a recent contribution to this thread notes that unreliable narration in the novel is easier to pull off than it is in cinema because "in a film you have objective reality in front of you all the time" this is an issue that was debated extensively on the list, perhaps a year ago, and this view was a widely shared one . . . but i think it's crucial to keep in mind ed o'neill's very acute observation that in cinema the main instrument of narration is not [ever] the voice, even an ostensibly omniscient voice over, on the sound track but always the images themselves . . . . thus in the interesting but somewhat misleading example of don lockwood's narrative at the start of SITR we have an example of absolutely reliable cinematic narration [in the image track] telling us [the audience] quite unambiguously that lockwood is lying to HIS audience, even while the film is being completely reliable with ITS audience . . . much more interesting, but still not quite to the point, are the two extraordinary films by terrence malick in each of which the voice over is subtly but profoundly skewed in ways that are not immediately apparent . . . thus a naive viewer of those films might well incline to take those voice-overs at face value, unlike the naive viewer of SITR who would immediately recognize that lockwood is lying . . . but to the extent that malick's images provide ample [if not imediately obvious] evidence of the inadequacy of views provided in the voice over, the film ultimately provides reliable narration . . . and indeed it could be argued [i would argue] that at the heart of both of malick's films is the disjunction between reality and conventionally banal ways of appropriating it . . . but the malick films at least raise an important point . . . the only way we could EVER know that a narration is unreliable, in fiction or film, is if the narrative itself contains some seed to clue us to that unreliability . . . otherwise, while we might not agree with what the narrator says -- or what the narrating character shows [cf. REEFER MADNESS] -- we would have to allow that within the diegesis the narration is quite reliable . . . this thread needs a good deal more attention . . . of course a good place to start is with booth/chatman, but there is more to be said, and i hope despite pressures of a new AY screen-L'ers will find the time and inclination to try to say it mike frank ---- Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite http://www.tcf.ua.edu/screensite