Another important device for the construction of film
narratives is the use of ‘flash-backs’, in the sense that the term is
understood nowadays. That is, having a scene in the present followed by a scene
in the past, and eventually returning to scenes in the present of the story. In
the earliest days of filmmaking, this was only done as a representation of a
character dreaming about the past, as in the 1901 Pathe film Histoire d’un crime. The first film in
which a character remembers the past while awake was Vitagraph’s Napoleon- Man of Destiny (1909). In this
film, Napoleon is in his palace after the battle of Waterloo remembering
notable scenes of his past life. A superimposed title appears identifying the
event he is thinking about, and then the film cuts straight to this scene, and
afterwards back to Napoleon thinking about it. The idea slowly spread over the
next few years, and in these, usually the framing action shows a character
narrating the story of the past events to people listening to them. This happens
in Luigi Maggi’s Nozze d’oro of 1911,
and amongst other films in the Edison Company’s The Passer-by of 1912. This film introduces what was to become a
standard way of getting into a flash-back. As the person telling the story of
their past starts talking, the camera tracks into his face, then there is a
dissolve to his younger face and the camera tracks back to reveal the scene in
the past. There are many examples of single shot memory flashbacks by 1913,
while a memory shown in an extended series of shots is much rarer. There is
even an example of a flash-back inside a flashback in Just a Shabby Doll made by the Thanhouser Company in 1913.
They are fun to watch as well!!
Remember this scene from Ratatouille??
When we see the flashback scene from Ego’s childhood after he takes his first bite of the ratatouille, the house and kitchen is the same countryside house that rats came from at the beginning of the movie (where Remy was studying the cookbooks and watching cooking shows with the old lady). Remy actually made Ego his own mother’s Recipe.
References:
Kenny (2004). Teaching Tv Production in a
Digital World: Integrating Media Literacy.
