This paper discusses film dialogue analysis in subtitling courses and more in particular, the lack of it during the teaching of screen translation and subtitling. Subtitling courses and introductory publications tend to focus on a fixed set of issues, and these do not include a study of film dialogue. In the hierarchy of film signs and research into their narrative functioning, film dialogue occupies the fourth position after the study of editing, the study of camera angles and the study of sound in a more general sense.