We can find works with varied but distinctively creative ways of employing voice-over, some based off literary works in order to preserve the author’s language, and others with entirely inventive uses – rather justifying why several were either nominated or won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.Īllen Baron’s Blast of Silence is greatly undervalued in many aspects. This list is an attempt of categorising the films with the most effective and innovative uses of voice-over narration in a somewhat suitable order, with the effort of avoiding to merely classify them on a best-film basis. Though voice-over is a technique that frequently causes debate in the cinematic world due to the claim that a film is inherently narrated – and thus that a supplementary voice would merely interfere in the storyline, it is surely due to the work of some remarkable screenwriters that voice-over has proven its ability of not necessarily intruding, but enhancing the effect of a narrative. However, by reflecting on which motion pictures have employed the most significant uses of voice-over narration, we can discern films that often transcend and defy this method’s conventional expectations. It can be used as a way to recount past events and create an ambience, but is also recurrent in non-fictional films, such as documentaries or televised-news, due to its characteristically informative nature. Usually uttered by a character from within the work, voice-over typically aims to elucidate a story’s development and mise-en-scène, thus creating elements of structure and continuity. Voice-over narration is a technique commonly used in film, theatre or television productions in which a voice, that is generally non-diegetic, occurs in the course of a work’s narrative.

Female narrators in movies