Subtitle-Cue Density, Silence, and Female Existential Positioning in Autumn Sonataand Les Rendez-vous d’Anna: A Reproducible Mixed-Methods Study

<title>Abstract</title> <p>This study develops a reproducible mixed-methods framework for comparing female subjectivity, maternal trauma, speech, and silence in Ingmar Bergman’s Autumn Sonata (1978) and Chantal Akerman’s Les Rendez-vous d’Anna (1978). Building on a close-reading argument that “martyrdom” and “nomadism” function as intertwined rather than binary existential positions, the study operationalizes verbal presence through time-stamped English subtitle cues and integrates descriptive computation with formal film analysis. To reduce release-specific runtime mismatch, the primary comparison is restricted to the shared first 75 min of the accessible subtitle tracks and divided into five 15-min segments. Autumn Sonata contains 865 cue starts in this window (11.53 cues/min), whereas Les Rendez-vous d’Anna contains 443 (5.91 cues/min), yielding a density ratio of 1.95. Across segments, cue density is comparatively stable in Autumn Sonata (SD = 0.37 cues/min; CV = 3.2%) but markedly more variable in Les Rendez-vous d’Anna (SD = 2.03; CV = 34.4%). Selected cue-free intervals further identify scenes in which verbal marking recedes and image, music, ambient sound, movement, and spatial composition carry interpretive weight. The quantitative patterns do not measure subjectivity directly; rather, they provide a reproducible temporal map for targeted close reading. The integrated analysis shows how Eva’s repeated return to speech corresponds to relational attachment and traumatic recurrence, while Anna’s intermittent verbal presence is aligned with mobility, withholding, and unstable belonging. The study demonstrates how modest computational measures can strengthen interpretive film scholarship without reducing cinematic silence to a purely linguistic absence.</p>