Abstract

This paper deals with the foundations of cinematographic narration. Contrary to a view quite commonly shared among French film theorists (Metz, Oudart) as well as American philosophers (Levinson, Chatman), I argue that there is no such thing as an implicit cinematographic narrator. To do so, I reject the a priori argument according to which the very notion of narration implies that for every film, there is at least an implicit narrator. Following Gaut, I argue that the assumption implies an absurd description of the viewer’s experience. So, we should give up on the platonist postulate of such an impalpable entity and, in accordance with some early remarks by Bordwell, move toward a nominalist conception of cinematographic narration.