[1] I am especially grateful to Natalie M. Rosinsky for her
careful reading of drafts of this paper and her always-valuable advice. I also want to
thank the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research and the Wisconsin State
Historical Society for access to various films and the Fredric March Collection. Thanks
also go to my university’s Research Committee for providing travel funds.
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[2] There are important nuances of difference between the
terms "story," "histoire," and "fabula," as well as
"plot," "discourse," and "syuzhet." However, for convenience
I will use these two sets of terms more or less interchangeably. For simplicity, I will
use "story" and "plot" most often.
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[3] For example, there is the issue of what Genette calls
"level" of narration in fiction, as when stories occur within stories, and have
narrators presenting other people’s narration. See Narrative Discourse,
227-229.
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[4] In spite of Chatman’s cautions, some critics even
identify the implied author with the "I" of first-person heterodiegetic
narration (as when a "third-person" narrator who is not a character in the
diegesis refers to himself or herself). For example, Wallace Martin states that "An
author who uses the word ‘I’ often seems different from the writer" and,
paradoxically, "An implied author who refers to himself as ‘I’ tells a
fictional story in which he does not appear . . . " (135), an impossibility in
Rimmon-Kenan’s and Chatman’s conception of the voiceless implied author.
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[5] This movement also coincided with literary analyses of
"cinematic" authors, such as Hemingway. See especially Claude-Edmonde
Magny’s The Age of the American Novel, first published in 1948.
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[6] See Berys Gaut, "Film Authorship and
Collaboration," for a good summary and critique of notions of film authorship.
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[7] In film, of course, there may also be
"impersonations" of narrators and even implied authors by various means. To take
an extreme case, a microphone on a boom becomes a signifier in the credit sequence of The
Magnificent Ambersons for the referent "Orson Welles," as well as the
signifier of both "the voice-over narrator" and "the implied
filmmaker." Yet only Welles’ voice is in the text of the film
itself—and that voice is outside (although sometimes playfully engaging with) the
film’s diegesis.
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[8] Although Levinson notes the disparity between the
film’s images and Sissy Spacek’s voiceover narration in Badlands, he does
not pursue how the "narration" of the score interacts with these other elements.
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[9] This is one reason that narratologists have found
Genette’s category of "heterodiegetic" narration to be a more accurate term
than "third-person" narration.
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[10] "Free indirect discourse" refers to verbal
reresentation of a character’s words or thoughts without the use of tag clauses such
as "She said that . . . " See Prince 34-35.
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[11] For example, some scenes are set at well-known
locations like Graumann’s Chinese Theater, the Hollywood Bowl, and the Trocadero
nightclub. Other scenes provide examples of screen tests and preview screenings. Still
others are set in studio locations, such as the commissary.
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[12] "Focalizer" refers to one aspect of the term
"point of view." The character whose physical and/or mental "point of
view" is being rendered is the "focalizer" of that particular scene. See
Prince 31-32.
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[13] Other, more subtle "winks" occur as well.
John Belton cites Steve Cohen’s description of Jeff and Lisa’s relationship as a
"reworking" of the relationship between Ingrid Bergman and photographer Robert
Capa , as well as that fact that Thorwald’s appearance and behavior mimic those of
David O. Selznick, Hitchcock’s former producer (5-7).
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[14] Compare the deliberate violation of such norms in some
films, such as the scene between Athos and his father’s mistress in Bertolucci’s
The Spider’s Strategem (1970).
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[15] Belton refers to this agent as "Hitchcock,"
but he does not distinguish between Hitchcock as implied filmmaker and Hitchcock as
narrator or presenter of the action (13).
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[16] These patterns would seem to throw into doubt much of
the psychoanalytic and Catholic interpretation of the film that usually contends that Jeff
has been "punished" for his voyeurism. See, for example, Belton, especially
16-17.
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[17] For the sake of inclusiveness in referring to
different media, I would prefer to use the terms "creator" and
"perceiver" rather than "author" or "filmmaker" and
"reader" or "spectator."
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[18] This speculation needs to be qualified with the
observation that high degrees of self-consciousness tend to be tolerated in comedies more
readily than in other genres.
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[19] This implication of the Implied Creator stands
independently of Anderson, the film’s empirical creator, who, it is widely reported,
had already planned the rain of frogs before he discovered the biblical reference.
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