ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at length that when movie viewers "see" the elements of a movie's fictional world, the "seeing" that is in question must be understood as "imagined seeing" through the imagination, prompted and structured by the evolving character of the image track. It points out several complications that are connected with the basic terms of the distinction and investigate at least briefly some ways in which these complications impinge on the messy notion of "cinematic realism". "Transparency" constitutes one of the several bases upon which film shots and larger movie segments have been affirmed to be "realistic". Thus, it is thought to draw an essential contrast between photographs, on the one hand, and handcrafted images derived from a model, on the other. The thesis has played a central role in many of the debates about cinematic realism.
