Important sources for coursework

Richard Maltby-Hollywood Cinema

"The plot is the order in which events are represented in the movie, for which the Formalists used the word syuzhet: 'the structured set of all casual events as we see and hear them presented'. The story, on the other hand, is the reconstruction of the events in their chronological order, through which we can establish the chain of casualty which links them, designated the fablula by the Formalists."-P.331

"Bordwell and Thompson's 'neoformalist' film criticism, however, regards the story as being retrospectively constructed by the viewer as a means of explaining the casual relations between plot events."-P.332

"The distinction between plot and story also helps to define the term narration. Where plot and story can both be understood as objects-sequences of events-narration is a process: the process by which a plot is arranged to permit the telling of a story."-P.332

"In addition to its conventional systems of space and time, narration sustains a movie's plausible performance by arranging plot events according to a principle of cause and effect."-P.333

Gill Branston-Media Students book

"Todorov, another structuralist, argued that all storied behind with an 'equilibrium' where any potentially opposing forces are 'in balance' - the 'once upon a time' moment. This is disrupted by some event, setting in train a series of other events, to close with a second, but different 'equilibrium' or status quo."-P45

Warren Buckland: Teach Yourself Film Studies

"Narration does not become omniscient in haphazard fashion; rather, it does so only at specific moments in the narrative."-P.41

Nick Lacey: Narrative and Genre

"Stereotypes are often deployed and while they are not 'psychologically rounded characters', they are 'psychologically recognisable'. Texts that are intended to be alternative must in some way break these 'rules'; they therefore tend to exist outside the mainstream."-P.121

What is the significance of Pulp Fictions non-linear chronology?

Portmanteau