should remain the same, although variations on
these elements are frequently used as long as they
preserve the integrity of the original image. An
example of the rhythmic use of identical images
occurs in Eisenstein’s repetition of a set of images
(steps, soldiers, mother holding baby, mother with
baby in carriage, woman shot in stomach, woman
with broken glasses, etc.) in the “Odessa Steps”
sequence of Battleship Potemkin. Other movies rely
on our familiarity with the original image to make
variations in it that we will recognize. In Howard
Hawks’s Red River(1948; screenwriters: Borden
Chase and Charles Schnee), the familiar image is
that of “Groot” Nadine (Walter Brennan) in the dri-
ver’s seat of a stagecoach, which is repeated many
times in order to emphasize his importance to the
journey, as well as to connect him to the actions of
other characters.
Some familiar images are symbols, particularly
those where a material object represents some-
thing abstract. Just for starters, think of the Grail
cross in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the gold
in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Leonardo’s
paintings in The Da Vinci Code, the black bird in The
Maltese Falcon, or the extraordinary cars that
James Bond drives in the many movies devoted to
his exploits. In Vo l v e r (2006), director Pedro
Almodóvar uses frequent shots of wind turbines in
the Spanish landscape as a symbol to help us
understand the meaning of the title, a Spanish
word that means “turn,” “return,” or “revolution,”
as in a circle turning. On the literal level, the story
itself turns on the theme of the “sins of the
fathers”—the cycle of genetic or behavioral influ-
ences that pass from one generation to the next
(here, it’s the sins of the mothers).
Setting
The settingof a movie is the time and place in
which the story occurs. It not only establishes the
date, city, or country, but also provides the charac-
ters’ social, educational, and cultural backgrounds
and other identifying factors vital for understanding
them, such as what they wear, eat, and drink. Setting
sometimes provides an implicit explanation for
actions or traits that we might otherwise consider
eccentric, because cultural norms vary from place to
place and throughout time. Certain genres are asso-
ciated with specific settings—for example, Westerns
with wide-open country, film noirs with dark city
streets, and horror movies with creepy houses.
In addition to providing us with essential con-
textual information that helps us understand story
events and character motivation, setting adds tex-
ture to the movie’s diegesis, enriching our sense of
the overall world of the movie. Terrence Malick’s
Days of Heaven(1978; screenwriter: Malick) fea-
tures magnificent landscapes in the American
West of the 1920s. At first, the extraordinary visual
imagery seems to take precedence over the narra-
tive. However, the settings—the vast wheat fields
and the great solitary house against the sky—
directly complement the depth and power of the
narrative, which is concerned with the cycle of the
seasons, the work connected with each season, and
how fate, greed, sexual passion, and jealousy can
lead to tragedy. Here, setting also helps to reveal
the characters’ states of mind. They are from the
Chicago slums, and once they arrive in the pristine
wheat fields of the West, they are lonely and alien-
ated from themselves and their values. They can-
not adapt and thus end tragically. Here, setting is
destiny.
Other films tell stories closely related to their
international, national, or regional settings, such as
the specific neighborhoods of New York City that
form the backdrop of many Woody Allen films. But
think of the many different ways in which Manhat-
tan has been photographed, including the many
film noirs with their harsh black-and-white con-
trasts; the sour colors of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi
Driver(1976; screenwriter: Paul Schrader); or the
bright colors of Alfred Hitchcock’s North by North-
west(1959; screenwriter: Ernest Lehman).
Settings are not always drawn from real-life
locales. An opening title card tells us that F. W.
Murnau’s Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans(1927;
screenwriter: Carl Mayer) takes place in “no place
and every place”; Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space
Odyssey(1968; screenwriters: Kubrick and Arthur
C. Clarke) creates an entirely new space–time con-
tinuum; and Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory(2005; screenwriter: John August) createsELEMENTS OF NARRATIVE 155