Movement and Time in Cinema 1

Movement and time in cinema

Thomas Poell

Over several centuries, from the Greeks to Kant, a revolution took place in
philosophy: the subordination of time to movement was reversed, time ceases
to be the measurement of normal movement, it increasingly appears for itself
and creates paradoxical movements. […] It could be said that, in its own
sphere, cinema has repeated the same experience, the same reversal, in more
fast-moving circumstances. The movement-image of the so called classical
cinema gave way, in the post-war period, to a direct time-image. 1

Deleuze argues that philosophy and cinema have gone through a parallel development, in
which time is disconnected from movement. Both philosophy and cinema started of by
considering time as the measure of movement. In this abstract perspective, time consists
of a series of presents or ‘now’ moments that can be divided infinitely, depending on the
movement that is measured. Deleuze maintains that eventually this idea was replaced by
another approach, in which time is conceptualized as a flow of internal psychical
experiences. According to this human based point of view, time allows us to have
internal experiences, like thoughts, dreams, fantasies, and feelings of fear, happiness,
sadness, and joy. Time stands on its own.
This article will explore how, according to Deleuze, this emancipation of time from
movement took place in cinema. It will start of with a discussion of Deleuze’s
interpretation of the work of the early twentieth century French philosopher Henri
Bergson, which spurred him to turn to cinema in the first place. From Bergson, Deleuze
has borrowed the idea of time as an internal flow of thoughts and experiences. I will

1
Deleuze, Cinema 2, The Time-Image, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989, xi.
 2 Movement and Time in Cinema

show how Deleuze uses Bergson’s ideas to think about the relationship between time and
movement in cinema.
The second and third part of the article turns to Deleuze’s actual confrontation with
cinema. The basis of the discussion are the two books on cinema, The Movement-Image
(1986) and The Time-Image (1989), which conclude Deleuze’s thinking on the
relationship between time and movement; an issue, which he has addressed throughout
his philosophical career 2 . Deleuze shows that various film directors have
thought about the relationship between time and movement by creating new images. This
‘cinematographic thinking’ is valuable because cinema can investigate the actual matter
of human spiritual and mental life, whereas philosophy can only think conceptually about
time and human subjectivity.
In producing the concepts of cinema, Deleuze differentiates between two basic
types of cinema, or images: ‘the movement-image’ and the ‘time-image’. The films that
fall under the regime of the movement-image, are those from before World War II, and
most of the commercial cinema of the second half of the twentieth century. According to
Deleuze, the crucial characteristic of these films is that movement is related to centers
that see, feel, and act. These centers are usually the main characters in a film, who act
and react to their surroundings. Movement is centered by linking the different images and
scenes in such a way that they show how the events affect the characters and vice versa.
For example, in Titanic (1997) we see how Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) saves Rose (Kate
Winslet) when she nearly falls into the sea. We see how they fall in love. How the ship
sinks after it hits the iceberg. Finally, how Jack drowns and Rose survives. Every image
and every cut in the film plays a functional part in showing the progression of these
events. The camera closely follows the characters, Jack, Rose, and of course the ship. It
shows how they influence the events that take place. There are no random shots. These
would only distract us from the story that is being told. Deleuze makes clear that this
centering of movement has one very important consequence: time is represented
indirectly. We only have a sense of time in relation to movements that are causally
linked.
 Movement and Time in Cinema 3

In the time-image, which is discussed in the final part of the article, this is no
longer the case. Deleuze maintains that in the course of the cinematographic history, time
has been emancipated from movement. What happened is that after the Second World
War various French new wave and Italian neo-realist directors started to make films in
which movement was no longer centered. In these films, the camera did not always
follow the characters, but it started to make autonomous movements. Neither were all the
shots and scenes edited in such a way as to suggest a clear progression of events. The
characters did not seem to be caught up in a story with a beginning and an end, instead
they just simply wandered around. In Godard’s Une Femme est Une Femme (1961), for
example, the main characters do not seem to have a clear purpose. They do some
housework, walk around the streets. and then suddenly they start to dance. As viewers we
are constantly reminded by Godard that we are watching a film. He employs various
methods to achieve this: intricate tracking shots, handheld cameras, jump cuts, and
bombastic music cues that grow sporadically at seemingly inappropriate times. We are
not supposed to lose ourselves in the narrative, but the objective is to make us think and
develop new ways of seeing. The central point of Deleuze’s argument is that in these
kind of films, movement no longer provides us with an experience of time, because it is
unclear how one movement follows from the previous. Deleuze claims that when this
happens, time can start to appear directly, as a flow of internal thoughts and experiences.
At first, the attempt to break the causally related patterns of action and reaction, typical
of mainstream commercial cinema, was primarily a French and Italian effort. Eventually
the time-image was further elaborated by various film directors from all over the world.
Today, for example, films from David Lynch, Lars von Trier, Raoul Ruiz, and Harmony
Korine incorporate aspects of the time-image.

2
Deleuze, 4 Leçons sur Kant, http://www.webdeleuze.com/sommaire.html, 5-8-2002; Deleuze, Kant's Critical
Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985; Deleuze, Bergsonism,
New York: Zone Books, 1991.
 4 Movement and Time in Cinema

Cinema as an instrument of philosophical discovery

Before conceptualizing the work of various film directors, Deleuze first demonstrates that
cinema is a proper instrument to study the relationship between time and movement. He
does so in discussion with the ideas of Henri Bergson. Paradoxically, Bergson did not
himself think that cinema could produce real movement, instead he contends that it is the
basic example of a flawed way of thinking about movement. In Creative Evolution
(1907), he argues that the main flaw in all thinking about movement is to assume that
movement can be reconstituted from instants or positions. This is, according to Bergson,
exactly what the cinematograph does. It takes a series of snapshots of a moving thing and
throws these on a screen, so that they replace each other very rapidly. Consequently,
there is the impression of movement, but the only real movement takes place in the
unrolling of the film.3
Bergson maintains that the artificial cinematographic process of recomposing
movement is characteristic of both ancient and modern science. For Greek and medieval
philosophy, movement consisted of the regulated transition from one form or idea to the
other. Modern science, which Bergson identifies with Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Newton
and Leibniz, differs from this ancient conception in sofar as movement is no longer
related to eternal forms, but to ‘any-instant-whatever’. Movement is now seen as a
mechanical succession of instants. For example, modern physics, links the space covered
to the time taken by a body to fall. Although there are clearly large differences between
the modern and ancient conception, the tendency is the same: movement is artificially
recomposed from immobile sections. In correspondence with this idea of movement, time
is considered as made up of moments or ‘virtual stopping-places’. Bergson contends that
this static way of thinking does not take into account the flux of time itself, only the
points of division. Neither does it capture real movement, which always occurs in the
interval between two instances.4 Following Bergson's line of thought, Deleuze maintains

3
Bergson, Creative Evolution, New York: Dover Publications, 1998, 304-306.
4
Ibid., 336-337.
 Movement and Time in Cinema 5

that modern science develops an abstract conception of time. He consequently proposes

the following formula: ‘immobile section’  ‘abstract time’.5

Real movement and time

Bergson’s objective is to replace the abstract conception of time and movement as
consisting of separate moments by a theory that captures the flow of real time and
movement. Accordingly, he argues that it is more productive to think movement as a
mobile section of a ‘whole’, than to take it apart in immobile sections. Bergson
completely changes the focus. Instead of taking movement apart, he looks at the
qualitative changes it expresses in the whole, whatever this whole might be. The
difference in approach becomes immediately clear when we consider an example given
by Deleuze to explain Bergson's new concept of movement:

If I consider parts or places abstractly - A and B - I cannot understand the

movement which goes from one to the other. But imagine I am starving at A,
and at B there is something to eat. When I have reached B and had something
to eat, what has changed is not only my state, but the state of the whole which
encompassed B, A, and all that was between them.6

In Bergson’s mind, movement always relates to a change in the whole. Following

Bergson, Deleuze explains that although movement must be considered as a mobile
section of a whole, this whole is never given or givable. Both ancient and modern science
were mistaken in thinking that the whole was given in subsequently the eternal order of
forms or as a ‘set’ of any-instances-whatevers. Deleuze emphasizes that there is a big
difference between a ‘whole’ and a ‘set’. A set is by definition closed, consisting of a
specific number of instances. The whole, on the other hand, will always be open, and
subject to constant change. Since it is always open, it doesn't have any parts, moments, or

5
Deleuze, Cinema 1, The Movement-Image, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986, 1.
6
Ibid., 8.
 6 Movement and Time in Cinema

instances, it cannot be divided without changing qualitatively at each stage of the

division.7
In correspondence with this new understanding of movement, Bergson no longer
equates time to essential moments or a series of ‘any-moment-whatevers’, but instead
theorizes it as concrete ‘duration’. Duration is the lived experience of qualitative
changes. It refers to real time as experienced in the unceasing variations of internal
psychical states, which form an endless flow.8 As such, duration is identical to the whole,
“a spiritual reality which constantly changes according to its own relations”.9 Based on
this Bergsonian theory of real time and movement, Deleuze proposes a second formula:
“real movement’  concrete duration”.10
After describing the two Bergsonian formula's of movement and time, Deleuze
goes on to argue that the two formula's can very well be combined. This seems very
strange, having just established that movement as composed of immobile sections
directly conflicts with a perspective on movement as a mobile section of a whole.
However, Deleuze now maintains that the formula's do not conflict, but in fact describe
two aspects of movement. He holds that movement associates the immobile sections of a
set to an open whole or duration, and at the same time it relates this duration to the
objects in the set. Deleuze explains this double sidedness as follows:

We can consider the objects or parts of a set as immobile sections; but

movement is established between these sections, and relates the objects or
parts to the duration of a whole which changes, and thus expresses the
changing of the whole in relation to the objects and is itself a mobile section
of duration. 11

Deleuze holds that the combination of the two formula’s of Bergson implies three levels
of analysis of movement and time. First, the sets are defined by separate objects or

7
Ibid., 8-11.
8
Bergson, Creative Evolution, New York: Dover Publications, 1998, 1-3
9
Deleuze, Cinema 1, The Movement-Image, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986, 11.
10
Ibid., 1.
11
Ibid., 11.
 Movement and Time in Cinema 7

immobile sections. Second, the movement of translation between objects and their
relationship to the whole. Third, duration or the whole, which forms a spiritual reality
that constantly changes.12

Cinematographic movement and time

After combining the two Bergsonian formula’s on movement and time, Deleuze goes on
to show that all three levels of analysis, which he has just identified, can be found in
cinema. Beginning with the first level of analysis, Deleuze develops a very different
understanding of the immobile section in cinema than initially conceived by Bergson. For
Bergson the snapshot was the immobile section from which movement was recomposed.
Deleuze substitutes this strictly technical perspective on cinema by an analysis of what
can be seen in the image. For him there is only the image, and the elements from which it
is composed. Strictly considering the image, Deleuze subsequently argues that the
immobile sections of movement in cinema are in fact the objects in the frame. In turn, he
defines the frame as “a relatively closed system which includes everything which is
present in the image –sets, characters and props”.13 Deleuze makes clear that as such the
frame forms a set with a great number of parts. Thus, it can be broken down in separate
objects, which include among others the characters and props.14
The reconceptualization of the immobile sections in cinema as the objects in the
frame allows Deleuze to show that cinema, in contrast to what Bergson thought, can
indeed produce movement as a mobile section of duration. Deleuze does admit that the
Bergsonian critique on cinema is quite understandable because at the outset cinema was
characterized by a fixed camera, which can only produce a spatial and strictly immobile
shot. With a fixed camera only the objects moved in a frame, as such movement was only
composed of immobile sections. Deleuze insists that movement in cinema became a
mobile section of duration by means of the mobility of the camera and more
fundamentally through montage. Montage, Deleuze asserts, can be considered as the
‘determination of the whole’ by means of the continuous connecting of shots, creating

12
Ibid., 11.
13
Ibid., 12.
14
Ibid., 12-18.
 8 Movement and Time in Cinema

continuities, cuttings and false continuities.15 Through montage and the movement of the
camera, the shot can express both the relationship between objects and at the same time
the state of the whole. Deleuze gives an example from Hitchcock’s Frenzy (1972) that
perfectly illustrates this double function of the shot.

The camera follows a man and a woman who climbs a staircase and arrive at
a door that the man opens; then the camera leaves them, and draws back in a
single shot. It runs along the external wall of the apartment, comes back to
the staircase that it descends backwards, coming out on to the pavement, and
rises up the exterior up to the opaque window of the apartment seen from
outside. This movement, which modifies the relative position of immobile
sets, is only necessary if it expresses something in the course of happening, a
change in the whole which is itself transmitted through these modifications:
the woman is being murdered.16

The shot shows the movement of the characters or objects, but at the same time it also
expresses a change in the whole. The connection of individual shots combined with the
movement of the camera, leaving the characters and going outside through the window of
the apartment, tells us that we are no longer in the same situation, the murder of the
woman has changed the whole. Thus, the method of montage and the movement of the
camera in the example from Frenchy is indeed a mobile section of the whole.17

The movement-image
So far, Deleuze has established that the introduction of montage and the mobility of the
camera has allowed cinema to produce movement as a mobile section of duration. Now
he has to show that time was indeed subordinated to movement in classical cinema, and
continues to be dependent on movement in today’s commercial cinema. Deleuze argues
that movement subordinates time in cinema, when the movements of characters and

15
Ibid., 29.
16
Ibid., 19.
17
Ibid, 19-24.
 Movement and Time in Cinema 9

objects are connected through montage to a center, which acts, perceives, and is affected.
A center can be the main character, a group of people, but also an idea, like the
dialectical progression of history in the films of Eisenstein. If movement is connected to
such center, the result will be a movement-image. The existence of a center makes it
possible to show patterns of actions and reactions, or ‘sensory-motor schemata’ as
Deleuze calls them, in which movements between characters and objects are causally
related. Deleuze maintains the causally related movements in the movement-image give
us cliché descriptions of the world. It only shows us what we are interested in relation to
the story or the vision of the director. In this sense, “the sensory-motor schema is an
agent of abstraction”.18 Everything that doesn’t serve a function in the story is stripped
away.
To present such a functionally related universe, time must be subordinated to
movement. To let movements logically follow each other, time can only appear as a
succession of moments that measure movement. This indirect representation of time and
the causal relations between movements are constituted through montage, which links
movement of characters and objects to a center that acts and reacts. Thus, in the
movement-image, “it is montage itself which constitutes the whole, and thus gives us the
image of time”.19 The relating of movements to a center through montage must be done
very carefully, otherwise the viewer will experience discontinuity in the progression of
events. In the case of Frenzy, for example, Hitchcock makes sure that each movement of
the camera and each cut is done in such a way as to show the progression of the murder
of the woman, who is in this case functions as the center.
The fact that classical and commercial cinema often use flashbacks does not
contradict Deleuze’s observation that time in the movement image is presented as a
succession of moments because the flashback “represents the former present that the past
‘was’”.20 When a flashback is used, it always becomes clear whether it shows something
that happened before or after the ‘present’ in which story takes place. As such, the
flashback conforms to the rule that time is presented as a succession of moments. Neither
does the flashback conflict with the imperative that movements must be related to a

18
Deleuze, Cinema 2, The Time-Image, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989, 45.
19
Ibid., 34.
 10 Movement and Time in Cinema

center. For the purpose of the flashback is to explain a particular action, feeling or
emotion of a character. For instance, in Once upon a time in the west (1968), we
understand why Harmonica (Charles Bronson) wants to kill Frank (Henry Fonda), when
we see how Frank has killed his brother years before in a particularly sadist manner.
Even a film which mixes different times lines, like for example Pulp Fiction (1994) from
Quentin Tarantino, can still be consistent with the regime of the movement-image. As
long as it is clear how different lines succeed each other. And providing that each line
serves a clear function in the story that is told.

The variations of the movement-image

Deleuze makes clear that movement can in different ways be related to a center to
express the change in the whole and give us an indirect image of time. The ways of
relating movement to a center, in turn depend on our own human sensibilities.21 Deleuze
identifies three basic modes of connecting movement to a center, through action,
perception, and affection. These modes are in effect the different ways in which time is
subordinated to movement. The three modes subsequently describe the general variants
in which the movement-image falls apart, which are the perception-, affection-, and
action-image. The perception-image shows through the long shot how a character or the
camera observes the world. These perceptions can conform to a particular vision, like in
the films of Eisenstein, or they can provide crucial information about the environment or
characters to the viewer. The action image displays by means of the medium shot the
actions and reaction between characters themselves, and between characters and
elements. Finally, the affection image reveals through the close-up how particular
developments in the story emotionally affect the character. Deleuze emphasizes that a
film is never made out of a single kind of image; in the montage of movement-images,
these three images are inter-assembled. Nonetheless, a film has always one dominant
type of image. Therefore, we can speak of active, perceptive or affective montage.22

20
Ibid., 54.
21
Deleuze, Cinema 1, The Movement-Image, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986, 63.
22
Ibid., 64-70.
 Movement and Time in Cinema 11

What kind of causally related universes are created by relating movements to a

center that sees, acts and feels? The dominant mode of connecting movement in cinema
is the American action montage. Deleuze maintains the American action-image
establishes the relationship between the environment or ‘milieux’ and various modes of
behavior. The pattern is always more or less the same: a character is caught in a difficult
situation, which provides a clear challenge. The character reacts in responds to the
challenge by changing the situation or his relation with the other characters. The
character must raise his ‘mode of being’ to the demands set by the situation or the
environment. He must achieve a new kind of consciousness, attitude, or power. Deleuze
stresses that in the basic model of the action-image everything is individuated, not only
the main character, but also the environment as a particular space and time, and the
situation as determining. The action-image constitutes a series of duels, with the
environment, with others, or with the self. Deleuze argues that this image has as its
formula SAS: “from the situation to the transformed situation via the intermediary of the
action”.23
Many movies can be mentioned to illustrate the American model of the action-
image. For example, Rocky (1976), to pick one that closely conforms to the basic model,
tells the story of a boxer, played by Sylvester Stallone, who throws away his talents in a
corrupt environment. At the beginning of the film, Rocky faces an enormous challenge
when he gets the chance to fight a match against the world champion. After experiencing
some serious doubts he takes up the challenge and raises himself to a new quality both
physically and mentally. Rocky obviously functions as the center to which all movements
are related. Deleuze makes clear that the centering of movement in the action image is
established through alternate parallel montage, to describe the environment, and alternate
concurrent montage, showing the progress of the duel. In Rocky, for example, the shots of
the training of the two boxers are intercut in such a way as to demonstrate how they
prepare for the upcoming fight.
Deleuze demonstrates that this type of montage does not just tell us a story, but in
fact provides us with a whole spiritual universe. Deleuze holds that this type of montage
creates a spiritual progression that expresses the birth of the American civilization as

23
Ibid., 142.
 12 Movement and Time in Cinema

universal history. Two characteristics of the American dream are displayed. First, the
ideal of the melting pot in which minorities are dissolved. Think about the way in which
characters are always in search of being recognized or belonging to some group or
collective. Second, the overcoming of all challenges which creates characters or leaders
capable of reacting to all situations.24
Although, the American action model dominates commercial cinema, it is only one
way in which movements can be connected to a center and give an indirect representation
of time. The action-, perception- and affection-image fall apart in a great number of
variations, which are all conceptualized by Deleuze. Let us look at one more example. In
exploring the perception image, Deleuze discusses among others the work of Dziga
Vertov, whom he calls the ‘inventor of perceptive montage’. A good illustration of what
can be done with the perception image, is Vertov's The Man with the Movie Camera
(1929), which consists of different series of shots that illuminate day-to-day life in
Moscow and Odessa in 1929. The film starts of by showing the details of a woman's
bedroom: the camera focuses on her window, then moves inside and examines her
belongings, such as pictures that hang on the wall and items scattered on her dresser. The
woman herself rests in her bed. Then we gradually move outside to see the world in a
seemingly frozen state; streets are empty, the parks and benches are unpopulated,
telephones are silent, and the wheels and gears of the factory remain still. When the
movie continues, we see shots of the woman waking up, intercut with images of trolley
cars leaving their stations and moving about in synchronized motion, as well as people
arriving at factories to begin labor. Deleuze maintains that what Vertov shows in this way
is the Soviet revolutionary consciousness: “Communist man with the material universe of
interactions defined as community”.25 In contrast to the American action model, there is
not there a single character or a group in the The Man with the Movie Camera that
operates as a center, but the dialectical communist vision of reality functions as such.

24
Ibid., 148.
25
Ibid., 82.
 Movement and Time in Cinema 13

The crisis of the movement image

The characteristics of movement-image have largely been developed before WWII by a
variety of American, French, German, and Soviet film directors. The movement-image
and especially the action-image have continued to dominate commercial cinema up to
today. However, Deleuze argues, that artistically the movement image came into a crisis
around the Second World War. This crisis was above all provoked by the work of
Hitchcock, who developed a fourth type of movement image, the mental image, which
opened up the road towards the time-image. Through the mental image it became
possible to show mental relations. Deleuze maintains that it may seem that these were
already included in the action- or affection-image, but he insists that mental relations are
of a totally different order. Action-images relate characters or objects to each other, but it
never establishes logical relations. The affection-image, for its part, obviously has a
strong mental component, but Deleuze claims that this is something very different than
making the mental the proper object of an image.
The mental-image does not have affections or actions as its object, but intellectual
feelings of relations. It shows ‘acts’ that contain ‘symbolic elements of a law’. For
example, in Hitchcock’s Vertigo, the retired police detective, played by James Steward,
does not simply follow Madeline/Judy (Kim Novak) around, but he in effect tries to trace
the relations in which she seems to be caught. She is hunted by a past, which she cannot
escape. The detective, in turn wants to gain access to her mystery, but he is unable to
enter. At one point, he even exclaims in frustration: ‘if I just could find the key’. The
objective of Vertigo is to show the different relations in which the detective tries to find
his way. Deleuze contends that : “What matters is not who did the action –what
Hitchcock calls with contempt the whodunit- but neither is it the action itself: it is the set
of relations in which the action and the one who did it are caught”.26 In this sense the
returning images of circles in Madeline’s hair, in the tree rings, the spiral staircase, and
the turning of the camera itself do not only refer to the detectives vertigo, but these are
signs of relations. By making the mental into an object of cinema, Hitchcock prefigured
a new kind of cinema which directly taps into spiritual realities.

26
Ibid., 200.
 14 Movement and Time in Cinema

The Time-Image
In the movement-image, it is montage which constructs the whole and gives us the image
of time. The whole is created by relating movements to a center, which is also still the
case in Hitchcocks films. Deleuze maintains that if movement is no longer connected to a
center or this center is incapable of acting or reacting, then a time-image emerges in
which time is presented directly. But what kind of time are we talking about, if it is not
simply the succession of moments? To answer this question, Deleuze connects to the
Bergsonian conceptualization of time as ‘duration’: lived experience as an unceasing
variation of internal psychical states. Duration, as we have discussed, must be understood
as an open whole, which cannot be divided into separate moments. Thus, time cannot be
theorized abstractly as a succession of ‘now’ moment; it must be considered as a whole.
Considering time as a whole, Deleuze argues that we can no longer talk about the past,
present, and future as successive moments. Instead, we have to think time as coexistence
of past, present and future. He maintains that the past is not a former present, and neither
is the future a present to come, they are both part of our experience of the present. He
consequently says that “there is no present which is not haunted by a past and a future”.27
Deleuze calls this coexistence of past, present and future ‘virtuality’.
In the spirit of Bergson, Deleuze asks: “how would a new present come about if the
old present did not pass at the same time that it is present?”28 He answers that the past is
already constituted as past at the same time that it is present. Deleuze holds that:

The past and the present do not denote two successive moments, but two
elements which coexist: One is the present, which does not cease to pass, and
the other is the past, which does not cease to be but through which all
presents pass. It is in this sense that there is a pure past, a kind of ‘past in
general’.29

27
Deleuze, Cinema 2, The Time-Image, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989, 37.
28
Deleuze, Bergsonism, New York: Zone Books, 1991, 58.
29
Ibid., 59.
 Movement and Time in Cinema 15

Accordingly, Deleuze defines duration or the whole, as ‘virtual coexistence’. It is called

‘virtual’ because we are not conscious of the coexistence of past, present, and future, but
it is the only way in which we can have a memory and recollections. Following this line
of thought, Deleuze argues that it is a mistake to assume that recollections are preserved
somewhere, for example in the brain, where we have ready access to them. Recollections
are not preserved, but must be found in the ‘past in general’. Deleuze maintains that
when we look for a recollection that escapes us, we detach ourselves from the present and
place ourselves first in the past in general. After that we go into a specific region of the
past, until a particular recollection slowly passes from the virtual state into the actual.30
The central argument of The Time-Image is that after the Second World War
various film directors have found ways to tap into the ‘virtual coexistence’ of past,
present, and future. How have they done this? Deleuze answers that they did so by
creating movements that are not related to a center.31 Movement, as we have discussed,
can only subordinate time and make it into a number that measures it, if it is connected to
a center, which recognizes, perceives, and acts. Movements that avoid centering can no
longer produce an indirect representation of time, since time can only measure
movement, if these movements show a clear causal or dialectical progression. When it is
unclear whether one movement follows from the previous, then movement does not
provide us with an experience of time. However, this does not mean that time stops
altogether, instead it appears directly. Neither does the direct presentation of time imply
that movement is halted. It only no longer centers, it has become ‘aberrant movement’.32
The invention of the time-image does not only entail the creation of aberrant
movements, but it involves the transformation of almost every aspect of cinema. Not only
the use of montage or the camera changed, but also the settings in which films take place,
the topics that are addressed, and even the actors and the characters. More profoundly,
the time-image has given access to a spiritual universe, which had always remained
closed to cinema. In the movement-image everything was related to a subject or center
giving way to three basic images, the perception-, affection-, and action-image, in the
time-image there is no more center, which allows for an infinite number of images and

30
Bergson, H., Matter and Memory, New York: Zone Books, 1991, 133-134; Deleuze, Bergsonism, 51-62.
31
Deleuze, Cinema 2, The Time-Image, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989, 36.
 16 Movement and Time in Cinema

variations. Let us look at the way in which aberrant cinematographic movements are
created, which is the first step in the disconnecting of time. Then, we will look at how a
direct image of time was in effect presented through montage.

Characteristics of the time-image

Deleuze starts of by arguing that just after the Second World War, French and Italian film
directors began to break away from the movement-image by locating their films in spaces
typical of post-war periods and of modern urban industrialism in decay: “deserted but
inhabited, disused warehouses, waste grounds, cities in the course of demolition or
reconstruction”.33 He calls these spaces ‘any spaces whatever’, which take away our
ability to orient ourselves. We feel lost, and we no longer know how to give a coherent
description of the world around us. Deleuze consequently argues that ‘any spaces
whatever’ give rise to ‘aberrant movements’. Movements that no longer center, which do
not provide us with a clear progression of events or a causal pattern of action and
reaction.
Another way in which the Italian and French directors disturbed the normal scheme
of action and reaction was by taking on situations of extreme horror or devastating
everydayness as the subject matter of their films. In neo-realist and new wave films, the
characters no longer found themselves in the middle of a great adventure or love story, in
which it was perfectly clear how to act and react. Neither did they experience a specific
emotion or express a particular vision. Instead, they seemed to wander around aimlessly,
were involved in simple daily chores, or remained completely paralyzed by psychological
stress. They had lost their sensory-motor functions, which in the movement-image linked
perceptions, affections and actions to a subject. The effect of this loss was that
movements did not center. They were not directly intelligible within a larger vision, or as
elements in a causal chain of events. Instead, the characters were overwhelmed by audio-
visual sensations, which Deleuze terms “purely optical and sound situations”.34

32
Ibid., 36.
33
Ibid., xi.
34
Ibid., 47.
 Movement and Time in Cinema 17

From the late nineteen-forties onwards, the Italian neo-realists, like Rossellini,
Antonioni, De Sica, and Fellini, started to make movies in which the characters were
overpowered by audio-visual sensations. They saw things that could no not be
understood within a straight forward pattern of action and reaction. For example, in
Rossellini’s Europa ’51 (1951) a bourgeois woman, played by Ingrid Bergman, cannot
make sense of the world around here after her son has committed suicide. One of her
friends subsequently introduces her to a world which she did not know before: factories
with sweating men, streets where whores stray, and slums in which mothers try to feed
their starving children. The woman has become a ‘seer’. Deleuze holds that:

Her glances relinquish the practical function of a mistress of a house who

arranges things and beings, and pass through every state of an internal vision,
affliction, compassion, love, happiness, acceptance, extending to the
psychiatric hospital where she is locked up at the end. […] She sees, she has
learnt to see.35

One of the great differences between neo-realist films, like “Europa ‘51”, and the films
that fall under the regime of the movement image, is that the character has become a
viewer. The situations in which the woman finds herself outstrip her motor capacities on
all sides, she sees things that are “no longer subject to the rules of a responds or an
action”.36
Deleuze contends that the transformation of the character from an agent to a seer
required another type of actor. He labels these actors “professional non-actors or actor
mediums”, who must primarily be capable of seeing and showing.37 What developed was
a kind of acting that seems almost unnatural from the point of view of American action
cinema. The actor is not trying to express a particular emotion or show that he is engaged
in a violent battle, his expression and body language rather show wonderment, or
disinterest. In any case, the actor does not show that he is able to take control of the
situation. A famous example of such acting can be found in Pasolini's Accatone (1961).

35
Ibid., 2
36
Ibid., 3
 18 Movement and Time in Cinema

The film stars Franco Citti, who at the time of making the film was a nonprofessional.
We see him in the role of the low life pimp Accatone, who mostly wanders around Rome
doing very little of substance. He does not seem to be able to take control of his life,
stumbling from one situation into the other. As spectators, we sort of stumble along,
sometimes interested, and sometimes bored. By showing the slowness and clumsiness of
an individual who is not extraordinary, Pasolini is able to make us reflect on human
existence.
The neo-realists and new wave directors not only broke with the regime of the
movement image by changing type settings, situations, and actors, but they also started to
make a fundamentally different use of the camera. Deleuze argues that they achieved a
camera consciousness or autonomy. The camera no longer only followed the movements
of the characters, but sometimes it undertook movements itself and left the characters or
made them into mere objects. The camera started to question, respond, provoke, and
experiment, creating mental connections. The camera made itself felt.38 Recent examples
of this camera autonomy can be found in Lynch's Lost Highway (1996). Striking is the
way in which the camera precedes the characters in certain scenes or goes on after they
have left. For instance in the second half of the film, before the young man and woman
reach the lodge in the desert to sell their stolen goods, we already see an inverted image
of the burning lodge. And at the beginning of the film, before the man kills his wife, the
camera goes around the house looking in dark corridors, as if something is to appear from
the darkness. Or what about the very end of the movie, when the head of the man in the
speeding car has exploded, but the camera goes on to race down the dark highway. It is
not the characters who are searching in the darkness, seeing the inverted image of the
burning lodge, or the highway at night. It is the camera itself, which at the same time
brings into play and questions the darkness of the human mind.

The whole in the time-image

We have seen how the camera, the setting, and characters have invoked ‘abberant
movements’, which in turn produce pure audio-visual images. The image is no longer

37
Ibid., 20
 Movement and Time in Cinema 19

subjected to patterns of action and reaction, it can stand on its own. When we break the
causal chain of images, the whole image can appear. “Literally, in its excess of horror or
beauty in its radical or unjustifiable character”.39 Deleuze consequently says that in
modern cinema the whole image must be read. It is in the image itself, that we can find
duration or the whole, whatever spiritual or intellectual universe this might be.
To understand Deleuze correctly, it is important to emphasize that the whole in the
time-image is not presented or given to us, like in the movement-image. The movement-
image, as we have seen, is a subject driven type of image, as all movements are related to
centers. This centering is done by linking movements in patterns of action and reaction.
The act of linking movements is called montage, which subsequently determines the
whole or the image of time. Hence, time is given to us indirectly through the act of
montage.
As Deleuze shows, the time-image is created in a totally different manner.
Movements are no longer systematically related to centers, not even abstract or
imaginary centers. The duration or the whole is not presented to us by the linking of
images. Instead, it can be found in the image itself, which must be read. Obviously not
every image is suitable to be used in such a way. It is the task of the film-director to
create images with which we can make spiritual or intellectual relations to find duration
or the whole directly. Thus, the creative effort of filmmaking has shifted from the linking
of images to the creation of intellectually or spiritually stimulating images. Deleuze
consequently maintains that in the time-image montage is already in the image.
The creation of a direct image of time not only involves a creative act of the film-
director, but also takes an effort on the part of the viewer. In the movement-image, the
viewer was led to a whole through the linking of images. This is not the case in the time-
image. We have to make the effort of reading the whole image, before we can find the
whole. The viewer has to make relations of thought, spirit or dreams with the image.
Accordingly, duration or the whole simultaneously exists in the image and in the viewer,
who uses the image to tap into a spiritual or intellectual universe. Obviously, this does
not always work. However, if we are able to establish relations with the image, than the

38
Ibid., 23.
39
Ibid., 20.
 20 Movement and Time in Cinema

possibilities are infinite. We can use the time-image to open ourselves to new fantasies,
dreams and thoughts. As Deleuze maintains in another context:

The modern work of art is anything it may seem; it is even its very property
of being whatever we like, of having the overdetermination of whatever we
like, from the moment ‘it works’: the modern work of art is a machine and
functions as such.40

This is certainly true for the time-image. It works once you know how to make
connections with the image. The main difficulty is that there is no pre-established
meaning that is given to us, like in the case of the movement-image. We have to find
meaning or the whole ourselves. We have to learn how to use the image. Deleuze
consequently contends that: “The modern work of art has no problem of meaning, it has
only a problem of use.”41
How is the position of the viewer related to the original distinction between the
indirect representation of time in the movement-image and its direct manifestation in the
time-image? In the movement image, the viewer is given an indirect representation of
time through the causal linking of movements. Time measures the sequence of actions,
feelings, emotions, and perceptions, which all react to one another. Thus, time remains
abstract. In the time-image, time becomes full of spirit. It is internal life that enters into
all sorts relations. The creation of time as internal life does, as we have seen, involve the
effort of the viewer. In fact, time manifests itself directly through the act of the viewer,
who establishes relations of thought and spirit with the image.

The montage of the time-image

How are images created with which we can make intellectual and spiritual relations?
Deleuze holds that this is done by inserting montage in the image. How he understands
this, can very well be observed in his analysis of the use of depth of field in Welles’
Citizen Kane (1941). Deleuze claims that this film induces two kinds of distinct images.

40
Deleuze, G., Proust & signs, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000, 145.
41
Ibid., 146.
 Movement and Time in Cinema 21

On the one hand, there are series of ‘cross-cutting shot-reaction shots’ of former presents,
which are structured according to the action-reaction patterns of the movement-image.
These shots show the progression of Kane's life, how he became a married man, turned
into a politician, and pushed his wife Susan into a singing career and eventually to
suicide. On the other hand, Welles introduces images with an enormous dept of field in
which sheets of present and past coexist. Deleuze refers for example to the long-shot
where Susan tries to commit suicide. In the back of the image, we see Kane bursts
through the door. In mid-shot, Susan is dying in the shadow. And in close-up, we can see
a large mirror. Of course, this composition is not a simple coincidence. The mirror
reflects the relationship between the events in Kane’s life, like the fact that Kane’s
ambition and his desire to see Susan as a singer, eventually drive her to suicide. All these
elements are present in the image, but they have to be ‘read’. Deleuze argues that:

The images in depth express regions of past as such, each with its own
accents or potentials, and mark critical moments in Kane's will to power. The
hero acts, walks and moves; but it is the past that he plunges himself into and
moves in.42

Deleuze holds that this depth ‘of’ field must not be confused with depth ‘in’ the field,
which has always been one of the characteristics of cinema. In every image, there are
things happening in the background and foreground. However, the novelty of Welles is
that the elements on the different planes, or depths of field, interact with each other. The
foreground is in direct contact with the background, as can be observed in the scene
described above. By making the elements of the different planes interact, Welles achieves
the virtual coexistence of sheets of past and present.
Citizen Kane is still a mixture of movement- and time-images. There is still a
fixed point of view, the death of Kane at the beginning of the film, from which the
different sheets of past coexist. The time-image became more fully developed when
movements were no longer related to a fixed point. This was, as we have seen, the case in
Italian neo-realism and the French new wave. The directors of these schools used

42
Deleuze, Cinema 2, The Time-Image, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989, 106.
 22 Movement and Time in Cinema

montage in the image to create entrances not only in sheets of personal time, like Welles
did in Citizen Kane, but also in world historical or even in archaeological time. For
example, Fellini creates a series of these entrances in 81/2: “the childhood recollection,
the nightmare, the distraction, the dreaming, the fantasy, the feeling of already having
been there”.43 In this film and also in his other work, he brings together in one image
persons, objects, and settings not only from the present and past of a character, but also
from his fantasies, dreams, and fears. This is very clear at the end of 81/2, when the film
director Guido Anselmi, played by Marcello Mastroianni, has a vision, in which he is
able to reconcile everyone from the present, past, his dreams, and fantasies in one great
dance. Fellini does not need the depth of field to bring virtuality into play. Through
theatrical sequences he is able to combine all the sheets of present and past, like he does
in the final scene of 81/2. Deleuze argues that Fellini constantly splits the image between
a parade of presents, which introduce a sequence of rather monstrous characters, and a
series of virtual images, which are invoked by present-images.44
It is vital to realize that the scene at the end of 81/2 is not a flashback. The
purpose of the flashback is always to explain a particular action of a certain character.
Like in the example of Once upon a time in the west (1968), the flashback explains why
Harmonica wants to kill Frank. The virtual-images, like the end scene in 81/2, give no
such explanation, but they show how we are subject to constant streams of associations
relating present to the past and future. Combining memories with images of the present,
but also with fantasies, dream-images, and premonitions. Mixing all these, we enter into
a spiritual and temporal universe. This is not the case in the movement image, which
only invokes temporality, when we are looking for a pure recollection in the place where
it was. The flashbacks in Once upon a time in the west bring back the exact murder as it
happened in the past. As such, the flashback “represents the former present that the past
‘was’”.45 Virtuality, by contrast, does not become visible in its pure form when a former
present is actualized, but in fact it is set free when we cannot remember. The sensory-
motor extensions are suspended, when we no longer have direct access to a former
present, then we cannot link the past to the present to bring in motion a causal chain of

43
Ibid., 89.
44
Ibid., 44-67.
 Movement and Time in Cinema 23

movements. Our embeddedness in time, as virtual coexistence, becomes clear when the
sensory motor links are jammed.
The virtual image must also be distinguished from the dream-scene, which is often
used in films that fall under the regime of the movement-image. The dream-scene, just
like the flashback, is always distinguished from the actual present in which the story of
the film takes place. It usually serves the function of showing the fears and desires of a
particular character. In this sense, it plays a clear role in the unraveling of the story that is
being told. Virtual scenes do not play such a role. Instead, they bring past, present, and
future together, to make us reflect about the relations in which a character is involved.
This is exactly what happens in the final scene of 81/2, in which everyone from Guido’s
present and past is joined together. By bringing all the characters together, Fellini has
created an image that allows us to think about the forces with which Guido is struggling.
The scene shows us the web of love, family, sexual, intellectual, and financial relations in
which Guido is caught in both his personal life and in his attempts to make a film.
Moreover, we can also read the scene as an act of creation on Guido’s part. At least
through this act he is able to reconcile the different forces that have so far prevented him
from working. Finally, while reading the image, we can think about the way in which our
own past, present and future coexist as sets of often contradictory forces. However we
reflect on films like 81/2, we are in the act of making relations with the image. We’re
putting the work of art to use. This is when time starts to appear directly, and when we
gain access to new intellectual and spiritual universes.

Bibliography
Bergson, H., 1991. Matter and Memory. New York: Zone Books
Bergson, H., 1998. Creative Evolution. New York: Dover Publications
Deleuze, G., 1978. 4 Leçons sur Kant, http://www.webdeleuze.com/sommaire.html
Deleuze, G. 1985. Kant's Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

45
Ibid., 54.
 24 Movement and Time in Cinema

Deleuze, G., 1986. The Movement-Image: Cinema 1. Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, G., 1989. The Time-Image: Cinema 2. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press.
Deleuze, G. 1991. Bergsonism. New York: Zone Books.
Deleuze, G. 2000. Proust & Signs. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
Flaxman, G. ed., 2000. The brain is the screen: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Cinema.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.