Chronology

Chronology is the relation between the order in which things happen in a story and the order, duration and frequency in which the film shows them: linear telling, flashback, flash-forward, ellipsis, compression, repetition. The mistake is to treat the linear version as neutral and everything else as a trick. Every film omits, and most omit almost everything, so the choice of what to skip is the first chronological decision and usually the most revealing. Reordering is rarer and more visible, and the books disagree about what it is for.

Three uses for a reordered story

Bordwell and Thompson describe chronology as work the viewer does. "As we watch a film, we construct story time on the basis of what the plot presents." The default is omission: we assume characters sleep, eat and travel, "so the periods containing such irrelevant action can be skipped over". A flashback is "the most common violation of 1-2-3 order", and reconstructing the sequence "might be seen as a sort of game". A reordering is information management. The film decides when you learn things.

Hayward reads the same device as psychology. Flashbacks "are a cinematic representation of memory and of history and, ultimately of subjective truth"; because they usually resolve an enigma, "they are by nature investigative or confessional". The flashback is not a delivery schedule but a mind, and the past it shows is somebody's version.

Giannetti reads it as theme. Flashbacks and flash-forwards let filmmakers "develop ideas thematically rather than chronologically", and the cinema's freedom with time amounts to "cracking the tyranny of mechanically measured time". Where Bordwell sees a puzzle and Hayward a confession, Giannetti sees a liberty.

Of any reordering, ask which of the three it is. A flashback that withholds a fact is Bordwell's. One that shows how a character remembers is Hayward's. One that sets two times against each other is Giannetti's, and the site's largest example is that kind.

On the bench

Alice — the prologue holds the biggest ellipsis on this site: a soundstage Monterey, a girl announcing she can sing, and a single cut to Socorro, New Mexico, 27 years later. Nothing between is shown, and nothing needs to be, because You'll Never Know, then Mott the Hoople carries the decades in the sound. That is Bordwell's skipped-over time used for Giannetti's purpose: two eras set side by side so the gap says what a montage of years could not.

Psycho (1960) compresses rather than leaps. The search montage folds an evening into 41 seconds (Playback ↗), story time exceeding screen time with nothing hidden. Its more radical act is structural: Killing the protagonist at minute 47 does not reorder events, but it breaks the expectation about when a story is allowed to change hands.

Taxi Driver (1976) keeps strict linear order and makes the calendar the subject. The hub note describes the structure as a diary, Travis's voice-over dating its own entries, so the film's chronology is the record of a man losing his.

What to look for

• What is skipped, and what does the skip protect? Name the longest gap and say what showing it would lose.
• When the film leaps, who bridges the gap: a caption, a cut, a song, or the audience alone?
• If there is a flashback, whose is it? Does the film treat it as fact, as memory, or as argument?

In the books

As we watch a film, we construct story time on the basis of what the plot presents.

— Film Art, fa 80

Flashbacks are a cinematic representation of memory and of history and, ultimately of subjective truth.

— Hayward, ckc 177

to develop ideas thematically rather than chronologically, freeing them to explore the subjective nature of time and the human mind

— Giannetti, um 158