The legacy of V.Ya. Propp, film studies and cinematic identity

Abstract

The historical-genetic connection between the narrative structures of fairy tales and initiation rites was defined by V.Ya. Propp in “Historical Roots of the Magic Fairy Tale” (1946) and became a milestone in the development of both humanitarian knowledge in general and the science of cinema in particular. The scholar’s idea that the composition of a magic fairy tale goes back to the initiation rite and the myths accompanying it as a source of vital information, and in the cultural and historical context of the ritual practices of primitive societies and life itself, is no less significant than the discovery of the linear order of the syntagmatic deployment of the functions of the actors constituting the invariant set of motifs of a magic fairy tale, made by him in “Morphology of the Fairy Tale” (1928). The article uses the example of Frank Perry’s film “The Swimmer” (1968) to prove the usefulness of both Propp’s books for the development of film analysis as an analysis of cinematic identity.