Narrative, meaning and suspense

USING NARRATIVE TO BUILD SUSPENSE

Restricted narrative can be used to surprise an audience, e.g. when a character does not know what is waiting around the corner and neither does the audience. A degree of unrestricted narrative, the other 'half', can be used to effectively build suspense, as the audience are anticipating the events to come, of which the character has no knowledge.

We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let us suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, "Boom!" There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence.

Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware that the bomb is going to explode at one o'clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions this innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: "You shouldn't be talking about such trivial matters. There's a bomb beneath you and it's about to explode"

In this first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of explosion. In the second case we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed.

[Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967), p.52]


USING NARRATIVE TO MAKE MEANING IN FILM

Why is narrative important to us? Stories are very important in helping us to make sense of our lives and the world around us. Bordwell and Thompson point out the different ways in which we are surrounded by the story form;
• As children we listen to fairy tales and myths. Reading material as we progress becomes short stories, novels, history and biographies.
• Religion is often presented through collection of stories/moral tales e.g. the Bible/ the Koran.
• Scientific breakthrough is often presented as stories of an experimenter's trial. Cultural phenomena such as plays, films, TV, dance, paintings tell stories. Newspapers tell stories, Dreams are little stories in themselves