‘Those funny subtitles’: Silent film intertitles in exhibition and discourse
2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 10; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/17460654.2012.724570
ISSN1746-0662
Autores Tópico(s)Theater, Performance, and Music History
ResumoAbstract Intertitles are a complex and understudied component of film. This article investigates two aspects of intertitles: their role in exhibition practice in the 1900s, and the discourse around them during the silent era. Firstly, the dynamic interplay between intertitles, the film lecturer, magic lanterns, developments in narrative film, and changing models of spectatorship is examined. The rise of in-film titles triggered a shift away from artisanal programming by film exhibitors and lecturers, resituating power in the hands of film manufacturers and producers. Intertitles were a significant factor in the increasing middle-class acceptance of film during cinema's first decades. The shift from scenic or topical films to intertitle-reliant narrative films allowed cinema to appropriate the aura of bourgeois-friendly narrative art forms like novels and theatre; likewise, intertitles conveyed information that relied on a literate audience, often excluding immigrant populations and the lower class. The discourse around intertitles in the 1910s and 1920s is also examined, revealing the intertitle as a site of considerable anxiety and ambivalence in light of contemporary cinematic ideals. The enthusiastic reception of Anita Loos' 'literary' intertitles supports the thesis that intertitles played a key role in the 'bourgeoisification' or upward mobility of film. Keywords: intertitlesilent filmfilm lecturermagic lanternsnarrative cinemanickelodeonsAnita Loos Acknowledgements The majority of articles referenced in this article from early film periodicals such as Photoplay were sourced from digitized copies provided by the Media History Project, located at http://mediahistoryproject.org/. Many of the writing manuals referenced in this essay were sourced from the Internet Archive, http://www.archive.org/. The Deaf community periodical The Silent Worker has been digitized by Gallaudet University Archives and is available online at http://www.aladin0.wrlc.org/gsdl/collect/gasw/gasw.shtml. Unless otherwise stated, quotations from French-language texts are my own translations. Notes 1. See Kracauer 1947, 96–106, 113–4, 119–23. 2. See, for example, Robert F. Berkhofer Jr's Beyond the Great Story: History as Text and Discourse (1995). With regard to cinema history, Cinema Journal 44, no. 1 (2004) contains a series of articles discussing the 'historical turn' in film studies. 3. This division derives from Kristin Thompson's analysis of the development of the classical Hollywood style (1985; see particularly 183–9). Though it is beyond the scope of this essay to consider in detail, later writers have recognized the limitations of this classification. André Gaudreault (1998) has suggested a tripartite division of subtitles: titre, sous-titres, and intertitres (titles, subtitles, and intertitles), which represent three successive developmental stages of intertitles and also denote the position of the texte intercalaire within the film. Recently, Galina Savukova (2010) has proposed a more complicated model that is based on the intertitle's level of integration into the diegesis. 4. Some currently viewable online versions of Ali Baba et les Quarante Voleurs attach the date of 1905, but 1902 is the correct date of first exhibition. See the listings for this film at the Gaumont Pathé Archives and the Fondation Jérôme Seydoux's Filmographie Pathé. This film should not be confused with the 1907 Pathé remake filmed by Segundo de Chomón, entitled simply Ali Baba. 5. In his comprehensive analysis of London municipal records, Burrows found the earliest mention of a cinema to occur in June 1906 (2004, 78), negating the oft-cited claim that the Balham Empire (est. 1907) was the first film-specific theatre in Britain (c.f. Low 1948, 15–16). His research also demonstrates that, contrary to popular belief, London did undergo a nickelodeon-style expansion phase corresponding to that occurring in American cities, albeit one that was very different in scale and cultural impact. 6. In contrast to Anglo-European countries, the Japanese tradition of benshi (live film oration) lasted until the introduction of sound. 7. It is interesting to note André Gaudreault's suggestion that one contributing factor to the decline of the narrator was the popularity in the mid-1900s of chase films, which did not require an external narrative voice (1990, 278). 8. Musser (2006) proposes that three other cinematic modes – contemplation, discernment and what might be called a weak narrative format – also appeared in the early years of cinema. Musser's early narrative model shows a commonality with the 'programme montage' style of exhibition described above. 9. As André Gaudreault states, the 'booming bonimenteur […] had to learn his true cost, since if lecturing was money, silence was gold' (1998, 53; emphasis in original). 10. Rather than a complete shift, it now seems more likely that cinema expanded its audience to encompass more members of the middle class than previously (Grieveson 2005, 42–3). 11. For more information on the debates surrounding early film audiences, see Stokes (1999, 1–5), and Hansen (1990, 228–31). 12. It must be noted that filmgoers in this era were, reportedly, adept lip-readers. Kevin Brownlow writes of the 'cuss-word puzzle', where lip-reading became a necessity for full enjoyment and comprehension of racy scenes (1968, 297). See also Louise Brooks (1965 Brooks, Louise. 1965. Pabst and Lulu. Sight and Sound, 34(3): 123–7. [Google Scholar], 126). 13. For more information about reading ability and literacy in audiences of the early twentieth century according to gender and ethnicity, see Liepa (2008, 45–7). 14. Aside from Der Letzte Mann, examples include Scherben [Shattered] (Lupu Pick, 1921), Die Straße [The street] (Karl Grune, 1923), Schatten – Eine nächtliche Halluzination [Warning shadows] (Arthur Robison, 1923), and Sylvester [New Year's Eve] (Lupu Pick, 1924). 15. Der Letzte Mann contains a single title that provides an epilogue to the main story. 16. A popular legend about Henri Langlois, founder of the Cinémathèque Française, is that he detested intertitles to the point that he had them removed from all film prints under his care. Eileen Bowser (1999 ———. 1999. Reconstruction of intertitles: Some ethical, practical and theoretical considerations. Paper presented at the international conference Intertitre et Film. Histoire, théorie, restauration, March 26–7, at the Cinémathèque Française in Paris, France. [Google Scholar], 7) has declared this likely to be false, stating that 'I suspect it was only because the films printed from the old negatives in France, too, were probably missing their intertitles, and he was faced with the same problems we all are'. Nonetheless, Langlois certainly did not show a great deal of interest or regard for the preservation or restoration of intertitles (Patalas 2002, 26). 17. An exception was Leonid Skrypnyk, who considered intertitles a demeaning compromise of the cinema (Nebesio 1996, 679–80). 18. I lack the space in this essay to consider the subject of creative visual or graphical uses of the intertitle, an extremely rich topic. However, one must note that Soviet filmmakers experimented with such devices, using different typefaces and text sizes to enhance the impact of intertitles in their films. Nebesio mentions Alexander Dovzhenko's use of such methods in Zhenyora and Arsenal (both 1928; Nebesio 1996, 692); one may also consider the work of Dziga Vertov (Three Songs about Lenin, 1934), and Sergej Eisenstein. 19. I capitalize Deaf in accordance with the conventions of the contemporary Deaf community. 20. See also Loos 1966, 134. 21. Although Loos and her husband John Emerson were jointly credited, the writing was primarily or wholly Loos' work. See Hefner (2010, 109, 118). 22. In this regard, there is a commonality between Loos' intertitles and earlier film lectureship, which could also provide playful, humorous, and sharp commentary.
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