1. Telling tales portmanteau style
Sin City, Pulp Fiction, Crash and Broken Flowers have all been described as ‘cult movies with
original storylines’. How much is this down to the less-than-usual way they tell their multiple
tales? Symon Quy gets to grips with films that work their audiences just that little bit harder...
A dictionary definition of the word ‘portmanteau’ is:
a French bag that opens up in to several parts.
This is a useful image to bear in mind if we consider the application of the word to movies.
The word is also used in the field of English grammar to describe newly-created words that condense
or blend objects or ideas. Portmanteau words are formed by combining two other words: taking the
prefix of one word and using the suffix of the other to form a like-sounding word. So, for instance, a
nonebrity (from nonentity and celebrity) describes a person with no talent or importance who has
somehow become famous, a Big Brother contestant, for example! This same sense of
experimentation and playfulness occurs in portmanteau films.
What are portmanteau films?
A portmanteau film then might be defined as a ‘collection of inter-related stories in a single vessel’.
Sometimes called ensemble or anthology films, each portmanteau movie will typically consist of four
to five short narratives connected by a ‘frame story’.
Portmanteau films offer an alternative way of telling stories to the classic realist narrative that portrays
‘events happening to characters, told in linear (chronological) time’. Classic Hollywood cinema or the
classic narrative structure of film consists of three main phases:
1. Equilibrium
2. Disruption or disequilibrium
3. Equilibrium re-established
In classic narrative structure there is a linear (straight line) sequence of events. A non-traditional
narrative structure might involve non-linear structures where there may be flashbacks, dream
sequences or separate sections or scenes of the film that start from the same point in time. A
portmanteau film might attempt to interfere with these modes of storytelling and ‘take issue’ with the
conventions of traditional forms.
Portmanteau films are commonly comprised of extended vignettes. These are short sequences;
snapshots of a moment in time. Vignettes have been defined as short compositions that show
considerable skill; they are especially designed with little or no plot or larger narrative structure, but
are descriptive or evocative in nature.
Portmanteau films display a developed understanding of the conventions of storytelling and
complicate the structure of a narrative by working with audience expectations of plots and stories.
• ‘Plot’ refers to the ordering of actions and events as they actually appear in the film in their closed
and irreversible sequence.
• ‘Story’ refers to the spectator’s mental reconstruction of these actions and events into a
chronological and meaningful pattern.
Typically, a portmanteau film consists of several mostly unrelated short films which are unified by a
‘point of commonality’. Sometimes each one is directed by a different director. For example, New York
Stories comprises three short films about the city, brought together by the American heavyweight
directors Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese and Francis Coppola.

2. On other occasions, a particular place might be represented by differing points of view. Four Rooms is
quartet of stories written and directed by hot filmmakers Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Allison
Anders and Alexandre Rockwell. The anthology is linked by the hotel in which all the events are
taking place, and by Tim Roth as a bellboy flitting from scene to scene.
Sometimes there is one ‘top-level’ story in a portmanteau film, which leads into the various sub-
stories. For instance, the opening sequence of Slacker sees director Richard Linklater spouting
abstract teenage philosophy to an uninterested cab-driver. It is this exposition sequence, however,
that provides the film with the structure around which to frame its narrative.
Another variation of the portmanteau form is when different sub-narratives share a common incident
(usually a turning point). This is the case in Mystery Train where the sound of a gunshot towards the
end of the film allows viewers to link the various stories together. The film’s audience is able to
participate in the process of making meaning and only when they see the gun actually being fired can
they make sense of the time-frame of the movie.
Another common feature of portmanteau films is their connection with literary sources. Sin City, for
instance is constructed from three stories from Miller’s graphic novellas and Short Cuts was framed
around the writings of the short story writer, Raymond Carver.
Where have portmanteau films come from?
The development of this less-than-usual storytelling form was, partially at least, related to the
industrial mode of exhibition that emerged as cinemas worked to secure larger audiences and
maximum profits. The standard exhibition format of movies of around 100 minutes allowed schedulers
to block screenings in two-hour time-slots. Compiling several linked short films into one programme
maintained this industrial directive. Indeed, in the Sixties and Seventies, portmanteau films were a
common form of popular cinema in Britain – partially responsible for keeping our ailing national
cinema afloat. The classic British film production companies Hammer and Amicus, for example,
produced a number of compilation films that saw short horror films linked by narrators such as Peter
Cushing. Amicus made this mini-genre all its own, via the likes of such crowd-pullers as Tales from
the Crypt, From Beyond the Grave and The House That Dripped Blood.
What’s the appeal?
So what are the attractions of the portmanteau film form to those who make and act in films?
• Production companies are more easily able to afford stars if individuals take a smaller part, yet they
are still able to use the stars’ images to attract audiences.
• The level of financial risk attached to these films is reduced in comparison with single-star ‘vehicle’
movies.
• Actors can spread the load of the marketing responsibilities and appeal to wider global markets in
the promotion of the film.
• Directors are able to experiment with alternative ways of telling stories and hope to devise a unique
selling point that will make their film stand out from other releases.
• Ensemble casts allow movie producers to combine the screen images of established ‘A’ list stars
with emerging talent and broaden the appeal of their film across several ‘audience demographics’.
• Viewers have to work to create meaning in these films and the notion of ‘active audiences’ has been
associated with innovation in filmmaking.
• Movies can be associated with high-art forms through conventions such as ‘chapters’. Narratives
can be broken up into sequences which are indicated through on-screen words (intertitles) or some
other type of signalled transition.
Auteur directors
Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller share the director credit on Sin City, though Rodriguez had to
surrender his membership of the Directors’ Guild of America for this to happen. The DGA requires
that films should be credited as the work of a sole individual in an attempt to maintain the elevated
status of the director in film production. Rodriguez, however, wished to credit Miller as the originator of
the material, and also involved his long-time collaborator Quentin Tarantino in the direction of
particular scenes in the movie. Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction remains the single most succesful
portmanteau film in the history of American film production.

3. Jim Jarmusch has spent most of his career as a director and screenwriter in the American
independent sector. Jarmusch recently broke in to the mainstream with the Oscar-nominated movie
Broken Flowers. This film casts Bill Murray as the middle-aged bachelor who is prompted to
investigate the lives of a series of old flames. His encounters with these past girlfriends are filmed as
individual sequences. The movie is ‘topped and tailed’ with ‘framing’ sequences that provide the
structure of the film.
Indeed Jarmusch is a director who has experimented with the portmanteau form in many of its
manifestations. Mystery Train experimented with sound as the ‘point of commonality’ between
sequences that might be called extended character pieces. Night on Earth’s strapline: ‘Five taxis. Five
cities. One night.’ reveals the structure of this movie (unusual even by the standards of portmanteau
film). Shooting in several countries enabled Jarmusch to secure funding from the nations involved,
and to attract an international cast that included Winona Ryder, Roberto Benigni and Beatrice Dalle. It
also ensured a wider release for his film than his previous movies had been able to secure. Coffee
and Cigarettes is a series of eleven short films that is constructed around the unlikely themes of
drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. As might be expected, some of the films are better than
others, but it is the emphasis on character and casting that makes the assemblage achieve its overall
effect.
So, if you are searching for ideas for your WJEC Film Studies, FS4 unit on Auteur research, you
might try investigating one of those from the list of movies below to see the ways in which they tell
their tales. In your opinion, does this style of film-making add up to more than the sum of its parts?
Symon Quy runs the PGCE in Media Studies at Central School of Speech and Drama, London.
Follow it up
A selection of portmanteau films worth investigating:
• New York Stories (dir. Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese & Francis Coppola) US, 1989
• Slacker (dir. Richard Linklater) US, 1991
• Short Cuts (dir. Robert Altman) US, 1993
• Pulp Fiction (dir. Quentin Tarantino) US, 1994
• Four Rooms (dir. Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Allison Anders and Alexandre Rockwell) US,
1995
• Magnolia (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson) US, 2000
• Lantana (dir. Ray Lawrence) Australia, 2003
• Crash (dir. Paul Haggis) US, 2004
• Sin City (dir. Robert Rodriquez, Frank Miller, Quentin Tarantino) US, 2005
Jim Jarmusch – Master of the portmanteau form:
• Mystery Train (dir. Jim Jarmusch) US, 1989
• Night on Earth (dir. Jim Jarmusch) US, 1992
• Coffee and Cigarettes (dir. Jim Jarmusch) US, 2003
• Broken Flowers (dir. Jim Jarmusch) US, 2005
Useful websites
www.myclassnotes.net/Topics/Film/FilmNarrative/ClassHollyCinema.html
This article first appeared in MediaMagazine 17.
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