In cinematic language, the term plot device refers to certain storytelling techniques used by filmmakers to enhance and embellish their narrative, elevating the level of its intrigue and boosting the audience’s engagement with the featured plot. Examples of plot devices widely employed by contemporary directors and screenwriters are flashbacks, in medias res, cliffhangers, foreshadowing, unreliable narrators and several more. The concept of framing device has its roots in the literary field and prominent examples of literary works employing the aforementioned trope include titles ranging from Homer’s Odyssey and Ovid’s Metamorphoses to the more recent classics, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and Emily_Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. What all plot devices share in common, except for thrusting the story forward and adding to its appeal, is the quality and effect of connection that they possess and create by establishing relationships between both things and characters, thus resulting in an embroidered watching experience that is readily identifiable by the audience. Another factor adding to that effect is that the inside story or stories are put into a different context, prompting the audience to easier comprehend the onscreen developments.

The concept of framing devices is used to describe a set of narrative methods used by filmmakers to surround the main story with a secondary one, or, in other words, to tell a story-within-a-story. The introductory narrative sets the stage for a second or third one that is born and developed within the boundaries of the main narrative that contains them. When there are more than one frame stories in a film, they are referred to as nested stories. Whether the frame narratives appear only at the beginning or the ending of a story or they are interpolated periodically throughout it, they serve certain functions:

1. Introducing the narrative’s central motifs and ideas;
2. Providing cohesion to the separate, smaller sub-stories; and sometimes even
3. Destabilising the narrative by planting the seed of doubt to the audience’s minds and introducing the possibility of the narrator being untrustworthy or unreliable.

The framing device further distances the audience from the story by removing narrative immediacy while allowing the story to provide dramatic explanations more effectively. A framing device is the optimal medium to tell a story from multiple perspectives. Popular examples of framing stories in film are Forrest Gump (Robert Zemneckis, 1994), Titanic (James Cameron, 1997), Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000), Synechdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman, 2009), while cinema lovers can trace the roots of this narrative strategy in films dating as far back as Orson Welles’s classic masterpiece Citizen Kane (1941).

Those familiar with film theory have probably stumbled upon the term mise-en-abyme (literally meaning “placement into abyss”), first appropriated for modern criticism by the French author André Gide, which is used in cinema to refer to the aesthetic technique of inserting a story within a story or a film-within-a-film. An example of the mise en abyme trope in cinema is the film-within-a-film storyline in which the film’s plot involves the making of a -fictional- movie as it happens in titles such as David Lynch’s Inland Empire (2007) or Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation (2002). In general terms, mise-en-abyme is a type of a framing story, with the nested narratives acting as an internal mirror that reflects the narrative as a whole.

Framing devices are not to be confused with narrative structure: the extensive use of flashbacks are not necessarily a sign of a framing narrative. The golden rule is that a flashback is just a flashback, a brief recollection of past events usually interposed in the main narrative, if the main storyline takes place in the present. If the main storyline unravels in the past, then everything in the present constitutes a framing story.

Below are three bright examples of movies that excelled in the use of the framing narrative technique and the mise-en-abyme trope. The titles are listed chronologically:

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1. Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950):

This is one of the most iconic films featuring multiple sub-stories ever filmed and it is considered one of the most compelling works in Akira Kurosawa’s oeuvre. Rashomon tells the story of a samurai’s murder that takes place in the forest and the narrative moves forward with the testimonies by four eyewitnesses who each give their own version of what truly transpired in the wood with the subjective interpretations of the crime being divergent and even conflicting with each other. The main story which frames the four little tales divulged by the respective number of characters (the Bandit, the Wife, the Husband, and the Woodcutter) is the debate between the Priest, the Woodcutter, and the Commoner at the Rashomon gate. The audience is left alone to decide which story seems more plausible, given the circumstances as the plot progresses. Kurosawa weaves the four sub-stories together in a masterful manner, using his auteur skills in order to create a mise-en-abyme that intends to reflect some of the most sizzling moral questions which were arisen after the ending of the Second World War, an era when Japan was still counting its scars.

The film gave birth to a newfound term, the so-called “Rashomon Effect”, used to describe the storytelling method in which a single event is interpreted in diverse ways by the characters, with the multiple perspectives opposing one another in an endless play of interpretation that gives prominence to the human subjective experience rather than to the -scientific in its origins- concept of objectivity founded on a consensus. Contemporary films such as Pete Travis’s Vantage Point (2008)and David Fincher’s Gone Girl (2014) are modern films that were heavily influenced by Kurosawa’s masterpiece. One of the classic samples of a framing narrative with many nested stories, Rashomon can be watched for pure pleasure, but also as a lesson in the beginnings of the mise-en-abyme in cinema during the beginning of the second half of 20th century.

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2. Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001):

While there is much controversy regarding the question which is the best film directed by the master of the bizarre and guru of the absurd, David Lynch, the majority of film buffs will always choose Mulholland Drive as the American visual artist’s most shapely outing, despite the narrative complexity that is one of the production’s trademarks. The story contains multiple layers with the protagonist, Betty (Naomi Watts) arriving in Hollywood in order to fulfil her dream of becoming a popular actress. However, things are not as peachy as she initially thinks and the harsh reality of today’s film industry hits Betty with full force, leaving her alone and desperate in the movie’s highly moving conclusion. Betty’s infatuation with Rita (Laura Harring) is another of the film’s central themes, and it is only in the finale, which still today remains notorious for its ambiguity and polysemy, that the audience gets a clear picture of what happened to both the two female leads. Those are the core motifs encompassing the various distinctive story threads that often take the form of dreams, more precisely Betty’s dreams, and it is only after the final climax that the audience can dissect this majestic experience and discern the truth from the imaginary, the real from the fantastic.

Mulholland Drive is a prime example of a dream-within-a-dream film that excels in framing its main storyline with several surreal sequences which are interposed in the main narrative. A few years later, Lynch released his magnum opus, Inland Empire, a movie that defies explanation as I challenge all film fanatics to make some sort of sense after watching it for the first time. Mulholland Drive can be entirely cut to pieces and explained with each scene possessing its own unique significance in the narrative’s mosaic, a testament to the fact that the mise-en-abyme technique has unlimited potential for creating spectacular, diachronic movies.

Mulholland Drive is also pictured at the top of this article.

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3. Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010):

There is no chance of drafting a list about special narrative techniques in film that wouldn’t include at least one title directed by one of the most renowned creators of our times, Christopher Nolan. Nolan developed this film for more than a decade, an indicator of the project’s gravitas, and what was originally intended to be a typical corporate espionage flick took a radical turn when the American director realized that diving into people’s dreams offers a vast array of opportunities narrative-wise. The film revolves around Cobb (Leonardo di Caprio) and his team of experts who are assigned with the task to plant a specific idea into the mind of a target, the son and potential inheritor of an ailing tycoon, Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy). To do so, Cobb will have to enlist the help of a dream “architect”, Ariadne (Elliot Page) who will devise a series of dream stages, each corresponding to gradually deeper phases of sleep. There are three dream levels, or else three nested stories, and each one of them retains its autonomy without, nevertheless, at any time becoming fully independent of the main, frame narrative. There was a heated debate in respect to the open-ended finale that forced us, the audience, to answer the big question: Was everything that we witnessed onscreen a big dream-within-a dream story? Is Cobb still dreaming? Will his personal totem continue spinning after the end credits begin to roll?

There is evidence to suggest that the top, once used by Cobb’s deceased wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard), eventually stops spinning. This means that Cobb indeed manages to return safely home to his family, shaking off the dreaming mode once and for all. The dream-within-a-dream format renders Inception an eminent example of the use of the mise en abyme technique: the interpolated, consecutive dream sequences reveal layer upon layer of the complex narrative development as the main characters fall deeper into a state of heavy sleep. Nolan had already proven his total command over both using evolving narrative structures and employing divergent techniques/tropes, as it is visible in Memento (2000), featuring a story told backwards by a protagonist suffering from anterograde amnesia, a condition that forbids him to create short-term memories. The director had created a spider-web of mise-en-abyme that brings forth the questioning of the protagonist’s/narrator’s reliability. The ending belongs to a film anthology, and the same can be said about the dénouement of Inception.