The name is absent

Appendix 3.2: Sample films - synopses and character lists

SUMMER HOLIDAY UK 63

TOM JONES dir Tony Richardson UK 1963

Fielding's novel is converted in this film into an engaging
fairy story complete with a handsome young hero, a beautiful
young heroine, several thoroughly unpleasant villains and
various other fairly crudely drawn characters. The plot is
both introduced and commented upon as it unfolds by a narrator
who, though extra diegetic in the sense that he is not a
character in the story, is yet intra diegetic because he
invites complicity from the audience with the (supposedly)
eighteenth century values which the film presents. His
discourse is at once informative and ironic. The story is set
in eighteenth century England, in the pastoral west country
and in pre-industrial London. Not only are many of the major
characters essentially stereotypes familiar from fairy
stories, so too are the settings in which they act. Events,
characters and time itself are all represented schematically.
The countryside is always sunny, the roses always blooming
profusely; London streets are crowded, London salons elegant.
The narrative is studded with set pieces having more or less
tenuous links with the strict requirements of narrative flow.
The hunt scene, for example, eventually results in the
heroine's horse bolting: she can then be rescued by the hero
who breaks his arm in the process thus presenting a legitimate

277

<<   <   274   275   276   277   278   279   280   >   >>