The Traditional Construction Of Narrativity In Hitchcock's The Master Of Suspense

“I did one thing in that picture that I should never have done, to put in a flashback that was a lie”
To understand why Hitchcock believed that he should never have put in a flashback that was a lie, requires an understanding of the traditional construction of narrativity. Defined by Braudy and Cohen as “the process by which a perceiver actively constructs a story from the fictional data provided by the narrative medium” (83), narrativity relies on the relationships between narrative structure, narrator or narration, and the narratee.
Narrative structure is traditionally made up of two parts the story and the plot. Story describes the events as they are told to or seen by the audience. Plot is what happened in chronological order within the story world (see figure). The distinction between story and plot is further defined by No Film School’s Justin

Part of what makes Cooper’s unreliable narration work is the narrative expectations for suspense. Often called “The Master of Suspense,” Hitchcock was known for letting his viewers “play god” by giving them privileged information that the characters on screen don’t have in order to harness the audience's expectations and anticipation. Casetti described this as providing the audience with suspicion, the tools needed to construct a narrative and the motivations of characters (70). Since Cooper and Hitchcock withhold the correct information until near the end of the film they intentionally let viewer build the wrong story and experience a surprise deception. Surprise deceptions, such as the one found in Stage Fright, were not done in the Classic Hollywood Cinema and when paired with traditional models of trust in film open up many layers of exploration into the reaction of the