Intertitle

Intertitles are text panels, mostly in silent films, the lead like a red thread through a movie or comment on it. They usually explain what the director or the writer did not want to put it into imagery or could. Many intertitles, however, were only used to make the dialogues or the declaration of a scene for the viewer visible.

There were many opportunities to use intertitles and shape. Thus, the rhyme has been used for example in Giant's Wedding ( 1916) by Paul Wegener. In many films, including Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's Nosferatu (1922 ), intertitles were visualizes in a way which give the viewer the impression that he would read a letter or a torn book page. Beginning of the 1920s, experiments with colorfully designed intertitles were made, such as in The Toll of the Sea in 1922, the first shot in two-color Technicolor red / green film.

In the first Oscar ceremony in 1928, there was the category "Best intertitles ." The first and only intertitles designer who won the Academy Award in this category, was an American screenwriter Joseph Farnham for the three films The Fair Co-Ed, between Frisco and Manchuria and Laugh, Clown, Laugh.

In the processing of foreign silent films for the German cinema the intertitles had to be redesigned. At the same time had to be taken to ensure that the text boards looked exactly as in the original setting. However, not the original text was often cultural, political or censorship technical considerations translated, but uses a similar-sounding text.

Even after the end of the silent era intertitles were used, such as in Modern Times (1936 ) Charlie Chaplin in Silent Movie ( 1976) by Mel Brooks, with Juha (1999) by Aki Kaurismäki. The Belladonna (2005) by Franka Potente or The Artist ( 2011) by Michel Hazanavicius.

Intertitles come sometimes when talkies used, for example, before a new chapter or a particular scene. Thus, in the gangster comedy are The highlight of George Roy Hill (1973 ) and the film essay Munich - initiated all chapters with intertitles secrets of a city by Dominik Graf ( 2000). When Adele has not yet dined by Oldrich Lipský there is between the real scenes repeatedly animated cut scenes to prepare the audience to the nearest real scene.