Page "History of film" Paragraph 113

From 1909 a small number of American films, and even one or two European ones, came to include a few dialogue titles, or " spoken titles " as they were called at the time.

Film-makers slowly progressed from putting these dialogue titles before the scene in which they were spoken, to cutting them into the middle of the shot at the point at which they were understood to be actually spoken by the characters.

This transition began in 1912.

Once underway, the trend was aided by the move towards the increasing use of cuts within scenes in American films.

In 1913 a substantial proportion of the dialogue titles that were used in American films were cut in at the point when they were spoken.

Hardly any of the films where this happened were D. W. Griffith films, and indeed many of his 1913 films still contain no dialogue titles at all.

Although some European film-makers picked up the trend towards using dialogue titles, they did not pick up on the move towards cutting them into the scene at the point at which they were actually spoken until a few years later.