The Point of View of the Wandering Camera

Abstract

I would like to call narratological attention to a particular camera movement that occurs in some films. It is what Seymour Chatman calls in Antonioni films the wandering camera,' those moments when the camera as a narrating entity wanders on its own, detached from supporting the story through a character's point of view. David Bordwell calls attention to this camera movement in F W. Murnau's Sunrise (1927), when as the Husband crosses the marsh to his illicit meeting with the City Woman, the camera does not follow his footsteps but strikes out on its own.2 This camera movement calls attention to itself as an presence, independent of its conventional function in cinematic discourse.