the culture of violence in towns such as Lordsburg.
In the 1930s, when Stagecoachwas made, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt singled out the banks as a
major cause of the Great Depression and increased
the government’s regulatory power of them, so we
can see that Gatewood (who is not in the original
story) gives the movie contemporary political rele-
vance. In the year after he made Stagecoach, in his
adaptation of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath
(1940)—which tells the story of a dispossessed fam-
ily journeying through dangerous country to reach
a place of safety—the director again put himself
fundamentally against the rich and powerful and
on the side of the poor and weak.Analyzing Elements of Narrative
Most of us can hardly avoid analyzing the narrative
of a movie after we have seen it. We ask, “Why did
the director choose thatstory?” “Why did he
choose to tell it in thatway?” “What does it mean?”
At the simplest level, our analysis happens uncon-
sciously while we’re watching a movie, as we fill ingaps in events, infer character traits from the clues
or cues we receive, and interpret the significance of
objects. But when we’re actively looking ata movie,
we should analyze their narratives in more precise,
conscious detail. The following checklist provides a
few ideas about how you might do this.✔Keep track of the major and minor events in
the movie’s plot. Are any of the minor events
unnecessary to the movie overall? If these
events were removed from the movie, would
it be a better movie? Why?
✔Are there scenes that create a noticeable
summary relationship between story duration
and screen duration? Do these scenes comple-
ment or detract from the overall narrative?
Are you given all the information about the
underlying story that you need in these
scenes to understand what has happened in
the elapsed story time?
✔Do any scenes use real time or a stretch rela-
tionship between story duration and screen
duration? If so, what is the significance of these
scenes to the overall narrative?
✔Is any major plot event presented on-screen
more than once? If so, why do you think the
filmmaker has chosen to use repetition of the
event?
✔How do the setting and the scope of the narra-
tive complement the other elements?✔Who is the movie’s protagonist? What factors
and needs motivate or complicate their actions?
Can you characterize each of them according to
their depth (round characters versus flat) and
motivation?
✔What is the narration of the movie? Does it use
a narrator of any kind?
✔What are the differences among omniscient,
restricted, and unrestricted narration?
✔Carefully reconstruct the narrative structure
of the movie. What is the inciting incident?
What goal does the protagonist pursue? How
does the protagonist’s need influence that
pursuit? What obstacles (including the crisis)
does the protagonist encounter, and how does
she engage them?
✔Keep track of nondiegetic elements that seem
essential to the movie’s plot (voice-overs, for
example). Do they seem natural and appropriate
to the film, or do they appear to be “tacked on”
to make up for a shortcoming in the overall pres-
entation of the movie’s narrative?
✔Are the plot events presented in chronological
order? What is the significance of the order of
plot events in the movie?Screening Checklist: Elements of Narrative
ANALYZING ELEMENTS OF NARRATIVE 167