In the Silent Film era, Directors used Title Cards between scenes to convey dialogue or a short desciption of action that is then shown in the folowing frames of the picture.

In modern film, intertitles are most commonly used to supply an epigraph, such as a poem, or to distinguish various "acts" of a film or multimedia production by use as a title card.

The development of the soundtrack largely eliminated their utility as a narrative device, but they are occasionally still used as an artistic device.