Does Every Picture Really Tell a Story?

Film Photonovel Magazines and the Question of Visual Sequentiality

Abstract

The present article deals with the forgotten genre of the film photonovel and the magazines that published this kind of movie adaptations in the decade between 1955 and 1965. It studies the various models that were copied or appropriated by this genre that was most popular in Italy and France. The main focus lies on the manner in which the layout principles of these magazines manipu-
lated the narrative and sequential principles of the movies they adapted. How did they succeed in offering new forms of visual montage that enabled them to combine storytelling on the one hand and portrait photography on the other? Finally, the paper discusses the differences between the better-known movie story magazines which fictionalized the movies while illustrating them with set pictures, and the film photonovel, in which word and image combinations were directly inspired by the photonovel magazines.