THE WELL-VERSED MOVIE

Fiction writers, dramatists, and poets resort to quotation constantly in order to create stop-motion effects like Virginia Wolf's Mrs. Dalloway and Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night. Harwood discusses the significance of poetry as a means by which a filmmaker reveals a character's state of mind, animates a plot, or introduces a movie's overarching theme. She argues that a poem must seem essential in order for it to be an effective piece of the cinematic whole.