Critical Approaches to Film

Lesson 9

Narrative recap

The Last Picture Show

http://www.totalfilm.com/features/50-worst-movie-endings

Exercise draft deadline

= 6th December

Exercise final deadline =

13th December

Cover sheet on socs-

media & on the website

Submit by 4pm at

Atrium Reception

Use terminology

Analysis not description

Meaning generated

through formal

elements

Narrative

• Strong cause-and-effect

• High degree of narrative closure

• Psychologically rounded, goal-driven characters

• Character subordinate to plot

• Fictional world governed by spatial and temporal verisimilitude

• Familiar rules, codes, conventions

• Heterosexual romance normally present as main plot or subplot

Art Cinema/ European

• Loose cause and effect

• Open/ambiguous endings

• Ambiguous characters, often

lacking defined desires/goals

• Plot subordinate to character

• Psychological or social realism

• Experimentation (less

formulaic)

Hollywood

Alternative/post-classical Hollywood

narrative

the style of the film

the principal themes

the film’s representation of the past.

Narrative: whether you can identify any influences from classical Hollywood and

European art cinema