What is Flashback and Racconto

These two words are commonly used in the world of movie theater, especially among screenwriting professionals. In both cases it is a technique narrative in which a story is told referring to the past. However, these are two different techniques.

Analyzing the flashback

This English term has two different parts: flash and back. The first indicates that something appears and disappears and the second refers to the past. Therefore, it is a return to an earlier time. The purpose of this technique is very diverse: to better understand the story of a character, to alter the chronological order to delve into a story or provide relevant clues for the viewer to better understand events that will occur in the future.

In this narrative technique there is a momentary interruption in order to take a leap into the past. In the flashback the interruption is presented quickly and suddenly and then continues the narration describing the present moment. This resource is frequent in those scenes in which a character momentarily remembers an episode from her past and then continues the narrative. In the world of

literature the term analepsis is used to express the same idea.

To the margin of the term used, retrospective narration is a common resource in cinema, but also in novel, television series, the comic or the theater. Focusing on the world of cinema, there are abundant examples of this retrospective modality: The Godfather II, The Matrix or Reservoir Dogs. If in the cinematographic story the time jump is oriented towards the future, the technique is known as flashforward.

Analyzing the racconto

Of Italian origin, it means story or story. Therefore, it is not about a flashback but about telling a whole story.

With this resource a previous episode or experience is also recovered, but in this case it is not done suddenly but in a more leisurely way. Thus, the racconto is a prolonged retrospective that allows us to tell something in more detail.

After the narrative parenthesis, the story is resumed in the present moment. This resource in a television series can last one or more chapters.

In the movie "Titanic" this technique is used, since the film begins with an old woman who returns to the place where the ship sank and at that moment the story begins.

In literature, a clear example of racconto is the one presented in the novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel García Márquez.

Fotolia photos: Sudok1 / Sangoiri

Themes in Flashback and Racconto