The French structuralist narratologist Tzvetan Todorov proposed the concepts of "histoire" and "discours" to distinguish between objects of expression and forms of expression in narrative works. The same story content, if different expressions are used, will have different effects, and more importantly, the reader's engagement will be different. Similar "discourse" is applied to the language of cinema, forming the narrative form of cinema, i.e., how the film tells the story.
According to the definition in The Art of Cinema, "a narrative begins with a situation, then causes a series of changes according to the pattern of causality; finally, a new situation is produced, giving the narrative an ending." The extent to which we get involved in the story depends on whether we understand the changes and stabilities, causal relationships, and patterns of time and space." What I want to discuss today is the causal relationship (one of the core elements of the narrative element) in the narrative of suspense films.
The cause of the story will show the origin of the whole story, which is a difficult part of the film narrative to ignore, and it can be said that a film can have no results (open-ended endings or meaningful endings) but it is difficult to do without causes. The occasion when the cause appears in the story is also very important, and like the creation of the novel, the film narrative also has a variety of narrative forms such as main narrative, flashback and interpolation, so the cause may appear at the beginning, middle or end of the film, which depends on different film types and narrative needs.
Some films will leave a foreshadowing of causal motives in the narrative process, such as the three farmers That Dorothy meets in real life in "The Wizard of Oz" and becomes three cartoon characters in her dreams, which is the causal motivation of psychological implications. It should be noted that a huge narrative will contain many branches, and there will also be some trivial causal motives on these branches, such as the scene of The Hong Kong thief Mike played by Lian Jin in "Crazy Stone" buying a rope, and the scene where he eventually steals forms a set of causal relationships.
Crazy Stone, 2006
In detective films (speculative fiction), it is typical to put the cause of the story at the end of the narrative form, that is, the order in which the story takes place is:
a. Caused by the motive of the crime
b. Planned crime
c. Committing a crime
d. Discovery of the crime
e. The detective begins the investigation
f. Detectives expose abc [3]
Ordinary detective movies (mystery novels) will start with the discovery of the crime, step by step to uncover the mystery until the discovery of abc (the cause and course of the case), so that the audience (reader) with strong curiosity will participate in the process of uncovering the mystery with the detective. Many film stories stimulate the audience's curiosity and increase audience participation by retaining the motivation of the cause of the accident.
This may also explain why White Nights was criticized after it was adapted into a TV series, because the TV series not only changed the relationship between the characters (more emphasis on simple love relationships) but also dropped the motives, crime tools, and crime process (important details that would only be designed in the last chapter of the original book) in the first episode. This is somewhat similar to watching Conan comics when someone circles it on the first page: TA is the murderer, so that later readers and viewers completely lose the pleasure of understanding the mystery.
Occasional exceptions, such as Keigo Higashino's The Devotion of Suspect X, in which the audience (the reader) is told at the outset who the murderer is, but retains another part of the key information, creating a wonderful experience in which the viewer (the reader) knows more than the detective but is as clueless as the detective.
For example, in Hitchcock's suspense film, the director is undoubtedly an all-knowing and all-powerful character in the story, but he will never shake out all the material of the story at the first time, but continue to unveil the mystery with the development of the plot. It is worth noting that speculative fiction (movies) often have as much information as the characters in the story and the reader know, and the narrative language of suspense novels (movies) often gives the reader (the audience) more information than the characters in the story to create suspense (similar but different from "The Dedication of Suspect X").
For example, in North by Northwest (1959), Roger Thornhill is inexplicably mistaken for a man named "George Kaplan", who is "kidnapped" and drunk by some suspected gangsters, and is placed on a (stolen) car with a failed brake, and nearly dies. In order to find out who "Caplin" really is and prove his innocence (no car theft, drunk driving, high speed), he begins a series of tracking and searching, the search is framed as murder, so Roger is hunted down by both the police and the mysterious organization. Note that the audience at this time still knows the same information as Roger in the film, and we don't know why Roger was mistaken for Kaplan, except that Roger was involved in a strange and mysterious event.
Soon, we learn through the meeting of the superior police that "Kaplan" is just a fictional character (bait) set up by the superior police to hunt down the criminal gang, and the police who cannot expose the target at this time cannot come forward to rescue Roger Thornhill, so the audience knows that Roger has been "abandoned" by the superior police, and he is in danger of dying at any time, but Roger himself is completely unaware of this. At this time, the audience already knows more information than Roger, we know that Roger's situation is very dangerous, but we don't know what specific dangers Roger will encounter, and the director has deliberately set up some links to prevent Roger from obtaining key information, so the audience has been worried about Roger.
The direct effect of such a narrative is to create suspense, the creator knows the facts but does not participate in the story narrative, but adopts a bystander narrative, and the audience receives more information than the characters in the play, thus helping to produce a strong suspense effect.
Hitchcock once said to Luffer: "As we are now, we are chatting from the north to the south. Suppose there is a bomb under the table. At first nothing happened, and then, suddenly, "Boom! "Exploded. The audience is startled, and there are usually no special signs before being frightened. Now, it's a suspenseful scenario: the viewer knows there's a bomb under the table, (slightly) the viewer knows that the bomb will explode at one o'clock, there's another clock on the fireplace, and the hands indicate that there are only 15 minutes left. Then, we talk like this and it becomes very interesting, because the audience has been involved in the plot and will want to warn the people in the play: "Stop talking about these sesame green beans, there is a bomb under the table to explode!" 」 ”
In the first explosion scenario, we can give the viewer a startling effect of 15 seconds. But in the second case, we offer the audience 15 minutes of suspense. [4]
Many gripping stories actually increase audience engagement through narratives (restrictive or non-restrictive), and when we watch a movie, we can think about whether we know more, less, or the same than the characters in the movie. (Non-restrictive narrative: the audience has a higher amount of information than the characters in the play; restrictive narrative: the amount of audience information is equal to the characters in the play; or somewhere between the unrestricted narrative and the restrictive narrative: such as The Dedication of Suspect X and North by Northwest). We can also judge the level of art of the work through narrative.
Shen Dan, Wang Liya. Western Narratology: Classics and Post-Classics. Peking University Press.2013.p14.
[2] David Bordwell, Kristen Thompson. The Art of Cinema, Form and Style (Illustrated Revised 8th Edition), translated by Zeng Weizhen." Film School"Editorial Board School. Beijing United Publishing Company.2016.p90.
[3] Ibid.p95.
[4] Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967), p.52.