designates as “the ABCEDminded,” which can be taken as “ab-
said” or “ab-sent,” or just alphabetically controlled.

     The business of the writer or the film-maker is to transfer 
the reader or viewer from one world, his own , to another, the 
world created by typography and film. That is so obvious, and 
happens so completely, that those undergoing the experience 
accept it subliminally and without critical awareness. Cervantes 
lived in a world in which print was as new as movies are in the 
West, and it seemed obvious to him that print, like the images 
now on the screen, had usurped the real world. The reader or 
spectator had become a dreamer under their spell, as René Clair 
said of film in 1926.

     Movies as a nonverbal form of experience are like 
photography, a form of statement without syntax. In fact,