Ways of Reading Third Edition - Martin Montgomery, Alan Durant, Nigel Fabb, Tom Furniss, Sara Mills 2007

24.5 Differences between film and prose fiction
Unit 24 Film and prose fiction
Section 6 Media: from text to performance

The novel, because it operates exclusively through the medium of the verbal sign, is sometimes considered richer in its texture than film. Its relationship to reality can seem more oblique, since the world that unfolds in the novel is not given directly but is developed by the narrator and recreated in an active and controlled process of reading that allows for reflection, comparison and the gradual construction of a coherent whole. Patterns of reference and cross-reference may be built up over several hundred pages; and the whole novel may take several hours to read (perhaps ten hours for an average length novel).

Film, by contrast, can seem more immediate, but perhaps at the same time, less dense. In the case of a film adaptation of a novel, the ten hours of reading are condensed into two hours’ viewing; and this viewing is required to be intelligible at a single screening. This might suggest that film is somehow a less complex, less demanding medium than the prose novel. It is, however, worth remembering that film is a multilayered medium, working with a potent combination of two modalities of expression: image and sound. The image has powerful possibilities for condensing significance: descriptive detail, character and action can be displayed simultaneously within the single shot, through codes of lighting, colour and composition, whereas prose is constrained by a sequential, piece by piece, mode of presentation. The significatory possibilities of the image are further enhanced, of course, by the various kinds of sound that constitute the soundtrack. Because of their different conditions of presentation and consumption, then, films may condense narrative material; but this does not inevitably entail simplification or mere reduction.

In conclusion, therefore, it is important to note that stories have a constructed nature, in whichever medium they are rendered. We have seen that film, no less than prose, depends on the operation of conventions - for example, rules that guide the selection of shots and their combination. Such conventions range from those governing the depiction of dialogue to those governing the depiction of a chase or the intrusion into a scene of a sinister onlooker. These filmic conventions are just as crucial for narration in film as are those that govern the representation of thought or speech (see Unit 22, Speech and narration) or the handling of ’point of view’ in prose fiction (see Unit 21). Prose is governed by conventions that are linguistic in character. What is less obvious - but no less true - is that film-makers also operate according to a kind of language: the language of film.