our sense that certain events produce likely actions
or outcomes.
We’ve learned to expect that most movies start
with a “normal” world, which is altered by a partic-
ular incident, that in turn compels the characters
to pursue a goal. And once the narrative begins,
those expectations provoke us to ask predictive
questions about the story’s outcome, questions we
will be asking ourselves repeatedly and waiting to
have answered over the course of the film.
The nineteenth-century Russian playwright
Anton Chekhov famously said that when a theater
audience sees a character produce a gun in the first
act, they expect that gun to be used before the play
ends. Movie audiences have similar expectations.
In the Coen brothers’ 2010 version of True Grit, the
villain Tom Chaney threatens young Mattie Ross:
“That pit is one hundred feet deep and I will throw
you in it.” From that moment on, our interpretation
of events is colored by the suggestion that Mattie is
destined for the abyss. Later, when her would-be
rescuer LeBoeuf says in passing, “Mind your foot-
ing, there is a pit here,” our expectations are rein-
forced. We can’t help but suppose that somebody is40 CHAPTER 2 PRINCIPLES OF FILM FORM
Formal expectations and The SearchersDirectors
can subvert our most basic expectations of film form to
dramatic effect. We have been conditioned to assume that
the subject (or narrative focus) of any shot will be the
largest or most noticeable element in the frame. At the
point in John Ford’s The Searchers(1956) illustrated here,
the movie has devoted most of its screen time to Ethan
Edward’s (John Wayne) thus-far fruitless five-year search for
his kidnapped niece Debbie (Natalie Wood). Ford lends
resonance to the climactic point at which the searchers and
their objective are finally (albeit briefly) reunited by
reversing our formal expectations for such an important
dramatic moment. As Ethan and his exasperated partner,
Martin (Jeffrey Hunter), argue, the all-important Debbie
appears not as the composition’s featured visual element,
but as a tiny figure in the background, distinguishable only
by her movement across the stark sky and sand. Even
though she is barely a speck on the screen, Debbie instantly
becomes the focus of our attention. This unexpected formal
approach allows the audience to spot the search’s goal long
before Ethan and Martin do, which creates suspense as we
await her long-delayed arrival, anticipate her volatile uncle’s
reaction, and ask the story’s central question one last time:
Will the searchers ever find Debbie?