ABSTRACT
Ideally, the practice of film history presupposes that each fact be considered from a dual perspective: as it appears to the film historian today and as it was viewed by the spectator at the time. On the one hand, history reads texts; on the other, each text has its own history of readings. It is scarcely worth discussing the evolution of film discourse if we think of discourse as something restricted to the films themselves. It is not only things that change, but the measure of things. If we admit that films imply their viewers, we have also to admit that it is not only films but viewers too that are subject to evolutionary change. In this respect a study of film reception can be expected to provide a significant corrective to any merely factual history of film.
