Verisimilitude
Whether a movie is realistic, antirealistic, or a com-
bination of the two, it can achieve a convincing
appearance of truth, a quality that we call
verisimilitude. Movies are verisimilar when they
convince you that the things on the screen—people,
places, what have you, no matter how fantastic or
antirealistic—are “really there.” In other words,
the movie’s vision seems internally consistent, giv-
ing you a sense that in the world on-screen, things
could be just like that. Of course, you can be con-
vinced by the physical verisimilitude of the world
being depicted and still be unconvinced by the
“unreality” of the characters, their portrayal by
the actors, the physical or logical implausibility of
the action, and so on.
In addition, audiences’ expectations concerning
“reality” change over time and across cultures. A
movie made in Germany in the 1930s may have
been considered thoroughly verisimilar by those
Germans who viewed it at the time but may seem
utterly unfamiliar and perhaps even unbelievable
to contemporary American viewers. Films that
succeed in seeming verisimilar across cultures and
times often enjoy the sort of critical and popular
success that prompts people to call them timeless.
Some of the most popular and successful movies
of all time convincingly depict imaginative or58 CHAPTER 2PRINCIPLES OF FILM FORM
1 2Realism versus antirealism[1] The Hon. Frances
Duncombe(1777), a realistic portrait painted by Thomas
Gainsborough; [2] Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2(1912),
the antirealistic work of Marcel Duchamp.