Overhearing Film Dialogue

by Sarah Kozloff

Since the birth of cinema, film has been lauded as a visual rather than a verbal medium; this sentiment was epitomized by John Ford's assertion in 1964 that, "When a motion picture is at its best, it is long on action and short on dialogue." Little serious work has been done on the subject of film dialogue, yet what characters say and how they say it has been crucial to our experience and understanding of every film since the coming of sound. Through informative discussions of dozens of classic and contemporary films--from Bringing Up Baby to Terms of Endearment, from Stagecoach to Reservoir Dogs--this lively book provides the first full-length study of the use of dialogue in American film.

Sarah Kozloff shows why dialogue has been neglected in the analysis of narrative film and uncovers the essential contributions dialogue makes to a film's development and impact. She uses narrative theory and drama theory to analyze the functions that dialogue typically serves in a film.

The second part of the book is a comprehensive discussion of the role and nature of dialogue in four film genres: westerns, screwball comedies, gangster films, and melodramas. Focusing on topics such as class and ethnic dialects, censorship, and the effect of dramatic irony, Kozloff provides an illuminating new perspective on film genres.

Genres: Media Tie In

336 pages, Paperback

First published February 27, 2000

About the author

Sarah has spent her life immersed in literature, narrative, and film.

After a degree in English at Dartmouth she worked in film production in NYC. She earned a Ph.D. from an interdisciplinary program at Stanford University, joining the Film Department of Vassar College in 1988. In 2009 she was awarded the William R. Kenan Jr. Endowed Chair.

In 2012, while teaching a senior seminar on American Women Directors, she realized that neither the books nor films of Lord of the Rings could pass the Bechdel Test. That summer, she grabbed her laptop and started imagining a world that awaited the return of the queen.

She didn’t know then that this leap into creative writing would spark a new career. Her epic fantasy quartet, The Nine Realms, was published by TOR on a rapid publications schedule. All four books, A Queen in Hiding, The Queen of Raiders, A Broken Queen, and The Cerulean Queen, came out from January through April 2020.

She lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband and a shifting menagerie of pets, who mistakenly believe they are suitable replacements for grown sons.