‘All I have to offer is myself’: The Film-Maker as Narrator

Abstract

Who precisely is the ‘I’ referenced in so many essay films’ voice-overs? It is easy to assume that it refers to the film-maker, but, even if the voice that we hear is the film-maker’s own, an essay film’s narrative ‘voice’ is always ambiguous. Starting from Chris Marker’s contradictory claim in a letter about Sans Soleil (1983) that all he has to offer is himself, the chapter explores how the aspiration of open and direct address is complicated through the various mediations involved in film-making. With particular focus on my own film, Rohmer in Paris (2013), it raises the paradoxical possibility that essay film-makers can only offer themselves, but are prevented by the form of the essay film from doing so.