Narrated films: storytelling situations in cinema history

Abstract

In Narrated Films, Avrom Fleishman explores the distinctive literary techniques often used by filmmakers to tell their stories. Through close viewings of ingeniously paired films, Fleishman documents five narrational practices in the cinema: voice-over ( Orpheus and Sunset Boulevard); dramatized narration, in which the film is a story that one character tells another ( The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Hiroshima Mon Amour); multiple narration, in which a number of characters tell the story that is the film ( Rashomon and Zelig); written narration, whether through diaries or letters ( Letter from an Unknown Woman and Diary of a Country Priest); and the cinematic version of interior monologue, which Fleishman terms mindscreen narration ( Brief Encounter and Daybreak).