This chapter examines narrative, or story, form in film. Most common in fictional films, narrative's components are causality, time, and space. Narratives have a plot that is affected by cause-and-effect relationships and contain exposition, narration, and a conclusion. The number of possible narratives is limitless.

After reading the chapter, you should be able to understand:

1. A narrative film, which makes use of causality, time, and space, may also be governed by other formal principles, such as parallelism. We are exposed to stories every day. Films often rely on our preconceptions of narrative form in order to tell their stories.
   
   
2. Audiences make sense of a narrative by identifying its events and linking them by cause and effect, time, and space. Diegesis encompasses the world of the film and the events within it, while nondiegetic elements are those things of which the world of the film is not aware, such as the soundtrack and the credits. Plot consists of only the story events that are presented, while story implies other diegetic events that we never see.
   
   
3. Narration is the plot's way of distributing story information in order to achieve specific effects. Many factors enter into narration, but the most important ones for our purposes involve the range and depth of story information that the plot presents. Narrative relies heavily on cause and effect. In films, characters are generally the agents of action (creating the cause), which then solicits results (effects). The more important a character is the more complex traits they have, which affects what causes they will set into motion. A common device is to withhold effects, which heightens tension and ambiguity in films.
   
   
4. Many contemporary films manipulate classical narrative format to create a new type of film that utilizes causality, time, and space but plays games with it. Films such as PulpFiction and GroundhogDay use narrative, but manipulate the element of time. There are many different patterns of development that can be used in narratives, each having its own set of expectations.
   
   
5. Fictional cinema has tended to dominate by a single mode of narrative form called classic Hollywood cinema. This conception of narration depends on the assumption that the action will spring primarily from characters and from cause-and-effect relationships. Unrestricted (omniscient) narration is when the viewer knows more than the characters. Restricted narration is when the viewer's understanding is limited to what characters know. Films can have either style of narration and often have a combination of the two.
   
   
6. CitizenKane follows the classic Hollywood cinema and has been praised for its innovative use of narrative. Ultimately, narration can be defined as the revelation of story information by the plot to the viewer. Whether from the point of view of a character, a nameless voice, or other device, narration is the giving and withholding of information to tell the film's story.