Intertitles
By 1908 cinema was already perceived as "a language that is universal. No matter what may be the tongue spoken by the spectator, he can understand the pictures and enjoy them."[129] This "language" centered on the gesture of the actors, their rendering of the narrative, and other pro-filmic elements rather than the filmic "grammar" of Lev Kuleshov, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and later theoreticians. The filmmaker utilized this universal language to construct a narrative that could be understood by audiences with the support, where necessary, of a lecture, dialogue, or intertitles. The more successfully a story was rendered, the less this crutch was needed. Intertitles put this verbal accompaniment in the hands of the production company. Each subject became a complete work in itself, guaranteeing, in principle at least, the intelligibility of a company's films. This allowed for a uniformity of information that was central to an industry based on mass production and consumption.
As noted in chapters 8 and 9, Porter had incorporated intertitles into his films with some frequency between mid 1903 and the end of 1905, but then virtually abandoned the practice in 1906-7. Although the industry's only trade journal had urged film producers to use intertitles on a regular basis in September 1906, Porter ignored such requests. With demands for intertitles becoming more urgent, Porter returned to their use on a consistent basis with Fireside Reminiscences (January 1908). Intertitles were indicated in Moving Picture World syn-
opses for this and subsequent Edison films through The Army of Two (October 1908). These, however, were usually quite brief. For example, Fireside Reminiscences has three intertitles: "Parted by a Brother," "Three Years Later," and "Reconciliation." Although these did not adequately explain the story in itself, they provided valuable guideposts when the spectator recalled the popular song, "After the Ball," which provided the key narrative referent. In many cases, these guideposts were considered inadequate. One exhibitor complained: "I think that half of the time the theater manager himself does not understand the picture as it is projected on the canvas. If some film manufacturer would make every one of his film subjects explain themselves as they pass through the machine he would soon have all the business he could attend to. If instead of having a few words of explanation on his film about every 100 feet, as most of them do, they would have these explanations come in at every 20 or 30 feet (or at every place in the film wherein an explanation was necessary), then the theater manager would have no use for a lecturer."[130]
The use of adequate explanatory titles at the beginning of each scene had the strong approval of the Dramatic Mirror , whose film reviewer, Frank Woods, did not hesitate to demand more elaborate titles if they seemed necessary to assure an intelligible story. Edison's Romance of a War Nurse (July 1908) was strongly criticized because it "is not as clearly told in the pictures as we would like to see. . . . love wins in the end and all are reconciled though how they do it and what was at the bottom of the story we must confess our inability to discover." It was suggested that "The Edison Company would do well in producing complicated dramatic stories of this kind if it would insert printed descriptive paragraphs at the proper points in the films so the spectators might gain a knowledge of what the actors are about."[131]The Devil was faulted for this reason. "In producing this film an attempt is made to make it intelligible by inserting descriptive paragraphs, but these are not numerous enough to be of much assistance."[132] Edison's Ingomar (September 1908) was criticized along similar lines.[133] In contrast, Griffith's use of titles contributed to the clarity of his films and received occasional praise.[134]