Classical Hollywood Cinema: Narration

A work of art is customarily associated with the name of the artist, and thehistory of an art form is traditionally written in terms of those names. Such ahistory assumes that individual artists either live and work in a social vacuumor so transcend the constraints of time and place that their work stands out-side of social history. But if the individual artist transcends society, we shouldremember that society is also and above all within that artist and that everywork bears at least two signatures-that of the artist and that of the world inwhich the work was created.

In the field of art history, Heinrich Wolfflin introduced the concept of "ahistory of art without names." Wolfflinwrote that history in terms of a typologyof artistic styles or schools rather than in terms of isolated, individual works. Bysubsuming the individual styles of the Great Masters within the larger styles of

the school 0' coun! at that r'tiCula< moment in histO

Iin which thl wo,ked,

he drew attention to the multifaceted nature of style, which became for him an"expression of the temper of an age and a nation as well as an expression of theindividual temperament."

The history of the cinema that is offered to students in introductory filmcourses has traditionally been written as a history of names: a history ofactors, directors, producers, and writers whose works transcend the times andplaces in which they were produced. But in the American cinema, individualartistic styles exist in the context of a larger, national style. It was against thebackground of this general style, which has come to be known as classicalHollywood style, that the distinct individual styles of directors such as JohnFord, Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Josef von Sternberg, Orson Welles,Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, and others took shape.

Every American film-from recognized masterpieces such as Citizen Kane(1941), which transcends stylistic convention, to run-of-the-mill programpictures such as Andy Hardy Gets Spring Fever (1939),which merely, observesconvention-draws on the fundamental stylistic principles of classicalHollywood cinema for its means of expression and, in doing so, conveys "thetemper of an age and a nation" as well as that of the artists who produceit. Yet every film also articulates this style in a different way, inflecting thelarger, national style with the individual accent(s) of particular studios,producers, directors, writers, stars, camerapersons, and other craftspeoplewho make films.

Unlike the periods of art history, such as the Gothic, Renaissance, or Baroque,in which the overall stylistic features of each period are quite apparent even tothe untrained eye, classical Hollywood cinema possesses a style that is largelyinvisible and difficult for the average spectator to see. Its invisibility is, in largepart, the product of American cinema's proficiency as a narrative machine.Like the industry-based, assembly-line process innovated by Henry Ford andhis peers in the business world to make the production of automobiles andother consumer goods as streamlined and economical as possible, Americanmovies rapidly evolved during the 1910sand 1920sinto a highly efficient modeof telling stories. Every aspect of the production operation was geared up tofacilitate the smoothest possible flow of the narrative process.

As a result, the narrative is delivered so effortlessly and efficiently to theaudience that it appears to have no source. It comes magically off the screen asif spontaneously creating itself in the presence of the spectators in the movietheater for their immediate consumption and pleasure. But, in fact, it is created;it is made according to classical principles of clarity, simplicity, elegance, order,economy, and symmetry. Classical works thus traditionally avoid excess,subjectivity, and undue emotionalism, striving for the Greek ideal of medenagan, or "nothing in excess."

Narrative process follows an orderly pattern in which an initial state of affairsis introduced, after which something occurs to disturb this equilibrium. Sub-sequent events attempt to restore the original status quo, but this is repeatedlyfrustrated, and order is recovered only at the end of the film.

For instance, Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954)begins with a state-ment of the narrative status quo, presenting a survey of the courtyard in whichthe action of the film will be set. The next few minutes of the film introduce theminor characters who live in the courtyard, as well as the film's major character,the news magazine photographer L. B.Jeffries Games Stewart), whose point ofview provides us with a perspective on the action that will follow.

Once the world of the film is described, its equilibrium is suddenly dis-rupted with the introduction of a lovers' quarrel between Jeffries and his girl-friend Lisa (Grace Kelly), and with a scream from a woman across the way,whom Jeffries subsequently suspects was murdered by her husband. Theaction that follows moves toward a resolution of the conflict between Jeffriesand his girlfriend, toward the proof that a murder has taken place, and towarda solution of that crime. With the completion of these actions, order is restored,

status quo.Classical narratives routinely begin with an act that disturbs the original

state of things and is answered, by the film's end, with another act thatreestablishes a new order or balance. Thus a murder mystery, whether a privateeye film of the 1940s (The Maltese Falcon, 1941)or a police picture of the 1990s(Se7en, 1995),will begin with the discovery of a dead body and end with thesolution of the crime.

An adventure story or quest (Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1981)is launched withthe loss, absence, or lack of a desired object and concludes with its attainment(or at least discovery). A love story (Pretty Woman, 1990)starts with a chanceencounter and culminates with a proposal of marriage. A monster Uaws, 1975)or horror (Halloween, 1978) film begins with the death of an innocent victimand ends with the actual or symbolic death of the thing, which is routinelyreincarnated for the sequel(s).

In between the beginning and the end of the film's overall narrative action,a series of additional, smaller disturbances take place, followed by tentativerestorations of order, with each scene or sequence recapitulating the largerprocess of balance, disruption, and rebalancing of the film as a whole. In thisway, the narrative moves ceaselessly toward closure, completion, conclusion.

Problem Solving

As David Bordwell explains, classical Hollywood cinema is primarily acharacter-centered cinema. Its characters are more or less stable, knowable,and psychologically coherent individuals who possess clearly defined, specificgoals. Although this cinema is also a plot-driven or action cinema, charactersstand at the center of the action and interact with events. Filmmakers use theseinteractions in accordance with the classical principles of narrative economyand efficiencyto further the exposition of their characters. Plot expectations areset by the specific goals that individual characters possess or by the problemsthey are asked to solve.

Over the course of the narrative, characters struggle to achieve their goalsor solve their problems. They overcome those who stand in their way (such asthe villains), triumph over adverse circumstances (such as physical disability,nature, or some other force), and/or transcend their own limitations (such asindividual fears or weaknesses). The narrative ends with the character's triumphor failure, with the resolution (or conclusive nonresolution) of the problem, andwith the attainment (or clear-cut nonattainment) of the goal.

In Vertigo (1958),former detective Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart), whosuddenly discovers that he suffers from acrophobia, becomes the unwitting

victim of an elaborate murder scheme that takes advantage of his fear of heightsin order to effect a perfect crime. Though Scottie's larger goals in the narrativeremain obscure, by the end of the film, his more immediate goals have beensatisfied. He reestablishes the balance or equilibrium with which the filmbegins: he not only discovers the deception and solves the mystery, but alsocures his vertigo (although he loses the great love of his life in the process).

Much as classical mystery narratives such as Vertigo enlist audiencesin the process of problem solving, classical suspense narratives regularlytake shape around the forward movement of characters' attempts to attaingoals and around the backward or sideways movements of the delays theyexperience in trying to overcome the various obstacles that stand (or areplaced) between them and their goals. For example, the action in The Termina-tor (1984)is constructed around the efforts of a cyborg (Arnold Schwarzeneg-ger) who was sent back in time by a totalitarian regime in the future (ca. 2029).He has been programmed to kill a woman, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton),to prevent her from bearing a child who is destined to lead a rebellion againstthat dictatorship.

At the same time, Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), a (human) rebel freedomfighter, is also sent back in time to prevent the cyborg, or Terminator, fromaccomplishing his task. The dramatic structure of the filmconsists ofalternatingsequences in which each of these major characters sets about attempting tosolve problems and to reach goals only to discover that his or her attemptshave been frustrated by the countereffort of the other. Both Reese and theTerminator pursue their goals relentlessly-to their own self-destruction. Atthis point, the film concludes (with Reese dead but victorious)-only to findits narrative resolution reopened seven years later in Terminator 2: JudgmentDay (1991).

Through Time and Space

Often the goals that organize a classicalHollywood narrative are given a precisetemporal dimension-a specific deadline has to be met or a certain task hasto be completed by a definite time. Near the start of Brewster's Millions (1985),the sixth remake of a popular plot idea that first reached the screen in 1914,Brewster (Richard Pryor) is told by a somewhat sadistic philanthropist that hewill be given $300 million, provided that he can spend $1 million a day for30 days without acquiring any tangible property or assets. The remainder ofthe film documents his efforts to meet this deadline.

Buster Keaton also milks the inheritance idea for suspense comedy inSeven Chances (1925),in which his character discovers that he will inherit $7million if he can get married by 7:00p.m. on his 27th birthday, which happensto be that very day. After getting a quick brush-off from his first seven choicesfor possible brides, Keaton literally runs through the rest of the movie lookingfor someone to marry, racing against the clock to meet the 7:00 deadline. In48 Hours (1982),the deadline gimmick plays a central role in a plot in which

Fred Haise <Bill Paxton, left), Jack

Swigert (Kevin Bacon, center), and

Jim Lovell <Tom Hanks) journey to

the moon in Apollo 13.

a detective (Nick Nolte) gives a convict (Eddie Murphy) 48 hours to help himcatch a couple of cop killers, promising to reward the latter with a parole ifthey succeed.

In a similar way, stories are routinely designed along spatial lines, withtheir characters moving toward precise destinations or geographical goals.Journeys and cross-country treks have served as the fundamental organizingprinciple for narratives since Homer's Odyssey. The journey provides the basicstructure for a number of extremely popular motion pictures, ranging from TheWizard ofOz (1939),Around the World in 80 Days (1956),and North by Northwest(1959),to 2001:A Space Odyssey (1968),Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977),Apocalypse Now (1979),and Apollo 13 (1995).Even in those instances in whichthe final destination is never announced, made clear, or reached, the voyagebecomes sufficient in itself to hold the narrative on course, giving it an all-important sense of forward movement.

By the ends of these journeys, the characters not only move from point Ato point 2, but they realize other nonspatial goals as well, making deadlines,solving mysteries, falling in love, discovering new worlds, and coming to termswith themselves and their fellow travelers. The purely physical movement ofthe characters through space provides a sense of narrative development thatis immediately coherent, no matter how obscure or incoherent the logic of thedramatic action actually is (as in 2001).The journey film always looks forwardto getting there; as a result, the spectator always arrives, even when thecharacters do not and even when "there" is only a hastily tacked-on title thatreads "The End."

Denial and Recognition

Ironically, the invisibility of classical Hollywood cinema is the result of greatartifice. Its transparency is only an illusion. Beneath the apparent artlessnessof the surface lies a solid foundation of highly crafted narrative techniques thatall share the same common goal and participate in the same dual mission. Theyfunction to deliver the story as powerfully as possible without interrupting itsflow with intrusive marks or signs that might betray the fact that the story isitself a product of careful construction.

Most spectators are aware, either consciously or unconsciously, that filmsare not real-that is, that the blood they see in the shower sequence of Psycho(1960) is really chocolate sauce; that the dangerous stunt sequences in theIndiana Jones films are made using doubles; that the attack on the Death Star inStar Wars (1977)is shot using models and miniatures at George Lucas's special-effects house, Industrial Light & Magic; and that no one really dies during themaking of the Terminator films. At the same time, most spectators also deny-out of necessity-their awareness of this artifice, or the fiction of the reality, inorder to participate in the reality of these fictions.

Moviegoing engages audiences in what is known as a willing suspensionof disbelief, and audiences are all the more willing to be thus engaged becausethe pleasures provided by doing so prove to be both rewarding and signifi-cant. Although a certain amount of denial works wonders in enabling audi-ences to enter into the onscreen fiction, considerable pleasure also derivesfrom the recognition of the artifice. Audiences appreciate what they refer to as"particularly good films," that is, technically well-crafted films or stories thatare told in an especially exciting manner; and they distinguish these worksfrom what they consider to be average films.

The pleasures of watching a Hitchcock film, for example, come as muchfrom the audience's complicity with the storytelling interventions of thedirector, who repeatedly nudges his viewers to notice this or that importantdetail or encourages them to react in this or that specific way, as it does fromtheir absorption into the fictional world of the narrative. Hitchcock describedhis films as "slices of cake" rather than slices of life. By this, he meant that hisfilms are not merely transparent records of reality.

Defining drama as "life with the dull bits cut out," Hitchcock cut those dullbits out with a razor-sharp narrative sensibility and rearranged the exciting bitsthat were leftover into breathtaking suspense thrillers.Yetunlike other, more self-effacing directors, Hitchcock left his mark on the finished film, and his imprintbecame an integral element of the film's appeal, openly acknowledging its statusas a concoction, that is, as a sliceof cake. As a result, Hitchcock enjoyed a specialrelationship with his audiences, who both lose themselves in the story being toldand simultaneously derive pleasure from a recognition of how it is being told.

The narrative patterns of mainstream Hollywood cinema are less clearly visiblethan the storytelling presence that can be found in every Hitchcock film; but,even so, they function to provide audiences with pleasure. But while the struc-ture of a Hitchcock narrative lies more or less on or near the surface of the film,the structure in the typical classical Hollywood film is buried much deeper; itshapes audiences' responses on a less visible level.

Audiences unconsciously sense the classicprinciples of economy, regularity,symmetry, and order that inform the most compelling narratives to emerge fromthis system of storytelling, and they derive pleasure from the order that theseelements impose on the entertainment experience. Any attempt to come to gripswith the phenomenon of classical Hollywood cinema must therefore acknowl-edge the importance of these basic narrative patterns and examine the role theyplay in the overall effectiveness of classical Hollywood cinema as a system.

Average spectators are fully aware that the films they watch are constructedout of bits and pieces of celluloid that have been shot at a variety of differenttimes and in an assortment of different settings and that have been assembledto tell a specific story in a certain way. Every time they watch a film, they arenecessarily reminded of its artifice by a number of factors-not the least ofwhich is the opening or closing credit sequence full of the names of those whoworked on the film. However, spectators rarely experience films in this way.

Though 90- to 120-minute films consist, on the average, of 600 to 800 individualshots and 5 to 40 separate sequences, audiences generally experience films ascontinuous instead of fragmented, as seamless wholes rather than as a string ofdiscrete episodes. As we shall see in the next chapter, this illusion of continuityis the product of a body of stylistic practices that are specifically designed toconceal the essential discontinuity of the filmmaking process. In order to under-stand how narratives work, film studies has developed an analytical techniquedesigned to expose this underlying discontinuity. It breaks the film down intoits basic narrative units. This process of structural analysis is known as segmenta-tion, which is a term that has been used in literary studies to describe the processof dividing works into their constituent parts to study them in greater detail.

Segmentation can be used in the analysis of single scenes, parts of scenes,or entire films. Various criteria also can be used to organize the segmentation,based on their appropriateness to the narrative structures of individual films.In general, the strategy involved in the segmentation of entire films is to breakthe films down into their largest units, which can then be subdivided intoincreasingly smaller units. These larger units tend to be based on the traditional

dramatic unities (as they are defined by Aristotle and others)-that is, the unitiesof action, time, and/ or space.

For example, Sophocles' Oedipus the King possesses all three unities: it con-sists of a single action-Oedipus's investigation into the causes of the plaguethat besets Thebes; it takes place more or less continuously during the course ofa single day; and it plays itself out in a single setting in front of the king's palaceat Thebes. Analyzed using these three traditional criteria, Oedipus would thusbreak down into only one segment.

Only a handful of motion pictures observe all three unities as thoroughlyas does Sophocles in Oedipus. Hitchcock's Rope (1948)is one of them. Rope is anadaptation of a play set in the living room of the central characters' apartment(unity of space). It takes place in real time; that is, without any abridgment orexpansion of the time of the action (unity of time). And it traces the beginning,middle, and end of a single action-a murder-that is committed, then con-cealed, and finally discovered (unity of action).

The Hitchcock films Lifeboat (1944)and Rear Window (1954)observe the uni-ties of action, dealing with the survivors of a shipwreck and a murder mystery,respectively, and unities of space-they are set in a lifeboat and a GreenwichVillage courtyard. But they do this without strict observance of the unity oftime: Lifeboat's action occupies roughly a week, and Rear Window's approxi-mately four days.

Most films, however, violate the traditional unities. They lend themselvesquite readily to segmentation, and the process of breaking them down intolarge units quite often reveals crucial elements of their dramatic structure. Thisstructure, in turn, can be read in terms of the role it plays in shaping the film'sthematic concerns. In other words, segmentation serves as a potentially pro-ductive first step in the larger process of film analysis.

A CIRCULAR PATTERN: CHAPLIN'STHE GOLD RUSH

Charles Chaplin's The Gold Rush (1925),ifbroken down into spatial units, provesto be a paradigm of classical narrative construction. A segmentation of the filminto large units, organized around its various locations and settings, disclosesthe following seven-part, circular pattern:

I. Prologue (journey to the Alaskan gold fields by Charlie, the loneprospector)

II. The cabin (Charlie and Big Jim take refuge in the outlaw BlackLarsen's cabin during a snow storm; Larsen leaves to get help; Charlieand Big Jim enjoy a Thanksgiving feast of boiled boot; the storm sub-sides and they set off on their separate ways)

The Cabin-Charlie Chaplin tries

to protect himself from Big Jim,

who is crazed with hunger in

The Gold Rush.

III. The dance hall (in town, Charlie discovers Georgia and falls in lovewith her at first sight, though she ignores him)

IV. The cabin in town (on New Year's Eve, Charlie prepares dinnerfor Georgia and her girlfriends, falls asleep when she stands himup, dreams that she is there, and performs the dance of the rolls toentertain her)

V. The dance hall (Georgia apologizes to Charlie; Big Jim rediscoversCharlie and falls in love with [pursues] him, much as Charlie pursuedGeorgia earlier)

VI. The cabin (Charlie and Big Jim return to the cabin-this time withplenty of food-in search of Big Jim's claim; another snowstorm; thestorm returns Big Jim to the exact spot where he was at the start ofsegment II)

VII. Epilogue (Charlie and BigJim, having struck it rich, return by boat tothe States; Charlie is reunited with Georgia who mistakes him for thelone prospector whom she met in segment III)

Symmetry

Chaplin's narrative observes a strict classical symmetry. The prologue (I), inwhich Charlie travels to Alaska, is answered by an epilogue (VII),in which he

returns to the States, casting the narrative in the form of a journey. An initialcabin sequence (II) introduces the characters of Big Jim and Black Larsen;Big Jim reappears in the final cabin sequence (VI). The first cabin sequencealso introduces the characters' fixation on material or physical needs (thedesire for gold, then for food), which is answered in the final cabin sequencewhen physical survival once again becomes paramount as the cabin is blownabout in a blizzard and finally settles on the edge of a cliff where it teetersprecariously.

By an uncanny coincidence, the wandering cabin ends up at the exact spotwhere Big Jim is introduced discovering gold. Thus the pursuit of wealth,which motivates Charlie's journey to the gold fields in the prologue and whichis echoed and doubled in the figures of Big Jim and Black Larsen whom hemeets in the cabin (II), finds resolution in segment VI in which all these ele-ments reappear.

If the search for gold structures the overall narrative, other goals emerge togive shape to the central section of the film, which is set in the town rather thanin the wilderness. These three segments introduce another set of characters anda second body of thematic concerns. This time, Charlie interacts not with menbut with women (Georgia and her friends), and his chief desire is not for goldor for physical survival but for more abstract needs-he longs for Georgia'slove. In this central narrative section, two public scenes in the dance hall (III,V) frame a more private sequence (IV)in the cabin that Charlie is taking care offor a friend.

The film's two fantasy or dream sequences, which provide one of thefilm's many parallel or paired scenes, underscore this thematic turnabout. Dur-ing Thanksgiving at the wilderness cabin, Big Jim fantasizes that Charlie is achicken, turning him into food. On New Year's Eve at the cabin in the settle-ment, Charlie transforms food into a phantasmical person, combining his ownhead with dinner rolls on the ends of forks to produce the dance of the rolls.In the former sequence, physical appetite produces the fantasy; in the latter,romantic desire feeds Charlie's imagination. The contrast between the two holi-days and the two settings is further driven home by another variation on thefilm's central theme. In one scene, Charlie turns a boot into a meal; in the other,he turns food into feet, transcending the purely physical world of blizzards,hunger, and greed for gold with an escapist fantasy that celebrates imagina-tion, creativity, and romance.

At the Center: Imagination

The film reveals itself to be a perfect example of the interdependency of formand function in classicalHollywood cinema. The narrative organization of GoldRush is designed around the central character, Charlie, whose goals the plotexplores and whose personality serves as a barometer that governs the audi-ence's perception of and reaction to the events that take place. Charlie's desire,feelings, and imagination stand at the literal center of the film-segment IV-in

sequence looks back to the physical hardship that precedes it in the prologueand in the wilderness cabin sequence, and it looks forward to the epilogue, inwhich this fantasy is made real. Charlie, now a millionaire but dressed onceagain in his tramp's outfit for news photographers, is reunited with Georgia,who, unaware of his wealth, befriends him, much as he befriends her in hisNew Year's Eve dream sequence.

Flight and Pursuit

The orderly narrative patterns of classical Hollywood cinema are not alwayscircular. The journey format often takes characters into new, unexplored ter-rains. That is, it takes them to a destination other than where it begins, as isthe case in Some Like It Hot (1959).The action of the film begins in Prohibition-era Chicago and follows its central characters, a saxophone player named Joe(Tony Curtis) and a bass player named Jerry (Jack Lemmon), on their journeyto Florida in flight from gangsters who want to kill them because they are thesole surviving witnesses to the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

The narrative pattern of the film is simple, with the action falling underthree basic spatial groupings that range from Chicago to the train and finallyto Florida. The goals that drive the narrative are similarly simple, even thoughtheir comic realization seems a bit improbable. Joe and Jerry need jobs and toget out of Chicago if they are to escape "Spats" Columbo (George Raft) andhis mob. Having no money, they are forced to take jobs impersonating womenmusicians in an all-female jazz band on its way to Miami.

On the train to Miami, they meet Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe), the band'slead singer, who is, like them, also in flight. However, the men she flees are notgangsters but rather saxophonists, with whom she always falls in love but whoalways abandon her, leaving her holding what she describes as "the fuzzy endof the lollipop."

In Florida, the characters' initial goals are modified; instead of focusing onflight, they shift their attention to pursuit. Sugar hopes to change her luck andfind a millionaire to marry. Joe, who has fallen in love with Sugar, concocts aplan that would permit him to become her millionaire. To do this, however,he is forced into yet another impersonation-he plays the role of "Shell Oil,Jr.," the sexually impotent, millionaire yachtsman who seeks Sugar's help inrestoring his interest in women. Meanwhile, Jerry, masquerading as Daphne,enjoys unprecedented success as a woman. S/he is romanced by a genuinemillionaire, Osgood, who showers her/him with expensive gifts and evenproposes marriage.

Just as the characters are about to realize their romantic goals (even Jerry /Daphne looks forward to marrying Osgood and then divorcing him for a nicealimony settlement), the gangsters reappear, having come to Miami from Chi-cago for a convention of The Friends of Italian Opera. Pursued by Spats and hismen, Joe and Jerry take refuge under a banquet table, where they once againwitness a mob bloodbath. Spats is rubbed out in retribution for his murder of"Toothpick" Charlie and others at the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. AlthoughSpats has been eliminated as a threat, Joe and Jerry suddenly find themselvespursued by a new mob for observing his murder.

As Josephine and Daphne, they "elope" with Sugar and Osgood, fleeingto the supposed safety of the latter's yacht. For this escape, however, Joe andJerry remove rather than put on their disguises; Joe confesses to Sugar that heis not only Josephine, but Shell Oil, Jr., as well; and Jerry informs Osgood thathe cannot marry him because he is a man. The film ends with Osgood's reply:"Nobody's perfect."

Narrative Structure and Sexuality

Some Like It Hot uses the journey format to provide a background for its cen-tral characters' sexual odyssey, which takes them from a comic-book worldof sexual stereotypes (Chicago), through a duplicitous, unstable world ofdisguise and sexual role playing (the train, Florida), to an uncharted worldwhere sexual differences no longer determine social structure (the boat trip in

In Some Like It Hot Joe <Tony

Curtis) and Jerry Uack Lemmon)

flee the male world of gangsters

for the female world of Sugar

(Marilyn Monroe) and Sweet Sue

and Her Society Syncopaters.

the last scene. In osrOd'S wodd, nObOdf is edect, that is, no one's sexual-

ity is perfect, and traditional notions of sexual difference no longer have anysignificance. As in Shakespeare's The Tempest, the film's characters survive aharrowing experience and enter a brave new world, having "suffer[ed] a sea-change into something rich and strange." At any rate, they are not in Chicagoanymore.

Chicago emerges as the city of gangsters. It is dominated by male vio-lence. Spats and his henchmen, ironically referred to as "all Harvard men,"are caricatures of masculinity. They are two-dimensional tough guys with toomany muscles and too few brains. In Chicago, Joe embodies male insensitivity,repeatedly taking advantage of women. He borrows money from the girls inthe chorus without intending to pay it back and sweet-talks Nellie, an agent'sreceptionist, into lending him her car.

When Joe and Jerry are forced to become Josephine and Daphne, theyare plunged into the all-female world of Sweet Sue and Her Society Synco-paters, where they find themselves on the other end of male insensitivityand sexism. This world is dominated by the "masculine" presence of Sue,the leader of the band, and by the effeminate presence of Mr. Bienstalk, theband's manager. In Florida, the reversal of sexual roles continues. Gold dig-gers in the band, such as Sugar, aggressively pursue local millionaires who,like Shell Oil, Jr., are inadequate as men; and millionaires, like Osgood, whosesexuality is similarly "abnormal," fall in love with men in drag, such asDaphne. Joe's creation of Shell Oil, Jr., serves as an unconscious expressionof his own sense of male inadequacy and as an indirect critique of the hyper-masculinity that characterizes his own earlier attitudes toward women as thewomanizer, Joe.

The sexual confusion of the central section of the film is resolved by the rein-stitution of clear-cut sexual differences, in the form of the excessively mascu-line gangsters, who, unlike Osgood, see through Joe's and Jerry's masquerades.Through their threatening presence, they force the reinstitution of a simplisticsexual duality, whereby men are men and women are women.

Yet the film suggests that their stereotypical male sexuality is inadequate,much as is that of Sugar's ideal man, whom she envisions as "gentle, sweet, andhelpless." Sugar's ideal proves to be pure fantasy, and she is ultimately forcedto recognize and give in to her irrational desire for tenor saxophone player(Joe). On the other hand, if Daphne is Osgood's ideal, then Jerry emerges asthe next best thing, as an imperfect Daphne. Some Like It Hot illustrates how theimpossible perfection imagined in the romantic dreams and sexual fantasiesof the central characters gives way to the more immediate, concrete realitiesof their sexual desires. In other words, all of them, even Osgood, discover thatnobody is perfect.

Modernist works tend to reject the illusionistic transparency of classical realisttexts and to bring to the foreground the process of the text's construction, lay-ing bare its parts, or to expose the process by which its meaning is constructed,or both. Modernist texts convey the spirit of crisis that characterizes the mod-ern (post-Industrial Revolution, twentieth-century) age. They do this, in part,by rejecting the principles of order, regularity, and invisibility that dominaterepresentation in its classical, romantic, and realist forms. The particular formthat modernism takes depends on the particular tradition that it rebels against;in American narrative filmmaking, modernism is best exemplified by CitizenKane (1941),a film that breaks the rules of classical narration in several ways.

Kane belongs to several film genres. On one level, it is a newspaper film;on another, a mystery; on yet another, it is a fictional biography (or biopic). If itis difficult to classify Kane in terms of its exact narrative type, it is also hard toidentify its central character. Is it Charles Foster Kane, who dies in its openingminutes? Or is it Thompson, the investigative reporter who is assigned to solvethe mystery of Kane's last word-"rosebud"?

What are the goals of these characters? If what both Kane and Thompsonwant is "rosebud," then neither succeeds in getting it. "Rosebud" remains, asfar as Kane is concerned, a lost object that he both possesses and can never find;it lies concealed in the vast storehouse of Kane's possessions. For Thompson,"rosebud" remains a mystery that he never solves. In other words, the goalthat structures the narrative is never reached by its central characters (thoughthe audience does penetrate at least one layer of the mystery of "rosebud" indiscovering the object to which the word refers).

I. The death of KaneA. Kane's death ("No Trespassing" /private; unmediated access to

Kane)B. "News on the March" obituary (public image of Kane)

II. The search for the meaning of "rosebud" (first-person portraits of Kane)A. Unsuccessful interview with SusanB. Thatcher's memoirs/flashback

1. Kane's professional success (as yellow journalist)2. Kane's professional failure (forced to relinquish control of

newspapers)

1. Kane's professional successi. The rise of the Inquirerii. Celebrating the Inquirer's success

2. Kane's personal successi. Collecting in Europeii. Marriage to Emily

D. Leland's flashback1. Kane's personal failure (marriage with Emily deteriorates)2. Kane's professional failure (Kane loses the election)3. Kane's personal/professional failure (attempts to make Susan

opera star fail)E. Susan's flashback

1. Kane's personal/professional failure (attempts to make Susanopera star fail)

2. Kane's personal failure (marriage with Susan deteriorates)F. Raymond's flashback

III. Rosebud (objects tell the story)

Artifice Exposed

Though the narration of Citizen Kane is extremely fragmented and complex, itcan be broken down into three segments. The first segment consists of Kane'sdeath at Xanadu and public reactions to it, seen in the News on the Marchnewsreel. It concludes with the reporter Thompson's assignment to discoverthe meaning of Kane's last word, "rosebud." The second segment documentsThompson's search. It is structured around a series of five flashbacks presentedthrough Thatcher's papers and interviews with Mr. Bernstein, Jed Leland,Susan Alexander Kane, and the butler, Raymond. It concludes with Thomp-son's admission of failure in finding out what "rosebud" meant. The final seg-ment is extremely brief-only five or six shots. It surveys Kane's possessions,reveals the identity of "rosebud," and returns us to the images of Xanadu andthe "No Trespassing" sign that began the film.

The first act presents private and public portraits of Kane. The second con-sists of first-person portraits of Kane that explore his various successes and fail-ures. In the final act, Kane's possessions stand as yet another way of viewinghis life. He is the sum total of all of these objects, and it is here that the mysteryof "rosebud" is finally solved.

The narrative structure of Kane also plays havoc with the norm; it is builtaround a complex series of overlapping flashbacks in which five different char-acters present their perceptions of Kane. Though Thompson serves as the audi-ence's guide through the maze of information presented about Kane, he neverprocesses that information for us. In fact, he refuses, declaring that he "doesn'tthink any word [could] explain a man's life" and that "rosebud" is "just a piecein a jigsaw puzzle-a missing piece."

Citizen Kane paints a modernist

portrait of its central character,

played by Orson Welles, as the

sum total of various reflections.

Thus, the audience is left with the difficult task of assembling these sepa-rate portraits of Kane into a coherent figure. The persistent refusal of the filmto give the audience access to its central character serves as the chief markof its modernism. A "No Trespassing" sign greets us at the beginning of thefilm; doors are repeatedly closed in our faces; and, once we finally get to see"rosebud" at the end, it goes up in smoke just as we begin to grasp its possiblemeanings.

Kane stands at the very fringe of classical Hollywood cinema and drawsmuch of its power from its violation of the codes and conventions that audi-ences take for granted when they go to the movies. Kane makes visible muchof that which the machinery of Hollywood cinema seeks to keep invisible. Buteven this visibility provides pleasure for audiences, engaging them on a height-ened level of narrative awareness that plays a crucial role in their understand-ing of the narrative.

MODERNIST MANIPULATION OFTIME AND SPACE:INSIDE MAN

If Citizen Kane violates the narrative linearity of classical Hollywood cinema,it nonetheless does so in a way that does not confuse audiences as to the tem-poral order or spatial location of narrative events. In She's Gotta Have It (1986),

!! 1i~!1IH j rII Iconstructed out of interviews with her and with her various friends, leav-ing it up to the audience to decide whether she is a sexual "freak" or not.In Inside Man (2006), Lee takes Welles a step farther and pushes the bound-aries of coherence in modernist narration by playing with the basic ele-ments of time and space within the conventional narrative pattern of a bankheist story.

Lee's film can be broken down into two acts, punctuated by a fade-out atthe end of the first act, as seen in the following segmentation:

I. The perfect crime: The bank robberyA. Prologue: The Who, What, Where, and WhyB. The How

1. Playing the game: Actions and counteractionsa. Taking the bank (robbers)b. Securing the perimeter (police)c. Protecting secrets (Arthur Case)

2. Complications: Snares, traps, and enigmas as the game plancontinuesa. Hostages: Cell phones / clothes exchanged for uniforms / masksb. Hostage with (fake) chest pains releasedc. First hostage interrogated by policed. Russell tours vault, safety deposit boxes, store roome. Case's first step: Hiring Madeleine White

3. The implementation of plansa. Police begin to gather information

i. Second, third, and fourth hostages interrogatedii. Darius briefs Frazier on threat to kill hostages

b. Case and White discuss keeping his secret secretc. Robbers begin construction in the supply room

4. Eavesdropping on one anothera. Fifth hostage (Miriam) interrogatedb. Sikh hostage released; bug unwittingly taken into command

centerc. White secures mayor's helpd. Russell eavesdrops on policee. Bugged pizza delivered; police eavesdrop on robbers;

Russian?f. Sixth hostage (Asian male) interrogated

5. Making contacta. Russell talks with hostage (black youth) about violent video

gameb. White and mayor insist Frazier give her every courtesyc. Frazier speaks with Russell on phoned. Seventh hostage (Armenian named Djmagian) interrogated

e. Frazier on phone with Russell: Which weighs more?f. Frazier calls girlfriendg. Frazier calls Russell to set up meeting with White inside

bankh. White fails to bribe Russell; learns of Case's collaboration

with Nazisi. White tells Frazier that Russell is not going to kill anyonej. Eighth to twelfth hostages (father/son, Pablo, jeweler, buxom

woman) interrogatedk. Russell tells Frazier he can't order assault until hostage is

killed6. No longer playing by the book: Upping the ante

a. Robbers shoot hostageb. Frazier and Russell argue at door of bankc. Darius takes over from Frazier (fantasy of storming bank)d. Frazier discovers Russell's bug; warns Darius that Russell

knows their plane. Robbers join hostages; all run out of bankf. Police enter bank; no one found; nothing stoleng. Hostages board bus. FADE-OUT

II. The imperfect crime: Case is caughtA. Frazier investigates Case against orders

1. Cameron orders Frazier to "bury it," the bank robbery "neverhappened"

2. Safety deposit box 392 does not exist3. White orders Frazier to stop; Frazier plays back her bribery

attempt4. White confronts Case in men's club; Case confesses

B. Reprise of the Who, What, Where, Why, and How as Russell exitshis "cell"

C. A comparison of fates1. Gang waits for Russell in car outside bank2. Russell bumps into Frazier as he leaves3. Frazier finds ring in box 3924. Frazier confronts Case in Case's office5. Frazier gives incriminating ring to mayor, digital pen to White6. Frazier returns home to girlfriend, finds diamond in pocket

FADE-OUT

Both acts involve crimes and responses to them, entailing investigations. In thefirst act, there are three major plot threads focusing on three narrative agents:Russell and his gang, Frazier and the police, and Case and White. All work at

Dalton Russell (Clive Owen)

explains the Who, What, Where,

Why, and Howat the start of

/nsideMon.

cross-purposes to one another. The outcome is a defeat for the latter two agentsand victory for the former. In the second act, Russell, Frazier, and White joinforces to investigate Case and expose his crime.

Part one is structured around routinized procedures that are best describedas conventional scenarios in which the chief actors follow procedures (play bythe book). In this game, Russell has the upper hand. He knows police procedureand uses it to make his plan work. He successfully bugs the police (before theybug him) and has access to their discussions of strategy. He tricks the policeby letting them eavesdrop on him, playing a speech in Albanian delivered byEnver Hoxha, a former head of state of that country now dead. He fakes theexecution of a hostage. His gang-dressed like hostages-escapes by pretend-ing to be hostages.

Manipulation of Time and Space

The narrative of Inside Man is marked by two salient features-the voice-overnarration of Dalton Russell (in boldface in the segmentation) and the hostageinterrogations (in italics). All of these segments initially share a spatial and tem-poral ambiguity in relation to the rest of the film. Russell's prologue (IA) isdelivered at a time and from a space that remain unclear until the film's finalact (lIB)when it is discovered that he has hidden himself in a secret cell in thebank's supply room. A week after the robbery took place, Russell simply exitshis cell and walks out of the bank with a bag of jewels. The hostage interviewssimilarly occur at a time and place that is not made clear, though the spectatorgradually realizes that these scenes probably occur at police headquarters afterall the hostages have been released. To make matters a bit more confusing, thehostage interrogations begin with the release of the first hostage (IB2b), butinvolve a different hostage (not the white man with chest pains but a black manwho will not be released until the freeing of the majority of other hostages nearthe end of the first act).

This withholding of information on the part of the film's narrator (SpikeLee) mirrors that of the bank robber, Dalton Russell, both in his voice-over

narration and in his deceptive interaction with the police and the hostages whoare led to believe that a routine bank robbery is taking place and that a hostagehas been executed. At the very beginning of the film, Russell instructs the audi-ence to "Pay strict attention to what I say because I choose my words carefully,and I never repeat myself." This warning, which is soon forgotten, puts theaudience on notice that it needs to pay "strict attention" to what is being saidand shown, alluding to the potential for deception or misunderstanding in theperception of what is happening. The fact that Russell does repeat himself-hemakes the same speech (accompanied by somewhat different images) in themiddle of the second act (B)-makes it clear that we cannot even trust him to betrue to his words and must try to make sense of what we see and hear on ourown.

Misperception

In retrospect, the film displays a fascination with perception and mispercep-tion, from the false fa<;:adeof Arthur Case, the respectable banker who attemptsto conceal a disreputable past, to the strategems of the bank robbers who weardisguises (painters' uniforms, masks), build a secret compartment in the sup-ply room, plant a listening device in the police command center so they caneavesdrop on their discussions, mislead the police with Hoxha's speech, poseenigmatic riddles about "which weighs more?," fake the killing of a hostage,and disguise themselves as hostages to make good their escape (borrowing aplot element from a BillMurray bank heist story, Quick Change, 1990).The audi-ence is also a victim of misperception. It is not until the beginning of the secondact that we can begin to make sense of the hostage interrogations. And we donot really know where Russell is until almost the end of that act.

Race and Misperception

Lee's playful manipulation of time and space foreground the problem ofperception and misperception. Though the nominal subject of the film is theface-off between cops and criminals during a bank robbery, Russell and hisgang harbor a hidden agenda that involves securing evidence that will exposeCase's crimes against Jewish victims of the Holocaust. In other words, the filmis also about race. New York City's multiculturalism is highlighted through aproliferation of characters representing different races and ethnicities, includ-ing African Americans, Albanians, Armenians, Asians, Hispanics, Jews, Poles,Saudi Arabians, and Sikhs. The title music-"Chaiyya, Chaiyya"-is an IslamicIndian love song from a popular Hindi film, further announcing the film's con-cern with other cultures.

Lee's inclusion of seemingly random instances of racism provides a sub-text that links racism to biased perception or misperception. The (white) copon the beat who discovers the robbery tells Frazier, who is black, a story abouthis first violent encounter with a 12-year-old who stuck a gun in his face. He

talks about b'eakin la firt in which "one little Spic is getting his clock

cleaned by anothN when a ni ... an African Ame'ic,n" pulled , gun on lun.With the n-word on his lips, he suddenly realizes who he is talking to and says"African American" instead. Even Captain Darius (Willem Dafoe) indulges inracist epithets, referring to "those ragheads at the Munich Olympics." A Sikhhostage is released; because he wears a turban, the police perceive him as anArab terrorist, throw him to the ground, and remove his turban, looking forconcealed weapons.

Frazier's misreading of the bank robbery, though in no way racist, becomesthe thematic center with which these other instances of biased perceptionresonate. Racism is grounded in racial misperception, a bias the film exposes.Lee's choreography of the ending of the film involves the pooling of efforts onthe part of the film's three major characters-a black man (Frazier), a whiteman (Russell), and a white woman (White)-to expose Case's criminal past.Three of the film's most visible nonracists take down the film's invisible racist.The moral imperative of the film is articulated by Russell in his final voice-over. Acknowledging that he robbed the bank for the money, he also admitsto another motive, noting that the money's "not worth much if you can't faceyourself in the mirror. Respect is the ultimate currency." Respect-both self-respect and respect for others-becomes the foundation on which a new, non-racist moral order can be built. Lee's film looks wistfully forward to the comingof that new order.

Several more recent films engage in a similar kind of modernist play with clas-sical narrative conventions, including films such as Pulp Fiction (1994),Memento(2001),and 21 Grams (2003).In each of these films, traditional narrative linearitygives way to a confusing rearrangement of the temporal relationship betweenscenes that demands an active and alert spectator who can figure that relation-ship out and construct a coherent story from the films' fragmented scenarios.In Pulp Fiction, the spectator needs to puzzle through a convoluted series ofevents to reconstruct their logical order so that the killing of Vincent Vega (JohnTravolta) by Butch (Bruce Willis) occurs after all the other narrative actionwe see in the film. Memento presents a narrative that runs, more or less, back-ward from the final action in which Leonard (Guy Pearce) kills Teddy (JoePantoliano) to the event that initially prompted this action-the murder ofLeonard's wife. Presented in a succession of 10-minute scenes that lead up toand briefly overlap with each previous scene, the film ironically calls on theshort- and long-term memories of its spectators to make sense of the narra-tive that explores the hero's short-term memory loss. 21 Grams is a nonlinearportrait of the relationship among three total strangers whose lives intersect

around a traffic accident in which one person, ex-con Jack Jordan (BeniciodelToro), kills the husband and two daughters of another person, Cristina Peck(Naomi Watts), who, in turn, anonymously donates her husband's heart to adying mathematician, Paul Rivers (Sean Penn). Director Alejandro Gonzalesmarritu begins and ends the film with Paul's death, interrupting this momentwith a quasi-eschatological assemblage of footage of events leading up to hisdeath. marritu's editing juxtaposes moments of gain and loss, of joy and suffer-ing, to explore an economy of redemption in which each individual's trajectorytoward salvation is intercut with moments of despair, abjection, and loss offaith experienced by others (and by themselves).

These narratives not only echo the modern condition in their formal rebel-liousness but become about it, representing a contemporary sense of frustration,lack of closure, and dissolution. In other words, they serve, much as does theseamless classical Hollywood cinema of the past, as an "expression of the tem-per of an age and a nation as well as an expression of the individual tempera-ment" of the artists who make them.

• •• SELECT FILMOGRAPHY

The Gold Rush (1925)Citizen Kane (1941)Rear Window (1954)Vertigo (1958)Some Like It Hot (1959)

The Terminator (1984)Pulp Fiction (1994)Memento (2001)21 Grams (2003)Inside Man (2006)

Classical Hollywood Cinema: Style

Classical Hollywood cinema is a character-centered cinema. Not only arenarratives structured around the goals of individual characters, but basicelements of film style are also put at the service of character exposition anddramatic development. Even at the level of setting, the narrative machineryseeks to maximize its use of the medium-to use it to describe characterpsychology, to visualize the goals and desires of characters, and to convey theirdevelopment as characters through the action that follows.

Classical Economy: The Opening Sequenceof Shadow of a Doubt

The introductory sequence of Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943)provides a perfect example of classical economy and efficiency in characterdelineation. A series of establishing shots connected by dissolves identifies the