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Movie Analysis : ' The Heart Of Hollywood Cinema ' By Thomas Elsaesser And Warren Buckland Essay

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“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” (Pullman, year). Storytelling has always been at the heart of Hollywood cinema. Revisiting the theories of Propp we can see the difference between a films story and its discourse, a story is what is being told where as the narrative is how it is told - “[a story is] An account of a string of events occurring in space and time… a narrative presents an order of events connected by the logic of cause and effect” (Pramaggiore & Wallis, 2008) Thus, it is through a films narrative that Hollywood tells its audience the story. In Thomas Elsaesser and Warren Buckland’s book Studying Contemporary American Film: A Guide to Movie Analysis narration is described as “How information reaches the audience and is mentally or emotionally processed…the function of filmic narration is to guide the eye and cue the mind…” (Elsaesser & Buckland, 2002) Hollywood storytelling is a tradition, since the 1920’s it has followed the same basic structure, however in contemporary Hollywood cinema many creative filmmakers, through the development of characters and deepening of plots, have found fresh ways to explore how a story is told (Bordwell, 2006). One of the most interesting developments in contemporary cinema of the past twenty years has been the surge of mainstream films that have come to move away from the traditions of Hollywood narrative and have introduced more complex and challenging narratives.

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