Seven chapters of technical analysis of film techniques offer detailed discussion, with specific cases and sequences, for the serious student of the film medium. The opening is a description of the differences in literature, drama and the stage and the film. Then follow expositions of basic film techniques, two sections on the composition of a shot, acting, the rhythm of the film, and film and sound, the last resulting in the decision that film plus sound has not achieved the dynamism of some of the old silent pictures. Here are the important attributes of an independent artistic genre, filmic structure and approaches, some of the important founders of film technique, etc., in careful elucidation for conscientious class and teacher application. This is not how-to-do-it material.