Narration in the Fiction Film

Most films tell tales, but what does that involve? How do motion pictures tease us into building what we all agree to call stories? In this study, David Bordwell offers the first comprehensive account of how movies use fundamental principles of narrative representation, unique features of the film medium, and diverse story-telling patterns to construct their fictional narratives. The result is a pioneering, far-reaching work which will change the way we perceive narrative film—and which every serious film scholar, student or fan will welcome.

“This book is of crucial importance to film specialists. I cannot think that any film teacher/scholar would miss reading this work.”—Don Fredricksen, Cornell University

“David Bordwell’s Narration in the Fiction Film is a major contribution to film studies and to narrative theory. The work, I predict, will be widely read, praised, debated, and damned. Brodwell’s originality lies not so much in demonstrating the deficiencies of other theories, which he does very convincingly, but in the scope and design of his project, against which there is no competition of comparable intellectual weight.”—Jerry Carlson, DePaul University

• Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and The Studio System
• Film As Film: Understanding And Judging Movies
• Reinventing Hollywood: How 1940s Filmmakers Changed Movie Storytelling
• Poetics of Cinema
• Ratcatcher (BFI Film Classics)
• Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema (Harvard Film Studies)
• The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960
• The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies
• What Is Cinema? Vol. 1
• Cinema 1: The Movement-Image