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(2013) Bergson and the metaphysics of media, Dordrecht, Springer.
One or many planes
the composition of intervals in painting and film
pp. 45-61
Readers of André Bazin and Jean Mitry may recognize in Gilles Deleuze's Cinema books a reworking of their already well-established theories on the impression of reality in long sequence and deep-focus shots. For Bazin and Mitry, the deep-focus shot represented a leap beyond the analytic fragmentation of action that characterized earlier forms of montage. Deep focus allowed for a more realistic presentation of events as they occurred. Mitry described this as a change from "actualization' to "presentification'. In the classical forms of montage that precede Orson Welles "we participate in a represented past, rather than a present actuality...what we are viewing is the consequence of an action.'1 In the deep-focus shot, on the other hand, we witness the development of action and the open time in which this takes place. Bazin's argument rested on a belief in film's direct photographic/indexical relation to reality, which he understood to be a part of a movement toward a more perfect analogical presentation of the world in a "total cinema'.
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(2013). One or many planes: the composition of intervals in painting and film, in Bergson and the metaphysics of media, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 45-61.
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