Le trentasei situazioni drammatiche

by Mike Figgis, Giuseppe Contarino (Translator)

Rivisitazione in chiave moderna del classico del drammaturgo francese George Polti, questo libro si propone a scrittori e sceneggiatori come strumento per pensare alla trama in modo completamente nuovo.


Era il 1850 quando il drammaturgo francese George Polti arrivava alla conclusione che ogni dramma è costruito su una combinazione di situazioni riconoscibili, trentasei in tutto, e le illustrava con esempi tratti dal teatro classico e francese. Tradotto in inglese nel 1921, il suo Le 36 situazioni drammatiche divenne presto un classico della drammaturgia.


Nel 2017 il regista e sceneggiatore Mike Figgis, alle prese con la stesura del trattamento di un suo film, si trova per caso tra le mani il classico di Polti. Lo legge e subito si accorge che il suo orizzonte creativo ne viene ampliato e che le idee adesso gli si presentano con maggiore semplicità. Comprendendo quindi l'importanza delle Trentasei situazioni come sistema di riferimento, intuisce che, spostandone il focus dal teatro al cinema, quel libro potrebbe diventare uno strumento di grande utilità non solo per gli sceneggiatori, ma per chiunque voglia narrare una storia.


Da questa intuizione nasce il suo Le trentasei situazioni drammatiche, che offre un'analisi dettagliata delle situazioni di Polti, approfondendole con esempi tratti da alcuni dei più importanti film della storia del cinema, da Quarto Potere a Inception.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction

125 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2018

About the author

With his roots in experimental theater and music, it is perhaps surprising that Kenyan-born writer-director Mike Figgis started out as such a conventional filmmaker, but his dissatisfaction with the Hollywood studio system eventually led to his true calling as one of the most innovative auteurs working in contemporary cinema. After studying music in London, he became a member of Gas Board, an English rhythm-and-blues band (which also featured a pre-fame Bryan Ferry), and later went on tour for nearly a decade with an experimental theater group The People Show first as a musician, then also as an actor. Undaunted by his unsuccessful application to London's National Film School, Figgis began writing and directing his own stage productions, visually striking works like "Redheugh", "Slow Fade" and "Animals of the City", which combined music with filmed segments and live performance. He developed "Slow Fade" into a one-hour piece ("The House") for Britain's Channel 4, capturing the attention of producer David Puttnam, for whom he wrote a treatment that would become his feature writing-directing debut, "Stormy Monday" (1988)". Although Puttnam would pass on the project, Figgis did finally get backing for his tale set in the seamy world of Newcastle jazz clubs. The atmospheric homage to Hollywood film noir featured a score by the director, who also persuaded B.B. King to record the title track, a career first for the great bluesman. His impressive American debut, "Internal Affairs" (1990), was a striking portrait of police corruption featuring powerhouse performances by a creepy silver-haired Richard Gere and a seething Andy Garcia. The studio demanded control over the music and chose two composers to help execute Figgis' vision, even though he had already done a temporary track to accompany the film. His follow up, "Liebestraum" (1991), made precious little sense--something about a 40-year-old sex scandal, corruption, and family madness--but had style to spare, and with Brit backing, he was able to write his own score, a more or less "wall-to-wall" affair, often almost inaudible but always a presence. Figgis then tangled with the studio and producers who insisted that "Mr. Jones" (1993), a change-of-pace romance with Gere as a manic depressive charmer who gets involved with his psychiatrist (Lena Olin), be more upbeat. "I thought it was a ludicrous idea," he told The New York Times (November 1, 1995). "Manic-depression isn't something to dismiss lightly." Once again a hired gun on the well-mounted, though stodgy remake of "The Browning Version" (1994), Figgis was at the creative center of his next project, "Leaving Las Vegas" (1995), and acquired foreign financing to protect the integrity of his noirish character study of an alcoholic, suicidal screenwriter (Nicolas Cage in an Oscar-winning turn) and his relationship with an abused prostitute (Elisabeth Shue). The actors and director took virtually no money, and Figgis began his love affair with the cheaper, grittier, "more impressionistic" Super 16 film (later blown up to 35 mm) normally used in documentaries, perfectly capturing the seamy trappings of the powerful love story. He also composed the score, and Sting, who had starred in "Stormy Monday", volunteered to sing on the soundtrack. When the movie opened, he had no expectations for commercial success, but "Leaving Las Vegas" became a critical darling, earning him the best reviews of his career as well as two Oscar nominations for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. After serving as executive producer of Annette Haywood-Carter's "Foxfire" (1996), Figgis then produced his own "One Night Stand" (1997), which he extensively rewrote from a Joe Eszterhas script (so much so that Eszterhas took no credit). Despite a too pat ending, it continued to show him as a filmmaker firmly in control, expertly matching his moody score to his complex take on relationships and reassessing life choices. His next film, "The Loss of Sexual Inn

Reviews

[Sebastien Castell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Books for writers tend to fall into very defined camps: mechanistic or artistic. Mechanistic books tend to focus on systems such as how to outline a novel, create characters, or build worlds. The artistic books focus more on the writer themselves and how, whether, and why to access one's inner creativity. There are countless books on each side of that very loosely defined line, many of which sit on my shelf as I type this. The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations by Mike Figgis sits squarely on the mechanistic side of that divide, but does the job so much better than most other craft book that he somehow manages to ignite the artistic at the same time.

The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations is actually a re-envisioning of a much older work of the same name by French dramatist George Polti. Where the original was written with the context of the theatre in mind, Figgis focuses on cinema. Both offer a wealth of contexts and ideas for novelists as well.

Unlike most books that deal with the mythical seven or ten or twenty or [insert number here and you can write your own book on the subject!] master plots which focus on a single concept defining an entire work (for example "the quest story"), the thirty-six dramatic situations refer to actual causes for conflict that might occupy a single scene, many chapters, a subplot, or an entire book. A movie like Blade Runner, for example, might incorporate a dozen of the thirty-six possible situations. This is significant, because it makes the book vastly more usable for one's own work.

Instead of having to choose a single "master plot", you might find several dramatic situations that can be incorporated into your novel or screenplay. In fact, Figgis puts all thirty-six into a card format that you can clip out and shuffle – dealing yourself a few of them and then inviting you to see how you might use them to build a complete story. Alternatively, you might feel something's sagging in the middle of your story and pick one of these situations to escalate tension.

If all of this still sounds rather mechanistic or formulaic, well, it is. However there's something more evocative about the dramatic situations that Figgis presents than I've seen in similar works, and I found myself perpetually imagining new scenes or stories as I went through the book. For professional writers, anything that gets you envisioning new possibilities is worthwhile.

In the process of creating a new version of Polti's original guide, Figgis has removed a couple of the older situations because they're no longer as distinct from one another as they were in the 19th Century when Polti was writing. In their place he's added new ones (specifically dream states and coincidence) because those have become relevant in our time. An even more important contribution is that Figgis has methodically considered gender implications of the situations, forcing us to look at alternatives to well-worn and often sexist tropes. This allows the writer to draw from what are still very powerful sources of conflict but find ways to do so that won't feel timeworn and lazy.

Of course, being as how the majority of The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations is a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of each of them, it's not exactly a fun read to bring to the beach with you, but it's worth pushing through nonetheless because each situation is a tool to add to your writer's kit that may provide a fascinating turn in your own work in future.

[elif sinem · Rating 4 out of 5]

i felt inspired by some sure!

[John Jr. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Drawing on a 19th-century French book about theater, filmmaker Mike Figgis here summarizes three dozen “situations” that provide the bones of many plot developments or entire stories. Though he gives examples from cinema, almost all of his discussion applies just as well to other forms. The situation labeled Disaster, for instance, is illustrated by the 1997 film Titanic and the 2011 film Melancholia, but the possible scenarios Figgis sketches range from misfortune in war, outright defeat, and the loss of loved ones to natural disasters and disasters of love. A few of Figgis’s other categories are Revolt (as in The Battle of Algiers, On the Waterfront, and others), The Enigma (as in Citizen Kane), Altered States–Madness, not to be confused with Dream State, and seven situations whose names include love.

As with many other attempts to schematize the stories of humankind, it’s not hard to question what is and isn’t here. Does the struggle to return home, which is the basic shape of tales as disparate as The Odyssey and the Tom Hanks film Cast Away, count as Deliverance? Maybe so, but as Figgis describes that situation, the agent of deliverance tends to be external (as in It’s a Wonderful Life). Are crime stories usually a case of Obtaining, except where they involve a titanic, enormously selfish, obsessive pursuit of the goods, which falls instead under Ambition? Where does a coming-of-age story, or a murder mystery, or a prison break or some other form of attempted escape (as in Ex Machina), fit?

Figgis isn’t necessarily attempting to categorize entire stories. These situations often apply only to one aspect of a narrative, which may also involve a handful of others; Don’t Look Now, for instance, relies on a total of 8 in Figgis’s view, and Cool Hand Luke uses 16. But it still feels as if something might be missing. Nonetheless, despite the book’s analytical shortcomings, its main purpose, Figgis says, is to serve as a stimulus to the imagination of a writer. For what it’s worth, I’ve found that it does.

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the concept, its quite interesting and useful but I had some major issues.

1. The book is quite disorganised, the fonts and the structure seem to change in a way that wasn't massively obvious to me.

2. Several of the situations should really be the same situation.
For example, Revenge following a crime, Revenge contained within a family, aren't they both just revenge? Also..Self-sacrifice for idealism, Self-sacrifice for family. Why separate them? I'm sure it was missing a few. Like he has "Mistaken jealousy" but not just Jealousy?

3. Although I think gender roles in media is an important topic, he addressed it in a very simplistic, slightly tedious way. In nearly every situation he suggests, "why not reverse the gender roles?". Genius Mike. Cheers for that.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting and potentially useful book for writers, actors, and other film/theater-goers, but marred by a few problems which could be easily fixed, but weren't.

In this book, Figgis revises the analysis by 19thC French author Georges Polti that all theatrical action can be boiled down to a combination of 36 basic situations/actions. Figgis updates and modifies these situations for contemporary cinema, provides a description of each, and some examples from films of different variations on the situation.

Here's the first problem: the idea is that every film is made up of a number of these situations in sequence -- as few as 5-6 to as many as 20+. However, when offering examples of each situation, he uses them to characterize the entire story, not just one section of it. For example, for situation 10, "Obtaining," he offers _Dog Day Afternoon_: "A man attempts to rob a bank to pay for a sex change for his lover. When things go wrong, a hostage situation results." OK, but that characterizes the whole movie, not just one scene, so how do the other situations fit in? It's a little awkward and confusing, and it would be more clear if for every example he made it clear that he is analyzing a portion of the film, not the entire thing.

The second issue is that he provides an analysis of 150 films, listing the situations that appear in each film. Potentially a great tool, because you could watch the film with his list to see how each situation is used in an actual film and how they are combined with others to create a narrative. However, for each film, he lists the situations in NUMERICAL ORDER rather than according to their CHRONOLOGICAL APPEARANCE IN THE FILM. In other words, the movie may unfold in this order: Situation 23, 5, 28, 17, 2, 20, 29, 10 -- that's the order of the situations as they play out in the film, but Figgis lists them as 2, 5, 10, 17, 20, 23, 28, 29, thus making his analysis mostly useless because you can't easily match up the scenes in the movie with his list.

Final minor point: Very uneven in the time he spends on each situation. Situation 14, "Rivalry of Kinsman," is barely 1.5 pages, whereas 16, "Altered States-Madness," is over 10 pages. I get that there are some situations he is more or less interested in, that are more or less common in contemporary film, etc., and he doesn't need to spend the exact same wordcount on each one, but a little bit more of an attempt at parity would be useful so that some ideas aren't underdeveloped.

Perhaps most useful about the book is the "deck" at the end -- little cards for each situation that could be photocopied and used as a writing tool -- shuffle them up, use them to help craft a storyline or decide where to go next in a screenplay.

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mike Figgis wrote this book as a guide to screen writers and filmmakers. Inspired by a book of the same name written by Georges Polti and published in English in 1916, Figgis sought to update the material for the age of cinema. The updating consists of altering two of the situations and pulling examples from various films.

It’s a short book and a quick read. The question is: how usable is the book? There are no real surprises here, and the titles of the situations are pretty self-explanatory, so the sections that expound upon them are not especially enlightening. Thankfully, Figgis does not overstay his welcome and keeps his comments brief. The other thing Figgis does well is to look at each situation from three different angles: namely, what they could mean and do at the opening of a story, as a midpoint of the story, and as a concluding element of the story.

The true value of the book, at least for me, is the proposal to turn the dramatic situations into a set of cards that can be drawn and randomized as story-starters. I am excited to see how the cards can be used. My interest in this book was not as a writer but as a communal creator of stories—I wanted to see if the material was useful for RPGs. I hoping the cards are excellent prompters of unexpected plot directions.

If you think the subject of the book is up your alley, my advice is to check the book out from the library and make notes or cards as you desire. It’ll be a quick experience to get what you need out of it, and it is probably not a book you need to have on your reference shelf.

[Stoic_quin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting Idea and a good technique to unblock creativity

[Warren · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting, informative book. I recommended it to anyone who wants to tell a good story.

[Jeremy Hung · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The function of drama remains the same as ever: to understand ourselves better by observing a collection of somewhat clichéd behavioural patterns of interaction."

[Tori · Rating 4 out of 5]

“All writers have their own systems for writing. Mine is very simple: I do nothing until the very last moment.”

“Chinema is the ongoing exploration of the human face.”

[Ming · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I would've found it more useful if I'd read it back when it was published, because I've since moved on to focus more on character than on plot

[Jin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting, but I don’t think his writing flows.

[Andrea · Rating 2 out of 5]

Way more normative than I expected so for me personally it's not that useful at this moment.

[berzi]

Di decente ispirazione per gli storyteller, contiene vari spunti e riflessioni utili, ma anche molte pagine di ovvietà che sembrano lì giusto per riempire il capitolo. Le "situazioni" stesse sono scelte in modo a dir poco arbitrario: c'è una strana discrepanza dati i capitoli ridondanti che coprono lo stesso argomento con piccole variazioni, contrapposti ad altri che raggruppano svariate variazioni sotto lo stesso titolo, e certe "situazioni" sembrano mancare mentre altre, presenti, sembrano eccessivamente specifiche.
L'autore avrebbe dovuto trarre ispirazione e creare un'analisi propria, invece di fare l'analisi di un'analisi di un media che lui stesso ammette come estremamente diverso.

Più che un libro sembra una raccolta di appunti quasi alla rinfusa, e per di più la traduzione italiana lascia spesso a desiderare. Nel complesso ne sconsiglio l'acquisto, dato che un rapido sguardo all'indice dà più di quanto possa aggiungere la lettura dell'intero libro.