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September 1995, Week 1

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From:
lang thompson <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sat, 2 Sep 1995 03:46:21 GMT
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I've been wondering how many examples there can be of the film
equivalent of the unreliable narrator.  (This was prompted by a recent
movie that i won't name so that its surprises won't be spoiled.)  I'm
not thinking just of voice-over narration but something a bit more
encompassing where scenes that are presented as "real" turn out to be
either imaginary or misinterpreted.  In literature, this device is
fairly common; the most notorious instance may be Agatha Christie's The
Murder of Roger Ackroyd but also The Blithedale Romance and Browning's
Sordello are standard examples.  (Maybe you could include narrators
unreliable because of their limited information; Henry James
specialized in these such as Turn of the Screw, Figure in the Carpet or
Daisy Miller.) The catch of course is that a film story isn't tied so
closely to one consciousness:  there's a separation between a
narrator/protagonist and the material itself.  On the other hand, there
are numerous instances of filmic hallucinations, dream sequences or
films/plays within the film.  But these are either obviously not real
or soon revealed as fake.  What i'd like to find are films where entire
scenes seem to be real within the story though later they turn out to
have been impossible or illusory.  In the recent movie that i haven't
named, there's a consistent story constructed by the end of the movie,
all of which the viewer has seen.  But there's also a revelation at the
end which shows that some of the scenes the viewer has seen never
actually happened at all, though until that revelation you had no
reason to doubt them.  Other scenes might not have occurred, at least
in the way they were shown.  Rashomon is an obvious comparison but that
film is fairly simplistic in its choices and presentation.  Any way, my
point to a rambling post is that such uncertainty is much more rare in
film than literature.
 
Lang Thompson
 
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