Reading films: Words on the silent screens of American cinema
Item
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Title
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Reading films: Words on the silent screens of American cinema
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:793464e129d5:10670
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identifier
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10811
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Creator
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Savukova, Galina,
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Contributor
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Mary Ann Caws
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Date
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2010
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Film studies | Language | American studies | avant-garde | film language | intertitle | screen words | silent cinema | textuality
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Abstract
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In spite of frequent appearances of words on the cinematic screen, contributions of written language are often ignored or marginalized in discussions of film language. I investigate why verbal text is employed in the distinctly visual medium of film and how screen words function within the frames and on the fringes of a cinematic composition. The micro-level of analysis, the focus of the first chapter, highlights potentialities of word and image interplay within the pictorial space. On the macro-level of analysis, in the second chapter, the discussion of written language in film is situated in the context of narrative structures, cinematic tradition, authorship and ownership, and the relation to the audience. I categorize screen words into five kinds: (1) title sequences and end credits, (2) intertitles, (3) subtitles, (4) integrated verbal elements, and (5) words as the only images on the screen. Within the five categories, I outline types and functions of written language, as applicable to silent and sound films.;My primary concern, however, is with the verbal-visual angle of interpretation, so I limit the scope of my detailed investigations in the third and fourth chapters to silent films. I zoom in on the screen words in select American films---of the pre-sound era and of the post-World-War-II avant-garde. In the third chapter, the verbal practices of the first two decades of American cinema are illustrated with films created by the Thomas A. Edison Company. The written language use in the late teens and twenties is analyzed in the context of comedies directed by John Emerson and Buster Keaton and of Cecil B. DeMille's dramas. I also explore contributions of screen words to several silent avant-garde films of the late twenties and early thirties. In the fourth chapter, I focus on the verbal text of the silent creations of Stan Brakhage and Hollis Frampton, the filmmakers whose approaches to language in film, although formulated in the same climate of discourses about the politics of language, are diametrically opposed. The dissertation concludes with a functional typology of screen words.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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English
