Overhearing Film DialogueUniversity of California Press, 2000 M03 30 - 332 pages Since the birth of cinema, film has been lauded as a visual rather than a verbal medium; this sentiment was epitomized by John Ford's assertion in 1964 that, "When a motion picture is at its best, it is long on action and short on dialogue." Little serious work has been done on the subject of film dialogue, yet what characters say and how they say it has been crucial to our experience and understanding of every film since the coming of sound. Through informative discussions of dozens of classic and contemporary films—from Bringing Up Baby to Terms of Endearment, from Stagecoach to Reservoir Dogs--this lively book provides the first full-length study of the use of dialogue in American film.
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Contents
33 | |
Structural and Stylistic Variables | 64 |
Integration | 90 |
DIALOGUE AND GENRE | 139 |
Word Play Dialogue in Screwball Comedies | 170 |
Words as Weapons Dialogue in Gangster Films | 201 |
Misunderstandings Dialogue in Melodramas | 235 |
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accents action actors American films Angeles argues audience Aurora Berkeley Bordwell Bringing Up Baby California Press CALVERA camera CATHY character's characters Charlotte Chris Cinema Citizen Kane close-ups conversation Corleone cultural Dallas Darling Clementine David dialect Directed discussion drama ELLEN Emma emotional film dialogue film's filmgoers filmmakers functions gangster films genre's George Gerald Mast Gerard Gerry Girl Godfather going gonna Hawks's Heathcliff hero Hollywood important James Jerry John Ford Jules Furthman language lines linguistic listening logue male means melodrama Michael Michel Chion Miniver movie narrative novel Palm Beach Story Paramount Peter phrase play plot Preston Sturges Quentin Tarantino Reservoir Dogs reveals Richard Ringo Robert scene Screen Screenplay screenwriters screwball comedies script sexual shot silent sound speak speech Stagecoach star Sturges's style Susan talk Tarantino tell tion University of California verbal viewer visual voice Voyager Warner Brothers Westerns woman women words York
Popular passages
Page 12 - Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
Page 3 - It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now ; so he shall never know how I love him ; and that not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same ; and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.
Page 2 - I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth ; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy.