Thanks for your thoughts Sarah and Jim. Thinking in
narrative sentences I could say that normally all the
"meta narrative" sentences are concluded at the end of
a film, so that the end is either revealing (like in
more conventional films) or more ambigious (which
establishes the whole film as an intenionally
illegible text).
> we really don't know what to do with them -- they
> only make sense once
> diegetic time has "caught up" with them (and the
> narrative can only be
> seen whole once the film is over).
I agree, but this happens also many times with
flashbacks, like in "The Seven Percent Solution"
(Homes's flashback about his childhood). In any case,
this shows again that film ends are crucial for the
meaning of the film.
Catalin
Sarah and Jim, do you know any books or aricles
dealing with what you said? As I am writing a
dissertation, I am required to quote the sources.
Thanks a lot for your help,
Catalin
--- Jim Flannery <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Sarah wrote to film-philosophy:
>
> S> [snip] statements with regard to past events that
> reflect our
> S> knowledge (or the author's knowledge) of what is
> going to happen
> S> after, that participants in the event have no way
> of knowing. ...
> S> [snip] There are many instances of narrative
> sentences in films, like
> S> flashbacks where you've already seen events in
> the film's 'present'.
>
> I'm reminded even more of the vogue in late 60s
> feature films for
> shock-cut flashforwards. I was just watching
> Lester's _Petulia_ last
> week, and it's full of them, as is Boorman's 1967
> version of _Point
> Blank_. But in those films, we're given these
> flashes of "knowledge" but
c> --
> Jim Flannery
> [log in to unmask]
>
> Because they've created such a deep structure
> now, you can't
> get in. And we don't want to get in, we're on
> the outside.
> But we're not on the outside looking in, we're
> on the outside
> looking out.
> -- John Zorn
>
> np: John Luther Adams, _Clouds of Forgetting, Clouds
> of Unknowing_
> nr: Harry Mathews, _The Journalist_
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