What is narrative?

Film and literature are both a way to express human meaning, and both have artistic characteristics of time form, so the similarity between them is narrative. The common phenomenon of contemporary narratology research and film adaptation from literature shows that narration is the root of the similarity between film and literature. The basic categories of narrative text include narrative mode, narrative angle and narrative discourse. Therefore, from the analysis of the relationship between narrative mode, narrative angle and narrative discourse skill-rhetoric, we can clearly see the concrete manifestation of the similarity between film and literature narrative.

First, narration is the root of the similarity between film and literature. The fundamental difference between literature and film is the difference between words and visual images. On the surface, this difference seems to divide them into different worlds. The best way to bridge this seemingly infinite gap is to regard words and images as symbols, both of which are intended to convey some meaning. From this perspective, both words and images are part of a larger ideographic system-a part of a generalized "language". Literature and film both start from their own ideal starting lines, one from pictures and the other from words, and move towards the same goal, that is, to express meaning perfectly. It is the significance of writing a paper and the philosophical height of human understanding that literature and film have established an essential relationship. For example, Gadamer said, "The universality of hermeneutics is all-encompassing ... In the final analysis, Goethe's assertion that everything is a symbol is the most comprehensive summary of hermeneutics. Explain that everything indicates other things. " [1] The most fundamental connection between literature and film lies in that both of them have the artistic characteristics of creating images in time, that is, unfolding the narrative of images on a flowing timeline. Fiction is an art of time, which accumulates and combines word by word in the duration, forming a story image of a novel in people's minds. Film is a space art that appeals to vision, and it is also an art of time. The motion of the film determines its temporal characteristics, that is, it moves and develops picture by picture, and finally forms the screen image of the whole film. It is during the viewing time that images have developed, which makes the film have a narrative nature similar to literature in theory. The difference is that "the narrative of literature is based on time which is mainly regarded as a linear order, while movies seem to be able to complete the narrative through the concept of simultaneity". Indeed, narrative is the strongest medium connecting novels and movies, and literature and visual language tend to penetrate each other most. [2] Narrative film, like literary narratology, is an important branch of contemporary narratology, with a strong structuralist and semiotic background. In general narratology and semiotics, literature and film are both involved, and even in the early Russian formalism literary theory, film theory is also included. Since Christian? Metz introduced Saussure's semiotic principle into the study of the 30th volume of Journal of Taizhou Film Academy and published Film: Language or Speech 1964. After that, film narrative research has its own independent character, and at the same time, it is more closely related to literary narrative. Because, according to Metz's research, "the study of film and literature has established the same consistency in content analysis, and then the same consistency in expression level." In other words, in the past, movies and literature were only linked in the study of language expression content (object, theme, scope ...), but now they are linked in the form of language expression. "[3] (2) factual basis. Since its birth, movies have been a means of telling stories. Movies such as The Gate of the Factory, The Baby's Lunch and The Train Arrives at the Station are only one or two minutes. Although they are not very exciting, they are really telling stories. By 19 15, the famous American director Griffith had montaged the birth of a country for two hours. In just 20 years, movies have the ability to tell complex stories, comparable to novels. The film "borrowed many forms of ancient novels and literature." "Because it is the novel that passes the literary heritage to the film, it has gained inspiration and source." [4] 79-80, just as the first real masterpiece in the world film history was adapted from Thomas? As Dixon's novel "Relatives" implies, the century-old film history is, in the final analysis, the history of the relationship between film and literature (and drama). Here are two important facts. One is that "movies are actually more and more on the road of novels and have made great achievements". [5] A large part of the works in film history are adapted from literary works, and in the award-winning films, the proportion of literary adaptations is higher. Most famous novels in the world have been put on the screen, and many of them have been put on the screen more than once. No wonder Winston said, "Movies can really be on a par with world literary masterpieces." [4]48 Many famous writers are also famous film writers and even film directors. Second, "the form of narration and storytelling is the extremely significant influence of novels on the development of film art". [4]8 1 Movies have learned a lot from literature, especially novels, such as reflecting real life through characterization, better expressing the theme through material selection and tailoring, making the work an organic whole through the arrangement of person, clue and structure, making the work more perfect, refined and expressive through the use of various narrative techniques and rhetorical methods, and so on. It is precisely because of too many quotations and uses that we can't understand each other for a moment. In the early 1980s, there was a great discussion on the relationship between film and literature in China, and even the view that "film is literature completed on the screen" appeared.

Second, the concrete expression of the similarity between film and literature (1) narrative style. 1, expression Expression is one of the narrative ways. The main forms of expression in literature are narration, description, discussion and lyricism. These expressions also exist in movies, but the media used are different-the former is language and the latter is screen image, and other aspects, including purpose, meaning, function and effect, are very similar. For example, "narration", common narratives include direct narration, flashback, classification, insertion, supplementary narration and so on. And it's similar in movies. Here is an example of flashback and classification. Flashback refers to bringing the end of an event or the most prominent segment to the beginning of an article or movie, and then returning the narrative of the article or movie to "chronological order". This technique can often highlight the center, arouse suspense, render the atmosphere, form waves, produce fascinating effects and avoid straightforward description of the structure. For example, in Lawrence of Arabia, at the beginning of the film, the protagonist Lawrence rides a motorcycle on a rugged country road. Suddenly, two cyclists flashed in front of him. He couldn't escape and flew to the bushes by the side of the road. After the funeral, Lawrence's life was narrated. The flashback technique here highlights the hero's adventurous and humanitarian personality, and also has the function of attracting the audience. Separate narration refers to parallel narration of two or more things, which can make complicated things clear and orderly. In Jurassic Park, Nedley destroyed the control system of the park and stole the dinosaur embryo to escape, but the dinosaur ate him. Dr Glenn, Rex and Tim are avoiding the dinosaurs, while Dr Harmont, Dr muldoon and Dr Sartre are trying to repair the system in the control center. These three lines are described separately to describe the complex relationship of these events clearly. Another example is discussion and lyricism. There are two main kinds of comments in literary works: the author's comments and the characters' comments. Accordingly, there are mainly these two kinds in movies. If it is the discussion of the characters in the play, it can be said directly by the characters. If it is the author's comment, it can be made with the help of voice-over or pictures. For example, in the Russian film Burning in the Sun, the portrait of Stalin painted on a huge canvas wrinkled like water ripples under the breeze, which is actually the film director's evaluation of Stalin. There are two kinds of lyricism in literature: direct lyricism and indirect lyricism, and movies also correspond to this. Direct lyricism in movies is often expressed directly through the expressions and actions of the characters in the play, while indirect lyricism is expressed through empty shots, music, songs and so on. 2. Structural model. There are many similarities in narrative structure between film texts and literary texts: beginning, end, turning point, coincidence and so on. For example, Care, for example, in the first half of Local Voice, through the mouth of the characters, repeatedly mentioned and showed Tao Chun's abdominal pain, laying the groundwork for later discovering that Tao Chun had cancer. Therefore, the next plot development is well-founded and logical. The Blue Bridge of Soul begins with the auspicious symbol of the protagonist standing on the Waterloo Bridge and ends with memories, with the present time and space at both ends and the contents of memories in the middle, which echo from beginning to end and are seamless. The content echoes before and after. For example, in the movie "Dead Poets Society", Mr. Keating stood on the table in class, inspiring students to look at things and think from different angles, so that students could stand on the table in turn to experience their feelings. Later, when the school put the responsibility for the accident on Keating and tried to drive him out of school, the students stood on the table to express their support for Keating regardless of the dean's cry. Another example is "ellipsis", which summarizes real life in literary creation, omits redundant time processes when conceiving plots, and omits worthless parts when portraying characters. This is the ellipsis. It is an indispensable means of literary creation and also an artistic technique of movies. Marda said, "Movies are the art of ellipsis". [6] In the movie Tess, Tess killed Alec: Tess fell on the table and cried sadly. She looked at Alec's knife in the beef, and her eyes were full of anger. The next scene is Tess rushing down the stairs and rushing out. Mrs. Bruce, the apartment manager, is sitting downstairs embroidering. She inadvertently saw the ever-expanding light oozing from the ceiling. She stood on the table curiously and reached for it. She immediately covered her mouth with her hand in horror. The plot is very subtle because it is omitted, and the murder scene is not displayed, which plays a role in maintaining Tess's beautiful image in the eyes of the audience. (2) Narrative angle. Narrative angle is the angle of observing and telling stories in this paper. [7] The narrator's identity does believe that film narration provides a general narrative perspective, and different narrative perspectives establish the distance, scope and involvement between the narrative subject and the narrated object, thus expressing the author's narrative judgment. Mainly in two aspects, one is "who is the narrator" and the other is "what is the character's point of view". "Who is the narrator" is what we usually call a person. The most common person in this article is the third person and the first person. For example, in the Three Colors of Blue, White and Red by Khiesz Lovsky, the identity of the narrator is "the audience in this article", that is, the third person is "the other"-the narrator follows what is told, so the right to judge the story is returned to the audience. The film Old Things in the South of the City retains the novel's first-person narrative style, and the whole film is expressed from Xiaoying's perspective, so it is easy for the audience to identify with the protagonist's feelings. The first person in literature can be directly expressed by words like "I" and "we"; The first-person narration in films usually adopts voiceover. If "person" is an intuitive expression of narrative angle, then "character viewpoint" is an implicit way of narrative angle. The viewpoints of characters in literature can be directly described by the narrator, but movies can't. It needs to be expressed through the lens. Sometimes a single shot can't convey the viewpoint relationship, and it needs the cooperation of the previous shot or the latter shot. For example, in Blue, Sabrina meets Julie. The first shot is a close-up of Sabrina facing the camera, and the next shot is a close-up of two people from Sabrina's back, from which it can be confirmed that the viewpoint of the characters here is objective, not the viewpoint of the characters in the play. On the other hand, the expression of film is more complicated than literature, and it has at least two narrative levels: visual level and auditory level. The visual level includes image, composition, light and color, and the auditory level includes dialogue, sound and music. Because of this, French film narrator Francois? Yost divided the narrative angles of movies into visual angle, auditory angle and known angle. If it corresponds to this division, then the narrative angle of literature is only known. Therefore, narrative angle, including person and viewpoint, is one of the manifestations of the similarity between film and literature narrative, but the narrative angle of film is more complicated.

(3) Rhetoric. Narrative discourse exists in the form of words in literary texts and images in film texts. Similarly, rhetoric, as the main manifestation of narrative discourse skills, also has its corresponding means in movies and literature-movie rhetoric directly uses images as rhetorical means, and literary rhetoric uses language as rhetorical means. However, from the perspective of rhetorical effect, there are similarities between them, such as using metaphors and symbols to express the author's implied thoughts, highlighting differences with contrast, and expressing emphasis with repetition, and so on. There are many similarities in rhetoric skills between movies and literature, but it does not mean that all literary rhetoric can be found in movies. Rhetoric created with the help of the unique pronunciation, mood and semantic skills of vocabulary, such as homophonic, rhetorical question, rhetorical call, parody, truth, palindrome, duality and transferred epithet, can not establish a corresponding relationship with the rhetoric of movies. According to the characteristics of its own media, the film makes full use of rhetorical devices such as metaphor, symbol, repetition, exaggeration, metonymy, comparison, foil, display, personification and pun. Such as "metaphor". Film is a typical metaphorical art. Because natural objects are directly used as ideographic symbols, the relationship between "vehicle" and "ontology" is usually the same, rather than the similar relationship between metaphor and literary rhetoric. In movies, the code composed of physical objects and the encoded objects (physical objects themselves) cannot be strictly distinguished. In this paper, the ontology in the natural sense and the carrier in the cultural sense appear at the same time. In Zhuo Bie 5 1 Lin's The Great Dictator, in the scene of kicking balloon dance, the balloon was made into a globe to show the dictator's ambition to rule and play with the world. The balloon was accidentally kicked by him, which indicated that he would eventually fail. In the Italian film Cinema Paradise, the hero fell in love with the banker's daughter, but it was doomed to be a dream because of the disparity in family background. The director separated them with railings, buildings, wooden curtains and other obstacles, and met a banker when he went out for an outing. At this point, the position of the banker in the picture just separates the two young people. Although the dealer didn't say a word, the picture has given us the meaning that "they can't be together again" Another example is "symbol". Symbols and metaphors in movies are very close. Generally speaking, metaphor is a temporary and local new meaning caused by the juxtaposition or "collision" of pictures, while symbols constantly repeat things in pictures and are stably linked with their cultural meanings, such as the conch in Lord of the Flies. At the beginning of the film, the conch was fished out of the water and made into a trumpet tool. As conch is used repeatedly as a collection tool, it gains the symbolic meaning of "power and norm" in the whole film. In the movie "Hanging the Red Lantern High", the closed Chen Family Courtyard appeared repeatedly in different segments, thus gaining symbolic significance-the epitome of feudal society. Lantern, the theme prop in the film, has also become a symbol of happiness, love and glory in feudal courtyards. Lights on represent "happiness", while lights off symbolize all misfortunes.