Deleuze: Cinema 1: The Movement-Image (1983)

Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) published Cinema 1: L'Image-Mouvement (Cinema 1: The Movement-Image) in 1983. It was translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam in 1986. It reflects Deleuze's idiosyncratic brand of Continental philosophy - both thematically, in its use of concepts like immanence and difference, and formally, in its insistence that philosophy doesn't refer to objects, but creates concepts that are somehow identified with those objects. This creates quite an opaque style, that alternates between extremely impressionistic, almost literary expression, and more systematic, academic expression. I have provided a comprehensive summary of each chapter, with the exception of the first and the fourth, which are the most abstract, and were, in some respects, beyond me. Another index of Deleuze's stylistic difficulty is a tendency to use abstractions without contextualising them, often interchangeably. This can make it difficult to know exactly what constitutes his 'vocabulary', but I have tried to underline anything that falls into that category. I have also, very occasionally, imported vocabulary from his other major works. Finally, Deleuze makes particular use of two figures - philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1951) and semiologist Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914). I have refrained from contextualising these figures too much, since Deleuze's take on them is fairly idiosyncratic.

1. THESES ON MOVEMENT: FIRST COMMENTARY ON BERGSON

Deleuze opens by outlining two different conceptions of movement. In a transcendent Universe - that is, a Universe that operates as a hierarchy of sets - movement is simply the translation of a component of one of these sets from one position to another. It can therefore be reduced to a series of spatial co-ordinates, combined with the time over which the translation occurs, since time and space are homogeneous in such a Universe. In an immanent Universe - that is, a continuum in constant qualitative flux, neither divisible nor indivisible but dividual - movement always involves the qualitative transformation of the entire Universe, which Deleuze variously labels the Whole and the Open. Such a Universe precludes the homogeneity of time and space, replacing it with the concept of duration, whose psychological overtones clarify immanence as a mental, or spiritual, entity. That said, the immanent Universe may, at the local level, present itself as a transcendent Universe; or, alternatively, the thread connecting the apparently closed set back to immanence may be too fine to be immediately noticeable. For this reason, Deleuze, who believes that we live in an immanent Universe, recommends that we always view movement progressively, as transcendent translation, and then immanent transformation. Thus far he is in agreement with Bergson. However, whereas Bergson argues that cinematographic perception merely confirms the mistakes of natural, or transcendent, perception, Deleuze believes that it corrects it - a difference that will make sense shortly.

2. FRAME AND SHOT, FRAMING AND CUTTING

For Deleuze, the cinematic frame corresponds to the immediate, transcendent appearance of the Universe; that is, as a hierarchy of sets. It may be saturated with subsets of information (Wyler, Altman), or rarefied so as to minimise those subsets. It may also be geometrical, identifying its parameters with those of the screen, and drawing strict distinctions between its subsets (Lang's Expressionism), or physical-dynamic, distinguishing its parameters from those of the screen (irising, selective framing, multiple screens), and drawing fluid distinctions between its subsets (Murnau's Expressionism). However, this transcendent appearance is threatened by what occurs offscreen, or out-of-field, producing two distinct responses. The committed transcendentalist will simply construe the out-of-field as a larger set that includes the individual frame; that is, as a quantitative departure from the frame. The sceptic will construe it as immanence itself; that is, as a qualitative departure from the frame, usually figured as a mental or spiritual surplus (Dreyer, Bresson, Ozu). Similarly, the shot often presents itself as a transparently transcendent phenomenon, appearing to simply register movement within the subsets of the frame, or of the frame itself into a larger set. However, just as the out-of-field constitutes the thread connecting the frame to immanence, so any movement abstracted from the set - a movement-image - constitutes the thread connecting the shot to immanence. This is explicated whenever the screen itself is transformed into an abstraction of movement (Epstein's Impressionism), but finds more typical expression through camera mobility, in which the camera appropriates the movement of an object in the frame (Wenders), and montage, in which this appropriation takes on a more indirect, rhythmic form. This explains Bergson's scepticism about cinematographic perception, since he was writing at a time (1890s-1910s) when montage and camera mobility had not yet been developed; or, alternatively, when the movement-image was subordinated to movement within the image. Deleuze concludes with a brief discussion of camera mobility, in which he distinguishes a shot - an individual slice of space - from the shot - the piece of abstracted movement, or movement-image, that encompasses it. In this sense, a tracking shot is both a collection of successive shots and a single shot. For Deleuze, an index of an auteur is his or her ability to put an original spin on the shot, or movement-image. Hitchcock favours geometrical movements, Kurosawa calligraphic movements, Welles reticulated movements, and so on.

3. MONTAGE 

Deleuze now moves on to montage, the second major manifestation of the movement- image, which he divides into four categories. American montage, as elaborated by Griffith, is organico-active, or parallel, and involves the rhythmic alternation of binary opposites, which eventually converge in a climactic duel. Soviet montage, as pioneered by Eisenstein, is dialectical, and supplements Griffith's organic vision with the pathetic moment, at which opposites are transformed into each other. This alternation between organic and pathetic is the basic law of dialectical materialism, which views the Universe as a single entity that continually divides itself in order to attain a new unity. Other Soviet directors prioritise more specific dialectical laws. Pudovkin prioritises the law that the qualitative change in the Universe is always a move towards some cosmic revolutionary consciousness, presenting the natural and inanimate world on the verge of being apprehended by such a consciousness. Dovzhenko prioritises the law that all conflicts, by virtue of being submerged in the dialectic, are on a continuum with the remote future and past, presenting figures caught in a spatial and temporal vacuum capable of accessing either. Vertov departs from all three in his insistence that the dialectic is not a primarily anthropomorphic phenomenon, but intrinsic to the entire material world. For this reason, he presents humans as mere collections of material processes, inducing Eisenstein to accuse him of being apolitical or, alternatively, of philosophising politics in a manner that was unproductive in the face of contemporary crises. Deleuze now moves on to French montage, which is extensive, or kinetic, and attempts to extend and abstract movement, in much the same way as a dance. It may do so by structuring the action around an automaton, which comically abstracts everything in its path, including the space through which it travels and the individuals that direct it (Clair), or an engine, whose capacity for abstraction tragically encroaches upon the spirit of its human operant (Gance). In both cases, the abstraction of movement is tantamount to Kant's mathematical sublime; that is, it takes the imagination's attempt to quantify the Universe (in this case, in terms of movement) to its limit, replacing it with the reason's ability to conceive of the Universe as a fundamentally unquantifiable phenomenon. Alternatively, it takes the imagination's tendency to view the Universe as a succession of movements to its limit, replacing it with the reason's ability to view it as a simultaneity of movements (Napoleon). This insistent separation between imagination and reason, as well as between mechanical and human, signifies a dualism that departs from the organic visions of American and Soviet montage. For this reason, French montage alternates light and darkness, both in order to incorporate them into this duality, and to use them as another means of extending, or maximising, movement. By contrast, German montage opposes light and darkness and, in doing so, suggests a fundamental incompatability between them that is itself incompatible with dualism. In doing so, it creates a power differential between darkness and light that intensifies, rather than extends, movement, and finds most basic expression in chiaroscuro and striation. Similarly, it replaces the dichotomy between animate and inanimate with a vision of non-organic, or pre-organic life, which suffuses object and organism alike, and explains the proliferation of somnambulists, zombies and golems. This non-organic life reifies evil and the unconscious, and is only countered when protagonists discover they belong to a virtuous, non- psychological entity that is capable of protecting them from it. This corresponds to Kant's dynamic sublime, which refers to the process of subsuming individuation into a higher spiritual entity in order to achieve invulnerability in the face of overwhelming experiences.
 
4. THE MOVEMENT-IMAGE AND ITS VARIETIES: SECOND COMMENTARY ON BERGSON
 
Deleuze now returns to the plane of immanence, via the philosophical crisis of the late nineteenth-century, which sprang from the apparent incommensurability of physical movements and mental images; or, alternatively, of materialism, which claimed that mental images were reducible to physical movements, and idealism, which claimed the reverse. Phenomenology attempted to avert this crisis by restructuring philosophy around natural perception, bracketing the question of whether physical movements existed in any form other than insofar as they produced mental images. Bergson, however, argued that phenomenology placed an artificial emphasis upon natural perception, instead characterising the Universe as an entity devoid of any intrinsic centre of perception, in which image is equated with movement, and movement with matter; that is, a plane of immanence constituted entirely by movement-images. This begs the question of how natural perception could arise in such a perceptually acentred Universe. Bergson's response draws on Einstein to argue that the matter-movement-image finds primary expression as a proliferation of light. From this perspective, the sensory-organs are simply places where the interval between reception and reaction is sufficiently extended to produce a surface around which this light can mould itself. In this way, Bergson reverses philosophical tradition, which construes the Universe as a darkness illuminated by consciousness, by arguing that the Universe itself is such a light, or consciousness, explaining the spiritual, or mental, status that the concept of duration attributes to it. From this perspective, 'natural perception' is merely a perceptive node, or centre of indetermination, around which the plane of immanence curves, much like a segment of space-time, bringing local movement-images into intimate contact with it. As a result, these movement-images undergo three distinct developments. Firstly, and most basically, they become perception-images, at the moment at which the sense-organs become capable of delaying the gap between reception and reaction. Yet this process is as much a function of the motor-organs; or, alternatively, in such a Universe, perception is as much a function of reaction as reception, leading to Bergson's refusal to draw any qualitative distinction between perception and action, or sensory- and motor-organs. For this reason, perception- images will immediately call action-images into existence. Finally, these two types of organs are transformed into subjectivity with the aid of affection-images, which refer to their reflection upon each other; or, alternatively, arise from the experience of the delay between reception and reaction that they accomplish. This is all tantamount to an evolution of subjectivity, which can also be strategically reversed, as in Beckett's Film, which attempts to return to the purity of the original movement-image - a project that Deleuze identifies with avant-garde film generally. Deleuze concludes by redefining montage as the combination of perception-images, action-images and affection-images, usually with a focus on one of the three, producing perceptive (Vertov), active (Griffith) and affective (Dreyer) montage, which foreground long shots, medium shots and close-ups respectively.
 
5. THE PERCEPTION-IMAGE 
 
Just as the plane of immanence precludes any qualitative distinction between perceiving subject and perception itself, so cinema is unable to draw any such distinction between objective and subjective perception-image, instead offering a compromise that Deleuze describes in terms of free indirect speech, after Pasolini, and as a dicisign, after Peirce. This comes to the fore in the New Waves, which tend to juxtapose a neurotic, insular protagonist with a marked consciousness on the part of the camera, producing the effect of a character observing him- or herself. This self-observation may be aesthetic (Antonioni), amused (Godard), ethical (Rohmer) or sacral (Pasolini), and tends to be accompanied by frequent zooming, conspicuous lens changes, and a lingering of the camera before and after figures enter and leave the frame. That said, this camera-consciousness may be refined so as to make the distinction between subject and object ever finer - a process that Deleuze construes as the movement from solid, to liquid, to gaseous perception. If solid perception is embodied by the New Waves, then liquid perception is embodied by French poetic realism, especially Vigo's L'Atalante, which explicitly contrasts perception on land and water. This doesn't signify a departure from earlier French directors, but instead translates their mechanical preoccupations into fluid dynamics, producing an approximation of objective, or acentred, movement that Deleuze, after Peirce and Pasolini, labels a reume. Finally, gaseous perception is embodied by Vertov's 'kino-eye', but also the American avant-garde (Brakhage, Snow), which attempts to completely replace the perceptive node with the perspective of matter itself. This is neither a dicisign nor a reume, but a gramme, which construes the still (photogramme) as basic unit of matter-movement.
 
6. THE AFFECTION-IMAGE: FACE AND CLOSE-UP 
 
Deleuze now turns to the face, which he describes in terms of two tendencies. Firstly, it may be an immobile, consistent surface that reflects back the external world; that is, a sensory-organ. Secondly, it may be a series of discrete micro-movements, or palpitations; that is, a truncated motor-organ. These two manifestations correspond to thought and desire respectively, and their combination produces affect. This combination tends to prioritise one manifestation, although it encompasses both. Griffith prioritises the reflective face, but includes the expressive face; Eisenstein prioritises the expressive face, but includes the reflective face. More subtly, German Expressionism prioritises the expressive face, subdivided by striations or shadows, but for the sake of producing a sublime reflective face. This clarifies von Sternberg's departure from Expressionism, since his strategy is, stylistically, to replace the spectrum between light and darkness with that between light and pure white and, affectively, to present a reflective face that is ultimately subdivided, and so becomes expressive, through the refraction of light through translucent white surfaces (muslin, lace, curtains).  Similarly, the climax of Pandora's Box brings the reflective and expressive faces into dramatic proximity. Whenever an object, such as a clock, combines reflection with micro-movement, it has thus become faceified. Deleuze identifies faceification with the close-up's ability to abstract objects from time and space, reducing them to pure surfaces of reflection and movement. Conversely, a close-up occurs whenever faceification occurs, even when the camera is some distance from the faceiefied object, at which point the intervening space is itself abstracted, and transformed into an any-space-whatever. The primary affect is fear, since the close-up ultimately robs the face of individuation, socialisation and communication, forcing a nihilistic confrontation with the resultant void (Bergman). At this point, Deleuze identifies the affection-image with Peirce's conception of firstness, the category of signs which have no reference to anything other than themselves, as opposed to secondness, the category of signs which are defined in relation to each other, and which correspond to the action-image. As a manifestation of firstness, the affection-image represents a semiotic potentiality, rather than actuality (since we can never knows things outside of their relations); that is, an insurmountable ambiguity.
 
7. THE AFFECTION-IMAGE: QUALITIES, POWERS, ANY-SPACE-WHATEVERS 
 

Deleuze now elaborates how affect may manifest its firstness; that is, how affection-images may communicate among themselves. Most basically, they may communicate as a network of faces, so long as that network is situated within an any-space-whatever, rather than the actualised space that is the province of the action-image. Dreyer's The Passion Of Joan Of Arc uses false continuity and assymetrical compositions to evoke this space, which Deleuze has previously described in terms of the out-of-field. However, as Bresson's The Trial Of Joan Of Arc demonstrates, the face may be completely elided from the close-up; or, alternatively, subsumed into its tendency to abstract space and time. At this point,  affection-images communicate as a network of any-space-whatevers, rather than a network of faces. Deleuze now renames these two kinds of affection-image - the face and the any-space-whatever - as icons and qualisigns, after Peirce, and divides the latter into two further categories: disconnected and emptied spaces. Disconnected spaces predominate in black-and-white cinema, especially German Expressionism, which spatialises a struggle between light and shadow, and 'Lyrical Abstraction', which spatialises an alternation between light and pure white that may be construed in aesthetic (von Sternberg), ethical (Dreyer), religious (Bresson) or sensational (Tourneur) terms and may, like all images, be framed according to geometric (Dreyer), or physical-dynamic (Bresson) co-ordinates. Emptied spaces predominate in colour cinema, which may use bright, hallucinatory tones to absorb characters and objects into a dream-state that is tantamount to affect (Minnelli) or, more radically, into a dream-state that is itself abstracted from any character, and so produces the complete disappearance of characters (Antonioni). Deleuze concludes by identifying the some of the ways in which the various New Waves further elaborated the any-space-whatever. The French New Wave favoured spaces that were literally fragmented, such as half-constructed apartment buildings (Godard). The German New Wave (Schmid, Fassbinder) imbued city exteriors with the indeterminacy of deserts, and interiors with disorienting mirrors. The American New Wave (Cassavetes, Lumet) robbed the city of the orienting factor of verticality, or three-dimensionality, presenting it as a series of endless sidewalks. Finally, the American Experimental Cinema offers the most radical any-space-whatevers, such as occur in Snow's Wavelength, a single take in which the camera separates a space from the human catastrophe that takes place within it.

8. FROM AFFECTION TO ACTION: THE IMPULSE-IMAGE 

Deleuze now introduces the impulse-image, which exists between the affection-image and the action-image, and corresponds to the originary world, which exists between any-space- whatevers and actualised space. The originary world is the primordial element of actualised space, best figured as a giant swamp, while the impulse-image is the primordial element of action. As such, it occurs prior to any differentiation between animal and human, leading Deleuze to identify it with naturalism, and associate it with surrealism, insofar as surrealism reveals a previously hidden element of nature. This construes the naturalist as diagnostician of 'civilisation', and subdivides the impulse-image into two categories - symptoms and fetishes. Symptom merely refers to the impuse itself, while fetishes are the originary fragments that result from its drive to appropriate actualised space to its primeval agenda, which it does with an insatiability that induces it to move indiscriminately from one mileu to another. Out of all the movement-images, the impulse-image comes closest to being a pure time-image, for reasons that will become clear. Deleuze identifies three major naturalists: von Stroheim, Bunuel and Losey. Von Stroheim prefers to diagnose the degraded individual, and to construe time as an accelerating entropy that facilitates this degradation. To this end, he figures darkness and light as functions of time, rather than the reverse, as occurs in Expressionism. Bunuel prefers to diagnose the degraded society, and to construe time as an eternal cycle, in which even the most apparently pious figures are implicated in this degradation. This transforms religious objects into so many fetishes, whether in the form of relics or voodoo objects. It also allows Bunuel to open up more mileux to degradation, explaining why his impulses tend to spring from the poor, who would otherwise find it difficult to access these mileux, whereas Stroheim's spring from the mobile rich. In this way, Bunuel replaces von Stroheim's individualistic predators with a predation so generalised as to constitute civilisation itself, and so become a form of mutual parasitism; or, more accurately, commensalism. For this reason, Bunuel's favoured protagonist is a monster-invalid; that is, a figure who is simultaneously predator and prey, and so embodies this parasitic economy. Nevertheless, by taking the eternal cycle to its logical conclusion, Bunuel gestures towards a conception of time that is divorced from eternity, and the transcendent universe that it connotes; that is, he gestures towards duration, and the immanent universe that it connotes. In this way, he presents immanence as salvation, and comes closer than any other naturalistic director to a pure time-image, clarifying that the latter is in fact a duration-image. Finally, Losey reconfigures Bunuel's parasitic economy as a servile economy, in which degradation is a function of servants' impulse to act as as masters, and masters' impulse to act as servants; that is a generalised impulse so strong that it ultimately consumes itself, or, alternatively, explicates itself as both its own servant and master. Concomitantly, Losey replaces the monster-invalid with the adult-child, who simultaneously embodies servantdom and masterdom. As a result, the mileu that is most consistently subjected to the incursion of the originary world is the Victorian home, which was predicated upon this servile economy, while the originary world itself is figured as a network of horizontal labyrinths, whose most basic manifestation is as the surrounding streetscape. This elision of cyclical time deflects the possibility of salvation into female characters, clarifying the servile economy as a homosexual economy, and the adult- hild as a homosexual man. Apart from these three major naturalists, Deleuze identifies certain naturalistic schools, such as the neo-Gothic (Davies, Bava), which replace the affective vampire with the impulsive vampire. Similarly, many directors are partial naturalists. Visconti and Renoir have naturalistic proclivities, but are ultimately too aristocratic and theatrical, respectively, to be considered naturalists per se. Finally, certain national cinemas are inimical to naturalism, such as the American, which is premised on the action-image, rather than the impulse-image. That said, certain directors show strong naturalistic tendencies (Fuller), while others may provisionally achieve it, whether after a systematic rejection of Hollywood (Vidor), a protracted, career-long disassociation of themselves from the action-image (Ray), or a sensitivity to actresses with an impulsive connotation (Ava Gardner). In this respect, Deleuze considers Losey to be a non-American.

9. THE ACTION-IMAGE: THE LARGE FORM 

Deleuze now turns to the action-image, which depicts concrete actions in concrete situations, and may take two forms. The large form depicts a situation that is modified by the intervention of an action, and is designated SAS'. The small form depicts an action that is modified by the intervention of a situation, and is designated ASA'. The large form starts with a wide focus, which narrows to an individual action, and then widens again, producing a respiratory movement, and a dramatic register. The small form starts with a narrow focus, which gradually widens to a situation, and then contracts again, producing a skeletal movement, and a bathetic, or comic register. Finally, the large form emphasises determinism, and the continuity of space, whereas the small form emphasises contingency, and the continguity of space. In semi-Peircean terms, the large form pairs a synsign (situation) with a duel (action), whereas the small form pairs an index (action) with a vector (situation). In linguistic terms, the large form operates according to the logic of metaphor, whereas the small form operates according to the logic of metonymy. Deleuze now provides a genealogy of the large form, starting with the documentary, as developed by Flaherty, which depicts a duel between man and environment. However, since this impact upon the environment is often very slight, the documentary is best understood as a nascent version of the large form, and designated as SAS. It is with the psycho-social drama, as pioneered by Vidor, that the large form both comes into its own and is explicated as a version of the American Dream, since it speaks both to collectivity (the situation) and individuality (the action). However, Vidor's works also contain the possibility of an American Nightmare, in which individual action makes no impact upon the collective situation (The Crowd) - a scenario that Deleuze also designates as SAS. This American Nightmare finds its logical conclusion in the crime film, in which the collective situation, or mileu, is presented as a pathology that precludes proper individuality, or action. However, the American Dream is reclaimed in the Fordian western, which identifies the mileu with the sky, thereby imbuing it with an immutability that admits modification, but not negation. In fact, Ford will often present 'before' and 'after' images to explicate this modification; that is, the difference between S and S'. Finally, the large form culminates with the historical film, which either deals explicitly with America, or treats other nations in analogical (Griffith) or parallel (DeMille) terms, thereby corresponding to Nietzsche's conception of monumental history. From this perspective, the biblical narrative is itself a type of the large form, since it relates the conflict between individuality and collectivity to the foundation of nation- states. The historical film also encompasses Nietzsche's antiquarian history, in its fascination with exotic historical objects, as well as his ethical history, in its reduction of the past to a series of prophetic instructions relating to the approaching apotheosis of the American state. Deleuze concludes by arguing that the large form of the action-image finds its logical conclusion in a behaviourist cinema, in which every interior state has a corresponding action. In such a cinema, there will be no reprieve from action, but merely an oscillation between vegetative (or preparatory) action, which permeates the entire narrative, and animal (or transformative) action, which explodes at isolated moments. The strongest behaviourist directors (Kazan, Fuller) create a succession of vegetative-animal transitions, expanding the large form from SAS' to (s1,a1,s2,a2,s3,a3...) or, alternatively, (SAS'AS''AS''...). In some cases, they may reverse the process and construe the vegetative state as an end in itself, producing a naturalist aesthetic. Concomitantly, the strongest behaviourist genres, such as the war film, incorporate gritty realism into the American Dream, signifying their own crisis. Finally, behaviourist cinema is closely allied to method acting, which construes internal states as a function of external objects, leading Deleuze to assert that the emotional object, or impression, stands in an analogous relation to action as the face does to affect, the fragment to impulse, and the gramme to percept.

10. THE ACTION-IMAGE: THE SMALL FORM 

Deleuze now moves on to the small form of the action image, in which an action is modified by the intervention of a situation. In primitive form, this occurs whenever an action discloses a situation (Lubitsch), producing the designation ASA. In more sophisticated form, it occurs whenever an action has the potential to disclose two contrasting situations, such that a minute difference in action will produce a drastic difference in situation. In this case, the ambiguity of the original action wil be retrospectively modified by the situation it has disclosed, producing the designation ASA'. This occurs in the comedy of manners, costume drama, detective film and documentary as formulated by Rotha and Grierson, which correspond to the 'large' psycho-social drama, historical drama, crime film and documentary as formulated by Flaherty. However, it reaches perfection in the burlesque. On the one hand, Chaplin's burlesque constantly present actions that have the potential to disclose both comic and pathetic situations, producing a laughter-emotion circuit. On the other hand, it presents actions that have the potential to disclose both submissive and resistant situations; or, alternatively, actions that have the potential to both submit to, and resist, the demands of capitalist objects (Modern Times). This politicised comedy comes to the fore in Chaplin's sound films, which generalise action to social position (ie collection of actions) and situation to social mileu (ie collection of situations), thereby presenting a social position that is modified by the intervention of a social mileu. The Great Dictator and Monsieur Verdoux describe social mileux in which there is an infinitesimal distance between victim and executioner (fascism), and murderer and lover (capitalism), while Limelight ponders over the moment at which an infinitesimal transition in age bespeaks a drastic difference in social and artistic credibility. In doing so, however, they move away from the small form, insofar as the mileu (capitalism, fascism) is relatively clear from the outset, whereas the more localised situations of Chaplin's silent films may not be. Yet they retain the small form insofar as the difference between actions remains minute, and the modification of the social mileu hypothetical. Deleuze describes this nexus of forms as an attempt to render the large form discursive, in the name of a communist-humanist socialism. Keaton, by contrast, favours an anarchistic-machinic socialism, and inserts burlesque directly into the large form. To this end, he situates himself in an immense transformation-space, which he encompasses with a gaze that is both periscopic (seeing far) and panoramic (seeing wide), and a movement that Deleuze, after Robinson, describes as the trajectory-gag. The trajectory-gag construes the transformation-space as an instance of the idiosyncratic machines that recur throughout Keaton's work, and is therefore itself an instance of the machine-gag. Unlike Chaplin, Keaton doesn't oppose the machine, but minors it to a series of non-functional, or only potentially functional, units, which can accomodate the individual. Thus, whereas Chaplin's comedy and pathos occur in the infinitesimal gap between an action and its clarification, Keaton's pathos occurs in the much wider gap between a situation and the individual who eventually comes to act meaningfully within it, while comedy is reserved for the moment of action; that is, Keaton's comedy is prepared by, rather than identified with, pathos, to the extent that 'comedy' simply comes to designate the deadpan that cancels that pathos. Finally, Deleuze distinguishes Lloyd from Chaplin and Keaton in terms of his desire to transplant burlesque from the action-image to the perception-image. As a result, his comedy often juxtaposes a minute difference in perception with a drastic difference in situation. If Chaplin and Keaton deform the small form in the direction of the large form, Hawks takes one of the defining instances of the large form - the western - and deforms it in the direction of the small form. To this end, he complicates the relationship between action and situation which, in the language of the western, means complicating the relationship between the binaries of land and sky, inside and outside, morality and immorality. The latter finds clearest expression in his reconfiguration of Ford's basic narrative structure, in which a protagonist gains the capacity to act on behalf of a fundamentally American community with the aid of a makeshift community (children, the elderly, prostitutes, alcoholics). In Hawks, however, the makeshift community entirely replaces the fundamental community, while its catalytic, or functional, role, is extrapolated to the entire film, replacing the organic vision of the classical western with the machinic, or claustrophilic, vision of the neo-western. This genre builds upon Hawks to present a world in which even the subdivisions within the makeshift community are no longer clear. Similarly, whereas Hawks' makeshift communities ultimately bespeak the absence of a fundamental community, the neo-western refuses to acknowledge any distinction between the two. As a result, the classification of the protagonist, as well as the situation, is entirely contingent on his actions - a tendency that climaxes with Peckinpah, who replaces the 'west' with geographically indeterminate 'wests'.

11. FIGURES, OR THE TRANSFORMATION OF FORMS

As Chaplin, Keaton and Hawks demonstrate, it is possible to deform the large form into the small form, and vice versa. This may occur with the aid of four discursive figures, which Deleuze derives from Fontainier. Firstly, tropes occur whenever a figurative word replaces a literal word, and include metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche. Secondly, imperfect tropes extend the figurative content from a word to a group of words, and include allegory and personification. Thirdly, reversal occurs when the meaning of words is reversed for figurative, or discursive purposes. Fourthly, figures of thought don't involve any figurative modification per se, but are nevertheless discursive, and include prosopopoeia, deliberation and concession. For Deleuze, Eisenstein's two major strategies for inducing qualitative changes in images - theatrical representations and plastic representations - respectively correspond to tropes and imperfect tropes, injecting the small form into the large form, and the large form into the small form. Similarly, Hawks' collapse of inside and outside instantiates a more general taste for reversal, which extends to the relation between the sexes (Bringing Up Baby), adult and child (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes), money and love, and 'proper' language and slang. For the moment, Deleuze avoids those directors who produce figures of thought. Along with Eisenstein, Deleuze cites Herzog as the most accomplished deformative, or figurative, director. On the one hand, Herzog's large form presents a sublime action that attempts to modify a situation by becoming the situation (the hallucinatory dimension). However, the impossibility of this ambition means that it is always drastically checked; that is, that the situation modifies the action in a manner characteristic of the small form (the hypnotic dimension) (Aguirre, Wrath Of God, Fitzcarraldo, Heart Of Glass). On the other hand, Herzog's small form presents an action that is completely debilitated by a situation that is usually identified with some kind of disability, whether physical (Nosferatu), sensory (Land Of Silence And Darkness, Handicapped Future) or intellectual (The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser). However, this very debilitation will imbue the situation with a tactility, or immediacy, that was previously lacking from it, thereby modifying it in a manner characteristic of the large form. Deleuze now turns to Kurosawa and Mizoguchi, whose deformation involves taking the large and small forms to their limits. Kurosawa broadens the large form by elevating the situation to a question, which the action discloses. However, whereas the situation is comprehensible, the question is never fully comprehensible, such that the (partial) disclosure becomes more significant than the (provisional) answer, since it is ultimately the disclosure of a void at the limits of the situation. This association of question and void means that the former tends to be oneiric, best understood by dreamers and madmen, both of whom find expression in Kurosawa's taste for sorcerers and sphinx-like figures. By contrast, Mizoguchi lengthens the small form, clarifying its limit as the median voids that exist between spaces, and within the situation. To this end, he favours high-angle, medium shots, which divide space so many slices, while even his occasional sequence shot tends to portray a series of continguous spaces. This is enhanced by his taste for Japanese domestic spaces, which also clarifies his lengthening of the small form as an attempt to draw attention to their paradoxical status as both median void and the line that coheres all the median voids, synthesising continguities.

12. THE CRISIS OF THE ACTION-IMAGE 

Deleuze now moves on the fourth kind of figure - figures of thought - via Peirce's conception of thirdness. If firstness refers to signs that only communicate among themselves, and secondness to those that communicate with each other, then thirdness refers to those that communicate via an intermediary, or third party. Alternatively, if firstness corresponds to affect, and secondness to action, then thirdness corresponds to logic, and produces a mental-image. Just as the action-image encompasses the affective- image, so the mental-image encompasses both images. Conversely, the affective-image and action-image both incline towards the mental-image, in their respective preoccupation with pure consciousness and constellations of conceptions, judgements and reasonings. In doing so, however, they simply articulate the necessary conditions for thought, and the causes and products of thought. By contrast, the mental-image presents the operation of thought itself, prioritising the relation between its components, rather than the components themselves. Leaving aside Chaplin and Keaton, this progression can be seen in the history of burlesque: Langdon is affect; Laurel is affect, Hardy action; Harpo Marx is affect, Chico action and Groucho logic. However, the mental-image finds its apotheosis in Hitchcock, who transforms cinema into the exposition of logical relations (Dial M For Murder, Rope). In doing so, he inherits the English logical tradition, in both its philosophical and literary incarnations (Lewis Carroll), only subscribing to other positions (Christianity, Platonism, psychoanalysis) insofar as they intersect with this tradition. From this perspective, his iconic 'wrong man' narrative doesn't simply describe an innocent man, but somebody who functions as an intermediary, or third party, between criminal and crime, and is therefore guilty insofar as he is caught up in these relations. As this suggests, Hitchcock's characters are never fully aware of the relations within which they are caught; or, more accurately, are embodiments of those relations (because, if, but), and therefore only capable of intellectual  feelings, rather than intellectual autonomy per se. This awareness of relations belongs to the camera, explaining Hitchcock's recommendation that the cast act as naturally and unobtrusively as possible, in direct contrast to method acting. It also belongs to the audience, producing suspense. Deleuze divides Hitchcock's mental-images into two categories, corresponding to the two major types of logical relations. Natural relations, which are intuitive, produce predictable series of marks, as well as the demarks that break those series (the windmill in Foreign Correspondent, the crop-duster in North By Northwest, the first attack in The Birds). Abstract relations, which are counter-intuitive, produce symbols; that is, objects which embody relations distinct from those with which they are intuitively associated (the handcuffs in The 39 Steps, the wedding ring in North By Northwest). By identifying cinema with logical relations, and attempting to include affect and action within those relations, Hitchcock takes the movement-image to its apotheosis. Similarly, by construing each frame as a self-sufficient logical term, he minimises the out- of-field as much as is possible. However, his prioritisation of the audience occasionally produces a very difference kind of scenario, in which the protagonist is himself debilitated and reduced to an audience on his own life (Rear Window), gesturing towards the collapse of subjectivity and sensorium constitutive of the time-image. Deleuze now turns to the historical crisis of the action-image, which he attributes to several factors, including: World War II, the demise of the American Dream, the exhaustion of Hollywood formulas, the increasing reification of the image in popular culture, the example of modernist literature, and the emergence of minority politics. This crisis manifests itself as five distinct symptoms. Firstly, the situation becomes dispersive, rather than synthetic, leading to the demise of the large form. Characters become ephemeral, and are connected in ephemeral ways, such that the distinction between primary and secondary characters tends to vanish (Altman). Secondly, the action becomes lacunary, rather than coherent, leading to the demise of the small form. As a results, actions are more prone to chance, and often abstracted from the very figures who perform them (Taxi Driver, The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie). The resultant collapse of affect and action, and any-space-whatever and concrete space, produces the third symptom: the proliferation of the trip, or meandering walk that leads nowhere, which Deleuze distinguishes from the initiatory journey (Wenders) and beat journey (Hopper). Generally, the trip occurs in an urban or semi-urban any-space- whatever, which differs from the concrete urban spaces of classical cinema by virtue of its horizontality, or two-dimensionality. Fourthly, the disruption of situation and action mean that syntax tends to occur in terms of psychic and physical cliches; or, more accurately, through a collapse of both, until the subject is little more than a cliche, moving in and out of fragments of popular culture (news reports, songs) with no apparent change in subjectivity (Altman, Godard). Fifthly, this collapse of inside and outside envisages the pervasive cliche as a conspiracy, especially in American cinema (Lumet), which Deleuze distinguishes from the identifiable criminals of film noir. Since the crisis of the action-image was simultaneously that of the American Dream, these symptoms manifested themselves most freely in Europe, especially in Italy (neorealism), France (New Wave) and Germany (New Wave) in approximately 1958, 1968 and 1978 respectively. Deleuze attributes Italy's initiative to the fact that it was not a victor of World War II (unlike France), nor suffered the same kind of cinematic suppression as Germany. The two founders of neorealism, Rossellini and De Sica, broke down the large and small forms, in response to the war and post-war economic crisis respectively. In their turn, the French directors perfected the trip format, which they variously construed as movement between Paris and the provinces (Chabrol), reflections of the soul (Truffaut, Rohmer), investigative outings (Rivette) and flights (Godard). Finally, Deleuze argues that these symptoms were only sufficient to produce a destructive, or parodic response to cliches (Altman); that is, they were merely the foundations for a radically new, more constructive category of image: the time-image.

Posted on Friday, January 4, 2008 by Registered CommenterBilly Stevenson | CommentsPost a Comment