The Sneeze

The film The Snezze showed that from early on, film could make something interesting even if it seems mundane at the time. Also the fact that the sneeze is one of the first films shows that film was being used that way in the beginning, before their was a a movement to make everything on film seem extremely interesting. It also is an amusing example of the power of documentation in film, or its ability to keep a record. It may have seemed experimental to them but to us many years later is on interesting document from a time we never would have been able to see motion from otherwise.

Narrative Structure

If by definition a narrative is a logical series of incidents that take us from point A to concluding point B, then these films show that every segment of a narrative does not need to focus on the story or getting to the next point, they can be about whatever so long as it actually does lead to the next point. Nothing in these films needs to be relevant to the overall story except as a building block to the next step. Or these films even make the story be about gags and about stunts because according to Frampton’s formula that is what we see the most, and yet the segments still lead to one another, no matter how loosely, which still classifies them as narratives. Duck soup and the way things go offers an intervention into narrative because it shows that every part of a story can be vastly independent, but as long as the events lead to one another and then to a conclusion, they are still supporting a narrative structure. The way things go especially breaks down the essentials of narrative because it shows that a narrative does not have to have words or even living objects, just objects which are given a type of controlled life (through physics and chemistry) and a series of events as a result of one another.