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Invisible Storytellers

Name: Invisible Storytellers
Author: Sarah Kozloff

Sarah Kozloff

180 pages
English
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eBook - PDF

Invisible Storytellers

Sarah Kozloff

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About This Book

"Let me tell you a story, " each film seems to offer silently as its opening frames hit the screen. But sometimes the film finds a voice—an off-screen narrator—for all or part of the story. From Wuthering Heights and Double Indemnity to Annie Hall and Platoon, voice-over narration has been an integral part of American movies. Through examples from films such as How Green Was My Valley, All About Eve, The Naked City, and Barry Lyndon, Sarah Kozloff examines and analyzes voice-over narration. She refutes the assumptions that words should only play a minimal role in film, that "showing" is superior to "telling, " or that the technique is inescapably authoritarian (the "voice of god"). She questions the common conception that voice-over is a literary technique by tracing its origins in the silent era and by highlighting the influence of radio, documentaries, and television. She explores how first-person or third-person narration really affects a film, in terms of genre conventions, viewer identification, time and nostalgia, subjectivity, and reliability. In conclusion she argues that voice-over increases film's potential for intimacy and sophisticated irony.

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Information

Publisher

University of California Press

Year

1989

ISBN

9780520909663

Edition

Topic

Media & Performing Arts

Subtopic

Film & Video

The

Prejudices

against

Voice-Over 

Narration

21

How

Green

Was

My

Valley.

Huw

[voice-over):

After

dinner 

when 

dishes

had

been

washed,

the

box

was

brought

to

the

table

for

the

spending 

money

to

be

handed 

out.

money.

This 

overlapping 

relates

to

the

cherishing

of

these 

moments

by

the

older, 

nostalgic

narrator—we

linger 

over 

these 

moments 

contentedly, 

sharing

the

double 

perspective

of

the

reflecting

narrating-I

and

the

participating 

child.

This 

lingering 

forces

the

spectator

to

view 

such 

simple 

familial 

details

as

em-

blematic

of

all

that

is

lost;

as

Guido 

Fink 

remarks,

"Things

must

be

twice-told

in

order

to

be

safely

redeemed

from 

time

and

decay."

28

Far

from 

being

an

egregious

fault,

this 

overlap

is

a

modest 

plum.

"The 

Last

Resort

of

the

Incompetent"

Is

it

[voice-over

narration]

a

meaningful

conven-

tion

.

.

.

Or

is

it

an

emergency

cord

the

filmmaker

pulls

when

he

or

she

cannot

think

of

another

way

to

begin

a

movie

or

deliver

some

important

piece

of

information?

Bernard 

Dick,

Anatomy

of

Film

According

to

another 

common 

view, 

since 

real 

filmmakers 

know 

that

film

is

essentially

a

visual 

medium,

it

is

the

unimaginative

and

incompetent

who

Cover
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 The Prejudices against Voice-Over Narration
2 Ancestors, Influences, and Development
3 First-Person Narrators
4 Third-Person Narrators
5 Irony in Voice-Over Films
Conclusion
Notes
Filmography
Bibliography of Works Cited
Index

Citation styles for Invisible Storytellers

APA 6 Citation

Kozloff, S. (1989). Invisible Storytellers (1st ed.). University of California Press. Retrieved from https://www.perlego.com/book/550991/invisible-storytellers-pdf (Original work published 1989)

Chicago Citation

Kozloff, Sarah. (1989) 1989. Invisible Storytellers. 1st ed. University of California Press. https://www.perlego.com/book/550991/invisible-storytellers-pdf.

Harvard Citation

Kozloff, S. (1989) Invisible Storytellers. 1st edn. University of California Press. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/550991/invisible-storytellers-pdf (Accessed: 14 October 2022).

MLA 7 Citation

Kozloff, Sarah. Invisible Storytellers. 1st ed. University of California Press, 1989. Web. 14 Oct. 2022.