Thursday, May 10, 2007

Could Have Been a Thing

Failed initial experiments may have prejudiced movie-going audiences against movies with subtitles. The silent movie The Chamber Mystery, made in 1920 by Abraham S. Schomer, used words superimposed on the picture. They were placed in comic-strip style balloons coming from the mouths of actors, not along the bottom of the screen. The movie was not a success, and the text in balloons was apparently not used again.

—Robert Shiller, The New Financial Order: Risk in the 21st Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 103.

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