The Four Elements

In my experience, movies and books that I have seen and read, there is always a basic story-telling structure. The Classical Narrative Structure- It is one of the most popular and common way of story-telling in nowadays. As Garand mentioned in his article, a classical narrative structure has four important parts: the Exposition, the Conflict, the Climax and the Resolution, and these four elements are clearly showed in the movie that I have seen lately.

In the movie Citizen Kane, the setting is located in America, and the period of time is approximately around 1860 to 1950. In the first scene of the movie, a hand and a glass ball appears. Then, a scary-looking castle and a lying dead man on the bed come up, and soon, the word- Rosebud appears and goes away. This specific way to start a story is called the fore-shadowing. It means the author of the story gives the audience a hint to know about the end of the story in the beginning of the story. Next, the movie takes the audience back to Charles Foster Kane’s childhood. During the time when Charles is playing in the snow with his precious sled, his mother Mary Kane and his father Jim Kane are having a meeting with a banker named Walter Thatcher in the house. Surprisingly, Mary is in charge of everything in the house instead of Jim. Audience could tell Mary and her husband is not in a good condition, and she desperately wants Jim to stay away from Charles. Then, she makes the decision to sale her son to Thatcher. When Mary tells Charles to go with Thatcher, Charles gets very emotional and angry, he tries to convince her mother from sending him away with his violent behavior, unluckily he was sent away with Thatcher and he never seen his parents again. This is one of my favorite scenes, and I think it is also a very important scene that shows how Charles is affected deeply after this horrible experience.

The story keeps building up through interviews with people that know about Charles by a reporter called Jerry Thompson. From the interviews, it shows Charles has conflicts with these people before. In the movie, there are many conflicts such as arguments between Charles and Thatcher, Charles and his first wife, and Charles and his friend Jedediah Leland. Among all these conflicts, the main conflict is the big fight between his first wife, his mistress Susan Alexander and Gettys.  Charles is trying to control the press coverage of his career in politics; on the other hand, he is trying to end his affair with Susan. This conflict guides to the climax of the movie, which is the most exciting part in the movie. Charles decides to choose to stay with Susan (his second wife), and he sends his wife and Gettys away. This scene is very intense because Charles shows his frustration aggressively when he has to make the decision in that situation. After this scene, the rhythm of the entire movie shows down, the resolution of the movie approaches, and Charles gets marry with Susan and loses in the election.

A story is like a cake. People add or take away the ingredients to make a cake that they think it would taste good. The base of a cake is important because it holds the entire body while the cake is developing, just like the four basic elements in the Classical Narrative structure. I like this movie and I prefer watching a movie that shows (acts) how the story goes instead of tells (speaks) the audience what is actually happening.