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September 1995, Week 1

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Subject:
From:
Donald Larsson <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 5 Sep 1995 12:23:37 -0600
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Lang Thompson inquires:
"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."
 
In addition to films already mentioned by others, there's NO WAY OUT, the
remake of THE BIG CLOCK, with Kevin Costner. The story is framed as a
flashback, but a revelation in the final scene of the frame requires one to
rethink everything that has come before--not in terms of its veracity but
in terms of the main character's motivations.
 
The question itself, though, raises the more problematic question of what
constitutes the film "
narrator" in the first place. Is it the implied organizing and presenting
consciousness? Is it an anthropomorphization of the "camera" (which usualy
also means editing and sound)? Is it the apparent focus of the main character?
Is it to be confined to the much rarer instance of a first-person voiceover
narrator?
 
See Seymour Chatman's STORY AND DISCOURSE and COMING TO TERMS (as well as
David Bordwell's take on Chatman in NARRATIVE IN THE FICTION FILM) for some
of the difficulties raised by these issues.
 
Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)
 
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