Critical Approaches to Film

Lesson 9Narrative recap

The Last Picture Show

http://www.totalfilm.com/features/50-worst-movie-endings

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Exercise final deadline = 13th December

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Use terminology

Analysis not description

Meaning generated through formal elements

Narrative

• Strong cause-and-effect• High degree of narrative closure• Psychologically rounded, goal-

driven characters• Character subordinate to plot• Fictional world governed by

spatial and temporal verisimilitude

• Familiar rules, codes, conventions• Heterosexual romance normally

present as main plot or subplot

Art Cinema/ European • Loose cause and effect• Open/ambiguous endings• Ambiguous characters, often

lacking defined desires/goals • Plot subordinate to character• Psychological or social realism• Experimentation (less

formulaic)

Hollywood

Narrative

Alternative/post-classical Hollywood narrative

Peter Bogdanovich

the style of the filmthe principal themesthe film’s representation of the past. Narrative: whether you can identify any influences from classical Hollywood and European art cinema