Cinema 1: The Movement Image
Encyclopedia
Cinema 1: The Movement Image is a book by the philosopher Gilles Deleuze
that combines philosophy with film criticism. It was originally published in French as L'Image-mouvement. Cinéma 1 (Les Éditions de Minuit
, 1983). It was translated into English by Hugh Tomlinson
. In the Preface to the French edition Deleuze says that, "This study is not a history of cinema. It is a taxonomy, an attempt at the classifications of images and signs" and acknowledges the influence of the American pragmatist C.S. Peirce and the French philosopher Henri Bergson
(p. xiv). The cinema covered in the book ranges from the silent era to the 1970s, and includes the work of D. W. Griffith
, Abel Gance
, Erich von Stroheim
, Charlie Chaplin
, Sergei Eisenstein
, Luis Buñuel
, Howard Hawks
, Robert Bresson
, Jean-Luc Godard
, Sidney Lumet
and Robert Altman
. The second volume, L'Image-temps. Cinéma 2 was published in 1985 (translated as Cinema 2: The Time-Image in 1989). Both books are clearly about cinema, but he also uses cinema to theorise time, movement and life as a whole.
, dismisses the conception of cinema as a succession of still photographs. Instead, he argues that cinema immediately gives us movement-image. Figures are not described in motion; rather, the continuity of movement describes the figure (p5). In this respect, cinema embodies a modern conception of movement, "capable of thinking the production of the new" (p7), as opposed to the ancient conception of movement as a succession of separate elements, exemplified by Zeno's arrow. The capacity for thinking the production of the new, being open to chance and accident, can be seen in the action-mime of Chaplin
and the action dance of Fred Astaire
(p7).
. Deleuze defines the shot (which is dependent on the position and movement of the camera) as the movement-image (p22). The mobile camera acts as a general equivalent to forms of locomotion, for instance walking, planes, cars (p22). The great moments of cinema are often when the camera, following its own movement, turns its back on a character (p23). In this way, the camera acts as a mechanical consciousness in its own right, separate from the consciousness of the audience or the hero (p22). Montage (the way the shots are edited) connects shots and gives movement, even when the camera is not mobile.
, the quantitative montage of the pre-war French school
and the intensive montage of the German expressionist
school (p30). The American school, exemplified in D.W. Griffith, relies on oppositions (rich/poor, men/women), but attempts to give to them the unity in a whole (p30). The Soviet school, in particular Sergei Eisenstein
, sees montage as developmental and revolutionary: opposite ideas giving birth to something new. Pre-war French montage puts the emphasis on movement. German expressionist montage emphasises colour and light and is essentially a montage of visual contrasts.
Deleuze’s cinematic taxonomy emerges from the philosophy of Henri Bergson
in Matter and Memory
. Bergson’s thesis is that of an enmeshed human body in the world of matter where perceptions cause affections and where affections cause actions. Deleuze sees a correspondence between Bergson’s tripartite formulation and the cinematic medium. There are thus three types of cinematic movement-images: perception images (that focus on what is seen), affection images (that focus on expressions of feeling) and action images (that focus on the duration of action). These three images are associated, respectively, with long shot
s, close-up
s and medium shot
s.
The perception-image resembles the point of view shot
of film theory, but Deleuze challenges that notion showing how it can be both subjective and semi-subjective, sometimes adopting the point of view of characters, sometime floating free. Deleuze describes the anonymous, unidentified viewpoint of the camera. He calls this camera consciousness. Some filmmakers, such as Jean-Luc Godard
, make the camera felt more than others. There are three different types of perception: solid perception (normal human perception), liquid perception (where images flow together, such as in pre-war French cinema), and gaseous perception (the pure vision of the non-human eye). The latter is objective vision, the vision of matter, of the world before man. Dziga Vertov
’s images aspire to pure machine vision. Experimental cinema also reaches for this pure perception.
Closeup = Face. A face can be a real face or not. All faces are affection-images. Affection-images move between two poles of admiration and desire. Because faces, and close-ups, are wholes that are cut off from the space and time around them, they bring forth the fear of the obliteration of the face. However, desire and wonder give them life. The use of close-ups and faces by Griffith and Eisenstein is considered. Deleuze looks at the work of Bresson
to explore how affect
can be expressed in a face. Also, in the "any-space-whatever" (p. 110). This is done using color/saturation, lighting, choice, etc. Naturalist films are concerned with impulse.
Deleuze defines two forms of the action-image: the large form and the small form. In realism, which “produced the universal triumph of American cinema”, actions transform an initial situation (p141). Large Form defined as SAS. There are gaps waiting to be filled. The main genres of this image are the Documentary film
, the Psycho-social film, Film Noir
, the Western
and the historical film. Deleuze attributes the large form to The Actors Studio and its method. Small Form defined as ASA. The actions create the situation. The films of Chaplin , Buster Keaton
and Harold Lloyd
play with the spectator's assumptions of what they are viewing on the screen. The SAS and ASA can be a continuous progression occurring many times throughout the film.
The categories of affection and action correspond to C.S Peirce's categories of firstness and secondness
. Peirce's category of thirdness corresponds to Deleuze's mental image. Alfred Hitchcock
, according to Deleuze, introduces the mental image, where relation itself is the object of the image. And this takes movement-image to its crisis. After Hitchcock, both the small form and the large form are in crisis, as are action-images in general. In Robert Altman
’s Nashville the multiple characters and storylines refer to a dispersive, rather than a globalising situation (p207). In Sidney Lumet
’s Serpico
and Dog Day Afternoon
characters “behave like windscreen wipers” (p208).
Deleuze develops this theory by detailing the chronology of Italian neorealism, French New Wave, and New German Cinema. Deleuze states that we must think “beyond movement” (p215)...Which leads us to Cinema 2: The Time-Image.
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with Félix...
that combines philosophy with film criticism. It was originally published in French as L'Image-mouvement. Cinéma 1 (Les Éditions de Minuit
Les Éditions de Minuit
Les Éditions de Minuit is a French publishing house which has its origins in the French Resistance of World War II and still publishes books today.-History:...
, 1983). It was translated into English by Hugh Tomlinson
Hugh Tomlinson
Hugh Tomlinson QC, is an English barrister at Matrix Chambers. He is a specialist in media and information law including defamation, confidence, privacy and data protection.-Education and career:...
. In the Preface to the French edition Deleuze says that, "This study is not a history of cinema. It is a taxonomy, an attempt at the classifications of images and signs" and acknowledges the influence of the American pragmatist C.S. Peirce and the French philosopher Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson
Henri-Louis Bergson was a major French philosopher, influential especially in the first half of the 20th century. Bergson convinced many thinkers that immediate experience and intuition are more significant than rationalism and science for understanding reality.He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize...
(p. xiv). The cinema covered in the book ranges from the silent era to the 1970s, and includes the work of D. W. Griffith
D. W. Griffith
David Llewelyn Wark Griffith was a premier pioneering American film director. He is best known as the director of the controversial and groundbreaking 1915 film The Birth of a Nation and the subsequent film Intolerance .Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation made pioneering use of advanced camera...
, Abel Gance
Abel Gance
Abel Gance was a French film director and producer, writer and actor. He is best known for three major silent films: J'accuse , La Roue , and the monumental Napoléon .-Early life:...
, Erich von Stroheim
Erich von Stroheim
Erich von Stroheim was an Austrian-born film star of the silent era, subsequently noted as an auteur for his directorial work.-Background:...
, Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
, Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein , né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the "Father of Montage"...
, Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés was a Spanish-born filmmaker — later a naturalized citizen of Mexico — who worked in Spain, Mexico, France and the US..-Early years:...
, Howard Hawks
Howard Hawks
Howard Winchester Hawks was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era...
, Robert Bresson
Robert Bresson
-Life and career:Bresson was born at Bromont-Lamothe, Puy-de-Dôme, the son of Marie-Élisabeth and Léon Bresson. Little is known of his early life and the year of his birth, 1901 or 1907, varies depending on the source. He was educated at Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, close to Paris, and...
, Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
, Sidney Lumet
Sidney Lumet
Sidney Lumet was an American director, producer and screenwriter with over 50 films to his credit. He was nominated for the Academy Award as Best Director for 12 Angry Men , Dog Day Afternoon , Network and The Verdict...
and Robert Altman
Robert Altman
Robert Bernard Altman was an American film director and screenwriter known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective. In 2006, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his body of work with an Academy Honorary Award.His films MASH , McCabe and...
. The second volume, L'Image-temps. Cinéma 2 was published in 1985 (translated as Cinema 2: The Time-Image in 1989). Both books are clearly about cinema, but he also uses cinema to theorise time, movement and life as a whole.
The movement-image
Deleuze, commenting on the philosophy of Henri BergsonHenri Bergson
Henri-Louis Bergson was a major French philosopher, influential especially in the first half of the 20th century. Bergson convinced many thinkers that immediate experience and intuition are more significant than rationalism and science for understanding reality.He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize...
, dismisses the conception of cinema as a succession of still photographs. Instead, he argues that cinema immediately gives us movement-image. Figures are not described in motion; rather, the continuity of movement describes the figure (p5). In this respect, cinema embodies a modern conception of movement, "capable of thinking the production of the new" (p7), as opposed to the ancient conception of movement as a succession of separate elements, exemplified by Zeno's arrow. The capacity for thinking the production of the new, being open to chance and accident, can be seen in the action-mime of Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
and the action dance of Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute...
(p7).
Frame and shot
That which is within the frame (characters, props) is a relatively closed system, and can be treated as a spatial composition. However, it can never be completely closed, because of the way it can define the "out-of-the-frame". This is particularly apparent in the films of Michelangelo AntonioniMichelangelo Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian modernist film director, screenwriter, editor and short story writer.- Personal life :...
. Deleuze defines the shot (which is dependent on the position and movement of the camera) as the movement-image (p22). The mobile camera acts as a general equivalent to forms of locomotion, for instance walking, planes, cars (p22). The great moments of cinema are often when the camera, following its own movement, turns its back on a character (p23). In this way, the camera acts as a mechanical consciousness in its own right, separate from the consciousness of the audience or the hero (p22). Montage (the way the shots are edited) connects shots and gives movement, even when the camera is not mobile.
Montage
Different conceptions of duration and movement can be seen in the four distinct schools of montage: the organic montage of the American school, the dialectic montage of the Soviet schoolCinema of the Soviet Union
The cinema of the Soviet Union, not to be confused with "Cinema of Russia" despite Russian language films being predominant in both genres, includes several film contributions of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union reflecting elements of their pre-Soviet culture, language and history,...
, the quantitative montage of the pre-war French school
Poetic realism
Poetic realism was a film movement in France of the 1930s and through the war years. More a tendency than a movement, Poetic Realism is not strongly unified like Soviet Montage or French Impressionism. Its leading filmmakers were Jean Renoir, Pierre Chenal, Jean Vigo, Julien Duvivier, and Marcel...
and the intensive montage of the German expressionist
German Expressionism
German Expressionism refers to a number of related creative movements beginning in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin, during the 1920s...
school (p30). The American school, exemplified in D.W. Griffith, relies on oppositions (rich/poor, men/women), but attempts to give to them the unity in a whole (p30). The Soviet school, in particular Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein , né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the "Father of Montage"...
, sees montage as developmental and revolutionary: opposite ideas giving birth to something new. Pre-war French montage puts the emphasis on movement. German expressionist montage emphasises colour and light and is essentially a montage of visual contrasts.
Types of movement-image
Henri Bergson
Henri-Louis Bergson was a major French philosopher, influential especially in the first half of the 20th century. Bergson convinced many thinkers that immediate experience and intuition are more significant than rationalism and science for understanding reality.He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize...
in Matter and Memory
Matter and Memory
Matter and Memory is one of the four main works by the French philosopher Henri Bergson . Its subtitle is "Essay on the relation of body and spirit", and the work presents an analysis of the classical philosophical problems concerning this relation...
. Bergson’s thesis is that of an enmeshed human body in the world of matter where perceptions cause affections and where affections cause actions. Deleuze sees a correspondence between Bergson’s tripartite formulation and the cinematic medium. There are thus three types of cinematic movement-images: perception images (that focus on what is seen), affection images (that focus on expressions of feeling) and action images (that focus on the duration of action). These three images are associated, respectively, with long shot
Long shot
In photography, filmmaking and video production, a long shot typically shows the entire object or human figure and is usually intended to place it in some relation to its surroundings...
s, close-up
Close-up
In filmmaking, television production, still photography and the comic strip medium a close-up tightly frames a person or an object. Close-ups are one of the standard shots used regularly with medium shots and long shots . Close-ups display the most detail, but they do not include the broader scene...
s and medium shot
Medium shot
In film, a medium shot is a camera shot from a medium distance. The dividing line between "long shot" and "medium shot" is fuzzy, as is the line between "medium shot" and "close-up"...
s.
The perception-image
“And if from the point of view of the human eye, montage is undoubtedly a construction, from the point of view of another eye, it ceases to be one; it is the purest vision of a non-human eye, of an eye which would be in things.” (p81)
The perception-image resembles the point of view shot
Point of view shot
A point of view shot is a short film scene that shows what a character is looking at . It is usually established by being positioned between a shot of a character looking at something, and a shot showing the character's reaction...
of film theory, but Deleuze challenges that notion showing how it can be both subjective and semi-subjective, sometimes adopting the point of view of characters, sometime floating free. Deleuze describes the anonymous, unidentified viewpoint of the camera. He calls this camera consciousness. Some filmmakers, such as Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
, make the camera felt more than others. There are three different types of perception: solid perception (normal human perception), liquid perception (where images flow together, such as in pre-war French cinema), and gaseous perception (the pure vision of the non-human eye). The latter is objective vision, the vision of matter, of the world before man. Dziga Vertov
Dziga Vertov
David Abelevich Kaufman , better known by his pseudonym Dziga Vertov , was a Soviet pioneer documentary film, newsreel director and cinema theorist...
’s images aspire to pure machine vision. Experimental cinema also reaches for this pure perception.
The affection-image
“The affection-image is the close-up, and the close-up is the face…” (p87)
Closeup = Face. A face can be a real face or not. All faces are affection-images. Affection-images move between two poles of admiration and desire. Because faces, and close-ups, are wholes that are cut off from the space and time around them, they bring forth the fear of the obliteration of the face. However, desire and wonder give them life. The use of close-ups and faces by Griffith and Eisenstein is considered. Deleuze looks at the work of Bresson
Robert Bresson
-Life and career:Bresson was born at Bromont-Lamothe, Puy-de-Dôme, the son of Marie-Élisabeth and Léon Bresson. Little is known of his early life and the year of his birth, 1901 or 1907, varies depending on the source. He was educated at Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, close to Paris, and...
to explore how affect
Affect (philosophy)
Affect is a concept used in the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza and elaborated by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari...
can be expressed in a face. Also, in the "any-space-whatever" (p. 110). This is done using color/saturation, lighting, choice, etc. Naturalist films are concerned with impulse.
The action-image
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
, the Psycho-social film, Film Noir
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
, the Western
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
and the historical film. Deleuze attributes the large form to The Actors Studio and its method. Small Form defined as ASA. The actions create the situation. The films of Chaplin , Buster Keaton
Buster Keaton
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton was an American comic actor, filmmaker, producer and writer. He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".Keaton was recognized as the...
and Harold Lloyd
Harold Lloyd
Harold Clayton Lloyd, Sr. was an American film actor and producer, most famous for his silent comedies....
play with the spectator's assumptions of what they are viewing on the screen. The SAS and ASA can be a continuous progression occurring many times throughout the film.
The crisis of the action-image
“We hardly believe any longer that a global situation can give rise to an action which is capable of modifying it – no more than we believe that an action can force a situation to disclose itself, even partially” (p206).
The categories of affection and action correspond to C.S Peirce's categories of firstness and secondness
Semiotic elements and classes of signs (Peirce)
Logician, mathematician, philosopher, and scientist Charles Sanders Peirce began writing on semeiotic, semiotics, or the theory of sign relations in the 1860s, around the time that he devised his system of three categories...
. Peirce's category of thirdness corresponds to Deleuze's mental image. Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
, according to Deleuze, introduces the mental image, where relation itself is the object of the image. And this takes movement-image to its crisis. After Hitchcock, both the small form and the large form are in crisis, as are action-images in general. In Robert Altman
Robert Altman
Robert Bernard Altman was an American film director and screenwriter known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective. In 2006, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his body of work with an Academy Honorary Award.His films MASH , McCabe and...
’s Nashville the multiple characters and storylines refer to a dispersive, rather than a globalising situation (p207). In Sidney Lumet
Sidney Lumet
Sidney Lumet was an American director, producer and screenwriter with over 50 films to his credit. He was nominated for the Academy Award as Best Director for 12 Angry Men , Dog Day Afternoon , Network and The Verdict...
’s Serpico
Serpico
Serpico is a 1973 American crime film directed by Sidney Lumet. It is based on the true story of New York City policeman Frank Serpico, who went undercover to expose the corruption of his fellow officers, after being pushed to the brink at first by their distrust and later by the threats and...
and Dog Day Afternoon
Dog Day Afternoon
Dog Day Afternoon is a 1975 drama film directed by Sidney Lumet, written by Frank Pierson, and produced by Martin Bregman. The film stars Al Pacino, John Cazale, Charles Durning, Chris Sarandon, Penny Allen, James Broderick, and Carol Kane. The title refers to the "dog days of summer".The film was...
characters “behave like windscreen wipers” (p208).
Deleuze develops this theory by detailing the chronology of Italian neorealism, French New Wave, and New German Cinema. Deleuze states that we must think “beyond movement” (p215)...Which leads us to Cinema 2: The Time-Image.
See also
- Auteur theoryAuteur theoryIn film criticism, auteur theory holds that a director's film reflects the director's personal creative vision, as if they were the primary "auteur"...
- Film genre
- DeterritorializationDeterritorializationDeterritorialization is a concept created by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in Anti-Oedipus , which, in accordance to Deleuze's desire and philosophy, quickly became used by others, for example in anthropology, and transformed in this reappropriation...
- Film theoryFilm theoryFilm theory is an academic discipline that aims to explore the essence of the cinema and provides conceptual frameworks for understanding film's relationship to reality, the other arts, individual viewers, and society at large...
- Mise en scèneMise en scèneMise-en-scène is an expression used to describe the design aspects of a theatre or film production, which essentially means "visual theme" or "telling a story"—both in visually artful ways through storyboarding, cinematography and stage design, and in poetically artful ways through direction...
- Plane of immanencePlane of immanencePlane of immanence is a founding concept in the metaphysics or ontology of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Immanence, meaning "existing or remaining within" generally offers a relative opposition to transcendence, a divine or metaphysical beyond or outside...
Further reading
- Bogue, Ronald. Deleuze on Cinema. New York and London: Routledge, 2003.
- Buchanan, Ian and Patricia MacCormack, eds. Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Cinema. London and New York: Continuum, 2008.
- Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2: The Time Image. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989.
- ---. L'Image-mouvement. Cinéma 1. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1983.
- ---. L'Image-temps. Cinéma 2. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1985.
- Flaxman, Gregory (ed.). The Brain is the Screen: Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy of Cinema. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
- Martin-Jones, David. Deleuze and World Cinemas. London and New York: Continuum, 2011.
- MacCormack, Patricia. Cinesexuality. Aldershot, England and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008.
- Marrati, Paola. Gilles Deleuze: Cinema and Philosophy. Trans. Alisa Hartz. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
- Pisters, Patricia. The Matrix of Visual Culture: Working With Deleuze in Film Theory. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003.
- Powell, Anna. Deleuze and Horror Film. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006.
- ---. Deleuze, Altered States, and Film. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007.
- Rodowick, D.N. Gilles Deleuze's Time Machine. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997.
- Rodowick, D.N., (ed.). Afterimages of Gilles Deleuze's Film Philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.
- Shaviro, Steven.Steven ShaviroSteven Shaviro is an American cultural critic. His most widely read book is Doom Patrols, a "theoretical fiction" that outlines the state of postmodernism during the early 1990s, using poetic language, personal anecdotes, and creative prose....
The Cinematic Body. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993.
External links
- Deleuze Cinema Project 1, internet site of quotes from the cinema books with associated film clips.
- A/V the International E-Journal for Deleuze Studies, online streamed video papers, many encompassing Deleuze and cinema.