The suspended narrative effect: Image and narrative modulation in cinema

• João Vitor Leal ^[1]
  1. [1] São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), Brazil
• Localización: Nuevas narrativas. Entre la ficción y la información: de la desregulación a la integración transmedia / coord. por Elena de la Cuadra Colmenares; Rosa Ferrer Ceresola (col.), Carlos Sanandrés Martínez (col.), 2017, ISBN 978-84-947521-8-6, págs. 519-528
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
  • Texto Completo Libro (pdf)
• Resumen

  • This paper intends to investigate when and in what ways, by which criteria and how accurately one can affirm that there is a narrative “halt” or “suspension” in a film; what are the qualities of the images and sounds that promote such events; and what are their consequences on the viewer’s experience. Our analysis will focus on moments where narrative logic seems to be disturbed – musical numbers, jump scares, humorous gags, intense corporeal performances, abstractions, etc. – when the flow of images on the screen ignores or rejects the moving forward of the story. We’ll call upon several theoretical notions in order to better define these alleged moments of narrative suspension, from Faure’s “cinéplastique” and Epstein’s “photogénie” to the “punctum” and the “third sense” (Barthes), the “figural” (Lyotard), the “cinema of attractions” (Gaudreault and Gunning), the “cinematic excess” (Thompson) and the “extended concept of moving-picture dance” (Carroll). We’ll argue that the cinematographic narrative cannot be simply defined in terms of storyline but should rather be understood as an elastic audiovisual fabric that modulates the story, allowing it to evolve in a more or less fluid and consistent or rarefied fashion.