{"id":32187,"date":"2015-08-24T21:20:56","date_gmt":"2015-08-25T02:20:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/?p=32187"},"modified":"2016-09-02T17:26:54","modified_gmt":"2016-09-02T22:26:54","slug":"dead-man-talking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/2015\/08\/24\/dead-man-talking\/","title":{"rendered":"Dead man talking"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Confidence<\/a><\/p>\n

Confidence<\/strong> (2003).<\/em><\/p>\n

DB here:<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I\u2019m dead.”<\/p>\n

At the start of Confidence<\/em> we\u00a0hear Jake Vig’s voice as we see him lying bloodied on a pavement.\u00a0\u00a0As the protagonist of a neo-noir, Jake recalls\u00a0the classic start of Billy Wilder’s\u00a0Sunset Boulevard<\/em> (1950). There Joe Gillis (an\u00a0echo of gigolo<\/em>?), floating face-down in a swimming pool, begins to recount his stay as a kept man of faded film star Norma Desmond. That opening has become a touchstone for the grim fatalism of film noir, as well as a mark of daring screenwriting. The guy telling the story is dead! How cool is that?<\/p>\n

Anybody interested in how films tell stories has to be interested in narrators, those figures\u2014either mere voices or tangible characters\u2014who recount, recall, or replay the story action. And anybody interested in Hollywood film knows that such narrators are hallmarks of a\u00a0giddy period of cinematic innovation, as recognizably \u201c1940s\u201d as flashbacks, moody subjective sequences, and twisty plots. In that era\u00a0we find narrators well outside that terrain\u00a0known as noir. Romantic dramas, family sagas, comedies, Gothics, musicals, and other genres made ample use of voice-over commentary, and it didn\u2019t always suggest a\u00a0doom-laden atmosphere.<\/p>\n

Still,\u00a0dead narrators seem to be pushing things. They flout realism (How can a dead person tell anything?) and they raise problems of logic (To whom is this person speaking?). Is it a chatty corpse (Wilder originally wanted a morgue opening introducing Gillis)\u00a0or an ethereal\u00a0spirit divorced from the dead body?<\/p>\n

Dead narrators turn up surprisingly often\u00a0in the 1940s. During\u00a0this period, as I\u2019ve argued on this site and in the book I\u2019m working on, many storytelling techniques we take for granted coalesced. There emerged a rough\u00a0menu for handling them, and ambitious filmmakers played with several possibilities. That play didn\u2019t stop in the Forties; we still have new versions of flashbacks, subjectivity, and the like.\u00a0So let’s look at posthumous narrators in the Forties, with some glances at a trio of more recent efforts.<\/p>\n

As a non-dead and highly reliable narrator, I\u00a0must warn you of\u00a0spoilers<\/strong> ahead.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Guiding spirits<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Matthew<\/a><\/p>\n

The Human Comedy<\/strong> (1943).<\/em><\/p>\n

Most simply, posthumous narration can be motivated as letters (Letter from an Unknown Woman<\/em>) or diary entries (Thatcher\u2019s journal in Citizen Kane<\/em>). Similarly, Heaven Can Wait<\/em> (1943) gives us a dead man explaining episodes from his life to an inquisitive official in the afterlife. The more flagrant cases, however, involve dead narrators who recount the entire film we see in voice-over, as in our prototype Sunset Boulevard<\/em>.\u00a0Knowing that the protagonist is dead at the start shifts our attention to how he or she will die.<\/p>\n

Posthumous narrators go back a fair bit. In literature, Edgar Lee Masters\u2019 Spoon River Anthology<\/em> (1915) presents the ruminations of the town dead, in the manner of the cemetery climax of Our Town<\/em> (1938 play, 1940 film). Wilfred Owen\u2019s poetic monologue \u201cStrange Meeting\u201d (1918) presents\u00a0soldiers reuniting in Hell, ending with the poignant line, \u201cLet us sleep now\u2026.\u201d Addie Bundren, the dead mother of Faulkner\u2019s As I Lay Dying<\/em> (1930), narrates portions of the novel from her coffin. In a pulpish pastiche of Faulkner, Kenneth Fearing\u2019s mystery novel Dagger of the Mind<\/em> (1941) includes a chapter narrated by a man who\u2019s been murdered. Radio drama also included voices from the beyond. Examples include\u00a0\u201cGhost Ship\u201d<\/a> (1940), with a victim recounting his own murder, and Norman Corwin\u2019s \u201cUntitled\u201d (1944), which reveals the narrator to be a dead soldier.<\/p>\n

In film, World War II brings forth the prospect of dead servicemen returning to tell their tales. \u201cI am Matthew Macauley,\u201d says a face superimposed over imagery of radiant clouds. \u201cI have been dead for two years. But so much of me is still living that I know now that the end is only the beginning.\u201d This is indeed a beginning, of The Human Comedy<\/em> (1943). Having died in the war, Matthew will guide us back to his hometown and his household\u2019s daily routines.<\/p>\n

Matthew\u2019s voice-over goes on to introduce his family members, including son Marcus on duty in the army. After a scene in which a spectral Matthew joins his wife at her work, his voice discreetly retires. It recurs only twice before he and his now-dead soldier son faintly\u00a0enter to watch\u00a0the family welcome their new member, Marcus\u2019s pal Toby.<\/p>\n

\"Matthew<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Matthew<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cYou see, Marcus, the ending is only the\u00a0beginning.\u201d Matthew’s\u00a0address to us has become piece of fatherly advice.<\/p>\n

The dead narrator of The Human Comedy<\/em> never intervenes in the action on earth, but an all-seeing intelligence exercises more authority in\u00a0The Seventh Cross<\/em> (1944). Seven prisoners escape from a concentration camp, and Ernst Wallau’s\u00a0narration launches\u00a0the film. During the escape sequence he rapidly introduces each of his comrades.<\/p>\n