Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement-Image [1983], trans.
Hugh Tomlinson and
Barbara Habberjam (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986).
WEEK 1--INTRODUCTION TO THE MOVEMENT-IMAGE;
MOVEMENT-IMAGE AS PERCEPTION
Abridged Version -- Read chapters 1-5, skipping part of Chapter 3 (pp. 40-55), the end
of Chapter 4 (pp. 66-70), and part of Chapter 5 (pp. 76-80).
Watch the following films:
• Broken Blossoms (d. Griffith, 1919).
• October: Ten Days That Shook the World (d. Eisenstein, 1927).
• Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (d. Murnau, 1927).
• The Passion of Joan of Arc (d. Dreyer, 1928).
• Metropolis (d. Lang, 1927).
• Man with a Movie Camera (d. Vertov, 1929).
1 Bergson and movement
movement space covered
indivisible divisible
“heterogenous, irreducible” (1) “single, identical, homogenous space” (1)
concrete/qualitative duration [durée] subdivided/quantitative time
privileged instants -- “keyframes” or any-instant-whatevers -- impartial
special tableaus quantizing
Hence Bergson's conclusion that cinema is false movement
• the cinematographic illusion
• immobile sections + abstract time
i.e. reconstitute movement by adding a “mechanical, homogenous, universal”
time axis (ex 24 fps) to a series of photographic still frames.
• this is “false” because it's an illusion of movement.
Yet Deleuze wants to show that the cinema can also be a real movement
“Can we conclude that the result is artificial because the means are artificial?” (2)
• phenomenological? experiential?
• real movement ->concrete duration
“In short, cinema...” (2)
2 privileged instants and any-instant-whatevers [instant quelconque]
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• ancient: “formal transcendental elements (poses),” privileged instants, dance, an
“intelligible synthesis” (4)
• modern: “immanent material elements (sections),” any-instant-whatevers, cinema,
a “sensible analysis” (4)
definition of cinema (5)
(yet the privileged instant can also return in the cinema, hence any-instant-whatevers can
also do double duty as privileged instants [6])
3 change
• ** instants A and B are to movement, as movements A and B are to duration **
• thus cinema itself is a Whole [le Tout] (8) and movement implies the change in
the Whole
• the whole is “the Open” [l'Ouvert]; it “endures” (9)
• difference between a whole and a set [ensemble] (10)
• hence three levels (11)
1. sets of discernible parts (frames)
◦ i.e. any-instant-whatevers
2. the real movement of translation between frames
◦ i.e. movement-images
3. the duration or the whole, a “spiritual reality”
◦ i.e. time-images (11), also called here “duration-images, change-images,
relation-images, volume-images which are beyond movement itself”
Chapter 2 Frame and shot, framing and cutting [cadre et plan, cadrage et découpage]
framing
• corresponds to Bergson's first level: sets of discernible parts (frames)
• five points (12-18; summary on 18):
• (1) framing is determination of a set (and hence tends toward either
rarefaction or saturation);
• (2) in that determination it is also an absolute geometric delimiter of space,
i.e. a rectangle or an iris;
• (3) but also a relative geometric force, internal to the frame, i.e. composition
and pattern, zones w/in the image, a deterritorialization of the elements of the
set (15);
• (4) an angle of framing or point-of-view;
• (5) out-of-field/offscreen space [hors-champ] as both diegetic space and “a
more radical Elsewhere [Ailleurs]” (17).
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the shot (18)
• corresponds to Bergon's second level: the real movement of translation between
frames (hence the movement-image in its purest sense)
• bounded and determined by cutting
• determines the movement of the closed system (of the framing of the shot)
◦ such movement always happens in two ways at once:
1. the micro movement of all the elements inside the shot.
2. the macro movement of the whole (irreducible to the micro elements).
• he calls the shot an intermediary between framing and montage -- it gets pulled in
both directions (19-20)
• thus “the shot is the movement-image” (22, emphasis added)
montage -- i.e. cinema only becomes cinema when you move the camera, either via a
mobile camera (continuous movement) or via montage (discontinuous movement) (24-
25)
Chapter 3 Montage
• corresponds to Bergon's third level: the composition of movement images into a
duration or whole (hence a gesture toward the time-image)
• ** “Montage is the operation which bears on the movement-images to release
the whole from them, that is, the image of time” (29) **
• he says this is “indirect,” the composition of “an indirect image of time” (30)
1 the organic American school (Griffith)
• montage is like an organism that has many parts that are different but work
together (shot, reverse-shot, insert, etc.) (30)
• “parallel alternate montage” (30) -- i.e. a rhythmic alternation between parallel
events.
2 the dialectic Soviet school (Eisenstein)
• i.e. not organic interplay of different elements (shot, reverse-shot, insert), but
more profound “duels” between qualitatively different images (32)
• a montage of opposition (following dialectical logic), not a “parallel montage”
like Griffith (34)
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Chapter 4 The movement-image
plane of immanence: “This infinite set of all images constitutes a plane of immanence”
(58-59) --
• i.e. two points: (1) the image is itself real/material and not a substitute for
something else, and (2) there is a plane wherein all these many real images live
and intermix/interconnect.
• ** “The movement-image and flowing-matter are strictly the same thing” (59).**
• “The plane of immanence is...” (59)
three types (or “avatars”) of the movement-image
1. perception-image
◦ cinema as (non-subjective) pure perception. from a “unicentered subjective
perception” or a “center of indetermination” (64)
◦ about elimination, selection, or framing
◦ the simple registration of the fact of the perceivability of things
◦ perception is the master of space (65)
◦ “perception relates movement to 'bodies' (nouns), that is to rigid objects which
will serve as moving bodies or as things moved” (65)
◦ corresponds to the long shot (70)
2. action-image
◦ ** “no longer elimination, selection or framing [i.e. perception], but the
incurving [incurvation] of the universe, which simultaneously causes the
virtual action of things on us and our possible action on things” (65) **
▪ the “curving” of the universe toward someone who can “act”
◦ (if perception is the master of space) action is the master of time (65)
◦ “action relates movement to 'acts' (verbs) which will be the design for an
assumed end or result” (65)
◦ corresponds to the medium shot (70)
3. affection-image
◦ “occupies the interval” between perceptive and active. “It surges in the centre
of indetermination...between a perception which is troubling...and a hesitant
action” (65)
◦ “Bergon's wonderful definition of affection as 'a kind of motor tendency on a
sensible nerve'” (66)
◦ the way in which a subject perceives itself.
◦ corresponds to the close-up (70)
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Chapter 5 The perception-image
Q: is perception subjective or objective? (71)
A: it's often understood as both, or rather as an oscillation between these two poles.
But instead a hypothesis: what if perception is semi-subjective with “no equivalent in
natural perception” (72)
• in other words, the camera is not merely objective, and hence is not indirect
discourse.
• Pasolini: no, the cinema is more like free indirect discourse.
Recall the three kinds of discursive speech...
direct discourse I would rather...
indirect discourse He said he would rather...
free indirect discourse He said He would rather...
Q: why free indirect discourse?
A: “there is not a simple combination of two fully-constituted subjects of enunciation,
one of which would be reporter, the other reported” (73)
A: no longer metaphor (73)
• hence a “dividing-in-two” (73), creating a secondary abstract cogito/observer.
• ** and the imposition of another vision, the free indirect subjective vision of the
camera itself. (74) **
◦ this is a “camera consciousness” (74) or a “self-consciousness” of the cinema
(75)
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WEEK 2--MOVEMENT-IMAGE AS AFFECTION, IMPULSE AND ACTION;
COLLAPSE OF THE MOVEMENT-IMAGE
Abridged Version -- Read chapters 6, 7, 9, 10, and 12, skipping the end of Chapter 7
(pp. 111-122), and the end of Chapter 9 (pp. 155-159).
Watch the following films:
• A Man Escaped (d. Bresson, 1956).
• The Scarlet Empress (d. Sternberg, 1934).
• The Great Dictator (d. Chaplin, 1940).
• Rio Bravo (d. Hawks, 1959).
• The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (d. Ford, 1962).
Chapter 6 The affection-image
Peirce on firstness and secondness (98)
• secondness -- definition through duality -- as action/reaction, individual/milieu,
i.e. always defined within the alternation of a coupling of second and first.
• * hence the realm of the action-image (which is also a “realism” [123]) *
• firstness -- definition through some uniqueness -- “what is new in experience,
what is fresh, fleeting and nevertheless eternal” (98)
• this is affection-image (which is also an “idealism” [123])
• Possible/potential: “Firstness is thus the category of the Possible. ...it is
potentially considered for itself as expressed” (98).
the clock: both a reflecting and reflected unity (87)
• clock hands -- micro movements; motor tendency; intensive series (i.e. they move
into and out of moments of punctuated singularity [i.e. it's 12 o'clock now])
• clock face -- sensitive nerve; receptive immobile surface
these are the two poles of the affection-image/close-up; they are also Eisenstein and
Griffiths (90-91):
Griffith Eisenstein
reflexive face intensive face
sensitive nerve motor tendency
Wonder/Quality Desire/Power [Puissance]
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the Entity
• note: the entity is not a partial object (in the tradition of both psychoanalysis
[castration] and linguistics [synecdoche, part for whole]) (95)
• ** “The affect is the entity, that is Power or Quality. It is something expressed: the
affect does not exist independently of something which expresses it, although it is
completely distinct from it” (97). **
the close-up suspends individuation (100)
• the generic
• hence the example of Persona
• see also Dividual on 92
Chapter 7 The affection-image (continued): Power-Quality; any-space-whatever
power-qualities (or affects) have two states (102-103)
1. the particular/individuated/real state of things
• leads to the action-image and the medium shot
2. the virtual singularity outside of space and time
• leads to the affection-image or the close-up: “It is the face...which gathers and
expresses the affect as a complex entity, and secures the virtual conjunctions
between singular points of this entity” (103)
Dreyer, The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) (106).
any-space-whatever (109)
• an anonymous space.. “no longer a particular determined space” (109)
• “a space which is defined by parts whose linking up and orientation are not
determined in advance, and can be done in an infinite number of ways” (120).
• **“a perfectly singular space, which has merely lost its homogeneity...a space of
virtual conjunction, grasped as pure locus of the possible” (109). **
• i.e. this is a firstness or power-quality of space (just as the previous chapter is
about a firstness/power-quality of the face). (110)
Chapter 9. The Large Form of the Action-image (i.e. heroic action)
• S-A, from situation to action
• “secondness”: definition through duality; polarity; everything is a duel.
• “It is this model which produced the universal triumph of the American cinema”
(141)
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the “hourglass” structure of SAS'
S -- situation/milieu/the Ambience/the Encompasser (141)/synsign (142)
A -- Action/binomial/duel (142)
• “There is a binomial as soon as the state of a force relates back to an
antagonistic force...the moment of the duel” (142)
seen across five different genres: Documentary; Psycho-social film; Film noir; Western;
The Historical film.
the laws
1. S (or SS') (151)
◦ the presence of the synsign/situation/milieu itself.
◦ “in Ford's skies...the whole incurves itself around the group, the character or
the home, constituting an encompasser” (151)
2. S → A (152)
◦ “from the synsign to the binomial” (152).. i.e. the duel.
3. A (153)
◦ this is A for itself. the drama of the pure confrontation. ex: Charlie and the lion
in a single shot.
4. AAA... (153)
◦ the “whole dovetailing of duels” -- i.e. there will always be multiple duels.
5. Actualization of SA (154)
◦ it takes a long time to actualize the action, i.e. why movies are 90 minutes
long!
Chapter 10. The Small Form of the Action-image (i.e. comedic action)
• A-S, from action to situation
• “This time it is the action which discloses the situation... The action advances
blindly and the situation is disclosed in darkness, or in ambiguity” (160).
• local (not global), elliptical (not spiral), constructed in events (not structural)
two poles of the index
1. elliptical gap/lack -- the absence of the situation
2. elliptical equivocity -- the ambiguity of the situation
Howard Hawks and the western (164)
Chaplin and Keaton (169-177)
• burlesque
• ** it best displays the index: “the law of the index -- the slight difference in
the action which brings out an infinite distance between two situations” (170).
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** I.e. comedy provokes endless circuits of “evanescent difference” (171).
• (Keaton: the trajectory gag and the machine gag [174-177])
Summary...
Large Form, SAS' Small Form, ASA'
milieu/Encompasser (141) ellipse (160)
psycho-social film comedy of manners (costume film)
crime (“actions which are duels” [164]) detective (“from blind actions...to obscure
situations” [164])
Chapter 12. Crisis of the action-image
Thirdness
• the intermediary; relation (197)
• mental image (198)/relation-image (204)
Hitchcock: “Hitchcock [and Marx Bros!] introduces the mental image into the
cinema. That is, he makes relation itself the object of an image” (203). a new kind
of figure, a “figure of thought”
• weaving; a “fabric of relations” (200)
• “natural” relation, i.e. relation in the world
• mark -- in an ordinary series, classificatory (i.e. “this bird is like all the
other birds”)
• demark -- in contradiction with the series (i.e. “that's not how windmills
turn!”)
• similar to/overlaps with the symbol (204)
• Q? “Hitchcock brings the cinema to completion” (204)
Crisis -- WW2; end of “American Dream”.. etc (206); 1948, 1958, 1968 (211)
1. the dispersive situation -- no longer “globalizing or synthetic” (207)
2. the deliberately weak links -- “reality is lacunary”; chance (207)
3. the voyage form; the return journey (208)
4. the consciousness of clichés
5. conspiracy/plot: the “condemnation of the plot [complot]” -- “one single misery..
a great and powerful plot” (209)
Italian Neo-realism -- this is what first forged the five characteristics of the crisis (211)
French New Wave -- the making-false of the image (213-214)
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