Narration and Monstration Within ‘Rescued by Rover’ Essay Example

audience knows more than one or several of the characters onscreen, a condition which pushes audience attention into the future because it creates anticipation about what is going to happen when the truth comes out. That anticipation is known as ironic tension” - (Paul Gulino, Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach. Continuum, 2004). Lewin Fitzhamon’s creation of ironic tension through repeated narration of identical shots thrusts the narrative forward, giving the audience an insight into the future, an advanced narrative technique of the time, debatably an early popularisation of the ‘dramatic irony’ technique.

The opening sequence of the film feature two shots linked by a jump cut. The first shot, a slow pan shot, shows what appears to be a homeless woman asking an upper-class lady for spare change. The lady very literally turns her nose up at the tramp, causing the tramp to angrily shake her fist at the lady. This shot is seamlessly edited into the next, as the upper-class lady is distracted by conversation with a man, and ultimately has her child stolen from her pram by the homeless woman.

The narration of these two shots conveys a sense of reason within the narrative of the film. The way the shots connect from the tramp’s angry fist-waving to her sneaking up menacingly to the pram tells the viewer not only that she is planning on doing something evil, but why she is. This sense of reason is very important in the plotline of the film, as it makes the viewer take sides with the family; it makes the haggard woman an antagonist, an integral staple of cinema. Monstration is beginning to take

hold as a way to describe and identify this mode of communicating a story, which consists of showing characters that act out rather than tell the vicissitudes to which they are subjected. Monstration could thus be used to replace the term ‘representation’” – (Andre Gaudreault, Timothy Barnard, From Plato to Lumiere: Narration and Monstration in Literature and Cinema, University of Toronto Press, March 2009). Fitzhamon uses monstration within the film to communicate the story without the need for diegetic sound or textual inter-titles. The hyperbolic acting of the cast also helps with this).

For example, the scene where the nursemaid discovers that the baby is missing is not directly linked with another shot, but the performance of May Clark within the shot very clearly portrays the emotion of the scene. The long two-shot shows May Clark fall into a hopeless bundle as her Mother comforts her. Whilst this happens, Rover the dog jumps from his chair and exits the room in haste. This creates a connection for the viewer, between the tragic loss of the baby, and the intent of Rover, further pushing the narrative of the film forward.

It could be argued that Fitzhamon creates a subtext within the film, through monstration. Later on in the picture, the tramp takes the baby back to her home/hideout. Here, within one shot, she takes a swig from a glass bottle (which is already open, as she cleans the top with her sleeve), gently sets the baby down, and then falls asleep by the baby’s side, in an almost motherly fashion. Stuart Hall’s ‘Reception Theory’ states that every film has a preferred reading, negotiated reading

and oppositional reading. A possible oppositional or negotiated reading of the film by the iewer could be that the tramp is merely a Mother without a child, rather than an evil thief. Towards the end of the same shot, Rover enters the home and finds the baby, is shooed away by woman and leaves. As soon as he finds the baby, it is clear to the viewer what will happen: Rover will return home to fetch help. The anticipation created by this scene furthers the narrative, although the results of Rover’s efforts are still left open to interpretation by the viewer. After this scene, Rover dashes back home along the same route he travelled to find the baby.

From here, the narration of the shots signifies to the audience exactly where he is going, and creates suspense as to how he will alert the parents of the baby. To conclude, the director uses both monstration and narration within the film very deliberately to keep the viewer in tune with the basic story of the film. But, that is not the only intention of the director. The narration and monstration of the film demonstrates the director’s knowledge of dramatic irony, suspense, and anticipation to keep the viewer completely interpellated within a film.