Early films appealed to audiences because they often referred to familiar stories, though they tended to merely present simple moving images. Therefore, as film form developed, filmmakers generally remained loyal to common themes, creating adaptations of well-known novels and stories. This trend of familiarity changed in the beginning of the twentieth century, when, in order to capitalize on the growing culture of leisure time, moviemakers developed more complex stories that could attract larger audiences and keep them in their seats for longer periods.

Two important industrial events stand out as catalysts in the development of narrative cinematography: the introduction of film scripts to prepare movie narratives and the advancement of narrative dialogue through sound. As the length of films increased, film scripts and screenwriters were needed. Scripts, or screenplays, are the written narrative from which films are made.

Silent films did have a limited amount of dialogue in the form of intertitles, but without the sound of voices and effects, they lacked dimension and character development. The introduction of synchronized sound film in 1927 allowed film narratives to craft more intricate and detailed characters whose dialogue added more in-depth psychological and social dimensions. The continuing evolution of the relationship between sound and narrative helped to solidify and fine-tune the fundamental shape of classical Hollywood narrative in the 1930s and 1940s. During this period, the structure of this increasingly dominant narrative form became firmly established according to three basic features: 1) A focus on one or two central characters; 2) A linear plot driven by the central characters; and 3) Action developed according to a realistic cause-and-effect logic.

World War II disrupted the classical Hollywood narrative, and in its aftermath, various art cinemas emerged in Europe in the 1950s and 1960s. This new form of cinema questioned many of the cultural perspectives and values that existed before the war. A number of new wave cinemas subverted traditional narrative and aesthetic forms and turned away from “neat” objective realism and toward more subjective, “messy” storytelling techniques.

Contemporary film narratives represent a diverse set of practices, but three are particularly significant: narrative reflexivity, or calling attention to the narrative techniques employed by the filmmaker in the plot; creating movies based on amusement park rides and the thrills associated with them; and incorporating effects from video games and digital technologies.