Unconventional Story-weavers and their “Ecstatic Truth”: An analysis of voice-overs in documentary film Aurora Drummer DRMAUR001 A dissertation submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree of Master of Arts in Film Studies Town Cape Centre for Film and Media Studies of Faculty of the Humanities University of Cape Town February 2014 COMPULSORY DECLARATIONUniversity This work has not been previously submitted in whole, or in part, for the award of any degree. It is my own work. Each significant contribution to, and quotation in, this dissertation from the work, or works, of other people has been attributed, and has been cited and referenced. Signature: ______________________________ Date: __________________________________ The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgementTown of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Cape Published by the University ofof Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University CONTENTS Abstract _________________________________________________ 1 Special Thanks ____________________________________________ 2 Introduction ______________________________________________ 3 Chapter Outlines__________________________________ 12 1: Voice-over in Documentary and Fiction: A Case Study of Little Dieter and Rescue Dawn ____________________________________________ 16 2: Echoes of a Remembered Past: N!ai and The Hunters ____________________________________________ 34 3:The Intentionally Deceitful Narrator in Buñuel‘s Las Hurdes ___________________________________________ 51 4:The Mutinous Subject: Silent Characters and Authorial Voices in the Films of Werner Herzog ____________________________________________ 65 5:Detaching the Third-person Narrator from Convention ____________________________________________ 87 Conclusion_____________________________________________ 101 List of Images ___________________________________________ 106 List of References_________________________________________ 106 1 ABSTRACT This dissertation takes theories of voice-over narration that are typically applied to fiction film and applies them to documentary film. It looks at issues of representation and truth- values in the documentary films of Werner Herzog, John Marshall, Luis Buñuel and Karin Jurshcick. It argues that the choices filmmakers make regarding types of voice-over affect these issues and are therefore worthy of study. It argues that the unconventional story-weavers in documentaries like those of Marshall and Herzog‘s can inadvertently marginalise their subjects. It looks at Buñuel‘s Land Without Bread as an extreme example of an (intentionally) manipulative narrator. It suggests that a voice-over narrator that follows Chion‘s conceptualisation of the complete acousmêtre encourages audiences to engage on a more critical level. Finally, it argues that even a seemingly traditional narrator as seen in Jurshick‘sIt Should Have Been Nice After That can be unconventional and reveal an ―ecstatic truth‖. 2 Special Thanks The production of this work would have not been possible without a few special people.Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisor Lauren van Vuurenfor guiding me through this process and introducing me to valuable information, particularly in finding It Should Have Been Nice After That. I would like to thank my parents, Edward Drummer and Kathy Watters, for their financial and emotional support throughout the past three years. I would like to thank Matthew Jones for important library sessions and in his help in developing my ideas. Finally, I would like to thank Daniel Brownell for attempting to hold my brain together when it threatened to implode. ―Only in this state of sublimity does something deeper become possible, a kind of truth that is the enemy of the merely factual. Ecstatic truth, I call it.‖ (Herzog, 2010) 3 Introduction Voice-over in documentary film is an under-researched topic. Two of the major authors in analysis of voice-over in cinema, Sarah Kozloff and Michel Chion, focus only on fiction film. This seems strange, as the disembodied voice in documentary is often viewed as a commonplace tool in the traditional documentary. However, it is perhaps this very reason that makes theorists shy away from discussing the voice-over in documentary filmmaking. Voice-over in narrative film is somewhat rare, so its inclusion is a seen as point to be studied. It is less rare in documentary film; therefore it is not seen as worthy of study. This sort of rationalisation, however, denies the varying effects voice-over can have on a film. Including voice-over is always a choice. Once that choice has been made, whether it is sub-conscious or not, a variety of choices must still be made by the filmmakers. From the gender of the voice, to a multi-vocal perspective, choices made by the filmmakers affect the final effect of the film. In this study, I will look at the varying effects that different types of story-weavers have on their respective documentary films. In this dissertation, I will therefore address the question: ―What choices in voice-over are available to documentary film-makers (from the decision to use voice-over to the language used in the voice) and how do these choices affect the truth values and issues of representation of the final films?‖ In order to address this question, I will first examine the existing literature on voice-over in documentary film, particularly that of David Bordwell, Michel Chion, Mary Ann Doane and Sarah Kozloff. I will then develop a theoretical frame-work through which to gauge the work of several documentary film-makers who use voice-over in unusual manners, namely John Marshall, Luis Buñuel, Werner Herzog, and Karin Jurschick. While it is commonly said that all journeys start with a single step, our journey will have to start with a few definitions. If I am to investigate how truth-values are affected by the presence of a non-traditional voice-over in a documentary film then it is important to be quite clear in what we mean by ―documentary‖. Godmilow and Shapiro (1997: 81) argue that documentary is a term of convenience and that it implies a ―conceit of the real‖. In other words, by merely using the term ―documentary‖ we imply that the film asserts itself to be true, even though it may not be. ―Non-fiction‖, too, they argue is classifying 4 something by what it is not, creating a strange, false, dichotomy between false fiction films, and true non-fiction film. It implies that fiction films cannot have truth, and that non-fiction films cannot have falsities. They prefer to define it as, ―everything but scripted drama‖. For the purposes of this study, I find it best to use the term ―documentary‖ in its loosest sense, that is, in its indexical quality. If a film is often referred to as a documentary (by the production team, by the reviewers, by the populace at large) then it will remain, for the purposes of this discussion, a ―documentary‖. How this indexical system is constructed, whether it is at all relevant, or if it is even needed, is a topic for another time. It is important to this discussion to view documentaries as people see them. This is important because I am going to investigate how different uses of voice-over narration affect the truth-values, gender politics, and identity in the documentary. I shall be investigating how these values change when told under the leadership of a voice-over that deviates from the norms of a traditional voice-of-God narrator. It is therefore not important here to discuss what makes a documentary a documentary. We only need to know that it is indexed as a documentary. If its viewers perceive the film as documentary then said viewers could judge it as a documentary. This is Plantinga‘s (2005) account of the documentary. He characterises the documentary as having ―asserted veridical representation‖ (Plantinga, 2005: 110). This means that we expect that the documentary filmmaker represents, and claims to represent, the visuals in a truthful manner. Plantinga indicates that while the filmmaker could seemingly follow strict protocols for veridical representation, it does not mean that the filmmaker has actually followed these protocols. This matter will be discussed further in Chapter Three, with regards to Bunuel‘s Land without Bread (1933). However, labelling a film as a documentary gives it this asserted veridical representation whether it has it or not. We must also be clear, as Kozloff argues, to distinguish between the creator of the film, and the narrator himself (seldom a ―herself). ―Filmmaker‖ tends to imply a purely functional role in the creation of the work and this common usage may belie the specific way in which I intend to use the term. Therefore,following Kozloff (1988),I call upon Metz‘s ―grand image-maker‖ (1974: 21) to signify the idea of the creative source rather than the functional team that actually creates the film. The voice-over narrator, instead, 5 would be the physical voice that is heard in the cinema, which may be unrelated to the image-maker. Bordwell (1985) argues that the concept of an image-maker is superfluous. He argues that narration is best conceived of as a set of cues found in the text that is then constructed into a story. We like to think of a constructor, however, to paraphrase Bordwell, so we then project an author onto those cues. Kozloff (1986) argues against his approach, by pointing out that if a set of cues is present in the narrative then someone must have put them there. Therefore, while I will not fully embrace Bordwell‘s approach, I will recognise that the image-maker could take on attributes that the actual creator(s) do(es) not possess. One could take an alternative reading of a text that the author did not intend, and falsely attribute this intention to the author.