Flashback (narrative)
Encyclopedia
Flashback is an interjected scene
that takes the narrative back in time from the current point the story has reached. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story’s primary sequence of events or to fill in crucial backstory. A character origin flashback shows key events early in a character's development. In the opposite direction, a flashforward
(or prolepsis) reveals events that will occur in the future. The technique is used to create suspense in a story, or develop a character. In literature, internal analepsis is a flashback to an earlier point in the narrative; external analepsis is a flashback to before the narrative started.
In literature, Racconto and flashback mean almost the same thing. However, the Racconto does not take the narrative back in time so suddenly, and it is longer and more detailed than a flashback.
In movies and television, several camera techniques and special effects have evolved to alert the viewer that the action shown is from the past; for example, the edges of the picture may be deliberately blurred, photography may be jarring or choppy, or unusual coloration or sepia tone, or monochrome
when most of the story is in full color, may be used.
and Mahabharata
, where the main story is narrated through a frame story
set in a later story.
Another early use of this device in a murder mystery
was in "The Three Apples", an Arabian Nights tale. The story begins with the discovery of a young woman's dead body. After the murderer later reveals himself, he narrates his reasons for the murder as a flashback of events leading up to the discovery of her dead body at the beginning of the story. Flashbacks are also employed in several other Arabian Nights tales such as "Sinbad the Sailor
" and "The City of Brass".
Analepsis was used extensively by author
Ford Madox Ford
. Also by poet
, author, historian and mythologist Robert Graves
, as a source of inspiration.
The 1927 book The Bridge of San Luis Rey
by Thornton Wilder
is the progenitor of the modern disaster epic in literature and film-making, where a single disaster intertwines the victims, whose lives are then explored by means of flashbacks to events leading up to the disaster.
If flashbacks are extensive and in chronological order, one can say that these form the present of the story, while the rest of the story consists of flash forwards. If flashbacks are presented non-chronologically it can be ambiguous what is the present of the story: An example of this is Slaughterhouse-Five
where the narrative jumps back and forth in time, so there is no actual present time line.
The Harry Potter
series employs a magical device called a Pensieve, which changes the nature of flashbacks from a mere narrative device to an event directly experienced by the characters, which are thus able to provide commentary.
's stage musical Carousel
used a flashback device which somewhat takes the impact away from a very dramatic plot development later in the film. This was done because the plot of Carousel was then considered unusually strong for a film musical. In film version of Camelot
(1967
), according to Alan Jay Lerner
, a flashback was added not to soften the blow of a later plot development but because the stage show had been criticized for shifting too abruptly in tone from near-comedy to tragedy.
A good example of both analepsis and prolepsis is the first scene of La jetée
(1962). As we learn a few minutes later, what we are seeing in that scene is a flashback to the past, since the present of the film’s diegesis is a time directly following World War III
. However, as we learn at the very end of the film, that scene also doubles as a prolepsis, since the dying man the boy is seeing is, in fact, himself. In other words, he is proleptically seeing his own death. We thus have an analepsis and prolepsis
in the very same scene.
The creator of the flashback technique in cinema was D.W. Griffith. One of the earliest examples is a single shot in his film Intolerance
(1916
).
Flashbacks were rare until about 1939
when, in William Wyler
's Wuthering Heights
as in Emily Brontë
's original novel, the housekeeper Ellen narrates the main story to overnight visitor Mr. Lockwood, who has witnessed Heathcliff's frantic pursuit of what is apparently a ghost. More famously, also in 1939, Marcel Carne's movie Le jour se lève is told entirely through flashback: the story starts with the murder of a man in a hotel. While the murderer, played by Jean Gabin, is surrounded by the police, several flashbacks tell the story of why he killed the man at the beginning of the movie.
One of the most famous examples of non-chronological flashback is in the Orson Welles
's film Citizen Kane
(1941
). The protagonist, Charles Foster Kane, dies at the beginning, uttering the word Rosebud. The remainder of the film is framed by a reporter's interviewing Kane's friends and associates, in a futile effort to discover what the word meant to Kane. As the interviews proceed, pieces of Kane's life unfold in flashback, but not always chronologically.
Satyajit Ray
experimented with flashbacks in The Adversary
(1972
). One of the experimental techniques which he pioneered was photo-negative
flashbacks.
Occasionally, a story may contain a flashback within a flashback, as in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
: the main action of the film is told in flashback, with the scene of Liberty Valance’s murder occurring as a flashback within that flashback. Another example is the 1968 Japanese film
Lone Wolf Isazo, which contains flashbacks within flashbacks. An extremely convoluted story may contain flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks, as in Six Degrees of Separation
, Passage to Marseille
, and The Locket
. This technique is a hallmark of Kannada movie director Upendra
whose futuristic flick Super (2010
) is set in 2030 and contains multiple flashbacks ranging from 2010 to 2015 depicting a utopian
India
.
Though usually used to clarify plot or backstory, flashbacks can also act as an unreliable narrator
. Alfred Hitchcock
's Stage Fright
notoriously featured a flashback that did not tell the truth but dramatized a lie from a witness. The multiple and contradictory staged reconstructions of a crime in Errol Morris
's The Thin Blue Line
are presented as flashbacks based on divergent testimony. Akira Kurosawa
's Rashomon
does this, in the most celebrated fictional use of contested multiple testimonies.
Near the end of his life, film director Howard Hawks
boasted that he was proud that none of his films ever used a flashback.
The television series Psych
uses flashbacks in nearly every episode.
Scene (fiction)
In fiction, a scene is a unit of drama. A sequel is what follows; an aftermath. Together, scene and sequel provide the building blocks of plot for short stories, novels, and other forms of fiction.-Characteristics of a scene:...
that takes the narrative back in time from the current point the story has reached. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story’s primary sequence of events or to fill in crucial backstory. A character origin flashback shows key events early in a character's development. In the opposite direction, a flashforward
Flashforward
A flashforward is an interjected scene that takes the narrative forward in time from the current point of the story in literature, film, television and other media. Flashforwards are often used to represent events expected, projected, or imagined to occur in the future...
(or prolepsis) reveals events that will occur in the future. The technique is used to create suspense in a story, or develop a character. In literature, internal analepsis is a flashback to an earlier point in the narrative; external analepsis is a flashback to before the narrative started.
In literature, Racconto and flashback mean almost the same thing. However, the Racconto does not take the narrative back in time so suddenly, and it is longer and more detailed than a flashback.
In movies and television, several camera techniques and special effects have evolved to alert the viewer that the action shown is from the past; for example, the edges of the picture may be deliberately blurred, photography may be jarring or choppy, or unusual coloration or sepia tone, or monochrome
Monochrome
Monochrome describes paintings, drawings, design, or photographs in one color or shades of one color. A monochromatic object or image has colors in shades of limited colors or hues. Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale or black-and-white...
when most of the story is in full color, may be used.
Literature
An early example of analepsis is in the RamayanaRamayana
The Ramayana is an ancient Sanskrit epic. It is ascribed to the Hindu sage Valmiki and forms an important part of the Hindu canon , considered to be itihāsa. The Ramayana is one of the two great epics of India and Nepal, the other being the Mahabharata...
and Mahabharata
Mahabharata
The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India and Nepal, the other being the Ramayana. The epic is part of itihasa....
, where the main story is narrated through a frame story
Frame story
A frame story is a literary technique that sometimes serves as a companion piece to a story within a story, whereby an introductory or main narrative is presented, at least in part, for the purpose of setting the stage either for a more emphasized second narrative or for a set of shorter stories...
set in a later story.
Another early use of this device in a murder mystery
Crime fiction
Crime fiction is the literary genre that fictionalizes crimes, their detection, criminals and their motives. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as science fiction or historical fiction, but boundaries can be, and indeed are, blurred...
was in "The Three Apples", an Arabian Nights tale. The story begins with the discovery of a young woman's dead body. After the murderer later reveals himself, he narrates his reasons for the murder as a flashback of events leading up to the discovery of her dead body at the beginning of the story. Flashbacks are also employed in several other Arabian Nights tales such as "Sinbad the Sailor
Sinbad the Sailor
Sinbad the Sailor is a fictional sailor from Basrah, living during the Abbasid Caliphate – the hero of a story-cycle of Middle Eastern origin...
" and "The City of Brass".
Analepsis was used extensively by author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals, The English Review and The Transatlantic Review, were instrumental in the development of early 20th-century English literature...
. Also by poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, author, historian and mythologist Robert Graves
Robert Graves
Robert von Ranke Graves 24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985 was an English poet, translator and novelist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works...
, as a source of inspiration.
The 1927 book The Bridge of San Luis Rey
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
The Bridge of San Luis Rey is American author Thornton Wilder's second novel, first published in 1927 to worldwide acclaim. It tells the story of several interrelated people who die in the collapse of an Inca rope-fiber suspension bridge in Peru, and the events that lead up to their being on the...
by Thornton Wilder
Thornton Wilder
Thornton Niven Wilder was an American playwright and novelist. He received three Pulitzer Prizes, one for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and two for his plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, and a National Book Award for his novel The Eighth Day.-Early years:Wilder was born in Madison,...
is the progenitor of the modern disaster epic in literature and film-making, where a single disaster intertwines the victims, whose lives are then explored by means of flashbacks to events leading up to the disaster.
If flashbacks are extensive and in chronological order, one can say that these form the present of the story, while the rest of the story consists of flash forwards. If flashbacks are presented non-chronologically it can be ambiguous what is the present of the story: An example of this is Slaughterhouse-Five
Slaughterhouse-Five
Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death is a satirical novel by Kurt Vonnegut about World War II experiences and journeys through time of a soldier called Billy Pilgrim...
where the narrative jumps back and forth in time, so there is no actual present time line.
The Harry Potter
Harry Potter
Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by the British author J. K. Rowling. The books chronicle the adventures of the adolescent wizard Harry Potter and his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry...
series employs a magical device called a Pensieve, which changes the nature of flashbacks from a mere narrative device to an event directly experienced by the characters, which are thus able to provide commentary.
Film
Sometimes a flashback is inserted into a film even though there was none in the original source from which the film was adapted. The 1956 film version of Rodgers and HammersteinRodgers and Hammerstein
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were a well-known American songwriting duo, usually referred to as Rodgers and Hammerstein. They created a string of popular Broadway musicals in the 1940s and 1950s during what is considered the golden age of the medium...
's stage musical Carousel
Carousel (musical)
Carousel is the second stage musical by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II . The work premiered in 1945 and was adapted from Ferenc Molnár's 1909 play Liliom, transplanting its Budapest setting to the Maine coastline...
used a flashback device which somewhat takes the impact away from a very dramatic plot development later in the film. This was done because the plot of Carousel was then considered unusually strong for a film musical. In film version of Camelot
Camelot (film)
Camelot is a 1967 film adaptation of the musical of the same name. Richard Harris stars as Arthur, Vanessa Redgrave as Guinevere, and Franco Nero as Lancelot. The film was directed by Joshua Logan.-Plot:...
(1967
1967 in film
The year 1967 in film involved some significant events. It is widely considered as one of the most ground-breaking years in film.-Events:* December 26 - The Beatles Magical Mystery Tour airs on British television....
), according to Alan Jay Lerner
Alan Jay Lerner
Alan Jay Lerner was an American lyricist and librettist. In collaboration with Frederick Loewe, he created some of the world's most popular and enduring works of musical theatre for both the stage and on film...
, a flashback was added not to soften the blow of a later plot development but because the stage show had been criticized for shifting too abruptly in tone from near-comedy to tragedy.
A good example of both analepsis and prolepsis is the first scene of La jetée
La Jetée
La jetée is a 1962 French science fiction film by Chris Marker. It is also known in English as The Jetty or The Pier. Constructed almost entirely from still photos, it tells the story of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel. The film runs for 28 minutes and is in black and white...
(1962). As we learn a few minutes later, what we are seeing in that scene is a flashback to the past, since the present of the film’s diegesis is a time directly following World War III
World War III
World War III denotes a successor to World War II that would be on a global scale, with common speculation that it would be likely nuclear and devastating in nature....
. However, as we learn at the very end of the film, that scene also doubles as a prolepsis, since the dying man the boy is seeing is, in fact, himself. In other words, he is proleptically seeing his own death. We thus have an analepsis and prolepsis
Prolepsis
Prolepsis may refer to:* Flashforward, in storytelling, an interjected scene that takes the narrative forward* Prolepsis , 1975 work by Arrogance...
in the very same scene.
The creator of the flashback technique in cinema was D.W. Griffith. One of the earliest examples is a single shot in his film Intolerance
Intolerance (film)
Intolerance is a 1916 American silent film directed by D. W. Griffith and is considered one of the great masterpieces of the Silent Era. The three-and-a-half hour epic intercuts four parallel storylines each separated by several centuries: A contemporary melodrama of crime and redemption; a...
(1916
1916 in film
The year 1916 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* October 17 - release of A Daughter of the Gods, the first US production with a million dollar budget, with the first nude scene by a major star....
).
Flashbacks were rare until about 1939
1939 in film
The year 1939 in motion pictures can be justified as being called the most outstanding one ever, when it comes to the high quality and high attendance at the large set of the best films that premiered in the year .- Events :Motion picture historians and film often rate...
when, in William Wyler
William Wyler
William Wyler was a leading American motion picture director, producer, and screenwriter.Notable works included Ben-Hur , The Best Years of Our Lives , and Mrs. Miniver , all of which won Wyler Academy Awards for Best Director, and also won Best Picture...
's Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights (1939 film)
Wuthering Heights is a 1939 American black-and-white film directed by William Wyler and produced by Samuel Goldwyn. It is based on the novel, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. The film depicts only sixteen of the novel's thirty-four chapters, eliminating the second generation of characters. The...
as in Emily Brontë
Emily Brontë
Emily Jane Brontë 30 July 1818 – 19 December 1848) was an English novelist and poet, best remembered for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature. Emily was the third eldest of the four surviving Brontë siblings, between the youngest Anne and her brother...
's original novel, the housekeeper Ellen narrates the main story to overnight visitor Mr. Lockwood, who has witnessed Heathcliff's frantic pursuit of what is apparently a ghost. More famously, also in 1939, Marcel Carne's movie Le jour se lève is told entirely through flashback: the story starts with the murder of a man in a hotel. While the murderer, played by Jean Gabin, is surrounded by the police, several flashbacks tell the story of why he killed the man at the beginning of the movie.
One of the most famous examples of non-chronological flashback is in the Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
's film Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Many critics consider it the greatest American film of all time, especially for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film...
(1941
1941 in film
The year 1941 in film involved some significant events.-Events:Citizen Kane, consistently rated as one of the greatest films of all time, was released in 1941.-Top grossing films :-Academy Awards:...
). The protagonist, Charles Foster Kane, dies at the beginning, uttering the word Rosebud. The remainder of the film is framed by a reporter's interviewing Kane's friends and associates, in a futile effort to discover what the word meant to Kane. As the interviews proceed, pieces of Kane's life unfold in flashback, but not always chronologically.
Satyajit Ray
Satyajit Ray
Satyajit Ray was an Indian Bengali filmmaker. He is regarded as one of the greatest auteurs of 20th century cinema. Ray was born in the city of Kolkata into a Bengali family prominent in the world of arts and literature...
experimented with flashbacks in The Adversary
Pratidwandi
Pratidwandi or Pratidandi is a 1971 Indian Bengali film directed by Satyajit Ray based on the novel by Sunil Gangopadhyay. It is the first part of the Calcutta trilogy...
(1972
1972 in film
The year 1972 in film involved some significant events.-Top grossing films :- Awards :Academy Awards:*Avanti!, directed by Billy Wilder, starring Jack Lemmon and Juliet MillsB...
). One of the experimental techniques which he pioneered was photo-negative
Negative (photography)
In photography, a negative may refer to three different things, although they are all related.-A negative:Film for 35 mm cameras comes in long narrow strips of chemical-coated plastic or cellulose acetate. As each image is captured by the camera onto the film strip, the film strip advances so that...
flashbacks.
Occasionally, a story may contain a flashback within a flashback, as in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a 1962 American Western film directed by John Ford and starring James Stewart and John Wayne. The black-and-white film was released by Paramount Pictures. The screenplay by James Warner Bellah and Willis Goldbeck was adapted from a short story written by Dorothy M...
: the main action of the film is told in flashback, with the scene of Liberty Valance’s murder occurring as a flashback within that flashback. Another example is the 1968 Japanese film
Cinema of Japan
The has a history that spans more than 100 years. Japan has one of the oldest and largest film industries in the world – as of 2009 the fourth largest by number of feature films produced. Movies have been produced in Japan since 1897, when the first foreign cameramen arrived...
Lone Wolf Isazo, which contains flashbacks within flashbacks. An extremely convoluted story may contain flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks, as in Six Degrees of Separation
Six Degrees of Separation (film)
Six Degrees of Separation is a 1990 play written by John Guare that premiered at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, Lincoln Center on May 16, 1990, directed by Jerry Zaks and starring Stockard Channing...
, Passage to Marseille
Passage to Marseille
Passage to Marseille is a 1944 war film made by Warner Brothers, directed by Michael Curtiz and produced by Hal B. Wallis with Jack L. Warner as executive producer. The screenplay was by Casey Robinson and Jack Moffitt from the novel Sans Patrie by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall...
, and The Locket
The Locket
The Locket is a suspense film directed by John Brahm, starring Laraine Day, Brian Aherne, Robert Mitchum, and Gene Raymond, and released by RKO Radio Pictures...
. This technique is a hallmark of Kannada movie director Upendra
Upendra
Upendra is a cine actor, director, script writer and singer. Born in a middle class family at Koteshwara near Kundapura, he belongs to Kannada speaking Kota Brahmin community. Upendra started his career off with famous director Kashinath as a writer and an assistant director...
whose futuristic flick Super (2010
2010 in film
The year 2010 saw many new films released worldwide. 2010 saw a dramatic increase and prominence in the use of 3D-technology in filmmaking and film releases after the success of Avatar in the format, with releases such as Alice in Wonderland, Clash of the Titans, Jackass 3D, all animated films and...
) is set in 2030 and contains multiple flashbacks ranging from 2010 to 2015 depicting a utopian
Utopian and dystopian fiction
The utopia and its offshoot, the dystopia, are genres of literature that explore social and political structures. Utopian fiction is the creation of an ideal world, or utopia, as the setting for a novel. Dystopian fiction is the opposite: creation of a nightmare world, or dystopia...
India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
.
Though usually used to clarify plot or backstory, flashbacks can also act as an unreliable narrator
Unreliable narrator
An unreliable narrator is a narrator, whether in literature, film, or theatre, whose credibility has been seriously compromised. The term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction. This narrative mode is one that can be developed by an author for a number of reasons, usually...
. Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
's Stage Fright
Stage Fright (film)
Stage Fright is a 1950 British crime film directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock starring Jane Wyman, Marlene Dietrich, Michael Wilding and Richard Todd...
notoriously featured a flashback that did not tell the truth but dramatized a lie from a witness. The multiple and contradictory staged reconstructions of a crime in Errol Morris
Errol Morris
Errol Mark Morris is an American director. In 2003, The Guardian put him seventh in its list of the world's 40 best directors. Also in 2003, his film The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.-Early life and...
's The Thin Blue Line
The Thin Blue Line (documentary)
The Thin Blue Line is a 1988 documentary film by Errol Morris, depicting the story of Randall Dale Adams, a man convicted and sentenced to die for a murder he did not commit. Adams' case was reviewed and he was released from prison approximately a year after the film's release.-Synopsis:The film...
are presented as flashbacks based on divergent testimony. Akira Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa
was a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. Regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, Kurosawa directed 30 filmsIn 1946, Kurosawa co-directed, with Hideo Sekigawa and Kajiro Yamamoto, the feature Those Who Make Tomorrow ;...
's Rashomon
Rashomon (film)
The bandit's storyTajōmaru, a notorious brigand , claims that he tricked the samurai to step off the mountain trail with him and look at a cache of ancient swords he discovered. In the grove he tied the samurai to a tree, then brought the woman there. She initially tried to defend herself with a...
does this, in the most celebrated fictional use of contested multiple testimonies.
Near the end of his life, film director Howard Hawks
Howard Hawks
Howard Winchester Hawks was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era...
boasted that he was proud that none of his films ever used a flashback.
The television series Psych
Psych
Psych is an American detective comedy-drama television series created by Steve Franks and broadcast on USA Network. It stars James Roday as Shawn Spencer, a young crime consultant for the Santa Barbara Police Department whose "heightened observational skills" and impressive detective instincts...
uses flashbacks in nearly every episode.