What Is Description in the Cinema?

Abstract

That serves well enough, I think, except that the twentieth century would argue that description is more than a mere figure; it is for us a whole genre or mode or text-type parallel and structurally contrasting with other text-types like narrative, exposition, lyric, and so on. I am chiefly concerned here with description in its relation narrative, specifically, its function at the service of narrative, as in the classical nineteenth century novel. The chief structural property of description is its atemporality. Unlike narrative, whose textual principle is the sequence and sequencing of events in time from beginning middle end, that of description is, elaborate on the Encyclopedie, an arraying or delineation of the properties and circumstances of objects in their spatial or conceptual field. Narrative time stays in abeyance as these properties and circumstances are presented. The most certain mark of description is the verb to be and its synonyms. Here, for instance, are sentences from the beginning of Balzac's Pere Goriot: The front of the lodging-house gives on a little garden and it is placed at