Page 175 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 175
memory and identity in film
It would take us too far away from our focus on film if we tried to fol-
low Bergson much further. What is interesting for our current purpose is
the following conclusion: “The actuality of our perception thus lies in its ac-
tivity, in the movements which prolong it, and not in its greater intensity:
the past is only idea, the present is ideo-motor” (Ibid, 1982: p. 71).
Film, which is often called “moving pictures”, corresponds to this by
putting together the idea of the past and the present since films are always
projected in the present for someone, an audience, who is watching them.
To recognise what Bergson‘s contribution to the understanding of cinema
was, we should take into account the comment by Deleuze:
Now we are equipped to understand the profound thesis of the first
chapter of Matter and Memory: 1) there are not only instantaneous
images, that is, immobile sections of movement; 2) there are move-
ment-images which are mobile sections of duration; 3) there are, fi-
nally, time-images, that is, duration-images, change-images, space
(volume)-images, which are beyond movement itself (Deleuze,
1983: p. 22).
In view of Deleuze‘s assertion we can say that the historical “insertion”
of film into these interacting movements, was not just any innocent act, es-
pecially bearing in mind Bergson‘s hint concerning the “mechanism of the
unconscious”.3
From Memory to Identity to Ethnology
The mechanical aspect of producing a photograph, a film and other visual
or audio-visual representations, contributes to an impression of a special
“objectivity” of any “documented” look through the lens of a camera. Un-
like written records or different works of art, including architecture, these
“instruments” of representation are simultaneously reducing and enlarg-
ing the impact of a subjectivity on a product, which makes a representation
possible and it is itself a representation. Reducing the impact of subjectivi-
ty, while the mechanics and the chemistry of photographic or film camera
eliminates all the work of “drawing and painting”, but enlarging this im-
pact, while a subjective decision is essential for shooting a picture or movie.
Furthermore, this is done by choosing angles, light and shadow and – what
3 Certainly, Bergson could not and therefore did not have in mind Freud’s idea of the
unconscious since the idea was just about to become a concept through Freud’s and
Breuer’s analysis of the famous case of hysteria in 1895.
173
It would take us too far away from our focus on film if we tried to fol-
low Bergson much further. What is interesting for our current purpose is
the following conclusion: “The actuality of our perception thus lies in its ac-
tivity, in the movements which prolong it, and not in its greater intensity:
the past is only idea, the present is ideo-motor” (Ibid, 1982: p. 71).
Film, which is often called “moving pictures”, corresponds to this by
putting together the idea of the past and the present since films are always
projected in the present for someone, an audience, who is watching them.
To recognise what Bergson‘s contribution to the understanding of cinema
was, we should take into account the comment by Deleuze:
Now we are equipped to understand the profound thesis of the first
chapter of Matter and Memory: 1) there are not only instantaneous
images, that is, immobile sections of movement; 2) there are move-
ment-images which are mobile sections of duration; 3) there are, fi-
nally, time-images, that is, duration-images, change-images, space
(volume)-images, which are beyond movement itself (Deleuze,
1983: p. 22).
In view of Deleuze‘s assertion we can say that the historical “insertion”
of film into these interacting movements, was not just any innocent act, es-
pecially bearing in mind Bergson‘s hint concerning the “mechanism of the
unconscious”.3
From Memory to Identity to Ethnology
The mechanical aspect of producing a photograph, a film and other visual
or audio-visual representations, contributes to an impression of a special
“objectivity” of any “documented” look through the lens of a camera. Un-
like written records or different works of art, including architecture, these
“instruments” of representation are simultaneously reducing and enlarg-
ing the impact of a subjectivity on a product, which makes a representation
possible and it is itself a representation. Reducing the impact of subjectivi-
ty, while the mechanics and the chemistry of photographic or film camera
eliminates all the work of “drawing and painting”, but enlarging this im-
pact, while a subjective decision is essential for shooting a picture or movie.
Furthermore, this is done by choosing angles, light and shadow and – what
3 Certainly, Bergson could not and therefore did not have in mind Freud’s idea of the
unconscious since the idea was just about to become a concept through Freud’s and
Breuer’s analysis of the famous case of hysteria in 1895.
173
