Book Review: An Exploration of some themes from Deleuze’s ‘Cinema 2’

Deleuze’s ‘Cinema 2’ offers an account of the development of post-war cinema, and the features that
distinguished this movement from the way the art was practiced in earlier times. In particular, he begins
by devoting considerable attention to the Italian neo-realist films and the manner in which they had begun
to constitute a ‘new image’ of the world; to have found a new form of expression that was – quite
evidently – marked by the traumatic experiences of the war. While it is easy to explain various aspects of
this new imagination (it is bleak, riddled with fragmentation, constantly evoking a sense of exhaustion
etc) by invoking such a historical context, Deleuze probes further into the conceptual work that such a
novel image represents; to the way in which it becomes a site for reflection on chronic philosophical
problems and the general condition of human life at the time. In the following, I will try to explore certain
aspects of this reflection; specifically, I will pay attention to the way this new form of realism captures a
‘decontextualized’ experience of the sensory world, and the way it conceives of subjective agency.

One of Deleuze’s basic thesis is that prewar cinema operated within the scheme of what he calls ‘the
movement-image’, and it is this scheme that starts to fade away and be reconstituted during the 40s and
50s. One of the chief characteristics of this older movement-image was that it was always framed by a
situational context. The images of this older form of cinema could always be read immediately as
moments within the unravelling of a fairly clear plot. The use of montage and the choice of shots served
the function of creating a tightly knit narrative, where one was always aware of how what was shown on
screen furthered the action in a specific way. Thus, it was also the case that the stories of these films were
situated in a much more conventional narrative universe and comprised its various tropes. Indeed,
characters were fully constituted beings, with clear identities and specific agendas that were always
intelligible within the scope of the overall drama that was unfolding.

In a sense, Deleuze likened this (what he calls the sensory-motor scheme) to the image we have of the
world around us while we are engaged in some endeavor. What we end up experiencing is, in fact, an
abstraction of the world; one made in keeping with the specific practical considerations at hand. As
Deleuze puts it: “we do not perceive the thing or the image in its entirety, we always perceive less of
it… we perceive only what we are interested in perceiving, or rather what it is in our interest to perceive,
by virtue of our economic interests, ideological beliefs and psychological demands” (pp.34) Thus, given
this overall framework for conveying meaning, one is not presented with people or entities ‘in
themselves’, but rather only the abstracted, and exaggerated features of them which are relevant to what
is being conveyed. Thus, such cinema was also one well versed with the register of clichés. As Deleuze
puts it, “A cliche is a sensory-motor image of the thing”. (ibid)

In postwar cinema, this is precisely the image that begins to fail. It is pertinent that the movement
inaugurating this shift conceived itself as a new take on realism, for it seemed to posit that earlier forms
of narrative had somehow come to be experienced as disingenuous, they were no longer adequate to the
experience of reality. So how did the earlier ‘movement-image’ come to be replaced, and what emerged
in its place? Deleuze’s entire second volume on cinema is meant to elaborate this concept of a novel ‘time-
image’ which was a cinematic paradigm where time itself became perceptible. However, this larger
trajectory of his thought involves a number of broader philosophical/ontological ideas, and here we will
restrict ourselves to describing some basic features of the new image and why they were interesting.
One of the principle changes of that seems to have occurred in the cinematic imagination has to do with
a kind of ‘decontextualized’ perception; an image of the everyday sensory world that is not framed or
subordinated to any plot or course of action. Deleuze, in keeping with the analogy of our practical
perception, offers that “if our sensory-motor schemata jam or break, then a different type of image can
appear: a pure optical-sound image” (pp.34) These pure optical and sound images seem to be images
that are stripped away from the meaningful contexts that characters would inhabit as agents in a
narrative. Instead, these are often images that evoke ‘events’ only in so far as the characters themselves
encounter these images and cannot really make sense of or domesticate them. As an example, Deleuze
offers the scene from De Silva’s Umberto D, where a maid is shot amidst her banal, everyday life “cleaning
a bit, driving the ants away from a water fountain, picking up the coffee grinder, stretching
out her foot to close the door with her toe. And her eyes meet her pregnant woman's belly, and it is as
though all the misery in the world were going to be born.” (pp.15)

What is interesting is that, the sudden thought of impending misery and the weight of its burden, are not
somehow part of some dramatic plot; they merely occur spontaneously, as part of the character’s activity.
Her routine suddenly appears to her as mortifyingly repetitive, and she cannot bear the thought of
bringing a child into the world just for this. However, one identifies with her not as an ‘agent’, but as
someone who is themselves subject to a thought that their environment brought about. The occurrence
of this thought for the maid is the only ‘event’ we witness in the scene. Another example that Deleuze
offers is that of Rosselini’s Europe 51, which follows a bereaved upper-class woman as she encounters
different spaces following the death of her child. Here, Deleuze notes that “Her glances relinquish the
practical function of a mistress of a house who arranges things and beings, and pass through every state
of an internal vision, affliction, compassion, love, happiness, acceptance” (pp.16) Again, a kind of
decontextualized perception seems to occur. Having lost her sense of identity, ‘relinquished her function
of a mistress”, she begins to ‘see’ these spaces as if for the first time. They are finally presented to her as
they are in themselves, no longer ‘given only within the horizon of her meaningful world’, and the power
of these images is what she is subjected to over the course of the film.

These examples also serve to illustrate a related development in the new ‘image’ inaugurated by the neo-
realists. Suddenly, within such an image, the notion of ‘human agency’ is completely transformed. No
longer is one supposed to find oneself identifying with a character, who being some kind of moral center,
proceeds through the drama as a ‘protagonist’. Instead, we are presented with characters who are not
‘agents’ at all. Instead, they seem generally to be just overwhelmed by the situations they find themselves
in, they are brutally affected by their own thoughts or inner life. It is almost as if the films make it so that
one can only identify with their ‘sight’, with their own confused and slow interiorization of the world they
are thrown into. “This is a cinema of the seer and no longer of the agent” (pp.17)

This image of human agency is especially unsettling in the effect it creates, for it complements/mirrors
the decontextualized perception of objects, and it gives to it a dark underpinning. It is as if one encounters
the world anew in these images, one sees objects outside their relation to any persisting action, from a
truly ‘disengaged, contemplative’ eye so to speak. However, this is only part of the picture, for one is then
presented with the continuous failure of different characters to sustain any kind of meaningful
engagement with the surroundings and situations they find themselves in. They cannot saturate the world
around them with meaning, they cannot abstract away from it and ‘perceive less’; yet simultaneously, the
world’s nakedness haunts them with its intensity and one can only join them in being subjected to it.
Deleuze mentions the critique come of these characters and images received at the hand of Leftists who
were dismayed at the passivity and incapacitation that was depicted in neorealist cinema. However,
Deleuze is weary of such a view and points out that “it is precisely the weakness of the
motor-linkages, the weak connections, that are capable of releasing huge forces of disintegration” (pp.33)
In some sense, his point seems to be that such critics fail to appreciate the gravity of the situation. That it
is they who are naïve to believe that older forms of engagement are adequate to the plight of the world,
that one can simply ‘will oneself back in to action’ in order to better the world. Instead, the imaginary of
these new films adequately portrays the destitution of human subjectivity that is becoming commonly
felt. In these images, it is as if reality itself is lost in thought, no longer capable of ordering itself into a
clear narrative structure where human beings can find and orient themselves effectively.

References:

Deleuze, Gilles. "Cinema 2: The time-image, trans. hugh tomlinson and robert galeta." London:
Athlone (1989).