Another critic who follows Chatman’s lead but tries to eliminate those confusions of level is Jerrold Levinson. To arguments that emphasize the spectator’s role in "constructing" the film narrative or to others that deny the need for any agency in telling stories in film, Levinson replies, "the postulate of narrative agency in cinema does a better job of accounting for how we, admittedly largely implicitly, make sense of films as conveyors of stories" (251). Indeed, Levinson would go beyond Chatman by insisting that a narrator cannot be on a different level—plot/discourse—from that of his/her characters—story: "Being heterodiegetic, or an ‘outsider’ to the events being related, does not remove a filmic narrator ontologically from the characters he/she/it serves to offer us perceptual access to. . . . the narrator must perforce share the fictional plane of the characters, since they are apparently real and reportable to that narrator . . . " (252). The film narrator (or "presenter" as Levinson also calls it) "presents the events of the film’s world from within it, whereas the implied author of a film . . . presents the world of the film . . . from a position external to it" (253).

Levinson, though, may be confusing "discourse" (syuzhet/plot) with "story" (fabula) and definitely seems to confuse mediation with narration. The appearance of "I" at the end of Bend Sinister, mentioned above, demonstrates that the "reality" and "reportability" of characters to a heterodiegetic narrator do not require the presence of that narrator on the scene, like some invisible Peeping Tom. At times, of course, the literary narrator may again impersonate or report the impersonation of such a narrator or even of the implied author within the text, as when John Fowles’ narrator in The French Lieutenant’s Woman is found sitting in a railway coach across from his protagonist or when "John Barth" is inserted into some of his own stories. But in such cases, "Nabokov," "Fowles," and "Barth" become characters who stand as signifiers for the text’s implied author or the heterodiegetic narrator, both of which (if the terms apply at all) exist on different textual levels from the diegesis itself. In film, the act of recording (via the camera and sound equipment) is not necessarily the same thing as "narrating" or "presenting" the fictional world.

Moreover, to say that the "presenter" of a film narrative is somehow in the film then neglects to say how that presenter can have knowledge of what he/she presents while also having the agency—the means—to present it. There is a failure here to distinguish the overall "text" of the film (with its credit sequences and other non-diegetic elements) from the diegesis presented by the film, and the means of presentation (the film’s "style") from its "presenter." If the film "narrator" is always within the diegesis, how can the narrator control the means of presentation without being yet another subject of narration? The effect is a mise-en-abyme, rather like a story that begins, "This is a story about a story about a story . . . " If the narrator is within the overall text, including the diegesis, how do we see that agency manifested without the use of a narrator’s (written or spoken) "voice"? Language is the medium of the narrator in print and oral fiction; with some exceptions, we expect one person to do the writing or speaking. On the other hand, the medium of cinema combines various manipulations and elements of sound and image that are themselves usually created through collaboration and that are then used in collaboration with each other to convey the film narrative—to "narrate" it. [7]

Levinson’s own primary example of how a film "presenter" and "implied filmmaker" might function is in the use of nondiegetic music (that is, music that does not have a plausible source in the film’s "story world"). Levinson distinguishes uses of such music according to its apparent source (the narrator/presenter or the "implied filmmaker") and whether such music is "narrative" or not, depending on whether or not the music generates "fictional truths" in the film (258-259). One major criterion that Levinson proposes is whether certain implications ("that a character was afraid or was remembering a past incident, or that a man had been executed or an agreement reached," etc.) would be established without the music (260). As examples, Levinson cites the "shark" motif from Jaws and the title song theme from Laura. While these typical uses of music seem clear enough at first, it is less clear how they differ qualitatively from other means of conveying such narrative effects (camera angles, lighting, particular props, etc.). In any event, Levinson would attribute such music to the film’s narrator/presenter. In contrast, Levinson also cites examples of music that "does not make anything fictional in the world of the film and is not reasonably assignable to the film’s internal narrator" (268), as well as some "intermediate or borderline" examples. For example, the use of Carl Orff’s and Eric Satie’s music in Badlands, according to Levinson, is "in a mode of distanced and reflective juxtaposition to the story narrated, by an intelligence standing just outside that narration. It is not . . . attributable to the film’s narrating agent, but only to the implied filmmaker" (272). In other words, the music seems to serve as a distanced form of commentary on the action [8]. As we shall see, though, a single theme may serve both "fictional" and "nonfictional" purposes within a film simultaneously.

Levinson assigns two categories of musical function—"the signifying of emotion, and the referential and connotative cueing of narrative"--to the narrator/presenter; he assigns another two—"the provision of continuity and the achievement of unity"—to the implied filmmaker (277). While these functions, which Levinson borrows from Claudia Gorbman, are valid ones, the value of assigning them to one form of agency or another is less clear. A musical cue could serve more than one function even in a single scene. For example, in Stagecoach, the use of the cowboy song "Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie" often accompanies shots of the stagecoach travelling through the high desert. As a motif, the song contributes to continuity and unity, functions of the implied filmmaker according to Levinson. Yet, the tune also signals the arrival or departure of the stagecoach at different stages of the journey—an element of narrative—and, through variations in tempo or shifts to or from a minor scale, it also signifies emotion. Both of these functions supposedly "belong" to the narrator/presenter. In addition, those latter two uses are usually in tandem with camera framings and actions by the characters that also cue narrative and signify emotion, so the musical motif does not always have the uniqueness that Levinson insists on. Still, the music does underscore those functions and it is hard to see why those should be denied simply because they are not unique. The result is a single piece of music that seems, in Levinson’s terms, to emanate from both the narrator and the implied filmmaker at the same time. Whether or not the distinction of "narrator" and "implied filmmaker" is valid and useful in general, applying the terms to music in this way seems to create more problems than it solves.

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