Time in the Movies

Abstract

A large part of what is special about film, as a medium, is the way in which it represents time. By “time” I mean temporal properties of, and relations among, events. Among other relations, films represent some events as earlier than, later than, and simultaneous with others. But films also represent intrinsic temporal features of events; they represent the duration of events, and sometimes the duration events seem to have to characters in the story. Although novels, poetry, plays, music, dance, and sometimes even still photographs, sculptures, and paintings also represent time, none of these media represents time in quite the way that films do.