The Grand Syntagma of Cinema
Introduction
Christian Metz was a French linguist who also loved cinema. He believed films contained “certain fixed structures and figures”, so he used his knowledge of semiotic theory to develop a model that described the “deep structure” of narrative cinema.
Metz argued a film “narrative is a sum of events”. Analysing how images and concepts were arranged in sequences, he identified eight different types of “autonomous segments” filmmakers used to construct meaning and engage the audience.
Let’s explore his “grande syntagmatique” with examples from popular films.
The Deep Structure of Cinema
Structuralists often begin by identifying the most basic units of meaning in narratives.
You are probably already familiar with Tzvetan Todorov’s framework which divides the narrative into three parts: equilibrium, disequilibrium and new equilibrium.
Claude Lévi-Strauss took a different approach and focused on the binary oppositions in myths, such as good versus evil or the hero who leaves their familiar home to go on a quest through an unfamiliar landscape. He used the term mytheme to describe the fundamental themes and motifs that appear across different myths and cultures.
By breaking down narratives into basic units of function and meaning, structuralists are trying to uncover their underlying structure and, perhaps, the universal patterns of human thought.
If you are going to explore the deep structure of cinema, individual shots might seem like an obvious place to start. You could analyse how a close-up of a character emphasises their thoughts and emotions whereas a long shot draws the audience’s attention the character’s connection to the setting. The composition of a shot will undoubtedly influence the audience’s interpretation of the event, but is there really a difference between a close-up or a long shot of a character in terms of the underlying structure of the narrative?
Christian Metz argued a shot’s value was derived from its relationship to other shots in the sequence. Consider this famous reaction shot from Jurassic Park (1993) and the protagonist’s first glimpse of the dinosaurs in the film:
Ellie, played by Laura Dern, rises from the passenger seat of the jeep, removes her sunglasses and stares open-mouthed at something offscreen. Spielberg then cuts from this close-up of the character to a long shot of the car and the dinosaur walking behind the trees.
Keeping the jeep and characters in the frame at the start of the second shot helps with continuity. The camera then pans and tilts to reveal the full magnificence of the brachiosaurus.
Importantly, Ellie’s body language and facial expressions only make sense when we cut to the image of the dinosaur. The shots react to each other. It is the arrangement of shots into a sequence that gives them meaning. It’s the Kuleshov effect.
In semiotics, this sort of relationship between the signs is known as a syntagm.
Metz believed films could be broken down into eight types of sequences according to how the images and ideas in each beat of the story were arranged. These syntagma are his fundamental units of cinema.
La Grand Syntagmatique
Christian Metz summarised his model in the following table:
We are going to start the sixth autonomous segment in Metz’s grand scheme because it should help anchor our understanding of the other syntagma.
Scene
The following segment comes from The Matrix (1999) and depicts the moment Morpheus offers the chosen one a choice between two pills: the red one will reveal the truth about the Matrix and the blue pill will make our hero forget everything and return him to his former life.
The Wachowski sisters signal the start of the event with Neo and Trinity walking through the doors and into the room of an abandoned building. Crossing a threshold often signifies the character’s movement from one phase in their life to another. The music also pivots from a crescendo to silence with the use of diegetic thunder to punctuate the movement from one narrative segment into the next.
Once the characters are seated, the directors make use of the conventional shot-reverse shot pattern. The characters do not need to appear in the frame for us to appreciate their immediate presence in the story. More importantly, alternating between long shots, close-ups and over-the-shoulder shots has no distinctive function in the narrative.
The characters move through another doorway, signalling the end of the segment.
The entire duologue takes place in a single room and the action is continuous. There are no diegetic breaks, and the duration of the shots coincides with the diegetic time.
The scene syntagma is defined by this strict unity of time, place, and action.
Metz said this autonomous segment is “the only kind of syntagma in the cinema that resembles a ‘scene’ in the theatre”. In fact, this segment from The Matrix could have been presented through one continuous shot and still achieve the same narrative intent.
The horror genre often depicts events in real time to create an uneasy atmosphere and build towards the inevitable jump scare. Have a look at the dancing boy scene from Insidious (2010):
Once again, the time, place and action are all continuous.
Autonomous Shots
The two subtypes of “plan autonome” are also defined by a unity of time, place, and action. However, the event is presented in a single shot with no obvious camera breaks. If the sequence from The Matrix was delivered in one long take rather than a conventional shot-reverse shot pattern, it would be an autonomous shot, or more specifically, the sequence shot.
The following segment from The Sixth Sense (1999) is a great example of the sequence shot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joa2XORuFak
The previous event in the narrative focuses on a session between the child psychologist and the young boy who is suffering from terrible anxiety and hallucinations. M. Night Shyamalan cuts to the restaurant where Crowe discusses his patient and then apologies to his wife for being emotionally and physically “distant” in recent months. She refuses to look at him, wishes him a “happy anniversary” and leaves. The segment ends with a fade to black.
Notice how the entire event is presented in a single shot. Instead of cutting from one camera angle to another, the director depicts the couple’s relationship in a single take with a strict unity of time, place, and action.
The Shining (1980) finishes with two fantastic inserts:
The first one is effective because Stanley Kubrick cuts abruptly from terror of the protagonist chasing his son through the snow-covered maze to this shocking close-up of him frozen to death the next day.
The camera in the second insert tightens into the black and white photograph in the hotel’s lobby. The picture features the protagonist prominently in the centre of the ballroom, suggesting he has always been a part of the Overlook Hotel’s dark history. Although the director uses dissolves, the event is treated as a single shot. It is an autonomous shot.
Metz acknowledged “the autonomous shot is by definition not a syntagma” because the filmmaker is not arranging shots into a sequence to construct meaning. However, he argued it was a “syntagmatic type” because it occurred in the “global syntagmatic structure of the film”. In other words, the autonomous segment is still a syntagma because it makes more sense when connected to the other events in the narrative.
Ordinary Sequence
The scene syntagma and autonomous shots follow a unity of action. The “séquence ordinaire” also describes a series of shots that are arranged in a linear and coherent order, but the presentation of time in this syntagma is discontinuous.
In this segment from Hidden Figures (2016), the protagonist desperately needs to take a break from work and is forced to use a bathroom in another building because of the segregation that existed in America in the 1960s:
Although the single action is presented in chronological order, the director skips moments because the shots of Katherine sprinting through the hallways, across the carpark and into the West Campus building are enough to demonstrate the ridiculous discrimination she endured while working for NASA and position the audience to sympathise with the protagonist.
Ordinary sequences condense time though “scattered” diegetic breaks because some moments will have “no direct bearing on the plot”. More shots of Katherine opening doors or scrambling along the paths would not add any further meanings or value to segment.
(The shot of Kevin Costner is a displaced diegetic insert which sets up a tense moment between the two characters later in the narrative.)
Episodic Sequence
An episodic sequence “strings together a number of very brief scenes” in chronological order. However, none of the events are developed in enough detail to be autonomous segments and they need to be taken in their “totality” for the message to make sense to the audience.
The introduction of Rey in The Force Awakens (2015) is a straightforward example of this syntagma:
The narrative is organised into distinct short scenes: Rey scavenging for parts in the old imperial star destroyer, travelling to the Nimba outpost on her junker speeder, scrubbing the metal clean, selling her haul for “one quarter portion”, and then eating alone in her makeshift home in the fallen AT-AT.
The director is establishing the protagonist’s equilibrium by alluding to various aspects of her routine. None of these events are treated with the thoroughness of an ordinary sequence or scene. Instead, these images combine to communicate her struggles in an efficient and satisfying way. It is effective storytelling.
Although the events cover several hours and shift to different locations, they are related to the audience in the matter of minutes. This “organised” condensing of diegetic time is typical of the episodic sequence.
Metz suggested the breakfast montage from Citizen Kane (1941) was as an extreme example of the episodic sequence because there is a substantial break between each scene.
Orson Welles wanted to depict the deterioration of the relationship between the protagonist and his first wife, from the close intimacy of newlyweds to the colder distance at the end of the segment. The audience needs to make the connections between the different beats for the intended message to make sense.
Metz said the parts of an episodic sequence are “usually separated from each other by optical devices”, such as dissolves and wipes. Welles uses pan shots to signify the temporal breaks in the breakfast montage. Contemporary directors are less reliant on these techniques but still make use of the episodic sequence to present their narratives.
Alternate Syntagma
The “syntagme alterné” refers to the crosscutting of two or more events which are happening at the same time and are connected in the narrative. The temporal relationship between the different motifs will be clear to the audience.
An obvious example would be the final battle segment in Star Wars (1977) because George Lucas interweaves images of the Rebel starfighters attacking the Death Star, the Alliance base preparing for the imminent attack, and the interior of the Death Star with the Imperial forces reacting to the Rebel forces. These sequences converge in a moment of triumph for the Rebellion.
Another possible example of the alternate syntagma is from Silence of the Lambs (1991) when the FBI believes they are closing in on Buffalo Bill’s house, but Clarice Starling discovers she is at the suspect’s location.
In The Devil Wears Prada (2006), the fast crosscutting between the editor-in-chief’s arrival and the Runway staff is very effective in establishing her tyrannical control of the magazine:
One of the most interesting uses of alternate syntagma is Inside Out (2015) and its sequel because the segments are constantly shifting between interior and exterior worlds. The following scene epitomises the central conceit of the film:
The autonomous segment alternates between several images. First, there is the family’s conversation at the dinner table where Riley’s mother encourages her daughter to join an ice-hockey team. The young girl is finding it difficult to adapt to her new life in San Francisco and reacts to the questions about school with “high levels of sass”.
The audience also gets to enjoy the actions and reactions of personified emotions when the director cuts to the inner workings of the three characters. By the end of the segment, Riley is sent to her room and the importance of Joy making it back to headquarters is reinforced to the audience.
The alternate syntagma is great way for filmmakers to build tension and draw interesting comparisons between the images.
Parallel Syntagma
The parallel syntagma also juxtaposes different motifs into a meaningful segment. However, this mode does not try to suggest the series of images are happening at the same time or they are connected to the chronology of the narrative.
Since there is nothing to indicate the events are simultaneous, the function of the parallel syntagma is “symbolic” rather than plot progression. This is the key difference between alternate and parallel syntagma.
Metz suggested some binary opposites that might form this syntagma: images of a “sinister urban landscape at night” alternating with shots of “a sunny pastoral view”; life and death; reaction and revolution; and the “alternation of shots of wealth and poverty”.
The opening sequence to Elysium (2013) sets the stage for the film’s dystopian narrative. The aerial shots of favelas and skyscrapers encode the grim reality of life on earth. The director cuts to a series of shots that depict the idyllic world on the space station. Our interpretation of the images is anchored by the captions.
We can classify this narrative event as a parallel syntagma because the “two threads have no commitment to time” and the balancing of the motifs emphasises the massive disparity between the rich and poor in the story.
Metz acknowledged parallel syntagma are rare in popular cinema, but it is an arrangement of shots filmmakers can use to establish interesting comparisons between ideas and develop the themes of their stories.
Bracket Syntagma
The bracket syntagma consists of “a series of very brief scenes” with no temporal or spatial relationships. The segment does not contribute directly to the narrative either. However, the shots contain a “common thread” with “facts that the filmmaker wants to describe in visual terms”. In other words, the images have a thematic or conceptual connection.
A film about an alien invasion might include a short montage of the city lying in ruins, including an aerial shot of smoke rising from the shattered buildings, an image of a car half-buried in rubble, and a long shot of lone figure covered in dust and blood staggering through the debris. Or a story about the financial markets might cut to a shot of unnamed traders in the stock exchange shouting across the pit followed by an image of numbers tracking across the board.
The bracket syntagma can help establish the “order of reality”.
For example, in Zero Dark Thirty (2012), the story shifts to Pakistan and the director, Kathryn Bigelow, presents a series of nine shots to give the audience a sense of life in the city. Here are two screenshots from the sequence:
There is no temporal or spatial relationship between the shots. They do not advance the narrative. But all the images have a common denominator – everyday life in Pakistan. They are “facts” that are representative of reality.
It is worth noting the opening segment in Elysium would have been a bracket syntagma if it only featured separate images of life on earth before cutting to the protagonist.
Descriptive Syntagma
The “syntagme descriptif” also offers a representation of the setting or atmosphere. However, the syntagma is more cohesive in terms of space and time compared to the bracket segment because the segment only focuses on one element.
What really makes the descriptive syntagma stand out from the other types of autonomous segments is the mode of address. Take a look at this sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) which describes Dr Heywood Floyd’s journey to Space Station Five above the moon:
Descriptive syntagma “suspend the course” of the narrative to focus on the world of the story. Kubrick deliberately distances the audience from Dr Floyd by using the seats to hide face, so we only see his arm floating in zero gravity. The medium shot of him sleeping suggests space travel is now routine, but it does not enable the viewer to engage with his thoughts and feelings.
This distancing effect is typical of the descriptive syntagma. Don’t expect any dialogue in this type of autonomous segment either because the filmmakers are relying on visual elements to build a picture of their world.
Descriptive syntagma will often use non-diegetic music to unify the shots in the segment. Kubrick uses The Blue Danube by Johann Strauss to contrast with the mechanical movements of the spacecraft and create a moment of beauty in the vastness of space.
Final Thoughts
In the grand syntagm of cinema, an autonomous segment is an event that is independent of what comes before and after the moment in the narrative. The eight types of segments might seem abstract, especially if you are not familiar with the structuralist approach to understanding systems, but his framework offers filmmakers a different way of looking at how films create meaning.
Narrative segments feature action and enigma codes to deliver the chronology of the narrative. The action is continuous in the scene syntagma whereas the action is broken up in an ordinary sequence. The action is still linear and chronological in an episodic sequence, but there is no longer a unity of time. Alternative syntagma crosscut two or more events which are happening at the same time and are connected in the narrative.
According to Metz, chronological segments are “by far the most numerous in the ordinary narrative film”.
Achronological segments develop ideas with no commitment to the forward progression of the plot.
The arrangement of shots might explore separate motifs. The parallel syntagma consists of separate ideas that do not have a narrative connection whereas alternate syntagma do have a narrative connection.
Parallel, bracket and descriptive syntagma have no direct involvement with the narrative but they can help develop the themes of the story.
They all contain a unity of purpose. It’s up to the filmmakers to decide which mode is best to encode meanings and entertain the audience.
