The Novel’s Linearity and Film’s Spatiality

The ‘reading’ of the novel is highly linear – we take in words and paragraphs sequentially as they appear on the page. As McFarlane explains, “the relentless linearity associated with the usual reading of a novel favours the gradual accretion of information about action, characters atmosphere, ideas…” (p.27)

McFarlane observes that while film appears analogous in relying on a sequentiality of viewing time, ‘frame-following-frame is not analogous to the word-following-word experience of the novel. There are at least two significant differences to be noted; i) the frame instantly, and at any given moment, provides information of at least visual complexity beyond that of any given word because of the spatial impact of the frame; and ii) the frame is never registered as a discreet entity in the way that a word is.” (p27)

An author can force the reader to see a character standing in a doorway squinting in the sunlight angrily, but in a film adaptation the eye observes that character’s height in proportion to the doorway. Mise-en scene and cinematic framing exposes the viewer to a multiplicity of signifiers, above all, the form stresses spatiality over linearity.

The way one ‘reads’ a film differs vastly from the reading of a novel – film has both cinematic and extra-cinematic codes that make up its language. While there are some conventions audiences learn how to read (and make associations with) – camera angles, fade ins, cuts, editing in general, what is the visual equivalent of a comma or full stop? McFarlane identifies four main codes operating in film; a) language codes, b) visual codes, c) non-linguistic sound codes (music and other), and d) cultural codes.

This is useful in that it allows one to see the two differing language systems of the novel and cinema. This analysis seems to elicit more questions than answers – questions I pose in each project pursued from herein.