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narrative schema clarifies how we organize information, it 'does not directly address such
problems as a perceiver's fascination, emotional reaction or participation in a story'
(Branigan, 1992:16). One of the objectives of this study is to investigate how emotional
responses are occasionally derived - indirectly - from the frustration of the viewers'
attempted schematization of Bertolucci's narratives, and also from a systematic analysis of
the aesthetics and visual techniques used by the director to engender emotional responses.
Branigan also links narrative causality to human mental schemata, individuals
evaluating the causes behind sequences of events in real life and those in fictional narratives
on the basis of the 'relative likelihood 7 of particular events appearing together (Branigan,
1992: 26). He argues that viewers perceive narrative events not only 'as a chain of causes and
effects' linked together and triggered by local determinants, but viewers also draw upon their
cultural knowledge in evaluating which actions are plausibly compatible with each other,
given 'our general knowledge of social interaction' (Branigan, 1992: 27). Branigan uses a
cognitive psychological distinction to differentiate the way we perceive what occurs on
screen; one process, functioning in a 'bottom-up s direction, is centred on the data seen on
screen, whose features are perceived and organized in terms of colour, motion, aural pitch,
and other qualities, with the viewer 'utilizing little or no associated memory' during this
process (Branigan, 1992: 37). By contrast, what he terms 'top-down' perceptual processes are
based on the spectators acquired knowledge and mental schemas, and these work 'top-down'
upon the screen data, using the spectator's expectations and goals as a way of organizing and
making sense of what is seen; this leads to the making of hypotheses and the creation of
narrative expectations (Branigan, 1992: 37). The top-down process is facilitated or hindered
by the way the story is presented - its 'narration'; certain forms of narration can complicate
the procedure of 'acquiring knowledge' about the story (Branigan, 1992: 65).
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