![]() However, this introduction of a narrator-traditionally a literary role-into a theory of point of view is problematic, for “the narrator does not ‘see’ the events of the fictional world, but recounts them he or she does not observe from a post within the fictional world, but recalls events from a position outside the fictional universe” (Stam et al 86). Equivalent agents have been noted in film, with the filmic narrator regarded as narrating the diegesis of the film, functioning, to use Genette’s terminology, as an “extradiegetic” (228). He describes the narrator as “omeone recounting something: the act of narrating in itself” (26). As will be discussed below with reference to Daniel Frampton, the former does not necessarily entail the latter, and in fact this showing activity of an agent is incompatible with immanency (involving as it does an extradiegetic showing by an immanent agent), leading Frampton (and others) to reject filmic narrators in favour of a more appropriate model of filmic agency.Īccounts of filmic narrators are derived from the work of Gerard Genette, who not only distinguished between discourse (expression) and story (content) within narrative, but also introduced a third aspect of narrative, emphasising the importance of narrative agency. Although Chatman claims that his narrator is immanent to the film, he does not, however, sufficiently follow through the consequences of positing an immanent agency, and how this can be reconciled with the showing of film, instead retaining the literary concept of a narrator who does this showing. A parallel between Chatman’s narrator and Metz’s grand imagier can be identified here, in that both conceptions posit a narrating agent external to the diegesis who is responsible for the presentation of the film. (211n)įor Chatman, a narrator is responsible for the communication of narrative in film. ![]() Neither is it a voiceover that introduces the action, though that voiceover may be one of its devices. It is not the filmmaker or production team but bears the same relation to those real people as does the narrator to the real author of a novel. The transmitting agency, immanent to the film, which presents the images we see and the sounds we hear. One of the most comprehensive arguments for the necessity of a filmic narrator is provided by Seymour Chatman, who elaborates the narratological ideas of Metz. This is a function that is explored with increasing sophistication throughout subsequent film theory. We have here an early conception of narrational filmic agency, positing an external agent responsible for the film. ![]() Metz identifies a grand imagier who is responsible for the selection and ordering of the film images, which he locates as “situated somewhere behind the film, and representing the basis that makes the film possible” (21). The work of Christian Metz introduced the idea that film narrative can be analysed in terms of a diegetic telling as well as having a mimetic basis, with analogical images of reality arranged to tell a story. Film-Thinking and Narrative Indeterminacy Jimmy Billingham
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