her disheveled appearance on a hangover, when we
know that all she’s been drinking is poisoned coffee.
A large part of the pleasure in experiencing such a
story comes from knowing more than the charac-
ters and anticipating what will happen if and when
they learn the whole truth.
Another Hitchcock movie, Rear Window(1954;
screenwriter: John Michael Hayes), tells the story
of Jeff Jeffries (James Stewart), a man of action
stuck in his apartment in a wheelchair recovering
from a badly broken leg. To amuse himself, Jeff
begins spying on his neighbors. The recreational
snooping suddenly takes a dark turn when he wit-
nesses what may—or may not be—a murder.
For the viewer, the pleasure of watching Jeff
slowly unravel the mystery depends on being
restricted to his incomplete understanding of the
events unfolding outside his rear window. As a
result, Hitchcock chose restricted narration,
which limits the information it provides the audi-
ence to things known only to a single character.
This approach encourages the audience to identify
with the character’s singular perspective on per-
plexing and frightening events—and invites us to
participate in the gradual unlocking of the narra-
tive’s secrets.
Steven Soderbergh’s The Limey(1999; screen-
writer: Lem Dobbs) uses a similar approach. For
most of the film, the camera narrator restricts the
narration. We see and hear only the thoughts,
memories, perspectives, and experiences available
to the character of Wilson (Terrence Stamp), as he
doggedly pursues the mystery behind the death of
his daughter. In fact, as the narrative progresses,
the viewer gradually realizes that the movie’s
highly stylized editing is not conveying the story
events as they happened, but as they are recalled
by Wilson on his way back to England after the
mystery has been solved. It’s a sort of visual first-
person narration without voice-over.
Of course, nothing in cinema is absolute. Many
films shift between restricted and omniscient nar-
ration depending on the needs of the story. Movies
like The Limey enforce restricted narration for
most of the story, only to switch to omniscient nar-
ration when it serves the narrative to expand our
view on the action. For those few times that the126 CHAPTER 4 ELEMENTS OF NARRATIVE
NarratorsIn The Royal Tenenbaums(2001), the camera
narrator tells us the story by displaying evidence of the
children Royal abandoned, as well as the slick con man
himself as he delivers what we assume to be the latest in a
string of manipulative lies [1]. But the narrative deepens
when the third-person voice-over interjects to tell the
audience that he’s telling the truth this time. Mattie Ross
(Hailee Steinfeld) helps tell the story of the 2010 version of
True Gritin a couple of ways. The camera shows us the
character’s image and actions on-screen, and her first-person
narration (as spoken by Mattie as an elderly woman) is
delivered in voice-over [2]. The sadistic home invader Paul
(Michael Pitt) in Funny Gamestakes a more direct approach
when he breaks the fourth wall to confront his audience with
direct-address narration [3].
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