Introduction
Literary and cinematic narration structures have always been compared to define whether they are symmetrical or asymmetrical. Although there are many analogies between film and literature, mostly their narrative methods differ. The crucial distinction lies in the idea of the narrator and its role in storytelling. Wilson defines a cinematic narrator as “a fictional figure… who addresses the audience through the image track and thereby ‘tells’ the film narrative visually”(127). This figure can be either explicit, as a character of the story, or implicit. While cinema uses explicit narrators less often, the role of implicit ones is also different. This can be explained not by the restriction and inability of various media to narrate, but rather by the authors’ desires to tell the story in different ways. Although cinematic narration can be paralleled to literary storytelling, in reality, their narrative structures differ due to the emphasis on different media and their capacity to narrate.
Narrative, Narration, and Narrators in Art
Definition of the Key Concepts
Examination of narration and the discussion about who performs it is impossible without understanding the narrative’s nature. In its broadest meaning, narrative can be described as a story being told by any object of art to the audience. It is the arrangement or positioning of events, words, musical chords, or painted elements that create the composition. However, the narrative should not be mixed with a plot, as it is not a mere sequence of events, but rather something that makes them tell a story. Through these interdependencies, the narrative does not merely present the events but can set and answer a variety of more complex questions. According to Gaut, any art object becomes known through narration or the way of storytelling (197). The way the audience perceives a narrative depends on the specific choice of methods and techniques that render it. Narration introduces the story from a particular angle or perspective, from which the author desires the audience to see it. As it is a dynamic process, it uses different rhythm, tempo, and detalization to create a flow of the story.
The concept of narrators in different forms of art is one of the most disputable questions. It is assumed that when there is a story, and it is being told to the audience, there must be some medium rendering it. The narrator is someone inherent to the narrative through whose eyes it is introduced. However, there are stories where no narrator is observed or where there is an omniscient narrator. This type of narrator is often associated with the person who created a narrative, or its implied author. This fact suggests that there are two different ways to tell a story, either using a narrator’s point of view, of rendering it directly from the author to the audience.
Nevertheless, this distinction does not bring simplicity to the question, complicating it even further. The development of art has provided evidence for a variety of ways to use narrators in storytelling. The examples from cinema or literature demonstrate how the narrative point of view can be shifted from one narrator to the other, or disappear altogether. Moreover, different forms of art and their media have various capacities to narrate, which impacts the choice of narrators and their role.
Narration and the Medium
The different ways in which the stories are told are connected to the media used in different art and their power to narrate. Art uses such tools as language, movement, sound, color, and shape. Their combination can create unique imagery, the sequence of which can tell a story. The capacity of different media to narrate defines how narration techniques differ in art. For example, in literature, an author can explain the character’s state of mind in every detail, having the ability to devote even a whole page to an emotion that lasted just a moment. In cinema, however, the same feelings should be expressed through the actor’s movement and facial expression, although the experiments to make them spoken in the voice-over are present even in the cinema.
The question of the cinematic medium and its ability to narrate has often been a subject of discussions as films portray physical reality (Singer 81). The author does not create these objects, and thus, their narrative capacity is assumed to be limited. However, there are several serious arguments against this assumption. As it has been mentioned before, the narrative is not a set of elements, but the way they are connected and presented dynamically. Different angles and perspectives can provide different views on the same object, highlighting the role of composition. Thus, physical objects give an opportunity to narrate in each shot. Moreover, montage and graphical editing magnify the power of the author to transform the reality so that it conveys the desired message.
Cinematic Narration
Definition of Cinematic Narration
The question of narration in cinema is among the central in the philosophy of film. It implies the discussion of how the stories are told in cinema and how they differ from those of other arts. According to Gaut, the nature of the medium plays a crucial role here, as it “conditions cinema as an art” (197). Films are rendered through visual images, sounds, movements, and language. All these elements are independent parts of physical reality, but the narrative brings them together (Singer 81). Cinema, however, is not merely a combination of objects of physical reality. According to Eisenstein, the author’s creative role is magnified in a montage as “the most powerful compositional means of telling a story” (111). Furthermore, editing, graphics, and sounds complete the movie, creating stories from independent parts of physical reality.
Fictional films pose a question, whether someone is mediating the story to the audience or whether people see it directly and immediately. It is evident that some movies have an explicit narrator within a story from whose perspective people see it, but this person rarely narrates during the film. Moreover, some works do not have this type of narrator, being presented by someone outside the story. Does it mean that the audience perceives these films directly? Wilson argues against directedness and immediacy of narration showing the examples in which it can be disrupted, such as in Ophüls’ Letters from an Unknown Woman, where the narrative role constantly shifts (144). Thus, a figure narrating a story must be postulated to the audience to present whose subjective point of view is being manifested.
However, some films still demonstrate someone’s perspective even without explicit narrators. Such an effect is reached by bringing the author in the story and creating his or her narrative presence. In such cases, the author is not a character, but he is heard from time to time, and it is clear that it is he or she who tells the story and manifests the position (Wilson 127). Such a method proves that first-person films being told by a filmmaker-narrator have the right to exist. To understand the possibilities of this approach, it is necessary to reveal what kinds of narrators are possible in cinema and what they bring to films.
Types of Cinematic Narrators
In a broad sense, cinematic narrators can be classified as implicit and explicit. The latter appears in the film directly as its fictional character. They tell a story to the audience through their point of view or a voice-over that presents their thoughts. Such narrators generally do not deliver the whole story, thus, there are no first-person movies seen through the eyes of explicit narrators. That is why the role of narrators in cinema is limited if speaking only about explicit narration. However, the matter should not be taken simply as the question of implicit narrators, and their role remains disputed.
When there is no explicit narrator, the question arises whether films narrate themselves or are presented by implied authors. Moreover, it is assumed that there is an invisible someone inherent to the story from whose point of view people see it. Such mediums that are neither characters nor authors are defined as implicit or visual narrators. Gaut outlines three types of them, such as an invisible observer, a guide, and an image-maker (203). The hypothesis about an invisible observer implies that people see the film through the eyes of some unknown character. However, shots from unrealistic angles do not suggest the possibility of someone seeing them. Moreover, the depiction of the scenes that are meant to be secret does not align with this assumption. What is more important, there is no justification for the use of such a narrator. Such type of narrator performs no role in the narrative and is therefore identical to the author.
The narrator, who is a guide, presents the events on the screen to the audience ‘leading’ the audience through the sequence of audio-visual elements without appearing in the story. The last type of implied narrator, an image-maker, differs from the previous two, as it means the absence of a fictional invisible character. This model explains that the audience does not see the events directly, but rather the images of these events composed and showed by a narrator. Still, the third type also fails to justify the role of such a narrator and its difference from the implied filmmaker.
Therefore, an implicit narrator brings no additional perspective that would discern him or her from the author and performs no meaningful role. Apart from the cases described by Wilson and mentioned above, when the author narrates a story and is heard from time to time, all other cases of implicit narration are performed by implied authors (127). That is why not every narrative requires a narrator when often it is an author who tells a story without mediating it through someone else’s perspective. That is why the role of narrators in cinema is limited to the explicit narrators and first-person authors-narrators who are heard in the film.
Literary and Cinematic Narration
The narratives of literature and cinema are often compared and contrasted. It is mostly because film as a more recent form of art has borrowed some narrative strategies from literature. Narrators in literature are generally present more often than in the cinema having a more significant role in telling stories. However, they are not as ubiquitous as many people think. Literary narrators should not be mixed with focalizers – people whose point of view is presented. Although the narration is restricted to what they see and do, such characters do not necessarily narrate their stories. The implied authors tell them as if ‘from behind’ the characters, guiding them through the events. Focalization is not equal to narration, as it may not present subjective perception. Even the character whose thoughts are presented in detail can be judged objectively by the implied author.
In the cases when literary stories are being depicted in cinema, the transformation of the narrative perspective is of particular interest. The problem is whether a filmmaker should adhere to the literary form strictly and whether it is possible or necessary. Discussing this question, scholars tend to adhere to two different assumptions – symmetry and asymmetry. Symmetry thesis implies that literary and cinematic narration have identical structural features, such as roles of narrators, points of view, or implied authors (Gaut 198). Thus, this theory assumes that representation modes do not alter how the stories are told.
Nevertheless, many scholars believe that the narration structures of literature and cinema cannot be paralleled. Asymmetry thesis is justified by differences in media and representation forms of these arts. According to Gaut, these theorists believe that “cinematic narration is not mediated in the way that literary narration is” (198). The critical difference in these art forms is the epistemic access of a narrator in literature and film, as literary narrators have increased the potential to present their inner subjective state through verbal mediators. Gaut argues that “the nature of the media affects their narrational capacities” (223). This thesis about the inequality of cinematic and literary narration seems valid but requires additional clarification.
The use of different media does not restrict the capacity of films or literature to narrate but instead maximizes other aspects. There are cases of using narrative techniques borrowed from literature in cinema. Theoretically, the whole story can be narrated in a voice-over as in many documentaries, which would make it similar to a literary work. Moreover, modern authors tend to experiment with cinematic modes of representation in literary works. That is why symmetry between literary and cinematic narration technically exists, but in reality, it does not make sense. The use of different media and, thus, a different art form is motivated by the desire to tell the story differently. While literature reveals the narrative from within the mind of a narrator, cinema provides outside visualization. Although cinematic narration can render a story similarly to literature, the filmmakers maximize the media’s capacity to speak visually and thus adhere to different modes of narration.
Conclusion
The comparison of narrative, narration, and narrator in film and literature shows significant parallelism as they can tell the same stories. However, the ways of telling, and especially the roles of narrators differ in these art forms. It can be explained by different media used for storytelling. Literature uses the first-person narrators more widely due to the opportunity to speak for oneself that language gives. Filmmakers, on the contrary, use visual representation to maximize the potential to observe from outside. The audience is more willing to see the characters than to see from their point of view, thus explicit narrators appear only episodically in cinema. The role of implicit narrators is also different proving that there is significant asymmetry between literary and cinematic narration.
Works Cited
Eisenstein, Sergej. “Film Language.” Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, edited by Sergej Eisenstein and Leyda, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1977, pp. 108-121.
Gaut, Berys. “Cinematic Narration.” A Philosophy of Cinematic Art, edited by Berys Gaut, Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 197-243.
Letters from an Unknown Woman. Directed by Max Ophüls, Universal Pictures, 1948.
Singer, Irving. “The Visual and the Literary.” Reality Transformed: Film as Meaning and Technique, edited by Irving Singer, MIT Press, 2000, pp. 81-100.
Wilson, George M. “On Narrators and Narration in Film.” Narration in Light: Studies in Cinematic Point of View, edited by George M. Wilson, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986, pp. 126-144.