Radomir D. Kokeš

The chapter has two aims. First, it wants to move towards writing an aesthetic history of Czech cinema from the perspective of the poetics of cinema. The first section of the chapter introduces the methodological background of such research. In a critical debate with existing approaches, the second section formulates more general hypotheses about the typical features of Czech silent and early sound films. The third section is then a more focused case study of the first film shot in Barrandov Studios. This analytical part also discusses both one particular genre tradition and the thoughtful embedding of the extraordinary technical options of Barrandov Studios into relatively longer-term stylistic continuities. Second, the chapter aims to sketch the possibilities of its concept of regional poetics, proposing and illustrating with an example of Czech cinema in the period preceding and immediately following the opening of Barrandov Studios in 1933. The notion of regional poetics refers to the analytical and historical research regarding what is typical for a particular area: as such, it inquires a corpus of feature-length film works, each of which was predominantly made in a specified territory, predominantly in the official language of that territory, and for standard commercial distribution within that territory.

Norm as a tool of structural analysis and writing of aesthetically based history is a concept designed by Czech structuralist Jan Mukařovský. For several decades, American film scholars David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson have been handling this notion. After a review of the original concept, the article follows three main goals: (1) The broadest aim is to reconstruct specific roles the concept played in the process of establishing the so-called neoformalist poetics approach. By returning to Mukařovský's starting points, we should be able to more clearly understand how his concept of norm was employed and transformed by neoformalist poeticians in order to solve the problems of film studies as an academic discipline on the one hand and problems in formulating concrete research projects on the other. (2) The more particular goal is to point out certain shifts in neoformalist poeticians' handling of the concept of norm after they formulated the classical Hollywood cinema model. The concept of norm was initially used by them as a tool for bottom-up research of the stylistic history of cinema, as a hollow category for its unbiased explanation. However, consequently it has also become a somewhat filled category applied rather top-down as an interpretative background for assessing its alternatives. (3) The final goal is to answer the question why this re-assessment and interrogation of roles played by norm in neoformalist poetics matters now. By returning to the original concept of norm and by the treatise of its changing functions for film study, the article aims to remind us of the usefulness and flexibility of this research tool. As is suggested in the last part of the article, we still know too little about historical poetics of so-called regional cinemas. If we want to understand them properly, the concept of norm is highly worthwhile – but only if is reached by bottom-up research as the hollow category for the unbiased explanation of certain cinematic phenomena.

This article focuses on the films HAPPY DEATH DAY (2017) and HAPPY DEATH DAY 2U (2019). Both handle the spiral narrative, which is recognised by the article as a specific storytelling pattern with a protagonist stuck in an iterative segment of space, time and causality – and this protagonist is not only fully aware of this situation but also tries to deal with it. What for other unaware characters is a closed loop is for the protagonist an open experience with an odd number of turns of time spiral. The spiral narrative is known mostly from high-budget films such as GROUNDHOG DAY (1993) or EDGE OF TOMORROW (2014). Nevertheless, as the article explains, it occurs in dozens of other theatrical films, VOD films, television films or television shows. However, what are the reasons why, when there is an extensive set of works to choose from, does the article takes just the doublet of HAPPY DEATH DAY films? (1) On their example, the article discusses author's general hypothesis about spiral narrative works as a series of applications of the innovative narrative schema as an aesthetic tool. Such a hypothesis consists of three broader dimensions: (a) the aesthetic dimension, i.e. the spiral schema as a part of the art work; (b) the creative dimension, i.e. the spiral schema as part of the problem-solution process of filmmaking; (c) the production dimension, i.e. the spiral schema as a part of the competition of audiovisual production. (2) An even more important reason, though, for selecting just these two films has been the fact that HAPPY DEATH DAY 2U is a sequel of HAPPY DEATH DAY. In the "post-classical era" of global franchises, sequels, prequels, remakes, reboots and transmedia storytellings, this does not seem to be exceptional. However, in the context of the spiral narrative, this is an unprecedented step that raises several questions the article asks.

2020 COMMENTARY: I wrote this item as a blog-post thirteen years ago as an undergraduate student, so there are a lot of flaws, errors, and naivety. Simultaneously I can see also some decent remarks in this text. What is important, it had been written two years before Warren Buckland's PUZZLE FILMS were published, and without a deeper awareness of THE WAY HOLLYWOOD TELLS IT written by David Bordwell. So I had found it worth to attempt a framework for my better understanding of these films which I have been considered remarkable. Moreover, although Christopher Nolan became one of the most commented film directors, the other three films I am analysing were somewhat forgotten. So this little piece can shed some light on them, I hope.

Despite the fact it had a lot to do with my youthful analytical enthusiasm when I wanted to see new ways of telling stories everywhere around, I still consider the 2005-2008 period of Hollywood filmmaking extraordinary. So many reasonably unusual films were shot. Not just the ones roughly analysed in the item (THE PRESTIGE, LADY IN THE WATER, DOMINO, STRANGER THAN FICTION), but also films like ZODIAC, SPEED RACER, THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III, SYRIANA, GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK and many others - all of them told their stories in more or less unusual ways. We can say that they "teased" boundaries of classical narrative trajectories. Their classical aspects were provocatively combined with quite a new narrative or stylistic challenges. These challenges did not unequivocally serve to classical ones but became the dominant ones (in the formalistic sense).

It certainly was not an unified trend, not at all. However, it is possible to consider it as a kind of temporary creative milieu in the searching for fresh approaches to (classical) storytelling.