I have come to the conclusion that curiously I don’t think film is a very good narrative medium. If I was to ask you to tell me the full story of Casablanca, or La Dolce Vita, I bet you couldn’t do it. Because I don’t think people do remember close narrative or close story-telling in the cinema. They remember ambience, they remember event, they remember incidents, performance, atmosphere, a line of dialogue, a sense of genius loci, but I really doubt whether they truly remember narrative. I would argue that if you want to write narratives, be an author, be a novelist, don’t be a film maker. Because I believe film making is so much more exciting in areas which aren’t primarily to do with narrative.
PETER GREENAWAY
