Accessibility and audiovisual language in early twentieth century-films

The appearance of the cinematograph marked the starting point of the history of cinema, the evolution of audiovisual language, interaction and communication between the audience and new steps in what would become audiovisual translation. The first films, known as early films, were in their first stages of development, a time when the rules and conventions of cinema were established, which the public was progressively learning, thanks, among other elements and devices, to the intervention of figures such as narrators who, in addition to explaining and making these celluloids accessible to the vast majority of the illiterate public, played a fundamental role in the comprehension of the films. The aim of this study is to examine the factors that, in our opinion, could be considered as the first steps towards accessibility in the film environment in the Spanish context. These interactions played a crucial role in the understanding of the first films by the audience, most of whom were illiterate and enthusiastic about this new art form.There is an absence of written evidence for these comments by narrators in Spain, with the exception of the notes collected in Sánchez Salas (1998, 2004, 2008a, 2008b), Montero Domínguez (2019) and Mirabent Espinosa (2016). There are no sound records or complete script writings. However, as a sample, we have extracted the comments of an actor and a narrator, Ramos de Castro, who, years later (1941), added his comments to The rent Collector (1921) film. Regrettably, this record has disappeared after the study that has been carried out.