A flashback
(also called analepsis
, plural analepses
) 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 prior to the story’s primary sequence of events or to fill in crucial backstory. Character origin flashbacks
specifically refers to flashbacks dealing with key events early in a character's development (Clark Kent discovering he could fly, for example, or the Elric brothers' attempt to bring back their mother). The television show Lost is particularly well known for extensive use of flashbacks in almost every episode. 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.
A scene in a narrative is called a flashback
if it depicts a set of events that occurred before the scenes immediately preceding it. The closely related term flashforward is used to indicate scenes that depict events taking place after the scenes immediately following it. Flashbacks and flash forwards are used frequently in literature, television, and movies for foreshadowing and stronger dramatic effect.
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Literature
An early example of analepsis is in the
Mahabharata
, where the main story is narrated through a
frame story set in a later time.
The earliest 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.
[1] 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.
[2]
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 Hammerstein'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. The 1967 film version of
Camelot
also uses this technique, but in the case of
Camelot
, according to
Alan Jay Lerner, it was not done to soften the blow of a later plot development but because the show had been criticized onstage as taking a too abrupt shift 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.
One of the first films to use a flashback technique was the 1939
Wuthering Heights
, in which, 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 1941
Orson Welles film
Citizen Kane
. The protagonist, Charles Foster Kane, dies at the beginning, uttering the word "Rosebud". A reporter spends the rest of the film interviewing Kane's friends and associates, in an effort to discover what Kane meant by uttering the word. As the interviews proceed, pieces of Kane's life unfold in flashback, but not always chronologically.
Satyajit Ray experimented with flashbacks in his 1972 film
The Adversary
. One of the experimental techniques which he pioneered was
photo-negative flashbacks.
[3]
Occasionally, a story may contain a flashback within a flashback: one example of this is the film
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. An extremely convoluted story may contain flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks: examples of this are the movies
Six Degrees of Separation
,
Passage to Marseille
, and
The Locket
.
Though usually used to clarify plot or backstory, flashbacks can also be used in the manner of the "
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 classic film
Rashomon
does this in the most celebrated fictional narrative 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.
Flashbacks are a trademark of the
Saw
movies, with many scenes adding extra depth to characters and adding insight to various aspects of the series.
Saw IV
has one scene set in real-time, while the rest of the film is a flashback, structured around a series of other flashbacks.
An occasional twist is the insertion of a character who was not part of the sequence being depicted, usually one to whom the events shown are being described. For instance, during a police interrogation in
Under Suspicion
, the events described are shown in flashback with the interrogator watching – signaling that the flashback represents the events as described by the witness, not necessarily as they really happened.
In 2006's
Ice Age: The Meltdown, Ellie the
mammoth has a flashback after walking through a deeply wooded area with Manfred, and it is revealed that Ellie apparently had walked through that exact area when she wasn't much more than a baby. In this flashback, a very young Ellie is wandering aimlessly and is completely lost in a huge
blizzard. She is apparently an orphan as there are no adult mammoths shown here. She rests under a frozen tree, but then sees a mother
opossum and her two babies and was apparently adopted by the mother, ultimately leading to Ellie believing that she herself was an opossum. After this flashback, Ellie, after many years, realises that she is indeed a mammoth.
Television
Lost
extensively uses flashbacks. Almost every episode focuses on a single character in their on island struggles and how it relates to a struggle before they arrived on the island. In the season three finale "
Through the Looking Glass" they switch to use a
flashforward to show what happened to the characters once they got off of the island, and has been used in multiple episodes since then.
Lots of flashbacks have been used in the hit TV show
Prison Break
for most characters.
In
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
and its spinoff
Angel
, flashbacks show events in the history of the principal
vampires Darla,
Angel,
Drusilla and
Spike, from 1609 until shortly before the beginning of the series.
In
One Tree Hill
at the end of season 4, the characters graduate high school. In the start of season 5 the series takes place 4 years in the future. The series includes flashbacks to explain what happened to the characters.
In
Cold Case
, each episode begins with a flashback scene establishing the year in which it is set. Further flashbacks are used in each episode.
In
Desperate Housewives
in season 4 a flashforward takes place 5 years in the future. The next season takes place 5 years into the future. Season 5 will likely include flashbacks to explain the mysteries revealed in the season finale.
How I Met Your Mother
can be considered one long flashback, as the show is set in the year 2030 with the narrator narrating the events of his life to his children.
Family Guy
includes many series of flashbacks throughout many of the episodes, many of which do not include the character initiating the flashback. These mostly are used to prove points, showing a clip to reveal why a stated simile is accurate. (These may also be called
cutaways).
In the anime
Fullmetal Alchemist
, a 7-episode extended flashback sequence gives background information from the lives of main characters
Edward Elric and
Alphonse Elric. It lasts from episode 3, "Mother," to episode 9, "Be Thou for the People," and outlines main events from their early childhood up to adolescence, until the plot comes full circle.
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 may be used.
References
- Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights
- Pensieve Flashback @ TV Tropes wiki
- First Light: Satyajit Ray From the Apu Trilogy to the Calcutta Trilogy