story order, which necessarily flows chronologi-
cally (as does life), plot order can be manipulated
so that events are presented in nonchronological
sequences that emphasize importance or meaning
or that establish desired expectations in audi-
ences. Many of the movies that puzzle but delight
audiences—Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting (1996;
screenwriter: John Hodge), Christopher Nolan’s
Memento (2000; screenwriters: Christopher and
Jonathan Nolan), or Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sun-
shine of the Spotless Mind(2004; screenwriters: Char-
lie Kaufman, Gondry, and Pierre Bismuth)—are
built on risky moves by the filmmakers to scramble
plot order or play with it in such a way that discern-
ing the underlying story can be one of the audience’s
chief sources of interest and enjoyment. If any of
these movies’ plots had presented the story infor-
mation in strict chronological order, viewers might
have found these films much less challenging.
Like many other aspects of filmmaking, conven-
tions of plot order have been established and chal-
lenged over the course of film history. For example,
Orson Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz, the
co-screenwriters of Citizen Kane(1941), adopted an
approach to plot order so radical for its time that
it actually bewildered many viewers with its
unconventional narrative style and structure. The
movie’s plot consists of nine sequences, five of which
are flashbacks. The second of these sequences, the
“News on the March” newsreel, grounds us by pre-
senting Kane’s (Welles) life in a reasonably chrono-
logical line; but Mr. Thompson (William Alland), the
newsreel reporter, does not conduct his search for
the meaning of “Rosebud” chronologically. His inves-
tigation is a kind of detective story, and Welles and
Mankiewicz incorporate ellipses (gaps and jumps)
into the narrative to make the film’s form another
kind of detective story. That is, just as Thompson
tries to assemble clues about Kane’s life into a solu-
tion of that life’s mystery, so we must, even as we
watch, fill in plot details and give it order. Citizen
Kanepresented techniques, ideas, and demands on
an audience that are now a standard part of film
vocabulary, yet at the time audiences were unpre-
pared for the challenge of taking in and working with
so many audio and visual facts so quickly.
However challenging it was for its time, the plot
structure of Citizen Kanehas been so influential
that it is now considered conventional. Among the
many movies that it influenced is Quentin Taran-
tino’s Pulp Fiction(1994; screenwriters: Tarantino
and Roger Avary). The plot of Pulp Fiction, which is
full of surprises, is constructed in a nonlinear way
and fragments the passing of time. We might have
to see the movie several times before being able to
say, for instance, at what point—in the plot and in
the story—Vincent Vega (John Travolta) dies.146 CHAPTER 4 ELEMENTS OF NARRATIVE
12Adaptation of literary sources[1] David Lean’s Great
Expectations(1946; screenwriters: Anthony Havelock-Allan,
Lean, Cecil McGivern, Ronald Neame, and Kay Walsh) takes
place, as Dickens’s novel does, in nineteenth-century England.
The young protagonist (John Mills, left), a student in London
named Pip (as in the novel), confronts his previously
anonymous benefactor, Magwitch (Finlay Currie). [2] Fifty-
two years later, Alfonso Cuarón’s version of the same story
(Great Expectations, 1998; screenwriter: Mitch Glazer) is set
in contemporary America. Finn (Ethan Hawke, right), a
painter in New York City, confronts his previously anonymous
benefactor, Arthur Lustig (Robert De Niro). An analysis of the
differences between these two adaptations of the same novel
can lead you to a deeper appreciation of the power of
filmmakers’ decisions regarding plot specifically and film
form more generally.