscious, as does a chaacter'saside to the audiencern an play. A novelwhichempoys Elizabethan a diist s narrtoris fr esssef-conscious. Secondly, a rrrtion is moe or lss knowledgeablz. The omniscient spekerof Vanl Fair rcvelsin his inmense knowedge,whie the correspondnts in n epistof' nove know much ess. As these exampes suggest, the most eommon way of limiting a darrto's knowledge is by making a particular characterthe nnator. Ths the lssue of knowledgeinvoves point-olview. Thirdly, a namationis-moe o sscommrrnicafie. Thg term refers to how willing fhe nartion is to shareits knov.ledge.A diarist might know ittle bt tl all, while n oniscient narator like Henry Fieding's in Tom Jonesmay suppressa great del of inforrtion. Someof Becht's plays usepojectd titles vrhichprcdictthe outcome of a scene'saction: this is ess suppressivethan a normal pay'snaaLion, whichtends t minimizp its own omniscience.T Stemberg's three scales cnbe summaized in a seiesof qustions.How awareis the naration o addre6singthe audience?Hov much does the naation know? How willing is the narratlon ro tell us rvhat it knows? Stemberg's categories help us analyzecassica

&ration quite prccisely.In the cassirafrlm, the nration is oDniscient, bt it ts that omniscience eomefowad moe t somepoints than t others. Thesefluctutinsae systematic. In th openingpassages ol the film, the narration is moderatey sf-conscious and oyertly suppressive. s the film poceds, the arratron becomes less sef-consciousatd morc cotr! muncative. The exceptiosto .thesetendencies are also stricty codified.The end of the film may quicky essd the naation's omnscierce and elf-consciosness.

The modestnarrion Classical narration usually begins before the actiondoes. Ti:ue,the creditsseqrence canbe seen as a.realm of grzphirpdy,n opening whichis relatvely oppn Lo non-narrfion elmenls. it is in credits.sequences {Certainy tht abstact cinema has had its nost significant inflnce upon the classic style.) Yet the .a6sical Holywood lm typcaly usesthe cedits sequence to initiate the film's nration. Eventhseforty to ninety seconds cnnotbe wasted.Fuhernrre, rn ihesemomentsthe naration is sef,conscious to a high degree.Musical ccompaniment alredy signals the presence of this nntion, and oten musical motifs in this overlurewill recu in the fim proper. The l,ilewill mostprobaby nameor describe the main character r.Mrcey ll981, *Gidaet Ir959l, *Kne of the Rodeo 1s28\ or indicate the nture of the ction (+Going Hghbrow ll933l, *npdct [1949]).If not, the title can suggestthe ocale of the actiJ\(*AiLuenture +Wuthering IstandI1947l, erst19390, a morif n the film (*pplazse[t929], +Batnlahatt939l, o the time ofthe action (+TheNight Hol.dsTerror u9551). The credts that ist the cast may *TheKnEand. nfoce the tite (e.g., thaChnrus Gr[ 11937],starring Fernand Gravet and Joan Blondell), but they v..il certainly introduce e fi lm's nanative hieachy. Protagodst, secondary protagonisl,opponenLs. nd other major characteswill be denotedby the order, size, and tlme onscen of vaous acto6' name. Some films strcngthen this linkage by dding shob of the chaactesto the cedits, in which the amount of the sereen surface character is alottei indicates the chaacter,s impoarce (fig 3.1).

26 TECLASSICAT, fiOLLl'tVOOD STyLO, 191? 60 (Comparethe flattening effect of sedits which leopard engaged in sctjons that will eppear in make no distinction among mjo actors nd the film; *Srreepsfales Wrrnar (1939)emplo,.s the wak-on prts, suchas the 'deinocatic'cedits of samr strategy (seefig 3.9).As Knt?l potnB ou[, J-Maie Staub and Danile Huilets Nor such sequences re explicitly nrrl.ionl: the Remnciled.11964l.)Even the studio logo, the unknownhandknoing aLthe doocn only b MGM lion or the Paramountmomtain, has ben the viewe's, giving an idealized repesenttionof analyzedas a narrationl hansition.s The credits the ewe/s entry into the fim.s Such overt ae thus highly self-conscious, erplicity addessto the spectator can so be seenin those addressed to te audience. stil-life coEpositionsof book pges or album In the sient peiod, mny fils went no further leaves tumedby unktown (e.q.. hands -ppnorse than tese cues, laying he credit sequence tl933l, Eary to Looh At lLsasl. -ptal Gnt gainst black bdckgoundsor a stanrdized l94ll). In the postwar period,direci address in desigr(e.g.,cutains, pllas, or pictue frames). cedits sequnces coud aso be aJcompisheil Somecredits sequences, howeve,used .art tites' through a voice-ove naator. In such ways, me whose designs depicted signicant narative cedits sequence launts both the narration, elements.Wilim S. Ht's *ffu Narow Tral omniscience and its ability to suppesswhatever (1917), fo. instance, displys its oedts against a it tikes painting of a stagecoach hodup.By the 1920s, Like credits,the earlysrenes ofthe actoncan 6uchart titles wee mmmonlyusedfor exposition revalthe naation quite bodly. Bfoe 1925,the (see fig 3.2). Lettering could aso indicte the film.might opcnwith asymboic prologue. peiod or setting of the story, prctice pmbby Dy rroos nct tjmrson .vis;onary mocked as scenes of influenced by playbills and illustated books: Heaven or Hell.oftheFates weaving human lives narration rendered as tlpography. In the 1920s, a in their web.I0(Se, for example. fig 0.4,oir $dits sequnce might ppar over lovrrg TheDcuil s Bai! ltgl?l.r More ofren, ;itent fitms (e.g.,*Merry-Go-Round. images [1923])or fi;g1,1 smpyusedexpository tites to anounc lhe be animated(e.g.,*ltu SpeedSpooh II1?/.I). Tyrc saintfeaturesof the nration. I the soundea, sound cinema canonizedthis stylized ,narrativ- oiher lm techniques take on this oe of ization'of the creditssequence, ssigningi a toregoundinB the nrration. Afte the credits, range of iunctions. *Panners in Crime(1928) revealsa city andscape The credits can anticipatea motif to appern and an inte-title, 'Gangstes and Gun War _ A the story proper.ln *Wonn of the World \1925), Cily Skeped in Crime{see 6g J b,. Suddnly the he pmtagonisfsscandalous tattoo is pesenred as tltlp shatl^rs as hands holding guns beak an abshact design under the credits; in +ffu thmu8h to 6re directlyat the audience tip frgs Blach Hand (1950),a stietto foms the back- 3.6 and 3.7). At the sta of *Eouse)fe gB4), te gToundo the titles. Cedits' imagery can aso cmera tmclls with a milkmanup to th fronl estahlishthe spce of the upcomingaction, as oo doorand ltoges on tle fronL door" he laves. the snowyfi trees in *Th.eMichigon Kd, ,]'g2B) There is a cut to the welcome mat, and ihe camera or the city view in *Cdso(1948).Credits ofun tracks in and tilts up to the doorbell anil name fleunt the narrationt omniscience nd tatalize cad. The shots have treated the cameras f it us 'itr glimpsesoI ction to come.As early as wee a guest strclling up to the house.*tasl to *The Royal Pauper (1917),$/e find the Fedits loo (1945)openswith a voice-ovenaator summzing the rags,to-richesstoy action by dscibing the hgmine's arriva in the city: ,And dissovingftom a shot of the st, dressedas a us New York's/population is increasedbr, one poo girl, to a shot of her werine exDensiv and quite a nuber . _.' as a man on th; street clothes. Thierry Kuntzel hs sho how rne at her- Suchpassages 8v,rks reveal the nanation opningcet sequence of ?lre Most Dongerous to-be dely knowledgeable and highly arare of (1932), Gome a shotofa handknocking at a door, addressing an audience. stgesn important gestureof the eruuing filrn The narraiion can also erploit the opening and articipatesseveralmotifs in the setting and moments to stess its abiity to be more or less action. Thecreditssequence of Bringing Up Baby conmunicative. +Ttu Ca:e of the Luck! Legs (1938rpresntssticl.-figur.man,-wan, and (1935)openswith a flurry of women'segsstriding

CLSSTCL NRTTON 27

up a flight of steps(seefig 3.8) and then dissotves to a sign (seefig 3.9). Several pairs of-legu are (see eveled fig 3.10)t the endofth scene, as fomercontes winne tries to cim he prizp, te sq'indler pushesher awy (seefig 3.11) and the camea pa6 to an advertisemetrtfor the Lucky l,gs contst (see fig 3.12i- The inge dissolves to a pi ol legs shetched out (seefig 3.13) and pns to their owner, the ltest bitked woman, sobbing. le gtuitous camera movement to the sign and the openingofthe next scenepmvide overty imnic commentayon the The erplicit presence of the narration in these heaviy expository beginningsis conrmed by the eventulemegence o the 'pre-creditssequence,' Here the film openstmy in meds res,th the creditspresented onyater n initial scene o two of story acion.This Fctice beganin the 1950s, possibly s boroding from television techniqueof the 'teaser.'The effect of pre-cedits acton was to eliminte the cedits s a distinct unit, sprinkling them thugh a short action sequpnce lhr mnveycdminimal story information (e.g.,the establishment of a localeor r,ne connectingof two scenesby a tip). The post ponement o the credts tacitly grants he nanationlsignicance ol whatever s{enes open the llm. pesent Yet once in these passages, opening the narrtion quickly ladesto the backgound. In the couse of the opening scenes, the nanation becomes ess self-coscious, less omniscienr,, aro more communi&tive- Very flagrant exanples allow us to hace this fading process at work. *le Coddy(1953)has a highty stylizedcedits sequnce that signasthe gene (comedy), repeats pincipal the motii kolf clubs, tes, tatqn), and anticipate6 story everts(the crtoonfigules).(See fig 3.14.)The fim's fist shot.evels a theahe marquee rrhich carries caictues simila to thosein the cedits (seefrg 3.15)-Ire bandstand's dcsign repeats e caricatures. linking the figxres to the live protagonists we Inaly see (fig 3.16)-ln a sliding movement, tre narration's crtoonimagesof Dean Matin and Jery Lewis have becorne gadally repaced by tle stoy's images of the charctes themselves.A more complex exampe occrsin *The Cantenille Chost (1944).Whie a voice-overcommentatotells of the Ghosts history, the imageshowsthe relevant

passagein a book,Fcnous Gh.osts of England. Thee folows a flashbackto 1634, which shows how the cov'dlySimonwas bricked up in a wa o the marsion.Thecmemtracks ito a clos-up of birthmk otr Simon's neck (see fig 3.17), hich freezesinto an illustration in the book as the voce-ov commentry resumes(seefig 3,18). The page is tumd s the narrator dscbes the castle today; the illustrtion of the castle (seelig 3.19) dissolvesto the same image on film, into which the heroine Jessic ides (see frg 3.20). Action hs replcd the non{iegetic voice,and we neve see or hear the narration so evidently agarn. The phasing out of the naator is also visible in hisioricl changes i fhe sient cinema's enpository tactics. Before 1917, fims commony intoduced chactN in ways that caled attntion to the act of nrration. An expository title would name and desibe the characterand attach th actor'sname;then a shot might sho' the aracter tiking a pose in a noniegetic setting (e.g-, a theater 6tge). After sevel chaacteswee infroducedthis way, the fictional action woud begin.fter 1917, such signs o na$ation diminished. Chaacters lr'ould be ntodced upon their flrst appearancein the acton-Ovet commentry in the ttles ('M-y, Bry') would be repacedby images of the characterenactingtypical behavior {e.g., Max kicking a dog).t The mle of expositoryinte,tites changedas well, Sent scenarists ,vere av,/ae that the expositof tite foregrounded narlation. Ore witer compedthe expo6itory tite to a Ceek someone chorus, whoiq behindthe scencs. They re in lh secret pay.'12 of {"he Anothercritic uas even moe awae of the intruson: 'lhe tite may say no more thn 'Dawn" or "Night" or 'Home'; bt t clearly is the injected coDment oi an outside who is assumed,by the author's own term6, to be absent.'r3 (This, he claimed, 'breaks the spell ofcompleteabsorytion.')The pesence of an unseen ficlionalDrslorwas also makedin expository titles by the rse o the past tense, v,/hchbecamestandard afur 1916. Aftr 1917, Hollylvoodlm became lesand less reliant upon expository ter-titles nd moe dependentupon diaogu titles, Between 191?and 1921,one-fih t one-third of frlm's inter-titles would be expository; fter 1921, expository tites con-

28

TTIECL.TSSICAI, IIOLLYWOOD STLE

91?-60

stituted less than a fiIh of the total. Ii the late silent yeas, !e find mswith noexpository tites at a. Pacementand lengh changedtoo: after 1921,the early scenes of the 6lm eontain more nd onger expositorytitles than do lte scenes. The cutivation of the art title, the expository title enhanced by a pictorial design, furthe substitted image for language.Expositional tasks were6hied to characterdialogueand action,not oDly acrossthe period but within the dividual film. The judicious combitiono expositorytitles, dialogue titles, and exempary chracter ction created a fairly knowledgeable and comrnunrcative narrator. Considerthe openingscene of *Miss (1921\. LuIu Bett The lamiy assembles lor dinner, nd an expositoy tite intoduces ech famiy member.Th tite is then followedby a character peforming a typicl action which confrms ne title's description. Afte the narrtion identifies the youngesl dughter, the images show her swiping food paytuly. After the fner rs identifred,he goesto the cockto checkhs watch. Oncelrost of the famiy are irtoduced,anothe expositorytitle intrcducesthe elder daughterbut addsthe infomtion that she wants to leavehe family- Ths title is folowedby a shot of her at the lont gate,holdinga boy'shand.Becauue r.ne nrtion has arcady accumtely characterized the other family membes, we tust its informarion aboullhe daughtcr's plIey pflvdte dsires nformtion which is rn lurn immediately confirmed by her action. The narration is omniscietand reliabe. The smoothness of such narationwas ecognized in Eumpein the silent ea; a Parisian c tic noted that the Holywooo film always begins with a long expositorytitle explainingth film's theme,followedby the rapid introduction to and delinetion of charactesbj/ means oftitles and actions. Thecitic emphasized that Hollywood films avoided the gradua psychoogicl evelation characteisticolswedsh and Gerrnanfilms of the period.ra ffiat enablesthe narration to fadeitselfout so quickly?Any nrrative 6m must informthe vre$rer of eventsthat occured befoethe action which we see. The classica film confines itself almost conpetlyto a sort of e)osition describdby Stenbegas comentratedandpreliminary.ls Ths measthat the expositionis confinedprincipaly to the openingof the plot. In explining how to

uite a screetrply, Emesonnd Loosclaim that te opengould 'explain brefiy but cealy the essenl,ial facl.s which the audience mustknow in ordeto understsnd Ljestory,'pefeably In one scene.' Such advice may seemcomrnonplace, but we need to remembe that this choic commits the Hollywood film o a sim ange of DratioDal optiots. Scattered o delayed er.positionhas the powe to lte the viewels undstatdingof events; making the spectato wit to fill gapsof causality, charactereations, and tempoal events can increasecuiosity and evenceateaic motivation, baring the device of naration itsf. But concentmted and peliminsry narration heps the classic fiIm to makthe naration seemlessomniscient and selfconsatous. Classica narration aso steps to the backgound by stating in medr res. The er.?osition plungesus into an alrady-moving flow of cause and effeet. s tros and Emesonput it, the action must begin \'ith th story itsef nd not with the histoy of the csewhich leadsup to the story.'t? When the chmactesthus assumethe burden of . exposition,te naation cn seemto vnish. *The Mad Martnd.aes(1942) offers a simpe case. Afler an exposiLoy tite (San Francism 1900'), the filrn opens with a clse-up of a cake, inscribed 'HappyBithday Fathe.'The camera tracksback, andwhiea maid andbutlerdcoate the cake they discuss househodaIais. The crnerafolows the butler to the piano, whee Evelyn,te elderdaughte,sits. Evelynnd the butlerconverse. We thn followthe buterto the study, past the youngr daughter Cathy, who is sitting a the desk wdtng. The cameahods on her while the butler leaves. Bob, Cathy,s friend, thrusts his hed in the window, whieh gives her a chanceto explain what she'swriting (a feminist tract, surpdsingy enough). The phone ilgs and Evelyn answes it. The caler is her bo]'fiendPete, who poposes marrageto her. At this junc'ture,the gils' father rrives,havingjust bought a Poussin painting. 1ryile workmen uncate the pinting, the family discussCathy's gaduation, Mtindale's bihday, thc news aboutPeter,et . When the butler bringsbirthday champage, Cathy aises the issueof unpaidbills; at this point, the ights go out, cut ofl by the utiity compny.As the sceneends,the family discover that it is pendless and Cathv sorruw-

CTNSSICALNARR.{TION 29

fuly rcvealshe gift to he father wallet. You ae fight to thnk that this sceneis overstued ith infomtion, but it is typical of Holly!,{'ood cinema's almost Scribeanoading of exposition nto a film's first scenes. By plungingin ndiosres with the frst shotof'Iappy Bithday Fatr,' the film lets the aracte$ tell each other what we nedto know, Clssical narration may emerge more ovetly in late portions of the frm, but sch reappearance wil be intemittDt and codified. In the sient cinema, the expository tite may idude imagery that commentsoverty on the action. Occasionaly, te nrrtion will esset . its omniscience by cameramovemenhthe clich example is the pan from the ong shot ol the stagecoch to the akhingIndin-s on the idge. In the soundfilm, an overlppingline of dilogue can link scenes in waysthat cal attention to the nration. Many of the exampes of rtistic motivaton and 'baring the device' that I mnsideredin the ast chaptercan now be seens exampls of sef-corscious and flagrantly supprcssive nion. Nrational intruslons may aso be geneicaymotivated:in a m],.stery lm,framingonly a portion ofthe c.iminal,s body as the crime is committed,or in a histoicatfilm, making the na'rator 'the voice of history.'rg Whateverte genre,however, thee is yet nother momentthat naration comes strongyfor'/ardin the cassica film - during montagesequences. Typically, the montagesequedce compesses a consideablelength of time. or spce,taces a large-scale event, or selects epresentative momntsfom process.e Cich instancesdc fluttering calenda eaves, brief images ol a detective's seffhfowiLnessps. th riseof singer gvet s bits of diffrent perfomances,the acaumationof tavelctickes o! trunk, or a flurry of newspaper headines. Rudimentary montage sequences cn be found in Hoywood fins of the teens and early twenties. By 192?, montagesequenees v/ee very common, and they continueto be usedin a vaiant form today. Fom histoical pe$pective, the montage seqoence is prt of HolbTood'sgadal eduction of ove narrational pesence. nstead of a title saying 'They loweredthe lifeboats,'or ,l hie the juy was out, Mccee waited n a cold sweat,,the fllm can reveal glimpsesof pertineqt ction.The montagesequence thus tansposes conventions of

pos narration into the cinema; Sarc cites Ctian Kna's montages as exmpesof the 'frequentative' tense (equivaent to witing ,He mde his wife sing in every theat in America').m Moreover,the montges,equcnce ainsat mntinty, Iining the shotsthrough nondieetic music nd smooth optica tansitions (dissolves,wipes, superimpositions,occasionally cuts). Yet the montage sequencestil maks narration mme forwad to get degree. Exteme close-ups,catted angles, silhouettes, whip pans, nd other obtusive rechniqrcs dieentiat this sort of segment from the orthodox scene.When newspapers swirl out ol nowherefo fatten themselvesobigingly fo ou inspection, or hen hourglasssnd calendar leaveswhisk acossthe scren,we are addrcssed by a powetht is free of norml Darrativespace and time. What keeps the montage sequence undercontrolis its stdct codifrcation: it is, simply, the sequence which advancesthe story ction in Just this ovet walt Flagant s the motage seqence is, its mrify, its nnativefunction, and its naowy conventionformat assueits statrs as clssica naration's mostacceptble rhetorical 6ourish.

Causality, characer, ad poirt-of,viw fte the concentated, preliminary expostion and exceptfor intusions like montge squetrcc$, thc rlassieal film reduces nararior prominence. s Chapters 4 and 5 rvil show how this process shapes cinemticspaceand time. For nov,/, I want only to indicate the geneml wys that cssical Holyrvoodnarration revals self-conscioaress, omniscience, and communicativeness. Afte the:opening poftionsofthe clssical frlm, the naration'sself,coNciousness is genealykept ow, chieflybecause characteractionand reacnon eonvey the ongoingcausal chain to us. It is here that the effect of an enclosed story wod, Bazin,s objectively existing play simply transmitted by the camera,is at its strongest.Many devicesof nineteenth-cetuy reaist theatr - xposition by chaacter convesation,speeches and ctions whith mofivate psychological deveopments, weltimed entrnces and exits - all assure the homogeneityof the fiction world. This homogeneity has induced many teoists and mosr

30 TtlEctssicAl H0LLYWOOD STI1,E, 19r?-{O viewersto seethe clssca lm a-s coniposed of a which- shws lhe audiDce whats happenrng solid and integal diegtc world o{casionlly r,exi.'22 inflectedby narrtonalouch from the outside, Th most eviden tace of the Barations s if our companionat a pay wee to tug ou omniscience is its omnipres?nce. The nrration is sleeve and point out a detail.We must,however, univilling to te at, but it is v,rilling to go make the efo to seethe fllm's diegeticworldas an]'whee.This is suey ahebasi6of the tendency itself constructedand, hence,ultimately just as to colapse nration into camea.ivok: the naralionl s the mosl, obtrusivcut o voice- cameracsn roam freely, cosscutting between over commentary.Yet we needto ecognize how locales or changing ils positionwitho a single important this apprentlyntal, ctually couert oom. The cmera,' wits Lne, .stimulates, narration s to te cssica cinema. In wht though corret choice o subject matter nd folows, I shal asume that this naaon- setup,the sense within the percipientof,teing at through,ract-interacton constitutes the the host vital pat of the expe ence _ at the most normal and east nticeable ploy of most advantageous poinL of perception" Holly'wood narration. r3 Somelimes ihis lhoughout l,be pic{ue. The narration reinforces the homogeneity ofthe ubiqty becomes only atisticlly nrotivated, as ictionl wold by means of a non-theatric in those'impossibe' came angesthat view the dece:the useofpubic and impersona sources chon.bomwithin a firepaca of or efrigrator. infomation that can b reaistically or generrc- panal omnipresence justied by is, of course, aly motivatedwithin the film. The mosto,nmon what story ctionoccusin any given place,and t instrumentis the newspper. ROSENFOUND is imited stil further by specificschematar a we GIJILTY: the headline or rticle becourcs shall see in Chapter5. To avoid teating he an nquestioned sunogate for the ararors canera as narrator, hoveve, rve should pesence.. In many films of the lg30s, newspaper emembe t\at what the cameradoes no, show eportembecome n expositoryehorus,initiafing implies omnipresence negativey - the site of n us into the ction.Otherpublic tansmitte$o action we will leam of only ater, the whotfigure informtion ncuderad;o, television,buletin of th mysteious intruder.The nnation could bods,posters,ticker tpe, to guids,and showus a1,bt it refuses. eference books (e.9., the Glrosrs of Englund Cls6ica narationadmitsitself to be spatialy volume in *The Canteroille cosr). These omupresent,but it caims no cornparable fluency impesonasources ofstory information asoprove in time. The nrationwil not moveo its owr invauable in toning down the sef-consciousness into the pstor lhe fuLure. Once the aclionrarls of montagesequencs. and maks definite pesent,movements into the Classicalnnation is potentialy omnisdenf,as past ae motivated though chrctes'memory. edits and openingsshow and as Hol]"wood's Ire flashback is not presented as an ovelt own discouse generaly ack:nowicugeu. expantionon the narration,sprt; the naTtion A. Lindsley Lane, for exampe, efes to 8mply pesentswhat the characte is recaling. bmncient perception' as the basicaw offilm.In Even more estrictive is classic narration,s the bulk of the Holywoodfilm, this omnisuence supFessionof fEtue events. No naration u any becomes overtoccsionally but briey,as whena text can spil all the beansat once,but after the cmeaangle or movment links chsracte$ rsho credits sequence, classical narration seldom are oaw:eof eachother.2lhe sameomnisci- ovety divulges anlthing about .itrhatwili ensue. encebecoEes overt in the dni;paoryqualitiesof It is up t the chaactesto foreshadowevents nrration - the chracterwho enters scene just though dialogueand physicalaction.If this is the beforeshe or he is neded, the meramovement lastjob te cookswill pull, they must tell us, fo that ccommodtes cteis gestie just the naationlt no, bemme moreself-conscious beforeit occurs,the ulexpectedcut to a dooell in order to do so- Il the ove alfir is to fait, the just before a thumb pessesit, the music tht characters must inuit i,: hese things nevr edsus to expect a prowlerto jump our of the nappen twice' (*Interlude 19511. At most, the shubbery.'Thee is only one ivay to shoola naration can dmp self-conscious hints, such as scne,' Raoul Walsh climed,,and that's the way pointing ot a sinicant detail that the

CT/SSICI, NRATION

31

.charactehave overlooked; e.g., the mmea movement upto lhe 'ForgotLn Anlthing?signon the hotel-room dooin ?ouch of Eo (195't).More commonly, anticipatoy motifs can be includedif th shotis alrcadymotivtedfo anothepurpose. Near the endol *Fmm llere a Eternitr {tg'Sr, the attack on Pear Hrbor is anticipated$/henthe camerapns to folow a chacter and eveasa calendaging the dte as Decmber 6. Classicalnaration thus delegates to chaacter causity nd gene mnventions the bulk of the film's fiow of informaton.When inlormtonmust be suppressed, it is done thmugh the charctes. Chaactels can keep secrets fom one aother (and us). Confinemnt to a single point-of-viv ca sso suppess story information. Genre conventronscan cooperateJas the editors of Cahersd.ucnma point out in ther analysisof young Mr. Lineoln (1939). Here the nrration must juggle thee points of view so as t keep certain information mm the spectato. Two brothesaccused of murder echbelievethe othe s euty,whilethemotherasobelieves that one is pilty. When ll three meet, it woud be plausiblefor them to talk to one anothe;andthrs rcvealech one's beiiefs. But ithis happened, the pot twist - that nether is guity - would b gr\cnawyprematurly So tho hmilys rounion is stageds a sient vigil the night beforetre tria's lasi day. This convention of courtroom dmmasmotivates withhodinginformation trom the audence.2s Any naFative text mtst repeat importantstry nfonnation, and in the cinema, rcpetition takes on a specianecessity;since the conditionsof presentatiln mean that one cannot stop and go back, most films reiterate infomation agin and again. The nture of that eiteration @! however,vary from film to frm.26In a film by Godard or Eisenstein, the naation overtly rcpets inibrmation that may not be repeated within the story. Sequenees late in Octoer.0g2B) (196?)repfiy events tht we have and Weekend. seenearlier i! te film, and this repetition is not motivatdby charactememory. But a classic film assigs epetition to the chaaces_ That is, te story ctioDif,selfcontains repetitionswhich the namtion simply passes long. For example, ater the credits fo the film *Housewfe0934) have concuded, te opening scene shows the heroinehassed by her domesticduties.At the

scene's cose, a polltker calls on her and askshei job;'Oh ...,' she says,'... just a horsewife.' {ouserife,' the polltke rcpetsat the faae-out. In one scene of tThe Whole To&n's Talkng (1935),we Ieam a man's pofessionthe moment he enterst]e mom:a groupof poceomciasgeet him in a chorus: Warden!' '!Vade\ Chiefl' t{ello, Waden.' 'Hiya, Warden-' Such epetition is not extensive that would be as tnsgessive as no repetition t a. Optimsly, a significant motif or infomational bit should be sho,r o mentioned at three or fou distinct momenLs, s in lhe wardpnchorus.Thee is in fact a mystical nrmber for Hollrlir'ood dramaturgy; an event becomes important if it s mentioned.three times.The Hoylvood sloganis to stte every fact thee times, oncefor the smsrt viewe, oncefor the averageviewer, and oncefor slowJoein the backrow.2? lo Mc0eyrecals: 'Mosrgags wereba"cd on he r;le ol three." L' became amost an un\{ tten rule.'23 Iryng Thalbergis reportd to have said,'I don't mean tell 'em thee tmes in the smevi/y.Maybe you tel 'em once in comedy, mybeyou te 'em once directly, maybeyou tel 'em next time with a twist.''ze For a me instnce of uddcous repetitio in t nTationathe than the story, seefig 3.21. Sinceclassica narration communicates wht it 'knows'by making chaacteshu the causal chain thmugh the film, it might seemogical to assume fhat the cassicalfilm commonlyrestncts its kno$redge to a single characte's point,of, view, Iagical, but.wrong. If we take point-of-view to be an optral subjectivity,no classiclfrlm, not even the vaunted but misdescribed Ladl n the Iake ll941l, competely confine.s itsetf to v,zhat a chactersees.Ifre rgfld a character'spoint of, view as comprising what the characterknows,we stil find very few classica films that estrict themselves to this degree. The overwhelmingly commonpractice s to use the omnipresence of classicanration to move.fiuidly lom one chacte to nother. he classical lm typicaiy contans a few subjectivepoint-of-viewshots {usually of printed

32

THE CLASSICL EOLLYWOOD SIYLE. I9i?.60

matter rcad by a chacte),but thesae mly newspaper picture of he. He asksthe baKeeD ro anchored in an 'objective' rame of rcference. bing Frank in. Usingonly i,woexpository ti;les, Moreover, Holywood's optics point-of-vevf lJle artion has preseoted the essential cutting is sedomigorously constent. While in backgound of the story action and has flendv ore shot a camera position wil be maked as movdamong various degees of subjectivir}. subjective, few shots ater the 6meewpoint Beginning in mzdras resanJlettingtle aact ers may be objective - oen resling in anomalies cvea exposition, the cassic Holyrroodfm such as a character walking into his or her own tDu6moveslo sjealivity only occasionally _ 6eld of vision (see fies 3.22 thmugh 8.25). In a sornethiog possible for narationendowed with si[nila fashion, classicl narration will conne oEniscienceitsel to one chaacte's limited knowledge,but The example trom *Tha MichEanKd shows this wil then be played oI againstwhat oth that clssicI, narrationcnexpoitomnipresence chacten know. Cver nanational twists often [o conceat ntomation that indidualchactars depend upon restcting us to one characte's possess. Occasiollythe classical film flaunts poiDt-of-view befoe revealing the t tal si,uaon. suchsuppressive opertions, openingup d gap Even flashbacks, which are initially motivel as De[ween the naration's omniscientrange of limited, subjective point-of-view,sedomesrrrct knowledge and its modeatecommunicativeness. themselvessolely to what the charcter coulil Consjdethe opening of *Manhandtcd \Igtg), have known. For such reasons,it is accurateto which showsa man sitting in a study. The describeclassicalnarration as fundamentally ramlng carefullyconceals his face. His wife and omniscient, even when pticu sDati o he over turn, but we seeonly hcir feei.Aftr temporal shis are moivated by hara"rer telovereaves. the husband follows her upstairs, subjectivity. his face slill offscreen He approaches his wifeanil 'Ihe Holtnvoodcinemaquickly mastered shits strts to strange her_ The sequenceseems in point of-view- As ealy as *Looeand the Lau tmhsgessve becausethe narration has overUv (1919), onecanfind extensive sequences o optical suppressed hc facesof ihe kiler ard the ovei. point-of-view cutting (seefigs 16.44 nd 16_45). Yet at the end of t]e sequence, thee is dissolve *The Mthgan Kd. (1928)begins ,At tht point wirh a montage nda voice says: the drearn lways ofgoldprospecting in askandthenmoves our end, doclor.' Th ovcriness ot lhe nrralion is attention to a gambing hl.AtonetablesitsJim lustfed rtoactivelJ as subjccllv. geter Th Rown, identified by an inte.-titleasthe ownerof enpha$s plced upon pslchonytic.explana. the ha|.In taking to two customers, Jim eveals lorlsol causaltyin the 940scrated trend that he is sellingout to go bckto the States and towrd such occasionallye.rplicit naration. rejoin the gil he eft behnd. As Jim pacns ro rmrlarly,play wit pornt-of-view is a rnrnor leave, he 6taes at his tatercd picture of Rose. convenlion of rhe mysteryF,lr|.,. Throwh fprpnt This trigge$ a flshback introducineJim as a Efcs (1929)^d Thz Grord Contml MystQn boy, playing wjlh R se and fightng off the 1942jboth use flashbacks r recountthe sarn; dejnqupnr Frnk. The flashbackends and pvenls from inconsj51s61 poinl,sof view. The dissovesinto Jim's optical viewpoint of Rose,s subJective fim and the mysteryfilm can thus picture.t this point, howeve,the flm widensits male naration self-conscous and ovetlv naratioral view.T'lcre is a cut l0 custome in suppressive. buLonly l.hanks to compositional an the gambling den. He ooks at his atchbefoe Senenc mob'vation. Consisknl.ly suppressive oering it s a stake. Thanks to aother point_of_ naration,such as that ofJean-Ma e Stab and verir shot, we see Roset pictue in his wawn. Danile Huillet's Not econciled. (1964\or Atarn Thus we know beforeJim doeslhat Frank has Resnais's Proudence 19??), is unknown ln the eenteedhis life, A bartende taes the watch to Holll.wood paradigm. Jim, who appraisesit; $/e re in suspense as to Cassicl nantion, then, pungesus irl medios phetherhe wil noticethe picture.t first he does res and poceds to reduce signs of iis sefnot, which increases the tension,but then he does. conscrouaness s he lookst the pictue, the shot supenposes accomplhesand omniscience.The narratron this reduction by meansof spatial hrs memory image of Roses a girl, then his omnlpresence, repetition of story infomation,

CLASSICAL N&RTON 33

minimal changesin temporal order, nd pays This continuous nusical ccompaniment between resticted nd ettively hrestricted functions as naration. It !0ouldbe easyto show pointsofview. It is in the light of theseaims that that film music stives to ecome as 'an-6paent we must assessthe power of that celebratd as any other technique- viz., not only t-hesneak, Holywood'continuity.' Because we see no gaps, in but the neutrality of the compositionls8les we never qestion the narration, hence never and the stndrdizedussto which they ae put quetionits source.When,in aPenthnuse Q9S1I ('La Marseilaise' for shots of France, tmbbing the scene slfts fo a nightclubt a luxury ycht hlthms for chase 6cenes), theodor Adomo and and the voice of the club'sbandeadermntinues Hanns Eisle have hapedsmm upon Holyrooal unintrupted, now boailcast llom a radio on music as pleonastic and self-effacing; Brecht boardthe yacht, we cancognize te naFtion's compared fim musiCs 'invisibiiqy' b the onipresence but r'e ae ass$ed that no hwnotist's need to conto the conditionsof the significnt story action hs ben suppssed. At trance-33 Yet caing the music 'transpenf is as the end o a scene,a 'diaogehooli anticipates tme brt uninformative s cling th enrre the beginning of the next (e.g., ,Shall we go ro Holl''wood stye insibe. I mrsic functions lnch?,4ong-shot o cl);such a tctic implies narmtionaly, how doesit acmmplishthose tasks tht the narrtion perfectytansmits the actlon. charactesticf classicanarrtion? Crosscutting signals omnipresence and unThe sourcesof Holywoodm music show ts estdcted point-of-view,q'hie editing witin the nnational bent very cea. In eighteenthscene deegates to the characters the job of centry melodama, background music ws forwardingthe sty ction.Chaptrc4 and 5 wi plyedto rnderscore damatic points, sometimes assesshow nnational concens have shaped even in ateruation with ines of dialogue. clssiclpattems of $pace and tiDre.At this point, American melodramaof the 1800susedsporadic it is ivorth ooking briefy at onetechniquethat is vamping,bui spcclacle plays and pantomimes seilomconsideed a part of narration at all. relied upon conrinuous musiral accompniment.ra The most imporant inuence upon Holll.woodfrm scoring,however,was that of ate Music as destiny ninetenth-certuy opetic and symphonic music, and Wagner was the est of that Fom the start, musical ccompanimenths influence. Wagler was a pedectmode, 6incehe proded the cinema' most overt continuity exploited the naratio possibilities of musc. factor. In the sient cinem4 pino or orchesrrar Harmony,rhy'thm, and 'continuousmeody, could mwic n along with the irnages,pointing them correspondto the play's damatic ctior, and up nd rnarking out hor the audience shod leitmotifs could convey chracte's thoughts, r$pond.Non-dicgeLc leaslsspervacive music in poinl up paalels between situations, even the eary 1930s, but te ise of symphonicsconng anticipte action oi crete imny. Adorno,s in the l,ork of M Steine, Erich Wolfgang monogaph on Wagnr even aBues that the Komgod, Erest Ne\uran, , al. reasserted ilream of the Gesamtkunstwerk anticipated the classicalcinem'sinterdst in using music to flow thoroughly; rationalized tifact of the culture continuouslyalong with the ction. Stravinsky's ndusty, s exempifiedin the Hollywood fi1m.35 comprison of film musicto wallpaper is apL,nol In the ery teens,fim tade joulnals soemnly only tecauseit is so stmngly decoative but supplied theater pianists \,ith oversimplified because it frlls in cracksnd smoothes dovrnough accounts of Wagner's pctice. One pianist textures-3oFilmmakers have long rccognized e).plained: 'I ttch cetain themeto eachpelson thse functions.As ealy as 1911, a therer in the pictur and work them out, in whatever musicia advised payersnot to stop a number folm the occasionmy call fo, not fogetting to abruptly when the scenechanged.3lHoll)'wood use popular tins if necessary.,36 When Carl omposes claimed trat suddenstops nd stts Joseph Breil proudy caimed to be the ist were voidabeby the process of imperceptibty compose fo .!vt a scorefo a film, he said he fadingthe musicup anddown,the practiceknown used leitmotifs lor the chracte*.3? Silent fim in the trade as 'sneakiig in and out_'32 smres,usually pastedtogetherout of standardized

34 THECLASSICL IOLLYIVOOD STLE, 19I?.60 snatchesof operas, orchestral music, anil popular musc can be anyvhere, ad it can intuit the tunes, dheed to the crude leitmotif dea see g ormatrc essence of the action. lt remins, 12.16). Ealy slmchronized,soud filtns with noweve, motivated by the story. Wlren diaogle mrsical tracks contnued the pactice: wheD \rre rs pesenl, the music must drop out or confine Beethe Danube, we hea The Blu Dlube' (ffu tsell to a subdued coloristic bckgound. .lf a Wedding March t19281). q6' rhe posLtggS scene with sient spots, te _rs .ntespeised resurgence in film scoing, Wagner emained the orchestrtionis tirned so closely that rt L [hicker r"odel..Mosl of the roajor studio composers werc dunng l.he sjlent shots.lt must then be tbinned tralned rn Euope and influenced by the down in a spit second when dialoguecomesin.,{6 sumptuorsochestration and iong meodiclines t usl. as ctassicalramprwork or edil.inq becomes charcterislicof Vicnnese opera.33 Ma_rSteiner more ovt whn there is lite dialogue, so the ,nd Mikls Rzsa expicitly acknowedged mustr comesInl,oits own as n accompaniment for Wagner's influence, as did Erich \olfgang pnysrcal action. Here music becomes expressive Komgold, who caed a film ,a textless opeia.d (codtng to cetin convenLions {s|,3tichamony Chractes, places, situations ll werc ,or suspenseor the mcbre,chromaticism for relentlessly assigned motifs, either oginal or l,enslon. arked rhyhm for chase s.enes).4? A boowed. When motifs were not employed, 'stng the music can underline a signjficant certain passagesfunctioned as a rccitative to cr ^in. rne ol drlogue very much in ihe manner of spefific atiitudes.to lh scene(e.g..comlc lnus,c, egnreenth_cen[u] melodramasuspnse music).{uBrecht complinedrhat with Music can also renforce poinrof-ew. tL such constantly p6ent music, bu ctos re esrat)tshes lime and place as asily s dos an fransformedinto sient opera singers.{r But Sam nre-tueor a sig: Rule BriLannie.over 6hots of rjotdwyn gvethe mostlespadvicc:.Wrirc mustc London, erghteenth century pastjche for the like Wagner,only ouder.,i2 c,te!.tL: or::!ro:::-urBpo,,oi,rt946). rn sconns . Like the opea scoe, the cassica tn scoe Lut Llp 19661, lor Rzsa modeled his scoreupon entes into systm of naation, endowed with ubussy in orde r,osugge"t Van Cogh perio.as s somp.degpe of spjf-conscjousness. range o[ ro,lns 'unrnc{iv. us of musical narration, i{no\{ldge, and dgce of communr(arrvenes". norrywood counterposs Lh possibiitJ of The use of nondiegetic music itsef signals tle suDJecrve musicl point.of-view The music ofl,en aTaon s awareness of fcing n udience,lor \precses characiers mpnra star/,s agitsted the musice\isr" solplyfor the peciato.s benel muslc tor innr turmoil. orrinous chords for rhe scleol lhe orchestral for.esemployed and lpnsjon,and ihe like.In The Jazz Singer g2t,, he symphonir rrsdilion itself cta an we k-ow Jkie is tjinking of his mo[he-rwhen,as rmpesona vash of sound befitting the unspecific h 5pes her picture, we hearthc .lvsmmy.tue rn naralor ol lh.assi.al film.arThc scorecan also rhe score. During rhe speof subjcliv;6ms of Desard to be omniscicnl. !rhl parker Tyer has tn l94Us, Dusicalexperiments inrreasdtthe cue voct appaatus of desliny..{a ln the bound r945j. playbck creds sequence,the msic can ay out motifs llee:in..in .Spe to rvebcr(ion in Murd*r, My S&ppi lt944l, As come,,even laggg-them l,oacmrs'names.During onecrrLrcnoted t the im. weird colori"tic effecls th: trl^m, adhres [o classicl narratron.s .mullc m:re commonberaseof .the vogle for rui ol onty a owng gimpsesof iG omriscience, ::cm1 nlms clealg as when th,escoreanlicipatesLhection by .with mnesi. shock, sust^.nse, a few neurosts.- and *Deep kindred psychological and Il Valtel rlg47,. for instance, psychratnc l"i"1t" thpmes.Thp music countemart of lhe Jus[ eore rhe fon]rct approachps Lh lovers,lhe troubld mental sttesdepictedin thes; films is a music swiy lums from plpasaDtlo sinister. s musrct style which emphsizesvagueness and ueogeAntheitputs it..The rhara.tersin a film sraDgness, especialyio lhe alms of harmony daDa.never know wh|. is goin8 to hppen tj ancl them, brt the music always knows..6 .ocheslralion.qs By the mid lg30s, musrc courdshttl easiy from unestictive to re;tnctlve Most importanl, musical accompanient ls \ewpornls! s when a character hums a tune ro cornunictive only wi{,hin ihe boundarieslaid hlmsel nd then, as-he steps ouidoos,Lhe down by classical nIration. Like the camea, orches{,ralkes it up.50Holy.wood music could

CLASSICI NRR.ATTON 35 eveo cre3t misleading na|.ration, as in discodancs, but orly by becomingidentic$rith tuertoi^ clory t1944\: whenthe pisoner Jean the score of the frlm, the score that had been lelsBonct h wntsto goto chuchto coness, the 'rehearsed' under the cedits. lhe nation,s musicis sentimentl,but onceBonetlets him go, power lies in the fact that Boneis alowedto score Jean fees ad the msicbecomes nippant.The the ast 6ceneonly by witing the scoe that the nrsr mustcl pssage is no{vrevealed as having narration td in mind all along. The narraions prcsented oly Bonet'smisconception aboutJean,s lrmrls re rvealed by its o.lmosl complet sinceity. Such pactices, even such deceptrors, anticipation of Bone'sconceto: the flm cannot e te logicalconsequence of makingmuslc_as complete the piece before h does. Only the narlatton dependent uponcharctcr casaliiy, conclusion of the action Bone finishing the Since assicl nalmtion tums neary all prforance alone in a burning buiding_ brrngs nticipatiorls and ecollectioDs of story actionover lhe conc{o and the film iLself ro cose. Ashe to the musicmusl not opemteas End' appeas on th 6ceen, the (noniegetic) ,chracters. complelety lce-roamtng narratjon,Here js one orchestra walovs the solo piano; now the diIence from Wagn1s method,,vhich did alo1v narratron cn havethe last word. and chord. tre music!o flaunt its orDniscience by ironicor propbtic uses ofmotif6. TheHolywood score,like lhe cla6sicdl visul style.sedom includes overt The reappearingnaration recolectionso fa,flng anticiptiors of th action.The music confinesitst to a momnt-by_ The finae ofllon,ooerSquareatsoilustrates te moment.heightening of the story. Slight ay jn whichrhe narralion canreappro\cnry anticrpatrons are permiited, but recolections of bt briefly at the films very cto"e.,ttris ctose pevious musical mteialmustbemotivted by a would minimljyconsist of a "the End tirle, repetiionof situation or by charactermemory. At usually.aganst a background identica to that of *Szzdoy the closeof Dinner for a Sold.er Qg44), the opening credits, and non.diegetic musi,.l Tessa's wrv" Lo Erjc is accompcnied by thp lorrish Su.h devrcs buckle rhe film shur, balloom music to whr.h they haddanced ur an mkin8Lhenarrator'simplv a disrr"er cunaicr, earherscene. The classic text thus reiesupon ike lhc curiainLhatcosps a play or The End our ormingstong associtions upon a motifs that concudes nove This nantion lrst entry. movement towad finaity is aid bare in the Thenaational limits whichthe cssieal nlm credits of l(ing I(on,0939). The openine credits puts upon music are dramaticly illushated in a.e set agamsta trianguar shapehich stediy Ha.ryouer Squo.re(1945). Duing the cedits, nrows as they proceed (seefigs 3.26 and 8.2?). omartic piano conceto pays non_diegeticaly No[ untjlthe?nd credit does the-triange diagram but does no[ conclude. Ely in the film, whenme eomptte (seefig J.2gr.5r ctosure Aer abol compose George Bonegoesto his apatment,his 970, it .6eems,fims seldom exploitedthese friend Barbara is playing the opening of his naratronalpossibilitics and insteaddropped the concerto, the samemusic we had head over the "Ihe End credit, shifted most of th opening cdits. But Bone's version is lsounfinished, and credits to tlie fina spot (as a signa of the enqr, Barbarahfatheradvises him to complete it. In the and expanded the cedits sequence to a Talmudic coulse ol the action, Bone is plgued by rntricacy. mur|erous mnesiac spells triggered by The nalration canaoril to be so modestat this drscordantnoises, which are reodered as point because tle 6lm has lreadyinfomed the subjective by me6of choratic and dissonant udenc whenil wi end.Chapter 4 shows how harnonies.Completingthe conctodrives these deadines work in this fashion.Chaacters also fron Bone's head,but in the lmt climacticsceDe, constantly *?e look forward to cosure. In 'hen he playsthe concerto at soire,he slIers ArhonsasTmvebr tt938l. Ttaveler tlls John: another reakdow.L Yet the perormance _lYhen lhis is l over,I want you to remember conLinues, and the action of the ast sceneis one thing.'In rhe 6nal moment of .play Girl accopanid[hroughout by BoDes concerto. .]usl, (1941), the heroine cals her maid to fetrh the ttone's romantir scoe winsout ovethe psychotic perfume she has wom for every flittion: The

36

TIIE CLASSIC, SOLLYWOOD SIYLE, 19I?{O

lst time, Josie, the last time.' *Urcernn GInry (1944)ends with Jean about to sacificehis life, Bonet: 'It s beena long road.'Jean: tsut it's come to the right ending.' The conditionsfor closure havealsobeennoniegetically nticipated by the nanatiot *The ShockPurc (1925)begins\eit expositorytitles that descbeDan Savageas a man who believes tt life is a batUe and the vinne is one who 'c command the ast eerve of physical power.'The next title continues:'And a-she wnted his son Rany to be like th[ o crry a final, decidingpunch into every conflict -.' Needlessto say, the film's action is esolved when Rany flattens the mn he is fighting. At the sla of *The Blrck llond (1950), a crawl tite tells of ltaian immignts living in New York at the turn of the century. Mos'[verc goodciLzem, the naration explains, who fought the Black Hand and eventually purged their commurity of its influence. The title thus anticipates Giok success in ovehowing tho Mafia. t the lm's close, firemn mutts, 'Ah, thesedgoes!' and th captain turns. 'I wonde lvhee you think Ameicns come fDm.' His retot conrms the rarraton's initial estimate of the immignts' civic virtues. In contrast, it is no trial desc ption of an avant'grde o modemistfim to say that suchfllms oftendo not et us knov'whenthey wil stop. Fims in these taditiors deiberately expoit a sense ol uncertainty bout their boundies,as rhen, in Last Year at Marienbad, (1961),the rato announcs that he whole story has cometo its end,'but neglects to add that the fim s only half over. The work of classicalnarration may lso peep out fmm the frm'sepilogue - apaof the final scene, or evn completen scene, that shows the eturn o a stabe nrrative stte. The sfienwriter FancesMrion slrggests endingthe lm as soon as possibleJr the action is Rolved,but 'not befoethe expected .wardsand pnalties ae meted out. . .. The final sequence shodshowthe eaction ofthe potagonistwhen he has achievedhis.desis.I-et the audience be stis6edlhat the fuLure of the prinripls is settled.'z Emersonand Looscall lhis a short 'human interest scene,an quivlentol And so they Iived happily ever aftr.6 All the 6lns in the UnS did incude an epilogue, however bie; in two-thirds of tem, the epilogue was a dstinctly demarcaiedscene.A 1919 film

+Loue and the Law (1919), sigrulledits epilogue by a very self-conscious title 'Patience,genue just one thing more.'Soon, audience, ho$'ever,Ro 6uch cuesweenecessay and an epiogue couldbe includedas a matter of course. Epiloguesll often tacitly efer back to tne openiDg scene,pong the aptness of Raymond Bellouis remark that in the clssicalfim Lne concusion cknowedges itself as a esut of the you for Me (1952) beg],ir\A.s1 beginswith Tony beingpeppered in the buttocksby a shotguD blast; a freeze fmectches him in a comic Dostue. The film ends with him sitting down on a knitting neede, accompanied by a freee iarne. +Szndol Dnnerfor a Soll,ier(1944)fimesits story by the habitul action of the family waving to pnes overhead; at the start, the planesare anonymous, but by the close,Tessais in love with one Dilot_ The familiar here-we-go-again, or "yclical, epilogueis a vaint of the smeprincipe. The epiloge can evenbe quite self-conscious bout its symmety,as is the framing naration of.*Impoc, (1944). Theopeningof the film coresponds to tl openingof a dictionary by an anonymous hand, ad the word mpact' is enlarged.A voice-over commentary eds the somewhat impobabte definition:'[mpact:Te forcewith which two lives cometogether,sometimes lo good, sometimes fo evil-' At the end, the epilogue retums to the dictionay, but the definition has chaneed: 'lmpact: The forcewirh whichI'o Iives cmn together,sometimes fo evi, sometimes fo good.' Theestotion of'good' s the stblestateceates an explicit baancingeffect, as doesshutting the mokto annonce the closeothe fim. Most cassical films use the toy action to mnfirm our epectatios of cosure without fi-trtherndgingsfrom the nnation. But *Impoct doesshowtht duing the last few seconds of the fim, the narlion can risk some sefconscious ness.The familir running gg,a motif rcpeated thoughout the frlm to be cappedin the final moments, rmindsthe audience to somedegeeof the arbitiness of cosure. nothe selfmnsciousmarking ol the naration's pespective upon the story word is the cameathat c:ares back to a hgh angle upon a final tabeau. Most ovel1is a finae like iht of*Appontnentfor Looe O941),in which an elevtor man urnsfmm the coupleand winks at the audienc. s we woud expect,such direct ddess is usuallv motivated

CISSICAL NRRATION 3? The sta systeE be unequivocaland significDt.5s of first impressions. lsoencourages l,hecrelion The peoplewho act in pictes ae selectedfo their roes because of the Fecise chaacter thL ey convey to audiences. For impressions The pinding coridor instance, the momentyou seeWalte Pidgeonrn The beief that classical narrtiotr is inYisible frm yo know immediately that he codnot do a mean or petty thing-so AI of thes fctos often accompanies 'an ssumption that the coopeate to einfoce the pimacy eect. specttor is passive.lf the Hollpfood film is a 'Many frms open with diaoguethat blds up cnbe visualized clearpsneof glass,the audience s a rapt onooke."Again, Hollwood's own an impression of the yet-to-be-introducd ptgonist; when the characte appears(played this. Concealmentof dscoseha6 encouraged by an appopritstar, caughtin a t}?ical action), atifice, techicianscaim, makes watching the the impressionis confrned. In the st sceneof frlm lik viewingeity. The cameabemesnot *Speedy (1928\, the young woman says that only the storytlle bt the viewer as wel; the (Emld Lloyd) has a newjob; her father absent narrator is.repaced by the 'idel Speedy with comments that Speedy cannot keep any job today would agee Few theorists obser-ver.'s because he is obsessed by basebI.Scene two Holj4vood'squation of it6 style th rtual begiB with an expository title identifying the peception,but contemporary accountsbave still to b qite inactive.Most crucial game being played in Yankee Stadium, mnsideedthe spectato concepts and shotsof the game ollow. Anothe expository fim theoristshave mpoyed cornmonly, now woks where he painting to explain the tite infoms us tht Speedy taken fom perspctive phone then see a soda cn the stadium. W like 'spectator Yet terms specttor's role. jek, going to fountain, with s the soda position,' spatial. Speedy and other . - placement,'tubject phone game's the score. The est of to learn metaphorsbreak the fim into a seies of views the judgment of Speedy's tageted toward n inert perceiver," IIl Chaptr the scene mnfi'rns Pop's chaactethrough gagsshowingSpeedycarrying ofthe as an account 5, I wil consider 'perspective' his baseblmania into his work. Dilogue title, of cassicalspace-For now, a epesenttion be epositorytitle, chracteaction,nd str peffiona and time will both invoving metaphor space (Harod caedhimself 'Speedy' in The Freslrman passes the cassica through seful. The spectator irst impression. a single fihn as if mong though m rchitectual ll925lrall nforce The primacy efect is not confinedto chaacte' volume,emembeingv/hat she or he has aheady guesses abouL upcoming izatio, athough first impessionsae pobably hazarding encountpred, most rm in that eaIn. In somesilent fi1m6,an into a tota imagesand sounds events,assembling Is unusually emphatic narration pevie$/s the itineary? shape.Wht, then, is the spectato's th most coheent it string-straight, o is. it Iroe like the baming, essentialtheme and establishes a the 'crooked corridors' that Henry James p ded readingof what wil follow. By e:ctension, decesof bnting' and foreshdov,/ing motifs himsef upon designing?s? objects, conditiors, deadlines - gain their The filrn begins, Concentateal,pliminary res triggem saiencyfrom the pimacy effect. ptrnges in rrudiqs us expositionthat Onee first impressions get eected, they ae and these becomethe stmng fist impressions, hard to knock down. Stemberg shows tht we basis for or e)eectationsacossthe entire film. of a motif as te Meir Sternbegclls this the 'prirnacy eect.'53 tnd to tke the frrst appearance tsting by 'tue' which can withstand seve point6 nrtive, th one, that in any He out a provided o contrary information. When, for instance, fist abot a cha3cter information situation ceates fixed baseline against which chracterfist pesentedas amiabelater behves gmmpily. lo justirythe grumpiwe are inclined later infomation is judged. As our elie examples indicte, the classicl cinema trades ness as tempoary detion.Gr This' tactic upon te primacyeect-Oncethe expositionhs (again,einfoced by the star system)is a conon ontlined a dnacter's traits, the chaacte should way in which the classical In pesents In the opening change or development. This meansthat actionsmust chactr emain consistent. o ealism (as in a frame by genre(e.g.,comedy) 6tory stressingthe factua basisof the ction)

38

THECrSSICAL HOLL.T WOOD STytE,191?-60

'i I

ot *Thz Miracle Wonan (1931),Florcnee Fallonis so distEught by her father's deth that she denouncshis congregtio as h}?ocrites and lanchesinto a sermonon the needfo kindness. n oppotunisticpomote tkes dvntage of he fervor and talks her into getting evenge on peopleby bcoming a phony fith healer. When we nexi seher,shebehaves cynicly.Bcause ot fist impessions, we seeher cynical sefislxress as a momenty abrration, crsedby eceptionl cicumstnces, and so we a not surprisedwhen love recallsher to her fathei's ideas_ Thepumacy eIect helps explain $,hy characte change in the Hollywoodfilm is not a drastic shift but a retun to the path fmm rvhich one has stayed, Fist impressions in place, the specttor proceeds thmugh the frm. How doesthis process wok? The nanation ceates gaps, holding back informaton and compeingthe spectator to fom hypotheses. Most mnimally and generaly, these hlpotheseswill pertain to what can happen next, but mny other hypotheses might be elicitad.Ihe spectomay ine how much a chrcterknows, o why a chaacteracts this way, or wht in the past the protgonist is trying to conceal.The viewe my asohypothesize abot the naration itself: why am I being tod this now?vhy is the key information beingwithhed?Stemberg sees evry viewing hypothesis as having thrc properties. hypothesis cn be more or less proale.Some hnotheses are vitual cetinties (e.g., that Bil wil survivethe fiood in *Sonoat B|II Jr. 19281I Other hypotheses are highy (e.9., impobbe that Bil wil not get the gir he lovcsr. Most hypothesesfall somewhere in between. Hj?othesescn also be more or less smult<tneous, that is, sometimesv,/ehold Dwo o more hypothess in balance at once, whie at other moments one h,?othesis simpy gets rcplacedby another.If a mn nounces tat he will get rrarried, ]ve hod simutaneoushjpotheses(he wil go tlrough with it or he ron!. But if a $,vombachelor suddenlyshows up with a bride on his aj.m. thc bchelo-hypotlesis is simply eplaced;the bacheor-hypothesis never competed with anothe possibility. Evidently, simultaneoush}pothesespromote suspense snd curiosity, q'hie successivehwotheses pomote surpise. Finaly, a set of hypoteses canbe more or lessrcrsiue. Namtion may forceus to ftame a ew sharplydistinguishd (in a chess hypotheses

gme, .here cnonly bewin, los. or draw,,o the nl.m may suppy range of overlppingand mdrslinctpossibilities {settingout on dp, onc may undergo a widevarietyof experiences).62 The {hree. scales of probabjliry, simultneity. anqexclusrvtty tkeus a consideable wavtowrd chaacterizing the ctities of the lassical spctto.Broadly.speing, Hol].woodnaration a-sks us to form hypothesesthat are highy probable and, sharply exclusive_Consider, as a naive example, l&oaing Timber (193?). In the tst scene,a lumber-mil o\e comes into sloon ooking for a new foreman. He tels the bartenderhe nedss tough guy for the job_Since we haveaready seen ou protagonist, Jim, entcr the bar, we form the h,?othesis tht the owner wil ask him. The erpecltjon is fairly pmbabe, and there is no informtion to the contrarv(no other mn in t}e room is identied cs a candidte). Thee is al6o narow anse of (either aLernatives ihe owner wii askJim-orhe wil notr.Few hlTothes.s aie as probabe as this, but one of the indicesof lassical nration.s reliability is tht it seldom equivocles abouL l_he likeist lew hlpothesps ai any eiven moment. Similrl),th classicat fitm shrpIy delimirs thc ange of our expectations. The characers queshons not 'What wi I do with my lfe?, but 'Will ehoose marriage or a career?, Even sub e cases opeat by the sarne ptln.;p1"".+Beggars of Li i1928rbcCins with a wanderjng yo;s rnon comlngup to a famhotrse and findinq a deadman insid. H lhenencounters a youniwomanwho tells.in flashback. howthp farmertried ru raor her and how she k'lled him. Thp alernarive explanations (suicide,accident,homiide,etc.) naow to a single one (seldefen6e), and this becomes steadily moe probable s the womant lale accounts for the detilqthe young man had noticed.True, farcicalforms of comedypermrr almost anlthing to happen next, but therc roe improbability and open+Ddedoess of pcrmissable rypohses are motivated as genicconventions! w adjust or expeclations accordingly. On 1nd Lne whole,classic naration areaLes Drobable and distinct h}'potheses. Chacte6,eoal orient_ tion olen rcinforces and zuides the dire4ron ese hlpotheses will take. Incidentallv. in *RooringTinber, Jira aueptste forenan.;job. By theading together everal Dmbable anal quiLexclusive hwotheses, wp participatin a

CLASSICAL NBRTION 39

All ofthe foregoinginsnces game of controled expectation and likely ustrate another feature of the gaps that classica nation olratioD-Thee is, howeve, more to th qeates: they are filed. Stebeg distinguishes spectatols activity. Any fictional naration can perrinnent gaps, wich the text never betwee'l. cal ou attention to a gap or it can distrct us the crucia uthodttvely ets us fill (e.9., Iago's motives), from it- In mysteryfilm, fo instnce, the detctive and &rnpororygaps,which sooneror ater we are cluemaybeindicatedquite casuay; able to frl.65It is a basic feature of classical may noticeit but re do not. If the narration thus distrack us, we do not form an appropriate naration to void permanent gaps.he perfect photopy leves no doubts, offers no expa' hlTothesisand the naation can then intoduce hypotheses, as nw infomation.These.successive nations.starts nolhing il cannot fini"h.66 Now it is Stmbegcalls them, cate surpise.63 The questions about Tonio i\ *Inte.Iud.e are chactristic of classical nmtion to u5e eventuy answered. Concentrated pelimijots would nary exposition, causa motivation, the se supse very sparingly. Too mny of denouement and epilogue - all seekto assure ead us to doubt the eliability of the naation, preliminry, that no hoesemain in the film. This pocess and tlre advanrages of concentrted, of gap-fiIing helps creat the continuity o in nedias res exposition woud be lost. ln ou impesionupon which Hollywood pides itsef. itinerary through the clssiclfilm, the bnister cnot consta[tly collpseunder our touch Each sequence, every line of dialogue,becomes a way of creatingor developing or rcnfiming Fo this son,classicanarration usualycalls hnothesis; shot by shot, questionsare posedand o ttetion to 8ps and aows us to set up The scenes answered. competingh)?oth6es. Our progressthough the film, as our simultaneous, *Be\gars ar'd of Lfe alold frr6t impessions fo*RocLringTmber are confirmed and or hypo+Interlude theses focus toward certainty, resembles the as doesa seqence cear instnces, (1957). calls on the conductor Tonio raphic design in tle titles of KnE Kong (fres The heroine 3.26-3.28): a pyramid narrowingto a point of of him hasbenidentica Fischer;our knowledge inteligibility. One screenpay manua puts it with hers.Whileshewaits fo him, the naration takesus to anothe oom,wheeToniois pying wel: 'n the beginning of the motionpicturevre ris.s don't picno for nolher womn. The scnp kno$' an]'thing. Du ng the coue of the th questions identityandTonio's story, informationis accumulated, aboutthe woman's until at the us to endwe knoweverything.'67 chcte haits, and these gaps encouage Again, one shouldnot concude that cassica constructsimutneoustenatives io be tested naration is naive or shlow, or sbte eects ir subsequent scenes. can be achived within the admittedly conOu hwothesis-formingactivity canbethought questions whichthe text impels stinedbounds of suchnartution. *Wine of Youth of as a se es ol (1924) literly, hegins us to sk.The questions cn be posed with three expositry tites: lo noth, s in lhebeginDing from one chaacler lhen our grandmothers of *MonseurBeaucare (1946: Wi therc be wereyoung,nice girls pretended more implict. to know nothing at all. wa?' Or the questions can be RolandBrthesspeaksof this question-posing Wen oqr moters were young,they admittd pocessas the 'hermeneulic code'nd he shows they knwa thing or two. The gls of todaypetendto knora' l there is to hownarrativeshavewys of delayingor recasting know. the questiono equivoctingabout the answe.64 The classical ciner aways delals and may There follov two parael scenes.At a bal in At the start of ecsst, but it sedomeqrivocates. rPlay Girl (1941), we are uncertain whethe 1870,a suitor ppossto a womn,ard she accepts: gold-digge whether the tite is 'Iheie hs neve been ove aEgeat as or Gace G ous!' At another dance in 1897,a suitorpoposes ironic. But when the father of her current bea to the mupet daughter,.and she too accepts, denounces her, not only does she not deny he epeating the line her mother had utteed yes past but heaccepts bribe to t the scandalous son go. The answer to our question,somewhat before. The s]'rnmetry is quite exacL similr situatiors,smesetting (a sofain an alcove), even delayed, is unequivoca.

40

THE CLASSICAI,HOLI,YI{OODSTYLE,19T?,60

the identical numbe of shotsin ch scene.At govd.handr.More importn, the narration this point, te nartioD has established itsf as mlsleds u n expository tjr,le at the verv higbly reliabe: the sceneshave confirEedthe outsel Overa still-life of the Maltrsefcon, th; titles' knowedgeof women,and we hve aedy title ecounl.s the stafue .s origin and endsby fomd stong 6st inpession_s about what the emaklDg l,hatits wheebouts remaina mysl,ery 'girls of today' will be ike. (The word ,pretends, 'to this dy (fig 8.29). \{hen he aracters final stongly suggestsomniscience.) lhen dre scene orly a leadreplicaof te falcon, the opening ti e moves to the pesent, our impressioos are stands reveaed as doublymftleading. The talc,on confirmed.Jazz babies and lomge lizards are in the still-life Eaybe the phony. anl the phrase engged in a wild pty. Mary, tfie granddaughter thb.gay' whi sr'emighr take as meaning ,i0 and dughte of the othe t\f,o eomen, refusesto nor hts story startd, acl,uallymeansreven marryher suitor. Weforma hlTothesis that tlis alte [ne. stoy concudcd., The openingtifle,s will not in the long nrn violate Lhe pallem qrxvocaton rs apparent only in reto6pect. The established in the frrst two scenes. Ove te whol same kind of misleading narration is ai work in fim we wat fo Mary to econcileheself to the f,trebegnning of aManhandkd, as I've aready decentyorng mn who Iovesher. A harrowrng suggestd (p.32). A more drasc example. probably faBily cisis demonshatsboth the strains and a lt.cse. is Hil,chcock's dupiicitous flashback th possibiitiesof marag.Mry nd he suito Inlhe beginning of Stuj,e,f nAt {1950). are sittng on tje sof(thesile o[ both previous 'lhe uneible and overi naration of the coutships). and he_ proposes. Sheccepts: "Iher myslery 6lm remains, however, finally bound by nas neverDeena love as geLas ours:'[L hs clssrcalprecepts. First. the narrion sLill beena long wait, but the narationa gap has dependschiely upon suspensd and forward finalybeen closed, and bJ n ironicepeitron at momentum:the stoy is primarily that of an that. The narralion can even_trod; LwrsL ,nvesligl.ion, evenif the goal hppens to be the embacing, the coupletunbe off the sofa _ that elurid-tion of a pstevenr. S;conJlt. the mysrery lends a small suprise to the finale. Our hlpo|m ehes completey upon carse and eTct, since thesesabout the conclrsion, estbiisheds vry the mysteryalwys rcvolvesamundmissineinks nao\tr and highy pmbable,are testedbut finally in thecausal chain. Third.those Lnksarelways vidated, and in a way tat asoilustrtes the lound,so even he gps of the mystery rlm are reculencof the Rule of Thee. tempory, not permnent.Most impo ant, the There is one genrc that my seem o ruD mystery fims orrt play of nrrrtion nd counter to ll these clajms about spertato hwothesis-foming is generically morvapd. activity in classiralrrration. The mysteryfilm itrnce Poe and Doyle, lhc rlassical dtective slorj sometrmes mkesjLsnaation quiteoi,ert:a shot has stessedthe game ol i/is that the narrato oJshdowy 6grr or an nonymous handmakes poposes to the reade. ln this genre, w waDt the vicler quilc awar? of a self_conscious,ncetainty, we expect both chacters and omniscient, and suppessive naration. Smilay, naratron to try to deceiveus, and we thereiore the mystryfilm encourags the spectato to eect erectspecific sorl_s of firsl impressions. cuuous, enoneous fist impressions, confounds the provrstonal ones, basedas much upon generic ewels most pmbable hypotheses, analstesses moveDtlons as uponwhat we ctualvlearn.We culos[y as mrlchs suspeDsc, tThemysteryl donol. feelberayed by lhe f'almn'sopening r ite, alwaysdepends uponhighly retrded exposition, srnc ,fair. rt is eqvalenl to the deceptive but lhe treaccount comingto light onlyat lhe end.r nartional manipulations in cer;in novels by tnc narratronmay even be revealed as retro_ AgathaChristie. John DicksonCarr. or Ellery spectivey uneiable. T\\s The Maltese lCueen. he classicalfilm thus can genericalll (1941\ Falron offers an interestingcontrast motlvate an urreliableand overtnarrlion, with fw?p of Youth. Not ony does Thespecttor moves through, or with, classical ,. the na-rtionabndon ik initial adherence rouywmd nration by castingexpeclatrons ln to,.Sam Spade'spoint-of-ewby shong rhe tie lorm of h,?otheses which the tFxL shpes. tfllung ot his partner Archer,but the rlarraton Narrl.ioo is fundamentallyreliable, allowing aso declinesto show the killer (we see ony a h]'potheses to be ranked in oder of probbility

CLASSTCAI, NARRATION 41

and nroved to a few distinct atemtives. Sumnse and diaoie on ae secondary to u" to 'hidl aternatives will be ",r.p"ro" aboul, tIe pas{.1kes a minor Curiosity con6rmed. of futue events. to nticipatiop in relation mle opened and systematicly Gaps re contirully pemaent. gap Lest this is and filled in, and no process o ntual, ecal sucha firn semobvious (1961), hich creates a s Ltstyear at Marenbdd firndamentally unelible narration, e lck of edundancy,n open and eatively impmbahle upon surprise a dependence st of hypotheses, pervasive ambiguity athe than suspen6e, abot the past that mkesthe future impossible

tn nticipte, and many gapsleft yavtning at the film's close.This is of coune ar extremeexample, bt othe narrativ lns contin nondassical fr]n's naration could narmtive strat.res. makethe initia xpositionlessce{irt, s does Godrd'sSauo qui peut (l/r lJi.e)(1980), or the Drtioncoldestblisha firur primayeffectbut then qualify or demolishit, asdo lmsas diffeent as Carl TheodorDreyels Da1 of Wrath (1943\and Prouidence(19??).The Hol]'woodfrlm Resnais's as these doesnot lead us to invalid conclusioDs, fms can; in the classicalnarative, the corridor rnay be nding, but it is never crooked.

Timein theclassical film

Our examinationofexpositionhs showntht the Flashbacksare rarer in the classicIHolryood narrational spectof plot manipultesstory time ^. than we normally lm thio. Tboushout the in specific ways. More generalll cassical period 1917-60,sceenwriers' manuais usually narration empoys chamcteristic stategies lo recommcnded not usingthem:as one manlput manipulating s|ory order arrd sLory d.umton. rl. Pmtcted or tequent flashbacks l.end ur srow These sttegesactivate the spectator in ways the dramtic progession, - emark that reflects mnguent with th oveall aims of the cassica Hollywood's genera reluctance to exploit cinema.Weshall also hve to pay someattention curiosit-y abou{, past story events.2 Of tbe one to how narration uses one device that is hundred UnS lms. only twenty uc any commonlyassociated with the Holywoodstyle,s nasnbcks at att, and fifleeDof thoseotcu rn hndling of time:crosscutting. silen! lms.tosl of thesearc brief. cxpository flashbacks frlling in informrion abouL a chacLer's backgound; this deviccwsobviously Temp'oralorder: the learch for meaning epracdby expositrrydialogue in the sound crnema..In the early years of sound. whD plays Alter dramas srpposedly withoutendings, here al]^ouLlrtats wecrommon film sources. Bashb.ks x a drama hich wouldbewithoutexposition ollrada way 10 open up stagylrial s.encs (e.g., oropening, andwhichwouldendceary. ,)h: Trtut,ThrouehDitf"pnr Ercs,The EvenLs would nofolow one Dother and tnotPdt"rfl ot Mry Dugon, Modane X, all t929r. especily woud notcorespond exacty. The Another vogrefor flaohbacks n from the lale fagmentsof mny pastscometo bur-y 1930sinto the 1950s. Bet"een1989 and 195g, themseves in a singenow.The futuie mixed four UnS filmsbegin with a framcsr.ory andflash among memoies. Thischmnology is that ofthe bc|( lo emunt tbehulk ofth min cl,ion before etming to the frame. yet those four fiashback frms still compiseessthn 10 Dei cent ol the JeaEpstin, witing in 192?, thus describes his UnS frlms ofthe period.What pob;bly mkesthe lm Lo Glarc trois fores. Holll,wood cinema, perod seem dominatedby ashbacksis not the howver, efusesthe rdical play with chronology numerical fequency of the device but the that Epstein proposes; the classica fim normaly rnt cate ways it wa.s used: contradictory shows story events in a 1,2-3 order. Unike flashbacksin Crossfre(1947),pallel lashbacks Epstein, the classica filmmaker neetls an rrr Letter to Three Wiues G94g), open-ended opening, a threshod - that mncentrated, flbcks in Eow Greenl{los My Vaey 094I) pelimirry expositionthat plungesus in medros and I Walhed With a Zonbe G43), fl;shbacks res. Events unfold successively fom [hat. within iashbackftithin lashbacksin passag,e ro Adrance notice of lhe future is especialy Mo.rseUe (1944) and The Locket (1946). and a forbidden, sincea f,ashforward would mre rhe flashback nanated by a deail man in Sunse nrraton'sormiscience and suppessiveness overt Bouleuard(19501. (seeChapter30 on alternative cinemas'useo te It is possible,of course,to pesent a shift in flashforwardr. The only permrssibte manipulalion story orde simpy as such, with the film,s of Btoryorderis the Rashback. nartion overtly intervening to reveal the past
42

I1ME N TIIE CLASSICAI, FILM

43

of Rose Tdior (1918), an expository laThe Ghost that it will explain how tie nnounces inter-title situation becamewht it is; the title motvats ?e Kllng (1956)usesvoice-over, the flasback, documentry-style narration t motivae 'e6ticaly' its jumps bckin time. The aW of these overt intrusions shows that clssicl naration alEost always motivatesflshhacks by ,memory. mens of chack SeVeral cues coopeate hee: imgesof the aracter thinking, th chacter'svoice head 'ovef the images, dissove, opcc.a effects blurring fmus),mlrsic, and specific rcfernces to the time periodwe are abotto ente. If we seeflashbacks as motivated by subjeetivity, then the exkaordin'yfashionfo temporal mnipuation'n the 1940s cn be eplainedby the changing conception of psychological causality in the period. Flashbacks, especiay convoluted o contadictoryoneB, cn be jstifiedby tht incresinginterest in vulgarized psychology which Chapte2 hasrcdy Freudian discssed. flashbacks are motivatedby chcte Cassical memory,but they do not function primariy to revea chaacter' traits. Nor were Honvood practitioners paiculary interestedin using the flashbacklo estict point ofview; one screenwriteE' mnual suggests that \rnmotivatd jumpingof time is likely to attrlethe audrerce, thereby breaking thei ilusion tat they paicipatein the lives of the chrcters.'3 Even th contdictory flashbsck ThrcughDifferc Eyesor Crossfireseve not to eveal the telle's personalityso much as they operate,vithin the conventionso the mystery fim, as visual eprcsentations of ies. Jen Epstein'saim in ,o GIme trois fces - t reflect tle mixed temporality of consciosness, fagments of the pst in a singe novt !: is fa removed from Hollywood's use of flshbacks s rhetoric 'dispositions'of the naative for th ske of suspeDae or surpdse. Nor need the casscal lashbck espectthe liteay conventions of fistpersonnarration. Extended flashbacksequences usly inclde ateial tat the emembeing chact could not have witnssed o ktrowr. Chaact memory is simply a conveent inmediate motivation for a shil in chronology; once the shifi is ccomplished,there are no constsnt cuesto emind us tht we ae supposdly in mmeone'smid. In flashbcks, then, th

narrating chaacte executes the same faling novement that the narator of the entire fim does:ovrt and self-conscios at frrst, then cove and intermittenty apparent.Beginring with one namtor nd endingwith anothe (e.9.,I Woled With a Zombe), or compellig a aacter to temember' things she never knev/ or wil know (e,8, Ten Nofth Frederiic [1958]), or creating a deceased naator (e.g., SunsetBouleoar - alll thesetacticsshowthat subjctivity is an a$ihary pretext fo flashbacks. Cssical manipulations of stoy oder impy specificactitie6 for the spectator.Thseinvolve v./hatpsychoogists call 'temporal integTation,' th pocess of fusing the perception of the presnt,thg memory of the pst, and expectationsabout the futue. E.H. Gombrichpoints out tht tmpor integation depends upon the seachfo meaning, tbe dve to make coherensenseof the mateial epresented.aThe film rnhich chalenges this (1964), coherence, a film like Not ReconcIed. Last Year at Maznbd (1961),or Inda Song J975), must mke tempor integration dicut t" achieve.In the classicIfrlm, howeve,chaacter causality povdes the basis for temporal coherence. The mnipulations ol story oder in Not Reconciled. or Marrod re pzzingpaly becausewe cannot determin any relevant chaacter identities, taits, or actions whichcoud motivatethe breksin chronoogy. On tLe other hand, one easonthat cassiclflshbacks do not adhere to a chaacter's viewpoint is tht they must neve distact ifom the ongoing causa chain. The causesand effects may be presented out of stry order, but ou search fo thei connections musL be rcwaded. Psychologica causality ths peTits the cassicalviewer to integrate the presentwith the past and to form clear-cuth)'potheses boutfirtue story events. To paticipte in th pmcess of csting ever more naaow nd exclusive hypotheses,we must havesoid ground under our feet. Therefore, through rcptition withi the story action and a covety naated, 'objectve'diegetic word, the film givesus clear memoriesof causl mate; on this basiswe can fom expectations. At t same time, the search for meaning of which Gombli speaks guides s toward the motifs and actionsaleady marked as potentially meaningful. For example,motifs eveaedin the creditssequeEce or in the early scenes accumulate

44

TIE CI"{SSIC! HOLLI.WOOD ST!,E, t9r7d)

significce as our memory is amplifid by the elipsis.Wipesenjoyed vogre betweenI9B2 and ongolng story. Kunt? suggests that these I94l and appe-aed occasionallythereafter. Su einscribed motifs crete a vague dej-vu that opircal punctuation marks were ofen compred becomes gadually more meaningful: The entire mth tletrical o literary conventions (cutain, itinerary o The MostDand.erous Cara is to Dke eld ofapter). lVithin scene, ofcourse, some of its inltial frBre reodnbb, tn pogessively the same elipses coud be used. Afte the late reassuretrc subjectplungede, oruprointa the 1920snd until the early t95os,scenes oen began urcrtaintyof the figule.'5The clssicaaesthetic wilh. 6hot of a building o a sig ad then of 'plarl.ing'^and foreshadowine. of taggingtlaib drssolved to the acl.ionproper. n the sameperiod, aDooojec[s or uEure use,c8n be seenas laying a.wipe, eithe hador soft-edged, might folow out elements to be recaedlate in thc ause_ chaacter moving om one sub,sceneto another, eect ogic of the frIm. If temporality ard (Not unti the ate 1950s did a few fitms begin to causaif,y did not coopeate in this tray, the eliminte su irtema punctution and simply spectator muld not conshucta coherentstory out use the straight cut to link scenes and sub_ of the naration. scenes.)Such a clear set of cues ceats n Our suvey of narration has show that the orderly flow of rtion; compre the disrupove viewels sucressive hypotheses can be thught of effect, in t]e films of Eisensteinand Godard, ot s seies of questiots. Holywood cinema,s beginning a scene's action and then, part of the eiance upon chronology triggers th fida_ way though, inteupting the ction th a tite mental query: What wil happen next in the [hat lells us when e ctjon js occurrinpstory? Each shot, wrote loos nd Omeson,.is Punctuation maks enabe the naration to skip pannedto lead the audience on to the nex.At unimportnt intervals by sipe omission. The any point, the specttois wonderinghow things montge sequence ets the aation reprcsent, wil comeot in the next scene.6 The fowad flo, however befly, those. intervs. The montage of l.hsehypotheses may be retaLedt0 the sequencedoes not omit time.but compresses it. A irreversibility of the fim.viwing experience; paJ pison sentence, or a career can be summd Thoms Esaesserhas speculateda[ the up in a few shots_ Fims which cover a gear channeling of chronotogy intocausality hclps t]e length of time may me heavy wether of l,lewer'manBe' Lh potnt iallydisturbinp nture monlge sequcnces, as does .lJ,g,4 frrae tt960). of the film-viewing sitution.? Theetiv;yclose wnrcnpmploya monlages ofseasons andsemeslers correspondence between stoy ode and to cover ou yeas on a college campus. The nation oder in the classcafrim heps the mon[ge sequencewas especially importanl_in spctato create an oganized successionof I'teay adaplations. since rhe pots of novels hlpothesesand a securehythm of questionand tended to cove ortensive perios.e So critical

Duration, deadines, and dissolves

Like order, classicalHolywooddration espects very old conventions.The narration shows the rmportnteventsand skips the interyals between them. he omitted intervas bemmecodifiec as a set of punctuation mrk6: expositoryintr_tides (The Next Day') and opticaleffects.Fom 191? to 1921,lade,ins and ,outs and iis-in6 and _outs \ere the most common optic tansitions between scenes_ Between 1921nd 192g,the iis The mjldest rd most frequent form of the fell into disrs,epacedby the fade as the most , oeaofiners the appoinlmenl This is most eden common trarsition.In e soundera, fadesand rD,[Je romnce line of action, kheein surtor 0rssolvs wene lhe mostcommon sigs oftepol wlt lnvltea woman oul
for dinner,{o a dance, etc.

wee montages to tempora construction tha they were also called .time-lapse. sequences. Thc classicalfilm creLes s pthmed durlion noo y trJ what l eaves our but by a specific, powerful dece. The story aclion sets a limit io how long it must Iast. Sometims this rrreans sipy a sticty confrned duation, as in the ramrlrar convenLion of one_nigh[_in-a.mystenoushousehtms (fip Ca/ and the Cana rJ llg?.t l, Seue n t@tprinfu.to Saranltg2ql, +Onp Fightened Nilhr ll935l, rSI th p O.rops [ 932r.Morc commonty, the story action sel,sstipulatcd d?odlrps for the

TIME IN TTIEC.ASSCIFILM

-15

f the frlm makes mnce pimary, the acaeptnce, rjectio! o dee$al of sch intatios foms a sigificant part of the drama (e.g., *I nterludeIl957L *TheKing and the ChorasGirl t1937). The very tit'le of *Appontmtnt for I'oe (1941)conveysthe same idea. Eveo if the frlm uponthe romance line of doesnot ely completely action, many senesinclde t making of Just a$mtjfs appointmntsfo ter en:countes. anticipate frtue actions,so appointmentsgear towad ater scenesour expectations The deadline prope is the stmngest way in with narmtive which story duation @opertes causaity-In effect, the charactesst a limit to to the chain of cuse and the time spannecessay UnS films of the thee-quaters effect. Over contained one o moie cearly aticulted dedlines.The deadinemay be stipulated in a in of dialogue, a shot (e-9.,a clock), or crosscuttingi rhatever deviceis used,it must pciry the drational limit thin which causeand effect can opcrte.Most frequently,the deadlineis. loclized, binding togethe a few scenes o in *Missrulu pattening only a singleone.Scenes Bett ll92l) are strutured ond the epated of dinnerhour. A sees of the family's deadlinc in *Iti8lr ?itn (1960)ae governed short episodes must build a bore by the fact that the Feshmen deadline is of The ocalzd by seven o'clockt the fim's clima-r.n *Fire coursemost common l5 one of the pmtagonists Down Belau (1957), tpped in the hold of a ship; it is on fire and is pedicteduponte 6inking, ard the suspense unil te situahon becomes of tme slov,r danage *The Cantenille G/ros(1944)presnts hopelell. the climactc scene of the ghost and young by towing a tickirg Wiliam poving thei couage WhenWiliam says,'lf bombacossthe andscape. more!' the Ghost it'll hod for twenty seconds strtto munt the secodsoff. The conventionsl is the mostedent instanceof lst-minute rescue how the classicalfilms dimax often tums upona deadline. dedline my also detemine the nte goal frm.lle potgonist's stuctue of a clasical can be straightorwardly dependent upon a deadline,as whenin *n oaringTmber(193'l\, Jm agreesto deliver eighty million feet of lumber in Punrh (1925) gives the sixty days. *?tu Shock potagoni6tthe tsk of finhing constrctionof a buiding by a certain date; the frmk last scene

occuE on te dedineday-In 1940sfrlms,the use ol the flashbackcan also imit the dwation of the story action- For example, +No Leaoe,No Looe (1946) begins ,rith the pmtgonist nishing t a matmity wad; while he waits fo news of his chid's biIth, he tells anothehusbandthe story of how he met his wife. By halting the actin at a poiBt of crisis and flashing back to ea events, the film makes those events seem to opeate uder the Fessre of a dadline.(Seealso ?e 86 Cloc[19481 and Eaw Dea.l $4a].\ *Urcernin Glorl {1944)offers a clear example to unify of how appointmensmix with deadines the dution of the classicalHollywoodfim. The fims action takes plcin Franceunder the Nazi presentthe escape Occupation. The first six scenes ol the convict Jean and his captue by the policd detective Bonet; in these portiorx, alternating point-of-view cIets sspense. lfhen Bonet hs captued Jan, we ealn that the Gestapowil if a prtisansaboteur shootonehundred hostages doesnot surender in ve da1's.This long_term deadlinestructues the bulk of the film, as Bonet t es to convinceJean to pose as the saboteu, While n syethe hostages. help the Resistance, the deadlinehovers over the action, the tvro men quarel, villages conspirc gainst them, Jean fas in ove with a village woman (entaiing and Jean tries sevela smal-scale appointments), times to escpe fom Bonet. Finlly, in the to penultimat at ve o'clock Jeandeeides scene, it?' sende himsel: 'Deadine's six o'clock,isn't He turns himsef in. It shoud be evident that deadlines function narationay. lssuing from the diegetic ,old, they r4otivate the fim's durational limits: the story action,not the naTato,seems to decidehol,v long the ction will tke. Planning appointments makes it 'natual' for the narration to show the meeting itself; stting up dedlines mkes it 'natural' for the nanatiod to devotescreentime to showing lehethe o not the deadlin! is met. stress[he Moreove, appointmenls and deadnes forward flow of story action: the arrows of the spectato's expectations are tumed toward the 'When,i enconteto come,the rce to the goal. (1929), sl(s te sailor ftom Wisconsin '*ppiouie prit for a date, we erpect to seethe date; when he sayshe has only four daysof leave,we are not surprised that he should ask her to mary him before his leave is up. Deadlines and appoint-

46

1.HECISSICALHOLLl'\rr'OOD STYLE,1917.50

ments thus peectly suit clssical narration,s peceptul duation that cold aid editing in mphasis upon elicitjng hypotheses ab;t the cetrng a semless temporal continuity. If wo futue. chacterc are tking, the sound edito muld As a fonl plinciple, the deadlines onofthe make the continuoussound conceal the cur. .\ most chactristic maks of HolbMood Bitish edito sumnaedmecn pactice:1l dranaturgy.Altrnative styesof filmmkingcn oen be recognized by thei efusal to set such This flowingof soundove a cut is oneoithe explicit imils on the duation ofstoy aion. The mosliDportaot fLues of he editingofsound altmatives vary. Ozu structues his flms by nos-- in prticulr, ofdialogue films.The repeted outinesand cyclesof family behavior. comptet?iy parallel cut ofsound and action Jac4ues Tati uses a 6xedduaiona week. a day shouldbethe exception rather than the ruleor tno) simply ae a bock of time without a . . . Most editorstoday makea p.acticeof deadline. Eisensein often composes filn of tappingthe last oneo two frmesf spaate, duationay distinct episodes (e.g., Ir,on modxtiononthe soundtrckofthe shotthey the Terrbl11945]). T\e'art ciaerna'of Feilerico are Iengoverontothe oncoming shot. Fellini, Ingmar Begna, or Michelangelo Atonioniis chaactrized party by its refusalof That is,. the shot change pecedesthe do$e dadines,its eplacement of ppointmenlsby cl1age by a sylable or a wod. This dalogre chance encoontes, and its bpen, endingsthat do cutling point'(Barry Sll'sLerm) became standard not low the audienceto anticipate -whenthe by 1930.'zOn other ocrasions. of course, the chain of cause and effect rvil be completed. A sound cn-Iead the irnage; very commonly a Holr.wood versionoftuueaaro (1960)woull be clssical 6lm will moj.ivate a cul by an oIscreen sure to includea scene in which someone says:.If sound,I he Doise of a doo opening, a chrcter we don't find Sndrin three days,her supplyof sltmg to speak, the music of a adio fom foodwil run out.' another room - these canall helpsound flosover Within the cassical scene,the iewer assumes a crt. dutional tontinuity uness sigs say Anothe q,y ol using sound to secureduraotherwise. The individual shot is a-ssumed to tional continuity s to empoy diegetc muslc. 0{. convey a continuous time spnwhichonly editing cousenon-diegetic music, as accompaniment, hil crdisupt.Yet the cassica cinema is a cxrem Deen..pesent in the silent cinema,but there ts of cutting;the single-shot sequence is vey rare. quauty as naraton madeir temporally bstract. Thus dassical editing stategies have to signa tn the soundfilm, diegetrcmusir could co,er tempoal' continty. Match-on-datnnaf,ttilg is cetan gapst the level of the image whie stil te most erpicit cue for moment_to moment proJectrng sens of continuous tinae_ For coDtinurly. If a chmctr srls to stndupnr une Flrng (1942), Fortress a couplesit shot and coniinues the 66yp11"n1 in tie neru :**p]",--downto iinher in a es{urnl whilpa bandis shot,the classical prcsumptionis that notime has pla),rng. The mel is abbreviatd Ly mear" o[ been omitted (Eeefigs 4.1 and 4.2). Erlitors are ssolves, ceating ellipses on the visul l.rck; bul wamedtha{,if they misrnarch action,audiences tne bands musiccontinuca unintcrupled. The wil be confirsed about tempolprogession.ro Dleedrng 0t music overlargeellipses suggests how rJutthe ml,ch-on.clioD cut, expensive andlime easlylne tempoa vagreness of mus;c canDke consuming,is relatively rare; of alt te shot, soundful narative functions. chages in a eassicl film, no more thn 12 per The dissolve,the most common indication of cent ae ikely to t matcheson action. In the duatioD,aforilsus an inshuctive example of how absence of inJormation Lo the contary,spatral clssrcal nartjon does it temporl work. eorLm cues, sch as eyeline_mt{h rulting,imply vlsully, th dissove is simpya variant of lhe oratront mntrnuty. lcl fde.ou[ ovrlapped with a fadin _ but The adoption ofsynchmnized sound-on_film had it is a fade duriog whi {,he sceen is never btank. a very powerfuleflecton how the classica cuema I lalmn or e versgetheatlegoer. a lap represented storyiime,aschptpr23will show rlo in al,ssorve passes unobtrusivel, by on tle sr:reen del,ail. Diege[ic sound cealed a concrete wrl,hout his beinga?vae l,hatil hd hppened. A

TIME IN THECI/SSICI FILM 4? lap dissolve sewes the pupose of smoothly wasqckly The dissolve the story-'r3 advancing restdctd to indicatng a short, oftn indefinit (e.9.,a dissove inteaal, if only a few seconds to ful shot). this makes the a om a detail dissolvea superb ivay to soen spatial, gaphic, and even tempoml discontinuities. The dissolve coud bend newsee footgeith studio shots, cove mismatched gre positions or scen direction, o bend an extreme-ong shot with a (see 4.5)Filrnmakers cos-up figs 4.3 thmugh of in Empend Russia showed that the the 1920s dissove opens up a realm of sheery graphc possibilities, but Holywoodseveelycurtied (suchas Josef these:apat om a fw exceptions Von Sternberg'swork), the Holywood dissolve becarne, as Tamar Lane puts it, 'a link- .,. It bdges over from one situation to another without a jarrng break of action and thout matter.'l! needfor explanatory trackwas AftI 1928, the dissove onthe imge accompaned by a soundtransitionas well. At fist, lhe poceduresof sound editine nd the unctainties o sourd pespective made puzzed.'Imagine switchingab.upty technicians from the bast of a jazz orchsha to a flash of a whispered conversation, then to the rush of a train nd bacl Io th sll,envcmpire sleeping peacefullyn her boudoir. Such a rush of conflicting soundoughi to leavean adjence s nervousas a doe at a waterhole.'1s Sound dissolves weredeclareddistacting; while a close up of a facecoulddissove to a ong shot of a cmwd,to mx even hnefly the cha?cte'sspeech rith the crowd's bbble wold result in kcophony.Instead,the chaacte ivould compete the dialogueand pause;the crowd noisewould then besneked in over the dissolve.Like the oIscreen soundthat motivatesthe cut to a rew space, the soundbridge here may sometimesvery slightly anticipatethe next image.Both imageand sound procedures dissolving showhow,once a trnsition became codified,it coudpovide a continuous and unself-corscious narrtion. Like our experience of story order,the viewet's experienceof story duation dependsupon a seachfo mening.Gombich$ites: liv cannot judge the distanceof an objectin 6pce beforev,/e have identified it and estimated its size. We cannote6timatethe pssage of time in a pictue wthout intepeting the event epresented.'16 n Lhe classical cinema,the nartions emphasi6 uponthe futue gearsou expecttions towardthe rsolul,ion of srspense. lt is this that delarmines what periods the nartion witl elininat or compress. When this doesnot happen,when the naation dwelsupon'damatically meaningless intervals,' dation comee fonvad as a s'.stemin the 6lm aud viesth causalilyfor promincnce. (Seelhe variouscritiquesr? of Hitchcock's use of the long tke in Bope [19481) Tme in the classical fim is a vehicefor causity,not process to be investigated on its own. Hencethe stcture that a walk witbout dilogue is 'ded'or wasted time. (Compare of the the durational importance silent \/k in Deyer, in Antonioni, and, from a different culture, in the Navajo fiIms descibed by SoVorthandJohnAdair.3) More genemlly,classiclnation's insistence upon closurerewardsthe searchfor neaning and makes the time span we expeinceseem complet unt. Even fmm shot to shot, ou expectation of csally signifrcnt cmpetion contols hov,/ we respond-'We hardly alize that we look at two differcnt shots if the 6rst one showsthe beginnng of an ction and the ne one is eontinuation.'e The match,on,action cut, the beeding of sound over a cut, the useof dissolves nd diegetic musicall confrmour expectation of completionThevieweisbility to testhypotheses against a film's nnfolding cuseand effectmeans that duation again becomes secondarf to a sarchfo Mrtive meaning. Hollywood has also epoited our search for tempomeaningby shaping the felt durationof o expeience. Narative thythm' canbe thought of as a wy ir vrhicb narrafion focusesand contols successve hypotheses, Camera movement, especially ifit is independentofthe lgues and closelylimed to music, cn cete momentby-moment'arc of expectation-2o Editngwasthe eaiest hythmic realm which the classical cinema systematicaly expoited; by 1920, scerarists were ecommendingusing shot shots to increase excitement.2l R-htthmic editingis still far fom ceay udeNtood theorctically, but certaiy the time neededto gasp a new shot depends partly upon eraectation. It ppars that if the viewer is prepared and il the shot is graphicaly comprehensible, Lheewcr equirps betweeahal a second and three seconds to adjust to the cut.22 Slowy pced editing leves a

48 THE CLSSICAI HOII'WOOD SIYI, 191?.60 confotablenagin, sothat the newshotis on the seen quite long enough for the ewe to assimilate it. But i Holywood,s u6e of cceleEtedediting, the viev,/e is ped o expecr very naToyrange of altemativ outcomes and {.he shors then flashon t}esceen soquicklytat the ewer can'read'them only in gross terms: do they confirm or disconfinn the inunediat hlTothesis? This pocessis evident in the lastminute escue,vrhenal the viewer wantsto know s whethe the rescres si arrive in time, sothe acceleating editing builds excitment by confiningeach shot to posing,retading,and eventuatty answeing lhis quesl.ion. Thebility of rapid editingto funnelthe spectto,s hlTbtheses rtrCo very narrowchnnels is confirmed by Robert Parrish'sclaim that fasLpare cn mv;r sory pmbems.sseting LhaLThe noarinq 1.uenhes (1939r works like .one big nin;ty_mmure montge. Pari6hnotes: The udjence nevergets arhance to elax and think aboutte story holes. They'reinto tle nexl scene before theyhavetime to tink aboutthe last onc 23 Crosscutting Strictly sraking, crosscutting carbeconsideed a ctegoyof temating editing, the intercalation ol fwo or more diIleent sees of imges_If tmporal simultneity is not pertinnt to the series, te cuttingmal bc clled porll"l edtling; rl lh seresare Lo be Laeo s temporally slmuttrneous,Lhen we hate arosscr/ing, For exampe, if the film ltemal.es imges of wealth and povy with no temporal .eation to one nother, we havpallediting;but ilthe ch man sittiDg down to dinner whie the beggar -is outside,we stffds hv crosscutting. Criffith /r,olproncp 1916/ uses bothtypes: paratet editin8 maaes abstactanalogies smonglhe fou epochs, wnlle crossrul,ting withir each epochdepicts srnuttneous actions. n tle cassica Holllwood cinema.psrallel editiDgis dislinctty unliLely . altematlve,sinceit emphasizes logicalrelations athr than causity and ronolocv. Crosscutting is a narrarionalpioc"ss tru o, morees ofaconin different locales are woven togethe. Ou herogetsup in the mominalcut l, tle bossookingat the clock;cut Lo;r hero eating beakfastj ct to the bosspacing.Christin
hs pointed out thet such scquence ]e manpulatsboth order and duation.r{ Within eachltneofaction, the eventsare consecuve; but Detween, the.lnes of actioDlken s wholes, t tempoal reltions are simutnco. The heo gels up. Boewhatefon, the boss looks at rhe crocti bul .cross the whole sequerrce, we rnderslrct that ure the heo getsup and mmes

I ok lctor "th9 invoved. which nouer Metz does trot enon:-usully, rmsscutting cralesellipses. [f we cut tiom hero waing up to boss l,o hero revhg, the shot of the bosscovers al the time i[ h*"

bosswairsfor .

ti"re i" yet

l:.01,. .T arnost lways Bkips ove inlervals in exclly l,his wEy. Uossculting, then, creaLes a unique set of tmpoafrelations-- order, ellipsis. simultaneity - wrch tunction fo specificnarrationl ends. remarton ot narratjorl poinl_of_ew hs a , roDg hrstoy in liLeture Dd other Jts, but ossc{.tjng is oen linked to specificalty nrneteenth,cntury hetrj.al and literary sources. Nicholas Vardac found .cross_rursen6 n nineteenth.cenLurJ drama. which used ju.rl boxse{'8 and ara lighting ro srah btweenines 0l actron._ Eisenslein tracFd Crif6Lh.s pralel monLage t]rough uhoatrical meodramaack to ulcfienss novels.,bThe analogieswith other rts emphsize the brevity of ihe scenes alternareo ad the Bimultanpity of the actrons rcprsenleo. Uhapter 16 wil show that botlr these sspets.1 crosscutting wr common;n Am,rjcan lilmmalsnglongbeforel9l?. But suchanalosies wh other ans do not specify all thc teaiures ol crasscalcossctting, Classical crosscutng,r.es out personalcdus anq eflect,crels dedlines.and freps narratron m etricting itself to a singecharcler.s pont_ ol-new.We mosl commonly think of crosscuLting as spporting a deadine - srpemely, the last_ mrDute rescue sitration. But a silent film might emploJ crosscutting in a geat may scenes _ as exposll,ron, s a rminder of characters,where. aDocs,nd especially as a ,/av In which narahon could control lhe viewer,i hypolhesis_ rarung. Urosscuttingthus revlsnttjon to be tt-tt" nanation knows that something .ot.y"lt. Impo{ntis happening in other hne of action,, Dul,lJus.onniscjence,true to classicalprpcept, s endeedas omnipesence. b 1920, Loos and Emeson advised the sc.en,

dress, wash, er.c. Crossc rng

TIME IN THE CLASSICALI'ILM

49

wite that two cosscutlines of action roud helD interested." Of e UnS silent keepthe audience frlms, 84 per ceri use extensive passages of cosscutiing. lvith the coming of souad, however, crosscutting becamefar less frequent. Of the UnS soundfrlms, only 49 pe cent use any cosscutting at all, and only 16 per cent use it ss extensively as did silent films. The reasonsale evident. Dialogue iaouldnot be cut as quickly as silent action, aod oosscutting lines of dialogue (done in Europe by Ren Cair and Fritz Lng) probably seemedtoo narrationaly intmsive for Hollywood frlmmaking.28The abandonmentof crosscutting thus becamemnsonant with a geater reticence on the part of sound-frlm aration. None the less, the pinciple behid cosscutting emained important for the sound filn. As

Chapter 23 l show, the hythm of sient film editing found functional equivalent in the sound film's rapid shis ftom scene to scene. In *?/rs Wh,ole Town's Talkine 935), our heroh boss notices that he is late and begins to inteogate othe empoyeesThe scene switches to Jones at home, asleep;he wakes up, noticesthe time, and ushes oL We then seeJones arrive at work. Such shifts in locale coud be motivated by sound links as well (music, adio or telesion bmadcasts, pho4econvesations, etc.). In suchways, a pid altemation of distinct scenes cold stimulate cosscuttinds characteistic play vi.ith time consecutiveode, ellipsis, and an oveall senseof simultaneity. A discreet narration oveNees time, making it subordinate to casality, while te sDectatofollows the causal thead.

Space in the classical fim

framings, discontinuity editing) but which were equally coheent and equally supporrive of cusality. Histoically, however, the classical constmction of space appeas far fom arbitarv. since iL s}.thesizes many traditions which have dominted vaios Westem ats. Post-Raissance painting provided one powerful model. Cinematogaphes and diectos In makng narative causality the dominant consLalty invoked famous paintings as aouces. system n the film's tota form, the classica Cecil B. De Mille claimed to have borrowedfrom Hollywood cinema choosesbo subordinae space. Dor, Van Dyck, Corot and one ,Reubens.'a Most obviousy, the cassicalstye makes the Roberl Surtees cited the Impressionisl,s. L,eon sheerly graphic spaceof the flm image a vehicle Shmoy imil,ai,ed Van Gogh. Discussjonsof lbr naative. We can seethis principle at work lighting invariably invoke Rembrandt.s To a tegativelyin the prohibitionsaginst ,bad,cuts. point. suchssertions are simply hyperbole. Allan 'The impotant subjects shoud be in the same Uwan remarked: Once in a while we would general area of the frame lo each of the two shots undertke the imitation or epoduction of which are to be cut togethe,' but ,as ong as the something artistic a famous painting, let,s important subject is not shifted from one side of say.'" (Stged replicas of famous pictres wee the sceen to the other, no rea harm is done.,2 In also a convention oftheatrica melodrama.) But in describing the classica cinema'suse ol space we a more significant sense, Holll,wood did per_ ae most incli]}ed to use the term ,trnspaent,, so petua[e many pecepts of posi-Renissance much doesthat cinema stive to effacethe pictue pinting. The very name 'fllm studio, derives lom plane. 'The sceen might be ikened to a pate- the term for the workroom of the parnte or gass window through which the observer ooks sculptor. Whie no major cinematograDherswere with one eye at the ctual scene.,3We need, pofessional paintes,nany (Chle; Roshe,Karl however, a fulle account of how clssica Stuss.StanleyCorlez,Jame6 WongHowerhad narration ussimage composition and editing to been potait photogaphers, a field in which create a poweful epresenttion of theeacademic rules of composition nd lighting dimensional space. prevaied. And occsionalya cinematographer 'ivould aticulate principles of filmmaking tht directly echo those of acadmic painting.? We The image composition oughl not to be surprised. then.lhat Holly.wood.s pcticesof compositioncontinue someverv oal While recogninng thal Holy'woodcinema tradjtions in the visual arts subordinatesspace to na-rative causalty, we An outstanding example is the Holtwood ought aso to acknowedge that the clsica cnema's inteest in centered comDositions. In sptial system is, in a sticty logical sense, post-Renaissance painting, the erecthuman body arbitray. We coud imagine othe systemsthat provrdes one majo standad of framing, with the privileged different devices (e.g., decentered face usually occupyingthe upper portion of the
50

The motion picture indushy for many yes has beentryidg to rcmove the one dimension ofthe Eceen. By lighting, with enses ofinexplicable complexity, through movement,camem angles, and a vaiety ofothe teclmiques, the fatness of the screen has largeybeenovercome.r Rarald MacDougall, 1945

SPACEIN TTIECLASSICALFILM

5I

pictue format. The same irnpulse can he seen in the pincipe of horizon-line isoeephaly, which guaantees tht figures' heads run along a more o ess horizont line.o Classical cinema empoys tese pecepts. While exteme long shots tend to weight the lowe half of the image (this derives from landscape painting taditions), most shots wok with a privieged zone of screen space esembing a T: the upper one-thd and the cental veica thid of the scee constitrte th 'cente' of the shot. This center detemines the composition of long shots, medium shots, and close-ups,as vell as the grouping of frgures (see figB 5.1 through 5.8). In videsceen fims, the ceote area is pmpoionately stetched, so even slightly off-center composiions ae not tlansgesive (especialy in a balanced shot/eveseshot cutting pattern). Classical flmmaking thus considesedge-famingtaboo; &ontaly positioned flgures or objects, however unimpotant, are seldom siced off by either vetical edge.nd, as the illustrations indicate, horizon-line isocephay is common in cassical filmmaking. Thus the human body is made the center of na-rtive nd graphic inteest: the close the shot, the geater the demand for centering. But how to center moving figures?The classical style quickly discovered lhe vinues of panning and tilting the camem.The subtlest refnement of ths practice vras the custom of refmmng. A efaming is a sight pan o tit to accommodate figure movement. Every filor in the UnS contained some reframings; ater 1929, one out of every six hotsused at least one refming. The chief alternative to rcframing is what Edward Branigan has calle lhe frame czt.' Within a defined locale, a figue leaves the shot, and, ds the body crosses the fran line, the cut reveals the frgure entering a new shot, with the body stil cossing the (opposite) frame line (see figs 5.9 though 5.14). Fame-cutting is extraodinaiy cinema,prtly because it is commonin cassical the est toublesome match-on-action cut to make but also becuse it confirms the importance of the center zone of the sceen. In a frame cut, the image's edge becomes only a bidge ove which flgures or objects pass on thei way to cener sage. With centering comesbalance, but the compex and d)'namic equiibium of grat Westem painting is usualy lacking in Hol1'wood

compositions. Overall balaceod an avoidanceof distactingly perfect symmetry generally suf6ce. Once centereil, the human body prodes enough slight asl.mmeties to yied a generally stable image, and camera ewfindes, engraved \,/ith coss-hatchings, enabed cameamen to balance the shot. When balance is lost, the esults eap to the eye. In figures 5.15 and 5.16, from ?e Bedroom Window (1924), Wiliam C. deMille's practice of multiplermea shooting has pushed the shots of-center ald off-balance. Of course, su imbalance can be causally motivated, as in Haruey (1950), for whieh einemtogapher William Daniels had to fame the shots asymmetricaly to include the invisible rabbit.ro The value of baance in the classical cinem can be seen in the way that a vcancy in the fme spacewill be esened fo the entry of a chaacte; that flgure competethe balancedcomposition (seefigs 5.17tbough 5.19). Both centeing and baancing function as naration in that these frlm techniques shape the story action lo the spectato. The narrational quaities of shot composition e lso edent in the classical use of fronl,aliLy. Rnaissance painting derived many pinciples of scenogaphy from Greekand Roman thete, sotht the idea of a narative action addessto the spectato became explicit in Westen painting. The classicafrlm imge elies upon such a conceptionof fontality. The face is positioned in full, three quarter, or profile view; the body typically in fu or threequate view. The esut is an odd r-ubbernecking chaacteistic of Holywood chacte position; people'sheadsmay face one another in profile but their bodies do not (see figs 5.20 and 5.21). Standing groups are aanged aong hozontal o diagonal lies or in half-circles;people seldom close anks as they would in rea life (seeflgs 5.22 and 5.23). the dyspepticWefordBeafonwas one of the few critics who notlcedthis practice:l1 In most of our pictures the dircctos make thei chaactersface the cameraby the simpe expedientof turning them around ntil they is face il.,nomttrhow unntual lhp scenp madetheeby. In Genlemen PreferBLondes there is an exhibitionoflagant [1928], disregard ofcommonsense in gouping charctes. Ruth Tylor, AiceWhite, and Fod Steringare shownseated at a round table in a

52

lHE CtSSlCAr, HOLL\.WOODSTILE, 191?,60

restauant. lnsted of forming a tiangle,.they aresqueezd togethersoclosely that Steling. rn [he center, accelycaD move, Yet complete fontality - e.g., direct address to te ratnea - is re; a modified ontality requies that a wedge be dven into the spac, opening up the best sightines. Fonlalily constitutes very importnt cue fo . the ewer. When chacl,es have their backs to us, it is sualy an index of their relative unimportance at the moment. George Cukor pornts out a scene om Adm,s Rb (1949) in which Katharine Hepbum was turned iom the came: That had a meaning:sheindicatedto the ardience.^that they shoud look at Judy Holiday-'r? Goupings aroucl tabtes oen sacrifice a good view of the east significant chaacte in- the scene. One UnS frlm, *Saratoga (193?)vdly ilushates how troubled the film,s b"::T when frontatiry is disrupted.Jean :1" 14towdtedIn the couseofthe m'spmduclion. oeloreseverajscenes were shot.In those scenes, Harlow wasrepaced by a doube who neverlces the esulting in the odd phenomenon of .camera, navrng no portraya of the heoin.s elpressions duing cimctic moments of the action. Most impotant, frontaity can be lost it.it is _ then egained. Over-the_shouder shovr:eveseshot cutting decenteas a figure and puts his or her back to us, but the reverse shot einstates that chaacl,er ion and cenler. Onre rhe figures are rnged lor us in Lhe image. dil,ing can lioducenew anges,but then cosershots will t;pically be cnterd. blaDced, and lron[al In thet tun. Even if one minimizes edtting, s Orson \{elles and William Wyler are oen l,holghtto do. lhe deep_focus mmpositlon cannol lorlit fontL[y indped.in films like Ie Magnficent Ambersons (1942) nd The Littte Fores (1941), classica frontaty is n tct exaggerated (seefigs 5.24 and 5.2S). The mostobviousway that the clssica cinema woks to teat the sceenas a plate-gass window rs rn the epesntationof depth. probaby the mostimportantdepthcue in cinemis movement. Wren a figure moves and ceates a continuous steamof oveapping planesandrecedingshapes, when the cameraglides throughor acrossa space - unde these cicumstncesit beconresvery difrcult to seethe sceenas flt suface_ Ths is

pehaps one of the easons that modemist d avant-garde frms have often suppressedthe kineticdeptheffect by suchdvices;flicker,still images, and graininess. .Cassical Holllvood spac is created in planes through various depth cues. To the usual cues of visual oveap (the object tt ovellaps must be closer)and famili size, ihe cassical image adds pattern, color. textur, lgnung. ancl tocusto specifydepth. Ceomel.rical paRensand colors. especiallyof coslumes, sland 0 tiom painer backgrounds rsee figs 5.26 and .2/r. tjven. in- black_and_white filmrng, set oesrgetspalntedselsin different colorsm creae planes in depth.t3More densend concentrated te)rf,ures were reservedfo the figures in the roregouncl. and cinematogphes would diffuse Lh lrght on backgoundsto make them moe gantla. Lighting is prticularly imponant ln establlshing-depth. Cinemalographes were caetut. to atteml,e panesjn contrsting keys nd half{ones ra silhouetted foreground. a bright mrcldle ground, a darker bckgoundr.r{ norr).woodsslandardized thee-point lighting syslem {kcy. 6ll. andbacklightrngt, supplemente Dy-Dckgound lighting. eye lighrs, and other lechntques, had as its effect the carefu aiculation of eachnarrativelyrelevntplane. the mportancc of backlighting cannot bp here.Commony thoughtot as a ::",ti.l, unnLh ctchor a suddenlyical eect,back lghtrngis in fcl. oneof the mostcommon ways ihe Hollywoodlmmakerdistinguishes ngure rom.backgound: A ppncil_linc oflighuaround the Dody s contou pu.llsthc figure lorward rseefigs 5.28 and 5.29,.15 Edge lighting of figures . emanedcommonevenafter fast film stocksand color fims. enhancedfigure separation (see frg 5 30). Low-keylighting coud be very eictvein prckrng-oJl plans if edge-lrghring supplementcd rl rs e e h g 5 . 3 1 F . in a l y rh . pp la n s o f lh e c l s s i c a l lmagelsousualy gpt dfinpd by selective focus. an equvatent ol ae.ial persppctiv in painting. ln lramjngs rloserthanmcdiumshol,lhe charac(ers ae in focus while other planes are not.r6 . varaLtons ae possiblp_ rn deep-space com_ poslllons. a hgupn the forcground mightbout or rocuswhtte anotherin the backgound is in tl"u".-.b!1 the prjncipl gpnrally holds good. No classical fimsthrow figures oul of focus to favor insignificant objects (kegs,stoves)in the manner

SPCEIN THE CLSSICA, FILM '3

of Ozu'6 frlms or of certain avanfgarde works.l? Stacked planes are not enough; the classical style stessesvolumes as wel. Cinematographers valued oundness' as much as depth, using highlights to accentute cues oi face and body or to pick out folds in drapery.r3 As eary as 1926, the cinematographe ws compared to the sculpto:r9 It is chiefly by the use of suchlighting eqripment that the sculpto{irector seekshis worshipped'pasticity.' Failing a tme stereoscopiceect in fim, he modelshis frguresto a oundnesswith ights behind nd aboveand on either side.soflening here and sharpening up for accentelsevhere,with a patienceand skil inevitably ost on the lyman. Make-up was designedto enance te roundness offaces.Likewise,a sethad to be epesented as volume, a containet fo action, ot a row of sliced plnes. Designes often built threedimensional models of sets in ode to tJ out vaous camera positions. Even the ceiling, sr'hich usaly could not be shown, hd to be impied through Cameamovementcouldendowthe set shdow.2o with a sculptural quaity too, as Dan obse-ved: 'In dolying as a ue we find i's a good idea to poss things in order to get the effectof movement. lYe aways noticedthat if we dolied past a tree, it became soidand ound, insteadof flat.''z The imponance of panes and volumeb in defining classical scenogaphic depth makes academic pespective rathe ae. Developed duing the Renarssance -as a revisionof ancient Geek perspective, centrl linea pespectve organizes panes around the pesumed vantage point of a stationay monocla obseve. Th impression of depth resuts fom the assumpton that paale lines receding fom the picture suface seem to meet at a single point on the horizon, the vanishing point.22 Now it is indisptablethat cetain aspectsof Hollywood fim poduciion,sueh as set designand speciaeffects work, feqently draw upon principles ol inear perspective.23 But magesin the Holywood cinema sedom exhibit the cental vanishing point, rakedandcheckered flooTans, and egul reession of planescharactedsticof what Piere (Such Fancstelcals the 'Quattocento cube.'24 in pe-clssicl conventions are far moe common

films; see g 5.32.) The classical shot rs more usually buit out of a few planes placed against a distant backgound plae - in a long shot, the hoizon; in a cos view, the re v/all of a oom (seefigs 5.33 and 5.34). A limited linear perspective view can be supplied by the come of a room or ceiling o the view out of window. Sonetimes,especially in 1940s fllms, a moe explicit sense of pespective emeges; an occsional estblishing shot exhibits a deep recessiona interior (see flg 5.35) o a ske\{ed vanishingpoint (seefig 5.36). But in mediumong and medium shots (the majority of the shots in a fim), inear pespective emains of little importance, and pronounceddepth is achievedby interposing frgures and objectson vanos panes. Such art-historical taditons woud not seem easiy appcable to lhe scenogaphic spce conBtructedby the soundtrack- But the cassical cinema modeled its use of sound upon its use of images. (Chapter 23 examneshow this ocdrred historicaly.)As one technicianwrote:25 With the two-dimensional cme, which bearc the samepsychologicalrcation to the eye as monaual sound doesto the ear, the illusion of depth ca be achievedby the proper use of lighting and contrast, just as by the manipuations of loudnessand reverbeation with the micophone. nd just as the eye canbe dawn to particular pesonso objectsby the adjustment of focl length, so can the ea be arrestedby the intensification ol impotnt soundsnd the rejection o unimpotnt ones. What Hollywood technicians caled 'sound perspective' was the belie that the acoustic qualitiesof dilogeand noisehd to matchthe scale of the image. Engineers dbated hov.' to convey lratural' sound whie gnting that sticty ealistic soundremding was unsuitable. Microphones had to be rotated in the couse of converstions; musical numbes had to be prerecordd; some dialogue had to be postsynchronized;nd, most impoftanty, somdshad to be segregated onto sepate tracks fo ater mixing. n the theate, the speakes were paced behind the screen,as centercd s wee the figures in the frame. The same conceptions of bnce, centality, and spatia definitionwere appedto steeophonic soundin the early 1950s.'6

54

TIE CIS$CI, HOLLY\i/OOD ST\'I,E, 19I?-60

Thus in the HolJnvood cinema the space constructed by the soundtrack is no lessadcial than that of the image. Alan Williarls points out that like visual perspective, sonic perspectiveis narrational, yieding not 'the full, material context of everyday vision or hearing, but te sfuns o/ such a physical situation.,2? He shows how selective the sonic space of a Hol\.wood locale is in comparison with that of the racketfied caf in Godards ?roo or Three Thnps I Know About t?r (t966). Similar effectsoccui in the dense,layered montage of offscreen sound in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Thrd Gewration (1980) and 1z a Year of Thirteen Moors (1980), during which radios,televisionsets, and several conversationscompete fo our attention. In this sense, classica sound technique aiculates foreground (principal voice) and background (sience, 'backgroun<I noise, music ,under, the action) with the same precision tht came and stagingdistinguishvisua planes. Centering, balancing, frontaity, and depth all lhespnrrational strategies encourage us uo read filmic space as stoy spce. Since the cassica narrative depends upon psychologica causality, we can think of ihese strategies as aiming to personalzeWace.Suoundings become significant partly lor their ability to dramatize individuaity. Hence the importance of doors:the doorway becomes a privieged zone of human action, pomising movement, encountes, confronttions, and conclusions. The classicalfilm also charges objects with personal mcanings. Props (guns, ings, etc.), and especialyrepresertational props (photographs, dos, porlrait pintings) al bea an inelctable psychoogica inpot.(Howmny classical msconvey a over,s disgust by vioence against the pictue of the beloved.)Shot scaleis also gearedto expessivity, with the plon amrban \the knees-up shot) and the medium shot the most conmon ones because they 'etain facial expressions and physical gestues - paially lost in the ons shot and reate these, dramaticaly, to the action invoved.'z3 A close-up, which can theoreticaly show anyhing. becomesvirtually aynony-ou. with the facia close-up, the portait that eveas chalacter. It is sgnificnt, however, that etreme facial clos-ups - framingscoserthan ful facia shots - ae almost bsent from the classica cinema,s if cutting the face completelyfree of

the backgmund made the close-up too fragmentary. (Compa.e the liequency of enlarged poions of faces in the Soviet cinem of the 1920s.)Lighting bings out the pesonlity of the character, whie diffusion distinguishes women by spiritualizing them.2s In the sound cinema. the voice paallels the face as a vehicle of Dersonalization. ln ll these ways, the classicaicinema declares its anthopocentic conitment: Spce will signify iefly io relation to psychologica causality. Classical naration of space thus arms at oientatioa: The scenography is addessedto the viewer. Can lve then say that a lage pdnciple of berspective' opemteshere - not the aalherence ro a particr spatial eomposition but a qeneral 'placing'ofthe speclator in n ideapositiono[ inl,eligibility?Jo Certainly Holl.v,wods own description of its work emphasizes he camera as an invisibe {'itness, iust as the soundtrack constitutes an ideal hearing of the scene. This aesthetic of eaced present is anthopocentric (camerand sound as eye and ear; and-idealist (the witness is imnterial, an omniscient subject), hence also ideological. Yet the viewe is not wholy pasivesubject t.r.annizedby a igid address. Anaogies with perspective, being spatial, tend to negect the spectatois activities. Just as the vievemust meet casal and temDoal systems halfway, the viewer musL contribute something ia order to make classicaspacework. That contribution includes the sort of hypothesislorming and -testing that I have empasizetl in carlierchapters. ThaLwe tendto anlicjpte dala. that we frameour hunrhes as moreor lessIikely all,rntives lor paradigmtic choicpsr, lhat we etmactivey check our hlpotheses - a these activities opeate in our constuction of cassicl space. So, fo instance, centering proceduresquickly lead the viewer to perform cein opeations. Confrning significant naaative action to any constnt zone of soeen space effectively rnsures that attention paid to other aeas wi not be ewaded. Moeover, psychoogists have long known that it is hard to read a configuration E thrce-dimensional if we are markedy aware of the edges of the image: oul eye tests for consistency, and the depth of the repesented spaceconflicts with the boundaryofthe picture.3r Centered film compositions, eithe slanc o

SPCf,IN THE CLASSICL FILM

55

moving, dmw our attention away fom the fame edge.Eve the viewing situation encourages this, since black masking on the theate sceen conceals the apertue line. Cinematogaphers often darkened the edgesof the image to avoid a glaing contast between the picture and the theate masking-32 Distacting o attentior om the edge thus discoages us fom testing the image as a fiat space. Compare, however, the flattening effect of edge-framed compositions in non-Holwood taditions (seefig 5.37). Similary, frontality lunctioru as a strong cue for the spectto. Since the classical Hollylvood cinema is pedomnantly nthropocentic,the epesentation of the expessive body arouses rn us an inteest nourished not only by art but by everyday ife. Our principal inlorrtion about people'smenta states is derived in lage part fom postue, gestre, facial expression,and eye movement(as well as voice).so that if classical cinem is lo epresent psychoogicacausation in it6 chaacte$, narationa space must priviege these behavioral cues. Moreove. as Gombich points out, someobjects give a more eract feeling of lontlity thn do othe$. rrVeare remarkably sensitiveto angingsofbody, face,nd especialy eyes,and \{e tend to oient ourceves to postues nd gazes with a pecisionthat we do not pply to wals o tees.33 In ddition. of coune. !oma' camea height, standardized at bet{een 5 and 6 feet, corresponds to gaze ftom an eect human body,a positioncanonized not onyin a but also in culture generay.3r Imagine a classicalfilm with only one difference:it is entirely shot from staight above the chaactes. The consistent bird's'eyeview would destoythe expressive basis of the nantive because the classica lmmaker lacks schematfor endering such an oientation and the film viewe has no approprite repeoie of expectations. And what of the spectator's consnction of depth? The various depth cues,most prominently movement,requie an act ofspatial integation on the viewe's pat. f cassical spacedoesnot pose the visual paradoxes of images in some German Expressionistic cnema or in abstract frlm, that is paly because ve sce ou expectations to a limited set of possibilities- But consider the bafffingspace offlgure 5.38,from Griffith'sTrying to Get Arrested.(1909). A tiny rnn runs in at the owe risht corne. The cue of lamiiar size

dictates that he looks small because he is far away, but the recedingplanes of the shot seemto deny this. Is the mar then a eprechaun?No, he is indeed in the distance, as a later frame (g 5.39) makesclea. The pecliariff of this priitive shot aises fom te way the image foils those expectations about panes and voumes that the cassica cinema v'oud have confirmed by composition and framing. Certainly seeing an image as deep is 'easie!' in cinema than in other ta, but even fllm depth mus be acir;eueo rc some dege, reying upon what Gombrich has called 'the beholdefs share.'35

Continuity editing theorists ae stil a long way from fully undestanding how the viewe contibutes to the ceation of classicspace,but aomeconsidetion of the process of editing may hep- Certainly editing can wok against the orientation achieved within the inage, as it does in the frlms of Eisenstin,Ozu, Nagisa Oshima, Godard,and other filmmakers.36 Classica continuity editing, however, reinforces spatial orientation. Continuity of gaphic quitiescn invite us to look though the 'plate,gass \indow' of the screen. From shot to shot, tonality, movement, and the center of compositionalinterest shi enoughto be distinguishabe but not enough to be disturbing. Editos seldom discussedgaphic continuity, but the pocedurcwas expained as early as 1928by two visitos to the Hollywood studios, who claimed that either the point of interest in shot B shouldbe on the sceen'almos whee the point of inteestof shotA ended, or B shouldcontinue A's

This has no referenceto the story itslf, but meely to the making of the pictures considered only as spots of colour and centes ofpictorial interest. The eye shouldbe led a gente dance, swaying easily and comfortaby from sideto side of the picture, now fast, now slow, as the emotionalneeds othe storydemand. Compae the gaphicalygentecut of the typical shot/evese-shot seies, which only sghtyshifts the center of interest (seefigs 5.40 though 5.43) with the graphicaly jarring cut which aters that

56

THD CLASSICALOLLYWOOD fl'rLE,

19T7.60

cente of interest quite daicaly (seefigs.5.44 nd 5.45). Oncegraphic continuity is achieved,the editing c mncentate upon olienting us to scenographic space. Cosscutting ceates a frctive space built out of several locaes. As Chapter 4 points out, classical crosscutting presupposeE that shifts in the locale rc motivated by the story action. Moe often, editing fulfils the naratioa frrnction of onenting us to a single loale (a oom, a stet of sidewlk, the cab of a truck) o! to physically djacentlocaes(a room ard a halway, the rear of the truck). Thus the pinciples and deces of continuity editing function to epesent space fo the sakeof the stoy. And Bazin has summarized the basic premises of classicalcontinuity editing:33 1 The veisimiitude of the space in which the positionofthe acto is always detemined, even when a close-upelimintes the decor_ 2 The pupose and the effectsof the ut e exclusively dramaticorpsychologica. In other words,if the scenewerc played on a stage and seenlom a seat in the orchestm,it wouldhavethe smemeaning, the episode would continue to exst objectively.The changes of point of view provided by the camerawould dd nothing. They would presentthe relity a little more forcefuly, rst by aloring a better view and then by putting the emphasiswhere it beongs. Besidesspeling out the classicaassumprons about consistent spatia reations nd the determiningoe of chacte psychology, Bazin reveals the extent to which cassical editing continues and elaborates the scenography of nineteenth-centurybourgeos theater. Bazin's mobile-yet-stationary spectator in the ochestm pesonifies the viewpoint cetedby the clsscal 80'' or 'axis-of-acl,ion' systemof spatlal edil,ing. 'lhe a$umptionis lht sbotswil be fimed and cut together so as to position the spectato? always on the same side of the story action. Bazin suggeststhat the 'objective' eality of the acron ndependentof the act of flming is analogous to that stabe space of proscenium theatrica pesentation, in which the spectator is aways positionedbeyond the fouth .\a,a. The axs of action ror centpr liner becomps the imaginary

vectoa of movements, character positions, and glances in the scene, and ideally the camera should not stay ove the axis. In any scene, expains Robert Aldich, 'You have to draw the cente line. . . . You must neve cmss the lie.'39If we assume that two conversing charactes e angled somewhat ftolltally (as is usual), the classic180' systemwil be as laid out in diasram 5.1. CamerapositionsA, B, C, anclD (a-od ineed any position within the ower haf-circe) wil cut togethe so as to orient the viewe, while camera position X (o any position on the other side ol the center line) is thought to disorient the spectaror.

q #-EThe 180"principegovensall the morc specific devicesof continuity editing. nal]ticol editing movesthe spectato nto or back fom pat of a tot space. A cut from positonA to positionB (or vice versa)would be an analyticacut, especting te axs of action. Shotlreerse-slot cutting assumes [hal the seris of sho(s altpmaLes a view of one end-pointof the line with a view of the other. hus cutting from camea position C to that of D would be a shotheve$eshot patten. Tlpicaly, shoreverse-shot editing joins shotsof chamctersfacing one another, but t reeonor.

SPACE IN THE CLASSICALFILM

5?

The same principe appies to vehicles, buidings, o any entities posited s being at oppositeendsol the axis of actiorr. Elelire-rnatch cutthg uses chacte glance s a cue to link shots. The assumptionis that the eyeline runs paalle to the axis, so the cmea positios wil emain on one side of the line. Shots C and D when cut together wil yied correct eyeline matches in a way tht, say, shots X and D would not. compaatively uncommoncaseof eyeline-matchcutting, poirrt-ofuie@cutting, evels the limits of pemissibility in the 180" system. The flst shot shows the chaacte ooking at omething offsc.een; the secondshot shows what the chaacte is seeing, but moe o less from the chaacte's optical vantage point. Remarkaby, citics contine to educe shoveverse-shot cutting to pointof-ew cutting. A recent monograph defines shot/vese shot in a convesation sceneas taking the second shot 'lom the frrst character's point-of-view.'40 Hoywood shol,/reverse-shot cutl,ing is more pmpey what Jen Mitry calls semi-subjective: we ae oen iterally looking over a chractels shoulder." (Edward Branigan has shown that camea ange is the critical vible here: cmera distance is oen inexactin classicalpoint-of,ew cutting.a'z)But even the point-of-ew shot emains within the 180" convention becauseit repese!ts a camea position on the is itself (e.9., positionE on the diagram).The powerofthe 180' system may also be 6een in what we may call the 'earliv-tuttch' cut, in which a chacte listens fom outside the space of the scene.The assumption is that the soundtavels in a staight line, which constitutesthe axis ol action. If a listene at a doo cocks.hisea to screeneft- a cut to someoneinside the room walking to that door rnust show the character moving screen right. Obviously, acrossa series of shots al these editing deviceswork smoothly to renforceeach othe, so that an estbishing shot will be inked by an anaytica cut to a closer view, nd then a seies of shoreverseshots wil folow. But the system,being pat of a styistic paradigm,has a certain ttude as wel. so that one can use the shot/evese-shot schema f one chaacte has tuned his back to the othe, if there are five or present,and so on. six characters One more device of the 180" system deseves mention, not east becauseit dramatizes the extent to rvhich the system de{nesa coheent but

limited freld for the spectator. Editing for direclirnol continuity translates lhe imaginrry line into a vector of movement. If a chaacter o vehicle is moving lef to right in shot 1, it should continue to do so in shot 2. Directional continuity cutting is like eyeline cutting: just as two shots of figures ooking in opposite directions impy that the frgures are ooking at each othe, so hro shots of figues mong in oppositdirections ead us to expect the frgures to meet. Directiona continuity aso esembles poiDt-of-view cutting in that one can show the movement lom a position on the axis ofaction - i.e.,either a heads-on or a tails-on shot of the action. ( shot from this position can unction as a transition if one wants to cos6 the ine.) Diectional continuity is often usedvrithin a cicumscibed space, as when a chcte goes ftom e window (exit frame ef) and comesto the desk (ent frame right). In these cases, Hol)'wood diectiona eontinuity dependsupon the frame cut. What is more eveing, though, is that diectional continuity can be mintaind across sepaate spaces, for in that casethe 180" system pesupposesthat the ideal spectto ts situatedon onesideof an axis perhaps miles ong! The closedchamber-space of the theater has been eft behind, but Bazin's spectato-in-the,ochesta and his or he eation to proscenium space remain intact. The devicesof continuity ediiing are best seen as taditiona schemata which the classical fimmake can impose upon any subject-As King Vidor wrote:'he filmmaker shouldbe consciously av.ae of this 180"lle thoughout the whole eld of film action.It is not only benefrcia in sports, but in chase sequences, with cowboys, Indiansand cavalry, anmal pusuits, moonandings,dinnertabe convestions, and a thousand oth mo\ne subjects.'ar Most fim critics are awae )f these schemata bt conside them simpy a neutr vehicle for the fimmaker's idiosl'ncratic themes or 'personavsion.' What mkes the continuity deces so powerful is exacty ther apparent neutraity; compositionl motivation has codified them to a degree of rigidity tht is sti hard to realize.In eachUnS film, lessthn 2 per cent of the shot-changes volated spatial continuity, nd one-fifth of the frms contained not a singe vioation- No wonder that, of al HoI1'wood styistic pcties,continuity editing has been consdered a set of firm rues.

58 ',,Im CISSICAI_ HOLLYWOOD STyLt,1917-60 As with othe classical tchniques, continuity editing cues form a redundant paradigm. Conveational 180" editiry assumes that the establishing shot ond the e1ine match cut ond directional continuity of movement ond the shoVrevese-shotschema wil all be present to 'ovederemine' the scenogphic space. Tre redundncy of the padigm becomes evident when we watch non-classicalfilmmaker simpy emove one or two cues. I\ Dreyefs Day of Wroth (1943),the chactes'eyeinesir medium shot often olat the 180' axis, but there ae fequent establishing shots to orient us. Conve$ely, in Btsson'sPmcs d,e Jmnne drc (1961), the eyeines espect the ais of action, but scenes frequently ack establishing shots.aaIn neithe film do we lose our bearings (athough, since each filmmaker exploitshis devices systematicly, the esult iB significantly different iom the space of the classical scene). What are the naationa consequencesof spatial continuity editing? One answer might be based on a broad conceptionof pespective.In perletuting the playing spce of postRenaissancebougeois theater, classical editing makes the specttor an idealy paced onlooker. 'lo paraphrase Bazin. the aclion nd the viewer ('the episode are sepaate would continueto exist objectively'), yet the naation acknowledgesthe onlookerby impicitly addressing her or him (,by alowing a better view'). IIl sum, the intlligibe oientation createdwithin the singleshot is kept consrstentacoss shots by positing a spect{) that can be moved ony within the limits of theatrical space of visionThis account is certainy corect as far as it goes. Its dawbacks are the passity it impuresro the spectator and its negectof cetainsignicant irreguarities in the continuity system.Fo one thing, the space constructed by continuityediting is rarely a tota one, even on the favoedside of the axis of action.Not ony do we sedom see the ouh wal of the typica interior, but aeas immedatey in front of Lhe c66p.^ .".^ r, eltively undefrned. Films of the ate teens and the 1920s sometimes have hoes in their scenogaphic space; the establishing shot may not show a adjacent areas from which chaactes may emerge. And Holll.wood practitiones have long empoyedthe apty named ,cheat cut,' in which the shift of camera distance and ange duing cut coves a distinct change in character position (seefigs 5.46 through 5.49). The cheat cut works to enhance balance. centering, or frontaligr:45 'Cheting' is the geat game betweenthe cmea opeato and the Cootinuity girl. To compose a foaegoundor a backgond the operator will sometimesmove or substitute objects,or have the aiste raised or lowercd in relation to his suroundings. Actualy, ater a long whie in pictures, I realised that such 'cheating' is seldomnoticeabeto an audience, but in the studio it o.en seems faniastic. The viewer's\illingnessto ignore unshownareas of spaceand to overlookcheat cuts sugges[s that the viewer acl,ively forms and ests specific hypotheses about the spce revealed by the narration. The always-present pockets ol nonestablishedspaceae, in the absenceof cuesto the contary, assuned to be consistent with wht we see.(We assumethat thee is more w1,a door, etc.)If a technicianor a lighting unit peeped into the shot, that would provoke us to vise such ssumptions-The cheat cut suggests that pocess of hieachicaseection is at wok. Since we ae to attend to story cusality, the fact that chaacte is fisi thee leet and then suddently two feet fom another chaacte beconresunrm, portant if our expectations about the actiot e confirmed from shot to shot. Of course, there are limits to how much the cut can cheat befoethe opertion distracts us fom stoy causality, and thesewarrant psychophysical study.a6 Our hierarcica seection of what to watch is evident fom the very schemata of classica cuttng. Fo exmpe,the epetition of camera positonbecomes very important. Typicay, any cassica se es of shots will incude severa identicacamea set-ups. The reestablishing shot will usualy be from the sameange and distance as the estabishing shot; shot and reverse,shot framings may_be epeatedseveal times. Such epetitions encouage us to ignore the cutting itself and notice only those narrative latos that changefrom shot to shot. n a simiar way, the irst occurence of a set-upoften 'pimes' us for a ater ction- ln *The Ca.d.dy (1953\, Harvey hides from dogs in a ocke room. A plan amrican reveashim leanig on the door; on the right of

SPACI N TITECLA$SICL FILM

59

the frame are clothes lyiig on a coat rack. Cut: the dogs outside the doo wande o. The next shot repeats the plan amrican of Harvey, but now Harvey notices e clothes. The firsr set-up unobtrusively asked us to hypothesize that Harvey wouJddisguisehimsell ad the guessis confirmed by keeping set-ups constant. A simi pmcessoccusin gures 5.50 though 5.53.This pdming of ate actions doesnot occur in filns by Eisenstein and Godard, for instance, \rho seldom exactly rcpeat Eet-upsand who thus demandthat we eoent ourselvesater every cut. The phenomenon of priming illustrates Gombich's point that schemataset the horizon of lhe viewer's expectations. Classical editing is organized paadigmtically, since any shot leads the viewer to infe a limited set of moe or less pobabe successos. Fo example, an establishing shot can cut away to another spaceor cut in to close shot; the atte atemative is moe likely. An angled medium shot of chaacter o object is usualy followed by a correspondingreverse shot. Cuttiog around within locle is most likely t be based upon eyeine matehes and upon shot/ everse-shotpatterns, less likely to be basedupon figure movement, and east ikely to be based upon optic point-of-view. (In this respect, Hitchcock relies upon point-of-vew cutting to an almost unique degee.) The classicamnst-uction of space thus paicipates in the pocess of hypothesis-forming that we saw at wok in narration generally. Julian Hochberg compes the viewe'6 constrction of editd space to 'cognitive mpping': 'The task of the fimmaker therefore is to make the viewer pose a visual question,and then answerit for him.'a? The processof viewe expectatio is paicu, larly apparent in the flow of onsceen nd offsceen space.Consider again the shoeveseshot schema.The fist mage, say a medium shot of Mailyn, implies an offscreen freld, fore, shadowing (by its angle, scale, and chamcte gance) what could most probably succeed it. The next shot n the series,a revese-angled view of Douglas, reveals th naratively significant

matrial which occupiestrat offscreen zone. Shot two makes sense as an answer to its Dedecesso. This backing-and-fillingmovement, opening a spatial gap and then plugging it, accords well 1viththe aims of classical nanation. Furthermore. shourevese-shot edil,ing helps mke narration covert by ceating the sense tat no impolrar scenogTaphic space emains unaccounted for. f shot two ows the important mateial outside shot one,thee is no spatia point we cn assignto the naation; the naration is always esewhee, outside this shot but neve visible in the next. This process, which evideatly is at work in cameamovement nd nal'.tical cutting s weI, rs consistent with that unsef-coscious but omipresenlnarratlon described in ChapterB.aBClassical ofscreen spacethus hrnctions as wn! Gombrich calls a 'screen,' a bank area which invites the spectator to poject hypothetical elements on to it.4e Given cassical vrewlns prior-jties, we ar moreconcemed with the distjnci pesonsand things visible within spacethan with the spacesbetween and aound them- f shot showsa pelson or object that was impicit in the pevious shot, we check the new mterial against ou pojection rathe than measuring the amount of space eft out. Since Hoywood scenogaphy seldomrepresents a locale in its entirety, we must costruct a sptial whole out of bits. And if those bils not only overp in what they show but agee with the flelds we have inferred to be lng oscreen,we wi not notice the fuzzy aea.sthat have never been sbicty accountedfor. Classical editing supports orientation according to Gombrich's negativ pincipe of pespective: A convincing image need not showever]ing in the spaceas long a.snothing we see actuay contradictswhat we expect.so If classical cinemamakes the screen a plate-glass window, it is partly becauseit turns a emakably cohercnt spatial systeminto the vehicle of narative cusality; but it is also because the vielver, having earned distinct perceptual and cognitive actities, meets the film halfway rd completes the ilusion of seeingn integ fictional space.

Shotandscene

could begin. The fllmmakers could tick off the shots one by one as they lvee competed. O Minotaur, here is you Aiadne's thead: Reheasalsofentie sceneswee ucommon.srnce decoupage.r the acl,os' pedormances were consl,ructed whollv in l,he editing. Using long rakeswasdiscouragej. ndr Bazin srnce a pucty of shots took crucial decisions Part by pat, brick by brick: the Ho,rrood about timing and emphasis out o pmduces' and cinema oen evkes metaphors ftom architecture editors' harrds. The routine pocedue of mking and masonry. What Soviet filmmakers of the shots aso tended to standdize nd limit the 1920s called montdge shot-assemblng as the ways each shot was handed. The Soet basic constructiona activity Hollywood cinemto8aphe Vadimir Nisen c ticized the filmmakers caled cutting o editing, tems Amelican methodfor fetishizing the shot as n end associatedwith trimming ol unwanted material. in itselfather an as prt ofa total editing uit.3 The best trm fo the Holywood practice is The shot becamethe bick which built the film anothe Fench one, dcorrpdg'e: the parceling out ong before 1915, but with the help of our of images in accordaace ra,ith the script, the Unbiased Sampe we can distinguish some mapping of the native action onto the significntquantitativedevelopment. It would be cinematic materi. This decoupage became possible to compute some general statistical standardized in sheerly quantitative tems_ In norms, as Bary Salt has done in his discussionof poduction, scriptwriters wee expectedto be abe avera8eshot engths,but such abstractio[srnean to estiate scenesin advance,and one specific litte without a conceptof i,he rangc of paraproduction ole - the time - existedto provide digmalicchoice dominanl t a givenperiod.a For exactcacuations ofa scipt'stota unning time. instance, in the years 1915-16, a feature fim As T.W. Adono proposes:'It is a justfication of (itsefoen only seventy-five minutesong)might quantitative methods that the products of the contain as few as 240 shots or as mny as 1000. culture industry, secondhand popular culture, are The most common nge was between 250 and themselves planned llom a vitualy statistica 450 shots per film, or (at 16 lmes pe second) point of vew. Quntitative analysis measures about 2?5-325 shotsper hour. iln l figues for them by their own standard.'2 the silcnt cinema,inter-titlesre countedas Fo Holl]'wood,the shot is the bsic unit of shots. Th.oughout the yeas 1915,1928, intermateial. But this unit of matei is already a titles comprised around 15 per cent of the tota unit of meaning.Before1950,technicians usually nmbe of shotspe fim.) To say, then, that the caleda 6hot 'scene,'defrning the stip of imges averageshot lergthof fllms of the years 1915-16 as narative action. The shot was aso Holy_ was about tweve to thirteen seconds is tue but wood'sbasic unit of production.Chapter 11 will misleading. The crucial point is that a diector o show how, after 1913, the developmentof the cutter had a specific range of choices and classicalmode of film poductiondepended upon constrrts: no feature fim would contain fewe the continuity scipt, which made the shot the than two hundredshotsand only a very few, sueh minima unit of panning. Once the stoy was as Wash'si?egene.orion (1915),might have over divided into shots, the planning of the shooting five hundred.
60

flom montage to dcoupage

SHOTAND SCENE

61

Afte 1916, howeve, the paradigmatic choices and corstraints shifted drasticaly. A film would be composedof many more shots, and the shots would be significantly shorter. The t5pical Hollywood featue film of the years 1917-28contained between500 and 1000shots,with never fever than 400and seldommore than 1300.While the average shot length (ASL) can thus be considered to be between five and sevenseconds, what is more significant is the shap widening of parudigmatic choice. A frlmmake might employ anything between 360 and 900 shots pe hou, the most commonrange being 500-800shots pe hou. The incease in cutting h''thn has causeswhich will be discussedin Chapter 16, but one effect was to broaden the frmmakers' options. A Douglas Fairbanks or Erich von Stoheim film might have an ASL of around thee seconds,whie Maurice Tourneur might rely on mu longer ta<es(an aveageof ten seconds in *yr.rory [1919]). Ou intuitive assumptio is tht the cutting ate slowedwith the intoduction of sound,and to someextent the belief is correct. The ASL ol the period1929-60 is ten to eeven seconds, twicethat of the classicl silent decade.But this alone cannoteveal the waysin x'hich the pamdigmatic raage changed with the coming of sound. The tFica fitm of the sound em contained between 300 and ?00 shots,or between 200 and 500 shots per hour. this afforded ony sighly less choice than the ange of the classica silent period. Nomal practicebetween 1917and 1928gavethe filmmaker a lee{,ay of bus or minus' 300 shots per hour, whie sound-period pactice yieldeda leeway of 250 more o less. Furthermore,the beadth of the paradigm increased aer 1928; f no sound film could be cut as fast as, say, von Stroheim's l{edding March (1928; ASL, 3.7 seconds),the range of permissible shot lengths was none the ess geater. A sound frm coud have an ASL of five seconds (*Indandpols Speedway 119391)or an ASL of thity-seven (C@rouon seconds Films of comparable t19341). lengthmight employ600shots(?etoc&ef[1946]) or 177 shots(FallenAngel11945)\. Similary, we tend to assume that the typical shot got longer during the sound ea. The histoy of avrageshot lengths beas this out, but ony at the expense of ignoitg the wide range of temativesthat werc awaysavaiable.During the yas 1929 to 1934,the mean ASL in the

Unbiased Sampe was eleven seconds, which corresponds to common ituitions about ugubrious cutting pace in the eay sound period. But is average is derived from a set of films with ASLs anging from 6.3 seconds(*Housewife [1934]) to 14 seconds (*Applause 19291, *Penou*e The Extended Sampleis even 119331). more reveaing, indicating that between1929 and 1934 filmmakers could choose to use nything between 170 and 600 shots pe hou. Some contemporary sources conflrm these figues. Seveawrites claim 200-500 shotsas norma for an ealy 1930sfilm- A 1937 sourcecites ten secondsas appopiate for a typica shot.5 The averagecutting ate speedsup a litte in the years 1935-46(SL 9 seconds)and slows down between 194?and 1960(ASL 11-12seconds), but the ange of choiceemains constant many films favo short shots (?-8 seconds), mny favor medium-length shots(9-11seconds), and othesfavo Iongertakes (12-14 seconds). (The UnS averagein the yeas 1947-60 is skewedby a few films with very ong tkes; it is in the pos-1946 peiodthat the UnS registes the fist featue lms since 1917 to contain fere thn 300 6hots.So the general belief that long-take fiming became more common in the postwa period is warranted, but both the UnS and the ES suggestthat it was by no meansthe dominant pactice.)Even in 195?, during the presumed heyday of widescreen long takes,oneCinemaScope flm might have200 shots per hou (tsongand Dangerous), anothe 267 (*lnterlude),another 450 (*Fre Down Below).A 1959 widescreenfim, Joume! to the Center of thg ,Oarr, couldhave an ASL of aroundsix seconds, the same as that ol a 1931 \ryanes' film, Dangerous Femnle. If the paadigm's center of gavity shifed somewhat in the course of the sound era, the ovral breaduh of choir.ewas hardy affected. Like lhe shot. the Hollywood is more sequence a naative entity than a materi one. The consensusamong contempoay theorists is that the cassical possesses sequence the Aristotelian unities ofduation, ocle,and'action,'andthat it is marked at each end by some standadized prnctuation(dissove,fade, wipe).6This rough descriptionservesus wel if we rememberthat each fim estabishes its own scaeof segmentarron.In *OneFrightenedN;g{1935), the ction sets up a veJ imited duation pithin a sngle

62

THE CLSSC4IHOLLYWOOD STYLE,191?-60

setting (a mansion), so slight lapses of time (usually signaed by wipes) and shifts of locale (fom room to room) constitute signifcant beaks between sequences. B]oL in *An Amerran Romance(1944),which spans several decades and jumps acloss the country, the same ifts in time d space do not mak new sequences.For instance, aie Anton explains to Stevewhere the coal goes, the shot dissolves to the two men walking out of tlre mine: rhe lapsof iime is as bief as that betweenscenesin *Ona Frightened Night, b.u,L in this context only longer intervals demarcate sepaate scenes. Most classical films are ovewhelmingly clear about the appopiate time scale for distinguishing arnong sequences. Shortly I shal examine the classicalsequence's intemal structe. t this point, I am concemed only with extema aspects of decoupage.How many sequences make up a classica fim? How many shots doesa sequencetJ.pically contain? gain, compingthe silent e r,i'ith the ound peiod eveals differences in the ange of paradigrnatic choices. Between191?and 1928,the ordinary Holll.wood fim containedbelweennine (not including the cedits and eighteen sequences sequence),'ith a tendency lor a flm to have somewhatmoe sequences before 1921than after. In the same period, the typical segmentcontained between forty and ninety shots and an om four to eight minutes.In the peiod 1928-60, however, the availabe alcematives shifted. sound film roud most commony contain between fouteen and thirty-five sequences. The tlpical sound sequence was composedof between tweve and thirty shots and ran fom two to frve minutes. Thus while ot lengths inceased with the introduction of sound,the number of sequences rn a Hollywood film almost doubled and the duation oI those sequencesroughy halved. (lt can be argued that the dynamic hythm ol editing in the silent film was, ae 1933, regained to sorne degree by a swifl succession of short scenes.) There is also somehistoical variation: post-1946 fllms tend to have more sequencesthan thei pedecessors,and po8t1952 films average somevr'hat fewer 6hotsper sequence. What rs more important, though, is tha the sound deeoupage pardigr was very flexibe; a sound film might ve srx sequences o sixty, a scenemight un one minute or ten, and a sequence might contain 8et mny shots.

Claude Chabol orce remarked at where an MGM editot would use four shoreverse ots. a Universal editor would use eight.? The UnS, taken with the ES, suggests that in fact decoupagevaded onty a little from studio to studio. In the silent peod, films iom Douslas Fairbanls's and Harold Lloyd's urj|,s hve unusually short shots. Undoubtedly, the average Wamer Bros film of the 1930sis cut faster than its mate esewhere.There was also a tendencv fo MGM and Paramount films to have sliihtly longer AS[,s. On tre whole, however, studio differences are minim1. No is genre a differentiating factor; thee is no clea tendencv for. say, musicals l,o have a longer ASL or for comediesto have a shorter ore. Generally, ASL vaies somewhat more sonsistently among diectos. Certain diectors habitually used comparatively ong take6 throughout a frlm: Maurice Tourneur, John Stahl, Josef Von Sternberg, Buste Keaton, W.S. Van Dyke, Vincente Minnelli, William Wyer, \{illiam Dieterle, and Otto Preminger. Directors \i/ith an unusually rapid editing rhlthm include D.W. Griffith, Erich von Stroheim, Mervyn l,eRoy, Lloyd Bacoo, and (despite the tous de foce of Rope 11948)and. IJnder Caprcorn t19491)Alfred Hitchcock. A few films inetably stand out. Carauan (1934), directd by Erik Charrelt, has only 160 shots; the ASL oI thiy-seven secords is due to spectacular camem movement. Contrari{.ise, George Stevens's ,Sone(1953) is remakabe fo averaging 720 shotspe hour (even if this rapid cutting rate seemB due chiefly to an inability to stage movement within a sustained shot). In a broader pespective, all the historical, institutional, and individual vaiati{rns are elatively minor. W}atever the options ithin th cassical paradigm, certin constaints remaned fixed. No Holly.wood 6lms have exploited either tha radical use of short ots to be seen in Soviet frlms o that dica use of the long take to be seen in films by Jancs, Drcyer, Marguerite Duras, Roberto Rossellini, and Kenji Mizoguchi. The very existence of the shot s a material uit has been questioned in films by Dziga Vertov, MichaeSnow,Hollis Frampton,and other avan garde filmmakers; in these works, supermpositions,single-fme sequences, and other stategiesrefuse to articulate shots as orscrere

SHOTANDSCENE 63

motivated eqivents of the silent film's expository int-title.) In silent film, sometimes an expository h title witl estabish the space, noi ony by naming it but by including a drawing of the locale. bically, the spaceis a oom, and the epositional phaseof the scenewill emphasize the room's fumiture nd its windows and doos. (In this espect, classicl fim eveas its debt to niqeteenth-entry tleat.r) Ernst Lubitsch is ADatomy of the scene reportd to have said that the main chaacte in his films was the door, brt the claim has some Montage sequences,chase scenes,and extended broader vaidity, too.12 Clssica cinem is indeed passages of crosscutting are part of the classical 'door-knob cinema,' strongly reliant upon paradigm, but the shightforward scene - one or signaling chaacter entances and exis from aI moe pesons acting in a imited locae over a interiocontinuous duation; what Christian Metz clls At the scene's start, the classica paradigm the'ordinary sequence' - emins the building oes two ways of estabishing the space: bochof classica drmatugy.3 A scene,one rule immediateo gradua.The nation my begin book says, is a series of shots 'naturally collected with long shot that establishes the total space; togetrer, usually in the sameor adjacentlocales this is by far the most common method. Mos or sets';hee, duratonacontinuity is assumed.e scenes in the UnS flms start oa n establishing Yet, as Thierry Kuntzel has pointed out, the long shot- O the narration may begin the scene autonomyof the cassical sceneis a mixed one; by showing only a portion of the space a the scene is both detachabe segnientand a ink character, n object, a detail of decor, a ooorin a chain.t0As such,the scenecan be taken s way.r3In this atemative,the scene wil begin by having two roughly distinct phases,the exposition liaming a detil and then by means of various and the development. Thesephasesorganizeall devices(dissove, cut, iis, o tacking shot) wil the narrative systemsat wok causaity,time, soon reveal the totality of the space. The and space, establishing shot is simpy delayed, seldom In the scene's expository phase, narration eiminated (as it often is in the films of Bresson, specifies the time, pace,and relevant chaacts. for instance). In locales that we know from The time is assumedto be afte the previous scene, peous scenes the nmtion my omit the unless othewise indicated, and usualy the establshing shot, though even in such instnces preceding scene has stipulalad when this scene establishingshotsare moe commonthan not. must be occuing (a few minutes ate, the next The expository phasedoesnot simpy signa the day). If not, an expositoy tite, a montge ocale, it paces chaacters within it. The sequencer o some indication t the st of the Holywoodscreenplay format is reveatoryhere, scene's action (e.g.,cenda, cock,dialogue)wi in that it frst indcates the plce,then the ime, announceths scene'splace in the film's time and then the characte acton. {For specrmens, scheme, see figs 12.9-12.12.) Space becomes chiefly a The scene'slocale will usualy be indicated container fo chaacter action; the sloy has (e.g.,an exteoshot of building,or a genealy appopiated it. That a localeis of little interestin (the immediatesite of the sign),then specically its own right is shownby the fact that tlpically action). Multiple cuesset to work: the ocalewill the exposition of spacetakes up the easttime ol havebeenanticipatedin an earie scene, a long any phaseof the scene(often less than r,wenr,y shot o mediumlong shot will establish the seconds and sedommore thn thirty)- By this totlity of the relevant space, and sond and point, the chacters hve taken over tne visal action wil al cooperate in defining the narration, locale. Signs ('Inspector Miller's Office) or The cassicalscenemust immedityreveal ('Morning Posr') wil aso two things about the chamctesi their eatve felephone-answering help. (Signs can be thorght of as reaisticay spatial positionsand thei states of mind. The

uts. In a similI way, \{ok upon narative or pon the soundtack can beak down our expctations about distinct sequences; Vertov's Enlhusiasm1930) nd Codard s Zp goj soooir (1969) pose problems of segmentation that the stable narative elations of Holywood fimmaking never raise.

64

THE CLASSICA,HOLLYWOODSTYLE,T917.60

establishing shots shoud, while exposing the surroundings, aso indicate whee everyone is. Previous scenes and cuent demeanor and diaogue should evea to us, if not to other characters, eachparticipant's psychologicastat. Our hlpothesis-building activity must be constanty led nd usuay confirmed; if a character is fuious witb his opponentat the close of scene A but is meek and amiabie at the beginning of sceneB, we had bette be quicky shown why the behavior has changed. The centality ofchaactes' inteaction may incline the nartion to begin with cose shots of them. In *Love and. the Lau 11919), ate an at title establishesthe overall locae (see fig 6.1), the scene begins ,!'ith tight shots of the vlous charactes govenor,Mellvaine, and Mina (see figs 6.2 through 6.5). Only aer nine of these deti shotsdoes te estabishing shot appea(frg 6.6. The deay in revpalingthe torl spaceis determined by the scene'sroe as a crisis in the plot. Moe commonly, however,the naation wil establish the scene'sspace quicky and then puge into the chacte$' elations. Fo example,folowingwaking characters provides a common way to revea space and to initiate ehracter inteaction. After the 1930s,a common stategy ws to begin in a corddoror on sheet, pan to follow a passing supemumerary, then pick up the main chacte, and follow that cnaraeie unti he o sheencountes notherchamcte(e.g., figs 6.7 to 6.9).14 Hol1'woodpractitiones rccognizedthe scene's expositionto be as fomuaic as I haveindicated. Taking a hypofhetical scene, two editors descbed the scene's openinSas 'setting the stage - the . theirpurpos inlroduction of lhe characlers in the scene- and their relation to echother.'l5 Or, as Howard Hawks put it ohandedy: 'You know v/hichway the menre going to come in, and then you expement and see whee you'e going to have ,{ayne sitting at a tabe, and then you see whee the gil sits, and then in a few minutes you've got t al worked out, nd it's pefecy simpe,s far as I am concemed.'16 Once the central charactes ae picked out and their psychoogica states estahished, the deveopmenta, phase of the scene begins. Chamcters act towad thei gos, ente into conflict, make choices, set deadines, make appointments, andplan fuure actions. In genera,

causal development shapes how time and space ae epesented. Ihamaturyicaly, the cassical scene patici" pats in two processes. Fst, it continues, develops,or closes o lines of cause atd effect previously lefi open. If Paul has been trying to borrow money in the previous scene, ths scene my showhim stil trying. Or the previouscausal line may be competed;Pau get his money. The classicalscene'sother duty is to open and pehaps deveopat least one ne&'causal chain. Against.the backdop of od lines of action, the sceneinitiates new conflicts, new goals, new questions. Once Pau has asked everyone he knows for money, he may decideto ty steaing some;in the classical 6lm, this decision wil rot be ocated a sepaate scenebt will be introduced aer an earlier ine of action has been developed in the scne.It is impoant that at est one new line of action be s$pendedin the scene; it will become an old line for later sceaes to deveop or coseoff. \pically, only the film's ast scene closes off a the lines of action. What is noteworthyaboutthe scene's continuation of old plot lines and the evelation of new onesis their rigorousyformuaicqrality. In S/2, Barthes points out that the nnative text (rerr&s, 'woven thing') is a fabric,in which the sequential codes ae theaded togethe, suspended,then taken up again.? The Hollywood fim rcveas somesuch weaving, but of a simpler sort. Most scenes continueor coseoff the old line of ction beforestaing the neiv one. Other scenesmay eintroducethe old lne, toy with it, suspendit agan,intmducea new causalne, then closeout the old and introduceyet anothebeforcthe scene ends. Changes in ines of acton a often punctuatedby the entry o exit of chamctels o by slight shifts in oeae(e.g.,from room ur rurrm/. Usually the new ine wl get fina say in the (evenif a motlo a biefreaction is the ast 6cene thing actuly prcsented). The new causa ine thus motivatesthe shift to the next scene.The famous'inearity' o cassicalHolywoodcinema thus consists of a linkagewhich resembles a game of dominoes, each dangingcausematchedby its effect in the following scene.Diagammed,the patten ooksike this: scene 1 C scene2 scene 3 etc.

-ECr+ErC3-E3Cr+gn

SHOT AND SCENE

65

A simple example will illustrate how con_ ventionl such phasescan be. In scene6 of *?z Kng and the Chorus Girl (193?), Dorothy Elis is brought Lo meet King Alfred, but he rs in a drunken stupo, ald she leaves, furious. When Alfred awakes nd leans that an mericn chous girl has spumed him, he indignanty ordes 'eggs and ham -. Ameican style.' T'his bit of speechpovides a diaogue hook to scene?. The Count is speaking: 'Eggsand ham, thats what he said.' The camela tacks back to revea the Count nd the Duchess in Dorothy,s mom, tellins her what happened .flrohe er. The charartcri are thus established in space and time while the dangling causeis tied up; the whole process takes only seventeen seconds_ Aer Doothy asks why they insist that she go to Afed, the sceneeturns to an old causalline. The Count and te Duchess explain that they need a gir of ,independent spirit' to keep Alfed fom drinking. They expain that they've tiied other women, but ony Doothy seemsto have had the desired eIect. This Dhaseof lhe scene consumes tlirty eight seconds. Now the sceneopensa new causalline. The Duchess bees Dorothy ro have supper with Alfred {onrgt (appointment poposed).Doothy agees,but ony if fred comes to fetch he- ,The independent spi t. That'srwhat you wnt, isn,t it?,This new ine of action takes thi-ty-one seconds to openand develop. TheCountopines that Alfrpdcrnot cll for a commoner: 'A Bruger cal lor an Eljs? Never!' This becomes the (negative) diaoguehook to the next scene,which begins with Alied's car driving up to Dorothy'saparnentbuildrnq. f I hese princrpes of linearityseem self-evident 'ntua,' or eca that other filmmakers have used quite dierent principles to stuctue nd connectscenes. Anlonioni wil commonly protract the establishmentphase of a scene,ingering uponenvircnmental featuesfor some time belore eausal line is broached.Besson wi oen abupty stIt a sceneon a nev ine of action vrithout any evident connectionto the prevrous scene; ou uncertanty is exacebated by ambgous temporal relations and an absence of estabishing shots. Othe filmmakers erploit unexpected nationa intusions durinq the srene.In Eisenstpi s O./oer(t928r.the.July days' sequeneebegins suddeny, with severl shotsofcrowds,and ony then doesan exDositorv inler-lile christpnthp scquenr. The sequcnco

on the Paris-Nnterre train in Godard's lo Cinoise(196?) begins with a medium shot of two pais of hands at a compatment window. Voices chaL offscreen. Eventualy Vronique and hnois Jeanson lean forward into th frame. Now n inter-title (Tncounte with Franois Jenson') intecedes to give us our bearings. Wheesthe classical film strives to ink scenes smoothlyand to eserve narational intrusions for the transitional moments, Eisenstein and Godard disorient us by shifting the naration,s interjecion o an unconventional point within the sene. Wiihin the clssical scene,charactes act and eact ac4oding to principes of individulized charctr psychology. They struggle.colide.and makedecisions, Because suchpattens resmble those of othodox dma, we are already incineil to se them as following the crisis/climx/ esolutiontr4iectory belovedof ate nineteenthcenfury ilamtic theory. But the classical sceneis not stmctued ike an act in a wel,made play. The classical scene climbs toward a climax, ceainly, but the peculi domino-lineaity of the scene-sconstuction makes limited kinds of esoution occuredrly in the scene, as od inesof aclion gelclobed o.And rhedangling rause often !aves the scene unresolved. open. snd leading o the next. The classicasceneprogresses steaily towad a cimax and then switches the resouton of that ine of ction to another,latet: scerTe. From the standpointof rcception,this palrcm enhances the spectator,s confidence in unilerstanding the stoy action. Closing off certain causallines early in the scene givesthe vrewera sense of cumuatively folowing the action, etoactivey clinching his o he .eding of earier scenes, Such shoLtem esoutionsaso promisea fina resolutionas we. Comparethis pocess with the opemtionsof scenes in Persono (1967)or L'eclsse (1963)or Pjerrot Ie fou (1965). In these fims, the scee r'ill not necessaily answerearlier qustions: posednd conslntly suddenly nigmas dropped leadto moment bymoment f-ustation that makes the vrewer suspectthat closue may neve come. Both time and spacefit themselves snugly to the contols of the cassica scene,sacton. As in t:'e *Kng and the Chorus Girl segment, the expostionalphase of the sceneoccpiesittle sceen duation; most is given ove to th developmental phase. Order is assumed to be

66

HOLL\'WCIODSYLE, 1917.0 T!]E CLSSIC,A]-

chronological, uness a flashback or some cosscutting takes place. Thee can be a brief ellipsis within the scene, but it wil be either signalled by dissolves or wipes or covered by cutai{ays (e.9., whie the boss chases his Becetary, he suitor waits outside). Durtional continuity fom shot to shot is secwed tbrough all the devices examined in Chapter 4 (matches on action, soundovelaps, etc.). Certainly, the use of deadlines and appointments, not ony between scenesbut also within them, helps the ewer to creat stable and narrow hypothesesabout what twrs the vaious lines of action can take. Spaceis also rigidly codifiedby the scene'sflow of causand effect- The chaactes' activity is the fulcnrm of the conshuction of 180' space. The initial establishing shots ae folowed most probably by two"shots an amrcanot medumlong-shotframings). Then mme shoveverse shots o eyeline-matrhed medium shots which can altemate fo some time. Ticking and tocking against one anothe, these images will usually keep the figures in the same scle in shot and counteshot.Then, east commonly,may come subjective point-of-view shots. This ccentuation of the spacefollows the flow of cause and effect, the opening, development, and closingof ines of action. When a chaacte changes position, a broader view must esituate us: when a new chaacter enters, the almost inevitabe eyeine matches must be reinforced by n eventual establishing shot.Thesere-estabishing shotscan in tu'r anticipate the next causein the chain, as \{e saw in the way tht one camera setuD

'pimed' us for the next t*The Ca.dt gg53). All of these facton are illustrated in tre samplescene analyzed on pages6&9. The classical sceneends, as I have suggested, with a dangling cuse - a new line of action, a step towad a goal, a chacter's eaction to a new piece of infornatiot. This pattern is echoed in the scenographic space.lvhie a classical film begins most scenes on an establishing shot, it doeFnot necessaily errd mosi sceneson a e-establishins shot. The classicalscene tlpically endson only part ofthe toi space- usually a chaacte. Just as narrative causaity impells us to look forward to the next scene,so the decoupagecarries us to the heart of the space, the site of character inteaction, and leavesus there to nticipate how fhe dangling causevill be taken up later. As always, the individual devicesthat construct tte scene ae historicaly variable. Before 1927, fo instnce, dissoves might be used to link a deti to a long shot during rhe scene's exposi. tional phase. Afte 1927,that lin would plbably be made by a camea movemnt. Similarly, the 1930s insisted moe shongly upon internediay stages between estabishing shot6 and close views than did the 1940s, which allowedcutting fom establishing shotsto close,ove-the-shoulder everse angles. But these minor fluctrations simply eliminate one of seveal edundarl cues and do not ffect the basic pinciples of the cassicalpaadigm.Thoseprinciples can be seen ai wok in a tlpical classical scene such as tht analyzedbelow.

PLAY GIRL (1941) Specimen Scene 1 (s) Sofa:Graceand Ellen are seatedand (lig 6.10). drinking coffee Grace:'How are things going with you and Tom?' Elen:'We'rehaving fun.' Shesetsdown her coffeecup. Grace:What've you been doing about it?' Elen:'Why, nothing.What makesyru think I ought to do an]'thing bout it?, Gaee: 'No easont all. Ijust thoughtI'd asK.

Commentary Sors 1 The opening of the scene immediately establishes the two characters in space and reveas their different states of mind. (They talk abt their feeings.)Grace'squestions pick up the suspended of action romance-line from the previos scene. Non-diegetic music plays softly. Ellen's ast line motivatesthe ne shot, Gace's ection.

SHoTAND SCENE 6?

Elleo ses and walks amund the edgeofthe sofa(fig 6.11). Elen: Aom's a nice boy and we have a lot ofgood times together,but Id never marry him.' (me,high angle) Grace Tell, you certainy had rne fooed-I could'vesworn you weFe in ovewith him.'(frg6.12) (mls) Elleo, v.alking to 6ofatowad Grce:,I am in love with him.'(fig 6.13)Sheleans on the sofa back. t thi I have been ever since at fist day out on the road., (fis 6.14) (ns, high angle as 2) Grace (fig6.15). Ellen, ofscreen:Ie never stopped thinking about him,' (ms) Ellen: 'Every night - all night ong - I deamabouthim.'(frg6.16) (ms,as 2) Grace sets downcoee;sherises andwalks aroundsofa(figs6.1?-6.18). Grace:'My advice to you is to marry him.' Gracecomesto Eller in the right foreground (fig 6.19).'Marry him the very fist moment he poposes.' Ellen:'He won't propose.' (msas 5) Elen, Graceon the eft edgeolthe lrame. Elen: 'He almost <idtoday, but I stopped hrm.'She stands up angllytfig 6.20r. 'Don'tbe alarmed.I'll seeto it that nothing ike this happensand this little corporation of ous Fil continue to du just as it is.' business (ns, as eod of 6) Gace:'Oh, I know how you feel, daling, but don't take it so much to heart.'(ffg 6.21) Elen, backing away: 'You wouldn't, woud you?' (ms,s 7) Een snorts(frg6.22).'Thereare othe men, lots ofthem. You Bill Vincetsand yor Van Pacens. But there aen't any of thern like Tom. He's the only one tt's shown me any genune respect since the vey flrst day . . .' 10 (ms,as8) Grace,seenpastElen'sshoulder

2-5 Analltical cuts (1/2, 3/4) and eyeline matches (2/3, 4/5) beak the Bpaceinto its components to emphasize te dialogue. Edge lighting sepates the chaactes from the backgrounds. Rframing is used to follow Elen as the rises. The preous line of action is developedio a climx: Elen admits she loves Tom. Music continues, aiding shot mntinuity.

Grace rises and walks to Elen, marking the new line of action. She advisesEllen to mary Tom. The camea folows Grace and picks up Elen in the right foreground, reoienting u6. This composition preparesfor a ehaacteistic shoUevese-shot patten. Music continues. 7-10 ShoUrevese-shotcutting traces the nsrng tension between the two women. The repeatedset upset us gnoreminutiaeor space d concentate upon changes in chacter bhavio,as whenElen puls wayin shot8. Sound bleedsover one cut (9/10)in order to anticipale chraclerraction. Music con. trnes.

(frs 6.23).

Ee n :'...metyou.' Grace 'I wish you hadn'tsaidthat, Ellen.,

TIIE CISSICL HOLL11VOOD STYLE, I9I?{O

She srniles and waks left (frgs6.24and 6.25). 'As a matter of fact I wasrather wishing you would marr5r . . ., 1 1 (1s, as 1) lhe two wonen at ether end ofthe sof(frg6.26). Grace:'...T0m.' Ellen: 'Of corse.Nothing would give you greater pleaslre than to get your hnds on eleven million dollars., Grace: 'I was thining first of al ofyour happiness.' Ellen, voice rising: 'And your hrture! But I won't do a thing like to Tom!' Grace:'D11en!' Door buzzer rings. Grace: 'Yo'd bette fix you face., Ellel goesout ight (fig 6.2?). Buzzesounds again. Grace goesout right (frg 6.28). 12 (1s) Foye. Gace comesin left (frg 6.29);pan witr her to door. She opensit (frg 6.80). Grace: 'Goodevening,Tom.' Tom: 'Hello, Grace.' He enters. Grace: 'Ellen wil be here in just a moment.' Tom: 'Say,thatt an awfully nicedress you'vegot on.' Grace, as she and Tom wak to the sofa. 'Oh, this isn a dress,it,s a negigee.I,m staying in tonight.'(fig 6.31) Tom: 'You are?' Grace,sitting downon the second 6ofa:.Sit down,Tom.I wnt to talk to you.,(fie 6.32) (ms) The second sofa, Tom sitting by Grace (fls 6.33). Grace:'You're very ond ofEen, en,t you?' Tom:'}Ve,I've heardtel.' Grace:'Goingto marry her?' Tom: 'I woudill could.' Grace:'Givemeonegoodreasonwhy you Tom: 'I don'tthink she'dhave me., Grace: 'Ever try asking?' Tom: 'No, notexactly.' Crace:'lwnl to tell you a scret. Ifyowere to ask he tonight, I wouldn,t bea bit supisedif shesaidyes.' Tom, eagerly:'Sh!Hereshecoms., Gracelooksoffleft and Tom turns (frg6.341.

11 Gace'swalk le motivates a .e-establishins shot.The conflictbetween Lhewomenreache-s its climax, with Elen ccusing Grace of wanting her to mrry Tom for his money. Instead of resolution. there is simply n interruption: the door bu_ae.This sound cuts off the non-diegetic music for the rest of the sceDe, thus increasing the senseof irresolu_ tion. Gace stats out of the frame afer Ellen nas gone.

12 A fme cut nd a panningmovementfollow Gace to the door. As Tom entes, the framing rc,establishes the chaacters in space. The camera reframes and tacks to follorp them to the second sofa. Gce,s ,l /ant to talk to you' announcesthat they wll te up a suspended line of action.

13 Ate ascetningTom's state of mind (he loves Elen), Gace opensa new cusal line for Tom, one parael to that she openedfor Elen in shot 6. Gace aso suggests a dedine for Tom's proposa. Again, the action is elt unesoved;Ellen's enty, ike Tom's arriva earer, breaks off the convesation.

SHOTAND SCENE 69

{1s,s eld of12) Tom,ising as Ellen entes: 'Hello,EUen.'(figs6.35-6.36) Ellen:'Hello,Tom-' Tom: 'You look mighty grnd.' Josiethe maid entes witr Ellen's gloves. Elen:'Ihank you.' Tom:'!Ve,here we go.' He leads Ellenout,nking backat Crace (fis 6.37). Josie, coming to Cace: What'shewinking about?' Gace:'I think he's going to propose tonight.' Josie: Tfe1,that's fine.For Ellen.'Josie sitsdown(g 6.38). (mls,as l3) Josind Grace on lhe semnl sofa(fig 6.39). Josie,tuming Gtace'schin towad he: 'But what happensto you?' Grace: 'Oh, I alwaysget along.' Her smie fades as shepicks up a magazinc; Josielooksskeptical(flg6.40). Dissolve

14 The cut matches on Tom's action of tning. Reframing oeates a new establishing shot as Een and ten Josie enter. A1er Tom leads Elen out in te backgound, Josie and Grace suarize what Gace has ccomplished. Josie's 'For Ellen' eintroduces Ellen's point (shot 11) aboutGrace's futue.

15 As Josie sits, anothe match-on-action cut keeps temporal continuity. Two causesare e dangling: one immediate (l\,il Elen accept Tom's poposal tonigh?), the othe long-term (what will happen to Grace if she does?).The sceneendsby lingering upon only a portion of the space, tht charged with expressivity by Josie's concern and Gace,s feigned nonchalance.

The scenes an object of fascination, for viewer and for analyst, pay because it offes in mcocosm the possibilityof chting the cassical spectator's activity. Chapt3 has arcady shown that classica nanation emerges quite ovetly in the 6lm's opening moment6, during the cedits and the eay scenes,and then becomesrnore covet, letting character causality caught in med.iasres carry the narrationa burden. Later chptes have shown how systems of time and spacepemit this naration to become reatively less self-conscious, to render omniscielcc as omnipresence, and to justify naation's suppession of infomtion by charace action and shiing point-of-view, At the fllm's end, the ction resolvesitself 'on its own tems,' according to an internal causal or generic logic, but a na nrationa intusion (e.g., the wink to the audiencein *Appointtuentfor Loue [19411 is pemissible. Now we can seethat this patten of fluctuating presence is at work in the sceneas weI. In the estabishingphase,the na'rationis most self-eonscious and omniscient,with signs, ostentatous camera movements, and teling

details leang the traces of a relatively ovet naration.Once the actiongetsgoing.thenarraon slips into the background. The peculiar dominoinkage of causeand effect tkes ove the scene, but the nrratiol may becomeove again by an anticipatoy cut o a stessed sound-image juxtaposition.And perhps, at the scenetend,the na:ration re-emergs more body: t might call our attention to a detai which wil prove rmpotant ater or which wil aid the tmnsition to the next scene, o non-diegetic music might sneak in to ink this scene with the next. This is not to say that the elassica fllm is only the scenewit large, since, fo one thing, the fim comesto rest and esolution in a way the typical scenedoesnot. Sceneand film do, however, rely upon the same viewing ctivities creating and checkingfrrst impressions; linking actions by thei anticipated consequences; weighing nd testing atematrve h]?otheses about causlity, time, and space.Brick by bick, scene by scene, and inference by inference, the classica film impells the spectato to ndetake a Daticularbut not nive wok.

Theboundsof difference

So far, I have emphasized the unity and unifomity of the classical stylistic paradigm. But aly complete account of Hol1.wood filmmaking must ecognize deviations from the normHollywood itself has stresseddiffeentiation as a coneltive to standardization. Novelty and originality were taken to be valuable qualities, and scriptwrites evovedan entire vocabularyfor describing vaiation (girnmick, twist, bo, y, weenie, old switcheroo). Cameramen likewise claimed to see eachstory as requiring unique sual stye. The question, though, is wha principes govered this searchfor dierentiation. \ryhat imits were set upon vaiety? In what permissible ways coud films differ from one another?And at what points can the oveall unity of the cassica stye be said to bek down altogether? We must not er?ect gaps and breakdowns everywhere. The principle of motivation gives the classica paradigm a get ange of non-disruptive differentiation.

Benson'scubist picture policedetectives In Saspicioz(1941), ae calling upon Lina Aysgarth to inquie about her husband Johnnie. Before and aer their questions, one detective pausesto ganceat a cubist painting on the wa. StephenHeath has lornd in this gestue a significant ruptue of narative unity: broblem of point of view, diferent fiaming, disturbance of the law and its inspectoring eye, interruption of homogeneity of the narrative economy, it is somewhere ese again, another scene, another story, another space.'l Yet althogh omcer painting lacks compositiona Benson's motivation it is causayirrelevant - the picture can be justified by othe means.The cubist painting s , genetically motivated; Diane Waldman has 70

shown that the woman's C'othicfilm of the 1940s conventionaly casts suspicionupon the husband's sanity by associating him $'ith the distoed style of modem art.2 Benson's interest is itsef generically motivated (the detective scas the room for clues to Johnnie's personality) and lealistically' motivated as well: the philistine policemanis baffied by the artifacts ofupper-clss life, and the na$ation hee comically eiterates the motif of class difference that runs through the fim. (The pino phase on the sondtack futhe marks tlis as narational joke.) Finaty, it is possibeto seethe cubist pictue as n instance of artistic motivation, calling attention to the significance of imagery (paintings, photogaphs) and vision (point'of-view, coect judgmnt of ppeaances)in Susprcion as a whoe. In sum, Benson'spictue breaks unity only if we limit our notion of unity to straightforward causal motivation. Most instances of appaent trsgession in the classical frlm are like Benson's picture intrusions which momertarily context causality but which are motivted in othe ways. We have already seen (in Chapte 2) how rtistic motivtion in Hollywood cinema can justify spectace,parody, and baring of the device. Motivation can aso explain some appaent disruptions in the roe of the sta. For Parker Tyle, the star is moe impotant than the story, Holly[ood acting is but a chaade, and the sta's voie functions disjunctively, as something detachable from the star's personality. For Richd Dyer, the star moe often than not poses problems for ceating chracter.3 But we must remember tht gene shapes how the sta is understood. Tyler caims that sincethe sta does not'act in the theatrical sense, he dominatesthe stoy; he cites as an exmple the way that a Fred Astaire m exists only to revealFred's talents.a

TTIA BOUNDSOT DIFFERENCE

?T

But this is only a way ofsaying that the sta has found his genre; the musical motivates its nrrative to allow occasions for ingatiating dance.The same point holds when a st crosses genres. In *?fu Blnck Hand. (1949) Gene Kelly plays an Italian who fights the Mafla; this crime film does not lead us to expect that he will burst into a angua dance, nor is there what Dyer cs a 'problmatic fit' between the bash, steetwise protagonists of Couer Grl (1944) and Anchors Aueigh (1945) and the irnpetuous, ideaistic Gio. Disuptions arise ony when the star's presenceo ctions cannot be motivated by any means, and this seemsto be rare. Benson's cubist pictue suggests tht t is an erro to overlook rcaistic motivtion, but it is soan ero to mate too mch of it. conception of the classical film as a 'reaist teit' tends to see the styization ol cetain frlms as outageosand joting. Yet styization, of vaious sort6, is a conventon o many Holywood genres, most notably the comedy, the musical, and the melodrama.Historically, all three descend from episodic and composite forms in the Ameican populartheate (e.9., vaudevile, melodrama). The nineteenth-centry popular play was commony interrpted by ochesta interludes, songs, dances,animal acts, magicins, acobts,and other noveties.s To some degree, musicals, meloalamas, and comedieshave folowed the episodic bent of their forebears.This seldom disturbs us, however, becausein such instances the typica multiple motivation of the cassica text simpy gives way to a more linear senes:a scenemotivated compositionally, then a songor gag motivated generically, then another srene, and so forth. We shouldnot. however, make too much of the quality ofthesegenres, episodic sincethe classca cinema tended to unify each genre's disparate appeals and to imit the genre's styizaton. Compositionamotivation povided ech genre with a cohercnt baseine against which the gene'sconventions could react. For exampe, in the fims of the Ritz Brothers, Abbott and Costello,and the Marx Brothers, the vaudeville skit o comic dialogueests within a eativey unified naratve. The backstage musica encour:aged intepoatedsongsand dances while sti maintining an ongoing c1rsa ehain. The 'big scenes' favoredby stage melodrama became

more compositionaly motivated in film melodma. Fo the mot pat, space and time remained classicaly coheent. The busts of stylization (a Busby Berkeley number, a Mamolliar hythmic pssage,or a Hapo Mrx sight gsgl emaintied l,o the classicl nom in that the norm defines the duation and ange ol permissible styization. What Aln Witliams remark of the musical appliesto all these genrcs thei conventionsseem stylized not in etion to 'ife' but in eation to the aesthetic nom of the cassica fi1m-6 Compositiona unity and generrc conventios ae as importnt as .realism' in locating the specificdynamics o these genres. All of which suggeststhat the most wenching aspects of these ms, their most ,radical, moments, ae fact codied through geneic conventonsRcently criics have put forward the melodrm Ea subvesive genr mostcrudeiy becauseits lck of veisimiitude yields unpleaswe, moe subty becauset reveals contra(family,business, dictionsin bourgeois ideolog) sexual relations).? Yet ctics have yer to constuct the melodrama as a empiricaly or concepually coheentgenrc. If we did constuc such a model, we would probaby nd tht the gene's'subvesiveness' is itself conventionalized. For exampe, Thomas Elsaesser'sgeneraly excenlessayon melodramacites a scene in Margie (1946) in which a gir ushesdownstais to seeher teacher,only to frnd that he is going to the dancewith someone else. Esaesse wites: 'The shategy of building up to a climax so as to thottle it the moe b'upty is a technique of damtic rcvesal by which Hollywood has consistently criticized the steak of ncuby naive morl and emotional idealism in the American psyche.'o But s ely as 1926, the RussianFonaist citic SergeiBalukhatyi had pointed out that stage meodmareied upon exactlythis convention of sudden ups and dolvns. Daie Gemuldsummaizes Balukhatyi'spoint:e Melodramaalways finds ways to introduce the uner.Wted.rrto he ction. The dj.rrniceffect of this dece lies in the fact that it oates the 'couse o events' as it hasbeenoutinedand already graspedby the spcttor,turning it in new,unknowndirections thoughthe intoduction of a new fact or deed,not stipulated by the previos action.

72

THE CLASSICLHOLLYWOODSTI'LE, 19I?.60

'Accopaniment for a FilE Scene.('|930), subtied, 'Danger ThreaLens. Pnic, Catstrophe,. was pmphetic, for Hollywood quicky identifred dsaonant music with just such oualities. Distubing music couldmnvey dsturbedstatesof mind:. David Rasin's ,piano lrack lor the deanfke scenps ot Laura \1944),l\4iklsRzsa.s theremin for expressing psychosis in Speltbound (1946), or Bernard Herrmann'sdissonances which trigger the homicida ddves of the cornooserprotgonist oI HangoucrSquare r1945'.Ato;ality was simiary domesticated. ln East of Ed.en The assimilation of the European avant-garde 1955), Leond Rosenmann assigned tonalmusic to the teenages and eseved atonality fo ,adut You cut to the backof the Big Feow, conflicts'; then for ?e CoDe (1955)Rosenmann used thee lp dissolves ol the pesses - give'em serial music becuse'I wanted more neutosis.,l3 that Ufa stuff, then to the steet a newsboy, Quite often in these films, th 'modem' music inse of he font page,the L roaring by becomes identified with the naative conict Keris, it's the gltsiest thing in pictures!Ca itsef, so that the esolution of the aetion cals for you back,chierI a eassertion of'normal' music. At the close of S.J. Perelman,,Scenario' Hangouer Square, the composer,s omntic concerto constanty shifts betlveen dieeetic and Like Benson'scubist pictue in Suspicirn, the non'diegetic status. thus overriding fhe disEuopean avant-gade might be thought to have sonances in his psyche. Ofthe last ten minutesof had a disruptive effect wher it entered Holl].wood Eost of Eden, Rosenmnn writes: 'The final cue in the period 1925-50. Yet on the whole, relums to moe tonal, cassica setting, Hollywood absorbed and modified altemative reflecting the resoluton of the stuggle, in Cal,s atistic pacticeswhich had been deveoped in epentanceand reconciation.'ra There s aso Euope and Russia. It is not too muchto say that genencmotivation.Just as sing-sorce ighting Hollywood has peryetuly renewed itsef by couldsigna the thriler genre,so .moden, music ssimilating techniques fom epeimenta wasreserved for horro fims,psychiat c subjects, movemelts. HollJ-wood has done this by coand science frction. The latte sene so elating new devices with functions already motivated the use of electonic music. After defined by the classica style. Three exampes , sconng experimenta shorts for Ian Huso and vnt-garde musc, German Expressionist othes. Louisand Bebp Baron wenron lo cmposp cnema,and Soet montagecinema- iustate fectronic musrc tor Forbiddpn Pioncl tt95t.r\ how this has happened. Even in recent yeas, horor and science fiction Contrary to wht we might expect, the ceehave remained the principa Hlyir'ood genres brated philistinism of Holywoodproducersdid that pemit 'avant-gade, scoes (20l [1968], not b avant-grde composers from studio work. Planet of the pes [19681, The Erorcst I191Bl, GeorgeAntheit ecled with astonishment that Halloween 11978], AIen t197g]D. In sho, the ,We engaged expressive he was hied o write discordanty: ange and foma innovations of you to do 'modenistic"music - so go aheadand expedmental music of this century have been do it!"' Stravinsky nd Schnbergwee both stringently-conf;4ed by Holywood,snantive approached to seorefims. Yef howevemoden conventions. the musical technique might be, it got motivated Wht of experimenta movements within in conveDtional ways, cinematse?Of al nationa cinemas,the 1920s It shouldgo without saying tht experimentl German film hd the getest influence on music sinceDebussy need not express anguished Holl'"r,ood. This rtselfis significnl. for in many o tomented feeing, lthogh some preces respects that cinemamost esembed the cassical cetainly do. In this respect, Schnbeg,s Ameican pactice- Ufa, the major Cerman

Tbis is not to deny the powerful effect of such twists, no is it to assert that trey should not be studied from a political stndpoint. The point is only that the contradictory emotional wenchings of meloalamaare geneicaly motivated, no more socially or textually disruptive than interpolated numbes in a usica-lo In such ways, eonventions of the rnore stylized genes operate as limited plays with the classic compositiona dominant.

TTE BOUNDSOF DIFFERENCE ?3

poduction compny, had shorpnhow fims coud be mde in the completely controlledenvioment of a studio, a lesson that was not to be lost on Holl5rwoodwhen sod cane. Moreove, ceain Expressionist techliques of lighting, camerawork, and special effects were quickly imitated by Ameicans. The set designs of such films as ?e Cabinet of Dr. Caligari \1920\, one commentato remaked in the 1920s, made Holyrood ,no longer terifred by shadows.'r6Fom 1926to 1929, films like Voriery (1925) and Thz Last Laugh (1924) createda vogue fo unusual agles and the Bo-called 'free'camera. CharlesCIarkerecalsthat at Fox, Geman frlms woud be screened for directors and cinematographers and discussions would be held afterward: Well, that s a great shot;vhy can'twe do that?'r?t the end of 1928, one witer pointed out the technoogicaldemand ceatedby the new fashion:l3 With the advent of the so-called,German influence' seveayeas ago,th fist camea to be called into servicein the poductionof creative angleswas e Akeey. Because of its light weight, facile leveling device,ad g1,roscopiccontol, directos found chimerical ideas efficiently screened by this remarkable carnera. The Akeey specialistswere caedupon to lash their instruments high on the mastsof ships, on the arms of derricks, or to be still diferenr, rn deephoes ookingup. When Charles Rosher was at Ufa as a consutant on ,t'o-st (1926), he learned how to suspend a cnela lom tle ceiling for overhead movrng shots, a technique employed later in S&nrjse (1927).The faseperspectives of The Last Laugh and the miniatues itr Metropolis (1926) irtroduced Hollyrvood to more sophiEticatedspecia effects, a pmctice that was aso to expand consideraby in the studio-bound era. The ssimition of. Germanic iechnique, however eager,was selective. Somedevceswere inseted into geneic contexts: low-key ighting for mystery, distorted perspectivesfor horror, odil angles for shock effects. With a few exceprons, cameramovement was usedto establish locaes or follow principa chacts. Most imporuan[, German Expressionist techniquesfor indcating chaacter subjectivity wee seized upon lo momentay, intensified inses. The dlunken

came r The Last Ltt , and the somesautins pornlof-view in Vorielr,becamequickly copied, arncehey r,vereeasiy motivatd by characters' psychological states.In Lhcate 1920;,Hollwood nlms began lo include prismatic or distorted rmagery, mutiple superimpositions, skewed perspective in scl design, and cmeragyatioDs to rndrcaie chracter'sjnloxication,deljrium, dteam, o emotional aD.iety. Such devices, more mre in the 1930s,were revvedin the subiective poinl,of-view frlns of the 1940s. Ot_her iormal taits of Expressionist cinem - the more eDisodic ndopen-nded nativ, lh enirelysubjective film, or the slower tempo of story events were not imitted by Hol)'wood;the classica stve took only what could extencl and elaborte irs principles /ithout chalenging them. Most significant of all is the manner in which the classieal Hollywood paadigm blunted the stylistic chaenge of the erperimental Soviet crnema. At the evel of stoy, the works of Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Dovzhenko, and othes frequenty refused to ceate indiduaized. psychologiclly defindpj-otsgonisls. Point-of.ew was manipulated by a naation that constantlv flaunuedts presence. Stylislicaljy, montage editing tended to beak down the unified dieetic wold. Mon[age forcedthe viewer lo recomizea reworing of l,h raw vent throueh conslnnl editing gps and fsmatches: overapping cutting distndedtime, disjunctivecuts ceated spatia and tempoal ambiguities. Even the shot itself ofered uncertain cues, since exteme close-ups, canted nges, and abstract compositional pattens against sky or neutra backgrounds tetded to diso ent the viewe. In sum, Soviet monlage crnema constituted a ehaenge to classical nrrative anddecoupage on almostlvery lmnt: narrative unity, narrationa voice and poiDt-of-view, spatia and temporl continuity. Hollywoodwas abeto assimiate certain trits of Soviet frms becauseits eariest awarenessof lnontage' was basedon Gernan ms- ExceDtfor Potenkin, which wasseenin the Unifed Sraiesin 1926,Soviet moatage films were not genealy impoted until fer 1928. But 'montage sequences' begin to appea in the Holywood cinemabeforethis; a goodexampe is the scene of the aists' ball in So ?s/s Paris {1926). At this period,compicaeddssolves with superimposed effects were ofen caed'Ufa shots.'Recoenized as

?4

TIIE CISSICAL HOLLYWOODSTYLE, 191?.60

specifrcallyGemanic, these shots were motivated as drems,visions,or hallucinations.Suchely montage sequences estblished two crucia qualities of late American ones: the linkage of seveal short shots by dissolves athe cts, and the motivation o montage by chaacte psychology or other story fctors. Late, acquaintancewith Soviet films induced Hollryood to add an abstaction accomplished through ftaming: extreme close-ups, low angles, and canted iamings. The combination of Soviet and German techniques thus became highly functional. The stylized framings signaled that these shotsdid not belongto the smenarational level as the 'normally' shot scenes,while the dissolves and wips - alreadycodified as indicatinga time lapse- implied the compession ofa consideabe nterval. Locked within an 'ordinary' context, the montage passagesbecamecodified as a s)rmbolic shorthand,not a new way of seeing. Early takies soon begn using the montage sequence to summarize a engthy process.ln ?e Da:rce of Life (1929), a performer's decline from success is endered through canted anges of theater marquees, prismatic shots of his hectic dissipation,and rotating shots of his binges,all inked by slow dissoves.Sa! It Wth Sones(1929) incudes a montageof the hero in pison,with his cesinging in the cente and superimpositonsof canted angles of prison routines; a late sequence shows a ticking cock with caendar pages superimposed. In the montage sequence, the sound cinema had found its equivalent for the expositoy tite, 'Iime passesand brings many cnanges . . .Flthemorc, decoation could make the montagea sourceof spectacle n its own ight, enhancingemotional and hythmic effect.Good exampes may be found in Flting Down to Ro (1933) and it Melodl Cruise (1933), in which montgeruns wid. Montagebecamea rhetorica dece used 'to get ove a damatic point in a minimum of lootage and with maximum force.,le Hol1wood's leadingspeciaist, SlavkoVorkapich, frled his montages with visual rodomontade, employingportentoussymbolism(e.g.,the Fures tn Crime Without Passioz[1934]) and a frantic editing pace (e.g.,te openingo[ Meet John Doe 94l l). Vorkapich'sostenlatloussequence in Moytng (1937), tacing the rise of an opera singer,seems to be paodied in SusanAexnde,s

decline in the opea montage of Ctizen Ka1e 1941). No matter how elaborai, montage introduced somediscontinuity,bul,because tt was c.91fined to short bursls for narrow puposes, the dlsJunctveness was not a dawback;indeed, i! was iileally suited to expess momentary disruptioa, as in the montge ofthe e.thqakein San Francisco (1936). Moeove, since any discontties were overridden by a unifie lsical passage,the montage seqrence gve the filrn mmposer d chance to wit a short but integal piece. The French terrn itsef connoted vituosity and sophistication; rvhen the Academv of Motion Picture Arl,s nd Siences slted an official magazinein 1939, e publication vas called Montage. By the mid,1930s, when the Soviet flrms wee better known, Hollywood beganto rticute what it had done with montge. Artices explaining Soet film theory began to appea in professional journals. Kar Feund pointd out that the very fast ctting of Soviet films was ,adaDtd bv American-studios fhrough the technique f opticat printing.'u Most self-consciously continentalwa5 Vorkapich, rvhojustified hiB work by appeal to the commonplaces of silent a theoies of ,pure cinema' and who caled the motion picture a 'symphony'ir spced time. EchoingEisenstin, Vokapich caimed a behaviorist basis for montage: 'It is possible to stimulate a specr,amr inlo variols psy(hological andphysical reactions by meansof ceain yisual initations comina from the screen.2r But whereas Eisenstein celerated the possibiity of doing this throughout the film and without use of na-rative, Vokapich insisted on the need to let the stoy determne the film,s shapeand^-to usemontge chiefly in.transilional pssages.'zz A fepdback loop wascosed: l,heearly Hollvood cinema's use of rapid cutting fo suspense initialy influenced the Russian fomulation of montage, whch was in tum revised and conected for decades of use rn Holywood.23 To this day, the classically constructed fil has incuded orthodox montase (albeil wilhout dissoves; equpnces see, f;r example, the arriva of the vcationers in JoDs (1974)or ths Fs<irt .fthe ransommoneyin ?e TakinA of Pelhm123 (1973. The caseoffilm noir Issues of tnsgession nd subversion, stylization

TIIE BOUNDSOF DIFENENCE '5

and realism, foreign inuence ad domesticgene intesect in that body of work known as film noir. It is an ertraordinarily amorphousbody; critics have defrnedit as a genre, a style, a movement, a cycle, even a tone or mood. 'Iwo respectedcritics find only twenty-two films noirs; a recent book on the sbject lists over t\ro hundred and fiy. Anote citiCs list incudes HEh Noon (1952\ a\d 2(n1 J968).4 The. concept of motivatior as we have been using it.can help carify what is on regaded as the "most deeply poblematic group of lms producedin Holll'wood. What is film noir? Not a geme. Producersand consumers both ecognize a gene as a distinct entity; nobody set out to makeor seea film noi in people the sensethat deibeately choseto nake a Western, a comedy,or a musical- Is film noir then a style? Critics have not succeeded in defining (one specifically no visual tchniques tht would include, say, Laura [lg4l] a'd Touch of EnI [1957]) or narrative str:uctre (one that would inelude policiers, melodramas,and historicl films like eign of Terror [1949)1. The probem resemblesone in art histoy, that of defining 'nonclassical'styles.Gombrichremindsus that most style terms Gothic, mamerist, Baoque originaly chaacteized a new style solelyby its epudiation of a nom. Such terms of exclusion cnot be simpy hansted into a set of taits for tle style in question becausete origina epithet intended no more than negative charcteization. ('Gothic'simply meant'baba&us.') Historically, however, critics tsnd to take the tem as a positive denition and to ty to find the essential taits of the stye. As Gombrich points oul25 The cookmay divide fungi into edibe mushroomsand poisououstoadstools;tese are the categories that matte to him. He fogets, evenifhe evecaed,that thee my befungi which areneither ediblenor poisonous. But a bol,anist whobasedhis taxonomy offungi on these distinctions and then maried thern to some othe methodof cssification would surely lail to produceanything useful. A ook at th histoy ol 'film noir' shows substantiallythe same pocess at wok- Initialy, the term served less to define than to diffeen, tiate. n the summerand fal of 1946,the Fench pblic saw a new so of Ameicanlm. Years of

occupation had thheld ?fu Ma.ltese Falcon (L94l\, Laura (1944\, Doublc Indemntr 1944), Murder, My Sueet (1944), The lVoman n the Wnd.ow(1944r, and,The Lost rleekend. (19451.ln Novemberof 1946,-LaRerue d.u cinma !'tblished Jean-Pierre Chartjejrs aticle,'Les amicains aussi font des frlms "ois"' ('Americans so Make Films "Noirs,,). Chrtie found thesefims to resemble the brooding Qua d.esbrumes (1938) aad Pple moko (1937),works which the French caled llms nors.26 From the start, then, the American 7lms noirs were defined chiefly by their iiference from the mainstream Hollywood pmduct. But later citics, such as Raymond Borde ald Eienne Chatmeton, began to search for traits that would constitute m noir as a unifred 9rce then, fim critics have BTouping,or sre.27 continued to rse 'film noi' as constitutive caegory, forgetting that it emerged as what Gombrich cals a term of excusion. The consequercewas the stil-curent disprte about what film noir reay 'is.' We might as easily, and as fruitessly,ask what 'the Baroque'essentillyis. The tem accetes mening, o athe meanings, only fom the history ol critcism. This is not to say that the tem is theeby phantsmie or triviI, since onee a citica tadition has intoduced the term, fimmaers can tal<e thei cue from the citics' very stuggle to define it positivey. Borde nd Chaumetonspeak of French films noirs influencedby the American souces,and ecent years have seen the release of such films as Chnaton(L974) an The Bg Fir (1978),which clealy are esponses to t ctica canonization of ilm noir. Thus we inherit a category constucted er post lcto ort o a peceived resemblance between continental cime meodamas and a ew Hollwoodproductions. As a resut, 'firn noi' has functioned not to dene a coheent genre o style but to locate in severa American films a chalengeltodominnt values. It is not a trial description of frlm noi to sy that it simply indicates particular pattens of nonconformity within Holywood. This is why films of many diffeent sorts cn be consideredto beog to llm noi.' In Wht e these pattms ol noneonfomity? general, lm noir has been considered to chllengethe cassica Hoywoodcinemain fou ways.

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T]{E CLSSTCAIIIOLLI'IVOOD STYI,E, 19I?-60

1 An ssaut on psychologicalcausality. The fim values prcminent in mainsteam Hollwvood noir prctagonist oen suffers internal conflict, cinema.But formally and stylistically,all iour of 'with an existential awareness of his or her lm noi's chalenges none the less aihee to situation.'B As Borde and Chameton put it, specific aad non-subversive convetions derived te lassical conventions of logical action, fom cdme itemtue and fom canonsof ealistic defined characters,and a psychologicallystabe and generic motivation. hero are subverted by frlm noir's attractive Chaier's term flm noir camefrom the phrase killers, repellent cops, conired actions, romn noir, used in the ealy 1940s to efe to gatuitous violence, and weary or disoriented hard-boied detective novels on the American heroes. model.33This etymology is significant because 2 A challenge to e prominence of heterosexual every chacteristic naative device of film noir romance. The flm noir heroine is sexualy was aready coneentjonal in American cime alluring but potentially teacheo-s. The fiction and drana of the 1930snd 1940s.Borde psychoogical uncertainty of the protagonist and Chaumeton correctly emphsizethe crucial finds its counterpart in this enigmatic influence of had-boied detective fiction. which chaacteiztion of the female. Christioe had in tlrc 1930sbecomemore rspectable wih Gledhi points out that the naration ofen the commerciasuccessof books by Dashie compells the heo to decidewhether the woman Hammett, James M- Cain, Raymond Chandler, fits the t'?e or not. Instead of winning he as and especially JamesHaclley Chase. One can even omtic partne, the hero finds her barring claim that Hammett's first lour novels (1929-ll) accessto his goal o holding him in her power; defined most of the conventions of noir dtective at the limit, he may have to kil her or die fims, including frrst-person naraton and himself to break lee.2e expressionist subjectivity (e.g.,the potagonist's 3 An attack on the motivated happy ending_The dreami Red. Hanest 119291). By 1944,the hadesolution of the plot oen expresses the boiled detective story hd becomeconventional working of the fate at has ovesee[ the entie enoughfor Ra1'rnondChander to sum it up in his action; in this event, the film ends unhappily. celebratedessay, 'The simpe art of murder.'n{ Or, if that is too shocking, he enforcedhappy The evidence is clear: using the Alain Silverending mmes to seem lame and tacked-on. Elizabeth Ward list (disprtablebut no more How, ask Borde and Chaumeton, can we be arbitrary than any), we frnd that adaptations of satisfied by the resoration of justice when the hard-boiled novelsconstitutealmost20 per cent of fllm has shown repesentatives of justice s the films noirs made between 1941 and 1948. monstmusly corrupt? 'Is the disturbing effect of Anothe sub-genre of c me literatue, the the film completely wiped out by the ast five 'psychoogica thiler,' nde'went ejuvenation minutes?'30 during the 1930s, in novelsand paysby Frances 4 A criticism of cassical technique. According Ies, Ernlyn Wiliams, and Patrick Hamiton.3t to Pau Schrader,fim noir uses night-lighting, The result was a series ol films shessins location shooting, a estless and unstabe, abnormal psychology and murder in a middlespace,and ensecompositions;such a stye can cass setting: Gaslght (1944, adapted from even undecut conventiona middle,class Hamilton's successfuplay Angel Street) , SlpepM! themes.31 According to other critics, film noir,s Loue (1948),Laura (1944), Th.eBiE Clock J946), visual style unsettles the viewer in orde to and, Secret Beyondthe Door (1948). The espionage express the ho's disoentation_32For the thrier, made respectable during the ate 1930s same ends, frlm noi taces the potagonist,s by Graham'Greeneand Eric Amber, was also mental states by meaDsof voice-ovenanation, quickly trnsposed into film, in suchworks as 7e flashbacks, and subjective point,of-ew. A of Mask of Dmitrios (1944), Journey nto Fear these devices are sid to chalenge the 9421, The Confid,ental Agent (1945), an The neutrality and 'invisibiity' of cassica stye. Ministry of Fear \1944).36 And the postwarvogue fo semi-documentay films owessomething to the Such aspectsof frm noir have athacted citical poice-procedura nove in crme fiction, usuay ttentionbecause th) ttack certinAm(n considercd to hve emerged with Law.rence

TIE BOUNDSOF DIFXRENCE

77

Tleats V as in Victin 1194. Cleary, the narrative ,probems, posedby fims nois are in fact conventions taten over by Holyqrood cinema from popuar liteatue. The relativity of dght and wong, the city s a junge of cornption and tero, the solity investigato walking down 'mean steets' - suchdevicesof the hard-boilednovels and espionage taes wee easily assimilated by the cinema. Similarly, film noir atmospher of fe and pedl, psychoogica ambiguity, and abnormal menta states had aledy been conventionalized in psychoogical tnnlles. The styiEtic features of film no are Jus! as strongly motivated. Subjective effects(flashbacks, voice-over commentary) wee part of a genea trend toward the epesentation of exteme psychoogical states. Location shooting, encouragedby wartirne limts on set constnrction and the ealism' of combat documentis, became common afTe Kiss of Death [94?) and Nahed.Cty (1948).37 Cinematographes regar rc empoy 'mood lighting' - truically, lor,key lighting. In normal filming, the atio of key to fil light was 4:1 (key plus l to frll alone).To ight ow-key,say 5:1, cinematographers usully shot with norma key and less fi, then adjusted the negtlve during processing or prinling to bring oul shadow detail.'"ln exlreme cases, cinemato. graphers used no fill light at all. Such \,eid lighting' wasoen consideredeistic in contast t tee-point studio glamorr ighting, and the effect couldbe plausiblymolivaLd as coming from a single,harsh souce- say, steet light or a feebe lamp (see fig ?.1). But here agarn, realisticmotivationoperated as an alibi. low-key lighting was already a stape of ceain genes (horror lms, poljciers), especialy in ssenes teating cime or morbid psychology (seefig ?.2). It is possblethat .crime iteratue arso contributed to noir ighting effects.John Bxter cites this passagefrom Come Woolich,s Black path of Fear ,1944):3e 'We went down a new aley . . . ribbons ofight spokedacrossthis one, gimmering through the intestices ofan unfurled bamboo bind strekhedacoss an entryway.. . . The barsof ight madecicatrices across us. . . . For a second I stoodlone, livid wealsstiping me fom heaal to lbot.

One can even flnd film noir visual conventionsir 1940scomic strips like Dick Trdc! and Thp Spirt. The Germanic influence upon Holl].wood lighting duing the 1920s and 1930s re-emergedin frlms noirsbecaus crrentconceptions of realismcame to einforce exiing geneic norms. The ca6e of film noir cao be solved by investigting ealistic and generic motivation. Mystery Jvits had ready tuned away fom the orthodox detective story towad a ne,, ealism'; this new realism in trn revivified certain fllm genres. Moreove, the new foms werc better suited to classical cinema than the cerebral detectivepuzzle had been;they pomisedaction d l,mosphere. The crucial point. however,is that formaly and technically these noir fims emained codified: a minority pmctice, but a unified one. Thesefilms blend causal rnity with a new elistic and generic motivation, and the esut no more sbverts the classical fim thn cdme fiction undecuts the orthodox novel. The reappearing author The most influentia agument for diffeentiation within Holll.wood cinema has been advancedby uteur critcs. To choosea body of work attched to a director's sigate and to caim it as individual, pesonal, even subversive is the most commonwy to sho$/that e Ho]'wood cinema is not monoithic. And auteur citics e ight; ike 'film noir,' the category of ,authoship' does locate important differences within the classica stfe. But rre need to rccognize several different senses in which any frm can be said to have an 'author.' The autho can be thought of as a personr the achral agent (o agents) creating the text. Traditionally, this has raised probems of attribution, authentication, the relevance of biographica data andstatements ofintention,etc. n mass-production cinema, which has traditionally involved coboiative labor, schoars have found t dincult to assign authoship to ay individual. Holllvood's own discouse has tended to recognzethe innovative worker (as Chapte 9 will show in deta), and that worker can sometimes be grantedthe status of'author \e.g., Gimth, von Stohem, possiby Welles). But identifying an innovative worker is seldom a

78

TIIE CLASSICAI IOLLI-WOOD STYI,E, 19r?.60

relevant textual factol however Vemon Walke,s special effect for Ctizen Kane (1941) might be pised within the trade, his work has acquiredno authoiial status irr the realm of eception or criticism. The author cal aso be thought of as a social code.Here the nameof the peson is investdwith ideological, even mythologica status. ,picasso, is more than a man; the nme connotes a complex sel of artistic techiques,hislorical epochs, and social atti{,udes.a0 ln this sense.the author is crnstructed in and through the social instittion of the specific art. Holyvood cinema has seldom constructed 'authors' as pat of its institution. With rae exceptions (Disney, Hitchcock, and directors who are also sts, such as Chaplin nd Jerry Lewis), the Holl]'wood cinema doesnot give directos, or even producers, authoal sttus. Considerby conkast the Europeanart cinem, which has created a compicated set of processes (criticism, film festivals, retrospectives) to fix 'Bergman'or 'Felini' as tademaks no lessvivid tha 'Picasso.' Both the autho as empirical agent and as institution trademak stand outside the texts themselves.We cn so thirk of the autho as name we give to cetain opeations of the a wok. When \e ask bout the director,s .attitude, toward the action o spek of authoria manipution o deception,we ae identflng the author to some degree with the naational pocess.Thus in a film one could sometimes equate the 'narratol with the author. The politique d.es autezrs went further, seeking nrrational constals in many works possessing the same signature. This constitutes a fourt senseof 'authorship.' Insofar as the autew citic is not simply taking intuitivey about ,personality,' he or sheis committed to the unearthingof commonstylistic o thematic stategieswithin a body of work. 'Uneathing' is the right wod becuse the 'invisibility' of Holywoodtchnique, the director who caims only to be a stor),telle, and the aggrandizement of ules al tend to do\,nplay the authoial poeess. The folowing pagesassume that identiying the 'autho' with the nrrational pocess, eithe vrithin a fim or acoss several frs, is the approachmost pertinent to the history of fim stye.If we think of authoship s charcterstic processesof narration, we shall find that

authorial presence in the Hol1.woodcinema is usually consonant with classicalnorms It would be possible to locate authodl diIerencs by using two oI the three leves of stylistic description I have already proposeil. Authors are most readily characterized by Ure recuTence of particula technicl devices Wylels deep focus, Von Sternberg,s cluttered compositions. Since the classieal stvle is a paradigm. a fiJmmaker may hbitu;ly and systematically choose one alternatrve over aothe. Wheeas John Ford might customariy stage n action around a doorway, Sirk might stage it in front of mirors. t the secondlevel. that of formalsystems, ar author'swork mav also reveal distinctive manipulaLjons of eauiality. time, nd space. One commonmark of the auleur fi-lm is anbiguity about chcler psychology. Welless Citen Xane is the /ocasc/ossicus of this practice, but simila strategies are at work in the fllms of Hitchcock, heminge, and Fritz La4g. It is pqually possible to defineaurhorial uniqueiess by virtue of a distinctive treatment of hme and space.Hawks's -tfis Gir, Fridoy (1939) acceerates plot duration by compressing slory time. while Von Ster.nberg prolongs dution though stiic poses. slowed conversations. and lengthy dis6olves wnrcn no tonger convey smpe ellipses bu[ graphicaly slpeimpose two discerc srory actions.Holl;wood auteurs havesopresented rrch variety of sptial systms.ranging from Premlnger's sober. long_held two_shot t Lubitschs fastidiousbrpakdowno[ the sDace into revealing objecfsand expressons. Such variety wil not surpriseus if we reca Leoncl Mever's point: For any specificstyle there is a finite number of rules, but there is n indefinite numbe of possible strategies for realizing or inslantiating such nrles. And for every set of rules there are probably innumerabe strategis that have never been instantiated.'a There is, as Meyer'sremark suggesls. also a .. lrmt lo authorialuniqueness in Hollvwood. At the most abtract levei of generality, narrative causaity domintes the flm's spatia and iempoal systems.We have already seen how gene, spectacle, technicl virtuosity, nd other actos encouagenarative to sip a bit from promrnence,ony to aow the naration to compensate for this sip by adjusingits overa st'ucturc. In a similar fashion, authorial

THE BOU\'DSOF DIFFERENCE

?9

eshiting of the hieachy of systrDs can only be intrmittent. The moderist cinena and the avnt-gade can make temporal and spatial systems vie for prominence with narrative causaity and even override it; Bresson, Tati, Mizoguchi, Ozu, Snow, Frampton, e, ol. can in vaious wys poblematize naative, making overt nrtion a pervasive pesence,But there is litte chance in Holywood of vhat Burch cals 'oganicdilectics,' the possibilityof using purey stylistic parametersto determine the shapeof the frlm (including its narrative).!2 When George Melford directed/ast o/'Borno. he couldnot have made Joseph Comell's lose lloart, although the atter contains amost no shot that is not in the fomer; Comel's frm creates a play of spatia and tempoa etions aong element discoveredin but feed fom a naationa mat. In the cassical frlm, such a play cannot permanently displace story causality from its privieged role. This is t say tht ove naration, the presence of self-conscious 'autho' not motivated by realism or genre or story causaity, can ony be intermittent and fluctuating in the cassicalfilm. We have already seen that the classica film contains certain codified moments when nartion can be foegrounded:the beginning and ending of the film, beginnings and endings ol scenes, montage sequences, and certain (usually generically motivated) rnoments within scenes. The self-conscious, omniscient, and suppessive narration of the fim comes forward usually at such points. To some extent the auteur, either within the fim or across films, can be identified sdth characteristic teatments of the intrusive narationa moments. Eo instance, expositoy inte-tites always acknowedge a certarn ommscience on the naation s pa; the llm may play down this omniscience(as in a majority practice) or play it up to create specifickind of naration (booding and bardic in Grith's fims, cynical and wordly in Lubitsch's). Similary, the opening is a paticulaly sef-conscious moment in the fllm, so one may. use it to erect false impressions(as Lubitsch doesin So lis is Panis) and thus emphasize the viewer's dependence upon the naation. The autho may not intude when we expect it: Ha\tks's or Cuko's naation almostneverlapses into self-consciousness or ove suppessiveness. O the author may ntude moe often than is usua, as in the films of Lang,

Hitchcock, and Weles. The authorial possibiities within classical narration may be usefuly ilustrated by the work of two auteurs - Atfred Hitchcock and Otto Peminge. Hitchcock's narration capitalizes on every permissible chce to display selfconsciousness, flaunt its superior knowledge, and mark its suppessiveopetions.This takes place ln two ways. On the one hand, the nation conines us to a single chaacter's point-of-view to a greate degee than is nomal; this is einforced by Hitchcock's unusual insistence upon optical subjectivity. On the other hnd, bltsnt naational intrusions feely comment on the action (symbolic inserts like the waltzing coupes ir Shad,ou of a Doubt, evelatory camela movements, unexpected anges and sound overlaps).There is thus a tension between what a chaacter knows and what the narration ells. But the narration must never tll all; again and again, the nation points oul its suppressive operations. When in Sha.dowof ct Doubt Undte Charlie sees the teltale newspaper stoy, the narration could showit to us;but the narration does not do so until ittle Charie discoversthe story in the libnry. When in Ps/clo Noman Btes climbs the stai to his mothe's oom, the camera ientatively follows him up and canes back to a bird's-eye view just outside the doorsill, selfconsciousydisplaying its delibeate withholding of informtion. By exploiting cetain poa possibilities of the classicalschemataof narrtion, Hitchcock's authoria pesona oscillates between being modest and omnicommunicativewithin very nTow limits (i.e., presenting a singe chaacte's point-of-view) and flaunting its omniscienceby suppessingcucial infomation. It is exactly between these poles that Preminger's naration lives. Preminge planes cassica nanation down to a flat, almost inexprcssv gornd. In frlms bke FalLen Angel (1944) or Dcisy Keryon (194'l), a poker-fced autho presents conhdictory or enigmatic character behavio without supplying causal explnations. Peminge's reluctance to use even shoueverse-shot cutting can be seen as a symptom of the naation's unwillingness to specify chacte psychology through recton shots.To this end, the films foego both chaacte subjectivity and naationl commentary, pefeng instead to shift point-of-view between

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TIIE CLASSICAL HOLLI'WOOD STYLD, T9T?.60

scenes, moving from one combination of chactes to another. Two such diferent authorial styles ae ihe esults of naration and not of 'ealism' or of 'round' versus 'lat' chaacters; s V.F. PekiN emarks, llitchcock tells stories as if he knows how they end, Peming gives the imprcssion o wihessing them as they unfoldasYet both auleurs remain within classical bounds: Hitchcock cannot always keep us awae of his aarrational presence, whereas Peminger l often claim his droi rJu segneur al the end of a film by an overt came movement. Historically, the degee of uthorial intervention has fluctuated. Grith is probably the frrst diecto systematically to foregound narration, a statgem most cely senin his ealy feates. l The Birth of a Naton (1915), Griffrth synthesizesmany contemporary but sporadicand patia foms into a coherent nartional pmcess. The fllm becomes a mosaic of events to be interpreted by means of the historical argument and damatic paralles uged by the omniscient naation. Moeove, the expository int-tites egiste a specific voice issuing from the frlm one which nayzes history, certies vei, similitude(sometitles havefootnotes), anticipates action, and poeticay meditates upon the images (onetitle efes to 'Wa'speace'). In a fina beatific sion ofpeace, the omniscient nration carrres us to diyine pempective outsidehistory. Even this omniscient naraton, however, iE not always visible;most scenes ely upon covert,diegetically motivatednarration. Many of Ginth's devicesbecame fashionable. At lest one director, Erich von Stoheim, continued Grifflth's search fo a novelisticcinem that woud make the narration quite ovet, and in Creed (1924), a Naturalistic causa scheme attmpted to eimnate indivduai psychoogical motivation-But, as released, the film remarns an unresoved mixtue of uthori intervention(in cetain camera anges and in the symboic nsets), expressionistc subjectivity (in the dreams and fntsies of the junk deaer),and compositionaly motivated psychological naration. Most of the great Holllwood directors of the 1920s - F.W- Murnau, Lubitsch, Ford, Buster Keaton, Borzage utilize authorial pesence in vaious ways,but none displaced the soveeignty of story in the classicalmodel.Afte

the corningof souad,the boundsof differense were frmly set. The intrmitient presence of the author in classical fims contributed to the very shape that arteu criticism has taken. Auteu citicism hs relied lnost completly upon thematic intepretation, consistently minimizing frlm form and technique. he typical thematic interpretation of an uteu film cornmencesby summaizing the story action, moves to a psychologicaldescription of e chctesand abstracl,tematic oppo6itions, and buttresses the reading with a rundown of prileged rnotifs that einforce the themes. The very form of sueh essaysconrms the fluctuation of classical naration. In each film, the uteur citic hvaiably tuns up geat swatchesof the classical stye - sequences, even whoe films, whose visual and sonic organizationcannot be thematized. Even auteurs, that is, spenda lot of time obeyinge rules. An auteu citic might gue in esponse that by looking at seveal frlms signed by the same diecto one could find taces of the autho in aspects which an analysis of a single frm might consider simpyconventional. T}is is why auteur criticism implies, as Peter Wolen puts it, 'an opeation of deciphement; it eveals authos whee none had been seen before.''a Auteur citicism ties, in effect, to make spects of the singefilm into narrationalsystems ofa agertex, that of the oeuore. But no auteu citic has in pactice sho$nthat, say, the shoveverse-shot patterns or the usage of lighting coss all of Sik's fims constitute a distinct handins of the classicalparadigm; what stnds out in an individuafim is what standsout in the wok as a whole {e.9., tendencytowad blatant symbolism for some purposes).l{ollen does indicate that (genes, 'noise'from other codes studios, technica staff) blocks the citic Fom finding a consrstent uthoial pesence in the Hoywoodfilm: 'Any single coding has to compete,ctainly in the cinema, with nose from signls coded diffeently.'4s The most powefuof those signas,I am sserting, is the cassica tdition tself. The intemittence of authoial presenceworks to reafirm classicalnorms. Because the classicai paradigm encourages redundancy, the directo cn choose how to b rdundntBy showing us how a particulnge ofchoices canbe organized systemticaly, the aute[ vivifiesthe norm and

THE BOUNDSOF DIFFERINCE

8T

makes us appreciate its depth and range. In 1is Girl Frday,Hawks prtslestempor continuity in a new diection, thus reaffrrming it as a value. Every vadant upon classical spcetestifies to the oominess of the original paradigm. Wen Hitchcock exploits optical point-of-view for srprise effect, we ecognize new possibilities in such a simple classicaldeiice. Dileent handings of genes - Sk's and Preminger's of the melodrama, Berkeley's-,and Minneli's of the musical, Keaton's and...Lloyd's of the actlon comedy, H\rks'sand Sam Fuels ofthe war film - only confrm the genre's fertility. In such ways, conception of authorship/enabe us to appeciate tre richness of the classical cinema. qualityof authorial The fluctuating presence in the Holyrvood film suggest that adical disruptions crop up rarely. Genuine beakdowns in classical naation ae abupt and fleetig, surounded by conventional passages. ln Hollywood cinema, there are no subversivefims, only subversive momenls. For social andeconomic reasons,no Holl1'woodfilm can povide a distinct and coherent altemative to the classica model. Nothing in any Hoywoodauteur frlm rivals the idiosyncatic systems ol space or time operatingin the work of Dreyer, Brcsson,Mizoguchi,Staubl Huillet, Ozu, P.esnais,or Godard. In such works, naration is pen/asive, constantly foregrounded, because these modemsl, worls crpate unique ntetual stylistie noms. Even the most deviant Holywood lrns, however, must ground themselves in the extema norms ol goup style. (1960) is certainly one of the Hitchcock's Psyc,tro most deviantfims ever madein Hollywood since it attacks several fundamental classica (e.g., the psychological assumptions identity ol charactes, the role accorded to narration). Yet Psyclro remains closer to Iis Gi Friday thn to Diar! of a Country Priast (1951) o Pp.rrot le fo (1965). Reely problematic Hollywood films become limit l,exts, workswhich.$hrlpremaining taditonaly legibe, dramatize some imits of that egibility. They do not, however, posit thoroughgoing atrnatives. So powful is the classicalparadigm that.it egulates wnar may violate itIt folowsthat authoria 'disrupton' of cassica norns can throw the spectato off-baance only momentariy.The cassicalparadigmsuppiesa set of hypotheses, mhked as atenativesand in

order of ikeihood, and the spectto uses those hlTotheses in following the film. The rrarrauon can tigger one story hypothesisand deliver on it, or delaydelivery.or confirm thp hypothesis in a fesh wy; ll these ae varints which do not drastically challenge the reiability of the aration. The classicl speetator is somewht more sorely hied if the nato is poven to be tundamentaly unreiable. Meir Sternberg points out that some naraions crete a firm prrmacy effect only to demoish it o qraify it.a6 When this occus in classic filmmaking, it is usualy motivated geneicaly, especially fo mystery or comedy.Chapter 3 pointed out how the expository tite in ?e Maltese Fakan undermines the pimacy effect. A comic delation of fist mpessronsoccurs in the opening of Troublz in Paradise (1932), when the sophisticated wealthy coupleis slowy eveaed obe a pai of hdened thieves.On those e occasions when this rise and fa of flrst impressions is not motivated genericaly, it can have genuiney disruptive consquences. It is worth ooking at one instnce in detail. Lrke Psycho, Fritz Lne's You Only Liue Once (1937) is widey recognized s a devint fim. The fllm's disruptions arise ftom a play with our expectations about the limited and intermittent intrusions of cassica narration. Specifically, we assume that nartionamanipuations wil be markedas such when they ppear,s Hitchcock,s cmea movements are, In Lang,s film, however, we do not notice authoi intusions when they occur;only later, when ou inferential steps have goneastay, do we retrceou pth and eaize how we jumped to conclusions. Lang thus foregrounds naration er pos, /oclo. To make us run ahead of the evidence, You Onfu Lue Once ilws on basic assumptions of cusal and geneic motivation and encouages us to assumethat, given cassical naation's omnipesence,no cucial acton taken by the protagonist wi be withheld from us. The narration smoothes ou infeentia path stil more by ceating unusually strongcontinuity between scenes: a dissove from pacelsto the heroine'ssuitcseas she packsfor her honeymoon; the heone saying, 'Gas,' folowed by a shot of the hero pulng into a gas station. Moeove, Lang's first scenes quiety signa the fim's obedience to the convention of stating a sceneby tracking back fom an object_

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All of these procedures foce us to jrmp to conclusionsduing one central scene. Eddie, an ex-conct, is jobless and frustratd. At the eld of one scene, the calrera shows us Eddie's hat, then Eddie eyeing a gun. n the next scene,we seeEddie's hat on the seatofa ca, ad the camerapansto show a man's faceencased in a gas mask. The man obs aa armoredcar and flees. n the ain, the trck crashes. Then Eddie, drenchedby the rain, staggers into his home and tells his wife, Jo: The bottom s dropped out of everything.' Cause and eect, point-of-view, continuit5r hooks bom scenelo scene,snd details in scene openings a encourage us to infer that Eddie pulled the robbery. Just as mpotant, no information has conrcdicted theseinferences.But Eddie now explainsthat his hat was stolen and someone elseobbedthe car. Lang'snarration has concealedthe real criminal from us by tading upon the assumption that foregoundednarraton will be immediatelynoticeabe; as we have sen, clssiclnarration usualy doesnot disrracr us ftom gaps. ln You On\' Loe Once, howeter, continuity deviceslink trivia items, conceaing crucial events !ithout any cue tht somehing is being concealed. Indeed, so stong e firct impessions in this case that even Eddie's explanation to Jo doesnot resolve al doubtsbout his guilt; the possibiity tht he may be ying ceates a ingeing simultaneous hlTothesis hat is not rued out until the police discover the ea robber's body mny scenes later. (To rnake this even more complex, the film's geneic identity is dubious; if it belongs to the 'they,made-me-acriminal' sub-gene, Eddie s likely to be egaly guity, evenif he is a vietim of circumstances.) The purposeof ceating such an unreiabe naration is evidently to compelthe viewer to judge Eddieas unfairly as do al the respectabe citizens who brand him incorrigible. More geneally, Lang's Amerien fims fequently construct a branoid' spectator through a naation that butlly and abptly maniputes point'of-view in oder to conceal gaps and force the viewerto faseconclusionsAn anaysis ofthis process is indispensble to any ccount of Lang as an 'uthor.' In Westem music, the clssicstyle ceates dynamismby depating lom and etuming to a stabe tonal cente. Something ike this

dynamism appears in the Hol1.woodauteur film. The auteu filn draws its sustenance fom the classical base, which is visible in the film. The flm mixes naration modes - some sysems opeating according to classical pobabilities, othsintermittently foregroundedas lessprobable and more distioctive. Far from being a fault or flaw, this mixtue caa be a source of aesthetic value to those pepaed to peceive it. Most often, an idiosyncatic exploration of causality, time, o space works to reafrrm the nom by evealing the suppleness and range of the paradign. At aer moments, a deant narrationa pocesscn be glimpsed. We seethe norm afresh, undestand its functions bette, ecognize previously untapped possibilities in it, and on a few occasions - reflect upon how ou trust in the norm can mislead us. The Hollywood auteur film oes a particula pleasure and knowledge: the spectator comes to ecognize norm and deviation oscilating, pehaps westling, within the same art work, that work being actively contained by the pressures of tadition.

Norms, subversion, conditions of production Any account of the cassicalHollywood film as an ideological product, a epresenttional commodity, must rccognize the specific foma opeations though which classica principles reinforce dominant ideoogical positions. Holywood has assmiatedthe challenge of avantgardestyesand of appaentlydeviant cyces such as fim noi. Cetainy the stress upon gooiented individuas, upon chaact psychology as desie,upon an 'objective' and inflexibestory order, upon a space derived fom theatrical scenography - a these fctos cluster aound assumptons bout the natue of socialexistence. Narrative resoutioncn wok to hnscendthe socia conflict epesented in the fim, often by displacingit onto the individual (the hero torn (the between duty and personal uges),the couple omnce-plot tking pecedenceove the pretextaction), the family, or the communa good.4? Recent Maist citiqus of Holyqvood cnema have demonstted its pesistent habit of reconciling soci antagonismsby shifting the emphasis lom history and institutons to individua causesnd effects,where ethica and

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even religious moral terms can . operate.'rg Spectacle can be used to elide or wish away uncomfortable contadictions. Classical tempoal mntinuity between episodes can deny the audience time to eflect about atnatives to the events prcsented. Adomo even criticized he mortge sequencefor dissolving humanity into prefabictd segmentsr_cheating the humn out of lived duration.aeOui exarnination of classical nanation hs sho\rn that it accusiomsspecttors o a limitd ond highly probable range ol expectations. Classica narration's reliability habituates the ewe to ccepting egulated impesonlity nd sorrcelessuthority. At the same time, howeve, we cannot denounce the Holllwood stye as uniomly suspect. Naration can, howeve moment y, break down the ideological unity of th classical frlm. There can be no typology of such breakdowns, although al of the aralysesin the last six chapters wil suggestwhere trouble might occur. If a mode is needed,the arbitrary happy ending servesas wel as any'A good directorcan contrive a happy ending tht eaves you dissaised.You know tnat something is wrong it just can't end that way.'50 Fassbinder's remrk indicates one extreme edgeof 'subversion' within the clssicl text, whethe it be film r'or or film tlauteur. The classicalending,both s resolutionand epilogue, lends lo ucher in l,h naffation as self-conscious and omniscientpesence.Yet even thrs overr narration shoudharmonize with the story action and geneicdemands. Ithe ending,especialy the happyending, is inadequately motivated, then the film createsa possiby poductive split ol story from narration.By including an endingthat -rns count to wht went before, deviant naration indieatscertin extratxtual, socia,historicl limits to its authority. Films like Szspiicion,Meet John Doe, Woman in the Wnd.ow,The Wrong Man (1957'),andHou GreenWas Mt Valley (1941 ) tend to lorcgound the bitary conventionaity of the ending and can even raise ideoogical questions. The cusoyesoutionor epiloguecn put on display the requirements of social institutions (censoship agencies, studios)which claim to act as deegates of audience desies. The happy ending may be thee, but to someexren! the needfor it is criticized.sl Conflictsof various colventions, opeting at

given historical moments, can ceate such problematic moments in Hol,'wood txts- We an undertandthose momenl,s ony by recognizing the norms operating in the Holl].wood cinema and by being alert fo glimpss, within the film, of another cinena, a cinena of multiplicity ald formal tensions not frnay resoved rnto a tlassical' unity. It is not enough to ocateprinciples of unity and altrnatives to those plincipes. An adequate histoical account of the cssical Holywood cinema must see the style as related to a specific mode ol film poduction. Just as xre must scutinize form and stye carefully, we must go beyond a general dismissal of Holllwood as an assembly-line opeation. t is tue that the American film industry does resemble cetain modes of manctue, but we must remembe that at works have been produced by collective labo fo centuries (e.g., Raphael's frescoes, academic painting in the nineteenth century). Marx and Enges point out that rtistic cetion was aways linked to geneal and specificmodesof production:52 Raphael as much as any atist was determined by the technicaladvances mdein art befoe him, by the organization ofsocietyanddivision of aborin his locality,and,finaly, by the divisionof abor in all the countrieswith which his locaityhad intercous... In poclaimingthe uniqueness ofwork in science nd rt, Stine adoptsa positio fa inferio to that ofthe bougeoisie. At the pesenttime [1845-7] it has alreadybeenfound necessaryto organize this 'unique' activity. Horace Vernet wouldnot havehd time to paint evena enth ofhis picturesifhe regarded them as woks which 'onlythis Unique person is capable ofproducing.'lnPais, the geat demand for vaudevilles and novelsbought about the oganization of vrork fo thei p&duction, oganization which at any rate yiedssomething betterthan its 'unique' competitos in Gemany. While the cultue industy hs carried this tendencyfuthe, we sha see that Holly\rood's divisionof labor, grounded in se al manufacture, stil emains quaittively different from assembyineproduction.

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TIIB CISSICAL I,IOLLYIVOOD STYI,E, 1917.60

The classical style can be linked .to its conditions of poduction much aore precisely thaJ! is generally acknowledged.Dvery cut testifies to naation, but every cut also implies somesort of work. The principles of a uniled narative both demanded and arose fom a filmmakirg process based upon the scenario; stylistic continity has depended upon a 'continuity' script and a 'cottinty gir.' The division of the filn into shots and scercs bears the traces of divisions within the labor pocess.The re[tition of camea set.up8 so important fo classical spatial oientation aso mirrors a rapid, economica poduction proceduae tat dependsupon shooting 'out of continuity.'s Soft-focus backgrounds in medim cn save money in set con-shots struction.or Even authorial dieences, those systematic choiceswithin the styistic paadigm, can b translatd back into productionprocedures; alternative schemata conepond to concete choices available to the filmmaters, and the limits upon those schemata paralle the work options open at any specific historical junetue. For a specificexampe, consider oncemore the montage sequence. It not only fulfiled styistic

functions; it had the virtue of economy.Action too expensiveto shoot as a 6cenecould be conveyedby moDtoge. tbus saving toth t]e budget and the continty.'- Cheaper films relied upon the montage because they could daw on stock footage.We cannot say that the montage sequence was used simply becauseit was cheap, since it would have been even cheaper to use an expository tite. Neithe can we say, however, that the montage would not have been used if it rad not been amenable to budgetary constaints. The frlm industry built rhe montagesequence into its poduction practices. Studios began to script such sequeces caefiily and to create production units specializingin them (e.g., Donald Siegel,s unit at Wamer Bms).56Once the stylistic device had proven its narational virtues, it was rationalized economiclly. In such ways, the classicl norms became important causes of and guidelines fo the organation of production. The rmainde of this bookis devotedto showing how the cassical mode ol frlric representtionboth sustained and was sustined by the deveopmentof a specificmodeol frlm production.