Graham Heys requests: "Lately, I have been wriggling with the concept of an unreliable narrator. Specifically what precisely constitutes one? In The Usual Suspects, Verbal Kint is clearly an unreliable narrator, as his narrative is exposed as false in the film; but does an unreliable narrator have to be foregrounded as such? For example, in Melville's top gangster hat movie Le Doulos, Silien (Jean-Paul Belmondo) gives an explanation of events which may be considered to be highly dubious but which is nevertheless neither exposed nor countered in the film. Do both of these narrators qualify as 'unreliable', despite their differences? Can anyone point me towards other films or articles , , , " This is a complex subject, which depends in part on how you define "narrator" to begin with. Is the narrator only to be considered a character in the film? What level of "telling" is involved in the unreliability? Is the unreliability an act of deliberate deception, or is the narrator-character unaware of his/her own self-deception? And so on. Two positions on these issues are staked out by David Bordwell in NARRATION IN THE FICTION FILM and by Seymour Chatman in STORY AND DISCOURSE and COMING TO TERMS. Although I think their differences are ultimately grounded in rhetorical figures, they carry on a partial debate with each other in these three books. At least they should give a good sense of the scope of the issue and, of course, they refer to a number of films. Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN) ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]