Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...

an impersonal “you” giving the viewer the impression that he or she is the person being
spoken to. The spectator occupies a rather uncomfortable position as he/she seems to be
powerless, and often feels unsympathetic and incredulous. The voice represents his struggle
against fate, which seems to be self-defeating, and despite the projection of his sense of
pessimism and doom (brought about again by voiceover), the “detour” appears to be the
road he wants to travel.
While the novel is told by a third-person in exacting chronological order, the film
Mildred Pierce uses voiceover narration (the voice of Mildred). Although Monte Beragon’s
(Zachary Scott) killing does not even take place in the original novel, the narrative is
framed by the the police inquiring Mildred. The killing becomes thus the focal point of the
film, and through Mildred’s voiceover, a flashback retells the entire movie until the
moment of Beragon’s death and each flashback is arranged so that this act of violence
informs and dominates it.
In addition to the images, the voiceover commentary of Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford)
and the diegetically rooted commentaries of Uncle Pio (Steven Geray) and the detective
constitute another important source of knowledge for the development of the story in
Gilda. Semiotically speaking, the image is the support of knowledge in the classical
Hollywood text, and ultimately it acts as the guarantor of reality and affect in the film. No
matter how badly each character behaves, whether lying or not, like Johnny Farrell in his
blind devotion to Ballin Mundson (George Macready), the image does not lie, but in Gilda
that image may appear to be self-contradictory: the question of sexuality is completely
suppressed, either towards men or towards women; and Gilda’s essential “innocence” is
only revealed at the end, although hinted out through the ambiguous metonymy of
striptease which may be suggestive of unveiling her own “goodness” after all.
One could argue that voiceovers can often reveal far too much about the characters
or the story, but indirectly it can serve to undercut the imagery and the dialogue which
should be having this function. In Gilda, for instance, Johnny’s voiceover creates a certain
temporal confusion, as his explanation is prepared in the past tense, but then the voice
speaks in the moment of the enunciation just to give the impression that Gilda really is
what she appeared to be.
However, it has also to be understood that flashbacks and essentially voiceovers
exist in film noir as cinematographic techniques that save time for filmmakers, especially
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