FIRST-PERSON NARRATION: The telling of a story in the grammatical first person, i.e. from the perspective of an "I," for example Moby Dick, including its famous opening: "Call me Ishmael." This form of narration is more difficult to achieve in film; however, voice-over narration can create the same structure. Orson Welles achieves similar effects in Citizen Kane through, for example, the judicious use of POV and over-the-shoulder shots. Such narrators can be active characters in the story being told or mere observers. First-person narration tends to underline the act of transmission and often includes an embedded listener or reader, who serves as the audience for the tale. First-person narration focalizes the narrative through the perspective of a single character. The question of motivation or psychology is therefore often raised: why is this narrator telling us this story in this way and can we trust him? For this reason, unreliable narrators are not uncommon.
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