Narrative

Barth's Codes - " a galexy of signifiers, not a structure of signifields" Barthe's is basicly saying that text is a tangled ball of threads which need unraveling so we can seperate the colour. Barth has three main codes: Action, Symbolic and Enigma.

Todorov - The disruption of equilibrium by this he means that a charecter or an action causes an effect which disturbs the state of normality. The below graph shows the disruption of normality throughout a film, the peaks show the disruption and the flat lines show the normality in the film the prestige we see the disruption or normality when the bird is put into the cage as the normal life of a bird is free and outside.

Propp - Propp is a Russian who studied Russian folk & fairy tails and he then decided that every single character in any narrative has been used before. He narrowed these characters down to 8 main types :-

1. The hero
2. The villain
3. The donor
4. The dispatcher
5. The false hero
6. The helper
7. The princess
8. The princess father

In the film the prestige we see a few of the above characters that Propp discovered. We see the villain who doesn't rescue the magician who falls into the water, we also think we saw the hero who we think is the monition in the water.

Levi-Strauss - Believes that after studying hundreds of myths and legends and he observed that we make sense of the world, people and events by seeing and using binary opposites. some examples of binary opposites that we see every day are: 

1.  Good and evil
2. Black and white
3. Old and young
4. Wealthy and poor

in the prestige we see some binary opposites such as male and female and old and young whilst the girl and the wise man are talking.

Applying Barthes Narrative Theory

In the opening scene of the prestige we see these three codes. Firstly we see action, with the magic tricks making the bird and the man dissapear, this creates action because they both dissapear suddenly. Seccondly we see the enigma code which makes us ask questions, who was the magition? Who was the young girl? Do they survive?. Finally we see the symbolic code like the birds can be a symbol for young life and the clothing is a symbol of the era in which the film is set.