reading_bordwellthompson

Last summer I read the suspenseful noir thriller "The Night has a Thousand Eyes" (1945) by Cornell Woolrich, who also published under William Irish and George Hopley. He was such as masterful storyteller, his work was chosen by Truffaut and Hitchcock for film (Rear Window being the most famous), television and radio. (The adaptation has the same title but little connection to the novel - so I never bothered to rent it). The story opens with a policeman finding the contents of a woman's purse along a bridge, then eventually the woman planning to jump. The entire story, centered around death and fate, contains most of the elements described by Bordwell and Thompson's Chapter 3 / Narrative as a Formal System. I was aware of how Woolrich's (and film examples mentioned) use of temporal order and objectivity heightened suspense. I was unaware how space can dictate plot pattern or how the range and depth of knowledge manipulate our interpretation of events.