A REMARKABLE AND BEAUTIFUL BOOKWHICH, WITH

IMMENSE ELEGANCE, SETSASIDE THE DIFFICULTIES OF

FILM THEORY TO RECREATE A LIBERATING, CRITICAL

AND POETICHISTORY OF CINEMA.

Adrian Rifkin

Translatedby Emiliano Battista

Film Fablestraces the history of modern cinema.
Encyclopedicin scope,Film Fables is that rare work that
manages to combineextraordinary breadth and analysis with
a lyricism that attests time and again to a love of cinema.
(acQuesRancieremoves effortlessly from Eisenstein'sand
Murnau's transition from theater to film to Fritz Langs
confrontation with television;from the classicalpoeticsof
Mann's Westerns to Ray's romantic poeticsof the image;
from Rossellinis neo-realismto Deleuze'sphilosophy of the
cinemaand Marker's documentaries.Film Fablesshows us
how, between its images and its stories,
the cinematells the truth.

JacquesRanciereis Professorof Aesthetics and Politicsat

the University of Paris-VllI (St.Denis).His booksinclude
ThePoliticsof Aesthetics, The Philosopherand HisPoor,
The Flesh of Words and TheNamesof History.

EmilianoBattista is a doctoral student in Philosophy at the

CatholicUniversity/ of Leuven and a freelancetranslator.

ISBN I 84520168 X
ic-ickd design bv Navetn Kishore Seagull Books

ISBN IfiMSEDlbfl-X
BERG
OXFORD NEW YORK

9\"781845ll2016851 www.bergpublishers.com
 Contents

Translator^ Preface vii

Prologue: A Thwarted Fable I

Part I Fablesof the Visible
Betweenthe Age ofthe Theaterand the TelevisionAge
1 EisensteinsMadness 23
2 A SilentTartuffe 33
3 From One Manhunt to Another: Fritz Lang between
Two Ages 45
4 The Child Director 63
Part II Classical
Narrative, Romantic Narrative
5 SomeThings to Do:The PoeticsofAnthony Mann 73
6 The MissingShot:The Poeticsof NicholasRay 95
Part HI IfThereis a Cinematographic
Modernity
7 From OneImage to Another? Deleuzeand the Ages of
Cinema 107
8 Falling Bodies:
Rossellinis Physics 125
9 TheRed ofLa Chinoise Godard'sPolitics 143
Part IV Fablesofthe Cinema,(Hi)stories
ofa Century
10^DocumentaryFiction:Markerand the Fiction ofMemory r 157
11 A Fable without a Moral:Godard,Cinema, (Hi)stories 171
Index 189
 Prologue
A Thwarted Fable

Cinema, by and large, doesn'tdo justice to the story. And \"dramatic action\" here
is a mistake. The drama were watching is already half-resolvedand unfolding
on the curative slopeto the crisis.The real tragedy is in suspense. It loomsover
all the faces;it is in the curtain and in the door-latch.Each drop of ink can
make it blossomat the tip of the pen.It dissolvesitself in the glass of water. At
every moment, the entire room is saturated with the drama. The cigar burns on
the lip of the ashtray like a threat. The dust of betrayal. Poisonousarabesques
stretch acrossthe rug and the arm of the seattrembles.For now, suffering is in
surfusion. Expectation.We can't seea thing yet, but the tragic crystal that will
turn out to be at the centerof the plot has fallen down somewhere.Its wave
advances.Concentriccircles.It keepson expanding, from relay to relay. Seconds.
The telephonerings. All islost
Is whether they get married in the end really all you want to know? Look,
really, THERE IS NO film that ends badly, and the audienceenters into
happinessat the hour appointedon the program.
Cinemais true, A story is a lie,1

In theselines,Jean Epsteinlays bare the problemposed by the very

notionof a film fable. Written in 1921 a
by young man of twenty-four,
they welcome, under the title Bonjour the artistic revolution
cin\303\251ma, he
believescinema is bringing about.Jean Epsteinsumsup this revolution with
remarkable brevity, in terms that seemto invalidate the very argument of
this book: cinema is to the art oftelling stories[Tart des histoires] what truth
is to lying. Cinemadiscardsthe infantile expectationfor the end of the
tale, with its marriage and numerous children.But, moreimportantly, it
discardsthe \"fable\" in the Aristotelian sense:the arrangement ofnecessary
and verisimilar actions that lead the charactersfrom fortune to misfortune,
or vice versa, through the careful constructionofthe intrigue [noeud] and
denouement.The tragic poem, indeedthe very idea of artistic expression,
2 Film Fables

had always been defined by just such a logicoforderedactions*And along

comesthis young man to tell us that this logicis Life is not about
illogical\302\273

stories, about actions oriented towards an end, but about situations open
in every direction. Life has nothing to do with dramatic progression,but is
instead a long and continuous movementmade up ofan infinity ofmicro-
movements.This truth about life has finally found an art capableofdoing
it justice,an art in which the intelligencethat createsthe reversalsoffortune
and the dramatic conflicts is subjectto another intelligence,the intelligence
of the machine that wants nothing, that doesnot constructany stories,but
simply recordsthe infinity ofmovementsthat gives riseto a drama a hundred
times more intense than all dramatic reversalsoffortune. At the origin of
the cinema, there is a \"scrupulously honest\" artist that doesnot cheat, that
cannot cheat, becauseall it doesis record. We mustn't confuse this recording
with the identical reproductionofthings in which Baudelairehad discerned
the negation ofartistic invention. Cinematographic automatism settlesthe
quarrel between art and technique by changing the very status ofthe \"real.\"
It doesnot reproducethings as they offer themselvesto the gaze.It records
them as the human eye cannot seethem, as they comeinto being,in a state
of waves and vibrations, before they can be qualified as intelligible objects,
people,or eventsdue to their descriptiveand narrative properties.
This is why the art ofmoving images can overthrow the old Aristotelian
hierarchy that privileged coherence ofthe
muthos\342\200\224the devalued plot\342\200\224and

spectacles sensibleeffect. It isn't that the art ofmoving images

opsis\342\200\224the

is an art of the visible that managed to annex, thanks to movement, the

capacity for narrative, or that it is a techniqueof visibility that replaces
the art of imitating visible forms.It is just that the art ofmoving images
providesaccess to an inner truth of the sensiblethat settles the quarrels
for priority among the arts and among the sensesbecauseit settles, first
and foremost, the great quarrel betweenthought and sensibility.Cinema
revokes the oldmimetic order becauseit resolvesthe question of mimesis
at its Platonic denunciation of images, the oppositionbetween
root\342\200\224the

sensiblecopy and intelligiblemodel.The matter seenand transcribedby

the mechanic eye,says Epstein,is equivalent to mind: a sensibleimmaterial
matter composed of waves and corpuscles that abolishesall opposition
betweendeceitful appearanceand substantial reality. The eye and hand that
struggledto reproducethe spectacleofthe world, as well as the play that
exploredthe most secretreachesofthe soul,belongto the oldart because
they belongto the oldscience. In the writing of movement with light,
fictional matter and sensiblematter coincide: the darknessofbetrayal, the
 Prologue 3

poisonofcrimes,and the anguish ofmelodrama comeinto contact with the

suspensionofspecksofdust, the smokeofa cigar and the arabesquesofa
rug. And this same writing reducesall ofthis to the intimate movementsof
an immaterial matter. That is the new drama to have found its artist in the
cinema* Thoughtsand things, exteriorand interior, are capturedin the same
texture, in which the sensibleand the intelligible remain undistinguished.
Thought impresses of
itselfon the brow the spectatorin \"bursts of
amperes,\" while loveon the screen\"containswhat no lovehad contained till
of
now: its fair share ultra-violet/'2
Admittedly, this is a way of
lookingat things that belongsto another time
than our own, but there are many ways to measure the distance.One such
It
way is nostalgia. notes that, outsidethe faithful fortress of
experimental
cinema, the reality of cinema long ago relinquishedthe beautiful hope of
becommga writing with light that confronted the fables and characters of
of
other ages with the intimate presence things.The young art of cinema
did more than just restoreties with the old art of
telling stories:
it became
that arts most faithful champion.Cinema wasn't contentjust to use its
visual power and experimentalmeans to illustrate old storiesof conflicting
interests and romantic ordeals,it went further and put those at the service
ofrestoring the entire representativeorderthat literature, painting, and the
theater had so deeplydamaged.It reinstatedplots and typical characters,
expressivecodesand the oldmotivations of pathos, and even the strict
division of genres. Nostalgiaindictscinemas involution, which it attributes
to two phenomena: the breakthrough of the talkies \\la coupure du parlant],
which dealt a severeblow to the attempts to create a language ofimages;the
Hollywoodindustry, which reduceddirectorsto the roleof illustrators of
scriptsbased,for commercial reasons,on the standardization ofplots and
on the audiences identification with the characters.
At the other endofnostalgia is condescension. Ittells us that if that dream
is remote today, as it no doubt is, it is simply becauseit had neveramounted
to more than an inconsistentUtopia. It just happenedto synchronize with
the great Utopia of the the aesthetic,scientific, and political
times\342\200\224with

dream of a new world where all material and historicalburdenswould find

themselves dissolvedin a reign of luminous energy.From the 1890s to
the 1920s, this para-scientificUtopia ofmatter dissolving itself in energy
inspired both the symbolistreveriesofthe immaterial poem and the Soviet
projectof building a new socialworld.Under the guiseof defining an art
through its technical apparatus, Jean Epstein would have given us nothing
more than his own particular version of the great odeto energy that his
4 Film Fables

epochsung and illustratedin symbolistmanifestoes la

myriad ways: in \303\240

Canudoand in futurist manifestoes la Marinetti; in the simultaneist poems

\303\240

of Appolinaireand Cendrarsto the glory of neonlighting and wireless

communication, and in Khlebnikov s poemsof transmental language;in the
dynamism ofdances la Severiniand in the dynamism ofchromatic circles
\303\240

la Delaunay; in Vertov's kino-eye,in Appiasstage lighting and designs,and

\303\240

in Fuller s luminous dances..

Lo\303\257e . Epsteinwrote his poem about thought
captured in burstsofamperesand love endowedwith its fair share of
under the spellof this Utopia of a new electric
ultraviolet world.He welcomed
an art that no longer exists,for the simplereasonthat it never did. It is not
our art, but it was not Epsteins either.It was not what filled the movie-
theaters ofhis day, nor was it the art he himself made, in which he, too, told
storiesofill-starredloversand other old-fashionedheartbreaks.He hailed
an art that existedonly in his head, an art that was just an idea in people s
heads.
It is by no means certain that condescensioninstructs us better than
nostalgia.After all, what is this simplereality of the cinematographic art that
condescension refers us to? How is this link between a technical apparatus
for the productionofvisible images and a manner oftelling storiesforged?
Thereis no shortageof theoreticianswho have attempted to ground the
art of moving imageson the solid base of the means specificto it.But
the means specificto yesterdaysanalogical machine and to today'sdigital
machine have shown themselvesequally suitablefor filming both love stories
and abstract dancesand forms.It is only in the name of an idea ofart that
we can establishthe relationship between a technical apparatus and this or
that type of fable. Cinema, like painting and literature, is not just the name ofan
art whoseprocesses can be deducedfrom the specificityofits material and
technical apparatuses.Likepainting and literature, cinema is the name of
an art whosemeaning cuts acrossthe bordersbetween the arts. Perhaps,in
orderto understandit, we shouldtake another lookat the linesfrom Bonjour
and at the idea ofart impliedin them. Epsteinpits the \"real tragedy,\"
cin\303\251ma

that is, the \"tragedy in suspense,\" against the old\"dramatic action.\" Now,
this notion of the tragedy in suspenseis not reducibleto the idea of the
automatic machine inscribingthe intimate face ofthings onto celluloid. Itis
something elsealtogether that Epsteinidentifies with the peculiar powerof
mechanicalautomatism: an active dialecticin which one tragedy takes form
at the expenseof threat ofthe cigar, the dust ofbetrayal, or
another\342\200\224the

the poisonouspower of the rug at the expenseofthe traditional narrative

and expressivearrangements of expectation, violence, and fear. Epsteins
 Prologue 5

text, in other words,undertakesa work ofde-figuration. Hecomposes one

film with the elementsof another.He is not describingan experimental
or imaginary\342\200\224made expresslyto attest to the power ofcinema.
film\342\200\224real

We learnlater that he has extractedthis film from another film, from a

melodrama by ThomasHarperInceentitled The Honour of His House, with
SessueHayakawa, a fetish-actorof the period,in the lead role,Epstein
extracts the theoretical and poeticalfable that describesthe original power
ofthe cinema from the body of another fable, from which he erasedthe
traditional narrative aspectin order to create another dramaturgy, another
system ofexpectations,actions, and states ofbeing.
The cinema-unity thus undergoesan exemplarysplit, Jean Epstein
welcomesan art that restores the duality of life and fictions, of art and
science, of the sensible and the intelligible, to their original unity. And yet,
Epsteinonly arrives at this pure essenceofthe cinema by extracting a work
of \"pure\" cinema from the filmed melodrama.This particular penchant for
making a fable with another is not a fad of the period, but a constitutive
fact of the as
cinema experience, art, and idea of art. It is also a fact that
puts cinema in a contradictory continuity with a whole regime ofart. From
Jean Epstein today, making a film on the body of another is exactly
to
what the three main figures spawnedby the cinema have beendoing all

along\342\200\224directors, who \"film\" scripts they themselves have nothing to do

with, the audience, for whom cinema is a potpourri ofmixed memories,and
criticsand who extract a work of pure plastic forms from the
cin\303\251philes,

body of a commercialfiction. The same is true ofthose two encyclopedic

works that attempt to sum up the power of cinema:Deleuze s Cinema I
and 2, and Godards du in eight episodes.
His\303\256oire\303\207s)
Thesetwo works
cin\303\251ma,

constitute an ontology ofthe cinema argued for with bits and pieces gleaned
from the entire corpus of the cinematographic art, Godardoffers as evidence
for his theory ofthe image-icon the pure plasticshots he extracts from the
functional imagesHitchcock had used to conveythe enigmas and affects of
his fables.Deleuzebuilds his ontology on the claim that cinematographic
images are two things in one:they are the things themselves, the intimate
events of universal becoming,and they are the operationsof an art that
restoresto the events ofthe world the power they had been deprived ofby
the opaquescreenofthe human brain, Deleuze s dramaturgy ofontological
restitution, like Epsteinsor Godardsdramaturgy oforigin, dependson the
same process ofextracting from the detailsin the fiction.For Deleuze,Jeff s
brokenlegin Rear Window and Scotties vertigo in Vertigo are embodimentsof
the \"rupture ofthe sensory-motorschema\"through which the time-image
6 Film Fables

splitsitself off from the movement-image.Deleuzeand Godardboth repeat

Jean Epstein's dramaturgy, they both extract, after the fact, the original
essenceofthe cinematographic art from the plots the art ofcinema shares
with the oldart of telling stories[Van des histoires]. Cinemasenthusiastic

pioneer,its disenchantedhistoriographer,its sophisticatedphilosopher,and

its amateurtheoreticians all share this dramaturgy becauseit is consubstantial
with cinemaas an art and an objectofthought. The fable that tellsthe truth
ofcinema is extracted from the storiesnarrated on its screens.
The substitution operatedby Jean Epsteins analysis is not the work of
youthful illusion.He presentsa fable ofthe cinema that is consubstantial
with the art ofthe cinematograph, though it was not a fable born with the
cinema.The dramaturgy Jean Epstein grafted onto the cinematographic
machine has comedown to us becauseit is as much a dramaturgy of art
in general as of the cinema in particular, becauseit belongsmoreto the
aesthetic moment of cinema than to the distinctivenessofits technical means.
Cinemaas an artistic idea predated the cinema as a technical means and
distinctiveart. Theoppositionbetweenthe \"tragedy in suspense\" that reveals
the intimate texture of things and the conventions of \"dramatic action\"
was instrumental in pitting the young art of cinema against the outdated
art of the theater.And yet, cinema inheritedthis opposition from the
theater, where it was first played out in the time ofMaeterlinckand Gordon
Craig, Appia and Meverhold. T hese playwrights and stage directorshad
alreadv counteredAristotle'sarrangement of incidentswith the intimate
suspenseof the world.They were also the oneswho taught the cinema
to extract the tragedy in suspensefrom the body ofoldplots. It is quite
tempting, in fact, to see Jean Epsteins\"tragedy in as
suspense\" deriving
from the \"motionlesstragedy\" that, thirty years earlier, Maeterlinckhad
thought ofextracting from Shakespeare'sstoriesofloveand violence:\"The
mysterious chant of the Infinite, the ominoussilenceof the souls and of
God, the murmur ofEternity on the horizon, the destiny or fatality we are
consciousofwithin us, though by what tokensnonecan not all
tell\342\200\224do

theseunderlie King Lear, Macbeth,Hamlet? And would it not be possible.

by someinterchanging ofthe roles, to bring them nearer to us, and sendthe
actors further off?...
I have grown to believethat an old man, seatedin his
armchair, waiting patiently, with his lamp besidehim; giving unconscious
ear to all the eternal laws that reign about his house,interpreting, without
comprehending,the silenceofdoors and windows and the quivering voice
of the light, submitting with bent head to the presenceof his soul and
his oldman, who conceivesnot that all the powersof this
destiny\342\200\224an
 Prologue 7

world, like so many heedful servants, are mingling and keepingvigil in his
room or that every star in heavenand every fiber ofthe soul are directly
\342\231\246
\342\231\246
\342\231\246

concerned in the movementof an eyelidthat closes,or a thought that springs

to have grown to believethat he, motionlessas he is, doesyet live
birth\342\200\224I

in reality a deeper,more human and more universal life than the lover who
strangles his mistress,the captain who conquersin battle, or 'the husband
who avengeshis honor/\"3
The automatic eye ofthe camera so celebratedin Bonjour doesno cin\303\251ma

morethan poetof the \"motionlesslife\"

dreamedup by Maeterlinck,
the
Even the crystal metaphor Gilles Deleuze borrows from Jean Epstein is
already there in the theoretician of symbolistdrama: \"Let but the chemist
pour a few mysterious drops into a vessel that seemsto contain the purest
water, and at oncemassesof crystals will rise to the surface, thus revealing
to us all that lay in abeyancethere where nothing was visiblebefore to our
incompleteeyes.\"4Maeterlinckadds that this new poem about the sudden
appearance offabulous crystals in a liquidin suspensionneedsa new actor,
a beingthat is not human, but closer in kind to the wax figures of a museum,
and not the traditional actor with his old-fashionedfeelings and means of
expression.This androidhas enjoyeda not undistinguishedlife in the theater,
from EdwardGordonCraigs Ubermarionettesto TadeuszKantor s Theater
ofDeath.Thebeing of celluloid,whose \"dead\" chemical materiality jars
with the actor'sliving gestures,is certainly oneof its possibleincarnations.
Maeterlinck'sdescriptionof the character who sits motionlessbesidehis
lamp conjuresup for us a cinematographicshot; film directors, whether
narrative or contemplative in temperament,have given this motionless
character a great number ofdiverseincarnations.
But we are not so concerned here with the specificnature ofthe debt the
film fableowesto symbolistpoetics. Itis not influence,or the fact ofbelonging
to a particular lexicalor conceptualuniverse,that leadsJean Epsteinto work
by extracting one fable from the body of another in Maeterlinck'swake and
before Deleuzeand Godard.Thelogicofa whole regime ofart is implicated
in the process. Thework ofde-figuration undertaken by Epsteinwas already
beingpracticedby thosenineteenthcentury art critics\342\200\224Goncourt and
extractedfrom Rubens'religious
others\342\200\224who scenes,Rembrandt's bourgeois
ones,and Chardinsstill-livesthe same dramaturgy ofthe painterly gesture
and the adventures of pictorialmatter beingbrought to the foreground
while relegating to the backgroundthe painting'sfigurative content.The
Schlegelbrothers were already proposingthis Romantic fragmentation,
this process of pickingapart oldpoems only to turn those parts into the
8 Film Fables

seedsfor new poems,in the texts they published in the at the

Athen\303\240um

beginning of that century. The whole logicof the aesthetic regime of art
finds its footing at this time.D This logicrejectsthe representativemodelof
constructedincidentsand expressivecodesappropriateto the subjectsand
situations in favor ofan originary power ofart initially distributedbetween
two extremes:a pure creativeactivity thenceforward thought to be without
rules or models, and the pure passivity of the expressivepowerinscribed
on the very surface of things, independentlyof every desireto signify or
It confronts the old principleof form fashioning matter with the
create\302\273

identity, at the coreofthis new regime, betweenthe pure power of the idea
and the radical impotenceofsensiblepresence and ofthe mute writing of
things.But this union ofcontraries, where the work requiredby the artistic
idea and the originary power coincide, is the result of the longwork of
de-figuration that in the new workcontradicts the expectationsborneby
the subjectmatter or the story, or that reviews,rereads,and rearranges the
elementsofoldworks.This process undoes the arrangements of fiction
and of representationalpainting, and draws our attention instead to the
painterly gesture and the adventures ofmatter lurking beneath the subject
of figuration, to the glimmer of the epiphany and the splendorof pure
reasonlessbeing glowing just beneath the conflict of wills of the play or
novel. It hollows out or exacerbatesthe gesturesofexpressivebodies,slows
down or speedsup narrative progression, suspendsor saturates meanings.
The art of the aesthetic age wants to identify its unconditionedpower with
its contrary: the passivity of reasonless being,the specks of elementary
particles,and the originary upsurgeofthings. Flaubert dreamedofwriting
a bookwithout subjector matter, a bookthat would be held together by
nothing more than its \"style/' though he himself realized that the only way
to achievethis sovereignstyle, the pure expressionofhis artistic will, was to
create its opposite: a bookstrippedofevery trace ofthe writer s intervention
and composed insteadofthe indifferent swirl ofspecksofdust and ofthe
passivity of things with neither will nor meaning. This splendorof the
insignificant had to be realized in the infinitesimal gap openedup at the
heart ofrepresentativelogic: in storiesabout individuals who help or thwart
oneanother in the pursuit oftheir goals,thesegoalsbeing,incidentally, of
the most commonplacesort:seducinga woman, attaining a socialposition,
earning money...The work ofstyle was to affect the passivity ofthe empty
gaze of reasonlessthings in its expositionofeveryday actions, and it would
only succeed in its taskif it itselfbecamepassive,invisible, if it painstakingly
effacedthe differencebetween itself and the ordinary proseofthe world.
 Prologue 9

of the aestheticage* It is an art that comesafterwards

Suchis the art
and undoes the links of representative art, either by thwarting the logic
of arranged incidentsthrough the becoming-passiveof writing, or by re-
figuring old poemsand paintings.This work presupposesall past art to be
availableand open to beingreread, reviewed,repaintedor rewritten at will.
It presupposesalso that anything and everything in the world is available
to art. Banal objects,a flake peelingfrom a wall, an illustration from an ad
campaign, are all availableto art in their double resource: as hieroglyphs
of
ciphering age the world, a society,a history, and, inversely, as pure
an
presences,as nakedrealities brought to light by the new-found splendorof
the insignificant.Thepropertiesofthis regime of ofactiveand
art\342\200\224identity

passive,elevation ofeverything to the dignity ofart, work of de-figuration

that extractsthe tragedy in suspensefrom the dramatic the action\342\200\224are

propertiesJean Epstein attributes to cinema. Cinema, in the doublepower

ofthe consciouseye of the directorand the unconsciouseye ofthe camera,
is the perfect embodimentof Schilling'sand Hegel'sargument that the
identity of consciousand unconsciousis the very principleof art.It is
easy,then, to seehow one may be tempted to conclude, with Epstein and
others, that cinema is the dream cometrue ofthis regime ofart. After all, it
really doesseemthat Flaubert framed his micro-narrations like \"film shots\":
Emma at the window absorbed in her contemplation of the bean props
knockeddown by the wind; Charlesleaning out of another window and
gazing distractedly at the lazinessof the summer evening, at the skeinsof
cotton drying in the air and at the dirty water ofan industrial river. Cinema
seemsto accomplishnaturally the writing of opsis that reverses Aristotle's
rnvileging of muthos. The conclusion,however, is false, for the very simple
reason that cinema,beingby nature what the arts ofthe aesthetic age had to

: :
frrrce to be,invariably reverts their movement.Flaubert'sframesare the work
a way of writing that contradictsnarrative plausibility and expectation
r~ reaching for the dreamlike stasisofpaintings.Painters and novelistshad
:: -a-ork to make themselves the instruments of their becoming-passive;
-_-1mechanical apparatus, conversely,suppressesthe active work involved
ji zt-Ls becoming-passive. Thecamera cannot be made passive becauseit is
Ti_-f:\"e already, becauseit is of necessityat the service of the intelligence

manipulates it.The camera-eyeDzigaVertov uses at the beginning of

\342\226\240_\\i:

\"
_z- :;:
2 Movie Camera to explorethe unknown face ofthings seemsat first
_il_i5rrate Jean Epsteins claim. Just then, a cameraman enters the frame
it.1.nfialls the tripod ofa secondcameraon top ofthe first, the instrument
i - ill that has prior access
\342\226\240

to the discoveriesof the first and is free to

10 Film Fables

arrange them into bits ofcelluloid appropriate for every use.The fact is that
the mechanic eye lendsitself to everything: to the tragedy in suspense,to the
work ofSoviet Kinoks,and not least to the illustration of old-fashioned
storiesofinterest, heartbreak, and death.Thosewho can do everything are
usually doomed to servitude.And indeedit turns out that the \"passivity\"
of the machine that supposedlycrownsthe program ofthe aesthetic regime
of art lendsitself just as well to the work ofrestoring the old representative
power ofactiveform arranging passivematter that a century ofpainting and
literature had struggledto subvert. At the end ofthe day, the whole logicof
representativeart finds itself restored,pieceby piece, by this machine. And
the artist who rules over the passivemachine with a sovereignhand is, more
than any other artist, doomed to transform his mastery into servitude, to
put his art at the serviceof companieswhosebusinessis to control and cash
in on the collective imaginary In the age ofJoyce and Virginia Woolf, of
Malevichand Schonberg, cinema arrives as if expresslydesignedto thwart a
simpleteleologyofartistic modernity, to counter arts aesthetic autonomy
with its old submissionto the representativeregime.
We must not map this process ofthwarting onto the oppositionbetween
the principlesof art and those of a popular entertainment subjectto the
industrialization ofleisure and the pleasuresofthe masses.The art of the
aesthetic age abolishesall ofthesebordersbecauseit makes art ofeverything.
Thenovel ofthe aesthetic age grew to maturity7 with the serial;its poetry
beat to the rhythm of the masses; its painting adornedguinguettesand
music halls.In Epsteinsday, the new art ofdirecting films drew inspiration
from acrobatic feats and athletic performances.It was also in his day that
one started seeingscraps of consumergoodshanging from picture rails
or illustrating poems. Thereis no doubt that very early on pressurefrom
the industry turned film directors into \"craftsmen\" who had to struggle
to impresstheir logoon scenariosthey were moreoften than not obliged
to illustrate with actorsnot of their choosing. And yet, a basiclaw of the
aestheticregimeof art is to comeafterwards, to graft onesart onto a
preexistingart and renderits operationsalmost indiscerniblefrom the prose
of everyday storiesand images.The film industry, in a sense,is only the most
radical form ofthis law. It is true that today we seemmore than willing to
rehabilitate a cinema ofcraftsmen in the face ofthe impassesofan \"auteur
politics\"whose culminationseemsto be the aestheticism of publicity
campaigns.Nobody needs to be prompted to reiterate Hegel'sdiagnosis
that the work ofthe artist who doesonly what he wants succeedsin showing
no more than the image of the artist in general. All we add today is that this
 Prologue I I

image is bound in the end to be confusedwith the image ofa name brand
on a product.6If the art of cinema accepts to comeafter producersand
scriptwriters and to illustrate the program they provide\342\200\224which it invariably
thwarts with its own logic\342\200\224it
isn't just becauseofthe pressurethe harsh
laws of the market exert on it.It is also, and moreimportantly, because
of an indecisiveness at the heart of its artistic nature. Cinema literalizes a
secular ideaofart in the same strokethat it actualizesthe refutation ofthat
idea:it is both the art of the afterwards that emergesfrom the Romantic
de-figuration ofstones,and the art that returns the work ofde-figuration to
classicalimitation. Hencethe paradoxicalnature of the continuity between
cinema and the aesthetic revolution that made it possible. Even though the
oasictechnical equipment ofthe cinema securesthe identity of activeand
massive that is the principleofthat revolution, the fact remains that cinema
can only be faithful to it if it gives another turn of the screwto its secular
dialectics.The art ofcinema has been constrained,empirically,to affirm its
irt against the tasksassignedto it by the industry. But the visibleprocessby
-vhich it thwarts thesetasks only hides a more intimate process: to thwart
::s servitude, cinema must first thwart its mastery. It must use its artistic
rroceduresto constructdramaturgies that thwart its natural powers.There
:sno straight line running from cinema'stechnicalnature to its artistic
-tcation. The film fable is a thwarted fable.
We must then callinto questionthe ideaof a continuity between
:-.etechnicalnature of the machineof vision and the forms of the
r.r.ematographic art. Filmmakersand theoreticianshave beenquick to
c'-ZZestthat the art of cinema attained its perfection there where its fables
rorms succeeded
_-.\302\243 in expressing the essence of the cinematographic
-T.eiium.A few exemplary figures and propositionspunctuate the history
:
- zrls identificationof form and fable:the
burlesqueautomaton\342\200\224whether
or Keatonian\342\200\224that fascinatedthe generationof Delluc,
r.-.iriinesque
Zrs:ein.and Eisensteinbefore resurfacing at the coreof Andr\303\251 Bazins film
:.-e:rv and inspiringsystematizationsbeing workedout today;7the gaze
:ii: rv Rossellinis camera at \"non-manipulated things\"; Bressonstheory
_-.irracticeof the \"model,\" which pits the truth of cinematographic
._::~_\302\243rism
against the artifice of theatrical expression. It wouldbe easy
f.- :~.
however,that noneof these dramaturgies properlybelongto the
:s.zzrjL.3etteryet, it would be easy to show that if they belongto cinema
:\" ill
iz is becausethey put a thwarting logicin motion.Thereare some
- - in: ragesin Bazinwherehe tries to demonstrate that Charliesmime is
_-. _-;imarionof cinematographic being,of the form silver nitrate prints
12 Film Fables

on strips of celluloid.8 But the burlesqueautomaton was an aesthetically

constitutedfigure, a hero of the pure spectacle that flew in the face of
traditional psychology,longbefore the advent of cinema. We might also
add that its rolein the cinema wasn't to be the embodiment ofthe technical
automaton, but to make itself the instrument that derailedevery fable, the
equivalent, in the art ofmoving images,to the becoming-passive characteristic
ofthe proseofthe modernnovel.Theburlesquebodyis constantly shuttling
between total impotenceand absolutepower, its actions and reactions are
always overshooting or falling short of the mark. The best example here is
the Keatonian hero, divided as he is between a lookthat spellsdefeat from
the outset and a movement that nothing can stop. TheKeatonian hero is
always lookingon as things slip right through his fingers, and he is also a
moving body [lemobile] whoseforward thrust knows no resistance,as in that
scenein Sherlock Junior where he clears,in a straight line, all the obstacles
in his way while sitting on the handlebarsof a motorcyclewhose driver
had fallen off at the beginning of the course. The burlesquebody cuts the
links between causeand effect, action and reaction, becauseit throws the
elements of the moving image into contradiction.This is why, throughout
cinema s history, the burlesquebody has been the preferred dramaturgic
machine for transforming one fable into another.Today, we have Kitano
using the mechanics ofburlesqueto turn the logicofthe action film on its
head.With acceleration, he turns the violent confrontation of wills into a
pure mechanics of action and reaction divested of all expressivity;he then
dissolvesthese automatic movements in pure contemplation by subjecting
them to the inverse principleof distension,of a growing gap between
actionand reaction. The policemen at the end of Hana~bihave become
pure spectatorsobserving suicideof their oldcolleague,
the perceptible
only as a sound resonating in the indifference ofsand and waves. Burlesque
automatism drivesthe logicofthe fableto what we might call, with Deleuze,
pure optical and soundsituations.But these \"pure\" situations are not the
rediscoveredessenceof the image: they are the result of those operations
wherebythe cinematographic art thwarts its own powers.
At the risk of parting ways with Bazin and Deleuze, I would say that
Rossellinis dramaturgy proves the same point:all ofthese \"pure\" situations
result from a set ofspecificoperations. Bazin argues that Rossellini,in the
great fables of he
wandering brings to the screen,realizesthe fundamental
vocation of the automatic machine to follow, ever so patiently, the minute
signs that allow a glimpseinto the spiritual secretof beings.Deleuze
seesRossellinias the directorpar excellence of the pure optical and sound
 Prologue 13

situations that reflect the realities besettingEuropein the aftermath ofthe

war, a time when individuals who had lost all their bearingswere forced to
confront situations they had no answersfor. But the situations ofnarrative
rarefaction Rossellinidramatizes on the screenare not situations indicative
of the \"impossibilityto react,\" or of the inability to bear intolerable
spectaclesor coordinategaze and action.They are experimental situations
that Rosselliniusesto superimposeonto the normal movement ofnarrative

continuity another movement directedby a fable of vocation. In Rome, Open

City, Pina tears herselffree from a line of soldiers who clearly should
have beenable to restrain her and dashesafter the truck driving awav her
fianc\303\251.
Originating in the mode of the burlesquemovement only to end in
5. mortal fall, Pina s dash after the truck at onceexceedsthe visible of the
narrative situation and of the expressionof love. Similarly, the jump into
:hevoid that brings Edmund'swanderings to a closein Germany Year Zero
exceedsevery (non)reaction to Germany'smaterial and moral ruin in 1945,
Thesemovements are not oriented towards a fictional end, nor have they
r een disorientedby an intolerable situation: theyVe beendeflectedby the
ur.positionof another movement, Rossellinihas transferred a dramaturgy
. :
:hecall from the religiousto the artistic level.That is what drives his
:uuracters from one modeof movement and gravitation to another mode,
they cannot but free-fall.Even if Rosselliniachievesin that movement
~
\"\".ere

:.-rcoincidence ofa fictional and a plasticdramaturgy, this unity ofform

_-.icontent is not the realizedessenceof the cinematographicmedium,
::i
? iucinga \"non-manipulated\" vision of things; it is insteadthe product
\342\226\240

dramaturgy where the charactersextreme liberty coincides with his or

::
- absolute
.rfzrv-motor
subjection to a command. T he logic of the \"rupture
schema\"is a dialecticofimpotenceand excessivepower.
of the
Tereencounter this same dialecticin Bressons\"cinematography,\" Bresson
:
- _
:houghtto sum it up with his well-known couple:
\"
the and
the \"passive\" model
intonations dictatedby the
mechanicallyreproduces gestures
\342\226\240

:- :i
._- nrr. and the
_u~u: canvas whereon to assemble
who usesthe screenas if it werethe
director\342\200\224painter\342\200\224editor

the \"piecesofnature\" offered up by the

eL Still, we need a more complexdramaturgy than this oneto separate
.
_r: Dt the cinematographer from the storieshe tells,A Bressonfilm is
.
5 :hemise~en~scene of a trap and a hunt. The poacher(Mouchette), the
-_ .-L:-.
\342\200\242

:
Balthazar), the rejected lover (Ladiesof the Bois Boulogne), the
rasar\303\240}
\303\240e

_ _ husband (A Gentle Woman), the thief and the chief ofpolice

f
(Pickpocket),
.-
rr.eir traps and wait for their victims to get caught. The film fable
-..-
_:5 artistic essenceby thwarting the scenariosconcocted by these
14 Film Fables

volitional agents.Its a mistake, however, to think that visual fragmentation

and the passivity ofthe modeldo in fact thwart those scenarios,sincewhat
they actually do is erasethe line between the hunter awaiting his prey and the
directortrying to surprisethe truth ofthe \"model\"There must be, in other
a
words, counter-logic opposes
that the visiblecomplicity between thesetwo
hunters.What protects the prey from the hunter and the film fable from
the story illustrated in Bressonis, first ofall, a fleeingmovement, a fall into
the void. The doorthat slamsshut as somebodyopens a window and the
flowing silk scarf in A Gentle Woman, orthe girl who rolls down the slope time
and again to the edgeof the pond where she'lldrown herself in Mouchetie,
mark the counter-movement, initial or final, by which the preys eludetheir
hunters. The beauty of these scenescomesfrom how the visible contradicts
narrative meaning: the veil gently suspendedby the wind hides the fall of a
suicidingbody, the childplaying at rolling down the slopeboth fulfills and
of
deniesthe suicide a teenager.That the authors thwarted by thesescenes
that Bressonhimself added to the storyline are not obscurescriptwriters
but Dostoevskyand Bernanoshighlights all the more the counter-movement
that keepscinema from every simpleeffectuation of
its visual essence.
The
of
roleBressonassignsto the voice in his films is the other part this counter-
effect logic.Far from beingjust the expressionof the truth wrenched from
the model,the so-called \"white\" voices of
Bressonsfilms are, more radically,
how cinema accomplishes the projectof literature bv inverting it. Literature,
of of
to thwart the arrangement incidentsand the conflict wills, let itself
of
be infiltrated by the great passivity the visible.The addition image of
to literature amounted to a subtraction of
sense.Cinema, for its part, can
only appropriate this powerby reversing the game and hollowing out the
of
visiblewith the word.That is the function these \"white voices\"that melt
together all the different intonations requiredbv the classicalexpression of
the characters.Paradoxically,it is this sound invention, and not the framing
of the painter and the montage ofthe editor, that defines the artof the
of of
modelrepresentative a \"pure cinema.\"Thecounterpart the image that
cuts the literary narrative is this voice that simultaneouslylendsbody to the
It
image and subtracts from it. is like a thwarted narrative voice in literature
lune parole contredite]: neutrality
litt\303\251raire of
the narrative voice attributed to
bodiesit has disownedand that distort it in turn. Ironically,the voice that
definesBressonscinematographic art was first imagined in the theater as the
of
voice the \"third character,\" the Unknownor the Inhuman, Maeterlinck
thought inhabited Ibsensdialogues.
 Prologue 15

these great figures of a pure cinema whosefables and forms would

All
easily be deduciblefrom its essence do no morethan offer up the best
examples of the film fable, split and thwarted: mise~en~sceneof a mise-en~
sc\303\250ne, counter-movement of incidentsand
that affects the arrangement
shots, automatism separatingimage from movement, voice hollowing out
the visible.Cinemacan only make the games it plays with its own means
intelligible to itself through the games of exchangeand inversion it plays
with the literary fable, the plastic form, and the theatrical voice.The texts

gathered here attest to the multiplicity ofthesegames, with no pretensions,

of course,to exhausting the field ofpossibilitiesofthe art ofcinema.Some
of the chapters show the paradoxesofthe film fable at their most radical.
This is the case,for instance, with Eisensteinsefforts to create a cinema that
opposesthe fables ofold with its capacity to translate an his case, idea\342\200\224in

:hatof communism\342\200\224directly that conveynew affects. It

into signs-images
is alsothe casewith Murnaus transpositionof s Tartuffe to the silentMoli\303\250re

screen.Eisensteinsprojectgoverns The General Line, where he identifies the

demonstration ofthe new art with the politicaloppositionofthe new and
mechanizedworld ofthe kolkhozesto the old world ofthe peasants.But to
rring it off, Eisensteinhas to line the oppositionwith a more secretaesthetic
complicity betweenthe Dionysianfigures of the new art and the trances
ind superstitionsofold.Murnau manages his transposition of Tartuffe
s.zosilent film s schemerinto a shadow, and his
:request by transforming Moli\303\250re

operationinto the conflict ofvisibilities conductedby

Elmire to
her husband.But then, it is the very power
dissipatethe shadow haunting
:::he cinematographic shadowthat Murnau must lay to rest in order to
jrcnaskthe impostor.A more discretethwarting ofthe text it bringsto the
- creencan be found in Nicholas
Rays They Live by Night, where Ray imbues
_-e visual fragmentation with the poeticpowersof metonymy in order to
_-.irthe perceptive continuum createdby the \"stream of consciousness\"
*_-!:rhe novelist in the 1930s had used, inversely, to capture the sensory
i-^ricterofthe moving image. Even the mostclassicalofcinematographic
the onesmostfaithful to the representative tradition of carefully
-_\342\200\224.5.

red incidents,clearlydefined characters, and neatly composed

-\342\200\224in
images,
_-e irrectedby this gap, evidenceenoughthat the film fable belongsto
_-. irsiheticregime ofart. Anthony Manns Westerns are a goodexample.
~-
z~z can be no doubt that Manns Westerns are modelrepresentatives

-
\"_.\" i:
most codedof cinematographicgenres,or that they obey all the
needsdictatedby a narrative and popularcinema. And yet they too
--\302\243
 16 Film Fables

are inhabited by an essentialgap.The meticulousprecisionthat connects

the hero'sperceptions and gesturescuts his actionsoff from all those
stability
things\342\200\224the
of ethical values, and the frenzy ofdesiresand dreams
that transgress normally give meaning to the action.Ironically,
them\342\200\224that

it is the perfection of the \"sensory-motor schema\"of action and reaction

that causesproblemsfor thesetales of quarrels with desireand the law by

substituting them with the confrontation betweentwo perceptive spaces.

A constant principleof what is known as mise~en~scene in the cinema is to
supplement\342\200\224and thwart\342\200\224narrative
continuity and the rationality of the
goalsby not aligning two visibilities,or two relationshipsof the visibleto
movement,either by means of visual reframings,or by meansof the aberrant
movements imposedby a character who simultaneously aligns himself with
the scenarioofthe pursuit of goalsand perverts it.
We shouldnot be surprisedto find here two other classicalincarnations
ofthis figure, namely the child (Moonfleei) and the psychopath (M, While the
City Sfeps). Thechild in the cinema oscillatesbetween two roles,traditionally
playing either the victim of a violent world or the mischievousobserver of
a world that takesitself tooseriously.In Moonjteet, Fritz Lang confronts
thesebanal and representativefigures with the aesthetic figure of the child
director,who is determinedto imposehis own script and to mount the
visual refutation ofthe narrative game of intrigues and the visual game of
appearancesthat normally conspireto pigeonholethe child into the role
of victim. Theobstinacy that exceedsevery rational pursuit ofgoals
na\303\257ve

is likewisethe trait by which the psychopath,in the cinema, upsets the

scenariosofthe trap where the criminal is at oncehunter and prey. In its
aberration, this obstinacy mirrors the equality ofaction and passionwhere
cinema metaphorizesitself.The murderer in M escapesvisually becausethe
automatism ofhis movementsdovetailsinto the doubletrap set by the police
and the mob that will in the end get the better ofhim. Unlikehis pursuers,
who trace circleson mapsand post detectiveson street corners, the murderer
doesn'tpursue a rational goal, he could not do something other than what
he does. When he meetsa child s gaze reflected in a shop window, he must
pass from the insoucianceof the anonymous to the automatism of
fl\303\242neur

the hunter, just as he must regain the image of a contentedobserveran

instant later, as he standsside by side with another little girl.The shot of
the murderer and his next victim lookinghappily at the window displayof
a toy shopbelongsto the same counter-effect logicas the flowing scarf in A
Gentle Woman, the rolls down the slopeofMouchette, the rectilinear trajectory
of Sherlock junior, the meticulousand indifferent gesturesofJames Stewart
 Prologue 17

in MannsWesterns, and the mythological elation of the bulls wedding in

The General Line.
This same logicabolishesthe bordersbetweendocument and fiction,
betweenthe politicallycommittedwork and the pure work.The plastic
extravaganceofEisensteinscommunist film is part and parcelofthe same
dream that producedthe indifferent \"shot\" ofEmma Bovary gazing out of
her window, and this indifference sometimesrubs off on the images of the
politically committed documentary.Thisis the casein that moment of Listen
to Britain when HumphreyJennings'camera,positionedinto the light, shows
nvo characters in silhouette peacefully watching the sun set over the waves
before a change of angle revealstheir function and identity: they are two
coastguardsscanning the horizon for signsofthe enemy.Listen to Britain is a
limit exampleofthe counter-effectcharacteristicof the film fable.Although
meant to rally supportfor England'swar efforts in 1941, the film nevershows
a country at war and mobilizedmilitarily for its defense.Jennings only shows
:hesoldiersduring their moments ofleisure:in a train compartment singing
a songabout distant lands, in a danceor concerthall, at a village procession.
His camera slidesseamlesslyfrom onefurtive imageto another: a man at his
window at night, holding a light with one hand and drawing the curtains
^vith the other, a schoolcourtyard where children dance in a circle, the two

men watching the setting sun.The paradoxicalpoliticalchoiceofshowing a

country at peacein orderto win support for its war efforts succeedsbecause
~ennings makes exemplaryuse ofthe paradox inherent to the film fable.The
reaceful moments that make up the face and light glimpsedbehind
film\342\200\224a

a window, two men chatting as they watch the sunset,a song in a train, a
fan ce nothing other than the moments of suspensionthat
contest\342\200\224are

Tunctuatefiction films and that invest the constructedverisimilitudeof the

acrionand the story with the nakedtruth, the meaninglesstruth oflife.The
libittends to interspersethese moments of suspension/moments of the
real with action sequences. Jennings, by thus isolating them in this strange
documentary,\"highlightsjust how ambivalent this play of exchanges,
rerweenthe verisimilar action characteristic ofrepresentative art and the
Lre without reasonemblematic ofaesthetic art, really is.9The ordinary, the
zero-degree ofcinematographic fiction is for thesetwo to complement one
it.other,in order to provide a sort ofdoubletestimony to the logicof the
izzion and the effect ofthe real.Theartistic work ofthe fable, conversely,
_5 :o
vary the values, to increase or diminishthe gap, to invert the roles.
The privilegeofthe so-called documentary film is that it is not obligedto
rreare the feeling of the real, and this allows it to treat the real as a problem
18 Film Fables

and to experiment morefreely with the variable games of action and life,
significanceand insignificance\302\273 If this play is at its zero-degree in Jennings'
documentary, it takes on an altogether different complexity when Chris
Marker composes The Last Bolshevik by interlacing imagesfrom the post-
Soviet presentwith various types of \"documents\":images of the imperial
family in 1913 and those ofa Stalin lookalike\"helping\" tractor drivers in
their difficulties; the buried film-reportsAlexander Medvekinshot from
his film-train, the comedies he directedand which got brushedunder the
carpet, and the films he was obligedto make of the huge pageants put on by
Stalinist athletes; the accounts gathered from interviews,the massacreon the
Odessasteps ofBattleship Potemkin, and Simpletonslamentation on the stage
of the BolshoiTheater.Marker,by putting all ofthesein dialogue in the six
\"letters\" to Alexander Medvekinthat make up the film, can deploybetter
than all illustrators of made up storiesthe polyvalenceof images and signs,
the potential difference between values of expression\342\200\224between the image
that speaksand the onethat silences,betweenthe speechthat conjures up an

image and the one that is simply enigmatic\342\200\224that make up, in contrast to the
episodesofbefore, the new forms of fiction ofthe aesthetic age.
Documentaryfiction mvents new intrigues with historicaldocuments,
and thus it touches hands with the film fable that joins and the
disjoins\342\200\224in

relationship between story and character,shot and sequence\342\200\224the powersof

the visible, of speech,and of movement.When Markerreplays, under the
shadowcast by the colorimagesofrestoredOrthodoxpomp,the \"doctored\"
imagesof the massacreon the Odessasteps and imagesfrom Stalinist
propagandafilms, his work resonateswith Godards, who filmed, in the Pop
age, the Maoist theatricalization of Marxismand, in the \"Post-Modern\"
age,the fragments ofthe intermingledhistory ofthe cinemaand the century.
Markeralso touches hands with Fritz Lang, who replays the same story of
the chase for a psychopathickiller at two different ages of the visible:the
first in M, wheremapsand magnifying glasses, inventoriesand drag-netstrap
the murderer and prosecutehim in a theatrical court;the secondin While the
City Sleeps, where all theseaccessories have disappearedand beenreplacedby
a machine of vision, the television that placesMobley \"face to face\"with
the murderer and transforms an imaginary capture into a weapon for a real
capture.TheTV monitor isn't the instrument of \"mass consumption\"that
spellsout the death ofthe great art. It is, more profoundly and also more
ironically, the machine ofvision that suppressesthe rnimetic gap and that
thus realizes,in its own way, the new art's panaesthetic project ofimmediate
sensiblepresence. This new machine doesn't annul the power of cinema,
 Prologue 19

rut its \"impotence.\"It annuls the processof thwarting that has always
-\342\200\224mated its fables.The task of the directoris then to invert, onceagain,
ir.egame wheretelevision \"realizes\"
cinema-A longstanding lamentation in
contemporary thought wants us to bear witness to the programmeddeath
: r images at the hands ofthe machine for information and advertisement.
I have opted for the opposite perspectiveand have tried to show that the
it: and thought of images have always beennourishedby all that thwarts
r.em.

NOTES

1. jean Epstein,Bonjour cin\303\251ma, in sur le

\303\211crits
(Paris:Seghers, cin\303\251ma 86.
1974)
A previous translation of this text, by Tom Milne,originally published
in Afterimage 10(Autumn 1981) can be found in Richard Abel,
9\342\200\22416,

ed.French Film Theory and Criticism: A History/Anthropology, 1901\342\200\2241939,

volume I: 1907\342\200\2241929
(Princeton,NJ:PrincetonUniversitv Press,
242.
1988),
1. Epstein,Bonjour cin\303\251ma 91.Abel, French
(Paris:Seghers,1974) Film Theory,
vol. 1,244.
?. MauriceMaeterlinck,\"The Tragical in Daily Life,\" in The Treasure of
:heHumble, trans. Alfred Sutro (London:GeorgeAllen, 1897)98-9;
105-6.
-t.Maeterlinck,\"TheTragical in Daily Life,\" 110.
5. For a more elaborate discussion,pleaseseemy The Politics ofAesthetics, trans.
GabeRockhill(London:Continuum Books,2004), and ^Inconscient
(Paris: 200I).
esth\303\251thique
Galil\303\251e,

?. SergeDaneyhas workedout the most rigorousform ofthis dialectic

of art and commerce.
Seeespeciallyhis:FExercicea profitable, monsieur \303\251t\303\251

Taris:P.O.L.,
1993)and La Maison cin\303\251ma et le monde (Paris:P.O.L.,
I discussthesein my: \"Celuiqui vient
2001). apr\303\250s.
Les antinomies de
la critique,\" Trafic 37 (2001)
pens\303\251e
142\342\200\22450.

\". Cf.
Giraud, et technologie (Paris:
Th\303\251r\303\250se PUF,2001), which argues
Cin\303\251ma

tor the
opposite thesisto the one I argue for here.
5. Bazin, \"The Myth ofMonsieurVerdoux,\" in What is Cinema?, vol.
Andr\303\251

2,trans. Hugh Gray (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1971)

104.\"Beforeany 'character'... there existsa person calledCharlie.He
 *
20 Film Fables

is a black-and-whiteform printed on the silver nitrate offilm \" Bazins

analysis doesnot limit itself to the onto-technological identification of
the Chaplinesquecharacter with cinematographic being,though that is
one ofits major concerns,hence his oppositionto the \"ideology\" of
Modern Times and The Great Dictator. Both thesefilms, Bazin argues,destroy
Charlie's\"ontological\" nature becausethey make Charlie Chaplinshand
and thought toovisible.
9* For a more detailedanalysis ofthis film, pleasesee:Jacques
Ranci\303\250re,

\"L'Inoubliable,\" in Arr\303\252t sur histoire, eds.Jean-LouisComolliand Jacques

Ranci\303\250re
(Paris:
\303\211ditions du CentreGeorgesPompidou, 1997) 47\342\200\224

70.
 Parti

Fablesofthe Visible
BetweentheAge of theTheaterandtheTelevision
Age
 CHAPTER I

Eisenstein's
Madness

Eisensteinpretendsto tell us everything about his transition from theater

to cinema, from the time of the theater to the time of the cinema, with
two anecdotes. In the first, about his last experience as a directorat the
Proletcult Theater, Eisensteintells us that while at work on his production
ofTretiakovs GasMasks, he was seizedby the idea ofstaging the play in its
actual setting and for the publicit supposedlyaddresses.And so it was that
GasMasks was stagedin the MoscowGasFactory.There,Sergei Mikhailovitch
tells us, the reality ofthe factory overwhelmedthe productionof the play
and, more generally, overwhelmedthe very projectofa revolutionary theater
whose stage performances would be the direct assimilation of the technical
gesturesand operationsof labor.The new factory and labor neededa new
art, one of their dimensions.1
Although it all seemsvery simpleat first, a matter ofpitting the realitiesof
Sovietlabor against the old mirages ofrepresentation, the secondanecdote
complicatesmatters right away. During the preparation of an Ostrovskyplay,
it the Proletcult still, the face ofa young boy attending rehearsalscaught the
directorseye.Theboy s facemimetically reflectedevery sentiment and action
representedon the stage, as though it werea mirror. Thischance glimpseof
die boys face was supposedlythe sourceof a completely different project.
Instead of annulling the omnipotence of mimesis so clearly visible on the
boys face by destroying the illusionsofart in the interests ofthe new life,
risensteindecided to do the reverse.Henow wanted to capture its principle
md breakdown its mechanism, not for the sakeofa critical demonstration
rr its powersofillusion, but for the sakeofrationalizing and optimizing
:3 use.2Mimesis, it must be remembered,is two things.It is the psychicand
socialpower through which a word, a behavior, or an image prompts its
malogue; and it is the particular regime ofart that embedsthis very power
_n the laws of
genres,the construction of stories,and the representationof
charactersacting and expressingtheir sentiments.The point, then, was not
24 Film Fables

to pit, wholesale,the realities of the constructionof a new life against the

fablesand images ofyore, as was fashionable at the time, but to wrench the
psychicand socialpowersofmimesis from the grip of the mimetic regime
of art. It was to transform the powersof mimesis into a powerofthought
capableofproducing,directlyand within a specificmodeofsensorialization,
the effects that mimetic art had until then entrustedto the episodesofthe
storiesand the audiences identification with the characters. This meant
replacing the traditional effectsachieved by identification with the story and
the characters by the direct identification with the affects programmedby
the artist. Eisensteinopeneda new path to thosewho had nothing elseto do
besidesrange in oppositionthe construction ofnew forms oflife and the
prestigeofmimesis:an aesthetic art, an art wherethe ideais no longer translated
into the construction of a plot dependenton identification, fear, and pity,
but is directly impressedonto an adequate sensibleform.
Cinema was the exemplaryform ofthis art. We must be sure that we dont
mix up our terms:cinema designatesmore than just a mode ofproducing
images.An art is more than the expressiveuse of a material medium and
a determinatemeans of expression\342\200\224an art is an idea of art.Eisenstein
stressesthis same point in his essayabout \"the cinema ofa country that has
no cinematography\"3. Heis thinking ofJapan.Theessence ofcinema,Eisenstein
says, is to be found everywherein Japaneseart, savefor in Japanesecinema.
Onefinds it in the haiku, in Japaneseprints,in the Kabuki Theater, in every
art, in short, that mobilizesthe ideogrammatic principleof the Japanese
language. The principleof the cinematographicart and the principle of
ideogrammaticlanguage are oneand the same.But this language,in itself, is
double.Meaning,in an ideogram, resultsfrom the meeting oftwo images.
And so, just as the combination of the image for water and the image of
an eyesignifies \"to weep,\" the combination of two shots, or oftwo visual
elements of a shot, producesa meaning that contradictsthe mimetic value
of the elements represented\302\273 It produces,in other words,an element in a
discoursewhere the idea is put directly into images in accordancewith the
dialecticalprincipleof the union ofcontraries. The \"ideogrammatic\" art
of the Kabuki is the art of montage, of the contradictionthat opposes
the integrity of the character with the parcelingof bodily attitudes and
the \"nuances\" ofthe inimetic translation ofsentiments with the shock of
antagonistic expressions. Cinematographicmontage inherits the powerof
this language. But the ideogramis also an element in a fusional language
that doesnot recognize the difference betweensubstratum and sensible
components. Cinema,like the ideogram, is a fusional art that reduces
 Eisenstein's Madness 25

the audiovisual elementsto a \"single unit of theater1:

not an element in a
determinateart or sense,but a stimulant for \"the cortexof the brain as
a whole, irrespective of the paths by which the accumulated stimuli have
been brought together/'4Put differently, Japanese\"theater\" gives the new
\"cinema\" its program:the constitution ofa \"language\" ofthe elements that

properly belongto the art, such that the arts direct effects on the brain to
be stimulated can be doubly calculated:as the exactcommunication of ideas
in the language ofimages, and as the direct modification of a sensorystate

through the combination of sensorystimuli. This is how the theater of a

country with no cinematographypointedthe way to a country in the process
ofgoing from the age ofthe theater to the age ofthe cinematograph.
The passagefrom \"theater to cinema\" is not the replacingof an art by
another, but a manifestation of a new regime of art. That does not mean,
however, that the proceduresofthis new art are new in and ofthemselves.
Unableto find the means to shoot and constrainedto devote his energiesto
writing, the celebrateddirectorof Battleship Potemkin put all his efforts into
showing that the principlesof montage were already at work not only in
the haiku and the Kabuki, but also in El Greco s paintings and Piraneses
drawings, in Diderot s theoretical texts and in Pushkin'spoems,in the novels
ofDickensand Zola,and in innumerableother manifestations ofthe art of
montage. Cinema presentsitself as the synthesis of the arts, as the material
fulfillment ofthe Utopian goal that Casteland Diderot had sought in
P\303\250re

the ocular clavichord,Wagner in his musical drama, Scriabinin his colored

concertos, and Paul Fort in his theater of perfumes.But the synthesisof
the arts doesnot mean bringing together words,music, images,movements,
and perfumes on one stage;it means reducing the heterogeneous procedures
and the different sensoryforms ofthe arts to a common denominator, to a
common fundamental [principielle] unity ofideal and sensoryelements.This
is what is summedup in the term montage. In cinematographic language,
the image ofthe world capturedby the machine is strippedof its mimetic
function and becomes instead a morphemefor a combinationof ideas.
This abstract morphemeis also a sensorystimulus that doespreciselywhat
Artaud will want to do later:it reachesthe nervous system directly, without
having to rely on the mediation ofa plot actedout by characters expressing
their sentiments.Cinema is not the language oflight sung by Canudo.It
is, more soberly,the art that guarantees the non-mimeticdecomposition
and re-composition ofthe elements ofthe mimetic effect by reducing the
communication of ideasand the ecstaticexplosionof sensoryaffects to a
common unit ofmeasurement.
26 Film Fables

Apollonian language ofimages that gives discourseits plasticform and

Dionysianlanguage of sensations:Nietzsche'smodeloftragedy had been,
especiallyin Russia,at the basis of symbolisttheoriesabout poetry and
theater, and it is easilyrecognizablein the \"dialectical\"coupleofthe organic
and the pathetic.An outcome of the Revolution had beenthe coupling
of Dionysus'drunken unconsciouswith the rational calculationsof the
buildersof the Soviet world and of the bio-mechanic athletes of the new
theater. In a provocativevein, Eisensteinradicalizedthis union by identifying
it with Pavlov'scalculationsof the conditionedreflexesthat would \"plough
the psycheofthe viewer like a tractor\" and make it the field for the growth
of a new conscience. Theentirely mathematical rigor of \"organic\" montage
is supposedto bring about the qualitative leap to the \"pathetic\" and secure
the exact adequation between the propagation of the communist idea and
the manifestation ofa new idea ofart.
Itis exactlythis
programthat, in an exemplarymanner, governs The General
Line, a film without a \"story,\" without another subjectthan communism itself
In all his other films, Eisensteinhad put the means ofmontage at the service
of an already constitutedsubjector theme.It is true that Strike bringsto the
screena conceptof strikethat doesn'tcorrespond to any strikein particular;
and it is also true that the historical films enjoy their fair share of invention,
beginningwith the massacreon the Odessasteps in Battleship Potemkin, a
scene,savs Eisenstein,born ofthe sensationof flight materially evoked by
thosesteps.But the subjectmatter of thesefilms, like that ofOctober, brings
with it a ready-made plot, scenesthat can be recognized, sharedaffects and
emblems.Thesame cannot be said about The General Line, where Eisenstein
uses the pure means of montage to pathetize an idea that cannot count
on the helpinghand offered by identification: the superiority of collective
over individual farming. The constructionof sequencesthat alternate
between the old (theprocession praying for relieffrom the drought) and
the new (the cream-separatormechanicallytransforming milk into cream)
has to reveal that the powerof the communist idea and the power of the
cinematographicart are equivalent. The rapid multiplication of shots in
the sceneswith the cream-separator, cross-cuttingfrom the separatorto the
suspicious, joyous,now
faces\342\200\224now now there to exalt the
darkened\342\200\224is

rather unattractive event ofmilk condensation. A constructivemathematics

has to supplant all Dionysianorgies,and yet, who cannot seethat it can
only do so on the conditionthat it has itself beenmade Dionysian? The
demonstrationof the cream-separator\342\200\224together with the water jets,
waterfalls, and flashes of lightning that are used as its metaphors\342\200\224is
 Eisenstein's Madness 27

followed by abstract numbers that, in the absenceofall representedcrowds,

flash upon the screenthe growing number of membersof the kolkhoz.
Theseabstractnumbers are plastic and meaningful elementswhosesize
swellswith the numerical progressionand whoseflashings harmonize with
the lightning and the flowing milk and water. Eisensteinwants us to see
thesesequencesas the cinematographic equivalent ofMalevichs suprematist
painting. But, more than an abstract painting, what thesescenesconjure up
for us is a commonlanguage that is also a common sensoriumof words,
rhythms, numbers,and images:the common language of the \"I feel\" that
Eisensteinopposes to Cartesiandualism in his reflections on the Kabuki.
He sets this new language of the immediate union of the intelligible and
the sensiblein oppositionto the old forms of mimetic mediation, just as
he sets the mechanicalmiracles ofthe cream-separator, of the tractor, and
of collectivization in oppositionto the oldprayers askingheaven and its
priests for the means to remedy the uncertaintiesofnature and the evils
of property. But it couldbe that the oppositionis a trompe l'oeil and that
the strange logic,a sort ofDionysian Pavlovism, Eisensteinopposes to the
gesticulations of ancient superstitionsis very quickly turned on its head.
The \"abstract\" frenzy ofthe lightning and numbers dancing on the screen
imposethe Dionysus-likemathematics ofthe new world must already
li\303\242t

nave beenanticipated in the scenesofthe \"old,\" it must have alreadyforged

i more profound alliance with the irrationality of superstition.
What really counts in the procession scenes,much morethan the
'dialectical\"plav of oppositionsEisensteinenumerates rather offhandedly
-earsafter the making ofthe film, is the frenzied pantomime ofgenuflecting
ind signsof the cross. Thispantomime is more than the ancient submission
:i superstitionthat has to be replacedby the soberattention to the verifiable
performanceofthe machine.Itis the power ofthe ideato become incarnate
iiat cinematographic procedureshave to be able to capture if they hopeto
: invert the idea into another body.Montagecannot ensure this conversion
ihrough the simplecalculation of \"attractions,\" so it must likenitself to
irisbody possessed by an idea in order to bring it about. In his memoirs,
Eisensteinsays that the principleofmontage is capturedin its entirety in
liesuperstitiouspersonsbelief that a cat is not just a furry mammal, but a
rrmbination oflines that has been on intimate terms with all that is dark
^nd ominous sincethe beginning of time.D Thereis no doubt an element
of provocation in all ofthis: the filmrnaker, forced to spend years writing,
multiplies the paradoxesand the foggy clues.Still,Eisensteinisn't just being
gritty and whimsical. Nor is he just shuffling for a reply in the paradox he
28 Film Fables

hurls at the participants at a congresswho denouncehis formalism and

suggestthat he shouldrediscoverthe warm valuesofhumanity* Hissupposed
formalism, he tells them, relying on Wundt, Spencer,and L\303\251vy-Bruhl, is
nothing less than the recovered language of pre-conceptual thought. His
use ofmetaphor and synecdochein The General Line and in Battleship Potemkin,
Eisensteintellsthem, is governedby the samelogicthat governsthe paratactic
structures characteristic of Bushman language and Polynesianrituals of
childbirth.The formal operationsof the cinema assimilatethe pure and
consciouscalculations ofthe communist projectto the unconsciouslogic
governing the deepest layers ofthe sensorythought and habits of primitive
es.
peopL
6

If cinemas formal operationssecurethis assimilation, it must be

becausethe montage that rearranges the sensoryaffects of superstitionis
superstitionsaccomplice. The young komsomolin The General Line can turn
his head away when the membersofthe kolkhozpost cow skulls on fence
polesto exorcisethe bulls malady, and the directorcan show his allegiance
to this attitude by underscoringthe return ofsuperstitionwith an intertitle*
But the cannot separate its powersfrom theseexorcisms.
mise-en-sc\303\250ne It
cannot do without theseanimal masks,skulls, metaphors,and masquerades.
Undoubtedlythe taste for masksand hybridization was quite common in
Eisensteinsera, though they were most commonly usedfor the purposesof
\"critique.\" In Dixs paintings, in Heartfield s photo-montages,
or in the shot
of the croakingfrogs in You Only Live Once,the metaphor or masquerade
denouncesa certain inhumanity in the human being.Eisensteinsbestiaries
do something elseentirely. Beyondcaricatureand metaphor, hisbestiariesare
a positive affirmation of the original unity ofthe human and the inhuman,
the site where the rational powersofthe new rediscoverthe ecstatic powers
ofthe old.The frenzied speedofthe fake competitionbetween the young
komsomoland the old Hercules-like peasant and the fairy-likewedding of
the bull both exceedeverything that may have beenrequiredfor the depiction
ofthe \"new life.\" Betweenthem, they form what we could properlycall a
mythology, maybe the last version of the mythology of reasonbecoming
sensiblewhere \"the oldestprogram ofGerman idealism\" saw, at the dawn
ofthe nineteenth century, the tasksofart convergingwith thoseofthe new
community.
Theheart ofthe problemis not that we have come to regard this program
with suspicion.Our unease as we watch the cascadingmilk or the wedding
of It
but aesthetic. is about what
the bull in The General Line is not ideological,
we see.We would loveto shakeoff our discomfortby indicting the film as
 Eisenstein's Madness 29

pure propaganda,but that argument fizzles out quickly. Forone because

the shots in questionare the freest and most beautiful onesEisensteinever
composed, and for another becausepropagandafilms function differently.
A propagandafilm must give us a senseof certainty about what we see,
it must choose betweenthe documentarythat presents what we seeas a
palpablereality or the fiction that forwards it as a desirableend,all the while
keepingnarration and symbolization in their respective places. Eisenstein
systematically deniesus this senseof certainty. Considerthe sceneof the
two brotherswho divide up their meager inheritance in accordancewith the
\"old\" law. They remove the thatched ceiling and saw the logs ofthe isba in

half, literalizing the metaphor of\"dismantling\" property.What we expectto

seeat the end ofthe sceneis the isbasurrealisticalfycut in two, whereaswhat
we actually seeis different and distributedover two incompatible registers.
On the symboliclevel, the sawedoff logsinstantaneously become a new
enclosurefencing in the whole field; on the narrative level, the brother's
family leaves, their wagon loaded with the logs the metaphor had already
\"used\" to build the fence.Thedirector has borrowed a figure of speech
from classicalrhetoric,the syllepsis,where an expressionis taken both in
its literal and figurative senses. The syllepsisdoesnot distinguish between
the specificsceneand the world it symbolizes.Here,though, it doesso at
the priceofleaving the elements disjointedand the eye uncertain of what it
sees. The end ofthe famous sceneof the cream-separatorpresentsthe same
counter-effect. On the narrative level, the milk should thicken into cream.
Metaphorically,the thick stream has beenanticipated by an equivalent
svmbol that nevertheless contradictsit visually: an ascendingjet of water,
synonym ofprosperity. Visually, both meanings have to beborne by Marfa s
kneeling body:the liquid flowing down her outstretched arms, the opposite
of the water from the sky ofthe procession, and the thick cream that dots
her cheeksas if it were make-up, the oppositeof the dirt-smearedbrow of
rhe peasant woman who risesfrom the old genuflexions.
This is at oncetoomuch and toolittle for a singlebody to bear.
Everything that today'sviewers find unbearable about the film is there in
Marfa's body.Thefilm wants to present collectivization as desirable,and
:hemost common strategy for making an ideadesirableis to projectit onto
iesiring,and desirable,bodies,onto bodiesthat traffic in the signsof desire.
Marfa shoulddo a little more to seduceus than just loosenher headscarf
rrom time to time. Sheshouldalsoconvey, howeverslightly, a human desire,a
desirefor something other than her cream-separator,her bull, or her tractor.
A little weakness in the body, a breach in the law, is necessary to makethe law
30 Film Fables

lovable.The carefreeand likeablefellow in BorisBarnets By the Bluest of Seas

who abandonscommunist work for the beautiful eyesofone ofthe women
in the kolkhozdoesmore to make communismlovablethan Marfa's figure in
all its devotion. A woman without a man, whether husbandorlover, with no
parents orchildren, Marfa only desirescommunism.Thingsmight evenhave
workedhad shebeen a virgin ofthe pure idea, but there is nothing ideal in
Marfa s communism. Quite the contrary: the film is constantly mobilizing
romantic affects that culminate in the love scenewhere Marfa
true\342\200\224false

is couplednot with the tractor driver, but with the tractor.Somefabric

is neededto mend the belt of the broken-downtractor, and the tractor
driver, who has already sacrificedhis shirt-front to the same cause,is about
to use the red flag when Marfas hand stops him. A silent dialogue ensues.
Marfa half-opensher coat, showsher skirt, and the driver tears off part of
it. Crouching next to the tractor, the driver tears the fabric rip by rip while
Marfa, in her underskirt, hides her face in her hands and laughs, like a
prudishvirgin who laughs and criesas she offers herself.Thetensionin the
sceneis as superbas it is intolerable, as had alreadybeenthe casein the scene
of the disputeover the use ofthe profits, where the furious determination
of the greedy farmers to distribute the common money subjectsMarfa to
what she experiences as gang rape.
That is what leaves us cold: this enormousrerouting of energiesthat
invests the communisttractorwith the affects \"normally\" found in the
relationship betweenonehuman bodyand another. But, onceagain, ideology
is not the heart of the matter. This excess\342\200\224or the idea that
ecstasy\342\200\224of

todays viewers objectto in The General Line, calling it a \"propagandafilm/'

is essentiallywhat Soviet propagandistsalso objected to when they indicted
the film as an exercisein \"formalist cinema,\" as completely antithetical to
the representation of \"living men.\" We want to convince ourselvesand
othersthat Eisensteinscinema suffers only from its identification with the
Soviet regime. But the problem goesmuch deeper. Other artists who are
also emblemsof the commitment to communism have fared better.Brecht
succeeded in identifying the figure ofthe cynical observer with that ofthe
engaged critic, and the lessonsofdialectical pedagogywith the athleticism
of the boxingring or the mockery of the cabaret,the first under the
aestheticcanon ofDadaism,the secondunder that ofthe New Objectivity.
He identified the work of the Marxist playwright with a certain artistic
modernity, with an art that stagesthe denunciation of the age-oldideals
ofart. This ironic modernity not only survived communisms politicalfall,
it has actuallv become the most banal form of the alliancebetween artistic
 Eisenstem's Madness 31

novelty and the critique of

dominant imaginaries.This banal version is a
threat to Brecht, but also a protection,the very protectionEisensteinlacks.
The discomfortEisensteincreatestoday has less to do with communism
than with the aestheticprojecthe identified with the propagationof the
communist idea.UnlikeBrecht, Eisensteinnever wanted to instruct or to
teach his audience how to seeand create a distance.Brecht set out to purge
theatricalrepresentation ofidentification,fascination,absorption.Eisenstein,
instead, wanted to capture all ofthem and multiply their power.Rather than
saying that he put the young art ofcinema at the service ofcommunism, it
would be more accurate to say that he put communism through the test of
cinema, through the test ofthe idea of art and modernity that Eisenstein
sawincarnated in cinema:that of a languageofideasbecominga languageof
sensations.A communist art was not for him a critical art aimed at bringing
about a new consciousness; it was an ecstaticart that directly transformed
the links between ideasinto chains ofimages in order to bring about a new
regime ofsensibility.
That is the heart ofthe problem.Our grudgewith Eisensteinhas lessto
do with the idealshe wanted us to share with him than with the fact that
he turns our supposedmodernity on its head.He reminds us ofthat idea
ofartistic modernity to which the cinema oncethought it couldidentify its
technique:the anti-representative art that was goingto replace the stories
and characters of vore with a language of ideas/sensations and with the
direct communication of affects. Marfa s lovingly torn skirt doesn'tjust
refer us to a century of revolutionary illusions that have faded into the
background.It alsoasks us what century we ourselves live in to derive so
much pleasure\342\200\224our Deleuzesin our pockets\342\200\224from the love affair upon
a sinking ship between a young woman in first classand a young man in
third.

NOTES

1. SergeiEisenstein,\"ThroughTheater to Cinema,\" in Film Form, ed.and

trans. Jay Leyda (NewYork:Harcourt,Braceand Company, 1949) 8.
2. SergeiEisenstein,\"How I Becamea Director,\"in Selected Works Volume 3:
Writings, 7, ed.RichardTaylor,trans.William Powell(London:
1934\342\200\224194

British Film Institute, 1996) 285-6.

 Film Fables

SergeiEisenstein,\"The CinematographicPrincipleand the Ideogram,\"

in Film Form, 28*
SergeiEisenstein,\"TheFilmic Fourth Dimension,\"in Film Form, 67.
SergeiEisenstein, vol. I, trans.JacquesAumont (Paris:UGE,
M\303\251moires,

1978)59.
SergeiEisenstein,\"Film Form:New Problems,\"in Film Form, 122\342\200\22449.
 CHAPTER2

A SilentTartuffe

Friedrich Murnau'sfilm versions of Tartuffe (I925)and Faust (1926) offer

the perfect opportunity to point out that the relationship between cinema
and theater is a little more complexthan the championsof the purity of
the cinematographic art, from Jean Epsteinto Robert Bresson,would have
us believe.Somefilmmakers, includingsomeof the greatest,were never
really convincedby the notion that the two \"languages\" were radically
heterogeneous, and they tried, even during the silent period,to bring the
of
masterpieces the stage to the silver screen. The questionthen is:how did
they hope\342\200\224indeed how were they pull this off when the silent
able\342\200\224to

image was all they had at their disposal? How were they goingto make
cinematographiclanguagesay: \"Coverup that bosom,which I can't Endure /
to lookon\" or \"Heaven forbids, 'tis true, somesatisfactions\"?In some
respects,this is Lessings classicquestionin the Laocoon about the relation
of the arts to one another. We might even say that the cinematographic
transpositionof Moli\303\250re s play posesstill more formidable problemsthan
thoseattendant on the attempt to determine whether sculpture, like poetry,
can representpain. Tartuffe is a play that representshypocrisy, which is to
say a difference betweenbeing and appearancethat, by definition, lacks a
specificexpressivecode,elseno onewould fall for it.Moreover, everyone
knows that \"hypocrite\" comesfrom the Greekword hupokrites, meaning actor,
someonewho speaksthrough a mask.Thecomedy ofthe hypocrite is such a
standard ofthe theater becauseofhow well it showcasesthe theater s ability
to play with appearances.In the play, the confrontation between the lie and
the truth that unmasks it is secondaryto the sequenceofappearancesthat
succeedsin trans forming an appearance into its opposite. Showingthat the
devout man is really a lecherouslout doesn'tinterest half as much
Moli\303\250re

as the process whereby he transforms Tartuffe's edifying discourseinto a

discourseof seduction.Playing on the ambiguity of the words(heaven/
heavenly/divine, devotion/altar), he turns a speechof religiousdevotion
34 Film Fables

into one of romantic devotion right under Elmire'snose*Thesuccessof

the comedyof the hypocritedepends on its use of the oldestdramatic
trick in the book: the doublemeaning of words.If it works,it is because
Tartuffe, likeOedipus,sayssomething other than what he is saying, because,
in general, words say something other than what their speakersintend them
to say.Which explains,by the by, why we can always be taken in bv Tartuffe,
even though, as MadameBordinsaysin Bouvard and \"everyone knows
P\303\251cuchet,

what a Tartuffe is\" Knowing what a Tartuffe is doesntprevent seduction,

but enablesit:our knowledgefrees us to savorfor its own sakethe seduction
ofwords that say something other than what they are saying.
We are now in a position to formulate the problemposed by the
cinematographicrepresentation ofthe hypocrite:can a shot show something
other than what it shows?The problemis laid bare by the modernprologue,
the \"properly cinematographic\"prologuethat scenaristCarlMeyerinvented
for this versionofTartuffe. In it, we re introducedto a contemporaryhypocrite,
an elderlyhousekeeperwho cajolesher master with an eyeto his inheritance.
The openingofthe film showsthe housekeepergetting up, grumbling, to
shake the shoesof the unfortunate old dotard she abandonedbehind her
in the corridor,before she goesbackand flasheshim a false little smile. We
immediatelyseethat she'sa hypocrite becausewe seethe deceptiongoing on
behindthe olddotards back.Our positionas spectatorsis alreadyseparated
from his positionas a character, and our superiorknowledgeresults in a
deficit in pleasure:we suffer from not being taken in ourselves, as we are
taken in by the charms of the speeches that aim at seducingElmire. The
image does not have the powerto show two things at once,unlessit is in
the didacticmodeof the symbol:the image of the housekeeper carefully
sharpening the barbers razor on a leather strap also revealsher intentions.
In matters ofappearance,cinemas real strength isnt that it can show us who
this beingthat we take for someone elsereally is, but that it can show, in the
subsequent s hot, that what we saw happen in the precedingshot is in fact
something else. This other barber, furiously sharpening his razor in the grip
of anger, is simply getting ready to give his client a close,neat shave (The
Great Dictator).The cuckoldedhusbandwho stands in front ofhis wife and
shootshimselfin the mouth is actually just taking a bite out ofa chocolate
revolverand enjoying scaring the pants off of his wife (Adams Rib). That is
what we are shown in the subsequentshots:onemore shot is always needed
to thwart appearances.
Cinemasappropriationofthe comedyofthe hypocrite is plaguedfrom
the outset by two principlesofcinematographic representation. The first is
 A Silent Tartuffe 35

i principleofnon-duplicity:an image always showswhat it shows and no

~ore.The image tendentiously annuls the duplicity of speech. We could
this the Moonfleet effect: the image, all by itself, contradictsthe one
:\302\2431

who says:\"Don'tbelieveme, Tm lying to you.\"1 The secondis a

principle
ofsupp/ementarity:makinga shot say somethingotherthan what it says
requiresanother shot that completes,and reverses,what the previous shot
had started.This principleof coursepresupposes the continuity of the
dramatic chain of events. It is almost impossibleto correcta shot from a
distance,the problemJohn Ford faced in TheMan Who Shot Liberty Valance. We
seethe clumsy Ransom Stoddard(James Stewart)miraculously shoot and
kill Liberty Valance (LeeMarvin). A scenemuch later in the film showsus
who actually shot and killed Liberty Valance:Tom Doniphon(John Wayne),

who was standing acrossthe street on the night of the showdown.But we

cannot harmonize the truth proposed by this later scenewith our visual
experience. impossible modify point ofview after the fact, to
It is to the
reinsertinto the field ofvision what had not been there before, to change
the directionof the fatal bullet.This later truth doesn'tdepend on visual
agreement;its only substanceis in the words Doniphonuses to reveal it
to Stoddard.It mav just be that this is the most intimate meaning of the
famous \"Print the legend\" on which the film closes: not the banal idea that
peopleprefer pretty lies to the naked truth, but the much moretroubling
observation that the image, unlike language, is incapableof transforming
another image.
What, then, can cinema do with the theatrical comedy of the hypocrite?
What can the silent cinema do with Tartuffe? How will Murnau use cinema
to show that \"the clothesdont make the man\" when he had just used all
the resources of film to show the oppositein The Last Laughs The clothes
do make the man. Isthe demoteddoorman,bereft ofhis stripeduniform,
anvthing more than a human wreck?Two possibleways ofdealing with these
difficultiesareavailable.Thefirst is to let the difficulties,the citations, and the
theater play themselvesout m the theater. ScenaristCarl Meyeropts for this
solution and embedsthe cinematographic transpositionof s Tartuffe
Moli\303\250re

in a contemporarystory of hypocrisy.The oldmans nephew, suspecting

the housekeeper's schemeto swindlehim out of his inheritance,arrives
disguisedas a traveling filmmaker and tries to unmask the hypocrite with
his projectionof Tartuffe.Theplot structure is the same as we find in Hamlet.
the spectaclewithin the spectaclewill forcethe hypocrite into the open.This
dramatic structure, as it turns out, is ineffective,sinceTartuffe doesnt fit into
either ofthe caseswhere it can be effective.In onecase,the spectaclewithin
36 Film Fables

the spectacleworks,as it does,for instance, in Minnellis The Pirate, where

the spectacleallows the false Macoco, a traveling actor mistakenly taken for
the notoriouspirate, to revealthe real pirate, who passeshimself off for a
respectablebourgeois. But it worksin The Pirate due to the introduction of
a very particular motivation: the real pirate, now a rotund bourgeois,would
rather reveal his true identity than let the actor steal his role.The pleasure
in theatrical impersonationand swaggerbringsabout a \"truth\" prejudicial
to the reality of the character, and celebratesmuch less the defeat of the
criminal than the victory of the actor, who appearsto the young Bovaryst
bride as the real incarnation of her romantic image of the pirate.In the
other, it fails, as for instance in Hamlet, where the representationdoes not
force the hypocrite into the open.But the failure in the fiction is still one
offictions successes. It confirms the impossibilityofknowing constitutive
ofthe characterand the futility ofthe desireto know that, perhaps,hidesa
more secretdesireto remain ignorant. It alsoconfirms the superiority ofthe
actor, who neither liesnor tells the truth, overthe liar who hides the truth
and the truth seekerdeterminedto smokehim out.
The spectacle
Tartuffe doesnt fit into either of these fictional \"successes.\"
within the spectacle unmasks no oneand revealsnothing. The representation
doesnt unmask the hypocrite; for that, the film will needa poisonflask taken
directly from melodrama, the word \"poison\" written all over it. The fact is
that the purposeof this whole machinery isn't to unmask the hypocrite,
but to serve as an abstract signifier of modernity that invests this modern
cinematographicadaptation with a self-imposedalienation effect. But what
exactlyis this, then, this doubly alienated Tartuffel
Thecinematographic transpositionhas to rely on something other than
the scenarios recourseto the theatrical machinery of showing a spectacle
within a spectacle. Itmust, m other words,have its own built-in principleof
conversion, its own way ofmaking the variations in the bodilymovements
ofthe charactersact like slipsand slidesofspeech.Theplaywright displaces
a speech. The filmmaker must enticea silhouette,this black silhouette
that stands in such sharp reliefagainst the white walls, into movement.
In Tartuffe is a beingcomposed
Moli\303\250re, ofwords twice over: ofhis own
words and of the wordsspoken about him before he ever appearson the
stage.Murnau'sfilm, conversely,is characterized by a refusal to use words
that goesbeyond the constraintsof silent film and the economic use of
intertitles.Thereare symbolsfor this refusal in the film itself, in Tartuffe
yawning in reply to Orgon'srequestthat he convertElmire to his faith, and,
possibly,in Dorinesadviceto the same Orgon\342\200\224\"Ask nothing, just come
 A Silent Tartuffe 37

and see Murnau'sTartuffe is not

.\" a man ofwords,buta tall and somber
silhouette,a longovercoat, a blackpolecrownedby a white ball, a round
headperpetually hiddenbehinda bookThe film opts for a radical solution
to our openingquestionabout how to make cinematographiclanguagesay:
/
\"Coverup that bosom,which I can't Endureto lookon,\" ItmakesTartuffe
and Dorines meeting a non-meeting. The blacksilhouette walking down the
stairs, its headburiedin a book, takes no noticeofthe soubrettemounting
the stairs.The problemfor the cinematographic fiction will be how to make
this silhouettemove, how to transform it into its opposite, into the lewd
man in shirtsleeveswith large,gaping mouth sprawledout on Elmire s bed
at the end of the film.
How will Murnau bring about this transformation? s Tartuffe is
Moli\303\250re

done in by words,by the predilectionfor seducingwith wordscommon to

the priest and the lecher.What equivalentpower does silent film have at its
disposal animate, and betray, the silhouette, to lead it to lower its guard?
to
A first answermight be:Tartuffe can give himself away, to othersand to the
camera,by his gaze.All the variations in Tartuffe s expressionsare variations
ofthe gaze.The facethe devout man buriesbehindhis bookis animated by
his eyes, or by oneof them to be exact.The film visualizeshypocrisy with
this eye that steals a sidelong,appreciative glance at a morselof food, a
ring, or a breast,while the other continues to lookstraight ahead.Tartuffe,
in other words,betrays his real character by leering. It remains to find out
what leeringmeans.Are the sidelongglancesof Emil Jannings/Tartuffe
different from thoseof Emil Jannings/Haroun-al-Rachid, the lustful sultan
of Waxworks} LotteEisnerwrites:\"He[Murnau] getsKarl Freunds camera
to exploreall the crevices,every wrinkle, every twitch, every blink, in order
to reveal,along with the frecklesand bad teeth, the dissimulatedvices.\"2But
what the camera showsus in Tartuffe is a beingon the lookout,a being fearful
of being found out.It just so happensthat an eye lookingaskancecan be
an illustration oftwo opposingthings.It can be a covetous eye susceptible
to the provocation trying to surprisethe lustful beingwho lurks behindthe
blacksilhouette.And it can alsobe the opposite,an eye surveying the traps
set to revealhis desire.Tartuffe s eyeleersbecauseit is constantly tracking the
lateral and obliquemovements that shouldescapeits notice. The attraction
drawing his eye towards the desiredobjectis always preceded by the eyes
observation ofwho is, or couldbe, looking.Elmire s machinations to show
the hidden Orgonthe truth about Tartuffe fail becausethe bosomshe
puts right under his noseis lessvisibleto Tartuffe than the hazy reflection
of Orgonsface in the tea kettle.Elmire'spowerlessness,however, is also
38 Film Fables

Tartuffe s.This silent hypocrite, bereft ofthe seductive powerof words,is

in a situation akin to that of the \"saboteurs\" of the Stalinistregime, who
never sabotagedanything lesttheir identity as saboteursbe revealed.Tartuffe,
above all, must not let anyone noticehe is a hypocrite.This explainswhy
the seductionscene,in which Elmire is the one doingall the work, seemsso
forcedElmireswhole show [mimique], unlessit is meant for someoneother
than Tartuffe, is forced, just as isf indeedeven moreso,the relationship
betweenthe shots ofTartuffe 's leeringeye and the shots of the objects
offered up to his lower legs and heaving chest.Theseobjects
desire\342\200\224her

are not so much what Tartuffe the lustful beingseesbut what shouldarouse
his desire. They are objectsof desirein exposedfleshbetween
general\342\200\224the

the boot and skirt and the quivering, palpitating bosomsthat went to young
mens headsin nineteenth-century novels.The film showsus these objects
ofdesireso that voe can attribute them to Tartuffe s desire.It seems,though,
that what shouldarousehis lust actually arousesin him the moreprosaic
desireofmaking sure no one is watching.
At first sight, it seems that the fiction adoptedstrives in vain for an
operation that never takes place:the conversionofTartuffe's body into
another gestus. And yet, the set designs,composed entirely of two types
ofplaces,seemto have beencreatedpreciselyfor the purposeofbringing
about this conversion.We have, in the hallway, the landing, and the staircase,
the classic\"passageways\" of theatrical fiction, passagewaysthat are, as a
matter ofprinciple,always open (even when thev happento be a bedroom,
like Marschallinsin The Rose^Bearer). This theatrical spacewhere it neednot
speakbut only paradeabout is the blacksilhouettesplace of choice. And
then we have the closed of
spaces cinematographic intimacy. These spaces
arenot secretivebut, on the contrary, closed volumeswherebodiesare locked
in, trapped,and threatened by the eye lookingin through the keyhole. The
task is to enticeTartuffe to move from the theatrical spacewherehe parades
his cinematographic silhouette at easeto thesetrap rooms. But this fictional
as well as decorative strategy doesnt work, least of all if we think of it as
a mechanismdesignedto inducethe hypocrite to confessand reveal his
true character. A character who'sunable to controlappearancesand who
has beenreducedto the roleof a suspiciousbeast cannot be caught at his
own game.Someone elsehas to be caught in his place.In the last scene,
the passive and transfixed Elmire, wearing a flirtatious dressthat
d\303\251collet\303\251

makesher seemmore mummy-like than attractive, is joinedin her roomby

a different character,who has, without any transition, taken the placeofthe
blacksilhouette:a drunken and lewd tramp reminiscent ofthose characters
 A Silent Tartuffe 39

we find in Labicheand Offenbach, the sort onerecruits from the bottom

of the barrel to play the rolesof distinguishedguests at a dinner party7
meant to impressa sucker,but who resume their natural state at the most
inopportune moment.The cinematographictransformation of the body
never takes placebecausethe hypocrite has not been allowedto command
the play of appearances. The character Orgonchasesviolently from his
home at the end of the film is a different theatrical character than the one
who had dupedhim.
If the cinematographic
transposition of Tartuffe relieson making the
characters gaze do the work that wordswith their doublemeanings do in
the theater, then it doesnot succeed. Thereremains another possibility.
Murnau's Tartuffe tells a radically different story from Moli\303\250re's, a story,
incidentally, perfectly suitedto the resourcesofcinema.The real difference
between the film and theater versions is not to be found in the \"modern\"
preludeand epilogue,but rather manifests itself oncethe \"story itself\" gets
under way. In the film, as in s play, Tartuffe is absent, but the status
Moli\303\250re

ofthis absenceis different. The two first acts ofthe play manage to sketch
the image of the (falsely)devout man by means of what the characters
have to say about him, Tartuffe being the objectof everyone's obsession.
The film doesntuse wordsto fill out the character, but instead identifies
him with a shadow.Morethan the falsely devout man who showsup to
swindlethe family, Tartuffe is the shadowthat comesto separateOrgon
and Elmire, the shadowthat darkens Orgonseves as he lowersElmire's
arms when sheis about to embracehim. I spokeaboveabout sentenceswith
doublemeanings.Now at least onemade its way into the film, in Orgons
reply to Elmire s declaration oflove (\"I'mso happyf ): \"If you only knew
how happy I ami\" Orgonis obviouslythinking ofa different happinessthan
hers, of the otherlove objecthe is contemplatingthrough Elmire's now
transparent body.While she rejoices husbands return,
in her he is dreaming
of the new friend he made during his trip+ This new friend is the shadow
that comes between them, the oneElmireconfronts again only a little later,
when she goesto Orgon'sroomto try to win him back and the camera
leavesus behindhis door. This meeting with the shadow accounts for the
intensity ofElmire s incredibleexit, her crinoline dressgaining formidable
weight as she descendsthe stairs.The crinolinedress,like the powdered
valets, is of coursean anachronism in this late eighteenth century set, but
not a random one.The Marie-Antoinette dresscrushing Elmire s body as
shehastensdown the stairs captures the whole transformation: rather than a
historical discrepancy, her dressis a fictional displacement.Elmire has been
40 Film Fables

transformed into the CountessAlmaviva from The Marriage of Figaro, who

painfully realizes that her husbanddoesn'tloveher anymore. Herincredible
descentand the tears that fall on Orgonsmedallion arethe equivalent oftwo
arias from Mozart,a Dovesono and a Porgi amor. Similarly, the sceneof Elmire
writing, with Dorines help,the letter she hopeswill enticeTartuffe into her
roomtransposesthe celebratedduet betweenthe Countessand Susanna.
Everything we had found confusing about this Tartuffe sans seductionfalls
into place as a result of this fictional displacement.Murnau'sstory is not
the story ofa hypocrite s machinations and designs,but of Orgonsmalady
and the treatment Elmire concocts to cure it. Everything revolvesaround
Elmire and Orgon,around Elmire and Orgonslovefor this shadow.Hence
the importanceof thosescenesof Orgonanxiously preparingTartuffe's
lunch or lovingly watching over his rest.Thesescenesvisualize, in a sense,
Dorines ironic quips about her mastersfolly in s play. Hereis the
Moli\303\250re

of
principle transforming lines from the play into film images.Instead of
showing what the characters say in the play, the images show what is said
about them. Thebustle and commotionof valets we see at the beginning
ofthe film visualizeMadamePernelles harsh words about her daughter-in-
law s servants;the shot ofOrgon standing in front ofthe arbor and looking
at Tartuffe napping on a hammock visualizes Dorines words.In this over
exposedsetting, we seeOrgonsdream, this dream that traversesthe sordid
reality we seewith Elmire s eyes:an enormoustomcat, hideousand sated,
curledup on a hammock.
This principleof visualization, morethan the determined
transpositionof the elements of the theatrical fable, inscribesthe
cinematographic

image and fable of Tartuffe into a seriesthat belongsto cinema in general,

to expressionistcinema in particular, and to Murnau s cinema evenmore so:
a seriesofstoriesof appearancesthat are no longer storiesof confession.
Cinema, weve already seen,doesnt lead hypocrites to confess,but tells the
stories ofsubstantial and beguiling shadowsthat have to be destroyed.A
shadow doesnt confess,it vanishes,disappears.The story ofOrgon falling
prey to a shadowresemblesother storiesMurnau has told us in his films.
Think ofthe young poetand civil servant in Phantom, who is literally knocked
down by the staggering force of a white apparition;of the young Hutter
rushing to the land ofghostsin Nosferatu; ofthe farmer, in Sunrise, standing
before the apparition ofthe foreigner.
All of theseshadowshave to be dissipated.But dissipatingshadowsis
a tall order for the cinema, sinceit excelsat doing exactly the opposite,at
giving shadowssubstance,at making them objectsof love and fascination
 A Silent Tartuffe 41

from which only a miracle or violent blow can deliver us.That s what this
Tartuffe is all about.Murnau's film is about Elmires machinations to win
back her husband, about the operation she must perform to excise from
Orgons heart the intruder who has made her invisible to him. Its an act
of exorcism, the chasing of a specter. This change of fable explainswhy
Tartuffes character is so impoverished in the film. He who, in is Moli\303\250re,

in control ofeverything, including his own perdition,has become, from the

very start, the intruder to be expelled, the one who must be tempted into
errorso he can be expelled. Thefilm deprivesTartuffe of all initiative, so
much so that even his assault on Elmire'svirtue is singularly ambiguous.
The missalhe placesupon the bosomexposedby the dressis
d\303\251collet\303\251

certainly blasphemous, but not devouringly sensual; most, replacesthe

a t it
handkerchief from the play. And the intertitles pare down whatever erotic
charge the gesture may have even further. The initiative belongsto Elmire,
the one who wants to chase out the shadow, unmask it. I suggestedabove
that the big seductionsceneis quite strange, that Elmire s whole show is a
bit toomechanical,and that the relationship betweenTartuffe s gaze and the
objectsofdesireis problematicinasmuch as it has to work through us.This
would all be very strange unlessElmire s show is actually meant for someone
else,which indeedit is.Elmire has put on this decollete dressfor the third
party hiddenbehind the curtain, Orgon.Recall MadamePernelle's words
to Elmire:\"A woman who would pleaseher husbands eye Alone, wants /
no such wealth of fineries\"
But one must tellMadame Pernelle that Elmire is not out to please
only her husband,but also this personinfatuated with Tartuffe. We should
add that Elmire, by thus offering her bosom,doestwo things at once:
she offers to Tartuffe s hard-to-elicitdesirewhat shouldbe the objectof
Orgonsdesire,and she offers herself in sacrificeto dissipatethe shadow.
Sheoffers her neck to the dark man, just as Hutters offers hers to
fianc\303\251e

Nosferatus fangs to free Hutter and the others from the vampire when
the cockcrows.Elmire offers herself to Tartuffe to restoreOrgon,like the
corruptedpeasant of Sunrise, to the world of the living, to enablehim,
like the selfish and ambitious son ofBurning Soil, to be reunited with his
family. Hererotic show is a sacrificialrite.In Nosferatu, the sacrifice causes
the shadow to vanish, whereas in Tartuffe the shadow doesnot vanish, but is
annihilated by substitution.
We shouldpausea moment and examine closelythe difference between
thesetwo solutions,as it encapsulatesthe problemofthe cinematographic
fable, that is, of the relationshipbetweencinema and the appearancesit
42 Film Fables

Cinemashowcasesits powersof illusionwith theseshadowsthat

creates.
hold the characters captive.To say that the visual narrative must dissipate
theseshadowsis tantamount to saying that it must dissipatethe immediate
powersof the cinema. Thereare two ways to dissipateshadows.Oneuses
the phantasmatic power itself to this end:the phantasmata-producing machme
takes it upon itself to dissipatethe shadowsit has itself magic
created\342\200\224the

of the machine dissolvesNosferatus blackshadowright before our eyes.

This first way is, as it were, a family affair: cinematographic technique
dissipates the shadows of cinematographic fiction.Thesecondway is
completelydifferent. It assumesthat cinema has renouncedthe powerto
dissipateits shadows,that it was steppedout ofits domain and confiscated
its figures.That is what happensin Tart-uffe.The: dark shadow,setso clearlyin
relief against the white walls, is as much a figure ofthe cinema as that hazy
and overexposed universe, Orgonskingdom.To dissipateits own shadows,
cinema must backup Elmiresstrategy, it must help her lure Tartuffe out of
the relationship that ties hisblackshadowto Orgonshazy kingdom.Elmire
has to lure him out of the land ofcinematographic immediacy.Herwhole
fictional strategy boils down to separatingTartuffe from the mode ofbeing
of cinematographic phantasmata that protectshim. This shadow that cannot
be trickedinto confession,as it might be in the theater, can likewisenot be
dissipatedcinematographically.The only remaining alternative is to move
the shadow into another, intermediary, set.The cinematographic silhouette
walks into the bedroom where Elmiretries to trap it onlv to find itself
confined by the frames of a genre painting. Elmire s romantic bedroom,at
first reminiscent of a Fragonard, becomes a Dutch interior, a pictorialspace
where bodilyproximity and the distribution of light and shadow lead the
blacksilhouette to be lost from sight.
Murnau eliminatesTartuffe by substituting onebody for another. The
bodythat entersElmire sbedroomis a different body, the rustic and satisfied
body of a farmer, a bit drunk and loud-mouthed,just like the bodies we
find in the paintings ofvan OstadeorAdriaen Brouwer.Unableto dissipate
the shadow,Murnau eliminates it by the exactlyinverseprocedure: he turns
the shadow into a body that cannot hide the identifying traits ofits origin,
the evidenceofits difference.The plebeianbodysprawledout on Elmire s
bed is a body out of its element,a body that clearly doesnot belongin
Orgonsaristocratic abode,a total stranger to the ways ofbeingexemplified
by Elmire s transfixed body.Its more natural habitat is a tavern scene. The
difference in socialclassis also a difference in the distribution of arts and
genres. While the cinematographic shadow belongsto the Romantic poetics
 A Silent Tartuffe 43

that breakswith the generic principleof adapting artistic forms to the subjects
represented,Elmire s, and Murnau s, strategy is to leadthe cinematographic
shadow back to a classicaluniverse where a genre correspondsto a subject
and where charactershave the physiognomy and language befitting their
status.The unsettling and elusivecinematographic body reverts to beingan
easilyidentifiablepictorialbody that can be put in its place,which is clearly
not the home ofElmire and Orgon.Tartuffe is visually expelledfrom their
universe well before he is physically thrown out by Orgon.
We would be wrong to regard Murnau'scinematographic transposition
of the theatrical fiction ofthe hypocrite as a straightforward translation.
Tartuffe s story must be changed m the land of cinematographic shadows.
Cinema deprivesthe seducerof the theatrical means of seductionand
createsa shadow to be dissipated.But what can no longer be entrustedto
the doublemeaning of wordsin the theater can likewisenot be guaranteed
by the means proper to cinematographic magic. The shadow has to be re-
embodiedand restoredto a mode of representationwhere bodies,and the
differences betweenthem, are clearly To resolve the fictional
identifiable\302\273

problem, Murnau identifiesTartuffe with a pictorialfigure, a character from

genre painting. But this solution,to placethe camera in front of a figure
from genre painting, means that cinema has in some ways renouncedwhat
had until then seemedits own wav ofimitating painting and substituting the
theater, its own way of creating and dissipatingshadows,its own immediate
magic.Murnau s film fictionally eliminatesTartuffe at the very high price
of having aestheticallyto eliminatewith him all of cinematographic
expressionism.Hencethe film's grayness tone.Theproblemisn t really
o\302\243

that the platitude of the intertitles awakens at every turn our nostalgia for
the lost enchantment of s words, but that, to appropriateTartuffe,
Moli\303\250re

cinemamust work against its own enchantments.With Tartuffe, Murnau puts

the last nail in the coffin of expressionism by annihilating with his hero a
certain idea ofwhat makescinema unique.

NOTES

1. Foran extendeddiscussionof this effect in Fritz Langs Moonfleet, see

\"The Child Director,\"Chapter4 below.
2. Lotte Eisner,The Haunted Screen:Expressionism in the German Cinema and the

Influence of Max Reinhardt, trans. Roger Greaves (Berkeley: University of

California Press,1973) 269.Translation slightly modified.
 CHAPTER3

FromOne Manhuntto Another

Fritz Lang between
TwoAges

Sinceits releasein 1955, Fritz Langs While the City Sleeps has beenseenas an
expression of radical pessimismby an artist who had grown disenchanted
with democracyand with the art of cinema through the combinedforces
ofthe American peopleand Hollywood.If that is the case,then what is
really the objectofLang s pessimism,and how doeshe turn it into fable?It
is standard to assume that the heart of the plot is the all-out competition
betweenthe big shots of Amos Kyne s news empire:the editor, the head of
wire services,and the manager of picture servicesfight it out to seewho gets
the positionofmanaging directorof the empire when its founder diesand
the businessis turned overto his spoiledand incompetent son.The son gets
the competitiongoing by promisingthe position to the one who succeeds
in unmasking the maniacal woman-killer whosecrimesare at that moment

terrorizing the city. A whole web of feminine intrigues is deployedfor the

service of the competitors. As for the visual spaceofthe film, it seemsto
be entirely composed of the bodily movements and exchange of glances
that cast theseschemersinto always unstable relationshipsofinferiority or

superiority; in the huge glassoffice, they spend their days spying on what
is happeningon the other side of the corridorin the hopesof catching
a meaningful smile or motion by surprise,all the while hiding what they
themselvesare doing,fashioning a maskmeant to deceivethe others about
the power relationshipsat play. Theassumption, in short, is that everything
revolves around the competition and the secretspermanently lodgedin
the bowelsof the immensemachinery whosebusinessis to bring to the
peoplethe light ofinformation. Lang s pessimismconsistsin observing,and
making us observe, that all thesepeople hunting down the murderer are as
unpleasant as he is, perhapsevenmore so.
But it couldbe that the show put on by theseschemersis only a comforting
illusion, and that the plotsblackheart is really made up of the actions of
46 Film Fables

the only two honestmembersof Kyne s empire,the reporterEd Mobley

and his Nancy, a secretary.Mobleyis not angling for a promotion,
fianc\303\251e

nor is he interestedin getting tangled up in any schemes.All he really wants

to do is unmask the murderer,and he has his own idea about how he's
goingto do that: helllead the murderer to reveal himself by talking to
him. Mobleys projectis, a priori, contradictory. To speakto the murderer,
he must first know who the murderer is, and if he knows who he is, it
is becausehe has already beencaught.Even the Machiavellian examiner
Porphyry would be powerlessif Raskolnikovhadn't bitten the bait and come
out to meet him. Mobleyis no examiner though, he's a television reporter,
and speakingface to face with people he doesn'tknow is what he doesevery7
night at eight o'clock. On the night in question,he goes to the television
studioreadv to speakto his viewers,as he always does,and to speakto one
viewer in particular, the murderer. Armed the insubstantial piecesof
with
evidencehe got from a policemanfriend, Mobleysketchesthe murderers
Identikit,tells him he has been identified and that soonit'llbe all over for
him. Without seeingthe murderer, Mobleylooks at him, he summons him
with his voice to meet this gaze.And suddenly, mid-sentence, a spectacular
cameramovement anticipates the effect with a shot reverse-shot that places
the camera in front of the murderer and the televisionmonitor in the reverse
angle.Thisliteral rendition ofthe \"faceto face\"that mtroducesthe reporter
into every home is at the same time a trope that inversesthe very meaning of
the word \"television.\"Thetelevised is no longer the one seenon television,but
the one seenby it. In this scene,the televisedis the murderer, who is told to
recognize himself as the one ofwhom, and to whom, Mobleyspeaks.
Langperforms with this cameramovementa standardtheatrical operation,
well known sinceAristotle as recognition,the change from ignoranceto
knowledge.But, morethan simply the process that leads from ignorance
to knowledge,recognitionis the operationthat brings the identified and
unidentified personsinto alignment. The paradigmaticexampleis to be
found in Oedipus Rex, where Oedipuslearns that he himself is the murderer
he'sbeen lookingfor when the messenger, pointing at him, tellsthe
herdsman:\"here'sthe man that was that child.\" Thereis recognitionin a
nutshell, in the junction ofthe two demonstratives the herdsman had tried
so hard to prevent. Indeed,all the other characters in the play who either
know or suspectthe secretspareno efforts to prevent the alignment ofthe
two identities,to postponethe moment of recognition when Oedipusgets
caught in his own trap set by the one who knew nothing and who
trap\342\200\224a

above all had to remain ignorant, though he was, at the same time, the only
onewho insistedon knowing.
 Fritz Lang betweenTwo Ages 47

This is what our scenein the film is all about* Evidently, though, Lang
has inverted everything in Aristotle'sschemaof recognition. Forone,the
audiencehas known the murderer s face ever sincehe was shown in action
in the openingshots of the film, quite sometime before this scene. For
another, the moment of recognition is not the moment when the trap closes,
but when it is set, when the character who doesnot know pretendsto know
and tells someone he doesn'tknow:\"I know you're him.\" Feigning to know
more than one does to get the suspectto fall into the trap and cough up
the missingevidenceis nothing new, but elementary police work.But that s
not what's happeninghere,as is shown,a contrario, by an episodea little
earlier on in the film, when the policearrest the unfortunate super ofthe
building for seemingthe ideal suspectand take him back to the station,
where they put him through the usual treatment: the bright lights projected
on the face, the harassing questions,the intimidation, etc.Thiswhole show,
Mobleytells his friend Lieutenant Kaufman, is uselessand bound to get
him nowhere.Mobleyputs what he knows and doesnt know to a completely
different use.Thereare no light projectorsshining in the suspects face, no
questions,there s no harassmentor intimidation. Mobleyis not out to make
the suspecton hand confessto having committedthe crime, but to bring
the unidentified criminal to the recognition that he has been recognized.
That requiresan apparatus that institutes different kind offace to face:a
a
faceto face with someone who is closer to you than any policemancan ever
be, preciselybecausehe is farthest away, becausehe only seesyou from far
away; a face to face with someone who is instantly on intimate terms with
you, who speaksto you while speakingto everyoneelse,and to you just as
to everyoneelse.
What doesMobleydo in this scene,then? Two things at once. While his
words sketchthe Identikitthat tells the what he is, his eyeslockthe
\305\222irninal

CTiminal in their gaze and direct him to where he must recognize himself:
in the Identikit.Theproblem,of course,is that Mobleys Identikit is an
insubstantial illusion, an amalgam of two heterogeneous elements:the set
ofindividuating traits (age,physical strength, hair color)Mobleyuses to
describewho the murderer is,though theseneversufficeto individuate anyone;
and a standard and well-knownclinical portrait that says only what he is, to
what category ofcriminal pathology he belongs. The policewould have no
use for such an Identikit,nor is it intendedfor them. The only personwho
can find it useful is the personwho has to recognize himself in it:the one
assumedto be there facing Mobley,the oneinstructedto identify his who to
this hotchpotchofdistinctivetraits. Themurderer, by the same token, is the
48 Film Fables

only onewho can expose himself, who can go wherehe is expectedthrough

the mediation ofthe pleasureofhaving been recognized for what he is, and
the terror ofhaving beenrecognized for who he is.The visual counterpart to
this doublemediation is the doublegrimace ofRobert Manners,played by
John BarrymoreJr.Whether in front of the fictional screenof the television
or in front ofthe real screenofthe camera,the doubleregisterofthe actor s
The initial feeling of
expressionis absolutely stereotypical. satisfaction\342\200\224a

broad smile,eyes supersededby a growing senseof

shining\342\200\224is panic\342\200\224a

snarl, eyeswidening in alarm, and hands that move into action and clutch
of
the crossbar the chair,just as later on they'll clutch the mother s neckand,
towards the end, Dorothy Kyne's neck.The actor s performanceexhausts
itself in the variations on this doubleregister,particularly the snarl.It is all
he can do to conveythe distressmechanicallytriggered in him by the sight of
a woman s legs,his feverishnessbefore the projectedaction, his ambivalent
feelings towards his mother, or his attitude when confronted by Mobleys
imaginary gaze.The stereotypy of Barrymore'sperformancecannot but
remindus of a performanceofmuch higher caliberfrom a quarter of a
century earlier, also by an actor playing the roleof a psychopathickiller, a
sort ofbrother ofRobertManners.Hisstereotypedgrimacesremind us of
all the expressive transitions from carefree strollerto savage
nuances\342\200\224the

beastto prostrate Peter Lorre brmgsto his rolein M, another

victim\342\200\224that

manhunt story, for which While the City Sleeps is, in someways, the American
remake.
It is of coursepossibleto explain away the difference between the two
by appealingto the quality of the actors, and it is well known that Lang
had nothing but harsh wordsfor the young Barrymore. But what is alsowell
known is that Lang left a very small margin ofinitiative to the personaltalent
ofhis actors:when he discoveredduring the filming ofM that Peter Lorre
couldn't whistle, he did the whistling for him insteadof droppingit from
the film. In other words,even if John Barrymore Jr.couldn'tact as well as
Lang might have wanted, it is reasonableto think that he actedas Lang told
him to.Hemay not have known how to give a stereotyped performance, but that
is what he was askedto do.The expressivesimplification has nothing to do
with the incompetence ofthe actor, but is integral to the very apparatus of
the mise~en~scencthis apparatus is what has changedsinceM.Ifit has changed,
it isn't becauseLang has lost his creativetouch, but becausean apparatus of
cinematographic is a way ofplaying with a politicaland social
mise~en~sc\303\250ne

of
apparatus visibility, a way of using oneof its tacit resources,ofrendering
its implicit activity explicit.The stereotypy ofRobert Manners'grimace is
 Fritz Lang between Two Ages 49

the polar oppositeofMs savageand conquering whistling becauseLang is

working with different apparatusesof visibility in M and in While the City
Sleeps.
Itwould be worthwhile then to backtrackand considerfor a moment the
in
episode M that correspondsto the remote face to face between Mobley
and the murdererthat launches the manhunt. Midway through M, the
police,following a microscopic search ofpsychiatric hospitals,identify the
murderer and his whereabouts.Armed with a magnifying glass,a policeman
examines the windowsillof his lodgings,where he finds, as he runs his
fingers on the woodgrain,shavings from the red pencilthe murderer had
used to write his taunting messages.While they are searching his lodgings,
the murderer is out and about. He is standing in front of a shop window
with a little girl he has just met.Both are visibly quite happy:happy with
what they are lookingat, happy with being together.His eyes follow the
child'shand as shepoints to the toy of her dreams.Helovesbeinga. fl\303\242neur,

he loveslookingat shopwindows,he loveslittle girls, he lovespleasingthem.

He seemsto have momentarily forgotten the goal of the operation:he is
just delighting in the present.She,too,is happy, sinceshe loves toys and
adults who are kind to little girls.A little later, when sheseesthe chalk mark
on his shoulder,all she thinks about is cleaning up the stain on the \"poor
old man.\" The manhunt is about to begin, and onceit does there'llbe no
respite,so that this sceneis the hero s last moment ofgrace, and we must
understand \"grace\" in the strong senseofthe term.It is not a last moment
of respite,but somethingmorelike a gracegranted to the character, the
^racehe has been allotted as a character.It was but a moment earlier that a
masterfully arranged compositionhad shown us his transition from normal
personto furious and pitilessbeasthunting its prey; and it is but a moment
later that the hunt against him will be in full swing. But for now, there is a
moment of grace when the murderer is allowedto delight in a spectacle,a
:ouch,a sensation,and to delight in it aesthetically,disinterestedly.Before
:hescenariocondemnsthe character, beforehe is left with no chance of
survival, the grants him his chance at beinghuman. Not at being
mise-en-sc\303\250ne

i sickman in needofprotection,but his chance at beinga carefree in

fl\303\242neur

i crowd,nothing more than a peaceful image seenthrough a shop window.

It grants him his photogenicchance, in Jean Epsteinssenseofthe term.
Theissuehere isnot one ofnarrative suspension,but of poetics. Aristotle's
requirementthat the narrative must leadthe criminalto the point wherehe'll
be caught and unmaskedruns into a new, and conflicting,requirement: the
esthetic requirement for suspendedshots, for a counter-logic that at every
50 Film Fables

turn interrupts the progressionofthe plot and the revelation ofthe secret*
In thesemoments,we experience the power of empty time, the time of
goals held in abeyance when young Cosettescontemplate the dolls oftheir
dreams, and when thosecondemnedto \"misery\" delight in a simplemoment
ofreconciliation with a world wholly indifferent to them and from which
all onereally wants is the chance to share in a novel quality of the sensible.
\"Action toohas its dreamy moments,\" says the author ofLes and
Mis\303\251rables,

rightlv so. The important point is not that the progression ofthe episodes
has to be punctuated with moments of rest, but that the very meaning of
episodehas changed.Thenew action, the aesthetic plot, breakswith the old
narrative plot by its treatment oftime. In the aesthetic plot, it is empty time,
che lost time of a stroll or the suspendedtime of an epiphany\342\200\224and not
the time ofprojects,of goalsrealizedor frustrated\342\200\224that lends powerto
the narrative. Literature came upon this pure power of the sensiblebetween
Flaubert and Virginia Woolf, and Jean Epstein, along with a handful of
others, dreamedofmaking this powerthe very fabric ofthe language of
images.True, the allures ofthis languagenever fully seducedFritz Lang, nor
did he ever embracethe notion that cinema was the new art ofaisthesis that
would supplant the old arts ofmimesis. Lang understoodvery earlv on that
cinema was an art insofar as it was the combination oftwo logics: the logic
of the narrative structuring the episodesand the logicof the image that
interrupts and regenerates the narrative. Lang alsonoticedearly on that the
combinedlogicofcinematographic mimesis borecloseties to a social logicof
mimesis, that it developedas much in reaction to that sociallogicas under
its shelter.
Let's take a closerlookat the moment of aesthetic happiness,which is
also a moment when placesare exchanged.While the policeare searching
his room, the murderer is casuallywandering the streets.Thereis something
strangely complementary between Ms brief moment ofpeace as a man of
the crowdsand the punctiliousorganization of the police,its unflagging
efforts to find in the visible what it hidesby tracing circleson a map with a
compass,by meticulously searchingevery bush, and by descendinginto the
dingiestdivesto subjecttheir every nookand cranny to the magnifying glass.
M's chanceto existas a character,both for himselfand for us, paradoxically
dependsupon all these circles that spread the news of the murder while
concentricallyclosingin on the murderer, who managesnonethelessto inch
his way and trace his own path acrossthe circlestraced by the police,the
mob, publicopinion,and the anarchic spreadofsuspicion. Heis sheltered,
somehow, at the heart of trap, much as the happinessofthe scenein front
the
 Fritz Lang betweenTwo Ages 51

of the shop window is embeddedin an alternating montage that stresses

that the hunt for the criminal is only gaining momentum. AU the circlesthat
closein on him in the scenarioofthe trap, all the socialcirclesthat imitate
each other, preserve him as a character and give him his chance.
To grasp the principleof this chance, we must take a lookat a singular
moment in the murderersalready singular trial in the makeshift courtroom
set up by the mob.What is so strange about this trial isn't that the members
ofthe mob act out every single one ofthe roles that make up a real trial,
down to the defenseattorney who, his Penal Codein hand, so stubbornly
defendsthe murderer that no oneis quite sure how to ascertain \"what he
really thinks.\" It is, moreprofoundly, that the murderersfate seemscaught
betweentwo laws:the law pure and simple,the orderthat protectshonest,as
well as dishonest,people; and a secondlaw: the mimesis ofthe socialcomedy,
the way socialroleshave ofliving off ofimitation, of being fueled by the
socialspenchant for the diffusing, performing, and reversing
theatrical\342\200\224for

roles.The crime boss appointshimself the representative of the bereaved

parents and honest citizens and confronts the murderer with photos ofthe
voting girls he has killed;the conman of the group plays the attorney for
the defense.A prostitute interrupts the proceedingsto voice the anguish and
pain ofthe mothers.Is sheherself a mother? Or is she playing the roleof
mother as the others play at beingattorneys? It doesnt much matter. What
does matter is the sudden change of tone in her voice:midway into her
angry tirade against the murderer, her voice falters, and when she resumes,
after a brief silence,she speaksmore slowly, more tenderly, as if she were
trying to expressthe ineffable pain ofthesemothers and to make us believe
that she toohas felt it. A woman caressesher shoulderwhile she speaks,a
silent display ofthe solidarity ofthesebereavedmothers.\"How couldyou
know what it feelslike?You shouldask the mothers\":that s the gist ofwhat
their \"representative\" has to tell him. The initial anger, the faltering voice,
the continuation in a lower tone of lamentation, the simplewords, we had
heard all of it but a minute the murderer s testimony. He.too,
before\342\200\224in

starts out by launching an angry tirade against his accusers,comesto a halt

midway through, and then resumeshis speechin the samelower register, the
expressionofhis pure pain.And he, too,concludesby asking his prosecutors:
\"What do you know? How could you possiblyknow what I feel?\"In both
instances,the same \"voiceof pain\" breaksthe silenceto invoke what the
other does not know. Thereis somethingthat remains unknown and that
can only be imitated, vocalized,performed,something that can only be felt
through an equivalent.
52 Film Fables

The murdererschanceand the happinessofthe mise~en~sc\303\250ne both rest on

the possibilityofweaving ofdistressand the appeasedcountenance
the cry
into a mimetic fabric that is, simultaneously,a paradigm of how society
functions. The social law ofmimesis is that onemust imitate, perform, what,
whether true or false, is not there or not known.Sincerityand hypocrisy
are equal before this imperative.The counterpointto the naked order, to
the socialorder of the law, is what we might call the freedom or chance
of mimesis, which heregrants an equal chanceto the fictive motherand
the fictional murderer.This is what protects M, and is preciselywhat has
disappearedin While the City Sleeps.If there is a paradoxin the relationship
betweenthe schemesgoingon inside Kyne's empire and the fate of the
psychopathickiller, it isn't that thesesupposedly\"honestpeople\"seemmore
sordidand low than the criminal they are hunting down.It is rather that this
empire of the democraticpressand of publicopinionhas blotted from the
field all publicopinion, even the one that assumesthe terrifying form of
the lynching mob in Fury. No one is tooconcerned with Robert Manners
in While the City Sleep,no onemakesthe rounds of the psychiatric clinics
to find out if any patients have been released,no one tries to find out the
murderer'swhereabouts.Even stranger, nobody reads the New York Sentinel,
savefor the journalists and the murderer. And it seemsthat nobodywatches
television either, exceptfor Nancy, to admire her hero and, onceagain, the
murderer.Thereis no list of the usual suspectsand places,no need to pick
up the scent of the murderer and track him down.Themurderer himself,
the televised,will of his own accordgo wherehe is expected,and he'lldo so
becausean image has cometo him and directedhim to sit down in front of
it and to recognize himselfin the imaginary Identikit of the murderer. He
has to recognize himself in the Identikit and feel flattered that the identity
ofhis casehas beenrecognized, happy that his lipstickmessageworkedand
that his hateful glee has beenrecognized. But, at the same time, he must also
recognize that he is trapped, that he has been recognized as the murderer.
This double capture hurls the murderer into the trap and inciteshim to
want to do what, till then, he had only doneby automatic compulsion.
He'snow to do it as if he had beenprogrammedto do it, either through
the desirefor vengeanceor becausehe s been challenged.He has no choice
but to respondin the same exactmanner to every situation: he must equate
his simpleincapacity to bear the sight of a woman's legs with the deeper
motivations ofvengeance,hate, and challenge.Indeed,all ofthis yieldsonly
one symptom, it is all expressedin the same snarl, the same eyeswidening
in alarm, the same sequenceof gestures.
 Fritz Lang between Two Ages 53

Thestereotypyofhisperformance,rather than reflectingthe shortcomings

of a deplorableactor, reflects the apparatus ofvisibility that sustainsthe
character.The structure that would protect him from his pursuersis gone,
and with it is gone also his chance for a moment ofgracewhen he might
be allowedto expresssomething besidesthis simplefacial automatism. The
other s vocal addressand binding gaze have locked him in this imaginary
shot reverse-shot, and there is no escape. A murderer can eludethe police;
a man of the crowdscan, like M, mergeinto the crowds.That is totally
different from having to eludesomeonewho looksyou in the face from far
away in orderto make you coincide with what he knows about you, someone
who, in and through you, brings what he knows and doesn'tknow into
alignment.Faceto face with the murderer, Mobleyaddsto the knowledgeof
the policemanthe knowledgeofthe clinicaldoctor,the supposedknowledge
ofthe psychoanalyst,the knowledgeofthe professor,and many other types
ofknowledgebesides.He gathers all these types ofknowledgeunder the
aegis ofonefundamental knowledge:he can passhimself off for the savant
that he isnt. Put more generally, he knowshow to act out what he is not.
This is, essentially,the knowledgeofthe actor, and it is as an actor that the
journalist combinesin himself all theseroles. Mobleyconfiscatesthe power
of mimesis and its performances and identifies them with the positionof the
one who knows.Hechains this power down to the placefilled by his image,
the placeofthe onewho seesand knows.
A quick lookat the classical formulation of the problem, Plato'sin
particular, will shedsome light on the identification going on here between
scienceand mimesis.The sovereignknowledgeMobleydeploysin his
is the ability to identify what he knowswith what he doesn'tknow,
broadcast

what he is with what he isnt; in short, he deploysthe knowledgeofbeing

what he is not.This defines, in Plato, the knowledgeof the mimetician: a

non-knowledgethat passesitself off for knowledge.We re all familiar with

how Plato calls this \"knowledge\" into question. Thereis Socrates,in the
Ion, asking how the rhapsodeIon could possiblyknow everything he sings
about in his epicpoems. How could he know how to \"do\" everything he
narrates, everything he identifieshimself with? And, in the Republic, Socrates
asking ironically if Homerknows everything his characters know. After all,
his charactersrule states,wage war, and so on.Doeshe, Homer, know how
to do all that? If he doesn't,we must then conclude that his fabrications are

just simulacra, appearancessuitable only for nurturing the socialcomedyof

appearances.
54 Film Fables

This socialcomedyofappearances,as we saw a minute ago, obligesthe

mob to parody both the pain ofhonestpeople and the impartiality ofjustice,
and, in the same stroke,gives the character his chance at the very heart ofthe
death hunt. Thingshave changed by the time we get to Edward Mobley,and
what Homer couldnot do, he can.With his oneiconicperformance, Moblev
actually manages to be everything at once: policeman,publicprosecutorand
judge, professor,doctor, interlocutor, and general commanding the battle.
Mobleyis all of theseas an actor, which explainswhy he is no longer limited
by the obligation to mimic justiceor the police. The actor, having forged
the imaginary synthesis of every type ofknowledge,arrives in the placeof
the one who knows and imposesan imaginary face to face that banishes
from the field every socialspaceprotectingthe character, every socialspace
granting the character the chance to be something other than what he is to
knowledge,that is, a sickman, a well-documentedclinical case,something
akin to a Charcot photograph or an overhead projection in a pedagogical

puppet ofknowledge.
conference\342\200\224a

The apparatus of Ed Mobley in his TV studio, and the ruse used by

his journalist colleagueCaseyMayo in The Blue Gardenia, another film by
Fritz Lang, are not at all alike.Mayo, angling for a spectacularstory, also
traps his victim by using the pressto addresshimself directly to her. With
his \"Letterto an UnknownMurderess,\" he leadsher to believethat she has
already been identified and offers her his help as a ploy to get her to come
out into the open.Mavo's trap, however,displavs all the classicaltraits of
seduction:set by a man for a woman, by a successfuljournalist for a petty
switchboardoperator,it trades on traditional hierarchies of sex and class.
Nothing couldbe further from Ed Mobleys trap in While the City Sleeps.He
offers no assistanceto allure the weak oneto cometo him, but imposeshis
assistanceupon the murderer in a different sense.Heimposeshis image,his
presence,his identification ofwhat he knowswith what he doesn'tknow,
ofwhat he is with what he isn't* Mobleys trap trades only on the imaginary
knowledgeborneby the image that speaksto the televisedand instructs him
to act strictly in accordancewith what it knowsabout him all the way up to
where the trap engulfs him. This is no seduction,but an execution in some
sensesmore radical than the onein the fictive trial: a scientificexecutionthat
robs the subjectofthe ability to be different than he is known to be.Itis an
executionin effigy at the same time that it is the setting ofan effectivetrap.
Thisis something entirely different from CaseyMayo s trick, and alsofrom
the intrigues and withholding ofinformation, the adulteries,
schemes\342\200\224the

That the honest and

the hallway romances\342\200\224that go on in Kyne's empire.
 Fritz Lang between Two Ages 55

disinterestedMobley should despiseall that is perfectly understandable.

Here,at least, things are still as they werein Plato:to despisepower one must
know something better than power.And clearlyMobleyknows something
better than being the managing directorofthe empire: the thrill afforded
by this play ofknowledge that absorbsall relationshipsofdomination and
that endsup beingan apparatus of execution.But, to get to the bottom of
this face to face, we must lookinto the nature ofthe image Mobleyplaces
before the murderer, the nature ofthe power he exerts and that allows him
to imposethis face to face.We need a detour here, leaving behind Mobley
king of the screento follow Mobleyas a man about town.
A truly peculiar love sceneshedslight on our problem.Mobleydowns a
few shots ofwhiskey at a bar to muster up somecourage and, a little tipsy,
goesto callon Nancy. Shewon t let him in, but Mobley very stealthily
manages to release the door'ssecurity lockso he can sneakback into the
apartment unannouncedand imposeupon his belovedthe embrace of
reconciliation. Thissceneis, interestingly enough, modeled point for point
on the murder scenesof the psychopathickiller.Everything is the same:
the staircase,the fascination with women's legs,the quick side lookat the
releasedsecurity lock,the intrusion into the apartment, the ensuing scuffle,
and even the insistent inscriptionof the maternal signifier:\"Didn'tyou
ever askyour mother?\" Nancy s reply to oneofher suitor'ssaucy questions
echoesthe messagethe maniacal killer writes on the wall with his victims
lipstick:Ask Mother, Lang'scamera develops a sustainedanalogy between the
love sceneand the murder scene. Where, then, is the difference?The answer
visually suggestedby theseshots is simple: Mobley strikesthe right flow,
the propermotorcoordination of speech,gaze, and hands.Thepoint is
to know the right way to use physical violence, to hold the neck with one
hand while wrapping the waist with the other, to closeones eyesinsteadof
rolling them or staring wide-eyed,to use vulgar language and saucy pitches
instead of mute lipstick inscriptions.Mobley,in short, showsthat with
womenthere are things to do and just have to be performedin the
say\342\200\224they

right order and with the proper timing. None ofthis, incidentally, requires
a whole lot of subtlety:it works even when the motionsand intonation
are those of a man who s had a few toomany whiskeys.It all comes down
to starting off on the right foot, which means renouncing the position of
papas la Walter
boy\342\200\224\303\240
ofmamas
Kyne\342\200\224and
la Robert Manners;
boy\342\200\224\303\240

it means renouncing the are

superfluous question: you what your parents
wanted you to be?That's the priceto pay for starting off on the right foot
and for mastering the fluid coordination ofone'smotor skills,the price to
56 Film Fables

pay if onehopesto turn out a goodbehaviorist and not a psychoanalytic

Identikit.
The spectatorno doubt feels that he toowould fall for this mediocre
pitch werehe in Nancy'sshoes,and that in spiteofthe fact that this is clearly
lessa love scenethan a pedagogicalone.Rather than making a show ofhis
affections for Nancy, Mobley is giving the sexualpsychopatha distant-
learning lessonon the normal libido, on the libido that has gonethrough
all the stages of infantile fixation and found the right objectsto suck
ofboozeand the lips ofsecretaries*We re now in a positionto
on\342\200\224glasses

explain Mobleys peculiarpower, what he bringsto this place,to the image

the murderer has no chance of It
escaping* is not the father, the law, order,
or societythat one cannot escape*Recall Mobley'sattitude when Amos
Kyne was going off about the duties of
the pressin a democracy,about the
sovereignty the people, of the need to keep it abreast of
all it is interested
in, and so on* Mobleyjust turns his back to him* He is thinking about his
imminent broadcast,and his silenceseemsto be saying: \"Oh!comeoff it!
The people,democracy, the free press,information. That's all a bunch of
stuff and nonsense. What really matters is what I'mabout to do.
Yes,me,
sitting in front of
the camera and entering everybody's living room* The
people don't exist* There are only tele-spectatorsand peoplelike me unto
infinity, can I
people instruct, not as a father, but as an olderbrother.\"
This olderbrother is not a terrifying image of the \"big brother\" varietv*
Theolderbrother is just someonewho can projecta normal image,an image
of the norm,someone who has gonethrough all the stages infantile of
fixation and \"matured\" his libido.Mobleyfaces the murderer as he would
face his kid brother who never left the stage of intellectual and manual
masturbation and ofpapa and mama stories,and is still wondering whether
it was for wanting him that a man and a woman performedthe seriesof
movements known as making love. In short, he faces the murderer as an
olderbrother, the image ofthe normal* The knowing actor occupiesthe
placeofthe olderbrother, that image ofthe normal, the placeof a fully
absorbed,yet self-denied,mimesis* This is the new couplethat replacesthe
duo ofmimesis and the law. The actor has taken overthe placeofthe expert,
absorbedall ofmimesis, and identified it from then on with the positionofthe
onewho knowsand seesyou. In Mobleystelevisedbroadcast,the authority
ofthe brother trumps the authority ofthe father. Thereare, as we know,
two ways ofunderstanding this substitution* DiscussingMelville'sBartkby,
and Pierre, Deleuzeconcocts
the Scrivener a theoretical fable, an America of
brothersand sistersfounded on the destitution ofthe image ofthe father.1
 Fritz Lang between Two Ages 57

Fritz Lang'sfable confronts the fraternal Utopia of American democracy

with a counter-utopia:the world of olderbrothers is not the \"high road\"
of the emancipated orphansbut its opposite,a world with no escape. It is
not the father and the law but their absencethat closes all the doors. It is
the destitution ofsocialmimesis to this relationship between a knowing and
seeingimage and an image known and seen;its destitutionto the benefit
ofthe television image, of the played image ofthe onewho is, and knows,
normality itself, the \"sexually mature\" olderbrother.
Morethan a German emigre's expressionof disillusionment with
American democracy, While the City Sleepsis the mise~en~scene of democracy's
identification with the tele-visual.But this identification is not just an object
for Fritz Lang.It is a new apparatus of the visible that cinema as such has
to confront. We've seenits effects on the fable and on the character ofthe
murderer, so it should comeas no surpriseto find that the expressionsof
his vanquisher, the ubiquitousgod oftele-visual presence, are also marked
by the same stereotypy. We continue to follow Mobley about town, in his
role of lover. Closeto the denouement, just as the murderer bites the bait
of the tele-viserand is about to fall into the trap, Mobley finds himself
the victim of a lover's quarrel with his Nancy. Sheis angry with
fianc\303\251e

him becauseof his escapade with the provocative Mildred, a columnist

working for one of the schemers. Put on the spot by Nancy'saccusations,

the actor-professorMobleyis singularly incapable of of
speaking, finding
the tone of conviction. He tells Nancy he would be devastated if she left
him, but we don't believe him. It isn't that we think he isn't being sincere.
Hejust comesacrossas someonewho doesn'tknow how to imitate, how to
strike the tone and assumethe image someone of overcomeby his feelings.
Earlier on in the film we had seen the adulterous Dorothy Kyne dupe her
husbandand the wily Mildred put on a third-rate performance to seduce
the reporter. But Mobley,it seems,either doesn'tknow or has forgotten how
to act out even his sincerefeelings for Nancy.A sincerefeeling, after all,
must be performedjust as much as a feigned one. The prostitute in M knew
how to expressthe pain felt by the mothers, making the she a
question\342\200\224is

mother?\342\200\224redundant. of
Mobley,conversely,is only capable expressingtwo
feelings: a vain and idioticbeatitude\342\200\224self-satisfied smile,mouth wide open,
eyes inspired\342\200\224and exasperation\342\200\224eyes rolling, hands fidgeting incessantly.
\"Don't bother me with all this,\" his hands seemto be saying at first; then
they tighten up, recalling the hands ofthe murderer, and at any rate miming
the thought: \"I could strangle you\"; finally clenched,his two fists bang on
the table in the most commonplace of angry gestures.Thestereotypy of
58 Film Fables

thesetwo expressions,inane beatitude and exasperation, of coursemirrors

the stereotypy of the murdererstwo expressions\302\273 PerhapsMobley,too, is
a capturedimage, perhapsthe mimeticiansidentification with the image-
that-knows has renderedhim inept at the oldtheatrical and socialgames
ofmimesis, inept at expressinga sentiment through performance.Mobleyis
reducedto stereotypy and made a prisonerofhis own exclusiveknowledge:
to speakfrom far away, in the image of the onewho knows,to those who
are absent.
Faulting the actor in Mobley'scasewould be much harder than in the case
of the murderer. Forall the unkind words Lang had for Dana Andrews, he
must have known at least two about him long beforehe got the cameras
things
rolling. Playing the passionatelover was never this actor s specialty.In Laura.
his big romance film, he cut a strange figure for a lover. Conversely,the one
thing he always played to perfection is impassiveness. In Laura, again, he let
the humiliations the radio star and worldly socialiteWaldo Lydeckerhurls
at the plebeianpolicemanMacphersonroll off ofhis supremelyindifferent
shoulders.Hewas certainly capableofinvesting Mobleys exasperationwith
all the nuances and half-tones Lang might have wanted. The problemisn't
with Dana Andrews'performance, but with the strange sort of actor he plays,
an actor who calls into questionthe very notion of mimetic performance.In
While the City Sleeps, the policemanhas becomethe journalist and the plebeian
taken the placeof the worldly socialite. He has taken over the position of
the writer and replacedLvdeckers radio voice with his voice and tele-visual
image. But this appropriationcosts the promotedplebeiana doubleprice:
he losesthe ability to speak and perform Lydeckerisunending love, and
he losesMacphersonspatience.He is now a prisonerof his new identity,
that of the image-that-knows and that speaksto you from afar. It would
seemthat, outside ofthat relationship,there was nothing left to perform
but insignificanceor a grimace. The image-that-knows can no longerbe a
character that performs.Thetele-visual image, by calling into questionthe
socialperformance the actor is supposedto represent,calls into question
of
the very gestus acting.
As we watch the grimaces,the rollingeyes,and the exasperatedhand
gesturesthat characterize Mobley'sperformancewith Nancy, we may be
remindedof a statement by DzigaVertov from the heroicdays of the
cinema:\"The machine makesus ashamed of mans inability to control
himself, but what areweto do if electricity'sunerring ways aremore exciting
to us than the disorderlyhaste of active men and the corruptinginertia
of passive ones?\"2The disorderof active men, the inertia ofpassive ones,
 Fritz Lang between Two Ages 59

that is exactlywhat Dana Andrews givesus here, like a big kick in the face
of this great cinematographicideaL Lang never really sharedthe ideal of
the exactmechanical man captured by the electric eye. UnlikeVertov, Lang
was never very enthusiastic about a societywhere humans were as exact as
of
machines, and equally devoid psychology.Nordid Lang ever think, like
Epstein,that a feeling couldbe x-rayed and that thought impresseditself
in bursts of amperesupon the brows spectators. ofLang always believed
thata feeling had to be performed,imitated, and if expressionism (a term
Lang disliked)means anything at all, it is that. He always opposed the anti-
mimetic Utopia dear to the avant-gardeofthe 1920s; he always confronted
it with that criticalmodeof mimesis that pits one of its modesagainst
the other.Lang stuck to this personal credofrom the days of the auteur
days of M, when he was master of the
cinema\342\200\224the the way
game\342\200\224all

through Hollywood, when he had a limited say in a where

process actors,
like scripts,were dictatedby the producerand imposedby the industry. But
he always managed to preserve a personalmimetic apparatus and to play his
own art ofmimesisagainst the art imposedupon him by the industrv. The
problem,though, is that in While the City SleepsLang confronts something
other than the industry's financial constraints.He confronts one of the
industry's other faces, this other version ofthe Utopia ofelectricity,though
one that is indeedquite real and calledtelevision.Thisnew machine recasts
the terms of the relationshipbetweenart and industry by redefining the
very meaning of mimesis. It settlesthe quarrel between the utopists of the
mechanical eye and the artists of a thwarted mimesis by replacingboth of
them, by fixing the status of the mechanical image ofthe massesas a self-
suppressedmimesis.
What roledoesDana Andrews play? He plays the tele-visual man, he
performs the relationshipbetweenhis ability and inability. He performs
the tele-visualmans ability to perform only onething: the position of the
one who knows,the onewho, speakingand seeingfrom far away, summons
thosewho are far off to comeand sit themselvesdown in front ofhim. This
ability is ofcoursea challengeto the mimetic arts in general, and to cinema
in particular. We might then thinkof While the City Sleeps as the mise~en~sc\303\250ne

of the tele-visual man. This explainswhy the trio\342\200\224murderer, journalist

chasing him down, and his more important than the schemesand
aide\342\200\224is

intrigues that run rampant in the news empire.This trio is none other than
the tele-visual trio:the tele-visual coupleand its witness,Nancy.Moblev
knows that at the heart of Kyne'snews empire, at the heart this enterprise of
of bringing information to the peopleand of
this counter-enterprise of
60 Film Fables

schemesand illusions,there is ultimately only one important thing: the TV

The all important thing is the apparatus that puts Mobley \"face to
studio\302\273

face\" with the murderer and that is of no interest at all to anyone in the
placeexceptfor Nancy.I suggestedearlier that this trio, and not the show
put on by the schemersin the rat-race for the position,is what gives the
film its formula. A more precise formulation is perhapsin order.The whole
film turns on the thresholdthat separatesthe tele-visualtrio from the world
ofschemesand schemers. The trio is set apart becauseit knows where the
seriousthings are happening.That is the privilegeit has over the others.The
price the membersofthis trio pay for this privilege is a deficit in mimetic
ability, a deficit in the ability to do what an actor is normally askedto do,
sinceit is, after all, what is alsodone in real life: imitate feelings,regardless
ofwhether they are felt and experienced.
makeslittle sense,then, to spend a lot of time trying to determine
It
what is moreinteresting,the hunt for the murderer or the schemesthat
surround it.The real point of interest is this threshold,this relationship
between the tele-visualscenarioand the old scenarioofrepresentation.No
matter how sordid the ambitions and means that reign supremein Kyne's
empire,the ostentatiousparade of interests,passions,ambitions,deceit,
lies,seductions,that oldscenarioof representationis still what infuses
appearanceswith a great mimetic glow. Besiegedby the new power ofthe
rmage-that-knows, mimesis deploysall its oldcharms,including the most
hackneyed,as in Mildreds seductionscene,played by Ida Lupino.Through
this huge glow, Lang showsus what is lacking in the image-that-knows,the
lossof the mimetic power ofseductionthat goeshand in hand with its very
authority. When he is not in front of the cameras, when he is not looking
at a spectatorfrom far awav but rather seeingher up close, when he must
act out a feeling, the tele-visual character is reducedto this grimace.The
film dramatizesthis relationshipbetweenability and inability, each side
criticizing and mockingthe other.Langs seemsto capture the
mise~en~sc\303\250ne

filmmakers forebodingthat perhaps,in art as in this story, the tele-viser

will carry the day and the weak image triumph overthe strong one.Perhaps
it was Lang s premonition ofthis fate, coupledwith his desireto play with
it, to drag it back into the very coreof the art of appearances,that led
him to insist on a short scenenot originally in the script,a scenethat,
paradoxically,the producerswanted to suppresson the groundsthat it was a
touch coarse: the gag ofthe slide-viewerwith whosesecretthe wily Mildred
sparksMobleys interest, though all it really hidesis a crawling baby.AU the
powersofiUusion are contained in this tiny and insignificant slide-viewer.
 Fritz Lang betweenTwo Ages 61

Lets not forget the silent commentary ofthe bartenderwho picks it up: a
smile, a shakeof the head. In his smilewe seethe smile,at oncemocking
and disenchanted,of the director,who sensesthat it may very well be the
end of the line for the old box ofillusions,but wants to play a bit anyway
with what has supplantedit.

NOTES

1. GillesDeleuze,\"Bartleby; or, TheFormula/'in Essays Critical and Clinical

trans.DanielW. Smith and MichaelA. Greco(Minneapolis:University
ofMinnesotaPress,1997)68-90.
2. DzigaVertov, \"We: Variant of a Manifesto,\"in Kino-Eye:The Writings
of DzigaVertov, ed.Annette Michelson,trans. Kevin O'Brian(Berkeley:
Universityof California Press, 7.
1984)
 Part III

If There is a Cinematographic
Modernity
 CHAPTER7

From One Imageto Another?

Deleuzeand theAgesof Cinema

Lune that there is a cinematographicmodernity and that it confronted

:cal c inema ofthe link between imagesfor the purposesof narrative
lcv and meaning with an autonomous power ofthe image whosetwo
characteristicsare its autonomous temporality and the void that
s it from other images.This break between two agesof the image
modelwitnesses:RobertoRossellini,the creator of a cinema ofthe
redthat confronts classicalnarrative with the essentialdiscontinuities
n^uities ofthe real, and OrsonWelles, who brokewith the tradition
irive montage through the creation of deep focus.And it also has

in the background,deployed the arsenal of phenomenology to

e the artistic advent of the essenceof cinema, which he identified
s \"realistic\" ability to \"reveal the hiddenmeanings in people
\303\256ema and
without disturbing the unity natural to them\";1 and GillesDeleuze,
the 1980s set about articulating a theory of the break between
vo ages basedon a rigorousontology ofthe cinematographicimage,
intuitions and theoreticalapproximationsof the occasional
\342\200\242rrect

>pher Bazin find their solid foundation in Deleuze's theorization

difference betweentwo types of images, the movement-image and
Le-image.Themovement-image, the image organizedaccordingto
ic of the sensory-motorschema,is conceivedof as being but one
l in a natural arrangement with other imageswithin a logicofthe set
?] analogous to that ofthe finalizedcoordination ofour perceptions
ions.The time-imageis characterizedby a rupture with this logic,bv
Rossellini\342\200\224of
>earance\342\200\224in
pure opticaland sound situations that
onger transformed into incidents.From thesepure opticaland sound
eventually
\342\200\242ns

emerges\342\200\224in crystal-image,the image that

Welles\342\200\224the

;erlinks up to another actual image,but only to its own virtual image.

 CHAPTER7

From One Imageto Another?

Deleuzeand theAgesof Cinema

Lets assumethat there is a cinematographicmodernity and that it confronted

the classicalcinema of the link between imagesfor the purposesof narrative
continuity and meaning with an autonomous power ofthe image whosetwo
defining characteristicsare its autonomous temporality and the void that
separatesit from other images.This breakbetween two ages of the image
has two modelwitnesses:RobertoRossellini,the creator of a cinema ofthe
unexpectedthat confronts classicalnarrative with the essentialdiscontinuities
and ambiguities ofthe real, and OrsonWelles, who brokewith the tradition
of narrative montage through the creation of deep focus.And it also has
two modelthinkers: Bazin, who in the 1950s,
Andr\303\251 a religiousagenda
firmly in the background,deployed the arsenal of phenomenology to
theorize the artistic advent of the essenceof cinema, which he identified
with cinemas \"realistic\" ability to \"reveal the hiddenmeanings in people and
things without disturbing the unity natural to them\";1 and GillesDeleuze,
who in the 1980s set about articulating a theory of the break between
thesetwo ages basedon a rigorousontology ofthe cinematographicimage.
Thecorrectintuitions and theoreticalapproximationsof the occasional
philosopherBazin find their solidfoundation in Deleuze's theorization
ofthe difference betweentwo types ofimages,the movement-image and
the time-image. The movement-image, the image organizedaccordingto
the logicof the sensory-motorschema,is conceivedof as being but one
element in a natural arrangement with other imageswithin a logicofthe set
[ensemble] analogous to that ofthe finalizedcoordination ofour perceptions
and actions.The time-image is characterizedby a rupture with this logic,by
the Rossellini\342\200\224of
appearance\342\200\224in pure optical and sound situations that
areno longer transformed into incidents.From thesepureopticaland sound
situations eventually emerges\342\200\224in crystal-image,the image that
Welles\342\200\224the

no longerlinks up to another actual image,but only to its own virtual image.

108 Film Fables

Each image, thus split off from other images, opens itself up to its own
infinity. Thenceforward, what creates the link is the absenceofthe link: the
intersticebetween images commandsa re-arrangement from the void and
not a sensory-motorarrangement.The time-image founds modern cinema,
in oppositionto the movement-imagethat was the heart ofclassicalcinema.
Betweenthe two there is a rupture, a crisisofthe action-image or a rupture
ofthe \"sensory-motorlink,\" which Deleuzeties to the historicalrupture
brought about by the SecondWorld War, a time that generated situations
that no longer fit the availableresponses.
Clearas its formulation may be, Deleuze'sdivision becomesquite
confusing as soonas we lookmoredeeplyinto the two questionsthat it
raises.First of all, how are we to think the relationshipbetweena break
internal to the art ofimages and the ruptures that affect history in general?
And secondly,how are we to recognize, in concrete works,the traces left by
this breakbetween two ages ofthe image and between two types of image?
Thefirst questionbringsup what is fundamentally equivocalin \"modernist\"
thought. In its mostgeneralgarb, this form of thought identifiesthe modern
revolutions in the arts with each art's manifestation of its proper essence.
The novelty ofthe \"modern\" is that the essenceofthe art, though it had
always been active in the art's previous manifestations, has now gainedits
autonomy by breaking free ofthe chains ofmimesis that had always fettered
it. The new, considered in this light, has always already been prefigured in
the old,and the \"rupture,\" in the end, is nothing morethan a required
episodein the edifying narrative through which each art proves its own
artistry by complyingwith the scenarioofa modernistrevolution in the arts
whereineach art attests to its own perennial essence. For Bazin, Rossellinis
and Welles' revolutions do no morethan realizecinema'sautonomous
vocation for realism\342\200\224which was already manifest in Murnau, Flaherty, or
Stroheim\342\200\224through
their oppositionto the heteronomous tradition of a
cinema ofmontage illustrated by Griffith s classicism,Eisensteinsdialectic,
or the spectacularism ofexpressionism.
Deleuze'sdivision between a movement-imageand a time-image doesn't
escapethe general circularity of modernist theory. The difference is that
in Deleuze the relationshipbetweenthe classification of images and the
historicity of the rupture takes on a much more complexfigure and raises
a more radicalproblem. The problemis no longerhow to harmonize art
history and generalhistory since,strictly speaking,for Deleuzethere is no
such thing as art history or general history:all history is \"natural history.\"
Deleuzeraisesthe \"passage\"from one type of image to another to the level
 Deleuzeand the Ages of Cinema 109

of a theoreticalepisode,the \"rupture of the sensory-motorlink,\" which

he defines from within a natural history of images that is ontological
and
cosmological principle.
in But how are we to think the of
coincidence the
logicofthis natural history, the development ofthe forms of an art, and
the \"historical\" breakmarked by a war?
Deleuzehimself warns us from the beginning.Although his work discusses
films and filmmakers, although it starts on the side ofGriffith, Vertov, and
Eisensteinand ends on the sideofGodard,Straub, and Syberberg,it is not
a history of cinema. It is an \"attempt at the classificationof signs\" in the
manner of a natural history. What, then, is a sign for Deleuze?He defines
it as follows: \"signs themselvesare the features of expressionthat compose
and combinethese images, and constantly re-create them, borne or carted
along by matter in movement.\"2 Signs are the componentsofimages, their
genetic What, then, is an image?It is not what we see,nor is it a
elements\302\273

doubleof things formed by our minds.Deleuzedevelops his reflections as

a continuation ofthe philosophicalrevolution started by Bergson,so what
is the principleof that revolution?It is to abolishthe oppositionbetween
the physical world ofmovement and the psychological world ofthe image.
Images are not the doubles of things, but the things themselves, \"the set
[ensemble] of what appears that is, the set of what is.Deleuze,
\"
quoting
Bergson,defines the image as: \"'a road by which pass,in every direction,the
modifications propagatedthroughout the immensity ofthe universe/\"3
Images,properly speaking,are the things ofthe world.Itfollowslogically
from this that cinema is not the name ofan art: it is the name ofthe world.
The\"classificationofsigns\" is a theory ofthe elements,a natural history of
the combinations ofbeings. This \"philosophyofcinema,\" in other words,
takes on a paradoxical turn from the very beginning. Cinema had generally
been thought ofas an art that invents images and the arrangement between
visual images.And along comesthis bookwith its radical thesis.What
constitutesthe image is not the gaze, the imagination, or this art. In fact,
the image neednot be constituted at all. It existsin itself. It is not a mental
representation,but matter-light in movement. Conversely,the face looking
at images and the brain conceivingthem are dark screensthat interrupt the
movement in every directionof images.Matter is the eye,the image is light,
lightis consciousness.
We might then concludethat Deleuze is not really speakingabout the art
of cinema, and that his two volumeson images are somesort philosophy of
of nature which treat cinematographicimagesas the events and assemblages
of luminous matter. A type of
framing, a play of
light and shadow,a mode
 CHAPTER4

TheChildDirector

Thereis no denying that infancy is disarming.In either one of his twin

figures, as pitiable or mischievous,the little animal was tailor made to reveal

the world s brutality and falsehoodwith the guile of
innocence.And so
the mind, feeling vanquished from the outset, is immediately rousedto its
guard at the beginning of Moon fleet, when the image presentsall the signs
characteristicof the little animal, his essence, as it were.Age:ten; eyes:green;
hair: red; distinctivetraits: freckles;nationality: English; civil status: orphan;
profession:chimney sweep;fictional tvpe: child of dispossessedfamily The
identification with the voung orphan becomes almost unstoppable once
we add to our natural compassionfor orphans our desire to always have
been one,that most secretdesireto have been our own parents that we
expressmetaphorically in the open seas,the highway, and in worn-out shoe
soles. Would any schoolboytoday, upon seeingthe little whistling animal
push his finger through the bared solesof his shoes,feel glorified because
he can reciteMa just as his homologue,
Boh\303\252me, in Flaubert s time, could
declaim Fashionedfrom the most hackneyedlongings for somesort
Rolh\303\271

of prelapsarianinnocence,isn't the figuration of rediscoveredinfancy a

zero-degree of art identical to a zero-degree of morals, both still stuck in
the pathos of the origin: that green paradisewhere storiesof infancy and
innocence are interchangeablethat Kant and Schiller,to say nothing ofSt,
Augustine, have sufficiently warned us about?
Itmay be, though, that allegingsuch sluggishnessoffeeling only betrays
a sluggishness of thought.After all, it is not always the same fable of
infancy that we seebeing played out in beautiful or ugly images.Some
have built figurations ofa different force atop this commonplaceseduction,
figurations that identify the virtue ofchildhodwith a disputeover the visible

by transforming the commonplace fable of the child who castsa nakedgaze

on the appearancesof the adult world into the site where an art confronts
its own powers,Ozu made a film in the last days ofthe silent period about
two children who go on a hunger strikeafter seeinga screeningat the home
ol their lather's employer ol somehome inovii*. the lalhei plays the
yvIhk
l)iilloonfor the amusement of his boss [I Was ). In the mimes
Horn, but
ol these two children, the art of cinema was forced to confront the social
usesofthe camera and the service it paid to the hierarchy, and amusement,
of the rich.But, Ozu s title says meaningfully, \"I was born.\" Twenty-five
years into the talkies,the boys' hunger strike had become a speechstrike
by a new generation of kids, striking this time around to get a television
set (GoodMorning), Thesetwo young rebelsmount a visual confrontation
between the conversational codesof adult civility and the anarchy\342\200\224that

other conformism\342\200\224of infantile society.With their revival of the insolent

disrespectfor the socialcomedythat Chaplin and Keaton expressedin their
silent choreography, these two boyspush the cinema to confront its old
powers,and, in the relationshipbetween the fable and the figuration, the
whole field of cinematographicrepresentation getsre-disputed.
John Mohunes foolishness,his attachment to his mothers letter assuring
him that he will find a friend in the villainous Jeremy Fox, might just be
another instance ofthe combinedsuspensionofa socialand a
code.\"Sir, I object\":
representational it isn't just the cynicismof Lord Ashwood
that John Mohune objectsto;this young and animal wreaks havoc
na\303\257ve

in the very logicof the play of truth and falsehood, ofthe visible and its

opposite,characteristic of cinema in general and of Langian figuration in

particular. He may very well be insufferable to a director who cant stand
children, but the more important point is that he demandsfrom Lang
na\303\257ve

an exemplarystretching of his art, of the way he puts the play of appearances

into images.
Let s seethe little Tom Thumb at work.Attracted by a noise,the young
John Mohunelooksup and his eyesmeet the terrifying stare of the bronze
archangel who guards over the cemetery.A hand that seemsto comefrom
beyond the grave appearsabovethe gravestone and invadesthe right sideof
the screen. John screamsand faints. A low-angleshot now arranges the wax
facesperchedoverthe child in a nightmarish circle: a mockingreferenceto the
means that the cinema in its infancy likedto use to evokea subjectivevision,
portray the senseofthe abyss, or incite fear in the audience.Thechild now
openshis eyes,props himself up on his elbow,and redressesthe vision.The
whole story ofthe film is here in thesefew shots.Thislittle chimney sweep,
who s in the habit ofgoing down chimneys and who spendshis time falling
into the subterranean coveswhere the villainous flipside of refined society
i an be seen,never stopsredressing the perspectiveand making it horizontal.
I le
goesthrough the film reframing the shots and imposinghis own space,
 with never so much as a
thought to what socialcustom and artistic master)-
picture L/Jgwre] and expressmetaphorically in the vertical relationshipof
the glittering surface to the gloomy deeps, the outward appearanceto the
hidden secret: a certain economy of the visible, simultaneously socialand
narratological, that turns hidden knowledgeinto fictional capital.Lang
extracts a cinematographic fable with different consequencesfrom the topos
of innocencebraving corruption and triumphing: that ofthe redresserof
appearances. Not a redresser of wrongs.He remains within the fable in
the figure of the magistrate Maskew,who resemblesthose he fights against
not so much becausehe is cruel but becausehe is absolutely incapable of
uttering a sentencewithout a doublemeaning-
John, for his part, is as deaf to doublemeanings as he is to any sentence
telling him that what he seeshides what is.
He makes his way through the
studios of the hidden truth imposinghis own gaze and storyboarding the
shotsfor his script,that of the letter that sent him off in search someone of
who has no choicebut to be his friend. Whether it is in the tavern, in the
undergroundcove where the squireis revealed to be the leader of a band
of of
smugglers,or through the windowpane the dilapidatedmanor house
where a gypsy woman danceson the table and toys with the squires desire,
John obstinately isolatesthe figure of
the friend and shootsonly this all
important relationship, which must, by the way, be just as he has it in his
script. And, indeed,it is true that the of
this script with only
mise-en-sc\303\250ne

two charactershas a childlike simplicity:all it doesis invert the logicof the

adult script where John is constantly being told not to believe what he is
told. \"Not words,deeds/' declarethe wisein their wisdom,and the child's
follows suit. Herespondsto the speechestelling him not to put
mise~en~sc\303\250ne

any stock in words with the deaf tranquility of gesturesthat hear and yet
dont hear, gesturesthat extract a different truth from the words.\"What am
I supposedto do with you, make you a pillar of society like myself?\" asks
the knavish gentleman, and the smugglersin the know all roar with laughter.
The child, though, doesn'tspeak or just looks,greets,smiles.
laugh\342\200\224he

Askedto promise \"to laugh\" now and then, John doesso with his whole
body, which is to say he makes a real promiseout their joke.Hisposture of
of
aloneis enough to drain the sentence its \"secondmeaning,\" to force
it to consummate all its meaning in the solespace the manifest. John's of
of
is the polar opposite Edmunds in Germany Year Zero. Edmund
na\303\257vet\303\251

concentrates all his attention and tendernesson putting an end to a father

who is suffering and sociallyuseless. In so doing,Edmunddoes,and doesnt
do, what his teacher tells him to do, that is, what his teacher, as yet another
niembei of flu*
huge N.i/.i.11my, has dour .nid not owned up to doing:
\"You s.ud it, 1 did it.\" John, at the end oi Moonfteet, tells Jeremy Fox the
opposite: \"You said you would abandon me, but you didn't/' But if Jeremy
lox hasn't abandoned him, it is becausethe child directorhas patiently
constructedwith his gaze and gestures a reality where the cynicswords lose
their effectiveness.
This suspensionstrategy starts in the back-room the tavern, where of
the cynic undertakesto educate the boy and teach him that he is not
na\303\257ve

the dicnd he might have thought. \"A friend! You disabuseyourself of that
whimsy/* Jeiemy Fox says, his back turned to the child that he assumesis
listening all the more attentively now that his instructor isn't lookingat him.
II voi 1 know
you needn't look,and Jeremy Fox knows full well that when
\\w .inkisthe pose of a superiorby turning his back to those he's talking
h< oinmands their full attention to his words all the better by their
I\302\273\302\273,
<

fi t of inlet lonty The child makes no reply. He objectsto Jeremy Fox's

lu\\\\\\

a* li non it ions that he shoulddisabusehimself of his

whimsy by suspending
his attention. Fie sleeps,just as he will sleeplater on in the beach hut during
the time that a takes Jeremy Fox to leave,and retrieve,the note telling John
vet again that he was wrong to have trusted him; the same time that it takes
lot the duped trio of crooksto fall into the trap and kill eachother off, thus

awarding victory to the sleepingboy who'sactive even in his absence. What's

the use in taking seriouslywordsthat instruct you not to believethem, save
perhapsfor those power games where you want the crooktrying to sham

you to know that you know what's up? These parlor games are good for the
boudoir and for the coach of the Ashwoods,where the camera shows that
hugging a Pekineseis as goodas embracing a loverand that, when measured
against the glitter ofa diamond,the lie ofa fake love sceneand the truth of
a real sceneof adultery are entirely interchangeable.The film of the quiet
child (\"You dont speakmuch, do you?\" comments the young Grace)cracks
the mirrors where Jeremy Fox and Lady Ash wood confirm time and again
that love and gold are as interchangeable as truth and lying. It hangs on a
truth that the worldly wise have had to abandon to those still untutored in
its ways: the statement \"I lie\" in truth makesno sense. The mothersletter
telling John he'llfind a friend in Jeremy Foxhas more truth in it than Jeremy
Fox'senjoinder:\"Believein the lying Jeremy Fox when he tells you not to
believehim.\" The truth of the mother s letter, however,derives its strength
and fragility from the same source: it hangs entirely on how well the child
can arrange with his gaze and gesturesthe spaceol the visibleso as to frame
the figure of the friend, on how well he manages to extract this figure, and
with it the sp.aeth;H scaursthe truth of the letter, from the spaceof pomp
\342\200\242uid falsehood.
The iictional work of the character and the action of the camera thus
perform one and the same operation:both undo a posture and disband a
group.They both undo the posture of this man in evening clotheswho
so theatrically entersthe smugglers'lair with his conqueringgaze and
disdainful mouth, turns his back to the smugglersto indicate his superior
position,and reaffirms his command with every new lessonin martial arts
he gives to the infantry. The turning point here is not really that the jealous
woman baresJeremy Fox'sshoulderto reveal the mass of scarsleft by the
watchdogs the Mohunes had set on him in his youth. A prior and more
subtle play was neededfor the gaze and voice ofthe boy to frame the wound
on Jeremy'sface, for his to arrange the barelv perceptiblesigns
mise~en~sc\303\250ne

of this assault: a gaze whosehaughty pomp seemsto recede, pursedlips that

have changed expressiveregisters. We have to have seen this play at work
earlier, in the interlacing of medium shots and close-ups, horizontal shots
and vertical shots, shots and reverse-shotsthat the objector, the redresser
of appearances,introducesat the party when he arrests the splendorsof
the flamencoand the ordinary games of easv seductionwith his little song.
Here'swhere the child's extracts the visibility of a wound from
mise-en-sc\303\250ne

the visiblegames ofrefined society,and where John draws his \"friend\" into
his frame: in the close-upofJeremy Fox, with John singing in the reverse
angle, where we seethe hand of the by now vanquished paid seductress
resting on the shoulderofthe man who has already beenpulled away from
her, her gesture of seductionnow one of impotence;and in the long final
shot of the staircase,where the ladies'favorite, standing on the threshold
betweentwo spacesjust split asunder by the boy, follows with his na\303\257ve

eyes the child who doesn't look back as he makes his way up the stairs. \"Are

you going to destroyhim too?\"his rejected lover asks him. \"There is far
more danger of him destroying me,\" he replies. And, in fact, in this extra
step the destructionofthe destroyer has already begun.Thescenealready
announcesthe final exit from the beach hut\342\200\224walking backwardsto hide the
fatal wound from the boy\342\200\224of
the man we first saw standing so arrogantly
at the door the tavern. of
The film rendersvisible the trajectory ofa wound.Much as the attentive
gaze ofthe child directormay searchfor traces ofthat wound in the set of
the abandonedsummerhouse,it is actually in the pursedlips of the adult
that he manages to bring it to the light of day. But the film also traces
the story of a higher seduction.
The of with its total
mise~en~sc\303\250ne na\303\257vet\303\251,
dependente on (he si enaiio ol (he IcMei .nnlwli.il s K no more .mlht\302\273ii/,<

than the secreto( a mutual love and reciptocaldebt is anothei distribution

ol the visible that oilersthe libertine something like a Pascalianwager:
blas\303\251

die charm of a higher game, a principleof discernmentthat locksup the

bidden/exposed games of deceitofthe Ashwoodhouseholdand turns the
nmmphant cynicism ofdissolutegentlemen and alluring women into pure
a I (ectat ion.Thisreversalin the fable is ofcoursematched by a corresponding
reversalin the mise-en-scene, Jeremy Fox'sexasperation with the spaniel-eved
child who keepson pesteringhim was originally Fritz Langs exasperation
with this idiotic story and this child actor that, as always, he didn't think
was \"very good,\"Langs whole experience as an exile, finding at the heart
k>\\ the best politicalregime the penchant for lynching and organized lying,
M\\d his whole art as a filmmaker, as somebodywho arrangesimagesin
their essentialdeceitfulness, were they not equallv revolted by the obligation
<>/
having to put into beautiful images this unlikely story about a trusting
i hi Id who disarmswith his smilea world where
deceptionis the rule? But
perhapsthe directiondraws its strength from this very anger. After all, the
directionof the child is nothing other than the knowing direction
\"na\303\257ve\"

of the director, who despises the sentimentalscript and can't stand the
child s fact is that, sinceSchiller,sentimentality is onething and
na\303\257vet\303\251,The

\"sentimental poetry\" another. poetry is poetrv that doesn'tneed to

Na\303\257ve

\"induce a sentiment\" becauseit is naturally attuned to the nature it presents;

sentimental poetry, conversely,knowsitself to be separatedfrom the lost
paradiseof immanence by the distanceof sentimentality, and so it must be
shapedagainst that distance.Thesentimental work, the modernwork if you
will, is a thwarted work.In the thwarted directionof the filmmaker Fritz
I
.ang we encounter the same tensionas in the style ofthe novelistFlaubert,
The same, but reversed.For the \"dry\" subjectofEmma Bovary s miserable
love affairs, Flaubert abandonedthe lyricism of St. Anthony. Hisproject,and
his torture, was \"to write mediocrity well,\" Directing well amounts na\303\257vet\303\251

to the reverse:Lang has to acceptthe lyricism he abhors.Flaubert took his

revengewriting Lang will take his shooting While the City Sleeps.
Salammb\303\264,

The lyrical film of victorious innocence and the film noir of triumphant
villainy are intimately linked, each oneseemingthe othersmirror image as
well as its exact opposite,Langsdirectionofthe child who sleepsevery time
he is told he s being lied to, and opens his heavy eyelidsto ascertain each
and every time that the facts beliethe claim, foreshadows his direction ofa
sleepingpopulaceruled over equally by the crime coming from the bowels
o( the city and by the lies of the men in the glassoffice who pretend to
bung to d.uknessof night the light of democraticinformation. The
the

portrayal of the obsessivecriminal who writes Ask Mother'on the wall

of one of his victims and of
the reporterwho \"never asked\"his mother
will be Langs revenge for everything he had to concede to this freckled
orphan.And Mildreds (IdaLupino)conquering seduction the reporter, of
meant to help (though at his own expense) the same GeorgeSanders,will
compensatefor all of
Lady Ashwoods vain simpering. The real tension
animating Moonjleet's seeminglylimpid surface and exemplaryfluid narrative
is that the directionhas to efface its normal powers:it has to subjectthe
play of day and night, of
high and low, of
appearance and its opposite,to
the intrusions of
the disarmedand disarminggaze the child who comes of
looking for his \"friend,\" his victim. All that s manifest in John Mohunes
of
gaze, beyond the sharedsecret an unhappy loveand a hidden treasure, is
the far from secretivesecret the equality of of
the visible, the very equality
from which, when all is said and done,every demonstration the game of
of appearancesderives its power.Isn't the ultimate secretof the image that,
to the frustration of
the clever, it contains no more or less than what it
contains?All the boy has to do to win is insist on the obstinacy the of
cinematographic lens,which baresthe image all metaphor and seesin it of
nothing beyond what is horizontally availableto the gaze.But the strength
of the figuration, its implacable logic,is that it keepscollapsingeverything
to this one level,that it continuously subjectsto this single equality the great
and false-bottomedmachinery of appearance\302\273

The sceneat the well is a microcosm for this narrative logic. Inside
the well whence emerges,proverbially, the truth of the lying surface, and
held aloft by the cord of adult machination, the child with heavy eyelids
leans forward with all the strength a child usually reservesfor the swing
and stretchesout his hand to get the diamond, horizontal with his gaze.
This superb,if topographically implausible, shot condensesthe redressing
of appearances,the great game of converting verticals into horizontals.
This is the higher game of the direction,of the directorwho can seduce
becausehe has himselfbeenseducedand thrown off kilter.How elsecan
we explainLang s irritation with a film he directedunwillingly, but is loved
by all the same? Hisnotoriousanger overthe last shot, \"added\"
cin\303\251philes

at the insistenceof the producers,expressesperhaps just the vexation of

someone who, in orderto make a film he couldlive with, had to fall for
the pitch of the boy. It cannot be denied that the final shot of the
na\303\257ve

boy openingthe grilledgates of the manor house to await the return of

his friend is lessbeautiful than the shot of the boy watching the boat bear
away his hicnd )miny 1 ox, whom he docs not know is dead, But isn't it the
casethat what so vexesthe directorabout the shot is that it steals
\"added\"
the unmistakable signature of the magician, who reassertshis mastery by
parading before the child the cinematic truth that his friend is dead and
doesn'tsee?The ending \"imposed\" upon
that John, with his spaniel-eyes,
him doesn'tchange anything
at all in the meaning of
the narration.The
same cannot be said about the happy ending of
While the City Sleeps, where

Mobley disgustedby Walter Kyne's decisionto award the position to his

wife's incompetentlover, learns over the radio while on his honevmoon
that Kyne has gone back on his decision. This ending actually reversesthe
entire logicof the film by awarding the final victorv to a moral that had
not been given the least bit of substancein the narration, Lang, in other
words,would have had every reason to be angry about it.If he wasn't, it
must bebecausethis reversallendsitself to the final pirouette ofthis master
who rendersequivalent the commercial constraints ofthe happy end and the
casualnessofthe creator who returns his creation to the emptinesswhenceit
came.The hat the reporter on his honevmoon throws over the telephoneof
intrigues becomes a mirror image of the crossof the LegionofHonorof
the last line ofMadame Bovary> Moonjieets \"bad ending\" is not an instance of
the artist beingbetrayed by the laws of commerce, but the incurably inane
illustration ofthe law by which the idiot annuls the power ofthe cunning.
The telephotographicsignature is powerlessagainst that: John Mohune,like
I :mma Bovarv, missesthe artists self-affirmationas
cunning.Thev both miss
the game of mastery expressedm the disappearance of the artist as the work
\"closesin\" on itself, and in the signature with which the artist reminds us he
is himself the instrument ofhis own disappearance. The superiorpower of
art is that it acceptsanother disappearance, that it tracesthe imperceptible
line separating this other disappearance from the banalities oftrade.In this,
the child always trumps the man.
 Part II

ClassicalNarrative,RomanticNarrative
 CHAPTER5

SomeThingsto Do
ThePoeticsofAnthony Mann

Somethings a man has to do, so he does'em.

The formula is perfectly polished,like the film to which it gives its moral;
Winchester 73, of ofall Anthony Manns Westerns, is undoubtedlythe one
whoseformulas and images seemto have been most carefully polished.We
know, though, that the hero in the film does,and very obstinately at that, only
one thing, or rather two things in one:he chasesafter the man who stolehis
famous Winchester, which is to say that he chasesafter the bad brother who
killedtheir father. Thedirector,on his side,makessure he diligently includes
of
in the film everything a gooddirector Westerns should:strangerswho
ride into a little town in turmoil, a provocation in a saloon,sharpshooters
showing off their stuff, a chase in the desert,a pokergame that ends badly,
the defenseof a camp against the Indians,the storming of a house where
somebandits have holed up, a bank holdup, and a final settling scoresof
amidst cacti and boulders.Mann includesall the episodesrequiredfor the
exemplary constructionof an exemplary fable. In the courseof the chase
that will, in goodAristotelian logic,reveal the identity of the parent and
of the enemy and, in goodWestern moral, bring down the criminal under
the blows of the man of of
justice,the Winchester the title passes,in one
close-upafter another, from hand to hand until it comesto its final resting
placeunder the wordsTHEEND.And the heroine, that eternal problem of
Western narration, circlesround with the rifle only to find the same owner
in the end.
Thereseemsto be a perfect harmony between the doing and the having-
to-doof the directorand his character, betweena narrative logicthat is
sure to satisfy every semiotician and the moral of the story, where justice
triumphs at the end of a number of trials.And yet, this neat harmony
runs into trouble preciselyin the identification that normally binds both
lories:in the ihaiaucis way of being, kin M.m Ail.ini ( j.imt s Stewait ) inav
.issiiirLola (ShelleyWinters) all he wants that he is as sc.nedas everyone
ekebefore the his every gesture contradictshis words.
Indian attack, but
I le evidently has a knack for expressinghimself in sententiousformulas,
but his gaze and demeanorseemincapableof embodyingeitherjustice
or vengeance.The signs of reflection that constantly flash acrosshis face
and his unflagging attention to how the present circumstancemay bring
him closer to his goal, or distancehim from it, only bring this incapacity
into even sharperfocus.He avengesa father much as he would do anything
else. This perfectly accomplished justice, this rifle that eventually returns
to its legitimate owner, just makes a certain absenceall the more manifest.
Pirsscd against the flank of a horse, the plaqueon the butt still nameless,
the Winchester itself seemsfrozen in its status as an exhibitionpiece, as
alien even to its owner. It as if, like Stesichores Helen,who never left Sparta,
but whosephantom alone elopedto Trov to fuel wars and epics,it was
only in a dream that the Winchester made its way from contestshowcase
to Western museum. As if all the others, all thoseblinded at the sight of
this repeating rifle that shinesonly when we, the audience, are in the reverse

angle,as if all of these\342\200\224themerchant and the Indian, the weakling and the
braggart\342\200\224had
died because they mistook this phantom for the goodold
IIlie left in the care ofDodgeCity.
The whole story, in short, might have been no more than the dream of
the children we see in the first images of the film pressingtheir foreheads
against the glass of the showcase,the same children who were granted,
becauseof their goodbehavior,the privilege of beingthe first to caressthe
object.This metafilmic hypothesisis not altogether incoherent.Winchester
/1banishesfrom Manns universe for a long time to comethe childhood
and family blissthat had beenso presentin the Indian fableDevilsDoorway,
Manns previous film. It is as if childhoodand family blisshad been sent
back to the reservation with the Indianswho thought they were home and
on their land, and as if this departurehad closed all the doors on the dream
of ever living harmoniouslyin onehomeand fatherland. Maybe this is
what the \"Indian turn\" of the Western really means.Not the discoverythat
Indians are also human beingswho think, love, and suffer, but rather the
leehng that their expropriation spellsout a common destiny and forecloses
the romance that would engender,simultaneously, the virtuous American
man and \"his\" land. Isit just chance that, seven years later, in The Tin Star,
it is the son of an Indian who brings back the childhoodand family bliss
so radically absent from the evele of Westerns shot with James Stewart?
 I lie fiction of tin-
expiopilatedIndian is die fiction of the closeddoorof
the paternal home.Therecan be no doubt that this soberlawman draws all
his strength from embodying nothing but this expropriation in the face of
beingswho Ve never quite recoveredfrom their childhood. We don'tneed to
read an Oedipalsymptom into the family photo that, howeverimplausibly,
adorns the wall of the murderous son in Winchester 73.This much, though,
is certain:even if the photo is an index of
recognitionfor the heroine
and for us, it does not give the least bit of substanceto the family home,
where nobodycan imagine James Stewart savoring the tranquilitv of work
done,the Winchester hanging on the wall, ShelleyWinters in an apron, and
a bunch of
childrenwith his same blue eyes.Lins companionurges him
to think about after, but in vain: that time will never cometo distract the
vigilanceof this lawman and inscribeits imaginary in his presentgestures.
That s the singular strength of this character who embodiesnothing and
that James Stewart plays with a meticulousattention that seemsalways to
be the manifestation of
a moreprofound distraction. of
The image the
father and of the paternal home, of
law and morals, never really take hold
in Stewart. It seems of
he'snever heard this sheriff calledWvatt Rarp,
who apparently doesn'tcare all that much about his star and who seems
of
as attentive to the orderliness his territory as he is indifferent to what
goeson beyondits borders.Stewart is, at best, a cross-bred figureof the
less fleeting than that
law\342\200\224barely
of
the sheriff of
Crosscutin Man of
the West, and barelv more seriousthan the law embodiedby the villainous

fudge Gannon in The Far Country. No sense law or of of

belongingto an
ethical community introducesthe slightestdifference into the care Manns
hero takes in avenging a father or a brother and the care he takes in leading
Is
his herd or prisonersto the slaughterhouse. it even possibleto imagine
a father for this man who shows himself to be the son of
his own actions
with every collected step orgunshot}Minn's hero doesn'tembodythe power
of
or the dream justice,but is protected, It
instead,by his abstraction. is
this that rendershim immune to the fascination that leads to their doom
of
all thosewho seein the radiance the rifle an object desirewithin of
their reach.Oneneedlookno further than this for the secretbehind the
paradoxical invincibility of this hero who is so often woundedin the script
and whom the camera, as if for the run of
it, lovesto placeso ostentatiously
in the sharpshooters line fire.of
The hero'sinvincibility, of course,is primarily a matter of the contract
between the directorand the audience,a contractMann subscribesto
without reservations.It is onlv fitting for the hero to triumph, for the man
who said \"I'lldo this\" to do it, lot flit ht m lu luliill the dtsjns of all the
peopleout there in those darkenedroomswho have gotten used to the fact
th.K they'll never do what they would have hoped to do.Mann, though, still
has to put the generosity or this contract into lablesand images.And in
11inIi, the one who has to do this, the actor, is not really made for the part.
|amesStewart, Mann said,is not the \"broad-shouldered type,\" so that you
must take a lot of \"precautions\" if you want to show him \"taking on the
whole world.\"This system ofprecautions is none other than the logicthat puts
the (able into images.Look at Dutch Henry at the top ofthe cliff, wasting
all his. ammunition on the pebblesmethodicallythrown by his brother.
What exactly could make his arm so uselessand his sight so troubled that
a shadow is all he can shoot at with the Winchester of his dreams?What
else,if not this absent lawman so removed from every fascination for every
(Itvting object that he assumesthe illusory consistencyof a specter?Look
at the old rancher in The Man from Laramie charge full speedahead and shoot

\\ttutu wmu into the scenerywhile his foe is leaning calmly against a tree.The

simplematerialist explanation\342\200\224the old rancher is losinghis sight\342\200\224cannot

account for the material oddity of the scene. The camera fixed on this
bucoliclandscapeshowssomething else:the old mans aim is off because
the present/absent man in his sights is the man he saw in his dream.
I xt us followthe camera in Bend of the River as it
pans sidewaysand scansin
the night the facesof Cole(Arthur Kennedy) and his companions,who are
all listening to the soundof rifle shotsfired in the distance,a visible/invisible
iullillmcnt of the promisemade by Stewarts/MacLyntockshallucinated
face when he, facing us, shouts after a foe who has already turned his back
iohim: \"Somenight I'llbe there.\" The man of their dreams is the one who
shoots and kills in the darkness,which does not mean off~cameray sincehis
absenceis, on the contrary, presenton all the faces.From insidethe saloon
m The Far Country, we hear the sound of the little bell attached to the saddle
lelnying in the darknessoutside the steps of the horse.How could this
IV-movie killer not miss his shot after being driven mad by the jingling of
that bell?We know that the bell attached to Jeff Webster's saddlehad been

given to him for the little ranch out in Utah by the dreamer Ben, who dies
becausehe cannot sacrificethe coffeefor the trip that was to take him to the
house ofhis dreams.Thereis no doubt that there'llnever be a ranch in Utah
lor Jeff Webster. And Harry Kemp, in The Naked Spur, gives up reclaiming
the ranch in Kansas that had sent him out on his bounty hunting journey
in the first place.It is this expropriation that accountsfor the strength
o( Manns heroesas they face the unending army of those who trade the
sin.il/ change 0/ their lost homes, those who flunk thy belong (two haunting
words)and crave to possess: merchants and prospectors\342\200\224whether honest
or gold fever brutally illuminates their faces and weighs down
not\342\200\224whose

their gesturesat the decisivemoment; professionalbandits whose every shot

brings them inexorably closerto the most fascinating name and the most
of of
fabled banks,those an abandonedcitv where only death awaits them;
adventurerscaptivated by the whims of a star or owners so possessedbv the
glitter of
their possessionsthat they have gonemad or blind Although they
were onceupon a time masters of the game, thev will all fall, as the story
nears the end, before this man who embodiesneither the law, nor the land,
nor the paternal image:this man whosewhole secretis to know that the
of
door the houseis closedfor goodand who passesby, coming hither and
going thither, tormenting their dreams with the mute jingling of of
the bell
the expropriated.
of
That s the point wherethe moral the fableand the logicof the narration
meet.In the final moment, all must fall before the man they have time and
again reducedto impotence,but who alone is capableof accomplishing the
some things a filmmaker and his hero have to do together. He alone can reach
the end together with the audience and signify them by riding away on his
horseor wagon with the heroine, even though he has no interest in her or in
starting a family. Herroleis simply to announce, like thosefour ritual verses
in Euripides,that the expected and the unexpected have changedplaces,
that the artists have held up their end of the contract, and that the audience
can now go home.1 Victory belongsto the one who can crown the action
with the wordsTHEEND, the one who knows,like the Stoicsage and the
Aristotelian poet,that action, tragedy, and life can only be dominated by that
measure of time that lends them grandeur and a set number of episodes.
The others,the senseless,the bad poets,the \"evil\" characters and the extras
dont know that. They seeno reasonto put an end to their storiesor family
romances,or to have done with the law and the father, gold and rifles.The
sageis free to leave them to their folly, and Manns hero sometimesthinks
he can play the sageby turning a blind eye to them. The poet, though, is
less tolerant than the sage.Tragedy, Aristotle says, must have a beginning,
middle, and an end.It is only right for the bad guys to be shot down, or
elsethe Western, missingan end, would never have comeinto beingin the
first same is true of tragedy. Meanwhile,for all thosewho'd
place\342\200\224the

rather never have donewith anything, providenceinvented television and

the serial, both of which can last as long as the world:all they need to do is
announce that tomorrow, like today nothing will happen either. The time
ni llu* i iik'iii.i is iliffrii'iit. It is tin- mm i\302\273l rlh iLntinj\302\273,
shot m I he Naked

Spur tcveals, Iron) the killers position,it llir top of the cliff, the body
\\\\\\a\\

ol the old prospectorlying peacefullyin the sun, a donkey licking his face.
Mann leavesit to Bensindefatigabledonkey to provide the commentary on
(his tender and bucolicimage of the common cruelty of the fable and the
film: \"I lesdone dreaming the impossible/'Ben, played by the anti-Stewart
Robert Ryan, mav marvel at his knack for telling jokesand for shootingat
deadmens boots, but he too will tip over to the other side when his time
comes. Following the apex when he believeshe'sin control ofthe action, it
will be his turn to be caught by a weapon of fortune, the nakedspur James
Stewart usesto make his way up the rocky face of the mountain.
In short, to do and to have to do are morecomplicatedacts than it might
srun at first, disjointedas thev are by the logicof some things. It doesn'tmuch
matter whether Manns hero is a man of justice or a reformed criminal,
since that is not the sourceof his quality. Hishero belongsto no place,has
no socialfunction and no typical Western role:he is not a sheriff, bandit,
lanch owner, cowboy,or officer; he doesntdefend or attack the established
older,and he doesnot conqueror defend any land.Heacts and that's it, he
doessomethings. With the exceptionof The Tin Star, his actions cannot be
identified with any duties towards a group or with the itinerary that reveals
that groupsvalues.Outside of the recurring have are
formula\342\200\224to to\342\200\224there

no similarities at all in Stewart s paths as a man ofjustice,an adventurer,

and a reformed border raider and that River of No Return on which ex-con
Robert Mitchum rafts downstream with his son and Marilvn Monroe,who
just quit the saloonwhere she was working as a singer.Premingers is a
family triangle, a Bildungsrotnan about a son who understands, repeating the
i n

gesture, how his father could have shot someonem the back and still have
been justified; it is a journey homeward that beginswith the trees cut down
for buildingthe house and ends on the word home. Preminger epitomizes
and stylizes the Westerns family romance or ballad with a masterly touch.
I leslike
Macpherson,a masterful plagiarist reviving a past moment of art
or conscience. Mann, for his part, makesno posthumousWesterns. There
can be no doubt that all his Westerns belongto the periodof the end
of the Western, to that moment when its images were beingsevered from
its beliefsand put to use in a new game.This is a time of moralistsand
atcheologistswho invert the values ofthe Western and askthemselvesabout
the elementsand the conditionsof possibilityof the American epos;of
psychologistsand sadists who never tire of harping on the ambivalence
of feelings and relationships,or of tracking down ghosts and exposing
violence; of plagiaristswho lilt from the dictionary of fables and images
the elements for posthumousWesterns composed of imagesmore beautiful
than natural; of show-offs who try to ally the shock imagesto the charms of
of d\303\251mystification\302\273

Mann is none of these It is true that he opened,with Daves, the

things\302\273

wav for the rehabilitation of the Indians, and he is morethan willing to

help himself to that man of woodVictor Mature to sap the moral of the
Blue Coats and to sow discord in the barracksand homes of all aspiring
Mann can also compose
Custers\302\273 scenesof violence and cruelty, rituals
of humiliation, whoseparoxvsms, in Winchester 13,The Naked Spur, The Man
from Laramie, or Man of the West, always exceed
what the simplenarrative logic
of the confrontation calls In Man of the West he includesa striptease
for\302\273

scenewhoseviolence is all the sharperfor offering nothing that couldcome

within reach of the censors Following the path of pioneersand scissors\302\273

gold hunters, in Bend of the River and The Far Country, Mann lends to the
romanceof these first settlers its most lyrical images, as well as its most
picaresqueand parodie He glidessmoothly from the pranks of the
ones\302\273

old captain and his black acolyte on the steamboat\342\200\224both of them straight
out of Mark Twain and the legendsof the Mississippi\342\200\224to this unreal,
low-angle shot of the ballet of immigrants standing in silhouetteon the
boat deck,waving goodbyeto the curious crowd gathered on the quay and
greeting a new world with oneand the same Hecan type the settler gesture\302\273

population of the Klondike, or compose the craziest of genre sceneswith

the syrupy and flowery romances ofthesethree ladiesofripe age and pure
morals before brutally interrupting it with the unloading of a corpse,or
condenseinto a few interrupted hanging, an improvised trial
images\342\200\224an

on a poker equivalencebetween law and lawlessnessthat reigns

table\342\200\224the

in Judge Gannons In contrast to the colorful charactersofthe first

territory\302\273

settlers,Mann populateshis lastWesterns with crepuscularcharacters\342\200\224the

blind rancher and his half-crazed son, the colonel drunk on vengeance,the
oldbandit in the midst of his band of degenerates\342\200\224all of whom take a
pieceof the legendof the far-West with them to the Mann is not grave\302\273

interestedin returning to the first settlersof the myth, or in the forms of

defecting from it; nor is he interested in psychologizing or aestheticizing\302\273 We
must not conclude,though, as is sometimesdone,that Mann is nothing but
a craftsman,a drudgewith no sensibilityfor Beforebeing a moralist or ideas\302\273

a craftsman, Mann is an artist, that is, he is first and foremost what Proust
understoodby an artist: a politeman who doesn'tleave price tags on the
gifts he gives. He is a classicalartist, more interestedin genresand their
 potential (I).ui id kjundsand (Ik 11 irson.nn s. 1 In I.issu.il artist is not
\302\273 \302\253

ml eiest cd in myths 01 in d\303\251mystification, but in flu* veiy specificoperation

wheieby a myth is turned into a fable, into a muthos in Aristotle's sense\342\200\224a

iepiesentationof men in action, an arrangement of incidentsthat has, as

Aristotle says,a certain grandeur, a propermeasure,a tempo that distinguishes
it from the time without beginning, middle,and end ofthe world.
Somethings, then, have to be arranged into a proper time in this
autonomous system of actions that does not simulate a curtain
openingonto
someepisode supposedlytaken from the courseof a story. This system is
such that it cannot be identified with any time, whether lost or regained,
with ,1 lost childhood,the learning of a value, or with the embodimentof
a ill earn; it has its own rhythm and follows its own logicas it moves across
these fragments of myths and storiesand their aleatory arrangements. No
nun et how different Manns scriptwriters may have been,and someamong
them had big names and personalities,the action in his films obeysa few
i i>ns\\<mt rules in terms of individualization and construction.The first rule
concernsthe singularization of the main character. It is very rare for this
character who comes from elsewhereand representsno one but himself not
( be placedfrom the opening shots ofthe film at the center ofthe action
c >

aiound which everyonewill revolve.He bearsno insignia that would make

his function clear, his stature is by no means imposing,and yet all he has
to do is enter the frame for the action and the charactersto comeunder his
sway which means, first of all, under his gaze.He designateswith his gaze
(he point toward which the action must unfold. \"Camp here/\" announces
t he
guide in Bend of the River and the conveyorm The Manjrom Laramie, and the
old prospectorcannot but acquiesce: \"You re the boss.\"
We don't know, any
more than the prospector does,what this here is, orwhether it is by chanceor
design that the hero comes upon thesecharred planksand tattered uniform
remains.We now seeJames Stewart, a hat already in his hands, scanning
the rocky mountaintops trying to discerna causefor an effect we dont yet
know. As he lays the hat backdown, the camera follows him, dippingdown
to the ground where the remains of a blue tunic lie.We intimate that were
witnessing a funeral rite, though we don't know yet that it actually is one.
With his gaze, then, the hero arranges the action, the places,and the char-
actci s that take part in the action. Hedeterminesits direction,and introduces
us to it as if we wereprivilegedspectators.The hero, albeit so unheroic in his
stance, displaysthe constancy of someonewho'scompletely in control of
(he action of the film. If he is parsimoniouswith his words, it is becausehe
has made his whole bodv into the narrative voice that gives bodyto the story.
 1 lie lu'to is alone, set apait lioin the others Ironi the very first images.
I'hemodality o( his relationshipsis that of the encounter, that's the second
major rule.Mann'scommunity is formed around the encounter, and not
around a place,the family, or an institution.The act that founds this
community is always a situation that has to be judgedin a glance, a decision
taken on the spot-When the camp is set, Stewart/MacLyntock goes out
reconnoitering and his gaze falls on Kennedy/Colein the hands of some
men whoVe tied a rope around his neck,A rifle shot and a relation is forged.
\"The horse,I didn't steal it, if that makes any differenceto you,\" Coletells
him.Evidently, this makesno difference at all to the ex-raider Lyntock,
even now that he'sreformed.The only differences that actually matter are
the differencesperceivablein the instant it takes to survey the situation and
make the decision. \"Strictly a gamble/' the man whoseneck has just been
saved says a little later.The gamble ofthe community is renewed with each
passinginstant, and the community often wins.In fact, it goeson winning
as long as the pure logicof the snap judgment and the gesture it prompts
are playing: a silent chaseof the Indiansset in the form of a midsummer
nights dream; a saloonexit that has becomethe stuff of anthologies;a
crazedstampede acrosstents in flames; the methodicalshootingof the
pursuerswho fall for the trap ofthe false camp fire. It only losesin the final
moment, when gold fever breaksthe seeingand judging machine and when
Cole,his whole bodyundergoing an abrupt conversion,declareshimself the
leaderof those who Ve just given Mac Lyntock a terrible beating. He takes
advantage of a favorable situation to collectthe ante, though in so doing
he drives the situation to the edgeof the oneiric. The camera now frames
him grotesquelycaressinghis chin with his pistol, when what he should
actually be doing is putting a few bullets in the man he has just betrayed.
From this moment on, Coleis portrayed as the leaderofa troop ofghosts
decimatedby a specter. Betweenthe initial decisionand the final usurpation,
the time of the film would have beenthat of the episodeswhere the gamble
ofthe community is renewed, where new encounters\342\200\224with the merchant,
the gambler, the captain, the goldhunters\342\200\224increase and complicate the
community
h\303\251t\303\251roclite formed by people who are all going in the same
direction,or at least claim to be.
Another instance ofthe samerule is the woman who appearson the deck
of the boat where the hero is being chasedin The Far Country, Hereis Jeff
(JamesStewart)hiding in Ronda's(Ruth Roman) bed,renderedinvisible to
the eyes of his pursuersby the bar to vision\342\200\224made by the show
screen\342\200\224a

of outrage put on by a woman in nightgown who acts out for us a fake

eioiusune sttaight out o( vaudeville.Mtu It l.iu i miln dim, I his lake scene
will leal sacrifice of love since,m (lie meantime, the original
(urn into a
iMoup has had to accept into its ranks the villainous representative of the
law, derangedby his thirst for hanging, and the disarming representativeof
humanitarian love, who abandonsthe father for whose studiesshe had been
slaving away as the char-womanof a saloon. The action, and here is the third
iule, has to be constructedin the minuscule gap between the moral of the
sciipt and the logicoi the encounter. The script of The Far Country is the
apologueof a selfish man who is as indifferent at first to the entreaties of
the lover oi humanity as he is to the spectacleof honestprospectorsbeing
oppiessedby a villainous gang of thieves, but who in the end picksup his
to avengehis friend and purge the colony of scum.Still,no matter how
i\302\273tm

attslvmg the image of the armv of honestpeoplesuddenlyforming m

. lose i.mks behind Jeff Webster, or how tender the final embracewith the
K)V( i of
humanity, the end of the film does not point to any community,
Mined or regained.
\302\273
The film ends on the shot of the little bell,a sibling, so
id speak,of the spur and the Winchester. Theseare all metaphorsfor the
passage,lor the obstaclesthat chance will always put in the path ofthe hero
and for the weapon of fortune found to face it. They are the weaponsof
the landlessman who vanquishes all of those whom the god of gold has
d nven mad by the inconstancy ofdesirehe mints, final metonymies for the
logic of the action, for the singular complicityof the action itself.This
lawman's real community is not with these decentpeople who feed on bear
steak, coo flowery melodies, and dream of having a town with sidewalks,

lampposts,and a church. His community is with all the peoplethat the logic
of chance and of thinking only from oneepisode to the next has yoked to
his footsteps:the people he encounters in escapingfrom a hanging or foiling
one, people
the he travels with and who are, due to the very needsof the

voyage, only temporary partners\342\200\224now of

objects distrust, now subjects
one has no choicebut trust in. It is with all these peoplewho demand his
constant vigilance, his unflagging attention to the signs what they mayof
of
be plotting (strictly a gamble) so that he is sure to be in control the gesture
that foils it.
The community of
this lonerwho s beenset apart from the
others from the very first shot is not the ethical community ofthose he
lights for, but that born from his encounterswith he acts with
the people
ami who require him to be always on the lookout for ambiguous signs,to
i ub shoulderswith dreamersand their potential to distract, to be
constantly
lookingand always acting, doing each and every time the some things that draw
t he episodesto a close
and drive the action one step further. We seenow why
the moral of the fable pushing the hero to identify himself with the ethical
community is ncvet realizedsavein the conventional imagesof the happy end,
though without there being materialized in these images either happiness
or the end.Mann never allows his heroto forget, in the throes some of
communitarian or romantic effusion, the thing he has to do* Hehas to drive
the action itself, his every gaze and gesture have to be pure embodiments of
of
the risk of the action:the risk of the particular task\342\200\224whether justice or
the script has entrustedto him, but also the risk
profit\342\200\224that
of the logic
of filmic action itself, whoseessenceand peril has to be gambled in every
episode. For filmic action, onceit has been released from the shelterof
myth Bildungsroman, is left at the mercy of each moments varying
or of the
intensity, much as the hero is at the mercy of a hand inching towards a belt
or a kiss distracting his vigilance.
The point ot conjunction of this doublerisk shared by every art that
urepresentsmen in action\" bears an old name that defines an equally old,
yet always fresh, problem:identification. Plato laid down the terms of the
problem in his discussionof the peculiarpleasurespectators,even those
ot high birth, derive from shudderingand sheddingtears over the ignoble
sufferings of characterswho are naught but phantoms.This pleasurein
suffering is the work oi the deceitful passionof identification, which seizes
the soul and nurtures its intimate divisions.We are all well acquainted
with Aristotle s decisive response to Plato'sindictment.Tragic action isn't
a portrayal of charactersthat requiresidentification, but a construction
of incidentsthat regulates the play of identificatory passionsthrough the
grandeur, temporal progression,and cadenceof its episodes. TheWestern
is not tragedy. But its art, like every art that representsmen in action, is
defined by its ability to maintain the separation,even in their conjunction,
of the time of aestheticemotion and the time of anxiety for the danger
threatening the characterin the fable.The temporal cadence specificto
cinema concentratesthis questionon the constructionot the episode, and
here Anthony Manns genius really shinesthrough. Mann works with two
major forms of constructing episodes, oneofwhich plays on the different
intensitiesof the episodes, the other on their similarities, one on the
continuity between episodes, the other on their properqualities.To the first
type belong those forms of dramatic constructionof the pathetic event
that can be illustrated with two episodes, one from The Last Frontier and the
other from The Tin Star, I am thinking ofthe scenein The Last Frontier where
the old fur-trapper Gus is sent to his death by one ofthe aspiring Custers.
The horseman forges ahead in the glade in alternating long and closeshots
11i.iisuddenly reveal,i touching behind flu- in .ill flit
\302\273 s wah hmg him.
\342\200\242.,
sli.id\302\273

)us( (hen, die camera abruptly goes elsewheie and (ins' companion
li\303\242mes

|edni a thicket seeminglyunrelated to the placeof the action.Heclimbs a

nee,and it is from his point of view that the camera, taking in the idyllic
landscapewith an overheadshot, revealsthe immense army ofIndianslying
on the ground awaiting the man on horsebackriding amidst the trees in the
middle distance.And it is still from Jedspoint of view that the camera pans
upwards, first to the host offeathered Indianson horseback,and eventually
to the Indian who bends his bow at the exact moment that Jedsrifle shot,
Iollowing the camera, hits him.OldGus will die, but the spectator will
not have confused the emotionof filmic action,which changesspatial

lelationshipsand the quality ofsilence,with the anxious identification with

(he promisedvictim. Counter-suspensemight not be a bad name for this
processthat purifies pathos by creating a decrescendo at the very heart of the
progressionofthe inexorable.Thisprocessreoccurs, albeit differently, in the
assassinationofthe doctorin The Tin Star.What makes this sceneso peculiar
is not that Mann elidesthe act, but how he managesto arrest all anxiety with
the shock of the first shot.The doctoris leaving the house where he was
delivering a child when, in the darknessofthe forest and the night, a boot
and spur shine on the right of the screenwhile left and back the doctors
carnage starts making its way down the narrow path. Our knowledgethat
death awaits the doctorproducesthe relief of the next shot, ofthe bandit
politely asking the doctorto help his woundedbrother.It producesthe
lelaxation that gives a purely dramatic interest to the scenesthat follow,
which culminate in the carriage riding into the festivetown, where we learn,

through the suddenchange of expression in the faces ofthe townsfolk, that

t he personin the carriage,the hero ofthe party, is dead.If we can enjoy this

scene,it is becausewe already know what Mann doesnot show us, because
he manages,with a single shot, to arrest empathie anxiety in order to release
aesthetic emotion.
Dazzling as thesedemonstrationsare, it is not in this form that we find
Mannsmost singular genius, but in the secondform, which plays on the
equivalent intensity ofthe episodes, all ofthem seeminglysaturated by the
most minute events, by gesturesand linesas clear as they are ambiguous, all
closedin on themselves and yet invaded by parasitetemporalities.Hereis
Mannstrue kingdom,in thesemoments of restthat are anything but restful,
in these nocturnesthat punctuate the voyage ofthe community,
h\303\251t\303\251roclite

and not in those requiredsceneswhere he excelsnonethelessat doing

just what has to be done.In the foreground,two characters in profile\342\200\224
half towards us, lull engulfed in then precanouspailncrslup\342\200\224are
(tiriu'il

discussingwhat they have to do the next day and what the night sounds
portend. Behind them, the camp fire confusedly lights up the bodieslying
down on the groundor the wagon, so that we dont really know who's
awake and who s asleep,who s listening and who isn't. James Stewart wraps
his hand around a woman's body and she, in the next shot, turns her face
and smilesat someone who s no longerthere and whosemeticulousness
she perhapsmistakes for love. As the camera pans sidewaysto wherecoffee
is beingpoured,the reflection from a flame casts a glare on a steaming
cup and on the conversation that gets going around it, on the storiesthat
remain half-told, and on the memoriesand dreams just then working their
seduction.Now is when a kiss is sometimessurprisedby someonelooking
on, and sometimesbenefits someonefeigning sleep. This is a moment of
the night when a sense,a romance, or a myth insinuates itself and injects
its diffused temporalitiesinto the time of the gaze and the decision: the
illusion of a past, or a future, or of a legend,of a privileged relationship
even in the community ofchance. Betrayal is always closeon the heelsofthe
seductive appeal of a moment of rest in the past or the future.
The best examplesofthis are, undoubtedly, the moments ofrest and the
nocturnesthat make up the plot of The Naked Spur, the paramount film of
the community. HowardKemp setsoff after the wanted criminal
h\303\251t\303\251roclite

BenVandergroat in the hopesof collecting the five thousand dollar bounty

on his head to buy back the ranch he lost. In the courseof the journey,
Kemp has to take on board an old prospector,a military deserter,and the
immaculately coiffed little savageaccompanyingthe runaway Ben.Thefilms
whole story is the common voyage ofa group necessarilycomplicitin their
difficultiesand constantly threatened by the betrayal that the gallowsbird, his
hands tied, foments with his incessstnttalking. The drama, though, revolves
less around Bens(RobertRyan) loquaciousnessand perpetualsmirk than
around the incessant approximations of bodieswhose gesturesand speeches
suggestboth complicity and betrayal. Onenight on the edgeofa river, Lina
(Janet Leigh)is wiping dry the sweaton the wounded Kemps forehead. Hes
deliriously talking in his sleepto the who left him, and Lina answers
fianc\303\251e

and comforts him in her place. The next morning Lina is shaving Bento the
left ofthe frameand the old prospector Jesse(MillardMitchell),lying down
next to them on the right, is talking in his sleepabout how he squandered
away his life on always uselessprospections. He is unwittingly telling the
murderer, without talking to him, wherehe can crack the complicity. Kemp,
anxious to get his wound bandaged,callsfor him from the other side. 'Til
do il,\" says 1 .ma. IoJames Stcwat t s clei nal <|ih m n\302\273n,
\"Why/' ( why did she
lake i.ireof him (he night before?Why bother taking <aieol someonewho
never takes care of anybody?), Lina respondswith one of the two answers
availableto a woman, each of them summedup by the two rivals of The
hir Country, r 1eranswer is not the provocativeRonda's\"Should there be a
reason?,\"but the sympathetic \"Somebody
Ren\303\251es had to\"True,somebody
has to take care of the sick companion\342\200\224the logicof the present and of
tin- commumtv demandsit. But meanwhile,the other logic,ofthe past and
the Iuturc, or romance and betrayal, is holdingsteady on its courseas Lina,
her laceturned towards us, attends to the woundedman lying down in

pi oh le and defendsthe murderer, this man who is not \"her\" man but who
ha*. <|tnte bv chance become her guardian and fed her dreams of owning a
i am h in California. Robert
Ryan takes advantage of the time it takesfor the
wounded man to get up with a limp to loosen,his gesturebarely noticeable,
i he yjt th ol the saddle on Kemp'shorse. The next shot showsthe group
matching in order towards their common destination. Kemp, chilledto the
bone, pays no attention to Ben, who next to him is treating everyoneto his
I an
nly romance while surveying from the cornerof his eye the girth sliding
along the horsesflank. Suddenly,all dialoguecomesto a brutal halt, and
by the next image we seemto be watching a silent film: James Stewart falls
hom his horseand rolls down the side of the hill; everyone lookson in
silencewhile Stewart makes his wav backup to the trail and onto his horse;
an exchangeof glancesis the extent of the confrontation between Kemp and
Ben. Night has now cometo prolong,and alter, the silenceof the event.
The camp fire lights up Janet Leigh'sface.James Stewart is lying down, his
head nodding occasionally,RobertRyan is lurking in the shadows,and
Millard Mitchellwakes up with a start and looksaround before falling
back asleep. Kemp getsup limping at the sound of the cry of an animal.
The camera frames Lina lying down, Kemps gaze, again Lina in close-up,
Kempwrapping his hand round her, Lina turning her dreamy face,and lastly
Benssmirk as he observesthe whole thing. Nothing much has happened
really, exceptfor somemovements:somebodieshave beendrawn closer and
made more complicit and also moreapt for betrayal, the one dramatized
in the next scene. In the cavewhere the group oftravelersstops to wait out
the storm, Ben with onelooksends Lina over to Kemp, who is, as always,
keepingguard over the caves entrance, on the border between the outside
darknesswhere the rain resoundsand the interior darknessthat engulfs the
supine bodies. In the next shot, she'skneelingin front of the crouching
\\uiard and talking to him about the music of the rain and of guitars on
 Sunday dances,o( what she'lldo in Abilene, the /mal destination of this
voyage, and in California, the final destination of her dreams, ofher home,
lost and refound, of having a ranch, a family, and neighbors.The indifferent
music of her sentimental words backsup the imperiousmusicof the shot
reverse-shot,which Mann never abuses,though he s fully cognizant of its
powers,ofhow its rhythm leadsmen to the paroxysm ofanger and a man
and a woman to that abandon that culminates in a kiss.Ben, of course,
flees during this minute of distraction, onlv to be immediately denounced
by the sound of a rock and recaptured by his guardians nimble hands.But
can anyone say that the sceneo( complicity was really just a ruse? \"It just
happenedthat way,\" Kemp snapsback sarcasticallyat Lina.But his irony is
a bit excessive. This is how things \"happen\" in the movies: by a field that
narrows down to one bodv while another exits the frame; by a two-shot that
draws bodiescloserand the alternating shots that intertwine their dreams;
by the rockingto and fro of speechand image, of shot and reverse-shot,
ofthe one real image and the imaginariesthat transform it into the ruse of
an absent totality; by the rhythm that lulls night watchers to sleepbefore
a sound off-camera awakes them. That's how seductionworks and, deep
down, James Stewart is wrong to complain about it. Besides,the ones who
always get tangled up in the traps of seductionare the wise guys who inanely
identify the effect ofa voiceor of an image with their sorrycalculations,the
oneswho think they know everything about deceitand seduction,and never
the onewho knows onlv the presentmoment and the courseto follow.
The hero'ssuccessis the successof the film. He alone is synchronous
with the time of the action, with its linear directionas well as with the

discontinuityof its episodes. All the others are always chasing after the
straight line of their dreams,always lookingout for the right moment to
strike.Their weaknessstems from the fact that they are characters of the
Western, figures of its mythology, someofthem dreamersofthe impossible
and others simply trigger-happy. But Manns hero is no longera figure of
the Western. He is simply the representativeof this actionthat moves
acrosstheir territory, intersecting their paths and dreams.Hencehis strange
demeanor: this hero in the leadroleis already as distant as the passerby.He
is someonewho knows the gesturesand the codes,but can no longer share
the dreams and the illusions.More than a character that weloveand fear for,
he's a straight line stretchedbetween the filmmaker s point ofview and the
viewer s.Victor Maturesclimb in The LastFrontier is a metaphor for this, but its
actualization to be found in James Stewart s performances, in the way they
is
ensure the constant occupationof time. The very specificfunction of this
always busy hand tli.it r. onii m
\302\273 now in t lut* h a blanket M\\d (hat knows
l*\302\273i

at tin* decisive moment to \\vm h loi the spin 01 the pebblesis to maintain
the steady progressionof the action, to reject the supplenessof dead time,
of the time that narrates on its own and generatesempathy at bargain prices.
We don't have time to fear for Stewart, Hes so busy that he makes us too
busy to have the time to fear for him. With his constant occupationoftime,
he affirms the slight distancethat separatesthe representativeofthe action
I torn the characters of the Western; he makesthe character as efficient as

,iny character in Ford (Manns avowedmodel),but without taking into the

bargain bords insistence on embodiment and moral empathy. And there, the
moral of the work prevails over the moral of the fable, the doing over the
luvmg-to-do. Stewart seemspredestinedto embodythis distancewith his
ga/i\\ his expression, and his gesturesof a displacedman, of someoneout
of his element in the Western that portrays in their complicity the comedy
ami the incarnations ofthe American idealThe bestillustrations of this are
WrnA of the River, The Naked
Spur, and The Far Country, the paradigmatic trilogy
of action in Mann. The Man from Laramie already obeysa different logic,even
though it cannot be deniedthat Stewart, in this film more than any other,
plays the man who comesfrom elsewhere,the wounded and humiliated
hero who ultimately prevails.But the strangerssolitudethat Manns camera
mk\\ Stewart'sperformance wereused to constructing everso patiently at the
lu t of the complicitiesof the communal voyage is m this film already a
\302\253u

leal in c of the script,and this changes the relationshipsbetween bodiesand

the logic of the action.The passerbyhas now become an investigator whose
investigation turns him into a voyeur spying into other peoples affairs,
into a decomposingfamily and a sinking universe.The end ofthe Western
has already imposedits agenda and determinedthis story that isn't really a
Western at all, but a detectivemelodrama about an investigator whose clues
lead him to the heart of a much darker secretthan the one he was looking
for: the symptoms ofthe decadenceofa tribe and a world, the nightmares
of its master as he sinksinto darkness,the frenzied gesturesof the empty-
headedheir, the silent intrigues of the bastard child who manipulates the
meaning of the story to make sure he becomes soleheir.In this world
consumedby a self-destructivedrive, Stewartsfragile invincibility takes on
extra-terrestrial powers.Itis like a ghostthat this man with an arm in a sling
otdersDave (Arthur Kennedy)essentiallyto commit suicideby pushing the
wagon loadedwith rifles overthe cliff in an act that demandsfrom Dave a
t h ousand times more strength than he would have needed to disarmhis foe.
I he
triumph of this lawman closes
a n action that is no longer his.It marks
his definite passage(o the othei side,a ghost with nothing elseto do other
than leaveto its ghostly destiny the by now provincialworld of the Western.
The final image we have of James Stewart indicates clearlyenough that he
will not return to get entangled in its games.
With his departure,a certain way of of
composingthe form the action
and the subjectivity of the hero becomes Mann had to develop
impossible\302\273

of
a dramaturgy specificto each the actors\342\200\224Victor Mature (theHuron),
Henry Fonda (theprofessor),Gary Cooper(the annihilator)\342\200\224he cast in
his subsequentstoriesof savageintrusion or final return to the land of the
Western. He also had to create a specificmise~en~scene to go along with, or
thwart, thesestoriesthat range from the coherent figure of
a parody taking
the genre to the grave to the contradictory figure of a new beginning that
organizes its own end.Parody triumphs in Man of the West, where the West
has become the workaday world of respectablemarried people, and where
the five thousand dollar bounty and the ranch it was going to buy back in
The Naked Spur have become a two hundred dollar purse to hire a qualified
for the offspring of the honorablecitizens of GoodHope.
schoolteacher
Insteadofthe headstrongcompanionsplayed by Arthur Kennedy and Rock
Hudson,all Gary Cooper can enlist as a helperis a card sharpwithout cards,
with a pot belly and a bowlerhat. The film, with its outmoded story of
decadence, takes us on a trip to the land ofshadowswhere we meet a killer
and his band, all still held captiveto the infantile dream (\"We shall be rich,,>)
ofthe fabulous gold of a town that no longer exists.Therants ofthis killer
are thoseof bad theater, or of the nightmare. And indeed,all we would
have to do to turn the whole story into a nightmare would be to add two
shots to the film, one of Gary Cooperbeinglulled to sleepby the jolts of
the train and the sight of charming greenlandscapes,and a secondofhim
waking up with a start at the criesof \"Forth Worth, everyone down.\" But
that s not how Mann organizes the relationship between these two worlds,
which he does,instead, in the passagefrom a shot to a reverse-shot. There
can be no doubt that the silent houseGary Cooper peeks into through the
broken windowpane is abandoned,that all one will find behind the Colt
shining alone in the darknesson the other side of the doorare ghosts,or
the surviving debrisof the Western: a crazedold man and his supporting
characters, who were given, much too late, a part for which they no longer
had the voice, head, or faith; a crazedold man who could only find these
supportingrolesto relivethe spectacleofbygoneWesterns. 'Tve never seen
anything like it in my life,\" he says,gloating overthe senseless
fight in which
Link Jonesstrips the crazy Coaley of his clothes.And, in fact, the two
shipping si eues (li.K piiihlnate (he Mm Ii.ivi (Ik halliu mated violence of
gesturesth.it have lost their dtanutic rationality, and in the (aceof which the
inoial satisfaction of witnessing Coaley'swell-deservedpunishment seems
almost trivial. Ultimately, it is the cinema that we hear dreaming aloud about
the dissociationof the elementsof a genre in the strange meditation ofthe
t ousin sitting next to Gary Cooper on the wagon.True, it certainly is an
absurd enterpriseto start again and again the cycleofrobbing,killing, and
lleemg,and there can certainly be no doubt that the old old actor
man\342\200\224the

who likes to think he knows a lot about directionand production\342\200\224is a little

u>// in the head. And yet, there is no other home or family for the supporting
i liaracters of the Western who failed to adjust in time to urban morals and
psychoanalyticmelodramas.Nothing left to do, then, but go all the way to
(he end, to the abandonedtown where the ghostsand supportingcharacters
ol the Western will seejustice served, where the representative of the new
moials and reality will, as any goodaccountant should, frisk through the
pocketsof the cousinwho had relievedhim ofhis purseand then crosshis
ai ins as if he were laying a corpse out in a casket.The logicof conflictual
i
omplicity that joined representative of the action to the character of
the
(he Western comes crumbling down:complicity has becomeonly a ruse,and
(he common voyage a final visit that buriesa world goneby.
Maybemore than in this fiction ofcollapse,and more eventhan in The Last
honttcr, where a disrespectful Victor Mature annihilates Custers legendwell
In lore the respectable Garv Cooper annihilates the legendofDocHolliday,
ii is m The Tin Star, the film dedicatedto that third great character of the

Western universe,the sheriff that the real suspensionof Mannian action is

most manifest. The Tin Star is a fiction of return that seemsat every level to
opposethesefictions ofannihilation. It bearsall the traits of a posthumous
Western.What couldbe more exemplaryof that than this story ofa sheriff
who hasto imposelaw and orderin the faceof the angerofthe townsfolkand
the cowardiceofthe towns dignitaries?And what better characterand actor
to dramatize and give psychological depth to the story than HenryFonda, in
(his role ofa disenchantedman who rediscoversthe reasonssymbolizedby
the star? James Stewart would not have fared so well had he had to portray
a similar ethical and psychologicalradicalization in an episode of The Tar
( .ountry. It would be difficult to picture him giving Anthony Perkinsa course
in the finer points ofbeinga sheriff that objectifies,in pedagogical items, all
the traits of his performance, or to imagine him expressing the tracesof the
past, the dilemmasof the present,and the flame of a rediscoveredfuture
with Henry Fondasflexibility7 and ease.This Bildungsroman that combines
the education ol the green sheriff the moral trajectory oi the disenchanted
man, and a whole nest of other family romances,runs counterto all of
Mannsrules about adventure, the encounter, and the decision. HenryFonda
may teach his pupil to take the split second necessary to make sure his shot
is good,but he himselfseemsoften to pausea split second longin his too
of
contemplation the motherand child before him and in recallingthe
motherand child who've died.However, unlike Man of the West, where the
directionsometimesfollows, and sometimesexceeds,the logic the fable, of
in The Tin Star the tension between the logicof the script and the logicof
Mannian action gives the directionnew energy. Mann extracts a lessonin
film directing from the heart of
this story about shootingand moral lessons.
Instead of the visitor who annihilates the ghosts of the Western, here it is
the that splits apart the script and organizesa confrontation
mise-en-sc\303\250ne

between two Westerns.

Lookat the crazy stampede the fanatical posseBogardusleads in of
pursuit of the assassins.On his orders,they surround the house where the
banditsare hiding out, set fire to its four corners,and, for a final touch, send
a flaming hay-cart crashing into it, at which point the livestockfleesthe barn
and, in the haze of
flame and smoke,gets all mixed up with the horses of
the delirious This spectacular
posse. is the visual demonstration mise-en-sc\303\250ne

of its own inefficiency: the two bandits, course,have fled. And now, of
in the void it leaves, another film starts:a kid on horsebackapproaches
the still-smokingruins, seesa dog, and whistlesto call back the fleeing
animal. Another developsat this point.Much more than a face
mise-en-sc\303\250ne

capableof moving sensitive hearts, the kids arrival gives this new mise-en-
a rhythm with which to structure the action.Henceforward,the time
sc\303\250ne

of the action will be governed by a very specificinfantile rhythm: that of

nursery rhymes. The strident and boomingband disappearsand is replaced
by the rhythm of
nursery rhymes: the sheriff chasesthe outlaws; the child
chasesthe dog; the dog tries to find its owners;Henry Fonda tries to find
the child.Another sort of community is formed. The childs
h\303\251t\303\251roclite

insouciant gait, instead ofbeing a sourceofanxiety and identification, lends

a strange serenity to the action, the serenity Fondashowsashe meticulously
preparesthe small fire with every way the oppositeof the giant
brooms\342\200\224in

flames ofthe bad smokesthe bandits out of their cave.

mise-en-sc\303\250ne\342\200\224that

Thefates of the characters are settledin the flow ofthe action and not in
the predeterminationsof the script.The last episode confirms this lesson:
Bogardus' defeat is another holiday granted to the Western character, to
the bad actor and the bad director, onethat is perhapsmore subtle,despite
 es, (h.m (he apologui ol
.ippc.il.un Man the Wi'st, bet ausr i( is worked out
<>/

(loin wilhin (he tension [between (he script .nul (he misr-cn- smir, from within
(he logic (hat relates the doingand the havmg-to-do.
Maybe the best way to put it would be to say that in the fates of the
vanquisher and the vanquished we have two denouementsthat don't
coincide. Anthony Mann does not shy away from the shot of the tin star
shining \"anew\" on the breast of his hero.And, for the first time, the final

image lets us believethat the hero will really return home and start a family.
A classicalartist would hardly think of achieving his effects by mocking
conventions; nor would he dream of allowing himself to identify the end
oi a story, the fulfillment of a narrative contract, with the metanarrative
argument of the end of an era, a myth, or a genre.Decadence makesfor
Ik ap philosophy.The only goodend is the one that contains the action
\302\253

with in its proper limits, the one that leaves open the possibilitythat the
.u (ton may be continued, restarted.This is what s calledthe risk ofart, and

Anthony Mann has always assumedthat risk. Beforethe remake of Cimarron,

Mann never let the action of any of his films gain its effect by overflowing
into legendor by beingidentified with this or that place,moment, or figure
of (he Western epic.He always constructedsingular and self-supporting
Westerns, and never Westerns that traded on someform of recognition.
At the \"end of the Western\" he even managed to give us many unique

ligures:a freeze frame (TheLast Frontier); an immortalization (TheTin Star);

an execution (Man of the West), The cemetery keeps its spoils, the treasure
box remains open,and the image couldmove again.Whether it doesor not
depends,it is true, on conditionsthat go beyond the powersofthe classical
artist, who subscribesto genres and to the invention ofnarrative contracts.
One thing will always eludehim: the regime of sight that gives genres their

visibility, the perceptive contracts that the power of merchandize signswith

(he public gaze.This is the realm of two othercategories: sometimesof
Romantic artists, but more often ofnon-artists.Anthony Mann is neither,
which is why his films seemso distant to us,2

NOTES

1. \"Many are the shapesof Heavensdenizens,and many a thing they bring

to passcontrary to our expectation; that which we thought would be is
not accomplished,while for the unexpectedGodfinds out a way.\"
1 would like to thank Jean-ClaudeBiette, Bernard liisenschitx,Alain
Faurc, Dominique Sylvie Pierre and GeorgeUlmann, who made
Pa\303\257ni,

it possiblefor me to seethese films again when no theaters ever screened

them.
il

't
 CHAPTER6

The MissingShot
ThePoeticsof NicholasRay

of
I was for a long time haunted by a shot.At the beginning NicholasRay s
They Live by Night, the escapedconvictBowieis about to enter the garagewhen
there materializesbefore him a body the likesofwhich no one had everseen
before:dressedin a mechanics coveralls,this beingwho is neither an adult
nor a child,masculine nor feminine, who is entirely adapted to the space
where it evolvedbut entirelv alien to the peoplewho occupyit, is a being
ofa singular
possessed beauty born from the impossibilityofclassifyingit
under any of the genresofbeauty known to the cinematographic repertoire.
It is as if all of a sudden,a beingremoved from resemblance,a real being,
had cometo exist in the cinema, the evident causeof an unparalleled love.
Bowies all-consuminglovefor Keechiewould then perfectlyparallel our love
for cinemas power to create a body.And Cathy O'Donnell s downcast eyes
and androgynousbody,much morethan HarrietAndersonsprovocative
bosomand looks in Summer with Monika, would be perfect emblemsof the
fierce independence characteristicof the auteur cinema celebratedby the
Nouvelle Vague. I dreamedfor a long time of writing about this amazing
shot, a shot that would be, for the cinema, what the apparition ofthe young
girlsin flower on the beachesof Balbecwas for literature: the construction
of a completely novel individuation, of a love objectthat is oneprecisely
becauseit has been strippedof the identifiablesexual propertiesthat make
it an objectofdesire.
Reason inevitablv won out:the shotdoesnot exist.Bowieand the audience
had met Keechielongbefore the scenein the garage. Still, my having seen
it for solong was no trick ofmemory, and I was not surprisedto discover
the same errorin another commentator, as if we neededthis missingshot
to contain the impressionleft by this body.After all, the apparition of this
singular body and novel beauty has indeedtaken placecinematographically.
1
say an appaiitton, mhI not the mif.u liions upMii^M- of being IIi.it .1 certain
phenomenology has taught us to imposeon the image,becausean apparition
is (he outcome of numerous appearancesand disappearances,additions
.nul subtractions.Cinema isn't the art of visual evidence celebratedby the
aesthetesof the 1960s. The young girl with rosy cheekson the beachin
the hook was born from a web of
metaphors,and Ray needs more than
.i cinematographic trope to get this body removed from resemblance to
materializebefore us.
Wh.it he needs,first of all, is a synecdoche. At first, there is nothing other
than the sound of a car engine and two headlights in the night. In Edward
Andet sons novel, Keechies car drives by but never finds the wounded man it
had gone after, Bowie,who is completely lost in his interior monologue. In
I he dim. Bowieslowly extractshimself from under the billboardgiving him
t ovei and walks towards the two
lights in the night followed by a dog that
appearsout of nowhere.A glare of light violently illuminates the windshield
.md rearview mirror, but leavesin the dark this face that seemscompletely
hidden under a hat pulledall the way down overthe eyes,so that all we see
of it are two unevenly lit up cheeks. This bodys center of gravity, it seems,
is m the hands tightly claspedaround the steeringwheel.\"Any trouble?\"
asksthe young man standing to the left of the frame and with his back to
audience.\"Couldbe/'repliesa white voicethat injects the codedindifference
of passwordswith doublemeanings with a hint ofsomething else,a slight
insolence,something like a secretshrug ofthe shoulders:\"Couldbe.Could
be something else.Whatever difference that makes/'
A few shotsand reverse-shots is all it takesfor thesetwo people to exchange
id die night information about different things that \"couldbe.\"Theyoung
man starts making his way around the car to enter on the passengerside,and
it is only now that the face of the young girl at the wheel appearsfully in

(he light, for us, though not for him.Thesecondhe enters the car, darkness
again descendson the two bodiesnow sitting sideby side. The car has barely
left when it reachesits destination.The driver, still in the dark and shot from
t he back,
says shehas things to do and pointsthe young man in the direction
of the cabin where he'llfind his two partners.
The paradox is that for this apparition to materialize, its traits must
appearoneby one.Like the smile of the cat or Rodrigos thirty sails,1all
we have at first are this voice, these cheeks,and these hands floating in the

night as if severedfrom their body. Cinemahas to frustrate the natural

teaI ism of mechanical reproduction.Indeed,it is through a very specific
operation of subtraction that the film distancesitself most sharply from
the novel it .id.ipis.
I is how, in the novel, Keechie appearsto Bowie,
1\303\250re

who has finally made it to the hide-out:\"Bowie now saw the girl standing
behind the screeneddoorway of the store.Shewas dark and small and her
high pointed breastsstretchedthe blue cotton her of shirt/'2This is
polo
an ordinary, a plausiblevision of of
the object desire,though I dont mean
with that to accuseAnderson of of
being a novelist ordinary tastes. is It
obvious that he wants to capture how this young and coarserunaway stares
at this standard image of I
the feminine body And doubt Nicholas Rav
of
had anv objectionsto the image the novelist gives the ordinary dreams of
this rural America during the Depression that he himself traveled through
when he was involved in thosebig cultural projectslinkedto the agricultural
policies of the New Deal.It's just that the cinematographic invention needs
another body of desire.The directorhas already intimated this in the image
of the two heads touching that precedes the openingcredits:\"This boy
... ...
and this girl werenever properly introducedto the world we live in.\"
This alsomeans that they cannot be introduced\342\200\224to us, to each other\342\200\224as

the subjectsor objectsof the desiresof rural America, as a girl with high
pointed breastsseenbehind a screeneddoorway The directorseparatesthe
imagesfrom the very start.The ordinary objectof desire,the silhouette of a
woman with high pointedbreasts,was left behind,up there on the billboard
Bowiewas using for cover.Venturing forward from the billboard,Bowie
headstowardsuncharted territory, towards this fragmented bodv that so far
existsonly as two cheekslit up by a glare of light, two hands claspedaround
the steering wheel,and a white voice.
Somethingessentialhappensin the gap between two types ofshots,the
overhead helicoptershots of the three thieves' escape and the closeshots
of Bowie and Keechie's first encounter.The film swallows in this gap the
form the realist novel uses to develop an intimate connectionbetween
socialstereotypesand the minute perceptionsand sensationsof individuals.
Between the objectivism of the escapeand the subjectivism of the gaze in
the night, between the silhouette of the billboardand the half-face in the car,
the directorhas undonethe literary form, call it literary cinematographism,
through which Bowie was \"introduced\" to his world and through which
Keechiecouldherself be introducedto it without much ado.Edward
Andersonsituates his novel on the zoneof indecisionbetween objective
narration and interior monologuethat appropriateseverything for itself,
the stream of consciousness that collapsesevery distinctionbetweenthe
events of the world and the hero'sperceptions,between the stereotypesof
the self and those of It makessensethat literature should create
society\302\273
this o( intimai y between the internal and (he external monologue and
m\302\273n

Mcieotype, as that is how it compensatesfor the weak sensiblepowers of

its medium, how it puts the flesh of shared experience on the words of the
made up story. Literature createsa continuum between the language of
intimate emotionsand the neon signsof a highway, and in that continuum
we see the story of the individual fates of the characters imprinted on the
shaied canvas of a society.But the cinematographic invention has to be
< oust meted against the grain ofliterary cinematographism. Cinema has to
put strangeness m the bodiesit presents,introduce a distancebetween those
it bungs together. The body Bowiemeets in the night is totally alien to his
\"i onsaousness,\" he cannot assimilate it to the stream of his perceptions.
I hat bodv is also, and for the same reasons,resistant soustrait|
\\
to our
poweisi)i identification.Theremust be, at first, only a glare of light and an
iiidiflcient voice if the intimacy without familiarity ot a purely romantic
irlaf lonshipis gradually to come into being.
The initial abstraction that separatesKeechies bodyfrom Bowiesstream
ol consciousness, and with it the cinematographic figure from literary
i
mematographism, lays the ground for a second operationof subtraction
ihat isolates the two lovers in the thieves' hide-out.In the cabin where
Keechiesfather is driving a hard bargain for his servicesto the three thieves,
a dooropensand we finally seeall ofKeechiestanding in the doorway with
hei boyishlooks,her hair pulled back, the collarof her unisexcoveralls
upturned, and her arms so laden with bags that the high pointed breasts
that stretchedthe fabric of the polo shirt have disappeared. The brutal
l eveise angle shot of Bowies gaze that follows is not enough to create the

intimacy between the two young people. Two peopleexchangingglances is

a rather coarse way of indicating a budding love, and Keechieand Bowie
spend verv little time lookingat each other.Keechie especially,sinceshes
always so busy. Keepingherself constantly busy is her way of beingfully
present to, but also fully absent from, her fathers and her uncle s world.
Keechiesabsentpresencecuts right through Deleuzes very neat opposition
between the functionality of the action-image and the expressivepower of
the affection-image.The film captures the different intensities of sensation
in the execution of ordinary, daily taskslike fixing a heater, pulling out a

jack, changing a car wheel, or massaginga wound.Theseare actions that

t wo peopledo
together, or that onedoes while the other looks on, actions
whose propergesturesand time are much bettersuitedto indicating the love
budding between two people who don't know what love is than any ecstatic
exchangeofglancesor conventional approximation ofbodies.
 Ray, to develop I be dtama, lias to isolate the two young peopleeven when
they re surrounded by those who do not allow them their intimacy. This
calls for a new operation that imposestwo overlapping yet incompatible
spacesonto the homogeneous sensoriumcreated by the \"cinematographic\"
proseof the novel. Everything happens around the way Ray handles an
ordinary task, the fixing ofthe smokingheater, a scenethat the novel, true
to its realistic logic,constructsas a natural modification of the sensations
of the young man:\"Thevoice of the girl, Keechie,made Bowies veins
distend and there was a velvety, fluttering sensationin his spine.Shewas
squatting over there now by the Bunkskeroseneheater, the brown flannel
ofher skirt stretchedtight around her bottom, showingT-Dub how to keep
the wick from smoking/'3The trajectorv of the sensation,from the heater
in the Bunk to the flutter the voice sendsdown Bowiesspine,is onceagain
headedtowards an ordinary representationof the objectof desire:fabric
stretchedby a body'scurves.The novel inscribesthe relationship between
the two young people in the same sensiblelogicthat governs the complicity
ofthe three fugitives. The directorbreaksup this continuity by changing the
trajectory of the perceptions. In the film, the one in control of the trajectory
is Keechie,this body committed to the efficientexecution ofeveryday tasks.
A slight disturbancein the order of things attracts her attention while she

pretendsto be listening to yet another ofher UncleChicamaws jokes,and

we followher eyes till they rest on Bowie,who s hopelesslytrying to get the
heater to stop smoking.Getting the heater to work properly is the business
ofthis authoritarian Cinderellawith soot-coveredcheeks,who by the very
next shot is kneeling in front of it under the gaze of the three thievesand of
the camera, which now plungestowards her from the left. The film doesn't
give us the time to pay any attention to Chicamaw s jokes about Bowies
inefficiency becauseby the very next shot both Chicamaw and T-Dub are
gone.Even better, it is as if they had never beenthere, as if there never had
beenenough spacefor the two of them in this room.Only Bowieand Keechie
are now framed by the camera placed at floor-levelon the right. Even this
may be saying toomuch, sinceall we really seeof Bowieare the backofhis
head, part ofhis shoulder,and his arm holding out a handkerchief. \"Here,\"
he says simply. \"Thanks,\" says the kneelingKeechieas shelooksup at him
without meeting our gaze. This instant when they are alone doesn'tlast even
five seconds. By the next shot the camera has already moved back to frame
Keechieand Bowie squarely between the two other thieves, before it closes
in on Keechieone last time for her comebackto the thieves'cracksabout the
\"head\" ofthe gallant Bowie:\"His head is alright to me.\"
 Nu hu.tks up (he iianalivc .uul linguist u continuum of the
lu\302\273I.is
Kay
lealist novel by squeezingtwo spacesand two incompatiblerelationships
info this one crowdedand cluttered room.Henceforward,the narrative
si 11 h nue of the him essentiallydevelopsthe coexistence ofthe incompatible
spans n constructsagainst the grain of the faithfully adaptedbook in six
shotsthat together don't add up to more than thirty seconds. Faithful to the

logic o!oidmarv tasks,Keechieand Bowieseal their initial separation from

(he oiheisand develop their intimacy in the process of avoiding a police
patiol and ol changing a car wheel Lets turn now to the garage scene.An
(
\\|n ilient dissolveshows us the young virgin in coverallsgetting her drunk
l.iihn (o bed And bringing out the jack for the onceupon a time aspiring
m< hann
< to show his talents. Seatedon the fender, Keechieobservesthe
i. pan woik and this being,of a kind unknown to this place,who tells her
Ins bleak family history while loosening the screwsof the wheel. Shegets
tip. fidgets with the steering wheel and puts on the sententious tone of an
oldi i sister to scoldthis young dreamerfor thinking he can get squared
np M\\i{ start his small filling station while running with his partners, for
thinking he can want to have both the fast life of the thief and the quiet
lili of the small businessowner. She dominates him from the
height of her
the
knowledge, knowledge of a child who has seen nothing of the world
and yet has understoodall about it simply by attending to the smoking
heater or to her drunk father, by comparing the rectitude of the ordinary
tasks requiredby the daily life of the place with the jumble of tortuous
opeiat ions that make this place their way-stop.Right at this moment her
knowledgereigns supreme,but it doesso from the depths of the certainty
of a timid child who has cometo know the world by cutting herself off
I iom it and by
denying its presencethrough the link between well-executed
tasks and sensiblewords.Keechie may seemready to share Bowieshopes
(01 socialreintegration, and yet the knowledgethat suddenlytakes hold of
hei authoritative, pensive body suggestssomething different: that there is
nothing to hopefor outsideof this little pieceofthe night where two kids
play at being mechanics. The concluding shot ofthe sceneis a pure moment
of Utopia.With the repair done and their sentiments clear, Keechieemerges
fiom the depths of the garagelike a dream, takes one of the handlesof the
jack, and helps Bowie drag it back to where it belongs. This pure moment
ol happinessaround a jack surpassesevery image ofidling under the shade
ol a coconuttree.But, even before the others invade this spaceand before
their hands touch only to be separated,Keechies mockingvoice denounces
the evil corruptingtheir shared dream, the invincible enemy that has always
already wrecked tfit* \\ccivtive luppmessol knowing children:(lie puciilc
desireof being an adult: \"You think you'requite man now, don't you?\"
<i

The secret drama of Nicholas Rays film, one that goesmuch deeper
than that of the law of a pitiless world tightening its noosearound two
kids,is this conflict between two infancies,the battle, always already lost, of
infantile maturity against adult puerility. Only the child who really accepts
to be a woman, who renouncesthe coveralls of the small androgynous
worker and the wisdomofthe knowing child, can decideto follow this kid
who now thinks he s quite the man. This renunciation makes for the simple
and stupefying beauty ofthe scenesofKeechiefinding the woundedBowie,
neverto leavehis side again.We know shehas made up her mind the second
shegives,without uttering a word, the money Chicamawgave her to care for
his wounded partner to her father, who'll drink it all. Shenow sits before a
mirror that doesnot show us her face, undoing and brushing her hair, which
falls in waves overher shoulders.The next time we seeher, when she appears
suddenlybehind the bed ofthe woundedBowie,she is no longer wearing
her mechanicsuniform, but the shirt, cardigan sweater,and skirt of a young
woman. She'llalways be able to use the brazen sentencesof the book, to tell
Bowie that she doesn'tknow what most \"girls\" want, or to inform him, as
she scrupulouslymassageshis back, that she would do \"the samefor a dog.\"
But these insolent remarks are powerlessagainst the admissionofher loose
and brushed hair, which reveals the reciprocal feelings and the pricethey
exact. Keechieand Bowieearn their love at the price of its cause:the quiet
certaintv and unclassifiablebeautv of this sexless,childishbodv, this master
of well-executedtasksthat deny the folly oi the world. Accepting the watch
he puts on her wrist amounts to acceptingfrom then on to want what he
wants, he who wants only to keepon wanting. Sheacceptsto live by the law
ofthosewho want, the law of the world they're about to confront and that
has, at this very moment, already defeated them. The little deity protecting
the placeis now thrown on the highway, a creature to protect for him and
an ordinary lover for us.
What makes the film so heart-rending, much more than the futile efforts
of these two young lovers to elude the thieves and the tragic absurdity of
the law's fierce pursuit of \"Bowie the Kid,\" the crazy killerborn of their
imagination, is that they had beendefeatedat the outset, when the only
one who could resist the law of the worldabdicatedher powers.Defeat
is the other name of their love. In They Live by Night, one cannot even plead
the injusticesof sociallaw and the crueltiesof chance,as one can, for
instance, in You Only Live Once.Bowieand Keechie'sdecisionto run away as
lovcis is tantamount (o lushing headlonglowaids I lit* (wo heroes
*l\302\253*.iili.

of Lings film were tlie victims of an implacable chain of circumstances

Ili.it could have been different: the prejudicesof a boss and of a landlord,
neilhei of whom want an ex-convict in their midst, an exchangeof hats, a
hidden car, m\\ absurd defensereflexat the moment ofgreeting\302\273The trap that
ensn.ucsthe two lovers who live by night was not set by this smooth and
logical machinery that perfectly combinesthe effects of sociallaw and of
c li.incv. That is l:ntzLang'sbread and butter. Ray lacksLang'scruelty, the
pleasurehe lakesin making the camera lensand the sights of a rifle coincide,
his male-chauvinistic,unwavering contempt for all those well-intentioned
young women who think it their businessto redeemsociety'soutlaws with
ilu h love. I he beauty of Ycm Only Live Oncestems from a classicalmastery
iIn- ail-,, which makes its happiness from the misfortunes of others,
\342\200\242
\342\200\242I

Us pel In (ion from how well it can arrange the suffering of its creatures.
Nn holas Kays Romantic filmmaking has nothing to do with this. But we
must not confuseRomanticism with simplesentimentality towards those
who suIlei.It is true that Keechie,the drunkard'sdaughter, is too closeto
(he (eenager who had to go into the night lookingfor his father in the bars
of Wisconsin, and too closealso to the young wife of the days of misery
and enthusiasm spent in New York, for Raymond NicholasKienzle, alias
NicholasRay, to enjoy seeingher through the sightsofa rifle. Ray has for
these lost children the tendernessof someonefor whom the intimate rifts
m the American dream were the closesthe had cometo the war of 1914,
the Weimar Republic,and exile. Romanticism against Classicismis not the
outpouring of feelings against coldrigor, but onebeautv against another:
ilie beauty of a perfectly crafted Aristotelian plot that transforms fortune
into misfortune and ignorance into knowledgeagainst the Baudelaireanloss
of (hat which there was never any point in knowing, the original lossof what
\"can never be found again never!\"
\342\200\224

It isn't, in other words,NicholasRay's kind-heartednature or fragility

(hat keeps him from constructingin a carefully planned crescendo the
stages and episodes of the flight, or the calculations of the hunters and
the wanderings of their prey.The defeat is original.HenceRay's relative
detachment from the scenesof their flight, why it didn'tbother him much
( have to cut the bank holdup scenesthe censorswere so bent against. At
c >

(he end of the day, theseimposedcuts serve the logicof the film. Thereis
no reason, then, to waste any time constructing the chaseand the flight in
alternating montage, or to belaboron the closingof the trap. All Mattie the
informer has to do to trap Bowieis to play on his well-knownweakness: his
 ignorance concerningwhat \"women\" want. The dice had beencast much
earlier, when the two loversabandonedthe kingdom ofthe night and threw
themselvesinto a world that neither ofthem had beenproperly introduced
Ray is not half as interestedin capturing the great confrontation between
to\302\273

the fugitives and the socialorder as he is in capturing the slight clumsiness

of these two peoplewho don't quite know what they are doing.Thefirst
shot oftheir flight is ofBowieon the bus holdinga crying baby and trying
to figure out how to soothethis child whosemother, an expertat doing
things, is content to leavecrying ofhunger so sheherselfcan get somesleep.
A little later, the high-angle shot of their backsframes them as if crushed
by the width of the street they have to crossto reach the housewhere
they get married.Throughouttheir flight, our tendernessfor their idyllic
love and our sharedpain for the fate awaiting them are mixed up with the
discomfortwe feel before peoplewho are clearly out oftheir element.It s
impossiblenot to seethesedoomed lovers with the same discomfortwe feel
when we seecountry people in their Sunday best disembarking into a world
whosecustomsthey know nothing about.Conversely,it is just when they are
most adroit that their gesturesof peoplehappily in loveare mostborrowed.
Keechie,with her permand suit, has become a young woman like any other;
evenher feelings have lost their mystery. The way she purrs like a satisfied
cat and her fits ofjealousy are both taken from an ordinary repertoire. Shes
as adrift in her body of a young married woman on honeymoon as in her
new clothes,both of them as borrowedas Bowieis in his double-breasted
suit. It is, however, this very clumsiness,this defeat, that gives the film its
paradoxicalpower.Our knowledgeofthe ineluctablegivesto the clumsiness
of country peopleand the foolishnessofthe young newlywedsa mournful
beauty, a beauty born from the mourning of another.To create the fragile
and slightly awkward body ofthis doomed lover,Ray had to burn the other
Keechie,the invulnerable child ofthe garage* Thisburnt iconhaunts the face
that in the last shot of the film turns towards us while Bowie liesdead on
the ground and readsthe last words ofhis letter, the intimate and catch-all
i love you.
Suchis the Romantic double law of beauty, exemplarily illustrated in
this film. It is a law of composition\342\200\224an image is made of many images;
and it is a law of subtraction\342\200\224an image is made from the mourning of
another image.This can be easily verified in that remakeof They Live by
Night calledBreathless. We know that Jean Seberg s final stare into the camera
transposesthe famous \"gaze into the camera\"ofthe last shot ofSummer with
Monika. But this composition that addsto the image is indissociable from the
it imposition (lut subi lu (s (loin i(.*mi|h i iiujuim d onto (he composed(ace
ol Paincia/Monika is kecehics pained i.\\a\\ I his Keechiehas added to her
iolethat oi Mattie the informer, and yet what still shinesthrough, beyond
every fictional transaction, is the faceof an original defeat.

NOTES

I. Ranci\303\250reis referring to a line from PierreCorneille s The Cid:\"This

dim light which falls from the stars, at last with the tide causesus to
see thirty sails\" (Act IV, sc. Ill)- Thesethirty sailsare as common an
of
example metonymy in the Francophoneworld as the Crown or the
Whitehouse are in the Anglophone,\342\200\224Trans.
.\\ I id ward Anderson, Thieves Like Us, in Crime Novels: American Noir of the

19 3ft> and 40s,ed.Robert Polito (NewYork:The of

Library America,
1997)232.
\\ Anderson, Thieves Like Us, 237.
 Part III

If There is a Cinematographic
Modernity
 CHAPTER7

From One Imageto Another?

Deleuzeand theAgesofCinema

Letsassumethat there is a cinematographicmodernity and that it confronted

the classicalcinema ofthe link between imagesfor the purposesofnarrative
continuity and meaning with an autonomous power ofthe imagewhosetwo
defining characteristicsare its autonomous temporality and the void that
separatesit from other images.This breakbetween two ages of the image
has two modelwitnesses:RobertoRossellini,the creator ofa cinema ofthe
unexpectedthat confronts classicalnarrative with the essentialdiscontinuities
and ambiguities ofthe real, and OrsonWelles,who brokewith the tradition
ofnarrative montage through the creation of deep focus.And it also has
two modelthinkers: Bazin, who in the 1950s,
Andr\303\251 a religiousagenda
firmly in the background,deployed the arsenal of phenomenology to
theorizethe artistic advent of the essenceof cinema, which he identified
with cinema's \"realistic\" ability to \"reveal the hiddenmeanings in people and
things without disturbing the unity natural to them\";1 and GillesDeleuze,
who in the 1980s set about articulating a theory of the break between
thesetwo ages basedon a rigorousontology ofthe cinematographicimage.
Thecorrectintuitions and theoreticalapproximationsof the occasional
philosopherBazin find their solidfoundation in Deleuze s theorization
ofthe difference betweentwo types of images,the movement-image and
the time-image. Themovement-image, the image organizedaccordingto
the logicof the sensory-motorschema,is conceivedof as being but one
element in a natural arrangement with other imageswithin a logicofthe set
[ensemble] analogous to that ofthe finalizedcoordination ofour perceptions
and actions. The time-image is characterizedby a rupture with this logic,by
the Rossellini\342\200\224of
appearance\342\200\224in pure optical and sound situations that
areno longer transformed into incidents.From thesepure opticaland sound
situations eventually emerges\342\200\224in crystal-image,the imagethat
Welles\342\200\224the

no longerlinks up to another actual image,but only to its own virtual image.

108 Film Fables

Each image, thus split off from other images, opens itself up to its own
infinity. Thenceforward, what creates the link is the absenceofthe link: the
intersticebetween images commandsa re-arrangement from the void and
not a sensory-motorarrangement.The time-image founds modern cinema,
in oppositionto the movement-imagethat was the heart ofclassicalcinema.
Betweenthe two there is a rupture, a crisisofthe action-image or a rupture
of the \"sensory-motorlink/'which Deleuzeties to the historicalrupture
brought about by the SecondWorld War, a time that generatedsituations
that no longerfit the availableresponses.
Clearas its formulation may be, Deleuzes division becomesquite
confusing as soonas we lookmoredeeplyinto the two questionsthat it
raises.First of all, how are we to think the relationshipbetweena break
internal to the art of images and the ruptures that affect history in general)
And secondly,how are we to recognize, in concrete works,the traces left by
this breakbetween two ages ofthe image and between two types of image?
Thefirst questionbringsup what is fundamentally equivocalin \"modernist\"
thought. In its most generalgarb, this form ofthought identifiesthe modern
revolutions in the arts with each arts manifestation of its proper essence.
The novelty ofthe \"modern\" is that the essenceofthe art, though it had
always been active in the arts previous manifestations, has now gainedits
autonomy by breaking free ofthe chains ofmimesis that had always fettered
it. The new, considered in this light, has always already been prefigured in
the old,and the \"rupture,\" in the end, is nothing morethan a required
episodein the edifying narrative through which each art proves its own
artistry by complyingwith the scenarioofa modernistrevolution in the arts
wherein each art attests to its own perennial essence. For Bazin, Rossellinis
and Welles'revolutionsdo no morethan realizecinema s autonomous
vocation for realism\342\200\224which was already manifest in Murnau, Flaherty, or
Stroheim\342\200\224through their oppositionto the heteronomous tradition of a
cinema ofmontage illustrated by Griffith s classicism,Eisensteinsdialectic,
orthe spectacularismofexpressionism.
Deleuzes division between a movement-imageand a time-image doesn't
escapethe general circularity ofmodernist theory. The difference is that
in Deleuze the relationshipbetweenthe classification of images and the
historicity of the rupture takes on a much more complexfigure and raises
a moreradicalproblem. The problemis no longerhow to harmonize art
history and general history since,strictly speaking,for Deleuzethere is no
such thing as art history or general history:all history is \"natural history.\"
Deleuzeraisesthe \"passage\"from onetype ofimage to another to the level
 Deleuzeand the Ages of Cinema 109

of a theoreticalepisode,the \"rupture of the sensory-motorlink,\" which

he defines from withina natural history of images that is ontological and
cosmological principle.
in But how are we to think the coincidence of
the
of of
logic this natural history, the development the forms an art, and of
the \"historical\" breakmarked by a war?
Deleuzehimself warns us from the beginning.Although his work discusses
films and filmmakers, although it starts on the side of Griffith, Vertov, and
Eisensteinand ends on the side of Godard,Straub, and Syberberg,it is not
a history of cinema. It is an \"attempt at the classification signs\" in the of
manner of a natural history. What, then, is a sign for Deleuze?He defines
it as follows: \"signs themselvesare the features of expression that compose
and combinethese images, and constantly re-create them, borneor carted
along by matter in movement.\"2 Signsare the components images, their of
It
genetic elements.What, then, is an image? is not what we see,nor is it a
of
double things formed by our minds.Deleuzedevelops his reflectionsas
a continuation of the philosophicalrevolution started by Bergson,so what
of It
is the principle that revolution? is to abolishthe oppositionbetween
of
the physical world movement and the psychological world of the image.
Images are not the of
doubles things, but the things themselves, \"the set
[ensemble] of what appears,\"that is, the set of
what is.
Deleuze,quoting
Bergson,definesthe image as: \"'a road by which pass, every direction,the
in
modifications propagatedthroughout the immensity of
the universe.'\"3
Images,properly speaking,are the things of It
the world. followslogically
from this that cinema is not the name of an art: it is the name the world. of
of of
The \"classification signs\" is a theory the elements,a natural history of
This \"philosophyofcinema,\" in
the combinations ofbeings. other words,
takes on a paradoxical turn from the very beginning. Cinema had generally
beenthought ofas an art that invents images and the arrangement between
visual images.And along comesthis bookwith its radical thesis.What
constitutesthe image is not the gaze, the imagination, or this art. In fact,
the image neednot beconstituted at all. It existsin itself. It is not a mental
representation, but matter-light in movement. Conversely,the face looking
at images and the brain conceivingthem are darkscreensthat interrupt the
movement in every direction of images.Matter is the eye,the image is light,
light is consciousness.
We might then concludethat Deleuzeis not really speakingabout the art
of cinema, and that his two volumeson imagesare somesort of philosophy
of nature which treat cinematographicimagesas the eventsand assemblages
of luminous matter. A type of
framing, a play of
light and shadow,a mode
no Film Fables

of linking shots would be so many metamorphosesof the elements,or

so many \"dreams of matter\" in GastonBachelard'ssense.But it isn't that
simple* Deleuze presentshis natural history ofimages in movement as the
history ofa certain number ofindividualized operationsand combinations
attributable to filmmakers, schools,epochs*Letslook,for example, at the
chapter he devotesto the first major form of the movement-image, the
perception-image, and, in that same chapter, at his analysis ofDzigaVertovs
theory ofthe kino-eve*Deleuzewrites:\"What montage does,accordingto
Vertov, is to carry perception to things, to put perceptioninto matter, so
that any point whatsoever in spaceitself perceivesall the points on which
it acts, or which act on it, howeverfar theseactions and reactions extend/'4
Thereare two problemswith this claim* First, we may ask ourselvesif this
is really what Vertov was trying to do* It would be easv to objectand say
instead that Vertovs camera is very carefulnot to carrv perceptionto things,
that it tries, on the contrary, to retain perception as its specialprivilege
and to join all spatial points at the center it constitutes.Second,we could
point out that every image in Man with a Movie Camera ultimately points back
to the persistentrepresentationsof the omnipresentcameraman with his
machine-eyeand of the editorwhoseoperationsalone can breath life into
images inert in themselves.We couldalso, alternatively, acceptDeleuze s
argument* But that only makesthe paradoxmoreradical*Vertov, he says,
carries\"perceptionto things.\" But why shouldhe do that? Wasn t Deleuzes
starting point that perceptionhas always beenin things, that it is things that
perceiveand are in an infinite relationship with one another?The definition
ofmontage turns out to be paradoxical:montage gives images,the eventsof
matter-light, propertiesthat already belongto them.
This is a problemthat requiresa two step answer, it seemsto me;this
duality, incidentally, is in keepingwith a tensionconstantly at work in
Deleuzesthought* On the onehand, the perceptive properties of images
are only potentialities. Perceptionis \"in things,\" but in a virtual state, so
that it has to be extractedfrom them, snatched out of the relationships
ofcauseand effect that relate things to one another* Beneath the order of
bodily states, of relationshipsof cause and effect and of the action and
reaction that characterizebodilyrelationships,the artist institutes a plane of
immanence where events\342\200\224incorporeal separatedfrom bodies
effects\342\200\224are

and composed in their properspace*Beneath the chronological time of

causesacting in bodies,the artist institutes another time to which Deleuze
gives the Greekname the time ofpure events* What art in general, and
ai\303\264n:

cinematographicmontage in particular, does is snatch from bodily states

 Deleuzeand the Ages of Cinema I II

their intensive qualities,the events harbored in them in a potential state.

This is preciselywhat Deleuze,in the chapter on the \"affection-image,\" is
working out with his theory of \"any-space-whatevers.\" Filmmakers snatch
from narratives and characters an order of pure events, of pure qualities
separatedfrom bodily states:in Lulu s killing in Pabst, for instance, there
is the light shining on the knife, the gleaming knife blade,Jacksterror,
Lulu s \"tenderness.\" Pabst isolatesthese and composes them in their own
properspace,one removedfrom the orientations and links ofthe story, and
removed, more generally, from the way in which we constructthe everyday
spaceofour orientedperceptionsand finalizedmovements.
We now cometo the secondreasonfor the paradox,one that brings a
different logicinto play even though, at the end of the day, it is probably
onlv a different way of saving the same thing.If we must give things a
perceptivepower they already '\"had,\" it must be becausethey have lost
it, and, if they ve lost it, it is for a very reason.It is becausethe
sp\303\251cifie

phosphorescence of imagesof the world and their movement in every

directionwere interrupted by this opaque image calledthe human brain.
The brain confiscated the interval between action and reaction for its own
benefit and proceeded from this interval to placeitself at the center of the
world.It proceeded to constitute a world of images for its use, a world of
readily available information that it uses to constructits sensory-motor
orient its movements,and make ofthe physical world an immense
sch\303\251mas,

machinery of causesand effects that transform it into the means for its
ends.Montagehas to put perceptionback in things becauseits operation
is one of restitution.Intentional artistic activity rendersunto the events
of sensiblematter the potentialitiesthe human brain had deprivedthem
of in orderto constitutea sensory-motoruniverse adapted to its needs
and subjectto its mastery.Thereis something emblematic in how Deleuze
puts Vertov, one of the main representatives of the sweepingSoviet and
constructivist desirefor a completereorganization ofthe material universe
in the interest ofhuman goals,to perform, symbolically,the inversetask:to

put perceptionback in things, to constitute an \"order\" of art that returns

the world to its essentialdisorder.This is how a natural history of images
can assumethe shapeof a history ofthe art whoseoperationsabstract the
pure potentialities ofsensiblematter. But this history ofthe art ofcinema
is just as much a history of redemption.The work ofart, in general,undoes
the ordinary work ofthe human brain, of this particular image that placed
itself at the center ofthe universe ofimages.The proposed \"classification\"
offilm images is in fact the history ofthe restitution ofworld-imagesto
themselves.It is a history ofredemption.
112 Film Fables

Hencethe complexity ofDeleuze s notion ofimage and ofthis history

ofcinema that actually isn't one,a complexity that shoots to the surface as
soonas we turn our attention to the analysesthat sustain Deleuzes thesis
and the imageshe bringsforth to illustrate it. Deleuzearguesthat the time-
image is\" situated on the other side of the rupture of the \"sensory-motor
schema But are its propertiesnot discerniblealready in the constitution of
the movement-image,especially in the way the affection-imageconstitutesan
orderofpure eventsby separating intensive qualities from bodilystates?The
time-image foils traditional narration by banishing all conventional forms
of the relationshipbetweennarrative situation and emotional expression
in order to releasethe pure potentialities borne by faces and gestures.But
this powerof the virtual properto the time-image is already a feature of
the affection-image, which is said to release pure qualities and compose
what Deleuze calls \"any-space-whatevers,\"spacesthat have lost the character
of spacesorientedby our will.The very same examples,in other words,
can be used to illustrate the constitution of the any-space-whatevers of
the affection-image and the constitutionof the pure optical and sound
situations of the time-image. Considerhow Deleuze uses as an example
one of the modelrepresentativesof cinematographic \"modernity,\" Robert
Bresson,himself an admirable theoretician of the autonomy ofthe art of
cinema.Bressonshowsup at two key moments ofDeleuze s discussion.The
chapter on the affection-image contrasts Bressons way of composingany-
space-whateverswith Dreyers:whereas Dreyerrelieson close-upsofJoan
of Arc and her judgesto releasethe intensive potentialitiesof the image,
Bressonimpregnatesspaceitselfwith thesepotentialitiesin his way of
relating spaces,ofrearranging the relationship between the opticaland the
tactile. Deleuze s analysisofBressonscinema is ultimately analogous to his
analysis of Vertovs: both show that the work ofrestituting to the image its
potentialities is already operative in all the componentsof the movement-
image.The analysis of Bressonin Cinema 2:The Time~lmage, under the title
\"Thought and Cinema,\" for the most part restates what Deleuzehas already
said about Bressonin connection with the affection-image.The very same

images examinedin the first bookas the componentsof the movement-

image reappearin the secondbookas the constitutive principlesof the
time-image. It seemsimpossible,in otherwords,to isolate in the model
filmmaker ofthe \"time-image\" any \"time-images,\" any imagesendowedwith
propertiesthat would distinguish them from the \"movement-image.\"
We would willingly concludethat movement-imageand time-image are
by no means two types of images ranged in opposition,but two different
 Deleuzeand the Ages of Cinema 13

points ofview on the image. Although speaksof films and filmmakers,

it
Deleuze s real projectin Cinema I:The Movement-Image is to analyze forms
of the art of cinema as events ofmatter-image. And although Cinema 2:
The Time-Image imports the analyses of The Movement-Image, it analyzes these
same cinematographic forms as forms ofthought-image.Thepassagefrom
one bookto the otherwould not mark the passagefrom one age of the
cinematographicimage to another but the passageto another point ofview
on the same images.When we pass from the affection-image,the form of
the movement-image,to the \"opsign\" the originary form ofthe time-image,
were not passingfrom one family of images to another, but rather from
one side to the other of the same images, from image as matter to image
as form. In short, we pass from imagesas elementsin a philosophy of
nature to imagesas elementsin a philosophyof spirit.As a philosophy
of nature, The Movement-Image uses specificcinematographicimages to
introduceus to the chaotic infinity ofthe metamorphosesofmatter-light.
As a philosophyofspirit, The Time-Image showsus, through the operations
of the cinematographic art, how thought deploysa power commensurate
with this chaos. The destiny of
cinema\342\200\224and of not in fact to
thought\342\200\224is

loseitself, as some simplifying \"Dyonisism\" would have it, in the infinite

inter-expressivityof images-matter-light.Its destiny is to couplethis infinity
to the order of its own infinity: that of the infinitely small that is equal to
the infinitely large. Its exemplary expressionis to be found in the \"crystal-
image,\" in the crystal of thought-image that links the actual image to the
virtual one, and that differentiates them in their very indiscernibility,which
is alsothe indiscernibility ofthe real and the imaginary. The task ofthought
is to render unto the whole the power of the interval confiscatedby the
brain/screen,and, of course,renderingthe interval unto the whole means
creating another whole from another powerof the interval. The interval-
screenthat arrests the inter-expressivityof images and imposesits laws
upon their free movement is set in oppositionto the crystal-interval, the
seed\"impregnating the sea.\"Put more soberly, the crystal-interval creates
a new whole, a whole of intervals, of solitarily expressivecrystals born
from the void and lapsingback into it.ThecategoriesDeleuze claims are
specific to the time-image\342\200\224false relationships, false movement, irrational
cuts\342\200\224wouldn't
actually describe the identifiable operationsthat separate
two families of images so much as mark how thought becomes one with
the chaosthat prompts it.And the \"rupture of the sensory-motorlink,\"
a process not to be found in this natural history of images, would in fact
expressthis relationship of correspondence between the infinity\342\200\224chaos\342\200\224
114 Film Fables

ofmatter-image and the infinity\342\200\224chaos\342\200\224characteristic

ofthought-image.
The distinctionbetweenthe two images would be strictly transcendental
and would thus not correspondto an identifiable rupture, whether in the
natural history ofimages or in the history ofhuman events or offorms of
the art of cinema.The sameimages\342\200\224from Dreyerand Bresson,or from
Eisensteinand equallyanalyzablein terms ofaffection-image
Godard\342\200\224are

or opsign,oforganic descriptionor crystalline description.

Tenableas this perspectiveis,Deleuzewont allow it. Itis true, he admits,
that the movement-image was already an open whole of the image, but it
was a whole still governed by a logicof associationand attraction between
images, still understoodon the model of action and reaction.In the time-
image, m modern cinema, conversely,each actuallv emergesfrom the
ima\303\247e

void and lapsesbackinto it, so much so, m fact, that it is the interstice, the
separationbetween images, that plays the decisiverolein modern cinema.
Therearen't just two points ofview on the same images.Thereare really
two logicsofthe image that correspond to two ages of the cinema.Between
the two, there is an identifiable crisisofthe action-image, a rupture ofthe
sensory-motorlink. Deleuzeties this crisisto the SecondWorld War, to the
concreteappearance,amidst the wreckageof war and the helplessnessof the
vanquished, of disconnected spacesand of characters who can no longer
react to the situations confronting them.
This avowed attempt to historicize obviously brings back the initial
paradox: how can a classificationamong types ofsignsbe split in two by an
externalhistorical event? Can \"history/' taken as a given at the beginning of
The Time-Image, do anything but sanction a crisisinternal to the movement-
image, that is, a rupture internal to the movement of imagesthat is in
itself wholly indifferent to the tribulations of the times and the horrors
of war? It is just such a crisis that Deleuzestagesin the last chapter ot
The Movement-Image, The strongpoint of Deleuze s dramaturgy there is to
be found in his analysis of Hitchcock s cinema, which is marshaledin as
the privileged example becausein many ways it sums up the entire genesis
ofthe movement-image. All of its componentsfind their placein it:the
play of light and shadowformed in the schoolof the perception-image
and perfectedby German expressionism; the constitution of any-space-
whateverswhere pure qualities (for example, the whitenessof the glassof
milk in Suspicion or of the snowfieldin Spellbound) compose a plane ofevents;
the immersion of these any-space-whateversin determinedsituations; the
constitution ofan overarchingaction schemebasedon the formula action/
situation/action. Theintegration ofall theseelementsdefineswhat Deleuze
 DeJeuzeand the Ages of Cinema 115

calls \"mental-images\":Hitchcock,
he says,films relations.
The real object
ofhis cinema, are thesegames ofequilibrium and disequilibriumdeveloped
around a few paradigmaticrelationships:the relationshipinnocent/guilty, for
example,or the dramaturgy or the exchangeofcrimes. Hitchcock s cinema
marks the end of the constitution of the movement-image,an integration
ofall its elements*According to the logicofartistic activity, this completion
shouldmean the end ofthe movement, which had always been operative in
each of these types of cinematographicimages,of restituting to matter-
image its intensivepotentialities.Deleuze, however, presentsthis completion
as an exhaustion.The crowning moment ofthe movement-imageis likewise
its moment of crisis,the moment when the schemalinking situation and
reaction cracksand were thrown into a world of pure optical and sound
situations.But, we may ask, what are the signsby which we recognize this
rupture, this crack? We recognize it in situations of paralvsis, of motor
inhibition, Deleuze answers.In Rear Window, the chaserofimagesJeff, played
by James Stewart, is struck with motor paralysis:his legin a cast, all he can
do is lookat what his neighborsacrossthe courtyard are doing.In Vertigo,
the detective, Scottie,also played by James Stewart, is paralyzed by vertigo
and cannot chasethe thief over the rooftops or climb to the top of the
bell-towerwhere the murder disguisedas suicideis committed.In The Wrong
Man, the wife ofthe wrong man, played by Vera Miles,sinks into madness.
The neat mechanics ofthe action-image oilrninates in these situations of
sensory-motorrupture that throw the logicof the movement-image into
crisis.^
Thisanalysisis at first sight a bit strange.The \"paralysis\" ofeach ofthese
characters is actually only an aspectof the plot, a feature of the narrative
situation. It is hard to seein what ways the characters'motor orpsychomotor
problemshinder the linear arrangement ofthe images and the action from
moving forward. Hitchcocks camera is not paralyzed by Scottie s vertigo,
but turns his vertigo into the opportunity to create the spectaculareffect
that showsJames Stewart hanging from a gutter over a vertiginous abyss.
Deleuzecontends that the image has lostits \"motor extension.\"But the
motorextensionof the image ofScottiehanging over the void is not an
image ofScottierecoveringand mounting back onto the rooftop.It is the
imagethat links this eventto its fictionalcontinuation: to the subsequentshot
where we seethat Scottiesurvived the whole ordeal, and, moreimportantly,
to the huge narrative and visual machination that his revealedhandicap sets
in motion.Scottie will be manipulated in the preparation of a suicidethat
is really a murder. Hisvertigo doesn'thinder in the least, but rather favors,
116 Film Fables

the play ofmental relations and of\"sensory-motor\"situations that develop

around thesequestions:who is the woman Scottiehas beenaskedto follow?
Who is the woman who fallsfrom the bell-tower?Howdoesshefall, murder
or suicide?The logicof the movement-imageis not at all paralyzed by the
fictionalsituation. The only remaining alternative is to considerthe paralysis
symbolic,to say that Deleuze treats these fictional situations of paralysis
as simpleallegoriesemblematic of the rupture in the action-image and its
principle:the rupture ofthe sensory-motorlink. However, if Deleuzehas
to allegorize this rupture by means ofemblems taken from the stories,isn t
it becauseit cannot be identified as an actual difference betweentypes of

images?Isn't it becausethe theoretician of the cinema must find a visible

incarnation for a purely ideal rupture? Themovement-image is \"in crisis\"
becausethe thinker needsit to be.
Why doeshe needthat? Becausethe passagefrom the infinity of matter-
image to the infinity of thought-image is also a history ofredemption,of
an always thwarted redemption.The filmmaker takes perceptionto images
by snatching them from bodilystatesand placing them on a plane of pure
events;in so doing,the filmmaker gives images an arrangement-in-thought.
But this arrangement-in-thought is always also the re-imposition of the
logic of the opaquescreen, o fthe central image that arrests the movement in

every direction ofother images to reorderthem from itself.The gesture of

restitution is always also a new gesture of capture.This is why Deleuzewants
to \"paralyze\" the logicofthe mental arrangement ofimages, even if to do
that he'sforcedto give an autonomous existence to the fictive propertiesof the
charactersin the stories. It is not at all surprisingthat Deleuzeshouldapply
this treatment to the manipulating filmmaker par excellence, to the creator
for whom a film is a rigorousassemblage ofimagesorganized so as to orient
and disorientthe affects ofthe viewer.Deleuzeturns against Hitchcockthe
fictionalparalysisthat the manipulative thought ofthe directorhad imposed
on his charactersfor his own expressiveends.Turning this paralysisagainst
Hitchcock amounts to transforming it, conceptually, into a real paralysis.
Significantly, Godard performsthe very sameoperation on the images of
the same Hitchcock in Histoires)du wherehe isolatesshotsofobjects
cin\303\251ma,

from their dramatic function: the glassof milk in Suspicion, the bottles of
wine in Notorious, the glassesin Strangers on a Train. Godard turns these into
still-lives,into self-sufficient icons.Albeit by different paths, Deleuzeand
Godardapply themselvesto the same task:to paralyze Hitchcocks cinema,
to isolateits images, to transform the dramatic progression ofhis cinema
into moments of passivity. And, through Hitchcock, it is moreglobally
 Deleuzeand the Ages of Cinema 117

the cinema, in someways, that they try to make \"passive,\" to free from the
despotismofthe directorin orderto renderit, in Deleuze,to the chaosof
matter-image and, in Godard,to the impressionsleft by things on a screen
that has beentransformed into the veil ofVeronica,
This brings us to the heart ofDeleuzes singular relationship to cinema,
which is, moreprofoundly, the heart of the problemcinema poses for
thought given the particular place occupies
it in what is generally called
artistic modernity, and which I prefer to call the aestheticregimeof art\302\273

What distinguishesthe latter from the classical,representative regimeis

a different conceptionof art, a different idea of how to think about art.
The representative regimeunderstandsartistic activity on the modelof
an activeform that imposesitself upon inert matter and subjectsit to its
representational ends* The aesthetic regime of art rejectsthe idea of form
willfully imposingitself on matter and insteadidentifies the power ofthe
work with the identity of contraries:the identity of activeand passive, of
thought and non-thought,of intentional and unintentional. I suggested
earlier on that the most abrupt formulation of this ideais to be found in
Flaubert, who set out to write a bookthat dependedon nothing external
and was held together solelyby the strength of its style.This book,thus
strippedof all subjectand all matter, would affirm only the now absolute
power of style. But what must this sovereignstyle produce?A bookthat
bearsno traces of the authors intervention and displaysinstead only the
absoluteindifferenceand passivity ofthings with neither will nor meaning.
More than an artistic ideology,what is expressedhere is a whole regime of
how to think about art that expressesalso an idea of thought. Thought is
no longer understoodas the faculty of impressingits will upon its objects,
but as the faculty ofbecomingonewith its contrary, Hegelstime saw this
equality of contraries as the Apollonian power of the idea emerging from
itself to become the light of a painting or the smileofa stone god.From
Nietzscheto Deleuze,it becamethe inverse,the Dionysian power through
which thought abdicatesthe attributes of will and losesitself in stone, in
color,in language,and equals its activemanifestation to the chaosofthings.
We have already mentionedthe paradoxcinema posesfor this idea of
art and thought. Cinema, due to its technical apparatus, literally embodies
this unity ofcontraries in the union ofthe passiveand automatic eye ofthe
camera and the consciouseye of the director. In the 1920s, theoreticians
minedthis unity to make the new art of imagesidenticalto a proper
language,onethat was at oncenatural and constructed. But they overlooked
the fact that the automatism ofcinematographic passivity confoundedthe
118 Film Fables

aestheticequation* Unlike novelists and painters,who are themselves the

agents of their becoming-passive, the camera cannot but be passive.In the
cinema, the identity of contraries is there at the outset, and hencelost from
the outset.The filmmaker who directs the mechanic eye with his eye has
already consignedhis \"work\" to the state of inert pieces of celluloidthat
can only be brought to life by the workofmontage. Deleuzetheorizes this
double mastery in the idea of the sensory-motorschema:as a result of
the mechanical apparatus of
the cinema, the identity of
activeand passive
reverts back to of
the omnipotence the mind coordinating the work with a
sovereigneye and hand.The old logicof form fashioning matter reinstates
itselfanew. In limit cases,the eye of the filmmaker neednot even look
through the eye of the camera. One filmmaker to have achieved this was
Hitchcock, who boastedthat he never looked through the eye of a camera
becausethe film was \"in his head.\"The pure affects extractedfrom the
state of things were initially conceivedas functional affects designedto
incitewonder or anxiety in the audience.Hitchcock embodies a certain
logicin which cinema reversesthe aesthetic identity ofpassive and active
and rehabilitatesthe sovereignty of the central intelligence. That is why
Deleuzebrings him onto center stage at the end ofThe Movement-Image, where
he describesHitchcock as a demiurge vanquished by the automata he had
himselfcreated, as afflicted in his turn by the paralysishe had conferredon
them.
The rupture of the \"sensorv-motor schema\"has not taken placeas
a processthat can be identified by specific characteristics eitherin the
composition of the shot or in the relationshipbetweentwo shots.The
gesture that frees the potentialities remains, as always, the gesture that chains
them up again. Therupture is always still to come,like a supplementof
intervention that is simultaneously a supplementof disappropriation.One
ofDeleuze s first examplesofthe crystal-image,taken from Tod Brownings
The Unknown, is significant in this regard.6It is very difficult to specify,in the
shots themselvesor in their sequential arrangement, the traits by which we
would recognizethe rupture of the sensory-motorlink, the infinitization
ofthe interval, and the crystallization ofthe virtual and the actual.That is
why Deleuzes whole analysis has to rely on the allegorical content of the
fable.The hero of The Unknown is an armlessman with a circus routine\342\200\224he

throws knives with his physicaldisabilityingratiates him

feet\342\200\224whose

to his assistant,who cannot stand the hands of men.The problem, we

learn soon enough,is that his disabilityis feigned:he has taken on this
identity in orderto hide from the police. Afraid that his assistantmight
 Deleuzeand the Ages of Cinema 119

discover his disguiseand leavehim, he takes a radical decisionand has his

arms amputated for real.Thingsend badly for him since,meanwhile, the
circusstrongman has squeezedthe assistants prejudicesout of her in his
embrace. What interestsus, though, are not the misfortunes of the hero,
but how Deleuze turns them into an allegory for the radicalform of the
\"rupture of the sensory-motorlink.\" If The Unknown is an emblem of the
crystal-image,the exemplaryfigure ofthe time-image, it is not becauseof
propertiesspecificto the shots and their assemblage,but becausethe film
allegorizesthe ideathat artistic activity is a surgery ofthought: the thought
that creates must always self-mutilate, amputate its arms, in orderto thwart
the logicby which it invariably takes backfrom the images ofthe world the
freedomthat it restitutes to them.Amputating the arms means undoing
the coordinationbetween the eye that has all the visible at its disposaland
the hand that coordinatesthe visibilities under the powerof a brain that
imposesits centralizing logic.Deleuzesubverts the old parable ofthe blind
and the paralytic: the filmmaker s gaze must become tactile, must become
of
like the gaze the blind who coordinate elements of the visibleworld
the
by groping.And, conversely,the coordinating hand must be the hand of a
paralytic.It must beseizedby the paralysisofthe gaze, which can only touch
things from afar, but never graspthem.
The rupture that structures the oppositionbetweenthe movement-image
and the time-image is a fictive rupture, so that we may do better to describe
their relationshipnot as an opposition,but as an infinite spiral.Artistic
activity must always be turned into passivity, find itself in this passivity, and
be thwarted anew. If we find Bressonboth in the analysis of the affection-
imageand among the heroesof the time-image,it is becauseBressonscinema
embodies,more than any other, the dialecticat the heart ofDeleuzes two
volumes,becausehis cinema embodiesa radicalform ofthe cinematographic
paradox.Hiswhole cinema is made of the doubleencounter ofactiveand
passive, voluntary and involuntary. The first encounter joins the sovereign
will of the director to these filmed bodiesthat Bressonpreferredto call
modelsso as to distinguish them from the tradition ofthe actor. Themodel
seems,at first, to be a body entirely subjectedto the will of the auteur,
who demandsthat the model reproducethe lines and gestureshe provides
without ever playing, without ever embodying the \"character\" as traditional
actors do.Themodelis to behave like an automaton and to reproducein
a uniform tone the lines taught by the auteur. But there the logicof the
automaton capsizes:the model'smechanical,unconsciousreproductionof
the lines and gesturesdictated by the directorinfuses them with its own
 120 Film Fables

interiortruth, invests them with a truth that it is not cognizant The

o\302\243

directoris even less cognizant of it than the model, so that the lines and
gestureshe tyrannically imposesupon the modelproducea film he couldnot
have foreseen and that may even run counter to everything he had planned\302\273

The automaton, says Deleuze,manifests what is unthinkable in thought: in

thought in general,but mainly in its own thought, as well as, and aboveall, in
the thought of the director To this first encounter between will and chance
we must add a second: the truth the modelmakesmanifest, which neither
it nor the directorwere cognizant of, again escapesit, becauseit is not in
the image it offers the camera, but in the way thoseimages are subsequently
arrangedduring montage.The modelonly gives the film its \"substance/'
It of
is the film s raw material, somewhat like the spectacle the visible that
unfolds before the painter. It is not by chance that Bressoncalls the models
of of of
\"pieces nature;\" The task art is to arrange thesepieces nature in a
way that expresses their truth and that brings them back to life again like
flowers in water.7
The gap between what the mechanical eye should capture and what it
has captured is cast off and seemsto get lost
in the indifferent equality
of of
the \"pieces nature\" the artist must assemble.Doesn'tthis reproduce,
oncemore, the old tyranny ofintentional form impressingitself on passive
matter? This questionunderliesDeleuze s whole analysis ofBresson.Deleuze
puts the \"hand,\" as an emblem of the work ofmontage, at the heart ofhis
analvsis becausehis main concernis with the relationship between the will
of the artist and the autonomous movement of images.He suggeststhat
Bressonconstructs a \"haptic\" space,a spacewhere touch has been freed
from the imperialismof the optical, a fragmented spacewhoseparts are
connected\"manually,\" by groping.Montage is the work of a hand that
touches,not of a hand that seizes. Deleuzegives another example,again
allegorical:the scenein Pickpocket where spaceis constructedby the hands
ofthe pickpocketspassingaround the stolenmoney.Thesehands,Deleuze
points out, dont seize,they just touch, they just stroke the stolen object.8
Thesepickpockets who don't seizewhat they steal and are contentjust
with touching it to connect a disorientedspaceare evidently kin to the man
whosefalse disability is transformed into a real amputation. Still, the best
illustration ofthis dialecticis no doubt to be found in Au hasard, Balthazar,
a film that is really a longstory of hands.The story starts with the first
shot, the hand ofthe young woman touching the donkey, and continues by
transforming her hand into the hands ofthe two young boys seizingand
pulling the donkeythey want to make into their toy. The story goesfrom
 Deleuzeand the Ages of Cinema 121

there to the hands ofthe child that baptize the donkeythen on to the hands
load,strike,and whip the donkeyThedonkey is first ofall a symbolof
that

passivity, the animal that suffers the blows.And indeedthat is all Balthazar
will do until he is shot deadat the end ofthe film as a result ofa
smuggling
deal gonewrong. In the meantime, another play ofhands has set in:the play
ofdesireofthe roguish who wants the young Mariejust as the two
G\303\251rard,

boys want the donkey, and who conductshis chase with perfect hand and
eye coordination. His hand takes advantage of the night to hold Maries
hand resting on a bench in the garden.Later on, this samehand disconnects
the cablesof the young woman's car, immobilizing it and making her feel
the power ofthe gaze that subjectsher even before the hand reachesfor her
bosomand around her neck.Later on there'llbe the slappinghand that
forcesa revolted Marieto recognize her master, and then the hand the miller
restson top ofMariesto indicateanew her dependence.
Tr\\e wdo/e ifiin is cAc storv ofcwo arevs, the donkey^^dtheyoz&iggi^X
at the mercy of those who assert their powerin the coordinationofgaze
and hand.How can we not see it as an allegory la Deleuze?The roguish \303\240

is basicallythe perfect Hitchcockiandirector.LikeHitchcock,

G\303\251rard G\303\251rard

spendsall his time setting traps:provoking accidentsby spillingoil on the

road;bringing Maries car to a stop by using Balthazaras bait; transforming
the vagabond Ars\303\250ne a gun and convincing
into a murderer by giving him
him that the policeare coming to arrest him.He is constantly arranging,
with his hands and his words,the specificvisibility that will producethe
movements he s after and henceallow for new gesturesof capture. G\303\251rard

is an allegory of the \"bad\" filmmaker who imposesthe law ofhis desireon

the visible.The paradox,evidently, is that this bad filmmaker is uncannily
like the goodone.When her mother asksMariewhat goodshe can possibly
seein \"Who knows why oneloves?Hesays to me:come.
shereplies:
G\303\251rard,

I I
come.Do thatl And do it.\" But the uniform tone with which the \"model,\"
Anne Wiazemsky, deliverstheselines betrays the kinship between the power
of the hunter of
and the directorBresson.Healso tells his models:
G\303\251rard

say that, and they say it; do that, and they do it.The difference,somemight say,
is that in doingwhat Bressonwants, Anne Wiazemsky alsodoes something
other than what he wants, she producesan unexpectedtruth that thwarts
hisintentions.But it is the way Bressondirectsthe traps set by the director
\"
that must make the differencebetween the two mise-en-s
G\303\251rard c\303\250nes\"

This difference, though, always gets played out at the very limits of the
indiscernible.This indiscernibility is ofcourserelated to the play ofhands.
Deleuze s claim that Bressonconstructs \"haptic\" and manually connected
122 Film Fables

spacesis his way oftalking about the fragmentation ofshots characteristic

of Bressonscinema.Deleuzeclaimsthat this fragmentation reveals the
power of the interval that separatesthe shots and puts emptinessbetween
them, insteadofthe power ofthe linear progressionof the \"sensory-motor\"
links.But, in practice,this oppositionbetween two opposinglogicsis almost
indiscernible.Bressonsvisually fragmented shots and connections amount
to an ellipsis.Hes more than willing to show us only parts ofbodies: hands
touching a donkeys stomach, arms baptizing it, a hand pouring a can of
oil,the samehand moving in the darknesstowards a hand resting in the
light.But the fragmentation of bodiesand shots is itself an ambivalent
procedure. Deleuzeseesin it the infinitization ofthe interval that disorients
the spacesand separatesthe images.But we couldalso seethe fragmentation
as doingthe inverse,as intensifying the coordination betweenthe visual and
the dramatic: we seizewith our hands, no need then to representthe whole
body; we walk with our feet, no needto show our heads.The fragmented
shotis also an economic means ofbringing into sharpfocus what is essential
in the action, what classicaltheoriesof painting used to call the pregnant
moment ofthe story. s hand may have beenreducedto a minuscule
G\303\251rard

blackshadow that touchesMaries hand, or, if you prefer, the white spot to
which her hand has been reduced. But this fragmentation only accentuates
all the more the \"implacable\" coordination between Gerard'shunt and the
film that directs it.The whole film proceeds thus accordingto an almost
indiscernibledifferencebetween the voluntarv of the hunter and
mise-en^sc\303\250ne

the involuntary one of the director. Coming back to Deleuze, this means
the near-total indiscernibihtvbetweenthe logicof the movement-image
and the logicof the time-image, between the montage that orients spaces
accordingto the \"sensory-motor\"schemaand that which disorientsit so
as to renderthe products of conscious thought equal in power to the free
deployment ofthe potentialities of world-images. Bressonscinematography
and Deleuze s theory both bring to the fore the dialecticconstitutive ofthe
cinema. Cinema is the art that realizesthe original identity ofthought and
non-thought that defines the modern image of art and thought. And it is
also the art that overturns this identity and rehabilitates the claims of the
human brain to its placeat the center of the world, from where it can put
everything at its disposal. This dialectic jeopardizes from the outset any
attempt to distinguish two images by means of specifictraits, and so to fix
a borderseparating a classicalfrom a modern cinema.
 Deleuzeand the Ages of Cinema 123

NOTES

Bazin, \"TheEvolution of the Language of Cinema/'in What is

Andr\303\251

Cinema?y vol I, trans. Hugh Gray (Berkeley:University of California

Press,1967) 38.
GillesDeleuze, Cinema 2:The Time-Image, trans. HughTomlinsonand
Robert Galeta (London:The Athlone Press,1989) 33.
GillesDeleuze, Cinema I:The Movement-Image, trans. HughTomlinson
and Barbara Habberjam(London:The Athlone Press,1986) 58.
Deleuze,Cinema Z, 81.
Cf. Deleuze,Cinema I, 200\342\200\2245.

Deleuze,Cinema 2,72.
Robert Bresson,Notes on the Cinematographer, trans.Jonathan Griffin
(Copenhagen: GreenInteger, 1997) 23.
Deleuze,Cinema 2, 12\342\200\22413.
 CHAPTER8

FallingBodies
Rossellini's
Physics

Morningin Rome,Pina.\"The beginningis morethan half the whole\"

says Aristotle. For Rossellinithe beginning, this more than half the whole,
is entitled Rome, Open City. It is of coursenot his first film, and there'sno
shortage of critics who never miss an opportunity to bring up Rossellinis
earlier films, devoted, as it were, to the war efforts of FascistItaly. It was
Rome, OpenCity, however, that establishedwhatever precarious consensus
there was betweena predominantly Italian Marxist gaze, attuned to the
worthinessofrepresentingthe anti-Fasciststruggle, and a predominantly
French phenomenological gaze, attuned to how major politicalthemes are
rootedin the restitution ofthe intimate truth ofordinary bodies. Rome, Open
City, in other words, is both the great film about the Italian resistanceand
the manifesto of neorealism, an epicabout people who die without talking
anchored in the representation of everyday life and using only the gestures
and intonations of real people. It is impossible not to praise the way it
dovetails politicalcontent and artistic form, the historicalstruggle of the
peopleand the struggle to achievea real representation ofthe people. Years
later, nostalgic critics will pit this perfect adequationagainst the poorly
workedout stories,the awkward links, and the CatholicsermonsofStromboli
and Voyage to Italy. It is odd, though, to note the extent to which thesesame
critics seemto have completelyoverlookedboth the improbabilitiesthat
abound in this realist manifesto and the lightnessthat characterizes these
modelfighters of the resistance. The leaderof the resistanceis having an
affair with a cabaret dancerwho makesher living from the liberality ofthe
occupying officers.When his place is tipped off, he seeksrefuge with his
companionat arms Francesco, who lives in a building where a group of
kids assiduouslyapply themselves to preparing and handlingexplosives.
He makessure to send word ofhis move to another \"artist\" of the same
ilk as his girlfriend. Thepriest who provides him with false documentsis
also sheltering a Wehrmacht deserter. Therehas never been,one would say,
 126 Film Fables

such a singularly strange representation ofthe Still, it is not the

resistance\302\273

recklessnessand politicalimpatienceof these characters that make them

seemsounfit for the clandestinelife of the resistance. It is, rather, the
directorwho seemsradically unsuited or indifferent to the representation
ofthe resistance.The impatience with which thesecharacters,so eminently
reasonableand measuredin thought and action, throw themselvesinto harm s
way doesn'tjust fly in the face of
the notion that this is a modelpolitical
film. It also jars with Bazinsimage of Rossellinis cinema as a patient search
for the secretof beings and things, and with Deleuze s characterization
ofit as a cinema of disconnectedspacesand of pure optical and sound
situations.Theirrush to hurl themselvesinto the trap is as far away from
Marxistpoliticalconscience as from the patienceof Bazins phenomenology
and of Deleuze s sensoriality.Their impetuositytranslates the directors
desireto get as quickly as possibleto the only thing that really interestshim:
the meeting of antagonistic elements, the pure collisionofextremes.
We will not find the best illustration of the purity of this meeting, of
this fall that is also an accomplishment,in the heroicmartyrdom of the
communist and the priest.Rossellinioncesaid he was morethan willing
to make a whole film for the sake of a scene,a shot, sometimesjust for
the sakeofa gesture:Edmund wandering the streetsofBerlin, the tin cans
that come tumbling down the village steps in Miracle, the two Anglo-Saxon
\"trees\" who fall prisonerto the mass of Neapolitan microbes at the end
of Voyage to Italy. Thereis no doubt that Rosselliniconceivedall of Rome,
Open City for the sceneof Pina s death, a scene,incidentally, that is also
highly improbable.In order to dash after the truck driving away her fianc\303\251,

Francesco, Pina has to force her way through a barrage of soldiersand

tear herselffree from arms that should visibly have been able to stop her\302\273

This doesn'tsit toowell with the incapacity to respondto a situation that

Deleuzedescribes. Nor does it have anything to do with the strength of
despairor the healthy vigor traditionally accordedto women ofthe people,
Pina is a creature who breaksher chains, takes a step to the side, and goes
there where her maker bids her go.Shetears herself away from the swarm
of German soldiersand tenement dwellersand finds herselfall alonein
the middle of the street, a blacksilhouette on an enormouswhite stretch,
comical almost as shedashestowards us, towards the camera and the rifles,
her exaggeratedgesturesreminiscentof thoseof a woman running after
a bus that left without waiting for its passenger.Were remindedof those
comedieswherethe delayedbrideand groomhave to run off to churchhalf-
clad.And, indeed,Pina and Francesco were supposedto meet at the altar
 Rossellini's Physics 127

later that morning. Very few directorswould have resistedthe temptation of

prolonging\342\200\224and
thus of marvelous suspensionof image and
losing-\342\200\224this

meaning with the use of slow motion or the freeze frame. Rossellininever
displayssuch lack of courage in his art. For his camera and for the rifles,
itstime to put an end to this suspension.Pina now crasheson the white
street like a great bird.The crying boy, and the priest trying to consolehis
pain, who swoopdown on her one after the other are themselves like two
birds outlined by the hand of a painter, and both equally unstoppablefor
the soldiers. Never have the weight of a falling body and the lightnessof
gracebeenbetter joinedthan in this body whosegentle curve vanquishes
from the outset all pain and disorder.This line that closes in on itself (it
wasn't so long ago that JacquesRivette turned to Matisse,the painter of
swoopingbirds,to talk about arabesques)is the happinessofthis image that
condensesthe relationshipsand tensionsof the film without symbolizing
them, without identifying them with somethingother than the interplay
of blackand white that defines the filmic image.This isn't to say that the
painter of the undergroundmovement in Italy worksonly for \"aesthetic\"
pleasure,for the thrill ofthe beautiful shot that loops the tragic death of
a mother and of a woman of the peopleinto a graciousarabesque.For
Rossellini,there is no beautiful shot that is not a moment of gracein the
strongest,Pauline senseofthe term; no beautiful shot that does not give
its absoluteconsentto the encounter with the thing or personit was not
searching for. In this instance, it marks the exact concordance ofan ethical
upsurge and an aesthetic trace.Beyond every political determination, the
priest and the communist engineer both die without talking for the sakeof
this pure original \303\251lan, for the absolutegratuity orgenerosity ofthis liberty.
We neverhear Pina talking about the gloriousfuture, though sheis the one
who rushes headlongtowards the rifles and the camera and outlines the
exactcurve ofthis liberty. All the gentlenessamassedin her fall is expressed
again in the infinitely gentle gesture ofDon Pietro, who holds in his hands
the head ofthe dead Manfredi and with his thumbs closesthe eyelidsthat
Manfredis torturers had left open.In a long scenefrom another film, The
Flowers of St. Francis, it will again fall to the same actor, Aldo Fabrizi, to unfold,
albeit differently, the meaning of this same gesture.Fabrizi, playing the
tyrant Nicolai, holds in his hands the equally beat up face ofFra Ginepro,
whom his men had tortured, until he concedes defeat, until he is disarmed
by the absoluteenigma ofthis fearlessface, by the incomprehensible power
that is the strength of the weak, the invincible strength of those who have
consentedto the most radical abandon, to absoluteweakness.
 128 Film Fables

But letsnot anticipate. Even if he grants Pina'sand DonPietro s gestures

the power to representthe causeManfredi diesfor, the directorof Rome, Open
City no doubt agrees with Manfredi\342\200\224and with his Franciscan critics\342\200\224that

kindnessalone is not enough to defeat the Nazi torturers.What he knows

already, however, is that he hastenshis heroesto the headquartersof the
Gestapo becausethis placewhere the peoplefighting for freedom come
face to face with their torturers is the site for a clash between two types of
mise~en~scene. Thereare two film directorsat the Gestapoheadquarters,one
who uses for a set the torture chamberswhere resistance fighters scream
loudly but say little, and the other the lounge fitted with all the elements of
a Hollywoodset for a film about Lili Marlenes Berlin\342\200\224mirrors, paintings,
and a piano.This is how Bergmann, the head ofthe Gestapo,and his associate
Ingrid have divided their respectivesidesand roles.In the room on the left,
Bergmann traces lines on the location map, arranges the shootingschedule,
and gives his instructions to his sound engineers\342\200\224that is, his torturers.
Ingridis responsiblefor the actressesand for arranging the imagesthat will
produce,in the adjoining set, the sought-after confessionspeech.Herart is
to use the image, the drug of the mirror, to trap all these \"actresses\"who
seetheir art as the art of putting makeup on their reflection in the dressing
room mirror, the same mirror that reflects Ingrids eyescontemplating their
prey and that holds the snapshotofMarina and Manfredi, the static shot
ofIngrids the little trap insidethe big trap. Rosselliniclearly
mise~en~sc\303\250ne,

doesn't want to dwell toolong on the act of denunciationnor on what

Marina s motivations might be.The drug shereceivesas payment is only the
small change ofher petty desire,ofher great fear ofthe Unknown.When
Marina picksup the phoneto denounceher lover,her idioticfriend, Lauretta,
tells her with the lucidity of those still half-asleep:\"Maybethey re right,
maybe werethe idiots.\"This\"maybe\" haunts the actressofthe bad cinema:
the vertigo ofhaving to act differently, ofhaving to leavethe dressingroom
and its mirrors to throw oneselfheadlongonto the street, the void, liberty7.
Marinasbetrayal is her refusalto change But, contrary to what
mise-en~sc\303\250nes.

Ingridsimage might have led Marina's image in the mirrorto believe in

the roomon the right, the mise~en~sc\303\250ne in the roomon the left has failed.
ThisHollywood-styleuse ofthe image as trap can do nothing to make the
men offreedom talk.When sheseesher deadlover,Marina collapseslike a
soullessmass,a mannequin, and Ingridbendsdown to removeher costume,
the fur coat, for the next extra to use.
\"It isn't hard to die well,\" says DonPietro to the priest trying to comfort

him with superfluous wordsof encouragement, \"the hard thing is to live

 Rossetlini's Physics 129

well!*This perfectly formulated antithesis will be answered by the voice of

another Christian, SimoneWeil, who was herselfinvolved in the resistance
and whosefigure will inspirethe director 51:
ofEurope \"Deathis the most
preciousthing which has been given to men.That is why the supreme
mpiety is to make bad use of it. To die amiss.To kill amiss\"1Rosseilinis
presupposesthe exact identification ofspiritual and material,
nise~en~$c\303\250ne

>olitical and artistic, so that we would do better, in his case,to formulate

he problem in terms of falling well or badly. Underthe subheadingof
he meeting of the film directorand the philosopher,we might add Weils
lefinition of the spiritual physicsofart: \"A doublemovement of descent:
3 do again, out of love, what gravity does. Isnot the double movement
f descentthe key to all art?\"2 Thereare two ways offalling, and they are
by a bare nothing that in art can only be called the soul:not a
\303\256parated

art of the representation,but an almost imperceptibledifference in the

ght that shineson it. The exactmeasure ofRossellini s \"realism\" is in the
recisionwith which he traces the gesturethat sums up the trajectory of
berty, in his determinedidentification ofthe believers spiritualism and the
tist s materialism:the so-called soaringsoulperfectly circumscribedby the
irve ofthe falling body.\"Genius ofChristianity,\" say Rohmer and Rivette
pagesthat have sincebecome
\342\200\242

famous. We shouldmention, though, that

lis genius3was from the very beginningsplit in two. Death and life in
hrist, the crucifixionofthe fleshafter Hisexampleand glorification of the
:>dy by the light ofthe Word made flesh. Centuriesof Christian polemic,
iting from the DesertFathers all the way to the Reformation and the
ounter-Reformation, have sedimentedthis duality around two poles: the
tought ofincarnation, ofbodiestransfigured by the presenceofthe Savior,
tat at its limit borders on idolatry; and the thought of renunciation, of
lortified flesh and ofthe denunciation ofimages, that at its limit borders
n becoming anotherpaganism\342\200\224the paganism of philosophers, the
latonism of the soul lamenting its fall and longing to be separatedfrom
ie body. Rosseilinisheroes, his heroinesespecially,are always traveling
etween thesetwo poles,between asceticismand idolatry: the renunciation
f the images in the mirror, ofPharisaic valuesand ofthe security of ones
ome culminates in Irene'sabsoluteasceticismin Europe 51; contactwith
le proliferating Madonnas,the cult ofthe dead,the programmedmiracles,
id the quasi-paganexcesses of NeapolitanChristianity culminatesin
.atherines critique of \"pure asceticimages\" in Voyage to Italy. The scandal
gives the fabric to Rossellinis films is always somehowrelated to an
\303\256at

nbiguity at the point where renunciation and incarnation meet.But we

 130 Film Fables

shouldsay that Rossellini'sparticular genius is that he can bring these

divergingroadstogether in the conciliation ofthe image,that he can fix the
indiscerniblepresenceofthe incorporealin the corporeal in the movement
of an ascending,descending,or falling body;in a gaze that is fixed, lost,
or turned to the side;in the way a head tilts towards another head, an arm
extendstowards another arm, and in how hands receive a pensive brow; in
the murmur ofan invocation that is both prayer and blasphemy.

Morningin Berlin,Edmund.To unravel the arabesqueof Pinas falling

Rosselliniturns it into the plot of another film, Germany Year Zero, a film
about the ruins of a city where a boy plays, wanders, and jumps into the
void. Rosselliniconstructedthis film for those final sceneswhere Edmund,
who has just killedhis father, plays all those ancestral games for which kids
the world over turn citiesinto playgrounds.Hebalanceshimselfon the very
edgeofthe sidewalkand ofa publicfountain, and he hopscotches from one
side ofthe brokensidewalkto the other;he kicksa ball, or anything that
might passfor one, around in the street, and he picksup a make-believegun
to shoot at squaresof light; he slidesdown ramps used for construction
materials, and he walks,runs, comesto a full stop to think, about what
we shall never know, then sets out again resolutelytowards an unknown
destination The insoucianceof childhood,is it beautiful or monstrous?
\342\231\246. \342\231\246

And, anyway, why assumethat Edmund, the intelligent child and family
breadwinner, is any moreinsouciant than Pina s son,Marcello,who lectures
Don Pietroon the needfor the historicalblocbetweentwo experiments
with explosive chemicals} Or maybe it is enough to do as the text in the
openingcreditsinvites us to do and seein his insouciancethe innocence of
childhoodperverted by the force ofideologies, Edmundled to parricideby
what his old Nazi teacher had to say about the necessaryelimination ofthe
weak?The problemis that evervthing we seein the film deniesthis causal
law. Our uneaseas we watch Edmundin action goesbeyond all our fearsand
concernsregarding the moral consequences attendant on the troubles ofthe
time and ideological inculcation. It seemshardly necessaryto note that the
schoolmasterdelivershis speechvery offhandedly, less attentive to what he
is saying than to what is happeningbehindhis landlordgroping back\342\200\224his

at the young boy he had left on the steps of the building.Noris there any
needto stress that the father himselfis distraught at being only another
uselessmouth to feed, that he deploreshis cowardicein the face ofthe only
desirableway out.It is enough to seeEdmundgrab the flask at the hospital
while his father deploreshis own weakness.It is enough to seeEdmund,
 Rossefhni's Physics (31

now backat home, rise slowly from the table while his father curseshis past
cowardiceand the presentcowardiceofhis oldestson, walk behindhis older
brother who's sitting with his head buriedin his hands,and step resolutely
into the adjoining roomwherehe prepares,unflinching, the fatal tea while
the voice off-screen goeson talking. Itsenough to seethe tea ball glimmer
like a circle oflight before the father picksup the cup, Edmund isn't just a
child who does what otherstell him to do;his act is a silent protest against
this disorderof voices and gesturesthat never coincide. The whole film is
here, in the relationship betweenEdmunds meticulous gesture and the voice
off-camera, Edmund acts while all the others talk, undaunted at the idea
of turning wordsinto deeds.This is the sourceof our profound unease
before this gesture that joins cold-blooded cruelty and supremetenderness.
Edmundbringsto his act of parricidethe same couragethat the companions
ofSt, Francis of Assisibring to their commitment to a literal application of
the words ofthe Gospel,He sets about the task of \"eliminating the weak\"
with that humble devotion that is preciselythe strength ofthe weak.There
is no gesture of love moremoving than Edmund placinghis hand on his
father s arm to dissuadehim from sharing with the others a drink prepared
speciallyfor him.All ideologies and all explanationsthat appeal to the
of
dangers ideology are disarmed by this coincidence of opposites,by the
perfection of this quiet gesture of love and death.Theseexplanations will
never be able to explain that there is nothing more on Edmunds silent face
than in his meticulous gestures;nor that this \"nothing more\" that manifests
itself in the unwavering decisionto murder and in the moving tenderness
of its executionis nothing lessthan liberty, Edmundis spurredto action by
his vertiginous discovery of the pure ability to do, or not do, what others
say, the discoverythat he alone is responsiblefor his act, the soleagent of
its coming into being.The film would be infinitely reassuringif all it did
was urge us to condemndangerous words and protect a child who is being
crushedunder the weight ofa world in ruins. But all that really weighs on
Edmund is the crushing weight of the liberty of the year zero.The Nazi
catechismcannot producethe act, and remorsecannot drive him to suicide.
Thereis no causein either case,but only vertigo, the attraction exertedby
the void of unlimited possibility:the gaping window of the bombed out
building, the window that is alsothe sourceofthe light that forms the white
squaresEdmundpretendsto shoot at with his imaginary pistol,
Surelv everyone must feel the profound kinship in this impassioned
improvisation in blackand white between the hopscotchfrom
games\342\200\224the

one black splotchto another\342\200\224Edmund plays with as much concentration

132 Film Fables

as he puts into killing his father and that other vertigo, the white pageand
the jump into the void of the film. Edmund composes this page that is
already saturated with Pina s fall with masterful improvisation,until he too
throws himselfbefore his true father, his creator, before this revolutionary
filmmaker who always refusedto work with a detailedscript and instead
improvisedfrom day to day, basing his decisionson the capacity ofhis
actors and on his own ability to guidethem to the sourceof every action and
every representation. Norcan we separatethe complicity betweenthe camera
and Edmunds games from something elsewe know:the film is dedicatedto
another child, the young Romano Rossellini,who was himself playing the
games Edmundplays in the film on the eve ofits making, but who had died
before shooting started.Still,this perfect complicity between biography and
fiction cannot account for the unbearable lightnessof Edmunds fall. The
fall that closesthe child'simprovisations\342\200\224the equal cruelty and tenderness
with which the artist leadshis son back to death, or reconstructshis death
as know its profound kinship with the absolutegenerosity or
play\342\200\224must

violenceofthe creator who freelyreclaimswhat Hehas freelygiven.Thecall

ofthe void to which the parricidechild surrendersmust revealits proximitv
to the call presentedby St.Francis ofAssisi,Gods Juggler, who teaches his
brothersthat the way to decidewhere they must go preach is to spin round
and round, as kids do, until vertigo throws them on the ground and points
them in the directionofthe call.
The oldClaudelmust have felt somethingof this sort when he was
asked to give his opinionabout Rossellini's productionofJoan of Arc at
the Stake, which Claudelhad
only wanted to see representedas an oratorio
becausethe sound of Joan's chains breaking had given him the idea for it
in the first place. The story goesthat at the conclusionof his own text,
which read \"Godis strongest,\" the old master blasphemously scribbled,as
if in agreement with Rossellini: \"Its Ingrid who'sstrongest\"Rather than
celebrating a new divinity of the artist, the story points to a more profound
complicitybetweendivine liberty and the power of this improviser who
breaksthe chains ofhis charactersby hurling them into the void and who, in
so doing,redefines as something other than the illustration ofa
mise~en~sc\303\250ne

story, as the trace of a fall, an arabesquewithin which the sound generating

the work still vibrates, but differently.
The improviserhad paved the way for this in Miracle, a film made entirely
for the pleasureof shootingthe sceneof the tin cans that cometumbling
down the village steps,as well as in the most improvisedofall his films, Voyage
to Italy, which he constructedaround a sound we cannot hear, the sound of
 RosseMini's Physics 133

the pebblesKatherine Joyce tells her husband about in the sun-drenched

terrace ofUncleHomer s villa. Thesepebbleshad beenthrown at her misty,
rain-splashedwindow by a young man, barely morethan a child,who was
later found chilledto the bonein the garden:Charles,the consumptive poet
of \"pure asceticimages\" who had cometo bid Katherine a final goodbye
before his premature death, IngridBergman listens for the sound of the
pebblesthrown by this Tom Thumb behindso many windows, their noise
makesher go up and down so many steps,and yet we shall neverhear their
sound, for the simple reasonthat neithershe nor we have ever heard it.
They are paperpebbles,Rossellinithe improviser was not above borrowing,
and he borrowedthesepebblesfrom a story by a namesake of Katherines,
JamesJoyce,They comefrom what he rememberedofJoyces storyabout the
impossibleand immaterial love that the modelwife of \"The Dead\"reveals
to her husband as the snow that drownsout every noisedescendssoftly
upon all ofDublin,The call oftheseabsencesresoundsin the analogy of
the works arabesques.

Thetwo paths, and Irene,In Europe 51we encounteranother

Mich\303\250le

falling child, a rich kid with no problemsof conscience

Mich\303\250le, who also
succumbsto the call of the void. It is clearthat he doesnot fall because
his motherwastessocializingall the time he would have wanted her to
spend on him. Nordoeshe jump becauseof the troublesof the time and
the disturbancesof conscience, as Andrea, the loquaciousheir ofthe quiet
Manfredi, suggests, himselftells his mother the reasonwhen she
Mich\303\250le

asks what s got into him that he insistson sullenly pacing up and down the
apartment in total boredom: nothing, niente. He jumps into the emptiness
in the middle of the stairwell for nothing. Or rather, he jumps to get his
motherto abandon her homeand exchange every possession and every
consideration f or the satisfaction of a singlequest:to find out what he
said, what he might have said, to the hospital doctoror the communist
journalist in explanation of his act.Irenes quest is of coursefutile: like
Pina, like Edmund, has simply thrown himself before his creator
Mich\303\250le

by jumping into the void that annuls every causeand goodcause,beginning

with that ofrealism.He jumps down for nothing, other than to mark the
milestonesalong the path that his mother will have to retrace,but backwards.
If Rossellinielides s act, if he doesn'tshow us the fall that would
Mich\303\250le

have tarnished the beauty ofthis bourgeoisstairwell,it isbecausethe thread

of events is spun backwards.AU we have of the fall is the absent voice
calling Ireneto retrace the path ofthe act.Thenceforward, it is Irenewho
 134 Film Fables

sticksout like a sore thumb in thesebourgeoissurroundingsas she tries to

rewind the trajectory of the fall. So she goesto lookelsewhere.Her first
destination is the working-class apartment blockson the outskirtsoftown
where she goesescorted by her scandalouscommunist cousin,Andrea, who
thinks the trip will take her mind off of her uselessquest and placeher
squarely in a solid universe of causes.Shegoeswith Andrea to the land
ofthe peopleand there she seestheir profound suffering: that of a child
whoselife is hanging on the money neededfor his treatment, and that of
the people, whosemiserableconditioncan be explainedby easilyidentifiable
causes.But in the courseofher visit, Irenelosesher way. A glance to the
side carriesher steps from these apartment blocks where factory workers
five to the vacant lots on the edgeof the river where the sub-proletariat
live in huts. Sheenters a universewhere the reference points normally used
to classifysufferings, their causes,and their remediesno longerapply.We
might be temptedto seehere the Deleuzean universe of \"opticaland sound
situations\" that break the continuity of the \"sensory-motor schema.\"The
problem,though, is that Irene s disorientation, like Pina s dash, is not an
impossibilityto react brought about by the troublesofthe time. They are
both movementsdictatedfrom behindthe camera by the imperiousvoice of
the director. Rossellinis is, point for point, the active refutation
mise~en~sc\303\250ne

ofthis simplescenarioofa world in ruins and disturbedconsciences that

the communist journalist tries so hard to impose. This is whv Ireneonly
keepsgoing further and further off, further and further to the side.From
the huts where Passerottolives with her fatherless children,Irenegoesto
the cementfactory and fills in for her, becominga worker for a day; as
she is leaving, she encountersa consumptive prostitute and becomes her
nurse.Irenes wanderings are her attempt to respondto a call not heard, an
absent voice. Shesurrenders,likeEdmund and St. Francis'companions,to
the call of chance and finds herself on an unpredictabletrajectory whose
progressionis extremely rigorousnonetheless:every step she takes only
estrangesher further from the system ofexplanations and motivations that
holds togetherthe rules ofgoodconduct,ofmental hygiene, and of all
things social. Sherejoinsthe point where the child fell at the bottom of
the spiral, that is to say, she rejoinsit up there, standing behind the barred
windowswhere thosewho no longerbelieve in causesor can no longer
serve any are lockedup.There,in a furtive gesture that sumsup the entire
trajectory ofthe film, the entire path she had retraceduntil coming to the
point where the fall had calledher, the madwoman\342\200\224the the
saint\342\200\224blesses

crowd that has gathered to bid her a last goodbye.The road up and the road
down are oneand the same.4
 Rossellini's Physics 135

A hillside.Nannina.Up and down, the identity of paths (su and as

gi\303\271,

Italian succinctlyputs it), such is the topography ofMiracle, a.film that hangs
from a hillside,held aloft between four shots:ofthe sea,barely visiblebelow,
ofthe village projectingfrom the face ofthe hill, ofthe flatland where goats
graze, and ofthe monastery at the top ofthe hill.The film hangs, also, on
the indiscernibilitybetweentruth and falsehood,betweenthe miraculous
and the blasphemous.Here,again, we must be careful to distinguish what
someonemay tell us about the film and what the film shows.An unfortunate
simpletonimagines she'spregnant with the Savior after beingraped by a
vagabond she thought was St.Joseph... It would all be very simpleif that
is what we saw.But on the screen,standing in front ofNannina and then
next to her, all we seeis a pure apparition that says nothing in reply to this
woman who pretendsto find its voice familiar. He sits next to her in the
square where shetells him to meet her (\"La!su?'*),poursher a drink, and she
sinks into a contentedsleep. The apparition has disappearedby the time
she awakesfrom her torpor, and nothing besidesher ravishment has taken
place.Theseare the sortsof scenesthat tend to be markedby a discrete
transition, like the ellipsisnovelists used long ago, or the woodburning in
the fireplaceof Hollywoodfilms. But parenthesesofthis sort have no place
in Rossellini'scinema.It isn't a matter ofprudishness,it s just that a director
soattuned to the powerofa singleglance,soskilledat capturing with a single
shot a bodys tiniest movementtowards another, can do without suggestion
and exhibition both.Which oneof those entangled and exposedlimbsthat
so repeatedly graceour screenswill ever attam the quiet shamelessnessof
IngridBergman, the provocativepowerofher face as she approaches,but
doesnot touch, the face ofthe priest in Strombohl Prudishnesshas nothing
to do with it.Rossellini's camera resists representinganything that takes
place, or should take place,in the shadows:a politicalconspiracy, a sexual
encounter, or even a sentiment whoseexpressioncannot be shown in the
perceptiblerelationship betweena glance and whatever attracts or troubles
it.A Rossellinifilm is a surfaceofinscriptionsthat doesnot tolerate the least
trace ofdissimulation, the presenceof something that must remain latent,
a truth hidden behind the appearance,or a scandalconcealed behind the
smoothsurface ofthings.The force ofscandal,here, has to do with the fact
that nothing is orcouldbe dissimulatei Nomatter how intenselyRossellini
scrutinizesfaces,he neverallowshis microscope to discoversomething that
the attentive onlooker would not have perceivedon his own. We discuss
belowthe difficulties Rosselliniencountersin Tear, where he brings to the
screenan ideathat, as a moralist, he has no issueswith: the liberating power
136 Film Fables

ofconfession.But what could Nannina confess?Herfolly or blasphemy is

entirely dependenton this spaceorientedonly by the path leadingup or
down, on this image that time and again tells everything worth knowing,
everything that is part ofthe event, this image that underminesall the solid
structures that tolerate a distinctionbetween the appearance ofthings and
their hidden reason,deceitand truth, the delinquencyof a vagabond and
the intervention of a transcendent power:the structures that partition the
spaceofperceptionand ofsocialrelationshipsinto surfaces comprisedof
aboveand below, front or back.What is so unbearable about this rounded
belly and obtusebrow is that nothing anywhere makesit possiblefor one to
discernwhat it is they re carrying.Theirsecretis the absenceof a secret,it is
that they ve forsaken the codes of visibility and interpretation that ordinarily
stitch the seamsof the social. The pure ravishment of this meeting with the
unknown leavesno other trace in reality than this child that nothing can
determinewhether he'sa gift of divine graceor the offspring of a bad
encounter.
Thisdoesnot mean that the directorconspireswith hisidiot to advancea
beatified fideism,to turn the disappearance ofthe causeinto the blank check
that allows us to read anything we want into the image and to substantiate
every theory. We should not take the disappearance of the causesomewhere
up there, in the directionofthe other church that hangs over the village of
exegetesand scandalmongerspackedtightly around the parish church, as
an indication ofRossellinis surrenderto pure fideism, but as an indication
of a different idea, one that demandsmore from interpretation, namely the
courageofthe personentrustedwith deliveringthe meaning or the child* The
courage ofthe actor and the attention of the spectatortogether
[interpr\303\250te],5

determine the meaning ofthe encounter. Plato had already told us this: we
seein Ionsgaze whether his song is an artificialfabrication or a divine gift.
We must then lookmore attentively at Anna Magnani (Nannina),to whose
art the film is dedicated.Itfalls to the mother, to the actress,to give birth to
this fatherless child, to impressher own questupon the child s face.This is
why the wretched Nannina, the daughter ofthe land, has to trace the same
path ofrenunciation as Irene,the respectablemother, the bourgeoiswoman
from the North who is brought face to face with the radicality ofher status
as a foreigner by her searchfor what her sonhad told her and by herobstinate
determination to know nothing ofsocietysavefor what she sees.Nannina,
too, has to leaveher \"home,\" the pitiful placethe village idiot and grotesque
godof the parish church sguare,Consinello,had given her and now takes
away. Shemust endure the insults ofthe enlightened youth, hear the sound
 Rossellini's Physics 137

of the tin cans thrown from the church square onto the steps ofthe village,
and, when chasedby a pack ofoldbigots and young skeptics,gather her
miserablerags and run up the long path to the high church* Shemust run
up there, even though she'llfind that the church is closedand that there
is no placeup there for the sacrilegiousbirth during which this backward
simpletonholds on to the iron rings on the wall as if she were on a cross
or on a delivery bed,and invokes the name ofGod as a breathing technique
for a painlessdelivery.And, even though all she gives birth to is a human
being,nothing more than the fruit ofher own labor and improvisation, she
exclaimsnonethelessin the presenceof the child we cannot see,but only
hear:\"Creatura mia\" Rossellinineeds two words and oneimage to sum up
the whole uncertainty ofthe film and oftwo centuries ofdiscussionabout
the human fabrication ofthe gods.Heconfronts the clevermans suspicions
that everything has a false bottom with this demonstration ofthe identity
of contraries: the humble confessionthat nothing hererequirescelestial
intervention and the quiet affirmation of the miraculous powerto create.
We shouldperhapscircle backfrom Anna Magnani s last wordsto the first
written wordsof the film, dedicatingit to her art. It may just be that the
Catholichierarchy did not react so much against the doubt cast upon its
mysteriesand miraclesas against the quiet pride of this humility, at the
excess of this final reversal that transforms St.Paul'sempowering of the
weak into an assault on the monopoly ofcreation.

Homeof the fisherman.Karin.Up and down, in and out, obedienceto

the call and the trap of the mirror:these are the categoriesthat structure
how Rossellinistagesthe huge conflict between North and South.We must
start out again from the Gestapoheadquarters in Rome, where the couple
Bergmann and Ingridshootall their sceneseither in the lounge all fitted with
mirrors or in the confessionchambers.The war didn'tend with the defeat
ofthe officers of the \"master race\";it goeson, but under different guises.
It falls to IngridBergman,the Swedishactresswho came to Rossellinivia
Hollywoodand who joins in her name and surname the diabolicduo of
directors, to wage a vertiginous doublecombat and carry out the double
execution that consumesthe pride ofthe master race from the North and
ofthe art of reflection and drugs,scripts and
mise~en~scene\342\200\224the frames\342\200\224

erectedby conqueringHollywoodin the effort to protect its studios and

drawing roomsfrom every call ofthe unknown and every vertigo ofliberty.
Under different names and characters\342\200\224Karin in Stromboli, Irenein Europe 51,
Katherine in Voyage to Bergmanalways acts out the same scenario
Italy\342\200\224Ingrid
138 Film Fables

ofpower beingconsumedin the flame of This consumptionis not

liberty\302\273

of
reducibleto what the hurried viewer Voyage to Italy gets to see:the haughty
Northernerswho arrive with their Bildungsroman only to seetheir scriptturned
inside out and utterly derailedby the pagan-Christianexcesses of the set
and of the Neapolitanfigurations\342\200\224the shameless,gigantic proportionsof
ancient statues and the obsceneproliferation ofroundedbelliesbefore the
altars ofthe Madonna;the Christian veneration of skulls thrown together
in a heap and the embracing bodies of pagan lovers just discoveredunder
the lava of the volcano; the vapors of the Solfatare and the delirium of
the processions, this \"panickedsenseof nature\" whosewhirlwind whisks
Alex and Katherine away only to return them to oneanother.The point
isn't to make the proud confesstheir weakness,or to get them to know the
barbarousheart and simplecustomsof civilization, or to make them feel
at home on the other side of the mirror. After all, this capacity to feel at
home in foreign lands is an old directorial trick, something the conqueror
has always taken pride in. Preciselythis temptation is illustrated on the little
blackislandofStromboliby Karin, the displacedwoman, the daughter of
the North who oncehad an affair with an officer ofthe master race and now
thinks she can put all ofthat behindher by following this fisherman whose
voice promisesthe romance and sun ofSouthernisles. Isit ignorance, or is
it a ploy to get Karin to touch the of
depths her hardships,that leadsthe
localpriest to suggest,apparently to dissuadeher from leaving, that she fix
up her conjugalhome?With the help shegets from masonsrecently returned
from Brooklyn, where they no doubt acquiredplentv of experience fixing
up restaurants calledNapoli or Vesuvius, it doesn'ttake Karin long to arrange
the set for her and then to set about consciouslyperverting the
mise~en-sc\303\250ne

relationshipsof in and out, here and elsewhere.SheremovesMadonnasand

family photos and decoratesthe walls with tufts and nets, bedecksthe tables
with vases,lets a prickly fig tree into the home, and paints Northern flowers
on the whitewashedwalls.
Karin makesthe placefeel like homeby transforming the fisherman's
home into oneofthose \"fishermen houses\"that distinguishedladiesfrom
the North in their conquestof the Southernisleswill soonbe buying and
fixing up for their Mediterraneanholidays.The fisherman's family thinks
it
his houselacksmodestyand refuseto enter The director,for his part, has
no intention ofletting Ingrid'slittle sisterframe all her dreams of escape
within this set worthy of the amateur filmmaker at best. He turns her out
ofdoorswith the childand questionshes carrying and setsher on the road
up, though here it doesnot abut on a church but on the fire-spewingcrater.
 Rossellini's Physics 139

Herelievesher of her meagerbaggageand leadsher into the presenceofthe

divinity that showsthe desireto escapeand the illusion of a home in their
common vanity* The modestythat Irenethe bourgeoisbut also
Karin\342\200\224like

like Nanni the simpleton\342\200\224must learn in the confrontation with the God-
volcano is certainly not the strength to resignherselfto her domesticduties,
but the courage to leavebehindevery home in answerto the call of this dead
child or to the question of the child about to be Rossellinidoesnt
born\302\273

ask the woman who came from the land of the conquerorsto familiarize
herself with the mores of her new land:he makes her touch the depths of
her conditionas a foreigner in order to bearwitnessto a conditionwe all
share.
Undoubtedly,Rossellinihas already intuited a different problem:Karin
can very well leaveher home to meet this God oflava and fire, and Ingrid
can very well consumeher entire craft, her whole careeras a Hollywoodstar,
in the flame ofthis passion,but the war is lost.
The relationship between the
two worldsthat structures Rossellini'smise~en~scene will soontake a sudden
turn, and even the furthermost isle will be tipped over to the side of the
Northerners, to the sideof thesedirectors and architectswho open all
the housesto the outside,lettreesinfiltrate them, and tame the place's
pagan-Christian barbarism with the whitewashedwalls oftheir civilization.
In contrast to the final conversionof Voyage to Italy or Stromholi, it is the
atheism of the Protestant North that ultimately gains the upper hand over
the Christian paganism of the South,overits preferencefor closed spaces,its
neat divisionsbetween what s honorable and what shameful, its submission
to the Godoffire, its cult ofthe dead,and its obstinate habit of rebuilding
and recultivating anew in the exact same way what the lava ofthe volcano
will in time bury again* If we regret this loss,it is not becausewe long for
the closedmorals of the village, for the black women of Stromboliwho
lookdown at the distractionsofthe foreigner, or for the refrains the men
ofthe islandsingin the ears of the cornuto [cuckold]. We long for what was
possibleto wrest from them as violence of scandaland graceof liberty.
Thearchitect and tour guide will soonrearrange the relationship between
in and out, freedom and necessity,and trace a new and level path for the
scandal-lessaudacity of a sterilizedliberty to paradeagainst the backdrop
ofthe yellow sun, the whitewashedwalls, and the blue Mediterranean.The
first to suffer the consequences ofthis will be young French enthusiasts
eager to make French cinema breath the air ofRossellinis liberty and walk
to the unpredictablerhythm ofEdmunds steps.But the liberty theseyoung
filmmakers hopewill vibrate in their images has lost the point of gravity
 140 Film Fables

or scandalthat gives to the performances ofthe improviser the immaterial

weight ofcourage*Thesecretforceof Edmundshopscotchis there, in Karin
and Nanni panting as they climb their mountain, in Irenes painful journey.
The senseofscandaland ofmiracle was lockedup behindbars with Irene,
and with this imprisonmentEdmund'slightnesswas lost, his arabesques
effaced by the whitewashedwalls ofKarins inheritors.It is in vain that these
young Rossellinistry to revive it by dint ofslidingon the snow, of surprise
starts in reversegear, ofcyclingexercisesinsidean apartment, ofmad races
through fields and dunes; or by dint of disconcerting encounters,false
continuities, and discrepanciesbetween sound and image.Thereis nothing
to the subversion of codesoncethe senseof the jump into the fall\342\200\224the

unknown and the confrontation with been lost.Ferdinand-

scandal\342\200\224has

Pierrot stresses,albeit ironically, this very point at the beginning ofPierrot le

fou: liberty and scandalhave joinedhands to sing the praisesofthe singular
comfort, and invisibility, of women'sunderwear.Thisliberty he wants to flee
from, however,is already down the path ofhis flight. Together, they travel
south at the speedof stolen cars towards Mediterraneanshores without
any volcanoesto climb, morals to violate, or village gossipsto endure.This
new liberty plays on the permanent subversion of codesto renderscandal
impossible,no matter how determinedone is to find it. No doubt Godard's
singular greatnessis that he picksup the wager ofthis impossibleand chases
to the edgeofsilenceand the void theseimages and words fleeingfrom the
derisoryliberty that incessantlycatches up with them.

Home.IreneIL Somehave seenm Fear a Hitchcockscriptmistakenly

entrusted to Rossellini;others have stressedthe continuity betweenthis
story of confessionand Rome, Ofen City. Maybe both sides are right, and
wrong. In Rome, Open City, the of confessionwas the work of
mise-en-sc\303\250ne

others, their bad film foiled by the courage ofthe membersofthe resistance
and the liberty ofthe director. It was a film within a film. It may very well
be the casethat the script ofFear signalsa rapprochementby transposing
a story originally set in Vienna in the 1920s to post-1945 Germany, and
by turning into an experimental biologistthe husband who traps his wife
with the aid ofan intermediary, the actressdisguisedas a blackmailer.But
the film is still missingthe that encompasses,
mise~en~sc\303\250ne and defeats, the
machinations designedto induceconfession.The closestwe have to this in
Fear is, possibly,the internal reversal by which Irene,in her turn, traps the
onetrying to trap her and makesher confessto what she really is:a washed
up cabaret actressbeingmanipulated by a director of the old school. But
 Rossellini's Physics 141

this reversalin the mechanism ofconfessionis still part ofthe scenarioof

confession.It is not strong enough to break free of its constraints, to beat
into the groundthesesideblows that confront a beingwith the truth about
herselfby inducingher to confessthe only thing worth confessing: her
weakness.And indeed,nothing couldprevailupon that, not thesemachines
for confessionthat hold, or assume the other to be holding,somehidden
knowledge,nor any oftheseexperimentsthat organize the other s weakness.
Therewhere liberty is not open to the chance of the encounter and where
bodieshave nothing to reveal,no soul can appear.
Shouldwe see in all ofthis an unprecedentedpowerlessness on the part
ofthe director? Or shouldwe seeRossellinideliberatelyand clearlymarking
the end ofthe line?Fearis like the last episodeofa cyclethat starts in Rome
occupiedby the officers from the North and ends in this Bavarian chalet
for blond Gretchensand ColonelBlimps.The conquerorshave goneback
home.The film adapts a story by Stefan Zweig,an exiledJew who killed
himself at the other end ofthe earth, in which the conquerorsare settling
their family affairs:the liesofthe children and the adulterous affairs ofthe
wives; the punishmentof the daughtersand the anxiety of the mothers,
confessionand forgiveness.The war is over.The machine designedto make
peopletalk has returned to its normal regime.The Italians may change the
title of the film and its ending to make it seemthat Ireneis only walking
into a summer houseon a movie set.But that only bringsinto greater focus
the sensethat the film is a return home.IreneIIreturns to the home Irene
I had left as if no child had ever fallen into the void and no mother had
ever lost her way. Rossellinihad wanted his dramaturgy to fan the flames
ofa new liberty from Europe'swound. In Fear, this wound has closed. The
cycle of the foreigner comesto an end, bringing to a closethis pirating
projectwhere Rosselliniturned oneofHollywoods modelchildren against
its cinema.Letshear the sound of a last fall, the deafening echoof the
imperceptiblenoise ofthe pebbles.Irenehas cometo her husbands lab to
kill herselfwith someof the liquid he injects into his guinea pigs when
the sound of a flask smashingon the ground, amplified by the music of
Renzo Rossellini,bringsthe mother and the actressback to reality. At this
moment, Rossellinireturns to the cinema ofothers what he had taken from
it. Thecrazy projectofconsumptionends.Hetakes Ingridbackhome, back
to the scripts and sets that were hers not long before this and will be hers
again shortly hereafter.For her, Rossellinidismantles the he had
mi$e~en~sc\303\250ne

mounted for her.The light that shinesin this film and that passesfor one
last time over Ingrid Bergmans face is like the flash of a final love gesture,
 142 Film Fables

the flame of this inverse consumption.

A little further away, in Bayreuth,
Brunhilde'spyre is burning again. On the ashesofhope,the Gods resume
their ordinary twilight.

NOTES

1, SimoneWeil, Gravity and Grace,trans, GustavThibon(London:Ark

Paperbacks,1987)77.
2. Weil, Gravity and Grace, 137.
3\302\273 LikeRohmer and Rivette beforehim, Ranci\303\250re is alluding to
ChateaubriandsThe Genius of Christianity,\342\200\224Trans.
4. For a longer discussionofIrenes voyage, pleasesee the third part (\"A
Child Kills Himself \") of my Short Voyages to the Land of the People, trans,
James B.Swenson(California:Stanford University Press,2003) 107\342\200\224

34.
5. is oneofthe wordsfor actor in French.
\"Interpr\303\250te\"
s claim that Ranci\303\250re

the ideademands\"more from interpretation\" plays on both meanings

ofthe term:it demandsmore from us, the interpreters,and from Anna
Magnani, the actor, the interpreter.\342\200\224Trans,
 CHAPTER9

The Red of La Chinoise

Godard'sPolitics

How should we understand the politicsGodard puts into play with his
cinematographicpracticein La Chinoise} The opinions on the matter have
more or lessfollowed the fluxes and refluxesof the left. Accusedwhen first
releasedofbeingjust a caricature, and not a seriousrepresentation, ofreal
militant Maoists,the film was later praisedas a brilliant anticipation ofthe
eventsofMay 1968, and as a lucidlookboth at the passinginfatuation with
Maoismby bourgeoisyoungsters and at the outcomesof that infatuation:
the return to order and terrorism.The questionof whether or not the film
or its characters are actually goodMarxistsis not only not interesting, but
alsomisguided,sincewe re bound to get nowhere with such relationshipsof
subordination:it is the coordinationthat we must lookat instead- Godard
doesn'tfilm \"Marxists\" or things whosemeaning would be Marxism.He
makes cinema with Marxism.\"A film in the making/* he says, and we must
understandthis in many ways. La Chinoise invites us onto the set, it makes
us feel likewere watching the shooting of the film. And it alsomakesus
feel like werewatching Marxism,a certain Marxismanyway, in the process
ofmaking itself into cinema, ofplay-acting. As we watch this play-acting
in La Chinoise, we seealso what mise~en~ means in the cinema.It is the
sc\303\250ne

intertwining ofthese two that we must look at more closely.

We might start with the following formulation: Godard puts \"cinema\"
betweentwo Marxisms\342\200\224Marxism as the matter of representation,and
Marxismas the principleofrepresentation.The Marxismrepresentedis a
certain Marxism,ChineseMaoism as it figured in the Western imaginary
at the time, which the film represents from the angle that rendersthe
stereotypes of its rhetoricand gesturescomplicitwith Godard'smethod
of the objectlessonand classroomexercises.1Maoismhere is a catalogue
of a of a of
images, panoply objects, repertoire phrases,a program of
The montage of all these
actions:courses,recitals,slogans,gym exercises.
 144 Film Fables

elements bringsinto play another complicity.Themethod of the \"object

lesson\"happensto align perfectly with the specificMarxismthat servesas
the principleof representation,namely Althusserian Marxism,which, in
1967,was essentiallya doctrinethat held that Marxismfor the most part
still had to be invented, and that inventing it was like relearning the senseof
the most elementary actions.Godard,as is his wont, treats Althusser in bits
and piecesthat he takes, for the most part, from prefacesand conclusions.
He composes with thesebits and pieces the speechof the militant Omar
and the peroration of the actor Guillaume. And he is likely to have read
this sentence,which could well sum up his whole method as a filmmaker,
in the preface to Reading Capital:\"I venture to suggestthat our age threatens
one day to appearin the history of human culture as marked by the most
dramatic and difficult trial ofall, the discoveryand training in the meaning
of the 'simplest' acts ofexistence: seeing,listening, speaking, readmg\342\200\224the

acts which relate men to their works,and to thoseworksthrown in their

faces, the 'absences of work.'\"2
Althusser s projectofknowing what \"seeing,listening, speaking,reading\"
mean is exactlywhat Godardputs into play in La Chinoise. At the center of
the film there are two red objects,the Little Red Book and the Cahiers marxistes-
linkedby their color,these two objectsstand in a relationship of
l\303\251ninistes:

solidarity and contradiction.The Little Red Bookcompilesthe detachedmaxims

that all those who tookpart in the Cultural Revolution either learnedby
heart or simply brandishedas rallying calls. The Cahiers marxistes-l\303\251ninistes is
the Marxistjournal of the studentsof the EcoleNormale Sup\303\251rieure, the
sophisticatedmilitant journal that lendsto the chosenbits and pieces learned
by the Red Guard their theoretical f oundation as well as their practical
acceptability.Thisjournal transforms the Althusserian projectof relearning
to see,speak,and read into Maoist rhetoric and gestures.Godards method
is to split up the terms of this operation,to break up the evidence,by
making Althusserian pedagogythe principlefor the ofMaoist
mise~en~sc\303\250ne

rhetoric and gestures.The film, then, is about learning to see,hear, speak,

or read these phrasesfrom the Little Red Book or from the Information.
P\303\251kin

But it is also about learning to read with them, as if thesephraseswere just

another example,and in essence no different from the storiesand examples
that illustrate the workbookspupilsuse when learning to read and write in

elementary school. La Chinoise is an exerciseon Marxismwith Marxismas

much as it is an exerciseon film with film.
\"To give vague ideas a clear image.\" To understand the formula that is
like an epigraphfor the film, we have to feel that the tensionweighing
 Godard'sPolitics 145

down on the relationship between word and image is strictly parallel to the
tensionthat the China of the time and in the Western Maoist
fueled\342\200\224in

imaginary\342\200\224the fight between two conceptions of the dialectic.\"Oneis

split in two,\" the formula reclaimedby Maoists; \"two are joinedin one\"
the formula stigmatized as \"revisionist.\" The strength of the film is that it
bringstogether cinema and Marxismby treating thosetwo formulas as two
different conceptions of art in general, and hence also of Marxistcinema.
What doesa Marxistfilm, a film that proposesMarxismas the meaning
of the fiction it puts on the screen,ordinarily do?How do the waves of
progressivefictions that flourishedon the heelsofLa Chinoise work? Basicallv
through a mixture of beautiful images and painful speeches, of fictional
affects and realist references, that when combinedcompose a symphony
on which Marxismimposesitself as the theme or melody necessarilybeing
sought by the mass orchestration. As such, these films remain tied to the
everyday functioning of communication. They join two in onein the image
ofthe everyday ofwords and images.Words make images.They
chass\303\251 crois\303\251

make us see.A sentencegives a quasi-visiblethat never attains the clarity of

the image. Images,in their turn, constitute a discourse. We hear in them a
quasi-ianguage not subject to the rules of The
speech. problem,however,
is that when we \"see\" a word, we no longer hear it.And likewisewith the
image:when we hear it, we no longer seeit. This is the dialecticof the \"two
in one\" instituted by the principleofreality.3 It is identical in every way to
the rhetorical-poetical principleofthe metaphor. Themetaphor, morethan
of
a means making an abstract idea concreteby linking it to an image, is
this ofwords that hide by becomingvisibleand of images made
chass\303\251 crois\303\251

invisible by becomingaudible.Onequasi entails the other. Onerefersto the

other, lasts only as long as is neededto do the otherswork and to link its
powersofdisappearanceto that ofthe other. The result is this melodic line
that is like the musicofthe world.
We might call this, after oneofthe episodesof the film, the bowl-and-
principle.Lookat Henridrink his
to\303\242st au lait and butter his toast in caf\303\251

front ofhis water heater as he itemizes all his reasonsfor goingbackto the
CommunistParty. The realistic weight ofhis wordsis entirely dependent
upon these accessories. Hadhe delivered it with a blackboardbehindhim
and a professors desk before him in the apartment of his old comrades,
the same speechwould lose80per cent of the force and conviction it
receivesfrom the \"popular\" gestus ofthis \"popular\" kitchen, which changes
even the connotationof his student cap:here it is the cap of the son of
the prole and not the cap of the student who plays at being a prole.The
 146 Film Fables

interview the maid Yvonne is another demonstration

with the same genre. of
The speechin which this daughter of
the peopleevokes the hardships of
growing up in the country immediatelygenerates an image. No need,then,
to showus the countryside,we seeit in her words. would be clumsy to It
show it, even perverse.And Godard'sperversity is to insert at this point
not the quintessential countrysideYvonne s wordsmake visible, but a silly
countryside that he sumsup in two images:chickensin front the wall a of of
farmhouse, and cows in a field appletrees. of
The common work art and of
politics is to interrupt this parading,this incessantsubstitution words of
that make us seeand images thatofspeak which imposes belief as the music
of the world.The point is to split in two the One representativemagma: of
to separatewordsand images, to get words to be heard in their strangeness
and images to be seenin their silliness.
Thereare two possibleways of achieving this dissociation. Jean-Pierre
announces the first one in the film: would that we were blind, he says,
L\303\251aud

then we would really listen to each other, really understandeach other. This
dream of
seizingthe radicalexperience hearing or seeingat its origins of
invariably takes us backto the experiences that made thesetwo sensesso dear
to the eighteenth century. Diderot s Letter on the Blind and Letter on the Deafand
Dumb are never very tar from Godard,nor is Rousseaus Discourse on the Origin

of Language. At its limits, the method of the \"objectlesson\"always tends

towards two renownedUtopias, the tabula rasa and fictional Robinsonades.
Godardleavesit to Henri,the \"revisionist/'to wax ironic about thesefictive
experiences by recalling the story Psammetichos,King of Egypt, who of
tried to discoverthe original language humankind by raising two of his of
children in complete isolation.When he heard them speak,they spoke in
the only \"language\" they were able to learn, that the sheep whosepen of
adjoined their retreat. The Robinsonadeis how the characters expressthe
experimentalsituation Godardputs them in.But the principle the mise~en~ of
sc\303\250ne If
is different. Godardreally wants us to hear the Marxism, words\342\200\224and

like any theory, is first and foremost an assemblage seethe of words\342\200\224and

reality they describe a nd reality is, first and

project\342\200\224and
foremost, an
assemblage of cannot treat them separately.Hemust reorganize
images\342\200\224he

their liaison,which doesntmean separatingthe words Marxismfrom of

every image in order to make us hear them, but the reverse: Godard must
really make us seethem, he must replacetheir obscureimage-makingwith a
brute image ofwhat they say. Hehas to put thesewordsin bodiesthat treat
them as the most basicutterances, bodiesthat try to speakthem in various
ways as well as to turn them into gestures.
 Godard'sPolitics 147

Godard then sets about elaboratingan apparatus of separation that

makes wordsaudible by making them visible. Hereis where Godard gives
cinematographic meaning to this representation,at first attacked and then
praisedfor its lucidity, of\"petit bourgeoisyoungsterscut off from the masses
and talking non-stopin the isolation oftheir bourgeoisapartment .\" Godard
is fond ofthe methodofenclosinghis characterswithin the four white walls
of an apartment where they struggle to put meat on the bonesofa few great
ideas.The \"Althusserianism\" ofLa Chinoise is its actualization ofAlthusser s
Diderot-inspiredpractices. The difference is that in the film the \"political\"
principle of isolation is the conditionfor the artistic understanding ofwhat
a politicaldiscoursesays.The task of art is to separate,to transform the
continuum ofimage-meaninginto a seriesoffragments, postcards,lessons.
The bourgeoisapartment is the frame of representationwherein Godard
arranges the necessaryand sufficient elementsfor the of the
mise~en~sc\303\250ne

question:what doesMarxism,this Marxism,say? How does it speak?How

doesit turn itself into film? In the pictorialand theatrical frame, wordsand
imagescan be rearranged in orderto undo the metaphorical play that makes
senseof reality by transforming images into quasi-wordsand words into
quasi-images.
Thereare two major forms of representationthat work against the
metaphor.The first is surrealism, which essentiallyliteralizesthe metaphor.
Logicianshave beenpointing out sinceantiquity that when we utter the
word \"chariot,\" no such vehicle issuesfrom our mouths.As a general rule,
though, thesesame logicianshave paid lessattention to the fact that though
the chariot doesntissuefrom our mouths, it doesntfor all that fail to dance
confusedlybeforethe eyesofour interlocutors.Surrealiststhen representthe
chariot issuingfrom the mouth. Magritte s paintings are the best illustration
ofthis pictorialmethod, which, in literature, is at the rootofLewisCarrolls
nonsense, though it had already served other mastersbefore him, such as
Rabelaisand Sterne.Godard rarely does without it. He makeshis use of
it explicitin the sceneofJean-Pierre L\303\251aud
throwing rubber-tippeddarts
at images of the representatives of bourgeoisculture as an illustration of
the idea that Marxismis the arrow trained on the target ofthe classenemy.
And he usesit directly, as in the scenewhere Juliet Berto illustrates the idea
that the Little Red Book is the rampart of the massesagainst imperialism by

standing in front ofa wall ofred books,or when shevisualizesthe principle

that Maos thought is the weapon ofthesesame massesby turning the radio
that broadcastsMaos thought through the voice of Radio-Peking into a
submachine gun.
 148 Film Fables

Thesurrealistmethod is itself subordinateto the dialecticalmethod,

which replacesthe figure of the metaphor with the figure of comparison.
Comparisondissociateswhat the metaphor joins.Instead oftelling us, as
the slogansofthe perioddid, that Maos thought is our red sun, comparison
makesus seeand hear this thought next to the sun. Comparisonfoils the
metaphorspower to join together:it gets us to hear words and seeimagesin
their dissociation,though not via somesort of Utopian separation, but by
keepingthem together in their problematic relationship in oneand the same
frame. It then becomes a matter of showing this: the revolutionary struggle
might resemblesuch an image; a group \"armed with the thought ofMao
TseTung\"might resemble the arrangement of such a sequence of discourses
and gestures. To interpret Maoist discourse\342\200\224to understand what it tells
must try to perform
us\342\200\224we
[interpr\303\251ter] represent
it\342\200\224to
way.4
it\342\200\224this

We have to help ourselvesto the bodies of actors,to a set, and to all the
elements ofrepresentation in orderto figure out how to perform/interpret
thesewords,how to make them audible by making them visible.
Godardstructures all of this with his remarkableuse of colorin the film.
He distributeson the white backgroundof a canvasor projectionscreen
three pure colorsthat he never allows to intermix:red, blue, and yellow.
Thesethree colorsare first of all emblematic of the objectsrepresented:
the red ofMaos flag and thought, the blue uniforms of Chineseworkers,
the yellow ofthe race.And they are alsothe three primary colors, the three
straightforward colorsthat opposethe gradation, nuances,and confusion
of \"reality,\" that is to say, of the metaphor.They function as the table
of categoriesthat Deleuzeclaims Godard is always creating.The \"simple
things\" to be relearnedare determinedand reflected in the categorial grid
formed by thesepure colors. This use of color,even though a constant
in Godard,is at its most powerful when the issueat hand is one of color,
like the red-white-blueGodardhad already used to structure the political
fable Made in USA. La Chinoise, a film about red as the colorof a line of
thought, is entirely structured by this chromatic apparatus, which structures
not only what goeson between the white walls of the apartment, but also
the relationshipbetweeninside and outside. The outside is the real, the
referent of their discourses. It is the greencountryside insertedinto Juliet
Berto s speech. Itis the vacant suburban lots and the University of Nanterre
barely visible beyondthem that Godard uses, oncehe has them rendered
equivalent with a panoramic shot, to illustrate Juliet Bertosspeech,to show
what her speechabout the three inequalities and about the worker\342\200\224student

link lookslike.Finally, the real is the alternating sceneryof countryside

 Godard'sPolitics 149

landscapeand suburban housesthat flies by behindthe window ofthe train

where Anne Wiazemsky talks to Francis Jeanson, and that strengthens with
its discreet
evidence Jeansonswordsby showing this rural France, grassy
and punctuated by homes,so utterly foreign to the discourseof the aspiring
terrorist.
Godardwas accusedof giving the upper hand to the \"realist\" discourse
ofFrancisJeanson,the onceupon a time assistantto the FLN,5over the
discourseof the student extremist who fidgets nervously with the handle
on the train window. But Godard doesn't take sides.All he does is place
the tension of the two discoursesin the tensionofthe visual sets.Heputs
in questionthe evidence provided by the rural France that speaksthrough

Jeansonsmouth by accentuatingin him, to the point ofcaricature,the habitus

ofthe professorwho s having a little fun at the student s expense:\"Yes, but\",
\"And then?\", \"So?\", \"What do you concludefrom that?,\" \"Ah, I see,\"\"And

you're the one who'lldo all that?\" But mainly, it is the pure colors
and forms
ofthe closedoff apartment that filter the play of reality and keep it from
appearing in a goodlight. Timeand time again, thesepure colorsand forms
refer reality to its mixedcharacter, this mixture ofmutually dissembling
colorsand metaphorsthat ignites, on the other side of the train window,
the reality that proves itself in the perennial referral ofits mixed tones\342\200\224a

testament to the infinite complexityofthe their dominant tonality:

real\342\200\224to

of
green, the color life in its essentialoriginality, color the countryside of
and authenticity. Greenis the mixed colorthat passesitself off for a primary
color.It is also, by convention, the anti-red:green for go, red for stop, the
of
color the market and not the colorof communism. \"Greenprices,since
the Reds have seentheir day,\" ran an ad in the 1990s
where debunkedRed
heroesurged everyonenot to missthe bargain pricesat FNAC.6La Chinoise
is certainly a film from the red epoch,the epochof straightforward colors
and simpleideas.Not simplisticideas,but the idea trying to seewhat of
simpleideaslooklike.The green epochis the epoch the mixed colors of of
reality\342\200\224supposedly
recalcitrant to ultimately lead to the green
ideas\342\200\224that

monochrome of life, which is} we re told, simpleand to be savored in its

simplicity.
Insidethe frame structured by the three primary colors, Godardorganizes
the mise~en~sdne ofthe different modesofdiscoursewithin which the Maoist
text can be spoken.Thereare three such modes: the interview, the lecture,
and the theater. Godard'stask is to examineand modify the value oftruth
and illusion normally accorded to each ofthese three modes. As a general
rule, the lecture is thought to portray the situation ofauthority commanded
 150 Film Fables

by big words divorced from reality. The apparatus of the lecture\342\200\224table,

blackboard,and lecturerstanding in front of an audienceseated on the

floor and answering their questions\342\200\224-seems to accentuatethe image of
the authority wieldedby big words.The interview, on the otherhand, is
generallythought to sound the voice ofthe real with the small and slightly
awkward words that anyone at a woman\342\200\224uses to describe
all\342\200\224preferably

the personal experiences that have led her to entrust her life to these big
words.The image can occasionallylend a supplementary authenticity to all
of this.The big eyes and pursedlips of Yvonne, the daughter of the people
who seemsstartledby what shedaresto say; the bowl-and-toastofHenri,the
realist who knowswhat he s talking about; the vacant lots that authenticate
V\303\251ronique
s discourse.The authenticity increaseswhen the voice of the
is
interviewer muted or annulled in orderto transform the solicitedresponse
into a gush of spontaneity. The calls this truth hierarchy into
mise-en^sc\303\250ne

question.The insertion of a stupid shot, the voice of the interviewer that

we hear without beingable to make out the words, the performances ofthe
and the canny, theseare all ways in which the
na\303\257ve invites us to
mise-en-sc\303\250ne

henceto
see\342\200\224and the regime of \"authentic\" speechis, just like
hear\342\200\224that

the lecture, the regime of an already-said,ofa recitedtext. It is how the mise-

invites us to ask ourselves,instead, if the situation of authenticity
en-sc\303\250ne

isn't actually just like that ofthe blackboardon which one ventures to write
down sentencesto be able to lookat them and seewhat they're saying, or
like the position of authority held by the amateur professor,who ventures
to let thesesentencesescapehis mouth and to hear their echo.
Beyond the professorand the intervieweeis a third character, the actor,
who takes their two performances back to their common origin, the art of
acting.In the confrontation with the student V\303\251ronique, it isn't the professor
and politician Francis who has the last word, but Guillaume, the actor thus
named as a tribute to his ancestor, Goethes Wilhelm Meister.IfJean-Pierre
wordsevoke the Letter on the Blind, it is certainly a new version of
L\303\251aud's

the Paradox of the Actor that he illustrates in the famous demonstrationhe

mimes: a Chinesestudent coveredin bandageshas cometo showthe wounds
inflicted upon him by \"revisionist\" policemen, but what he showsus, as he
removesthe last bandage, is a facefree ofany wounds.The politicalmilitant
and the actor are alike:their work is to show us not visiblehorrors,but what
cannot be seen.
Theactor becomes, in the same gesture, the elementary schoolteacher
who returns the speechesand gesturesofthe intervieweeand of the
na\303\257ve

learnedprofessorto their first elements.The actor teaches the militant that

 Godard'sPolitics 151

it is possibleto understanda text by lending ones voice and body to it, just
as he teaches all ofthem how to spellout wordsand to vocalizeand visualize
ideas.That s what Jean-Pierre s work illustrates when he shouts,as a
L\303\251aud

warrant officer would, the \"Why?\" that is always falsely inquisitive in the
professor,or when he mimes the meaning ofwhat he saysbv changingtones,
..
\"we needsincerity . AND VIOLENCE/' Spellingout the sentencesof
the Little Red Book and scanning them with physical exercises, this is to study
stereotypeswith stereotypy.It doesn'tmake a chariot issuefrom the mouth,
but at least it makesit weigh on the tongue.
When the country girl asks the amateur professor \"What is an
na\303\257ve

analysis?/'it is the actor who answers,who showsher in the strictestsense

what an analysis is.He decomposes the assemblyof gesturesand images
and returns them to their basicelements.The universality ofhis art is that
it establishesthe most basic elements, and assembliesthereof, that make a
discourseand a practiceintelligible by making them comparableto other
discoursesand practices,by, for instance, making a politicaldiscourseand
union comparableto a declaration ofloveand a love affair. This is what we
seein the openingshots ofthe film, which show the fragmented speeches
and intertwining hands ofJean-Pierre who still seemsto be acting
L\303\251aud,

in Masculine Feminine, and Anne Wiazemsky, who'sstill speakingthe Bresson

ofAu hasard, Balthazar. It is what Wiazemsky teaches when she makes
L\303\251aud

the utterances \"Dovou love me?\" and \"No, I don't love vou anymore'' as
problematicas politicalutterances.If we prefer a visual over a dialectical
demonstration,there is one in that superb shot ofYvonne, her posture
straight out of a maid in Manet, lookingout the window in the scenewhen
Henriis being expelled: the image rendersher scansionof the word \"re-vi-
sio-nist\"identical to the scansionof \"I-dont-love-you-anymore.\"
Godard showsus what the words and gesturesof politicslookslike
by translating them into the attitudes of being in and out of love. His
translation isolatesthe simpleelements of a politicalspeechthat resurface
not only in the lover's discourse,but also in the glib tongue of the street
vendor peddlinghis waresand in the smooth talking of the market vendor.
ofthe film
Thefinal episodes are not an illustration of moral relativism,
of the equivalence of all things:the militant's speechas he lays out his
copiesof the Little Red Book the same as the street vendor sellinghis heads
of lettuce.We would do betterto recallthe Brecht who conceivedthe
episodes ofJungle of Cities as the rounds of a boxingmatch. Like Brechts
variations, the film bringsto light all those elements in the job ofthe actor
that Godard
are alsopresentin everv meaningful action and effectivespeech.
152 Film Fables

inverts the logicof Wilhelm Meister, a bookhe is always reading and rereading\302\273

Goethes hero starts in love with the theater and ends by finding certainty
in collective Godard'shero moves in the oppositedirectionand
knowledge\302\273

leads collective knowledgeback to the elementsof the art ofthe theater.

Politicsresemblesart in one essentialpoint Likeart, politicsalso cuts into
that great metaphor where wordsand imagesare continuously slidingin and
out ofeach other to producethe sensoryevidenceofa world in order.And,
like art, it constructsnovel combinationsof words and actions,it shows
words borne by bodiesin movement to make them audible,to produce
another articulation ofthe visibleand the sayable.
Theater Year Zero is the title Godard gives to the theatrical adventures
of GuillaumeMeister, and his allusion to Rossellini'sGermany Year Zero
is nominalas well as visuaL Jean-Pierre roams the same ruined
L\303\251aud

landscape and ventures into undergroundspacessimilar to thosevisited

by the young Edmund,though not to experiencethere the law of a world
in ruins, but to relearnthe meaning of the three blows of the theater.
Rosselliniwanted his title to evoke a world that had beenwipedout and to
serveas an epitaph to a child victimized by a murderous ideology.Godard's
subtitle,in turn, speaksabout what Rossellini^film shows:a kid playing
hopscotchagainst the backdropof a world in ruins. Ultimately, the moral
ofthe film emergesfrom the oppositionbetween the actor Guillaume and
the terrorist V\303\251ronique: there is no zero situation, no world in ruins or to
be ruined.Thereis only a curtain that risesand a child, an actor who plays
with somuch lightnessthe roleof a childwhoseshouldershave to bear
the doubleweight of a devastatedworld and of a world about to be born.
Anyone determinedto think the separation between the games ofthe child
actor and the wanderingsthat end with the death ofthe child in the fiction,
or between theatrical work and revolutionary work, must also think their
community. That is what we seein this cinema between two Marxismsthat
concludesas a meditation on the theater.

NOTES

I. des choses\"and \"travaux practiques\"are indissociable

\"Le\303\247ons

pedagogicalmethodsthat started being used in French schoolstowards

the end ofthe nineteenth century Thebasicidea is to organize exercises
 Godard'sPolitics 153

wherethe studentslearn, literally from things. I renderthe first term by

\"objectlesson\"and the secondby \"classroom or simply by
exercises\"
\"exercises.\"\342\200\224Trans.

LouisAlthusser and Etienne Balibar,Reading Capital trans. Ben Brewster

(London:NLB, 1970) 15-6.
NotFreud s reality principle/Theprincipleofreality is the principleof
the metaphor, as indicatesin the next sentence.\342\200\224Trans.
Ranci\303\250re

is playing on the word \"interpr\303\251ter,\" which means to interpret,

Ranci\303\250re

and also to act out, perform (\"interpr\303\250te\" beingone of the words for
actor in French).\342\200\224Trans.
The Front de Nationale, or National LiberationFront, the ruling
Lib\303\251ration

party of Algeria through the battle of independenceto today.\342\200\224

Trans.
FNAC is a French (now European)chain ofmegastoressellingbooks,
CDs,DVDs, cameras, computers,and so on.The closestequivalent in
the Anglophone world might be Bordersor Barnes& Noble.\342\200\224Trans.
 CHAPTER10

DocumentaryFiction
Markerand the Fictionof Memory

The Last Bolshevik is the title of the filmChris Marker dedicates to the
memory ofAlexander Medvekin, the Soviet filmmaker who was born with
his century and who died during the Perestro\303\257ka. To speakof \"memory\" is
to raisethe paradox ofthe film at the outset.Markers film cannot very well
hopeto preserve the memory ofa filmmaker whosefilms we have not seen
and whosename was, until quite recently,unfamiliar to most ofus.Noris
this situation much different with Medvekinscompatriots,who are as likely
to know his films as we are.The point, then, isn't to preserveMedvekins
memory, but to create it. Theenigma buriedin the title1 raisesthe problem
of the nature of a cinematographic
genre,the so-called\"documentary,\"
and allows us, via a vertiginous shortcut, to link two questions: What is
memory?What is the documentary as a genre offiction?
Let s take as our starting point someself-evidentclaims that nonetheless
still seemparadoxicalto some. Memoryis not the storeofrecollections ofa
particular consciousness, else
the very notion ofa collective memory would
be devoid ofsense.Memoryis an orderly collection, a certain arrangement of
signs,traces,and monuments. The Great Pyramid, the tomb par excellence,
doesn'tkeep Cheops memory. It is that memory.Thereare somewho will
no doubt claim that there are two regimesof memory separated by an
ocean:there is that ofthe powerful sovereigns of longago whosereality,
in somecases, today boils down to the material and the ornamentation
of their tombs; and there is that of the contemporaryworld, diligently
keepingthe recordsthat attest to the most commonplacelives and the most
ordinary events.It would seema foregone conclusionthat an abundance of
information equals an overabundanceofmemory.And yet, everything in our
presentdeniesthat. Information isn't memory, and it does not accumulate
and store for memory's sake.It worksexclusively for its own profit, which
dependson the prompt forgetfulness ofeverything clearing the way for the
158 Film Fables

sole,and abstract, truth of the presentto assertitself and for information

to cement its claimto beingalone adequate to that truth. As the abundance
of facts grows, so grows the senseoftheir indifferent equivalenceand the
capacity to make of their interminable juxtapositionthe impossibilityof
ever reaching a conclusion,of ever beingable to read, in the facts and their
juxtaposition,the meaning of one story Negationistshave already shown
that to deny what has happened,it isn't necessaryto deny fact after fact:
denying the links that run through them and give them the weight ofhistory
is enough.The reign ofthe informational-present rejectsas outsidereality
everything it cannot assimilateto the homogeneous and indifferent process
of its self-presentation. Not satisfied with rejecting out ofhand everything
as already in the past, it doubts the past itself.
Memory must be createdagainst the overabundance of information
as well as against its absence. It has to be constructedas the liaison that
connects account of events and the traces of actions,much like that
the
orucrrr|MXX XCOV Ttpayiaaxcov, that \"arrangement ofincidents/'that Aristotle
talks about in the Poetics and that he calls muthos: not, as it were, a \"myth\"
that refers us back to somesortof collective unconscious, but a fable or
fiction. Memoryis the work oeuvre] offiction. Goodhistorical conscience
\\

can denouncethis as paradoxicaland pit its patient searchfor the truth

against the fictions of collective memory that underpin powerin general
and totalitarian power in particular. But, in general, \"fiction\" is not a pretty
storv or evil lie,the flipsideof reality that peopletry to pass off for it.
Originally,jingere doesnt mean \"to feign\" but \"to forge.\"Fiction means using
the means ofart to constructa \"system\" ofrepresentedactions, assembled
forms, and internally coherentsigns.We cannot think of \"documentary\"
film as the polaroppositeof \"fiction\" film simply becausethe former works
with images from real daily life and archive documentsabout events that

obviously happened, and the latter with actors who act out an invented
story.The real difference betweenthem isn't that the documentary sides
with the real against the inventions offiction, it s just that the documentary
insteadoftreating the real as an effect to be produced,treats it as a fact to
be understood.Documentaryfilm can isolatethe artistic work of fiction
simply by dissociatingthat work from its most common use:the imaginary
productionofverisimilitude,ofeffects ofthe real.It can take that artistic
work back to its essence, to a way of cutting a story into sequences, of
assemblingshots into a story, ofjoining and disjoiningvoices and bodies,
soundsand images,oflengthening and tightening time. \"Thestory7 starts in
the presentat Chelmno\": ClaudeLanzrnanns provocativeopeningsentence
 Marker and the Fiction of Memory 159

in Shoahsums up this idea offiction quite well. The forgotten, the denied,
orthe ignoredthat thesefictions ofmemory want to bear witness to are set
in oppositionto the \"real of fiction\" that ensuresthe mirror recognition
betweenthe audiencein the theaters and the figures on the screen,and
betweenthe figures on the screenand those of the socialimaginary,) In
contrast to this tendentiousreductionof the fictional invention to the
stereotypesof the socialimaginary, the fiction ofmemory sets its roots in
the gap that separatesthe construction ofmeaning, the referential real, and
the \"heterogeneity\" ofits documents*\"Documentary\" cinema is a mode of
fiction at oncemore homogeneousand morecomplex: more homogeneous
becausethe personwho conceivesthe idea is also the personwho makes it;
more complexbecauseit is much more likely to arrange or interlace a series
of heterogeneous The Last Bolshevik with scenes
images.Marker composes
filmed in Russiatoday, the accountsoffered by the peoplehe interviews,
yesterday'snewsitems, and with film clipsfrom different time periodsand
by directorswith varying agendas,ranging from Battleship Potemkin all the way
to Stalinistpropagandafilms, with incursions,of course,into the films of
AlexanderMedvekin himself, all ofwhich Markerreinsertsinto a different
plot and binds together with virtual images.
Markermakeswith the real documentshe has amassedand treated with
an eye to the truth a work whosefictional or poetictenor every
is\342\200\224beyond

value judgment\342\200\224incomparably superiorto that of the most spectacular

action movie* Alexanderstomb is not the gravestone laid over the body of
Alexander Medvekin* Noris it a simplemetaphor designating an appraisal
ofthe life of a militant filmmaker that is, simultaneously,an appraisal of
the Soviet dream and nightmare* The metonymical value of Alexander s
tomb is that it speaksto us about another tomb symbolic of buriedhope,
Leninsmausoleum* It is certainly a \"fictional\" choiceon Marker'spart not
to representLenin exceptthrough metonymy: this demoralizedhead that
the militants who joinedforces against the communist putsch in the summer
of 1991gatheredaround in celebration,and on which kids can now be
seen playing lightheartedly. The colossal, Pharaonic head with enormous
inquisitive eyes ofFelix Djerzinski,the man, it was said till recently,whom
Lenin had appointedhead ofthe politicalpolice becausehe was a Pole who
had so often suffered in his own body the horrors ofthe Tsarist policethat
he would never build a policeforce in that image *..
A tomb isn't a gravestoneor a metaphor* It is a poemsuch as those
that used to be written in the Renaissanceand whosetradition resurfaces
in Mallarm\303\251* Or it is a musical piecein honorof another musician, like
160 Film Fables

the oneswritten in the era of Couperinand Marin Marais, and more

recently by Ravel. The Last Bolshevik is a document about the Russia of our
century becauseit is a tomb in this poetical or musicalsense,an artistic
homage to a fellow artist. It is also a poemalignedto a specificpoetics.
Thereare two major traditions in poetics,both of which are susceptible
to being further subdividedor entangled.Classical,Aristotelian poeticsis
a poeticsof action and representationthat seesthe coreof the poemas
the \"representationofmen in action/'as the performance by oneor more
actors ofthe speechesthat describeor mime the incidentsthat befall the
characters, and whose arrangement abidesby the logicthat the progression
of the action must coincidewith a change in the characters'fortune and
knowledge.Romantic poeticsabandonedthis poeticsof action, character,
and discoursein favor of a poeticsof signs.Here,the backboneof the
story is not the causal continuity ofthe action \"accordingto necessityand
verisimilitude\" theorizedby Aristotle, but the variable signifying power of
signsand assembliesofsignsthat forms the tissueofthe work.This power
is, first of all, the powerof expressionwhereby a sentence,an episode, or
an impressioncan, even in isolation,representthe sense,or nonsense, of
the whole; secondly,it is the power ofcorrespondence that puts signsfrom
different regimesm resonant or dissonantrelationships;thirdly, it is the
powerofmetamorphosesby which a combination of signssolidifiesinto
an opaqueobjector deploysitself in a signifying, living form; and, finally, it
is the power ofreflection that gives a particular combination the power to
interpret another combination, or, alternatively, let itself be interpretedby
it. Schlegel formulated the ideal union ofall thesepowersin his idea ofthe
\"poem of the poem,\" the poemthat claimsto raiseto a higher power a poetic
power already presentin the life oflanguage,in the spirit of a community,
and even in the folds and ridgesofminerals.Romantic poeticsdeploysitself
around two poles: it affirms the power of speechinherent to every silent

thing in the same breath that it affirms the infinite power of the poem to
multiply itself by multiplying its modesofspeechand levelsof meaning.
Thispoeticscomplicates,in the same gesture, the regime oftruth ofthe
work.Classicalpoeticsis basedon the constructionofa plot whose truth-
value dependson a system of affinities and verisimilitudesthat presupposes
the objectification ofthe space-timespecificto the fiction.The preeminent
Romantic hero,Don Quixote, ruins the objectivity of fiction when he
smashesto smithereensMaster Peter'spuppets. DonQuixoterejectsthe
separationof seriousactivitiesand leisureactivities with his insistenceon
the coincidence ofthe Bookand the world, an insistancethat bespeaksless
 Marker and the Fiction of Memory 161

the folly of a readerof chivalricromancesthan the folly ofthe Christian

cross.Romanticpoeticsreplacesthe spacemade objective by fiction
with an indeterminate spaceof writing: this spaceis, on the one hand,
of \"things\" and impressions
indistinguishablefrom a \"reality\" composed
that are also signs that speak for themselves;and it is also, on the other
of
hand, the opposite this, a spaceundergoing an infinite constructionthat
fashions, with its scaffoldings, labyrinths, and slants, an equivalent this of
forever mute reality.
Cinema, the preeminently modern art, experiencesmore than anv other
art the conflict of
these two poetics, though it by the same token, the is\302\273

art that most attempts to combinethem.Cinemais the combination of

the gaze of
the artist who decides and the mechanical gaze that records,
of constructedimagesand chanceimages.Even if it normally uses this
doublepower as a simpleinstrument illustration for the service theof of
succedaneumto classical poetics, cinema is neverthelessthe art that can
raise to the highest power the doubleresource the mute impressionsthat of
speakfor themselvesand the montage that calculates their signifying force
and truth-value. Documentarycinema is not bound to the \"real\" sought
after by the classical normsof affinities and verisimilitude that exert so
much force on so-called fiction cinema.This gives the documentary much
to
greater leverage play around with the consonance and dissonancebetween
narrative voices,or with the seriesofperiodimageswith different provenances
and signifying power.It can join the powerof the impression,the power
of speechborn from the meeting of the mutism ofthe machine and the
silenceof things, to the powerof montage, in the broad, non-technical
senseofthe term, as that which constructsa story and a meaning by its self-
proclaimedright to combinemeanings freely, to re-view images, to arrange
them differently, and to diminish or increasetheir capacity for expression
and for generating meaning. and dialectical cinema\342\200\224Dziga
Cin\303\251ma-v\303\251rit\303\251

Vertov's train charging a cameraman lying level with the tracks, and the
strollerdescendingwith implacableslownessthe famous Odessasteps
in Battleship two faces of the samepoetics.
Potemkin\342\200\224are Marker,poetof
the cinematographic poem,organizesthem into a new mise~en~scene.He
alternates shots from the massacreon the Odessasteps in Battleship Potemkin
with shotsofpedestrianswalking down the same stepstoday to make us feel
the extraordinary artifice ofEisenstein's\"slow-motion,\" his seven-minute
dramatization of peoplerunning for their lives down thesesteps that a
pedestrianwalking at a leisurely pace can walk down in ninety secondsat
most.In the same gesture, Markeralsoshowsthe infinite gap separating the
162 Film Fables

artifice by which art punctuates a historicalmoment from the artifices of

propaganda:the film where a lookalikeofthe friendly Stalin stickshis nose
into the broken-downengine ofa tractor. The slow-motionEisensteinuses
to film this hurried flight becomes part ofa whole seriesofoperationswith
and
space time, large and small, high and low, commonplaceand singular; it
becomes part ofthe system offigures that constructsthe space-timesofthe
Revolution. Eisenstein'sfiction is a history making fiction, whereas Stalin's
lookalikeis only Stalinslookalike,nothing more than a fiction ofpower.
From the midst of the present-dayimages,the fictions of Soviet art,
and the fictions of Stalinist power, there emergesthe dialogue of shadows
ChrisMarkerorganizes with the six \"letters\" he writes today to the already
dead Alexander Medvekin.SometimesMarkerinserts yesterday'simages
into today's prose,as in the re-stagingof the emblematicsceneof the
Revolution's emblematicfilm; and sometimes he moves m the opposite
direction,going from this or that \"thing seen\"today to the history of a
people s imaginary. In a church in Moscow,his cameralingers on imagesthat
\"speakfor themselves\":a religiouscelebrationalike in everv wav to those
of long ago, full of ornamental and ceremonialpomp,burning incense,and
the devotion of the perennial babushkas.It also lingers awhile on the face
of an elderly gentleman who looks just like any other, though he is in fact
not your ordinary devout elderly gentleman. In the congregation there is
this man who, like Alexander Medvekin, is as old as his century and whose
name, Ivan Kozlovzki,also \"says\" nothing to the Western viewer.This long
take of a face we shall not seeagain doestwo things at once:it puts the
communist past and the post-communistpresentinto the fabric ofan older
history, the one performedin the great operasofthe national repertory, and
it gives Medvekin a double,it furtively sketchesthe diptych essentialto the
elaboration of \"Alexander s fiction.\"
Thesetwo figures couldnot be more opposed. Medvekinspent his life,
his century, working to make the century and the Soviet territory the time
and placefor the incarnation of the word of Marx. He spent his years
making communist films devoted to the regime and its heads,though these
headsnever allowedthe peopleto seehis films. He invented the film-train
to be able to go into kolkhozes,miners'compounds,and so on, in order to
film the work, the living conditionsof the workers,and the debatesoftheir
representatives.He had a lab installed in one ofthe cars of the train to be
ableto process the film on the spot and show it to the people he had filmed,
to submit to their eyes,posthaste,this document about their successes and
shortcomings. He succeeded, toowell it seems:his implacableimages of
 Marker and the Fiction of Memory 163

desolategroups ofhuts, of courtyards full of dead trees,ofthe meetings

ofpen-pushers,were all assigneda quiet resting placein the archiveswhere
only now researchers are uncoveringthem. Hethen went on to put the comic
and surrealistverve ofHappiness at the service of the policies for agrarian
reform, but the fun it pokes dignitaries, Orthodoxpriests,
at and kulaks is
by all accounts far in excessof what the depictionof any \"line\" calls for,
so the film got no distribution.Thisdidn'tkeepMedvekinfrom celebrating
the official urban planning in The New Moscow, but what possessed him to
have somefun at the architects'expenseby showing,backwards,the new
buildingsbeingdestroyedand the SaviorsCathedralbeingreconstructed?
The film was immediatelyshelved along with the others.Hewas eventually
obligedto renouncehis own films and to resignhimself to making other
people's films, films that anybody couldhave directedillustrating the
official line of the moment, celebratingthe pageants m honorof Stalins
glory, denouncing Chinesecommunism, or vaunting Soviet concern for the
environment shortly before Chernobyl.
This is not how Ivan Kozlovzki lived his life and century. He sang
Tchaikovsky, loved by the Tsarsand preferredby Stalin to the musicians of
the communist avant-garde.Healso sangRimsky-Korsakovand Mussorgsky,
especiallyhis Boris Godunov, an opera based on the work of the foremost
Russian poet, who was also much loved under the Soviets,Alexander,family
name Pushkin.In this emblematicstory ofan assassinatedtsarevichand of a
bloodyusurperwhoseplans are foiled by another impostor,Ivan Kozlovzki
played Simpleton, who in the final and propheticscenecriesover the
impenetrable night, pain, and hunger awaiting the Russian people. Hespent
his life and century performing thesenineteenth-century fables that portray
every revolution as doomed from the outset and singing the suffering ofa
peopleeternally condemnedto subjectionand deceit.And he did so to an
audience ofcommunist officialswho always preferredthesestoriesand this
music to the worksof the communist avant-garde.The camera, lingering
thus on his silent face, doesmorethan just release the furtive counter-
image of another life lived in the Soviet century. It inscribesthat face in a
fiction ofmemory that is the combat between two legacies: one twentieth
century inherited from the nineteenth century against another. Thesetwo
\"centuries\" of courseintersect, they both deploytheir own metamorphoses,
contradictions,and reversals.And so it is that, between two images of the
singer, betweenthe old gentleman praying in the cathedral and Simpletons
lamentation on the stage of the Bolshoi,Markerinserts another story of
ferociously anticlerical scenesof
popes\342\200\224the
well as another
Happiness\342\200\224as
164 Film Fables

meeting ofcenturies,men, and \"religions\": Medvekinsrecollections ofthe

Red Cavalry, where he served in the Cossackranks under Boudienny with
the later to be executedJew IsaacBabeL
The fictionalidentification ofthe life ofa communist filmmaker and the
life ofcommunismsland and century doesntproducea linear narrative, and
that in spite of the fact that Markerssix \"letters\" to AlexanderMedvekin
adhere, formally at least, to a chronological order* The first letter is about
Tsarist Russia;the secondabout the first years of the Soviet Union;the
third about the agitprop activities Medvekinstirred up with the epicof
the film-train; the fourth about the triumph of Stalinismby way of the
misadventuresof The New Moscow; the fifth about Medvekinsdeath during
the Perestroikaand the end of the Soviet But this neat chronology
Union\302\273

is confoundedalready in the first letter, which pilestogether all these ages.

The first letter, in fact, organizes a different story oflife and death, though
this will only become explicitin the sixth letter, where we seeimages of
AlexanderMedvekinsreal death, his living death while filming, in 1939, the
enormouspageants in celebration ofStalin for a film entitled Blossoming Youth
Markerconstructshis film in the interval between two deaths, one real, the
other symbolic.Each episode, as Markerintimates with his title,
polys\303\251mie

is really a carefully constructedmixture oftimes, a pluralization of memory

and fiction.Thereare, in the end,at least four Alexandersgroupedunder the
one ofthe title. Thevisit to Medvekinstomb is sidetrackedby the sceneofa
crowd hurrying in the mud of the late-winter thaw to coverwith flowersthe
tomb ofa more illustrious Alexander,Tsar AlexanderIII.Theseimages,like
the images ofthe religiousprocessionsin Moscowand Kiev, are not simply
the visual equivalent ofRimbaud'sline \"Society,and everything, is restored/'*
The kinship between these two tombs is more than simply a synonym for
buriedhope and for the vindication ofthe old world.It deterrnines, from
the start, the entire narrative structure of the film. Markerdoesn'ttry to
show a linear transition from Tsarist Russia to the Revolution, and from its
collapse to the restorationof old values. Rather, he throws three Russias
into one present:the Russia of Nicolas II,of the Soviets,and of today.
Thesethree Russiasare likewisethree ages of the image:Tsarist Russia
the age ofphotography and ofthe rich who paradewithout compunction
before the poor; SovietRussia the age of cinema and ofthe war of images;
contemporary Russia the age of video and television.
Markerhas already suggestedall ofthis in one ofthe first images ofthe
film, that of an officer in St.Petersburg in 1913 ordering the people with his

imperiousgesturesto take off their hats and bow before the passingnobles.
 Marker and the Fiction of Memory 165

We must make sure we dont misunderstandwhat Markermeans when he

says he wants us to rememberthis \"fat man who orders the poorto bow
It
to the rich/' s not that he want us, metaphorically,to store this image of
oppressionthat yesterdaylegitimated and today might \"excuse\" the Soviet
Revolution. He wants us, literally, not to forget it, he wants us to pair this
image of the great paradingbefore the small with its counter-image: the
enormousSoviet pageantsthat the small now declaredgreat\342\200\224gymnasts,
children, kolkhozniks\342\200\224put on for their \"comrades\"in the official gallery.
Marker,however,is not just having a little fun by confounding those well-
establishedtemporal systems,the simplechronologicalorderor the classical
narrative told in flashback.Heis working out a narrative structure that creates
a memory in the presentas the intertwining oftwo historiesof the century.
This becomes explicit when we meet, in the image ofIvan Kozlovzkisinging
the part ofSimpleton,the third Alexander:AlexanderSergueivitchPushkin.
But Alexanderis, first and foremost, the name ofthe greatest of conquerors,
the name of the Macedonianprincewho ensured that history wouldn't
forget him by subjugating ancient Greece and extending its bordersto the
furthest reachesof the known world.And it is the name ofthe illustrious
corpsewhosetomb explorershave beentrying to find for millennia: it is, in
other words,one \"name ofAlexander\" that makes this learnedhistory of
homonyms incomplete,that refersthe tomb-poemto the missingtomb that,
perhaps,it always allegorizes.
That is how the \"classical\"story offortune and misfortune, ofignorance
and knowledge,that ties onemans life to the Soviet epicand catastrophe
assumesthe \"Romantic\" form ofthis narrative that inverts the \"black soil
oftime,\" just as do thosepoemsOsip Mandelstamwrote on the eve ofthe
Revolution. Mandelstamhad wanted to free our \"century of clay\" from
the evil spellsof the previous one and to give it a historicalskeleton,and
this explainsthe narrative structure of thosepoemswhere he interlaces
the Soviet presentand Greekmythology, the sacking of the Winter Palace
and the sackingofTroy.2If the structure ofMarker's\"tomb\" has become
more complex, it is not becausethe means of signification of cinema are
different from thoseof poetry, but becauseof the historicity of cinema
itself. Cinema was born as an art out ofRomantic poetics, was pre-shaped
by it: as an art, seemsalmost to have beendesignedfor the metamorphoses
it
of signifying forms that make it possible to constructmemory as the
interlacing ofuneven temporalitiesand of heterogeneous regimesof the
image.Cinemais also,in its artistic, technical, and socialnature, a living
metaphor of moderntimes.An inheritance from the nineteenth century
 166 Film Fables

and a relationshipbetween the twentieth and the nineteenthcenturies,

cinema combinesour century's dual relationshipto the previouscentury,
the two legaciesI alluded to above: Marx's century m Lenin's;Pushkin's
and Dostoevskys century in Stalins.It is an art form whoseprinciple,the
union ofconscious thought and unconsciousperception,had beenworked
out in the final chapter ofSchellings System of Transcendental Idealism, a good
hundredyears before the first publicscreenings. And it is alsothe crowning
product of a century of scientificand technical researchinto how to effect
the transition from the scienceof amusing illusionsto the ability to use
light to record movements hidden to the human eye.In Etienne Marey's
day, cinema was still regardedas an instrument useful to the human sciences
and to the searchfor scientific truth, both ofwhich were contemporaneous
with the age of scientific socialism. And although it might have seemed,
when Alexander Medvekinwas born, that cinema had reachedits final
destinationin the new industry of illusionand public entertainment, by
the time he had grown ofage, the powersofscienceand the powersofthe
imagehad joinedhandsoncemore, much as had the power ofthe new man,
the communist and electric man: communist becauseelectric, and electric
becausecommunist. one fell swoop,writing with light becamea practical
In
instrument and the ideal metaphor for the union ofthe powersofillusion,
ofscience,and ofthe people.
Cinemawas the communist art, the art of the identity of scienceand
Utopia. In the 1920s, it wasn't onlv in the revolutionary MoscowofVertov
and Eisenstein,ofMedvekinand Dovchenko,that the combinations oflight
and movementwere chasingthe attitudes and thoughts ofthe old-fashioned
man; the same was happening in the aestheticizedParis ofCanudo,Delluc
and Epstein.Cinema,the crowning productof the nineteenthcentury,
becamethe basis for the definitive breakbetweenthat century and theirs.
It was the kingdomofshadowsdestinedto becomea kingdomoflight, a
writing ofmovement that, like the railway and with it, couldnot but merge
into the very movement ofthe revolution. In The Last Bolshevik Markertells
the cinematographic history of cinemasdoublerelationship to Sovietism.
Hesuggeststhat it is possibleto tell the history ofthe Sovietcentury through
the fates of Soviet filmmakers, through the films they made, thosethey
didn't make, and thosethey were obligedto make, becauseall oftheseattest
to the common destiny of cinema and Sovietism.But there is also a more
profound reason:the art ofcinema is the metaphor, indeedthe very cipher,
for an ideaof the century and ofhistory that found its politicalincarnation
in Sovietism.Markersproject,in its own way, mirrorsGodards in Histoire(s)
 Marker and the Fiction of Memory 167

du where Godardproposesto read the history ofour century not by

cin\303\251ma,

lookingat its history, but by lookingat the storks, or someofthe stories, of

the cinema, sincecinema is not only contemporaneous with the century,
but an integral part of its very \"idea/'Godardportrays the Soviet and the
Hollywooddream factories as mirror images,he seesin StateMarxismand
industrialized cinema the same conflict between the two legaciesinherited
by the century* Ofcourse,Godardsmethodand Markers are quite different.
Godard producesanother form of the \"poem of the poem\"by using the
resourcesof videographicwriting to render the powerof the blackboard
and the powerof pictorialmontage identicalon the screen. He sends the
machine devoted to information into shockwith his method of saturating
images or zigzagging through them; he superimposesin the same
unit an image from onefilm, an image from a secondfilm, the music
\"audiovisual\"

from a third, a voice from a fourth, and words from a fifth; he complicates
this intertwining further by using images from painting and by punctuating
the whole thing with a commentary in the present.Each of his images
and conjunctionsof imagesis a treasurehunt: they openonto multiple
paths and create a virtual spaceof indefinite connections and resonances.
Markerfavors a dialecticalmethodinstead.Hecomposes a seriesof images
(interviews, archival documents,clips from the classicsof Soviet cinema
and from propagandafilms, scenesfrom the opera,virtual images,etc.)that
he arranges,always in strict adherence to the cinematographicprinciples
ofmontage, in orderto define very specificmomentsin the relationship
between the cinematographic \"kingdom of shadows\" and the \"shadows of
the [utopian| kingdom.\" While Godard gives us a smooth plane, Marker
creates a memory we can scan.And yet he falls prey, like Godardbut even
more so, to an obvious paradox:he feels compelled to punctuate all these
\"images that speak for themselves,\"as well as the interlacing of seriesof
images that make cinema into a meta-language and into a \"poem of the
poem,\" with an imperiousvoice-over commentary that tells us what it is
that they \"say.\"
Herewe have, in a nutshell,the problemof documentaryfiction in
particular and of cinematographic fiction in general. Cinema s first Utopia
was that it was a language\342\200\224syntax, architecture,
symphony\342\200\224better

equippedthan the language ofwordsto embracebodiesin movement.This

Utopia has always had to confront, during the silent and talking eras,the
limits of its capacity to speak and all the returns of the \"old\" language.
\"Documentary\" cinema in particular has always beencaught betweenthe
ambiguitiesof turns of montage,and the
the dialectical
cin\303\251ma-v\303\251rit\303\251,
 168 Film Fables

imperialismof the voice of the master, usually off, that eitherlines the
unfolding of heterogeneous imageswith its melodiccontinuity, or gives
a step by step explanation of the meaning of the images'silent presence
or elegant arabesques.Marker, the dialectical pedagogue,rarely fails to
underline for us the evidence that the image \"itself\" provides of what our
memory tends to forget and our thought resists conceptualizing, or to
stressthe insignificanceor ambivalenceofthe image when left to its own
devicesand the concomitant needofmaking all of its possible readings
explicit.The Last Bolshevik is a fiction ofmemory, ofthe interwoven memory
ofcommunism and cinema. Marker,however,cannot resistthe temptation
ofmaking the fiction ofmemory he constructswith artistic means into a
\"lessonon memory\" and on the dutiesofmemory.That is what this voice
is constantly spellingout for the audience: dont forget this image, be sure
to connectit to this other image, lookat that image a little closer, reread
what there is to read in this image.The directors visual demonstration of
Eisensteinsartifice, the alternating montage ofclips from Battleship Potemkin
and shots of pedestrianstoday who descendthose steps moreslowly and
faster at the sametime, has been anticipatedand made redundant by the
professorsexplanation. And yet, it would be difficult to read it without the
commentary. The \"documentary\" always plays with how the images and
their montage, which shouldspeakall by themselves,have to be referred to
the authority ofa voice that securesmeaning at the priceof weakening the
images.Undoubtedly,this tension is at its peak in the caseof a historical
and documentary fiction that is at the same time a cinematographicfilm
about cinemas historicalpowers.As for the fiction ofthe \"letter\" addressed
to the dead director, it is the means ofensuring the undivided authority of
this voice.
Theissuesraisedhere gobeyond the alreadydifficult relationship between
pedagogyand art and touch the heart ofthe Romantic poeticsthat cinema
belongsto as the conjunctionof the power of speechaccorded to mute
things and the power of self-reflection accordedto the work.We all know
that Hegel radically contestedthis claim in his lectures on\" aesthetics.As he
seesit, the power ofthe form, the \"thought-outside-itself ofthe work, and
the powerofself-reflection,the \"thought-in-itself ofconceptualthought,
\"

are mutually opposed. The drive to identify them resultseither in the work
being reduced to the demonstration of a specificvirtuosity, an individual
signature, orin its beingcaught in the endlesssymbolistgame betweenform
and meaning whereonesideisnevermorethan the other s echo.When cinema
presentsitself as a cinema ofcinema and identifies this cinema ofcinema
 Marker and the Fiction of Memory 169

with the readingof a century, it runs the same risk:it finds itself caught
between the infinite referral of images and sounds,offorms and meaning,
characteristic of Godards style, and the powerofthe commentatorsvoice
in Marker.Markers latest films show his awarenessof this aporia and his
attempts to breakfree from it. LevelFive is a particularly goodexamplein this
respect. The film deliberatelybreakswith the equilibrium characteristicofa
documentary in its constructionofa fiction ofmemory around the battle
ofOkinawa and around the bone-chilling,collectivesuicidethe conquering
Japaneseofficers imposed upon the colonized of Okinawa, forcing them
to apeJapanesecodesof honor.With a computer,Marker generatesthe
images ofthe past in the form of a video game; then, using the dialectical
principlesof montage, he confronts the computer-generatedimages with
present-dayimages and with the voices ofthe peopleinterviewed.Marker
has made of this computer a fictional character: memory, tomb, and game
board that allow Markerto combinethe resourcesof video game with the
strategy ofJapanesegenerals and ofthe game go.As it happens,the game
go is the emblem ofanother film, LastYear at Ivlarienbad, by Alan Resnais,who
alsodirectedthe \"documentary\" Night and Fog, and the \"fiction\" Hiroshima,
mon amour. Level Five is a sort of computer-age version of Hiroshima, mon
amour in which the two lovers have beensubstitutedby a singular couple:
the computer and the woman who usesit to talk to her beloved who s gone
missing.We must not missthe very particular status ofthis fictional lover.
Sheis, essentially, the nationalization of a poeticfunction\342\200\224that of the
voice ofthe commentator. Markerrepresentsthis voice in Level Five, where
it is not off, masculine,and imperious,but fictional and feminine. But he
doessounder a very specificmode:the \"heroine\" herself,Laura, has to step
out ofthe cinematographic fiction, much like her namesake,the heroine of
Preminger s film, who steps out ofthe painting to become a living being.
Norshould forget
we that Laurasfame is closelyassociatedwith the opening
sentenceofthe film, 'Tilnever forget the afternoon Laura died,\" a sentence
that turns out to be spokenby a deadman about a living being.
Thus is the fiction ofmemory redoubledto infinity and the documentary
revealedto be, more than ever, the actualization of the Romantic poetics
that rejectsevery aporia of the \"end ofart.\" Level Five identifies the memory
of one ofthe most monstrouscrimesofthe century and ofhistory with
a fiction about the fiction of fiction. But the fictional reduction of sense
in LevelFive is matched by the material impoverishment of the image.The
aura-lessunreality ofthe computer-generated image rubs off on the images
ofvarious origins Markerassemblesin the film. Thereductionoflevelsof
170 Film Fables

fiction and sensecomplementsthe platitude of videographicspace. The

tensionbetween the \"images that speakfor themselves\" and the words that
make them speakis, when all is said and done,the tension betweenthe idea
ofthe image and imaged matter. The real issuehas nothing to do with the
technical apparatus,but is still a matter of poetics. Godard tooturns to
video, but he achievesthe inverseend:he leadsthe joyous disorderof words
and imagesbackto the glory ofthe icon.By assemblingfragments from the
fictions ofan entire century, Godardeternizesthe spiritual as wellas plastic
kingdomofcinematographic shadows,the heirs ofpictorial figures.With
Marker,and here he showshis kinship with installation artists, it is instead
the image as an operationof assemblingand splitting asunder that affirms
itself to the detriment ofthe material splendorofthe kingdomofshadows.
At a time when the balancesheets of the century and of the revolutions
in image-making techniqueare being weighed,the \"poem of the poem\"
finds two figures so closetogether, and yet so radically opposed.Onetomb
against another, one poem against another/

NOTES

1. TheFrench title is LeTombeau d3Alexandre Alexander's Tomb~],which explains

I

why Ranci\303\250re
plays throughout the chapter on the word \"tomb\" and the
name \"Alexander.\"\342\200\224Trans.

2. Cf.Jacques Ranci\303\250re, \"From Wordsworth to Mandelstam: The

Transportsof Liberty,\" in The Flesh of Words: The Politics of Writing, trans.
Charlotte Mandell(California:Stanford University Press,2004).
3. I would liketo thank Sylvie Astric for drawing my attention to this film
and to documentary fiction in general during a program of the BPI
(Bilioth\303\250que publiqued'information)
she organized at the Pompidou
Center.
 CHAPTER I I

A Fablewithout a Moral
Godard,Cinema,
(Histories

Histoire(s)du Godards title, with its doublemeaning and variablereach,

cin\303\251ma:

perfectly sumsup the complexartistic apparatus he develops to presentthe

following thesis:the history of cinema is that of a missed date with the
history of its century. Cinemamissedthe date becauseit misunderstood
its own historicity, the history it had already announced in virtual images.
Thismisunderstanding is rootedin the fact that cinema misunderstoodthe
powerof its images, its inheritance from the pictorial tradition, which it
agreedto subjectto scripted\"stories,\" heirsofthe literary tradition ofplot
and characters. The thesisthus counterposestwo types of \"(hi)stories\": the
storiesthe film industry illustrated with imageswith an eye to cashing in on
the collectiveimaginary, and the virtual historv told by these same images.
Thestyle ofmontage Godard developsfor Histoirefs) du is designed
cin\303\251ma

to show the history announcedbv a century of films, but whosepower

slippedthrough the fingers oftheir filmmakers, who subjectedthe \"life\" of
images to the immanent \"death\" of the text. Godard takes the films these
filmmakers madeand makes with them the films they didn't make.This calls
for a two-stepprocess: the first recaptures the images from their subjection
to the storiesthey were used to tell, and the secondrearranges them into
other stories. Theproject, simpleas its descriptionmay sound,requiresa set
ofoperationsthat singularly complicateour notions ofimage and history,
operationsthat ultimately invert the thesisthat cinema betrayed itself and
its century and demonstrate,instead,the radicalinnocenceof the art of
moving images.
Lets start at the beginning.NotofGodards series,but ofhis intervention,
which is to say, let s turn directly to the sectionentitled The Control of the
Universe, particularly to that part ofit offset by the subheading\"Introduction
to the Method ofAlfred Hitchcock,\" a homage to Paul s Introduction to
Val\303\251ry

the Method of Leonardo da Vinci This entire episode is devoted to an illustration

 172 Film Fables

ofthe primacy ofimages overplot, Godardsuggests:\"WeVe forgotten why

Joan Fontaine leans over the edgeofthe cliff and what exactlyJoel McCrea
went to do in Holland,We ve forgotten what MontgomeryClift s eternal
silencekeepsand why Janet Leigh stops at the Bates Motel and why Teresa
Wright is still crazy about her UncleCharlie. WeVe forgotten what it is
that Henry Fonda is not exactly guilty of and to what end the American

governmenthiredIngridBergman,But we do remembera purse,a bus in the

desert,a glassofmilk, the sailsofa windmill, a hairbrush.We remember a
row ofbottles,a pair ofglasses,a musical score, a bunch ofkeys, because
with and through theseAlfred Hitchcock succeedswhere Alexander,Julius
a nd
Caesar, Napoleon had all failed:he takes control of the universe/'l
Hitchcocks cinema, Godardis saying, is made of images whosepower
is indifferent to the storiesinto which they've been arranged.We remember
the glassofmilk Cary Grant takes to Joan Fontaine in Suspicion, but not the
financial problemsthe character thinks he might solve by coming into his
wife'slife insurance;we remember the hairbrush the wife who goesmad in The
Wrong Man, Vera Miles,brandishesfrantically, but not the confusion that led
to the arrest ofher husband,Henry Fonda;we remember the close-up shots
ofthe bottle ofPommard falling in Notorious and the sailsofthe windmill
spinning against the wind in The Secret Agent, but not the storiesofanti-Nazi
espionagethat the charactersplayed by Cary Grant, IngridBergmanand Joel
McCreaare involved in,2 This argument, as such, is easily refuted, Godard
clearlymakes his point by dissociatingthings that are indissociable. We don't
rememberthe bottles of Pommard in Notorious becauseof their pictorial
qualities but becauseof the emotional charge that the narrative situation
has invested in them. The bottle that wobblesand falls interestsus because
it contains the uranium Alicia (IngridBergman) and Devlin (Cary Grant)
are lookingfor; becausewe know that while they'researchingthe wine cellar,
the champagne at the reception upstairsis running out and Alicia'shusband
Sebastian(ClaudeRains),a Nazi agent, will presentlystep down to the
cellar with his butler to fetch somemore, hear the bottle falling, and notice
that his key to the cellar is missingbecauseAlicia has taken it. Thesame goes
for all the images Godardevokes:in every case,it is the narrative situation
that lends importanceto the objects. It is easy, then, to refute Godards
argument. The problem,though, is that Godarddoesn'topposearguments,
he opposes images.What we seerunning parallel with this discourseare
other imagesmade from Hitchcock's images.Theglassofmilk, the keys,the
and
glasses, the bottlesall reappear Godard,but separatedby blacked-out
in
screens,s o that they seem like somany icons,so many faces ofthings, akin
 Godard, Cinema, (Hi)stories 173

in many ways to the applesin mentionedin passingin the voice-

C\303\251zanne

over commentary: so many testimonies to the ofall things under

\303\207re)bixth

the light ofpictorial presence.

Separatingthe images from their narrative arrangement is only the first
part of Godards project. The second,and moreimportant part, entails
transforming their nature as images.Lets lookagain at the glassofmilk in
Suspicion, which Hitchcock uses in the film to condensetwo contradictory
affects. It is the objectof Lina's(Joan Fontaine)anxiety becauseshe has
just learnedofher husbands murderous intentions.Themien ofthe young
woman weVe just seenin her bedroom, the insert of the dial of a clock
appointing the hour ofthe crime, and the arrow ofwhite light formed by
a dooropenedonto a darkenedhallway, all conspireto make us share the
intensity ofher anxiety. But for us the glassofmilk is also something else.
Itsappearanceis like a little visual puzzle:a luminous white spot that shines
on the tall and slenderbody ofCary Grant, and that slowly grows in sizeas
he makes his way up the stairs, the field ofvision narrowing with each one
ofhis stepsuntil the glasstakes up the whole screen. This small white spot
inscribesitself into the play of white, grey, and black surfaces formed by
the lights on the walls and the railing of the stairwell. Cary Grant mounts
the stairs with habitual impassiveness, as if to the rhythm of a verv slow
waltz. An image,properly speaking,is exactly this apparatus that produces
a doubleeffect:on the onehand, it materializes the anxiety that it makesus
share with the heroine by aligning visual and fictional tensions;on the other
hand, it separatesthem: Cary Grant calmly making his way up the stairwell
and the abstract play of light and shadow transform the visual enigma. It
answersthe spectatorwho s wondering, with the heroine, if there is poison
in the glass,with another questionthat pacifies anxiety by turning it into
curiosity: You re no doubt asking yourself if there s poison in the glass, no? Doyou really
think there is? It includesthe viewer in the play of the author by distancing

him from the affect ofthe heroine. Thename ofthis doubleeffect, although
it is often applied a bit mdiscrirninately to every situation, fits this scene
perfectly.Ithas beencalled,sinceAristotle, the purification ofthe passions,
and here it is the purification of the dramatic passionpar excellence, fear.
Fear is arousedsimultaneouslyin its identificatory and purified modes,it is
alleviatedby a play ofknowledgethat movesthrough anxiety and frees itself
from it. A Hitchcockimage is an element in an Aristotelian dramaturgy. It
is the causeof anxiety and the instrument that purifies the anxiety it has
aroused.His films are modelexamplesof the representative tradition, a
constructionofvisual incidentsthat acts on the sensibilitiesofthe viewer
174 Film Fables

by playing with the shifting relations of pleasureand pain through the

relationship between ignorance and knowledge*
The images in thesefilms are operations,units that partake in the
channelingofhypothesesand the manipulation ofaffects.In the soundtrack,
we hear Hitchcocks voice talking about this manipulation of the viewers
affects until his voice is drownedout and another voice comesto inhabit
theseimages,Godards.The \"MethodofAlfred Hitchcock\"transforms his
imagesinto their contraries:visual units wherein the face ofthings impresses
itself like the face ofthe Savior on Veronicas veil. Godardhas turned them
into units caught up in a doublerelationship\342\200\224with all the things that have
left their impressionon them, and with all the other imageswith which they
compose a specificsensorium,a world of inter-expressivity.Transforming
images into their contraries requiresmorethan just separating them from
their narrative context and arranging them differently. It is a well-known
fact that sinceDzigaVertov cutting and pasting have generally beenused
to producethe inverse effect, to show that cinematographic imageson
their own are just inert piecesof celluloid that can only be brought to
life by the operationof montage that arranges them.The montage that
transforms Hitchcock's affect-bearing images into iconsof the originary
of
presence things must really be an anti-montage, a fusional montage that
inverts the artificialist logicoffragmentation. Four operationsmake up this
anti-montage. In the first, the images are separatedby blacked-outscreens
and thus isolatedfrom oneanother, which is to say, moreimportantly, that
they have beenisolatedtogether in their world, a netherworld ofimageswhence
each image seemsto emergein its turn as if to bear witnessto it.Thenthere
is the discrepancybetween speechand image that, likewise,works against
its normal uses.The text discussesa film while we watch the images of a
different film. Godarddoes not exploitthis discrepancyto create critical
disjunction, as is most commonly done,but to sealthe global co-belonging
oftext and film to the same world ofimages.The voice, for its part, gives
homogeneity and depth to this world.Lastly, video-editing,characterized
by its overexposures, its images that appear, flicker and disappear,or that
are superimposedor mergedinto oneanother, completesthe representation
ofan originary sensorium,ofa world ofimages whence the imagesemerge
when summonedby the director,like the souls Homerimagines in Hades
gathering around Odysseusafter having beensummonedthere by the sound
ofhis call and the smellofblood. In a spectacularmoment, Hitchcock's
mummified iconreturns from the realm ofthe deadto inhabit the world of
\"his\" images, to replaceJames Stewart at Kim Novak's side in the sequoia
 Godard,Cinema, (Hi)stones 175

forest of Vertigo. The substitution is of courseemblematic* By recalling the

title of the novel that the film adapts, From among the Dead, it inverts the
manipulation in the films diabolicalscript,wherethe theme ofthe woman
summonedby her ancestorto the kingdomof the dead servesas a ruse for
the criminal manipulations that dupe the detectiveScottie(James Stewart)*
This perfectly measuredcounter-manipulation transforms the characters
and their directorinto shadowsliterally emerging from the realm of the
Thevideo imageuncouplesthe cinematographicimage from the script
dead\302\273

and placesit in this realm in order to make cinema itself the inferiority of
this realm.
Godard removes these visual fragments from the continuum of a film
as a means of changing their nature. He transforms them into units that
no longer belongto the narrative/affective strategiesofthe representative
mode,but belonginstead to an originary sensonum.There,Hitchcocks
images become event-worlds that coexistwith the infinity of other event-
worldsthat belongnot only to all other films but also to all other forms of
illustration of the century; they become susceptibleto striking an infinite
number ofrelationshipsamongst themselvesas well as with all the eventsof
the centurv. Godardgives us the impressionthat he hasn't cut up Hitchcock s
images,but that it was Hitchcock who assembledall these imagesthat
already lived a life of their own in a world ofgeneralizedinter-expressivity;
all Godardreally did was lookfor them again in his films and assemblethem
differently, in a way that was truer to their nature.
What is this nature, exactly?This is what we learn presently.Godard
follows the Hitchcock episodeof Histoire(s)du with a homageto
cin\303\251ma

cinema whosecompositionis a perfect illustration ofhis method.Godard

now paradesbefore our eyes visual fragments taken for the most part from
the expressionistand fantastic traditions, representedhere by a handful of
their most illustrious films: Nosferatu, The Phantom of the Opera,Faust, Metropolis,
Son of Frankenstein, etc.The voice commenting on theseterrifying images of
monsterstransforms them into their exact opposites: whether in the image
ofFrankenstein presentedas SaintChristophercarrying the child-king(Son
of Frankenstein) or ofBrigitte Helmcoveringthe children under the mantle of
the Virgin Mary (Metropolis), every oneofthesefilms seemsto boil down to
a demonstration of a few ofhumanity s daily gesturesand archetypalposes.
They illustrate the major agesand essentialmoments oflife, and cinema, as
commentedon by the voice-overofAlain Cluny, becomes the encyclopedia
of these essentialgestures:\"From insoucianceto disquietude,from the
impassionedand truculent first efforts to the hesitant but essentialforms of
176 Film Fables

the last, it is the same central force that governs the Onefollows it
cinema\302\273

within cinemafrom form to form, with the shadowand the ray of

light which
circle around, iUuminating onething, hiding another, causing a shoulderto
jut forth, or a face, or a raisedfinger, an open book, a forehead, or a little
child in a manger.That which plungesinto the light is the reverberation of
that which night submerges. That which the night submergesprolongsinto
the visible that which plungesinto the light. Thought,vision, words,and
action unite this forehead, that eye,this mouth, that hand, with the volumes
scarcelyperceived in the shadow:heads and bodiesbendingover a birth, a
death struggleor death itself L..
the headlight
I of
a car, a sleepingface,
darknessbecominganimated, somebeingsleaning overa cradleon which all
the light falls, a man executedin front of a dirty wall, a miry road running
alongsidethe sea, a street corner,an obscuresky, a ray of light over some
of
meadow land, the empire the wind discoveredin a flying cloud.Hereare
nothing but blackstrokescrossingone another on a glowing canvas,and the
tragedy of spaceand the tragedy oflife make the screenwrithe in their fire
[.,,]It is there when the cradleis iUurninated. It
is there when the young girl
appears to us leaning on the windowsill, with eyes that do not know and a
It
pearl between her breasts. is there when we have disrobedher, when her
It
hard torso trembles to the throbbing of our fever. is there when she has
aged, when her furrowed face is surroundedwith a cap and when her bony
hands crossat her waist to signify that shehas no resentment against life for
having dealt hard with her\"3
Thereading of this text, which stretchesthe length ofthese images of
life's archetypal gestures,defines what cinema alone may do, what it alone
saw.Thetext, though, is not Godards, nor is it a text about cinema. Save
for a coupleof minor alterations, Godard tookthe whole of it from the
pagesElieFaure dedicatesto Rembrandt in his History of Art. Even if textual
collageis as essentialto Godard'smethodas visual collage,we cannot
overlook the fact that this rerouting ofFaures text takes on a very specific
meaning.It claims for cinema the legacy of the pictorialtradition.But,
more importantly, it claims for it the legacy ofa genre ofpainting that has
regardedRembrandt as its flagship sincethe beginningof the nineteenth
century, Rembrandt became,from that time onwards, the retrospectivehero
of a \"new\" kind ofpainting, one that breakswith the traditional hierarchy
of subjectsand division ofgenresthat had always structured the opposition
betweennoblehistory painting and vulgar genrepainting.Thisnew painting
uses the quasi-abstractplay of light and shadowto capture the essential
gesturesand emotions ofeveryday life that succeedthe pomp that normally
 Godard,Cinema, (Hi)stones 177

surrounded exalted subjectmatters and memorableexploits,Rembrandt,

the hero ofa new \"history painting\" that is in every sensethe polaropposite
ofthe old, is thus the hero ofa \"new history/' Notthe history ofprinces
and conquerors, but of the intertwinedmultiplicity of epochs,gestures,
objects,and symbolsof ordinary human life, of the different agesoflife
and ofthe handing down of its forms. This is the new history that critics
like Goncourt,assistedby someHegelian-inspired philosophers, read on
the canvasesofRembrandt, Rubens, and Chardin, the new history that was
brought to the world of the novel in the proseof Balzac and Hugo and
that found its model historian in Micheletand its archetypal art historian
in the personof Elie Faure, the theoretician/poet of the \"forms,\" a term
that encompassesboth artistic forms and the cyclical forms oflife in this
universe.ForElie Faure, the \"spirit of the forms\" is the \"central fire\" that
weldsthem, the universal energy of collectivelife that does and undoesits
forms.In this history, Rembrandt is the exemplaryfigure ofthe artist who
seizesthe spirit/fire at its source,in the elementary gesturesof life.
We can now explainthe precisenature of this \"rerouting\" of Elie
Faures text, which Godarduses to transform these cinematographic fables
of monstersinto the goldenbookof the essentialmoments of human
life. Godard, in a very phenomenological fashion, conceivesthe truth of
as
this originary world of images beingnone other than this \"spirit of the
forms\" that the nineteenth century had learnedto read as the interiority
of works of art.This interiority links artistic forms to shared forms of
life, it allows all these forms to be associated and inter-expressed in an
indefinite number of combinations,and it also ensuresthat every one of
thesecombinations can expressthe collectivelife that threads together every
fact, ordinary object,elementarygesture, speech,and image, whether banal
or extraordinary.Thisparticular co-belonging offorms and experiencehas,
sincethosedays, goneby the very specificname of history. It'sover two
centuries now sincehistory has designatednot the narrative of things past,
but a modeof co-presence, a way of thinking and experiencing the co-
of
belonging experiences and the inter-expressivity of the forms and signs
that give them shape.The young woman leaning on the windowsill,the
headlight of a car in the night, the miry road, the street also
corner\342\200\224but

the sailsofthe windmill, the glassofmilk, the wobbling bottle ofwine and
the crime reflected in the victim s ofthesehave belongedto art
glasses\342\200\224all

sincehistory becamethe name for the co-belonging ofindividual experiences,

whether gloriousor mundane, the name for what puts the forms ofcanvases
and the sentencesof alsothe graffiti and the lizards on a wall,
novels\342\200\224but
 178 Film Fables

the wear and tear of clothesor the flakes peelingfrom a fa\303\247ade\342\200\224into

a
relationship ofinter-expressivity.History is this modeof sharedexperience
whereall experiences are equivalent and wherethe signsof any one experience
are capableof expressingall the others.Novalis succinctly summed up the
poeticsof the age ofhistory in his famous dictum:\"everything speaks/'This
means that every sensibleform is a tissueof more or lessobscuresigns,a
presencecapableof signifying the power of the collective experience that

bringsthe sensibleform into presence. It alsomeans that each one ofthese

signifying forms is to
open striking new relationshipswith all other forms,
generating thereby new signifying arrangements. It is as a result of this
of
regime meaning where everything speaks pure presenceand as
twice\342\200\224as

the infinity ofits virtual connections\342\200\224that experiences are communicated

and a common world created.
Godardrelieson this history and poeticsof history to transform
Hitchcock's affect-bearing images into iconsof pure presence,or to use
Elie Faure s text on Rembrandt to transform shots from or Son of
Fant\303\264mas

Frankenstein into imagesofthe elementary gesturesof human life.The image-

operationsof the storytellers of the cmema can become phenomenological
iconsof beingsbeingborn to presencebecausethe \"images\" of the age of
history the images of the aesthetic regime of art, lend their metamorphic
qualities to this operation.Thefact is that they belongto a more fundamental
poeticsthat ensuresthe mterchangeabilitv of the functional sequencesof
representativenarrative and the iconsof phenomenological Friedrich
religion.
Schlegel sums up this poetics in the notion of a \"progressive universal
poetry\":a poetry of metamorphosesthat not only transforms the elements
ofancient poemsinto fragments that can becombinedinto new poems,but
alsoensuresthat the speechesand images of art are interchangeable with
the speechesand imagesofcommon experience. The visual fragments taken
from Hitchcockand others belongto this aesthetic regime of images,they
are metamorphic elements that can always be divorced from their narrative
arrangement, or transformed from within, or coupledand reassembledwith
any of the other imagesthat belongto this great continuum of forms.
Each elementin this regimeis at oncean image-material susceptibleto
transformations and combinations,and an image-signcapableof
infinit\303\251

designatingand interpreting every other.This reserve historicity sustains

the poeticsofHistoire(s) du cinema, this poeticsthat makes every sentenceand
image an element that can be associatedwith every other element to tell the
truth about a century or historv and of cinema, evenif that means changing
their nature and meaning. Godarddigsinto this reserveto constructthe real
 Godard,Cinema, (Hi)stories 179

plot ofHistoire(s) cinema, although it never ceasedbearing witness

du cin\303\251ma:

to the century, consistently misunderstoodits own testimony

Godard'sHistoire(s)du is the most stunning contemporary
cin\303\251ma

manifestation ofthe Romantic poeticsofeverything speaks and ofthe original

tension that inhabits that poetics. Thereare essentiallytwo major methods
of hearing things speak,that is, two major ways ofmaking things speakthe
language of their mutism. In the first we placeourselvesbefore things and
free them from their subjectionto the words and determinations ofthe plot
in order to be able to hear their intimate murmurings. We have to let them

impressthe imprints oftheir presenceon their own. Things are there and
that's all; getting them to speakmeans refraining from manipulating them.
The secondamounts to the inverse. Becauseall things and all meanings
inter-express,we have to manipulate them to make them speak,we have to
uproot them and put them in touch with all the things, forms, signs and
ways of doing that are their co-presents. We have to multiply the short-
circuits that produce,with flashes ofRomantic Witz, the ofsensethat \303\251clat

illuminates common experience.

Histoire(s)du is governed by the play of these two polarities.
cin\303\251ma Its
discourseseems,at first, to come down decidedlyon the side of the first
method.Cinemais \"an art without a future,\" Godardtells us, an \"infant
art\"whose vocation is to the presentand to presence. Cinemais not a
\"camera-pen,\"it is just a screenstretched acrossthe globefor things to
impressthemselveson it. And yet, both the ofthis discourseand mise~en~sc\303\250ne

the presentationof the pure presencesit reclaims obligeGodardto resort

to the secondmethod,which makes everyimage an element in a discourse
in which it either interprets another image or is interpretedby it. This has
been the casefrom the very beginning.Cyd Charissedancing in The Band
Wagon isn't just an expressionofthe immanenceofchoreographicmovement
to the moving image, but is presentedalsoas an illustration ofHollywood's
pact with the devil, symbolizedby Mephistos appearancein Murnau s Faust
Mephistohimself is a doublesymbol, a figure for Hollywoodgrabbing this
infant art a mighty hand, and for this art itself, the art of Murnau,
with
who became in his turn the victim of the pact he brought to the screen.
This dramaturgy sums up, in someways, the doubledialecticat work in
Histoire(s)du the dialectic
cin\303\251ma: that gives it its plot,and the one that
makesthe construction ofthat plot possible. In du Godard Histoire\303\207s) cin\303\251ma,

announces a ofpure presence\342\200\224that it accusesthe cinema of

poetics\342\200\224that

having betrayed. But m order to mount the accusation, Godardhas to apply

a different of metaphoricalmontage\342\200\224which obligeshim
poetics\342\200\224that
 180 Film Fables

to concludethat cinema was indeedpresentto its century, though on the

metaphorical level,asthe way to provethat it was not presentto this presence.
Godard organizeshis demonstrationaround a double failure: cinema
failed its century becauseit had already failed itselfThe first failure
revolvesaround cinemasimpotencebefore the disastersof and
1939\342\200\22445,

particularly around the fact that it failed to seeand show the death camps.
Thesecondconcernsthe pactHollywoodsignedwith the devil ofthe dream
industry and ofcommercialized plots. The whole structure of Histoire(s) du
is determinedby an imperiousteleologyin which Nazism and the
cin\303\251ma

SecondWorld War serve as cinemas truth test.This same teleologylimits

the plot of Histoire(s) du to the destiny of Europeancinema and its
cin\303\251ma

double undoing:at the hands of the American industry and of the Nazi
horror.It also explainswhy Japanesecinema is so noticeably absent from
Godards encyclopedia.It isn't that the SecondWorld War didn't implicate
Japan and mark its cinema, but that by definition neither of these can be
incorporated into the schemaabout the \"destiny of European culture/'
inspiredby and Heidegger,
Val\303\251ry
that governs Godards dramaturgy. The
coreof the demonstrationevidently touches on cinema'srelationshipto
the death camps.If the \"flame of cinema went out at Auschwitz,\" it is
for Godard for a completely different reasonthan for Adorno. Cinema is
not guilty of wanting to continue making art after Auschwitz, but guilty7
of not having been there, ofnot having seen and shown the images from
Auschwitz. Godard's argument is obviously indifferent to all empirical
considerationsabout how exactlycinema couldhave beenthere to film at all.
In Godard,as in Rousseau,facts prove nothing. Cinema should have been
presentat Auschwitz becauseits essenceis to be present.Thereare images
wherever somethinghappens\342\200\224birth or death, banality or atrocity\342\200\224and
cinemas duty is to record thoseimages.Cinema'sbetrayal,that it made itself
incapable ofbeing there to recordthose images, is rootedin the fact that
it had alreadybetrayed itself long before.It had sold its soul to the devil.
It had sold itself to that \"insignificant little mafia bookkeeper\" known as
the inventor ofthe script.It had already surrenderedthe power ofits mute
speechto the tyranny of words and the powerof its images to the huge
industry offiction, the industry of sexand death that substitutesfor our
gaze a world illusorily in accordwith our desires. Already backthen cinema
had agreedto reducethe infinite murmuring and speakingforms of the
world to thesestandardizeddream storiesthat can so easilybe aligned with
the dreamsof all the men in the darkenedrooms just by parading before
their eyes those two great objectsof desire,women and guns.
 Godard,Cinema, (Hi)stories 18!
Godardshowsall of this through a seriesof displacementsand super-
de-figurationsand de-nominations.
impositions, We see,for instance,
images from Griffiths Broken Blossoms and from the rabbit hunt in Renoir s
The Rulesof the Game being crushedby Hollywood'sBabylonian-likepower,
captured in the images ofBabylon from Intolerance and in the image of the
raceon the backs of men in Fritz Langs Rancho Notorious. Godard, as we
can see,makesdoubleuse ofthe same elements.Babylon in Intolerance is the
Hollywoodempireand also Griffith's cinema, killed by this empire. The
rabbit hunt of The Rules of the Game is French cinema destinedto be destroyed
by American help (LesleyCaron and Gene Kelly dancing in An American in
Paris is the metaphor for this) and an expression of the forebodingthat
inhabits the cinema:a foreboding ofits own death and ofthe extermination
to come, both pre-figuredin the danceofdeath performedby the characters
in the film. Rancho Notorious is an American film made for an German \303\251migr\303\251

actress, M arlene Dietrich,by an German director, Fritz

\303\251migr\303\251 Lang, who
had already given the Nihenlungen Saga, Metropolis, and
us\342\200\224in
Mahuse\342\200\224images

of reality being seizedby a murderous fiction and hencehad, him too,

announced cinemas declineand the Nazi crimes.
Godards demonstration depends on his use of cinemas\"historical\"
power, that is, cinemas power to put every image into associativeand inter-
expressiverelationshipswith all otherimages, or to make every image an
image of somethingelse,a commentary that transforms another image,
either by revealingits hiddentruth or by demonstrating its powersto foretell.
But we also learn, in the courseofGodards retrospection,that this \"infant
art\" never stoppedgiving itself a totally different power, a dialogicalpower
of associationand metaphor.This art so soonkilled off never stopped
announcing its own death, it never stoppedtaking revengeon the empireof
fiction that was strangling it to death by depictingit time and again as a folly
that was itselfheadedfor destruction.And in so doing,it turns out that the
cinemahad alsodenouncedwell in advancethe histrionicsofdictatorswith
a theatrical bent, which it had depicted in its own way. From the lighting
effects at Nurembergthat, accordingto Godard,Murnau and Karl Freund
had \"set long beforehand,\"to its culminating point in Charlie Chaplins The
cinema dramatized time and again the delirium of fiction in
Great Dictator,

power and the revenge ofthe real on the fictive. But this very anticipation
spellsout a new guilt:cinema failed to recognizethe catastropheit itself
announced, it failed to seewhat its images foretold.
Theargument, left to its inherent merits, is oncemore not very convincing.
Itis always possibleto seethe rabbit hunt in The Rules of the Game, orany other
 182 Film Fables

sceneof carnage for that matter, as prefiguring genocide. Conversely,the

rather debonaircamp the barber and his accomplice escapefrom without
much ado in The Great Dictator showsthat even Nazismsmost acerbiccritic
was miles away from anticipating the reality of
the death camps.Chaplin's
artistic procedurein The Great Dictator succeeds in brilliantly parodying and
perverting Hitlersgesturesand in reclaiming them by those means for the
of It
commonstock the cinema and political resistance. does not for all
that prefigure the death camps.In contrast, Godard'shistoricalprocedure
in Histoire(s)mobilizes
the power of associationthat connectsChaplin's
those of Renoir\342\200\224with all those images that are their virtual
images\342\200\224or

co-presents,all those images that inter-belongin this regime of senseand

experience calledHistory. Godardmines this reservedpowerofmeaning
for his project.It allows him, on onelevel, to seein the films of Renoir.
Chaplin, Griffith, Lang, and Murnau the figures that announced the realities
ofthe War and extermination to come, and, on a secondlevel,to denounce
cinemas incapacity, its failure to recognize its own dialogicand prophetic
powers. Godards accusation, although basedentirely on the dialogicpoetics
of associationand metaphor for its formulation, paradoxically confirms
the discourseof presenceand gives a new twist to the spiraling apparatus
ofHistoire(s).Godard wants to show that cinema betrayed its own ability
to prophesythe future becauseit had already betrayed its presenceto the
present.Like Peter who deniesthe Word made flesh, cinema betrayed the
lovaltv it owed to this word made flesh called the image. Cinema failed to
recognize the redemptivepower ofthe image,the nature the cinematographic
screenshares,through Goyas or Picasso's painting, with the religiousimage,
with the natural image ofthe Sonimpressedon the veil ofVeronica.
Godard'sfilm is about this redemption. Cinema,like Peter at the third
crow ofthe cock, can recognize its guilt becausethis power ofthe Image still
speaksin it, becausesomething in the Image resistsall betrayal. In the time
ofcatastrophesand horrors,it was the \"pitiable cinema ofnews and current
events\" that preservedthe image s power to save.True,it was not in the
campsto film the extermination, but it \"was there\" in general. Cameramen
placedtheir camerasbefore the things they filmed before all the destruction
and suffering, and allowed them to speakwithout pretendingto make art
with what they filmed.The documentary spirit ofFlaherty and Jean Epstein
lived on in the newsreel,which is why it was able to save the essence of
of
cinema, to allow it to be reborn from the ashes this global catastrophe
and atone for its faults. The two episodes that best illustrate the rebirth
ofcinema are worth reviewing, not least for the way they exposeGodard's
 Godard,Cinema, (Hi)stories 183

method.In the first, devotedto the year zeroofthe rebirth, Godardpresents

the last scenesofGermany Year Zero as a symbol ofItalian cinema beingborn
from escaping\"American occupation/' Godard'streatment of thesescenes
is diametricallyopposedto his treatment of the fragments from Hitchcock s
films, which he had uncoupled from their narrative context and transformed
into so many testimoniesto pure presence. Godarddoes the inverse with
the shotsofEdmunds silent wanderingsand unexplained suicide: he creates
with them a rigorousconnection that transforms the end of his itinerary
into the annunciation of the Resurrection.Edmunds conductat the end of
Germany Year Zero, after he'ssnubbedby the schoolmaster whosenotions he
thought he was putting into practice, amounts to a seriesofsilent acts wholly
impervious to meaning: he walks, runs, stops, hopscotches, kicks a stone,
slidesdown a ramp, picksup a pieceof metal that he makesbelieveis a gun
and that he points first at himself, and then at the emptinesssurrounding
him. In the bombedout building, Edmundis separatedfrom the world going
on below,from his father s burial, his freed brother returning home, and his
sistercalling for him. Edmunds answerto this call will be to throw himself
into the void. Godard takes the radical disconnection of thesescenesand
creates,using slow-motion,fast-forward, and superimpositions,a rigorous
connection that inversesthe meaning ofthe episode. Edmundrubshis eyes
like someone just waking up, like the cinema learning to seeafresh, and his
gaze meetsthe most innocent of gazes,Gelsominas in La Strada, that other
iconof neorealistcinema.Betweenthe gazes ofthesetwo \"children/1 cinema
is reborn to its powersand duties to see,it recovers from the America and
Hollywoodsymbolizedby the dancing couplein An American in Paris. The
extremeslow-motionGodardimposeson the end ofthe film transforms the
sisterwho bends over her deadbrother into an angel ofthe Resurrection,
who risestowardsus to showthe perennialpower ofthe Image to berestored
to life from every death.
Elsewhere,Godard condenses this resurrectioninto a singleimage, the
redemption of the sinner herself, the prostituted Babylon/Hollywood.
Godard rewritesan episodeof A Placein the Sun and puts the love affair
betweenthe beautiful heiressplayed by ElizabethTaylor and the young
careerist playedby MontgomeryClift in the light of the Image,reborn
from the death it had diedin the campsthat GeorgeStevensfilmed in 1945,
when a photographerwith the American army. \"If GeorgeStevenshad not
used the first sixteen-millimeter colorfilm at Auschwitz and Ravensbriick,
undoubtedlyElizabethTaylor s happinesswould never have found a place
in the sun.\" Godard,oncemore, doesnt give us the chance to evaluatethe
184 Film Fables

argument on its own terms, as the next shot literalizes this placein the sun.
of
Theyoung woman steppingout the lake appearsencircled,iconized,by a
halo oflight seemsto outline the imperiousgesture ofa paintedfigure
that

apparently descended from the heavens.Elizabeth Taylor stepping out of

the water is a figure for the cinema itself beingrebornfrom among the dead.
The angel ofthe Resurrection and ofpainting descendsfrom the heavenof
Imagesto restoreto life both the cinema and its heroines. This is a strange
angel, though, who seems to have come down from heaven without wings.
And indeed, the halo of this character hovering midair, the expression
in
in her gaze, and her red cape fringed with gold seeminsteadto belongto
a saint. But saints only very rarely descendfrom the heavens, and it is not
clear why this figure, where we recognize Giottos hand, is here defying the
law ofgravity for material and spiritual bodies. Noris the profile that of
a saint famous for having practiced but simply the profile ofthe
l\303\251vitation,

preeminent sinner Marv Magdalene.Sheis now hovering in midair with her

arms reaching out to the groundbecauseGodardrotated her image ninety
degrees.In Giottos fresco, Mary Magdalenes feet are firmly plantedon the
ground and her arms are reaching out to the Savior, whom she recognizes
near the empty tomb and who turns her away with his arms:Noli me tangere,
touch me not.
Godard, in the end, puts the final toucheson his dialecticofthe
cinematographic image by resortingto a very specificuse of painting. Giotto
holds a specialplacein the Western pictorialtradition, as the painter who
relievedthe sacredfigures inherited from Byzantine iconsfrom their solitude
and brought them togetheras characterswho form part of one and the
same drama and who all share a common space. ElieFaure, Godard'smaster
in matters iconographie, went so far as to compareThe Deposition of Christ
to a photographof a group of surgeonsin the middle of an operationin
an attempt to get us to appreciate the painting s dramatic as well as plastic
composition. The full meaning ofGodards cutting and pasting is revealed
against this background.By cutting Mary Magdalene's profile, Godard
doesn'tjust free the pictorialimage from the \"original sin\" ofperspective
and history, as Bazin and a handful ofotherswanted to do.Godard
Andr\303\251

releasesthe figure ofthe saint from a plasticdramaturgy whosepropersense

was absence,the incurability ofseparation, ofthis empty tomb that was for
Hegelthe heart ofRomantic art and the reasonwhy this art was fated to
the play ofmetaphor and irony. Hefills the placeofNoli me tangere with the
absoluteimage, the promisedescendingfrom the heavens and raisingthe
rich cinema along with
heiress\342\200\224and the tomb, like the speech
her\342\200\224from
 Godard, Cinema, (Hi)stones 185

ofthe illuminato Johannes that brings the young mother in Ordet back to
life.
Ofcourse,this iconization isonly madepossibleby the play ofits opposite,
of
the Romantic poeticsof the \"poem the poem\"that first undoesand then
recomposes of
the works the tradition and that introduces\342\200\224between image
and image, between images and their words,images and their referents\342\200\224all

the connectionsand all the short-circuitsthat permitthe projection novel of

of
flashes meaning onto a segment the story or of of
history. Theshort-
circuits that FriedrichSchlegels to
poeticshad hoped provoke when all it
of
had at its disposalwas the power words can be infinitely multiplied today
thanks to the possibilitiesavailableto video-editing. Histoire(s)du turns cin\303\251ma

on its head the widespreadcontemporary doxa that accusesthe fatal screen,

of It
the reign the spectacleand the simulacrum. bringsinto broad daylight
what contemporary developments in the art of
video have been intimating
for sometime:it is, on the contrary, from the heart of
the videographic
of of
manipulation images,wherethe reign artificesand simulations of the
machine are there for all the world to see,that arisesa new spiritualism, a
new sacralization ofthe image and presence. The prestigeofvideographic
art transforms the melancholicdiscourseabout the spectacle-king into a new
sparkle of the idols of flesh and blood.It is true that the paradox couldbe
In
read backwards. order bring the scenarios
to of cinema backto the pure
icons of \"non-manipulated\"presence,Godard has to create the icons by
force ofmontage. It cannot be done without the hand ofthe manipulator
who cuts to piecesall the compositions of painting and all the links of
film and then re-pastesthem all as he seesfit. Godardhas to enhance their
pure presencewith the same gesture that rendersall imagespolyvalent:the
image ofthe wind blowing on a woman'sbody must be seenas a metaphor
of originary \"murmuring,\" the \"youngest of the ladies of the Bois de
Boulogne\"struggling with death as a symptom ofthe threat facing cinema,
slaughteredrabbits as prefiguring genocide. Godard challenges the empire
oflanguage and meaning, but he cannot do without subjectingthe links
between imagesto all the prestigesofhomonyms and word play. Hiscinema
renewsthe perennialtensionbetweenthe two antagonistic but complicit
[solidaire]poetics ofthe aesthetic age:it affirms the radicalimmanence of
thought in the materiality of forms, and it redoublesto infinity the games
ofthe poemthat takes itself as its object.
This is undoubtedly the most profound paradox of Godard'sHistoire(s)
du He wants to show that cinemabetrayed both its vocation to
cin\303\251ma.

presenceand its historicaltask.And yet the demonstration of this vocation

 186 Film Fables

and this betrayal suddenlyturn into the opportunity to the inverse.

verify
The film denouncescinema s \"lost
opportunities,\"though all these \"lost
opportunities\"are retrospective. If Griffith had not filmed the sufferings of
martyred children and Minnelli two lovers dancing, if Lang and Hitchcock
had not brought to the screenthe manipulations of cynical and deranged
calculators,if Stroheimand Renoir had not filmed the decadence of the
aristocracy and Stevens the tribulations of a latter-day Rastignac, Godard
would never have had the opportunity to tell a thousandnew versions of
the history of the cinema and the century with the fragments from their
fictions.These\"lost opportunities,\"in other words, are so many seized
opportunities.Godardmakeswith the films of Murnau, Lang, Griffith,
Chaplin,or Renoir the films thev did not make, which are the films Godard
would not have been able to make had thosedirectorsalready made them,
had they comeahead ofthemselves,so to speakHistory,properlyspeaking,
is this relationshipof interiority that puts every image into relation with
every other;it is what allows us to be where we were not, forge all the
connectionsthat had not been forged, and then replay all the \"(hi)stories\"
differently. Herewe comeupon the sourceof the profound melancholy
underlying this \"denunciation.\" History holds the promiseof omnipresence
and omnipotence, and yet these are powerlessto act on any present other
than that oftheir performance. This \"excess ofpower\" denouncesitself as
guiltv and calls upon the redemption of the naked image, though the price
it must pav for it is onemoreexcess, one moretwist of the spiral. And
this supplementis evidenceof the contrary, of the infinite possibilityand
radical harmlessnessofthe great manipulation ofimages.It is understood
that the figure of the \"wrong man\" haunts Godards film. A \"wrong man,\"
for Hitchcock, is someonemistakenly thought to be guilty; for Dostoevsky,
conversely, it is someone who strugglesin vain to pass for guilty. Maybe
the most intimate melancholy of Godardsprojectis that it demonstrates
everywherethe innocence ofthis art that shouldbe guilty in orderto prove,
a contrario, its sacredmission. Themoral ofthe cinema is,much likeits fables,
thwarted.

NOTES

L Jean-LucGodard, Histoire\303\207s)
du cin\303\251ma, vol. 4 (Paris:Gallimard, 1998)
75-85.
 Godard,Cinema, (Hi)stones 187

2. A key to Godards other allusions.In I Confess, MontgomeryClift plays

a priest accusedof a crime he didn't commit; he knowsthe identity of
the real culprit, but cannot revealit becausehe learnedit in the secrecy
of confession.Thepurse is the one in Psycho, fall ofthe money stolen
by Marion (Janet Leigh),who makes the fatal error of stoppingat the
BatesMotel for the night, where she'skilledbv Norman Bates(Anthony
Perkins).In Shadow of a Doubt, TeresaWright plays the young Charlie,
crazy about her uncle and namesake,the widow murdererplayed by
JosephCotten.Thebus in the desert is the bus that Roger Thornhill
(Cary Grant), sent to the middleof nowhere by his enemies,is waiting
for in North by Northwest In Strangers on a Train, the sceneofBruno (Robert
Walker) strangling Miriam Hainesis reflected in her glasses.Lastly, the
musical scoreis integral to the suspenseof The Man who Knew Too Muck
where a diplomat is to be killedduring a performanceat the Royal
Albert Hall.
3. Godard,Histoire(s) du vol. 4,
cin\303\251ma, 99\342\200\224120.

4. Elie Faure, History of Art, vol. 2,trans.Walter Pach (NewYork:Dover

Publications,1937) 64-72.