concept

Point of view

Whose knowledge the narration is limited to, how deep it goes, and how films move it without saying so.

story conventions
film-language
narrative

Point of view is the most overloaded term in film analysis. It names a camera position (the shot through a character's eyes), a narrative limit (what the audience is allowed to know), and a loyalty (whose side the film puts you on). Students collapse the three. Keep them apart, because a film can hand you one without the others: you can see through a character's eyes and know nothing of what they think, or know everything they know and still be positioned to judge them. The interesting films change the arrangement mid-stream and do not announce it.

Three books, three meanings

Film Art concedes the problem outright. The term is ambiguous because it can mean range of knowledge or depth of knowledge, and the two are set independently: The Big Sleep is tightly restricted to Marlowe yet almost never enters his head (fa 93). Having said so, the book retreats to the narrowest sense and reserves the term for the optical POV shot.

Boggs (The Art of Watching Films) goes the other way. His glossary defines a point-of-view character as the one "with whom we emotionally or intellectually identify", and lists voice-over, editing and camera position as the tools for producing that identification (awf 506). Point of view here is allegiance, and the camera is only one of its instruments.

Giannetti (Understanding Movies) is blunter. Because every camera move is a new vantage on the scene, omniscient narration is nearly unavoidable in film; the camera can be a dispassionate observer or "a witty commentator" on what it shows (um 400). The three are describing layers, not contradicting each other. Bordwell supplies the dials, range and depth. Boggs names the effect those settings produce. Giannetti reminds you that above the character there is always a narrating camera with opinions of its own. This wiki uses the term in Boggs's wide sense and describes it with Bordwell's dials.

On the bench

Psycho (1960) is the case for measuring a transfer. For 47 minutes the range is restricted to Marion; then the film kills her and has to re-home the audience (Killing the protagonist at minute 47). It prepares the move in Psycho — the parlour scene, where sympathy consolidates around Norman, and confirms it when the sinking car pauses and the audience catches itself wanting the swamp to finish the job (The money dies with Marion). Allegiance changes hands in one held shot.

Taxi Driver (1976) is the case for depth without agreement. The narration stays inside Travis for the whole running time, and the city arrives through his windscreen and rear-view mirror (Bickle sees through glass). Boggs names the film as a model for voice-over that conveys personality rather than information (awf 395). Giannetti's commentating camera appears twice: the track down an empty corridor in Taxi Driver — the phone call, and the rise through the ceiling in Taxi Driver — the shoot-out. Both leave his head to look at the space around him.

After Hours (1985) is the case for point of view as a prank. The narration never leaves Paul, and the camera keeps borrowing the grammar of subjectivity for things that cannot see: a set of keys falling at his face (After Hours — the keys), close-ups of light switches that promise significance and deliver none (Close-ups for no reason). Ebert's diagnosis is that an audience "raised on classic film grammar would share his expectation and disappointment". The optical POV shot and the allegiance come apart, and the paranoia lives in the gap.

What to look for

Range: is there a scene the main character is not in? What does the film know that they do not?
Depth: do you get the character's perception, their thoughts, or only their behaviour?
Allegiance: whose success are you hoping for, and when did that start?
Where does the camera move on its own authority, without a character to motivate it? What is it saying there?

In the books

Incidentally, this is one reason why the term point of view is ambiguous. It can refer to range of knowledge (as when a critic speaks of an "omniscient point of view") or to depth (as when speaking of "subjective point of view").

— Film Art, fa 93

point-of-view character A film character with whom we emotionally or intellectually identify and through whom we experience the film. Voice-over narration, editing, and camera position may be employed for this effect.

— Boggs, awf 506

Each time the director moves the camera—either within a shot or between shots—we are offered a new point of view from which to evaluate the scene.

— Giannetti, um 400

Deepest on this in the library

Measured across the 72 books indexed in Reel — how much denser each one is on this concept than the library average. A place to read next, not a claim about quality.

4.4× Per Persson — Understanding Cinema 179 passages · cite as uc
3.2× Marilyn Fabe — Closely Watched Films: An Introduction to the Art of Narrative Film Technique 108 passages · cite as cwf
2.6× Kelly Gordon Brine — The Art of Cinematic Storytelling 163 passages · cite as acs
2× Justus Nieland — David Lynch 54 passages · cite as dl
1.5× Boggs & Petrie — The Art of Watching Films 210 passages · cite as awf
1.5× Dixon & Foster — A Short History of Film 82 passages · cite as shf

Go on, then

concept The MacGuffin Hitchcock's name for the object the characters chase and the film forgets, and the argument over what its emptiness is for.
concept Character How a film builds a person out of traits, and whether it ever lets that person decide anything.
concept Chronology The order of telling versus the order of events: flashback, ellipsis, and time folded on purpose.
concept Conflict What stands between a character and what they want, and whether the film treats that as a device or as its subject.
concept Structure The shape of the telling, and whether that shape is a pattern the audience feels or a template the writer follows.
idea Killing the protagonist at minute 47 Psycho spends its first act building a protagonist by the book, then murders her at the mid-point of act two.