The Narrative Study Of Giuseppe Tornatore's Films

Giuseppe Tornatore,as a new Italian director with great ambition,has gained great prestige in international film industry.With an attempt to discover the cognitive patterns behind his works,this paper chooses narrative style as the starting point of the study and his works as the research subject to explore the reality reflected in these works,and to detect his contemplation on the war and insights into humanity in terms of narrative theme,narrative tactics and narrative language.Memories of the era,dilemmas in daily life,and discrepancies between modern culture and traditional culture are three themes presented in Giuseppe Tornatore's films to reflect his concern over social reality and the nostalgia for his hometown,and to reveal the dissimilation of humanity in postwar world and the alienation in social reality.Meanwhile,his adherence to the traditions of Italian films is presented in his choices of film themes,which implies his worries about the unfavorable situation of traditional civilization.With regard to narrative tactics,the combination of geographical space and inner space,the mixture of commercial elements,such as sex,violence,which are demonstrated from both male perspective and children viewpoint,and the use of open-ended narrative structure,cross-comparison narrative structure and imaginary recurrence narrative structure all bring the audience into the world of reality and memory,fantasy and actuality to ponder over life and humanity.Instead of being confined to the traditions of Italian films,his films absorb the ingredients of the narrative tactics in Fellini and Hollywood films to achieve the balance of artistic merit and commercial benefit.As for narrative language,Giuseppe Tornatore's films are featured by the usage of long take to shorten the distance between the audience and the reality,the close-up shot to present the inner world of characters,and the metaphorical script and Morricone's music to manifest the sarcasm to the reality,the anxiety over identity,and the deliberation on humanity midst the nostalgia.Inthe course of artistic improvement,not artistic reform,Giuseppe Tornatore clings to the local characteristics of Italian films,and constantly learns some commercial elements from Hollywood films.It perfectly exemplifies a new path consistent with the current needs of local films,and addresses the issue about how to strike a balance between commerce and art,genre and ethnicity.This unique narrative style of Tornatore films occupies a big share even in the worldwide prevalence of Hollywood films.