From Fairy Tale to Screenplay: Working with Plot Genotypes by Terrance Patrick Murphy (review)

In 1928 Vladimir Propp published his work on the functional analysis of Russian folktales titled Morphology of the Folktale, in which he asserted that regardless of fluidity in characters, setting, and so on, the thirty-one functions (or actions) performed within the plot of a tale are the same, resulting in “an amazing uniformity” in the structure of folktales. Although Terrance Patrick Murphy believes (as many scholars now do) that the reach of Propp’s theory is overstated, he builds on previous work (2008) to support his claim that it is “possible to reconcile the work of Syd Field [a late-twentieth-century screenplay analyst] with that of Vladimir Propp in order to create a better method of analyzing a typical Hollywood screenplay” (27). Through a “friendly critique of the original model” Murphy develops a “new set of plot genotypes, each with its own accompanying cast of characters” that he intends the reader to make use of in developing a better understanding of plot genotype theory and the ways in which movie screenplays function in relation to European wonder tales (5).

From Fairy Tale to Film Screenplay is a relatively short read that is organized into thirteen chapters. Murphy begins the book with a discussion of the brief academic history of screenplay analysis, which did not take off until the 1970s, involving such individuals as Syd Field, Kristin Thomson, and David Bordwell (2). He introduces a plot genotype as the “functional structure or compositional schema of a particular story” (4). Murphy then summarizes the work of Vladimir Propp and his contemporaries before providing a Proppian analysis of Charles Perrault’s “Cinderella.” Chapters 5 through 12 function as pairs: each odd-numbered chapter discusses the modified Proppian genotype of a classic fairy tale (“The Robber Bridegroom,” “The Frog Prince,” “Puss-in-Boots,” and “Little Red Riding Hood”), and the corresponding even-numbered chapter comparatively analyzes the screenplay of a Hollywood film that makes use of the same genotype (Wrong Turn [2003], Pretty Woman [1990], The Mask [1994], and Psycho [1960], respectively). The analysis and discussion of each of these chapters concludes with a chart clearly laying out the breakdown of the plot genotype and cast of characters that can be compared to Propp’s original work. Murphy concludes with a brief functional analysis of Chinatown (1974), the film included in Syd Field’s Screenplay: The Foundations of Screen-writing (1979) and the opening chapter of this book, bringing it full circle.

Murphy addresses the purpose of From Fairy Tale to Film Screenplay quite well through his selection of European fairy tales and their film counterparts. As he states after his functional analysis of “Cinderella,” “While it is certainly possible to see that quite a number of plots share the same basic plot genotype evident in Cinderella, it is evident that not all plots do” (28). His choice of the aforementioned fairy tales, along with his base analysis of “Cinderella,” allows Murphy to demonstrate convincingly his changes to the functional analysis of plot genotype versus the original genotype. This is especially true in his inclusion of “The Frog Prince” and Pretty Woman, which Murphy points out is often (mis)interpreted as another telling of “Cinderella.”

Along with suggestions for better-suited terms, one of the most convincing pieces of Murphy’s work is his suggestion of plot “alleles” within the genotype. This biological metaphor defines a plot allele as “a different form of a particular plot function at the same place on the plot genotype” (29). Again, Murphy’s choice of tales allows a considerable demonstration of this theory, which he also connects to film through the difference in a romantic comedy screenplay versus that of a horror film. For example, he discusses the “pivotal eighth function” of lack in “Cinderella,” compared with the eighth function of villainy in “The Robber Bridegroom” and the “double plot function allele” in “The Frog Prince” (29–30). These options, or alleles, are...