Words on screen / Michel Chion ; edited and translated by Claudia Gorbman.

Includes bibliographical references and index

Introduction -- The name on screen -- Nondiegetic writing -- Diegetic writing as athorybos -- Fingers, tablets, and machines writing -- From books undone, films -- Half-reading -- Hearing one language and reading another -- writing in film space -- Writing in the land of three dimensions -- Anagrams and clinamen -- Excription

Michel Chion is well known in contemporary film studies for his innovative investigations into aspects of cinema that scholars have traditionally overlooked. Following his work on sound in film in Audio-Vision and Film, a Sound Art, Words on Screen is Chion's survey of everything the seventh art gives us to read on screen. He analyzes titles, credits, and intertitles, but also less obvious forms of writing that appear on screen, from the tear-stained letter in a character's hand to reversed writing seen in mirrors. Through this examination, Chion delves into the multitude of roles that words on screen play: how they can generate narrative, be torn up or consumed but still remain in the viewer's consciousness, take on symbolic dimensions, and bear every possible relation to cinematic space