나운규의 무성영화와 중간자막의 미학

Abstract

Studies of silent film in modern Korea have focused on the benshi, the silent film narrators who played a very important role in audiences’ acception of silent film, a new medium from the West. These studies could at times illuminate the dynamism of silent film, but they neglected to evaluate the aesthetic possibility and self-completeness of the text of the film. Inequality between different areas in enjoying silent film through benshi can be mattered and there were limits of benshi performances beyond film censorship. In this regard, this paper examines the types and the aesthetic functions of the intertitles in Na, Un-gyu’s films using his cine-roman texts. Intertitles, shots of texts printed on material that does not belong to the diegesis of a film, came into use in the late nineteenth century and became one of the most important conventions in Hollywood films by the 1910s. Na, Un-gyu’s films were influenced by the so-called classical Hollywood style films, including his use of intertitles. There are two types of intertitles: dialogue intertitles, which enunciated within the diegesis, and expository intertitles, which enunciated outside the diegesis. We can find various types of expository intertitles in Na’s films, such as identifications, temporal markers, narrative summaries, characterizations, mediated thoughts or paraphrased dialogues, and commentary on stories or discourses, as also seen in Hollywood’s silent films. Intertitles in Na’s film were influenced by and imitated the classical Hollywood style, but we can also note that Na created the most effective and original intertitles to utilize actions, performances, and comedies that featured the popularity of silent film in colonial Korea at that time. Intertitles of the lyrics of songs were often used for the performances in theaters, whereas dialogue intertitles in action scenes were used less often. Comedies in Na’s films were mostly the effect of dialogue intertitles, which created humorous situations or contained reversed and appropriated expressions uttered by others. Musical effects using rhyming couplets also strengthened the comedic effects of his intertitles. Metaphoric and symbolic expressions, which might be the “commentaries on story,” constitute the best use of intertitles in Na’s films. The figurative and lyrical intertitles found in his various films might belong to the territory of literature rather than that of film, as they appeal to audiences’ visual recognition through reading the literary intertitles rather than to their auditory recognition of information that they received passively through the benshi performance. Ultimately, we can say that silent film in colonial Korea was located in the dynamic space between oral audienceship composed by the benshi performances and the visual spectatorship made by the intertitles.