What is shared by almost all these studies is the “ambiguous” character of FID, i.e., the intermixing of narrative voice and internal focalization, or, put differently, when the spectator is not able to distinguish whether a particular part of the narrative text is the FCD’s account of or judgment about the character in question (ID) or the character’s own unfiltered voice (FDD / DD). So far, several theorists and critics have, directly or indirectly, dealt with the concept of FID in film. Based on this established theory, in this essay, we offer a model for identifying and analyzing FID in narrative film, including a detailed survey of its textual markers and major functions. FID is generally defined as a “dual voice,” i.e., an ambiguous, polyphonic mixing of the narrator’s and the character-focalizer’s voices. It is the most problematic mode among the four major modes of representing characters’ discourses, the others being direct discourse (DD), indirect discourse (ID), and free direct discourse (FDD). One of the major discursive devices adopted by modernist writers to depict the mental processes of alienated or self-conscious characters was “free indirect discourse” (FID). David Bordwell suggests that such techniques as subjectivization (= internal focalization) came into prominence in cinema with the advent of art films because it is in such films that individual subjectivities acquire significance. From this perspective, these films are comparable to modernist fiction. The same approach to the inner worlds of characters developed by modernist writers can be observed in what is generally referred to as “art cinema” or what Pier Paolo Pasolini terms the “cinema of poetry,” for example, those mid-century movies associated with neorealism. The model provided can be adopted for analyzing any narrative film. This characterizes the narrative text as polyvocal / polyphonic, leading to artistic ambiguity and such processes as “différance” and “deterritorialization.” Based on this theory, the researchers offer a detailed analysis of the textual markers and major functions of FID in filmic narratives. The basic argument of the essay, then, is that FID occurs in a film at the moment when the spectator is not able to distinguish narratorial objectivity from characterological subjectivity. According to the established “dual-voice” hypothesis, FID is an ambiguous merger of the narrator’s voice and the character-focalizer’s, without one predominating over the other. This essay provides, for the first time, a model for identifying and analyzing “free indirect discourse” (FID) in narrative film, the most problematic mode of representing characters’ discourse which has received little attention from film theorists and critics. Mohammad Ghaffary, Shiraz University, Shiraz, IranĪmir Ali Nojoumian, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran
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