First off, I’m sorry for not posting into this more. I’m extremely bad at using these sorts of class blogs. I’ve got another post in the pipe, that I’ll try to get up as soon as possible, but I may not get it up before class tomorrow. If not, I’ll have it up by Friday. Anyway, on to the post:

Although the reading we did on the editing of Annie Hall was absolutely fascinating, and great fodder for discussion about the movie and the crafting of a narrative, what I would like to single out is one particular scene: shortly after meeting for the first time, Alvy and Annie are on the balcony at her apartment, chatting. While discussing photography as an emerging art form, subtitles express the thoughts of both characters, neither of whom is at all concerned with photography and much more focused on the impression they are making on the other.

It’s a very simple device, but it’s also ingenious. I’m not sure I can think of many films that have employed subtitles in such an inventive way. The internal thoughts of film characters are generally not expressed in the film, and when they are, they are virtually always done through voiceover, and it is even rarer to have internal monologue for multiple characters. The idea of expressing, through text and images, the subtext of a scene is quite novel. Although I’m sure it’s been employed elsewhere, the only similar example I can think of is Wayne’s World, which makes jokes about subtitling itself, and also features an extremely melodramatic scene with the words “Oscar Clip” flashing at the bottom, serving as a wink to the audience.

Such a device actually seems very rare to me. I cannot think of many novels that would employ such a device, and I certainly can’t think of many handling it particularly well. The only medium I can think of where such a thing is common is comic books, where it is pretty much standard practice to have characters speak one thing and think another. Generally, it’s not used to any great narrative ends, although I can think of a rather brilliant moment in Astonishing X-Men — I’m showing my Whedonphile colors here — where an entire conversation is in fact a red herring while characters communicate in secret via telepathy.

I’m curious to know whether others have more examples where visual media mix in words in order to comment, undercut, or augment the action that is being shown. It seems like something that could offer great possibilities, but one that is rarely used. Subtitling is an obvious means to incorporate this second layer of narrative, but one that is very rarely experimented with. Subtitles are almost always a pedestrian affair, either alerting us to locations or translating foreign languages, but used inventively, like they are in Annie Hall, they open up interesting possibilities.