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September 1995, Week 1

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Subject:
From:
"Edward R. O'Neill" <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 5 Sep 1995 00:32:00 PDT
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  An interesting film in this vein is *Reversal of Fortune*, in which we
see a number of possible reconstructions of events, all narrated, in the
best  *Sunset Boulevard* fashion, by the comatose Sunny von Bulow!
Also, I think that *JFK* is interesting in this respect because
despite its emphasis on evidence such as the Zapruder (sp?) film,
it deliriously reconstructs all kinds of viewpoints on the key traumatic
event of JFK's death.  At one point towards the end Costner's character
describes something which *might* have happened, which we see at the
same time.
  It seems to me that in these two cases there is a kind of attempt to
produce modalities of cinematic representation *other than* the
indicative "it is" or the past tense "it was."
  Also interesting might be Lang's *The Woman in the Window* (along
the *...Owl Creek Bridge* lines), *Sudden Fear* with Joan Crawford (which
includes an imagined sequence) and *Pursued*, which I rewatched
recently and which is mostly told in flashback but we see events
where the intradiegetci narrator couldn't possibly have been (which is
not so uncommon).
  I find Gerard Genette's discussion of these issues in literature much
more convincing than those of the Anglo-American tradition of theorizing
about the novel.  (The book is *Narrative Discourse*.)  Genette
distinguishes between mood and voice, where mood is our access to
narrative information and voice is who's telling the story.  Thus
in the famous Jamesian "story told as if from a character's point-of-
view but in the third person" the mood involves the restriction of
point-of-view, whereas the person involves the fact that a non-diegetic
narrator is speaking, rather than someone within the story.
  A very complex and interesting  topic!  No doubt there are so
many examples of such a great variety that it is difficult to find
exactly the kind of examples one is searching for.
Sincerely,
Edward R. O'Neill
UCLA
 
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