Motion Perception in Motion Pictures

Historians and theorists of the motion picture who have felt obliged to provide some explanation of how the illusion of motion on the screen is perceived have, almost without exception, relied upon a phenomenon they have termed ‘persistence of vision’. The notion is ubiquitous in film literature. Credit for its discovery may be attributed to different sources, and the details of the process vary slightly from one account to the next, but ‘persistence of vision’ in one form or another is invariably proffered as the basis of filmic illusion.