Random Notes on the Conventional Narrative Film
Klaus Wyborny • 22.09.2025
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The Docks of New York (1928, Josef von Sternberg)
A) The Reality of the Steady Stare
The cinema's image of human beings: characters who stare into each other's eyes at length; characters who observe objects, landscapes and other characters with unmoving eyes; characters who steadfastly return every stare - if not, they are supposed to have something to hide. The thinker stares in the course of his thinking at a hypothetical point in the room without moving his eyes, and it is this which demonstrates his mental activity.
On the other hand, reality: characters who only accidentally look into each other's eyes: characters whose irises continually oscillate when they look at something carefully; characters who would not think of returning a stare; and a mental activity so intimately associated with uncontrollable eye-movement that you might surmise that it is this very eye-movement, continually wiping the reservoirs and cells free of the residues of previous mental efforts, that makes a fresh train of thought possible.
When interviewed, people move their eyes with nimble dexterity as they answer. If I am conversing with someone who does not move his eyes, I am sure that he is not listening to me. When I recite a poem, I can keep my eyes fixed on a single point for as long as I can perfectly recall the text. If I have to consider how to continue, I am obliged to move my eyes. It is no accident that actors move their eyes little in films. They have already learnt the words they are speaking by heart and should they move their eyes, the motion will be somewhat mechanical focussing on surrounding objects, on flowers, ash-trays, the edges of a desk.
The eye movement of a person who is thinking, on the other hand, does not focus on surrounding objects. It is unfocussed If I am thinking, I cannot simultaneously see something in sharp focus. If I am staring at a fixed point in space, even my field of vision disappears. To be able to see, I need movement. If this movement is not provided by the objects around me I must produce it through my iris. Conversely, people who move their eyes rapidly in a film are those who have something to conceal - criminals, neurotics and the insane. Narrative cinema transforms mental activity into an attribute of sub-criminal anomaly.
Narrative cinema treats interaction between characters as the visible interaction of rigid bodies with a well-defined momentum, a well-defined line of movement, and a well-defined shape. Shifts in momentum, line of movement and shape have a well-defined cause in a well-defined interaction with another well-defined body.
The main function of narrative grammar is to produce a natural connection between units of space and time not naturally connected. The yardstick for the naturalness of such a grammatical bond is the emergence of a space-time structure which is not internally contradictory at first sight. This is to say that implicit in every element of the emerging space-time structure is the virtual imprint of a geographical and a temporal co-ordinate, and these co-ordinates must not be contradictory. It would be contradictory, for example, for a rigid body to occupy two different geographic co-ordinates simultaneously.
The space-time constructions of narrative grammar are accomplished almost exclusively by a single operational principle, by the exchange of carriers of motion in different units of space and time. These carriers of motion ordinarily conform to the type of the rigid body, and among the latter predominantly to rigid bodies of the type 'actor'. Frequently space-time connections are also brought about by potential carriers of motion, who for their part are produced by an already familiar discovery of narrative cinema, namely that of the stare. The latter for its part forms a unit, indestructible in the context of narrative grammar, with the carrier of motion, which has degenerated to a rigid body, ie the rigid type of actor.
The basis of this construction is the unshakeable identity of an image with what it portrays. The image of a space is perceived as being identical with the space itself. As a result, distortions of scale are generously overlooked from shot to shot. Equally overlooked are distortions in the area of colour distribution, even to the surprising extent of black and white films being identified with a particularly emphatic kind of realism.
What are not overlooked, however, are visual errors such as extreme over-exposure and wide-angle distortion. In these cases the identity of picture and subject is undermined to such an extent that within narrative grammar they are located in the province of psychotic and sub-criminal perversion.
A curious value is given to heavily under-lit scenes to which, strange to say, the time co-ordinate 'night' is attributed even when a thousand pieces of evidence contradict this interpretation. A brownish tint with black-and-white footage is even interpreted as a record from time long past, although this brownish tint was at no point in time part of the chemical production process of film stock.
This suggests that narrative cinema and its grammar is a matter of a meagre collection of little artifices, to which the spectator reacts with Pavlovian certainty. Such an approach, however, overlooks the fact that pictorial errors belong to the border-regions of narrative grammar. They have little to do with the appreciation of space-time constructions, and the latter form the back-bone of this grammar. No analytic approach which stops at the level of pictorial deformation can proceed towards an understanding of the narrative principle.
The basis of the narrative system is the identity of picture and subject.
The systematic disregard for the questionable status of such an identity leads to a bizarre understanding of the reality of narrative film. Films which permit unambiguous space-time constructions, without the synthetic element of their process of production being apparent in them at first glance, are felt to be particularly realistic. The very films, however, that can produce this lack of ambiguity are synthetic to a very high degree, and so they must be too. They insist, for example, on the stare.
A society whose pictorial appreciation is such that it confuses pictures with reality, even when a thousand pieces of evidence weigh against the possibility of such a confusion, must in itself be or become highly schizophrenic. How then can an individual understand reality, if he concedes reality only to systematic distortion. If he tries to evaluate reality according to the standards of a deformed reality. How can he interact with other people, if his understanding of reality is determined by the reality of the stare.
The Docks of New York (1928, Josef von Sternberg)
B) Normalisation Towards the Representational Shot
The identity of Picture and subject calls for far-reaching restrictions within the possible forms of pictorial representation. We mentioned constraints towards standard lenses, correct exposure, and plausible colour-balance. On top of this comes the demand for satisfactory picture definition. This is necessary to prevent the identification of pictorial space with real space being undermined. Likewise a film's time in the narrative context must appear equal to the time it represents. This leads to mutually standardised speeds for shooting and projection. 24/25 images per second is the norm. Small deviations can be noticed only in sound films by an audience with sharp hearing.
A further restriction consists of the use of the static camera. The identification of picture and subject leaves no room for a character outside the scene who is making the scene come about. The cameraman must remain invisible. Pans are used only if they are so strongly motivated by an observable motion in the scene that the action of panning is not felt to be an operation by the camera. All other pans have an atmospheric character and only condense the narrative continuity produced by static camera shots. All experiments with hand-held cameras stress the doubtful nature of the identification of image and subject and only a well-disposed audience perceives them as narrative. Even when such shots are officially designated as 'especially documentary', their effect is only atmospheric. The identification of the image with its subject becomes ineffective after a time. The film is misunderstood as the product of the cameraman.
Conventional narrative cinema dies once the static shot is abandoned. And it was the static shot which made its rise possible. The first film cameras had to be used as static cameras, since there was, as a rule, no means of viewing the image while the camera was running.
The principle of identification excludes a further area of images in which an uninterrupted identification of picture and subject is not possible in spite of existing normalisations. This area includes pictures of extremely small objects. They have to be prepared for by other shots, so that an acceptable sense of scale is established. There is moreover a range of shots in which spatial relationships are so opaque that they can only be read as abstract images. Those too are forbidden in a strictly narrative context.
Another requirement is the horizontality of a depicted horizon. If discrepancy is hot given an extraordinarily strong motivation, then it is perceived as the deliberate action of the cameraman and works as such against the principle of identification.
The horizontality of the horizon demands, even in spaces without an horizon, the verticality of verticals. The vertical is the determining structure in a narrative image. Even when, because of the selected camera-angle, the horizontal lines are distorted for purposes of perspective, the verticals remain vertical. Foreground/ background focussing must be motivated by a previous action. It is subject to the same rule as the pan.
Anything which is perceived as a marked deviation from the abovementioned normalisations has an atmospheric effect, and many of these deviations have a striking tendency towards the domain of the psychotic and sub-criminal. Sub-criminals and psychotics are accepted as people for whom the world has lost its bearings, and in narrative cinema this means in effect that the unshakeable identity postulated between image and subject is undermined.
The identity of image and subject can also be approached through the concept of the representational shot. A shot represents a clearly defined space and is identified with it. We designate as representational those shots in which there appears to be a simple identification between the image and its subject. In this sense representational shots demand the normalisations described above. The representational shot is a prerequisite of narrative grammar. A simple succession of representational shots is however, insufficient to create a narrative system. Narrative grammar -is more tightly structured.
Also some non-narrative systems use representational shots, as for example the genre of documentary film. But unless they are strongly structured in a narrative way, their effect after a while becomes atmospheric, like the illustration to a text. This is also extremely true of news broadcasts which incorporate documentary material, where an intensive use of the hand-held camera obviously increases this impression.
Representational shots must have a specific minimum length, so that their representational effect can be recognised. This minimum length lies between one and five seconds. If the shots are shorter, they have an atmospheric effect.
The representational shot is unconnected with the field of vision of a hypothetical spectator. The field of vision of a spectator does not have the least similarity with the field of vision of a representational shot. The eye sees differently from the camera. A camera-pan and the field of a person's vision as he turns his head to see more, are two fundamentally different things. Occasionally in narrative films there is an apparent identification of viewpoints between camera and spectator which is described as the subjective camera. This identification is absolutely artificial and exists only as a convention. The shot used in the narrative system usually requires no motivation in terms of a possible spectator. Camera-viewpoints least accessible to a viewer do not rule out the representational character of a shot - on the contrary, frequently they provide the primary condition of its possibility.
The use of non-representational shots is at the present time examined almost exclusively in avant-garde cinema. They are however also used in commercials, and in a certain type of musical, admittedly in their most trivially atmospheric form.
Multiple exposures and superimpositions have a narrative effect only if the character of the superimposition is disguised, as in travelling mattes and other effects. If they are recognisable as multiple exposures or superimpositions, they have an atmospheric effect. One exception is provided by the dissolve from one shot to the next. Like the fade, it has the character of a well-defined signal in the narrative context.
The constant application over many decades of these principles of normalisation has so exhausted the visual raw material of narrative films that it is no longer in a position to carry contents in tune with its times. A few directors have been trying for some time to integrate non-representational images into the narrative framework. Since they however accept the narrative principle as a corset, we find more and more in their films that category of cinema-pyschopaths which have nothing, absolutely nothing, in common with true psychopaths.
