New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics

FORMALIST APPROACHES 89
FOCALIZATION AND FILTRATION
Branigan’s method, like Browne’s does not distinguish the separate
functions of narrative discourse with separate terminology. Because of the
range of functions communicated by the term point-of-view, recent
narrative theory has attempted to classify the different functions it signifies
by using specific vocabulary for each of these levels. The term
FOCALIZATION was introduced by Gerard Genette to distinguish the
activity of the narrator recounting the events of the fictional world from
the activity of the character from whose perspective events are perceived,
or FOCALIZED. The distinction between the narrator and the
FOCALIZER is commonly described in literary theory as a distinction
between the agent “who speaks” and the agent “who sees.”
The importance of distinguishing the different levels and techniques of
narrative discourse is the subject of Genette’s book, Figure III, translated
into English as Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method (1980). This
study in literary narratology—a term suggested by Todorov to denote the
structuralist analysis of narrative—had a very pronounced impact on film
narrative theory, for it provided a precise delineation of the multiple
processes involved in the representation of the fictional world.
One of the most important refinements Genette introduced—other
contributions will be discussed later in this Part—was the division between
the viewpoint established within the fictional world, the angle of vision
“from which the life or the action is looked at,” and the narrator’s
recounting or presenting of the narrative world from a perspective
temporally removed from the immediacy of the represented events.
Narrative information in film will often be channeled through a
particular character or group of characters, restricting our knowledge of
the fictional world to their perceptions, knowledge or subjectivity. In an
older terminology, this would be called point-of-view. By recasting pointof-view
in terms of focalization, Genette restricts the term to the diegetic
level of the text, to the level of characters and actions: it returns the
question of point-of-view to the basic problem of “who sees.” But even
where a literal point-of-view shot is not present, narrative films may utilize
specific characters as centers of consciousness, reflectors, or as
“bottlenecks” which convey narrative information, activities which also
come under the heading of focalization. Genette redraws the conceptual
map of narrative with this refinement, situating the category of point-ofview,
or focalization, on the side of the diegesis rather than on the side of
narration.
Focalization has been subdivided by Genette into different types:
INTERNAL FOCALIZATION occurs when a narrative is presented
entirely from a given character’s perspective, with the limitations and
restrictions this implies. An example would be Robert Montgomery’s Lady