Storytelling and Style: The Classical Short

Abstract

Since David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson introduced the immensely useful, painstakingly researched volume, The Classical Hollywood Cinema, their paradigm of the classical narrative mode has enabled the systematic study of feature-length films. It also has served as a useful point of comparison for films that do not fit the classical mode, such as the live-action fiction short. Briefly, the classical Hollywood film narrative turns on a causal chain motivated by a protagonist’s desire to achieve a particular goal, whose efforts are countered by an antagonist, which produces conflict and leads to a closed ending in which the fate of the characters, their goals, and the outcome of their conflicts are clear.1 The majority of short fiction films do not to adhere to the classical Hollywood narrative model with its elaborately developed characters, plots, and subplots. In addition, unlike feature-length films, shorts rarely portray heroes or extraordinary triumphs; there are fewer love stories; and endings tend to be more intense, as noted in chapter three (herein). This chapter organizes the classical short according to several variations including, in the most general terms, storytelling strategies that range from simple to more complex, and from short to long, with running times that range from a few minutes up to an hour.