Deleuze and Lola Montès

Richard Rushton

• Editorial: Bloomsbury Academic
• Año: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781501345784
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Media & Performing Arts
• Categoría: Film History & Criticism

Gilles Deleuze represents the most widely referenced theorist of cinema today. And yet, even the most rudimentary pillars of his thought remain mysterious to most students (and even many scholars) of film studies. From one of the foremost theorists following Deleuze in the world today, Deleuze and Lola Montès offers a detailed explication of Gilles Deleuze's writings on film – from his books Cinema 1: The Movement-Image (1983) and Cinema 2: The Time-Image (1985). Building on this foundation, Rushton provides an interpretation of Max Ophuls's classic film Lola Montès as an example of how Deleuzian film theory can function in the practice of film interpretation.

CHAPTER 1

Deleuze’s Cinema

Movement, Time, Memory, and Subjectivity

A Philosopher Goes to the Movies

Gilles Deleuze wrote two books on cinema, Cinema 1: The Movement-Image in 1983 and Cinema 2: The Time-Image in 1985. These books offered a remarkable account of cinema history and theory, all informed not only by Deleuze’s many years of writing philosophy but also by his love of cinema. He offered conceptions of cinema that were original and provocative, and which went against the grain of the cinema scholarship of the period.

We might first of all ask, what does Deleuze mean by the movement-image and the time-image? These formulations were daring. They challenged the reigning film theory orthodoxies of the 1970s and 1980s. Then, much film theory concentrated on the various ways that cinema, especially mainstream cinema, was seen to be illusory, escapist, or deceptive. Theories advocated by the likes of Jean-Louis Baudry’s formulations on the “ideological” nature of the cinema apparatus, or Guy Debord’s critique of the “society of the spectacle,” and along with it Theodor Adorno’s contention that entertainment industries like cinema were forms of “mass deception,” all grounded their arguments on the fundamental belief that films and cinema are typically fraudulent, fake, and inauthentic.¹Against what they saw as being a cinema of deception, these theorists hoped there would emerge a true cinema that would eschew illusion and deception.

Deleuze rejects this distinction between a false cinema and a supposedly true cinema. Far from being critical of cinema as a form of deception, Deleuze can instead be seen as a true lover of cinema. “The cinema is always as perfect as it can be,” he wrote in the preface to the English translation of Cinema 1 (C1, x). This means that Deleuze’s Cinema books set out on a trajectory that is rather different from what had usually been expected of a book of film studies, certainly during the period when the books were written. Deleuze’s aim in his writings on cinema is therefore one that eschews any attempt to distinguish between a true cinema and a false cinema, or between good films and bad ones. Rather, his aim is to develop a system of classification of the different types and modes of cinema that existed up until the period when he wrote these two books.

So what are the movement-image and the time-image then? Generally speaking, the movement-image refers to modes and techniques developed in cinema and filmmaking up to the Second World War, while the time-image denotes new techniques that emerged after the Second World War. This definition is very general, however, so that modes associated with the movement-image survived well after the Second World War and, indeed, techniques related to the movement-image remain dominant in cinema today. Likewise, Deleuze claims that aspects of the time-image were always implicit in the movement-image and that some films displayed time-image attributes well before the Second World War, such as films by Carl Theodor Dreyer, Yasujiro Ozu, as well as Max Ophuls, whose works we will come across throughout this book.

What exactly does Deleuze mean by calling these modes the movement-image and the time-image? First of all, as might be expected, movement is crucial for the movement-image, while time is paramount for the time-image. Deleuze means somewhat more than this, however. What is truly remarkable about the movement-image, Deleuze claims, is that it includes movement in the image. This might not initially sound like a particularly revelatory point to make, but given that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries moving images were a genuine innovation—never before in human history had this kind of moving image been produced—Deleuze wants to emphasize that the invention of movement in images was an extraordinary one. Even given the ubiquity of moving images today, there can be little doubt that the invention of moving images was an astonishing one for human history.

Deleuze therefore goes to great lengths to point out that for moving images of the cinema, movement is inside the image; movement is part of the image. In arguing this point, he is countering a classical conception of what cinematographic images are. We know that the process of cinema projection—in the analogue era and also in the digital age—is one in which a series of still images is projected at such a rapid rate (twenty-four frames per second) that viewers of those images perceive them as being in movement. Thus, a standard account of cinema will claim that in reality cinema’s images are static: they do not move. The only reason they appear to move is because our perceptual faculties are tricked into seeing movement where in reality there is no such thing. From this perspective, therefore, movement is not part of the image but is merely added to the image, almost as a kind of afterthought. We might also see this as being one of the ways that cinema itself has often been thought to be illusory or deceptive: it does not really give us moving images; rather, we are tricked into seeing movement where there is none. Deleuze rejects such arguments. He declares instead that, even if still images are projected, we do not perceive stillness. We perceive moving images. In other words, what the cinema gives us is a movement-image: images that move and movement that is part of the image. This is why Deleuze calls them movement-images.

If movement is essential to the movement-image, then what is a time-image? I have suggested that the distinction between the movement-image and the time-image is a historical one, and to some extent this is true. But the distinction is much more of a conceptual than historical one. The movement-image designates one way of accounting for what occurs in films, and by association, it also accounts for a certain way of understanding the “real world” too. That way of accounting for things is by way of movement. The time-image then provides a different way of accounting for what occurs in films—and in the “real world” too—in terms of time rather than in terms of movement. Films of the time-image do not prioritize movement, as films of the movement-image do. In many ways the experience of time is one of memory for Deleuze. Time is a matter of the ways that our memories of the past influence our conceptions of the present and our premonitions of the future. As we will see throughout this book, memory is indeed central for films of the time-image. Because film offers ways of capturing images of the present which, as soon as they are photographed, become images of the past, then film offers unique ways of conceiving of the relationship between the past and the present. Deleuze considers that a range of films which emerged after the Second World War took certain aspects of memory as a theme—the “flashback,” for example, became a staple of Hollywood cinema during the 1940s.²It is therefore films like this, which deal with memory to a large extent and with the relationship between the past and the present, that come to define what is specific to films of the time-image. In what follows I shall detail some aspects of the movement-image and the time-image with reference to a couple of films directed by Max Ophuls.

On Max Ophuls

Max Ophuls was born in Germany in 1902. As a young man in Germany he worked in theater before moving into film direction. Ophuls was Jewish, so after the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, he fled to France, while also spending some time working in Holland and Italy. He made several films in France before then moving to Hollywood during the Second World War. He struggled to find work during the war years in Hollywood, before making a series of distinctive films, none of which was especially successful, though Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) is today regarded as one of the great Hollywood melodramas. In what follows, I engage substantially with Letter. Ophuls returned to France in 1950 where he made some of his most highly acclaimed films, including Lola Montès. Lola Montès (1955) was the last film directed by Ophuls. He died in 1957.

In Cinema 2, Deleuze describes Lola Montès in terms of flashbacks and multilayered relationships between the past and present (C2, 84). For Deleuze, the film provides a fine example of the time-image. Flashbacks, memories, and relationships between the past and the present are central to many of Ophuls’s films, including those made in Hollywood, such as Letter from an Unknown Woman or The Reckless Moment (1949), or those made elsewhere such as La Ronde (France, 1950), or La signora di tutti (Italy, 1934). What is very interesting about Ophuls’s films overall is that they very often foreground relationships between the past and the present. Yet they do so in varying ways. Often such films will be movement-image films, while at other times they will be time-image films. Thus, some of Ophuls’s films prioritize the movement-image, while others place emphasis on the time-image.

How is this so? For those films like La signora di tutti (usually translated as Everybody’s Lady) which offer movement-images rather than time-images, the flashbacks to the past are designed so as to fix the past in such a way that it will not be subject to change. Therefore, the task of La signora di tutti is to definitively place the past in the past, so that what is happening now, in the present, can be clearly distinguished from the past. It is the act of “placing the past in the past” that makes it an example of the movement-image. Let’s explore this in a little more detail. What is this film about? Set in Milan and made in 1934, La signora di tutti focuses on the life of Gaby Doriot (Isa Miranda). In the film’s opening scenes, Gaby is presented to us as a famous film actress who has just signed a lucrative new contract with a movie studio. However, she has just been discovered in her bathroom badly wounded: it is a suicide attempt. She is immediately taken to a hospital and placed under general anesthetic. As she falls under the effect of the anesthetizing gas, the film’s images dissolve and we are then treated to a range of flashback episodes that tell the story of Gaby’s life.

These episodes unfold in chronological order, beginning with scenes of Gaby’s expulsion from school, then moving on to her meeting Roberto Nanni (Friedrich Benfer), thence to her love affair with Roberto’s father, Leonardo (Memo Benassi). As the film brings us toward the present, it is revealed that Roberto was, in fact, Gaby’s true love, and that it had been a mistake for her to have fallen for Leonardo. To make matters worse, Roberto has married Gaby’s sister, Anna (Nelly Corradi), and they are happily married with a child. At the very end of the film, we return to the present. Gaby’s suicide attempt has been successful, the surgeons were unable to save her, and she has died.

The film shows us the key attributes of the movement-image. The overall shape of La signora di tutti unfolds in the following way: a character in the present, Gaby Doriot, tries to remember the past so she can “put the past in order,” so she can discover from the perspective of the present how the past has led to the present. And it was, as both she and we discover, her decision to choose the wrong man that has led to the present situation in which she has attempted suicide: she had an affair with Leonardo when she now realizes she should have married Leonardo’s son, Roberto. In this way, the task of the film’s narrative is to secure the timeline between past and present, and therefore to explain how and why the past has caused the present situation of Gaby’s suicide attempt.

The Movement-Image: Time as Measurement

As I have claimed, the film is an example of a movement-image. And yet, doesn’t this film show us what time is? Isn’t this film about relationships between the past, present, and future? If this is so, then why is La signora di tutti an example of a movement-image? To complete the timeline of La signora, what happened in the past and present leads to the consequence that, in the future, Gaby will no longer be alive: her suicide attempt is successful. But, again, if this is how time seems to work, why is La signora an example of a movement-image? Deleuze argues, in ways that will be expanded upon throughout this book, that the movement-image provides one way of conceiving of time. In fact, this way of understanding time—as a timeline in which events and actions are fixed into moments of the past that lead to effects in the present and which then, in turn, will cause certain events and actions to then occur in the future—this way of understanding how time works is not, for Deleuze, a way of conceiving of how time really works. The movement-image does not give us an accurate way of understanding what time is. Rather, Deleuze claims that conceiving of time in terms of a past-present-future pattern in which the past, the present, and the future are clearly separated, is a way of presenting time in terms of measurement. For Deleuze, time as such cannot be measured. This is one of the major points he adapts from French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859–1941).

Films of the movement-image therefore present time in terms of the ways that time can be measured—“clock time,” as it were. If time is measured then it becomes much more akin to space, for space is a dimension that can be measured. Space can be measured, Deleuze claims, in ways that time cannot. Thus, to “measure” time is to treat time as though it were space. Therefore, Deleuze argues, if I measure time in that sort of way, that is, in terms of the “time covered” or the “time traveled,” then I am actually conceiving of time in spatial terms. I am not conceiving of time as time. Rather, I am conceiving of time as though it were space. To clarify things to a further degree: if I conceive of time in terms of a sort of “distance covered” then I am actually conceiving of time as a form of movement. That is, the kind of question I am asking of time is akin to the sort of question I would ask when measuring movement. Movement is measured by asking How far is it from one point in space to another? To conceive of time in terms of movement is thus to ask this sort of question of time: How long does it take to get from the past to the present? Or: How long does it take to get from A to B? Or: How has time moved in such a way as to make the path from the past to the present clear and complete? Conceiving of time in this way is actually to conceive of time as a form of movement. And, for the cinema, to conceive of time in terms of movement is to give us a film characterized by what Deleuze calls the movement-image. The kind of timeline displayed in a film like La signora di tutti is therefore one that shows us a movement-image rather than a time-image. What occurs in such a film is that time is portrayed as a movement between past and present, where points between past, present, and future are fixed and clearly placed on a timeline. As a result, we know how the film’s present came to be, such that it was caused by certain events that happened in the past: Gaby has committed suicide because she realizes her mistake in the past of choosing Leonardo instead of Roberto.

If films of the movement-image show time as a kind of movement, what Deleuze calls “an indirect image of time,” then what does the time-image do to time? How does the time-image gives us a “direct image of time” or, as Deleuze claims, “A little time in the pure state”? (see C2, pp. 270–3).

The Past Can Change

Let us once again try to find our bearings, for if the movement-image has so far begun to feel rather complicated, then the time-image will, in fact, turn out to be somewhat more complicated again. Therefore, let us try some clear formulations. If the movement-image endeavors to fix the past-present-future into a clear, chronological order, then the time-image provides a far looser sense of chronological time and much more of a sense of lived time or time-as-it-is-experienced. This means that the time-image introduces relationships...