Narrative

The Narrative

A trailers narrative enables the viewer to understand the story line and helps you to grasp an idea or prediction as to what will happen in the film. The structure can be a main feature of a narrative as the way that the storyline is told is important to consumers some viewers may or may not like complicated story lines. There are some theories that individuals have on specific narrative which can become apparent in similar genres of film. Such like theorists Todorov, Tzetvan,Claude Levi and pam cook.



I thought it would be more usful to apply the theories to a few of the previous film noir trailers I had analysed.

Shutter Island

Shutter island follows a typical film noir narrative, that follows the theory of vladmir Propp, which is that narrative have the same character types that preform certain actions and portray certain aspects which are the same all the time in any film this enables you to recognise the characters.

The trailer doesn't follow a linear narrative, this is because it's a trailer which shows the best parts of the film not nessacarily in order to attract the audience and give a sense of mystery. Though the film itself follows a linear narrative, which allows the tension to build for the audience as aspects are hidden from the audience throughout. 

This film is a restricted narrative as the main character is narrating the beginning of the trailer.

 

Memento


Memento is a classic film noir murder story. Linking to theorist Pam cook, she says about the structure of hollywood film narravtives ''linearity of cause and effect within an overall trajectory of enigma.''


The flashbacks which take olace in the film help relate to this of Tzetvan Toorov, he states narratives always have a structure. Though this structure isn't a linear narrative as the flashbacks represent the scenes of his past and where the main character is in the present state of the film.
Not having the film/trailer as a linear narrative helps create enigma. This theory is stressed by a theory; Ronald Barthes he states that enigma codes are intentionally put into narratives to give a pleasurable way of ending a story.

This film is a restricted narrative within the beginning of the trailer which indicates it's about the protaginists experiences as the narrator uses many personal pronouns.