Aflashback, more formally known asanalepsis, is an interjectedscene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point in thestory.[1] Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story's primary sequence of events to fill in crucialbackstory.[2] In the opposite direction, aflashforward (or prolepsis) reveals events that will occur in the future.[3] Both flashback and flashforward are used to cohere a story, develop a character, or add structure to the narrative. In literature,internal analepsis is a flashback to an earlier point in the narrative;external analepsis is a flashback to a time before the narrative started.[4]
In film, flashbacks depict the subjective experience of a character by showing a memory of a previous event and they are often used to "resolve an enigma".[5] Flashbacks are important infilm noir andmelodrama films.[6] In films and television, several camera techniques, editing approaches and special effects have evolved to alert the viewer that the action shown is a flashback or flashforward; for example, the edges of the picture may be deliberately blurred, photography may be jarring or choppy, or unusual coloration or sepia tone, ormonochrome when most of the story is in full color, may be used. The scene may fade or dissolve, often with the camera focused on the face of the character and there is typically a voice-over by a narrator (who is often the character who is experiencing the memory).[7]
An early example of analepsis is in theRamayana andMahabharata, where the main story is narrated through aframe story set at a later time. Another early use of this device in amurder mystery was in "The Three Apples", anArabian 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 in a series of flashbacks leading up to the discovery of her dead body at the beginning of the story.[8] Flashbacks are also employed in several otherArabian Nights tales, such as "Sinbad the Sailor" and "The City of Brass".
Analepsis was used extensively by authorFord Madox Ford, and by poet, author, historian and mythologistRobert Graves. The 1927 bookThe Bridge of San Luis Rey byThornton 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 of events leading up to the disaster. Analepsis is also used inNight byElie Wiesel. 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 flashforwards. If flashbacks are presented in non-chronological order, the time at which the story takes place can be ambiguous: One such work isSlaughterhouse-Five, in which the narrative jumps back and forth in time, so there is no actual present time line.Os Lusíadas is a story about a voyage ofVasco da Gama toIndia and back. The narration starts when they were arriving inAfrica but it quickly flashes back to the beginning of the story, which is when they were leavingPortugal.[9]
TheHarry Potter series employs a magical device called aPensieve, which changes the nature of flashbacks from a mere narrative device to an event directly experienced by the characters, who are thus able to provide commentary.
The creator of the flashback technique in cinema wasHistoire d'un crime directed byFerdinand Zecca in 1901.[10] An early flashback in cinema occurs throughoutD.W. Griffith's filmHearts of the World (1918): for example, during the wall scene with the Boy at 1:33. Flashbacks were first employed during the sound era inRouben Mamoulian's 1931 filmCity Streets, but were rare until about 1939 when, inWilliam Wyler'sWuthering Heights as inEmily 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 Carné's filmLe Jour Se Lève is told almost entirely through flashback: the story starts with the murder of a man in a hotel. While the murderer, played byJean Gabin, is surrounded by the police, several flashbacks tell the story of why he killed the man at the beginning of the film.
One of the most famous flashbacks is in theOrson Welles filmCitizen Kane (1941). The protagonist,Charles Foster Kane, dies at the beginning, uttering the wordRosebud. 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 Welles' use of such unconventional flashbacks was thought to have been influenced byWilliam K. Howard'sThe Power and the Glory. Lubitsch used a flashback inHeaven Can Wait (1943), which tells the story of Henry Van Cleve. Though usually used to clarify plot or backstory, flashbacks can also act as anunreliable narrator. The multiple and contradictory staged reconstructions of a crime inErrol Morris's 1988 documentaryThe Thin Blue Line are presented as flashbacks based on divergent testimony.Akira Kurosawa's 1950Rashomon does this in the most celebrated fictional use of contested multiple testimonies.
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 ofRodgers and Hammerstein's stage musicalCarousel 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 ofCarousel was then considered unusually strong for a film musical. In the film version ofCamelot (1967), according toAlan 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.
InBilly Wilder'sfilm noirDouble Indemnity (1944), a flashback from the main character is used to provide a confession to his fraudulent and criminal activities.[11]Fish & Cat is the firstsingle-shot movie with several flashbacks.
InJohn Brahm'sfilm noirThe Locket (1946), a uniquehat trick (a flashback within a flashback within a flashback) gives psychological depth to the story of a woman who was allegedly a kleptomaniac, inveterate liar, and murderess but had never been punished for any of her crimes.
A good example of both flashback andflashforward is the first scene ofLa 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'sdiegesis is a time directly followingWorld War III. However, as we learn at the 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 same scene.
Occasionally, a story may contain a flashback within a flashback, with the earliest known example appearing inJacques Feyder'sL'Atlantide.Little Annie Rooney (1925) contains a flashback scene in a Chinese laundry, with a flashback within that flashback in the corner of the screen. InJohn Ford'sThe Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), 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. Other examples that contains flashbacks within flashbacks are the 1968Japanese filmLone Wolf Isazo[12] and 2004'sThe Phantom of the Opera, where almost the entire film (set in 1870) is told as a flashback from 1919 (inblack-and-white) and contains other flashbacks; for example, Madame Giry rescuing the Phantom from a freak show. An extremely convoluted story may contain flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks, as inSix Degrees of Separation,Passage to Marseille, andThe Locket.
This technique is a hallmark ofKannada movie directorUpendra. He has employed this technique in his movies –Om (1995),A (1998) and the futuristicSuper (2010) – set in 2030 containing multiple flashbacks ranging from 2010 to 2015 depicting aUtopian India.
Satyajit Ray experimented with flashbacks inThe Adversary (Pratidwandi, 1972), pioneering the technique ofphoto-negative flashbacks.[13] He also uses flashbacks in other films, such asNayak (1966),Kapurush- O – Mahapurush (1965),Aranyer Din Ratri (1970), andJalsaghar (1959). In fact,Nayak is entirely anonlinear narrative which explores the Hero's (Arindam's) past through seven flashbacks and two dreams. He also uses extensive flashbacks in theKanchenjunga (1962).[14]
Quentin Tarantino makes extensive use of the flashback and flashforward in many of his films.Reservoir Dogs (1992), for example, intercuts scenes of the present story with various flashbacks that give each character's backstory and motivation. InPulp Fiction (1994), which uses a highly nonlinear narrative, traditional flashback is also used in the sequence titled "The Gold Watch". Other films, such as his two-partKill Bill (Part I 2003, Part II 2004), also feature a narrative that bounces between present time and flashbacks.
The television seriesQuantico,Kung Fu,Psych,How I Met Your Mother,Grounded for Life,Once Upon a Time, andI Didn't Do It use flashbacks in every episode. Flashbacks were a predominant feature of the television showsLost,Arrow,Phineas and Ferb,Orange Is the New Black,13 Reasons Why,Elite andQuicksand. Many detective shows routinely use flashback in the last act to illustrate the detective's reconstruction of the culprit's plot, e.g.Murder, She Wrote,Banacek,Columbo. The television showLeverage uses a flashback at the end of each episode to show how the protagonists successfully carried out theirconfidence trick on the episode's antagonist.
The animeInuyasha flashes backs to half a century earlier in the two-part episode "The Tragic Love Song of Destiny" (episodes 147 and 148, in thesixth season), narrated by the elderly younger sister of Lady Kikyo,Lady Kaede.
InPrincess Half-Demon, the spinoff to the aforementioned anime, the premiere flashes back eighteen years, to five months since the conclusion of the original series'seventh season. Episode fifteen, "Farewell Under the Lunar Eclipse", is narrated by Riku, who explains what had happened before and right after the Half-Demon Princesses were born; namely where Inuyasha and nineteen-year-old Kagome Higurashi had ended up, trapped within the Black Pearl at the border of the Afterlife for fourteen years. Some months later, there are flashbacks of memories belonging to Jaken ("The Silver-Scale Curse") and Hachimon ("Battle of the Moon, Part 1").
TheDisney Channel seriesPhineas and Ferb has many flashbacks and flashforwards. In several episodes, the main antagonist,Dr. Doofenshmirtz, uses flashbacks to explain his past. A gag in the episode "Doof Dynasty" notes that, when a character explains his or her past, their body ripples (referencing the "ripple effect" which starts a flashback in other media). The whole episode "Act Your Age" is a flashforward of the characters as teenagers. Several other episodes also feature flashbacks of the main characters' ancestors who, as a running gag, always seem to look like the main characters with slight variations in clothing, but the same mannerisms and voices.(Northern Exposure episode "Cicely" used a similar device, with the main cast playing unrelated characters of 84 years before, at the founding of the village.)
Breaking Bad and its spinoffBetter Call Saul frequently employ flashbacks, most often in the form of thecold open. While many of the flashbacks take place years before the events of each series, some are new scenes set during previous episodes, such asBreaking Bad's "Más" and "Ozymandias," whose openings are set during the show'spilot. Thefinalthreeepisodes ofBetter Call Saul, set in the post-Breaking Bad timeline, also include flashbacks taking place both between and during the two series' time frames.
The 2D hand-drawn animated showRapunzel's Tangled Adventure (known asTangled: The Series during its first season) began showing flashbacks set a quarter of a century ago in the Dark Kingdom, where the heavenly Moonstone resides within for hundreds of years in the second season's premiere "Beyond the Walls of Corona", "Rapunzel and the Great Tree" and the finale "Destinies Collide."
