This essay details that which is arguably the essential nature of a ubiquitous kind of visual display prominently involved in a great many phenomena that people have in mind when they think and talk about the cinema. My argument begins with a summary and critique of an important precedent, Noël Carroll’s essentialist definition of the detached moving image display. The remainder of my discussion concentrates on the structure and dynamics of a particular sort of luminescent display. This display is essential (...) to what I call the cinematic display. As I understand it, the cinematic display is neither the or a medium of cinema nor perforce a vehicle for artistic content. It is, rather, a luminescent display in service of someone’s presentational intentions. I conclude with thoughts about the ontological relation between cinematic displays and works, the latter tentatively defined as a display of expressive or artistic agency. (shrink)