Point of view
Whose experience organises the narrative — and how films reassign it without telling you.
- story conventions
- film-language
- narrative
Point of view is a story convention before it is a camera technique: the question is whose knowledge, desire and jeopardy the narration is organised around. POV shots are just the most literal instrument of it.
Canonical case
Psycho (1960) runs a bait-and-switch on the whole convention. Forty-odd minutes are organised around Marion — her theft, her drive, her guilt — and then Killing the protagonist at minute 47 forces a transfer to Norman. The infamous test: when Marion's car pauses while sinking in the swamp, audiences catch themselves wanting it to sink. Allegiance has been reassigned to the man hiding the body.
The transfer is prepared, not sprung: Psycho — the parlour scene builds sympathy for Norman first, and Psycho — the opening made the audience complicit watchers from the first shot — see The camera as voyeur.
Sources
Truffaut on audience manipulation; Durgnat tracks the transfer scene by scene.