The Cinematic Denial of Difference

from Montage Realism and the Act of Vision

A. Time and The Apparatus 

The mechanics of the motion picture camera subjects the temporal continuum of "reality'' to an "analysis'' not entirely unlike that performed on the phonetic continuum by a syntagmatic breakdown into phonemes. The characteristic division of the film strip into a series of similar but discontinuous "frames'' is, moreover, analogous to the purely spatial division into bits of grain of a photograph as analyzed by Eco.

According to Jean Louis Baudry's seminal essay, "Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus," the projector restores the original continuity, "but it is precisely ...the restoration of continuity to discontinuous elements which poses a problem. The meaning effect produced does not depend only on the content of the images but also on the material procedures by which an illusion of continuity ...is restored from discontinuous elements.'' The differences between the frames are necessary for the illusion, "but only on one condition can these differences create this illusion: they must be effaced as differences ...In this sense we could say that film lives on the denial of difference.''

We are here reminded of the "double aspect of montage,'' which hinges on the same opposition. The "scandal'' of montage is, of course, effaced in the "denial of difference'' which is film language itself. Baudry relates denial of difference to a "principle of transcendence'' linking meaning with consciousness itself:

...what was already at work as the originating basis of the perspective image, namely the eye, the "subject,'' is put forth, liberated ...by the operation which transforms successive, discrete images ...into continuity, movement, meaning; with continuity restored, both meaning and consciousness are restored.2

Baudry continues, relating the cinematic process to psychoanalytic themes. What must concern us here is his notion of film time, which, like traditional pictorial space, is first analyzed into fragments, then reconstituted synthetically to form a conceptual whole. The fragments are the individual frames, synthesized when projected, to produce the illusion, the idea, of motion within an ideal time field which contains the motion as perspective space contains objects.

Cinematographic Time

That this kind of time is not really new, but based on a conventional attitude that has been prevalent in Western thinking for centuries, is the central idea behind the philosophy of Henri Bergson. For Bergson, in fact, motion picture film provides a convenient metaphor for the rationalistic basis of Western thought. In his major work, Creative Evolution, he has provided a classic analysis of the workings of the cinematographic apparatus in relation to what Baudry would call "ideology.'' 

Pointing out that film is made of "a series of snapshots'' each of which is immobile, Bergson, like Baudry, is fascinated by the manner in which the projection apparatus "reconstitutes the mobility'' of the original scene. He observes that the unrolling of the film through the projector provides the actual movement by means of which the pictured objects appear to move. The process then consists in extracting from all the movements peculiar to all the figures an impersonal movement abstract and simple, movement in general, so to speak.
Bergson then proceeds to compare this process with that of "our knowledge'' itself in a key statement which must be quoted in full:

We take snapshots, as it were, of the passing reality, and, as these are characteristic of the reality, we have only to string them on a becoming, abstract, uniform and invisible, situated at the back of the apparatus of knowledge [like a movie projector] in order to imitate what there is that is characteristic in this becoming itself. Perception, intellection, language, so proceed in general. Whether we would think becoming, or express it, or even perceive it, we hardly do anything else than set going a kind of cinematograph inside us ... The mechanism of our ordinary knowledge is of a cinematographic kind.3

To the film viewer, the actual movement of the film strip is "abstract, uniform and invisible.'' It is, in fact, the equivalent of what we usually think of as "time itself,'' moving uniformly at its own pace within which every other movement is contained, against which all motion is measured. It is this traditional, mechanistic ideology (Bergson of course does not use this term) which, to Bergson, calls forth a completely misleading notion of "becoming,'' the very basis for "perception, intellection, language.'' 

The Spatialization of Time

For Bergson, "cinematographic time'' illustrates a general misconception which he calls the "spatialization of time.'' To grasp his meaning, we must recall that the film strip is, in fact, a linear space. Bergson contrasts our notion of time as something that can be measured along such a strip with a formulation of his own: "pure duration.''

While his definition of this term is somewhat problematic, in essence it involves the direct intuition we have of time when we enter in to events themselves rather than attempt to measure them according to some uniform, external and abstract "flow.'' For example, if we wish to know when a pot of water has begun to boil, we can either set an alarm to ring at approximately the right moment or we can stand before the pot and watch for the signs of boiling. In the first case, we are placing the event within the abstract context of universal clock time. The boiling of the water, measured against the space of the clock face, will have no real duration for us. We will be interested only in the "point in time'' marked by the alarm.
In the second case our experience of time will be totally different. We will be placing our awareness within the boiling process itself and actually experiencing its duration. This type of experience does not involve anything abstract. The duration of this particular boiling will be a particular duration, concrete and with a unique "weight'' of its own (a "weight'' which can, indeed, make us feel quite uncomfortable).

For Bergson, the first case would illustrate the common tendency to perceive time in terms of space. The second case, in which time is experienced in itself, and space plays no role at all, would be an example of "pure duration.'' This distinction is the basis for Bergson's claim that time as we actually experience it is totally unlike space, a claim that rules out any attempt to draw an analogy between them. His forceful arguments have had a powerful influence on modern philosophy to the extent that many thinkers of today believe that our intuitions of time and space are so utterly different that there can be no basis for comparison.

Pure Duration and Negative Space

While critically scrutinizing the traditional view of time, Bergson has apparently been willing to uncritically accept the traditional view of space. As we have shown, however, conventional pictorial syntax is as dubious a model of spatial experience as"cinematographic time'' is of "pure duration.'' As we encounter time in the Bergsonian sense, as "contained'' within the event itself, we are involved in a mode of experience beautifully parallel to Cézanne's encounter with the space that is "contained'' in objects.
In a spirit remarkably close to that of Bergson, Cézanne entered in to things themselves. Just as Bergson's "pure duration'' is the characteristic time of each event, so space, for Cézanne, begins with the characteristic form of each object. The proper analogy is not, therefore, the one denied by Bergson, but the one he ought himself to have made: abstract perspective space is analogous to abstract "cinematographic'' time; the contained negative space of the object or facet is analogous to "pure duration.''4

"Cinematographic time,'' in this context, is not a function of the simple material space of the film strip, as Bergson implies, but of the conceptual synthesis of static fragments into integral movements. What Bergson has criticised as the "spatialization of time'' is really the synthetic conceptualization of time, directly analogous to the synthetic conceptualization of space as found in scientific perspective. The time of film as we usually experience it is thus analogous, not to space in general, but the highly rationalized space of perspective painting and photography.

B. Montage, Positive and Negative

Strictly speaking, the analogy between perspective space and cinematographic time remains completely unproblematic only to the extent that the latter remain "abstract, uniform and invisible.'' As soon as there is a break in the continuity, a "cut'' in the action, the uniformity of the implied time "container'' may be threatened. What the average viewer would prefer to subliminally sense as an abstract time field might be perceived as a dislocation of time, the psychological effect of the impingement of the actual motion of the concrete strip of celluloid on the threshold of awareness. It was, indeed, fear of destroying the illusion of the uniform, completely abstract time field that caused film makers before Griffith to be so conservative with cuts. What Griffith noticed, and what amazed Kuleshov, was the fact that the uniformity of the time field was so resistant to such breaks in continuity.

Montage and Continuity

A little reflection on the nature of iconographic codes should clarify the relation between montage and continuity. As we have already learned, any "readable'' image can be broken down into discrete codes. This is as true of the "transmission codes'' of photographic grain as it is of the various levels of iconographic paradigm in traditional pictorial design. Each frame of a motion picture film is already a tiny disruption of temporal continuity. As a factor built-in to the apparatus itself and designed to be completely subliminal, this disruption may be regarded as part of a cinematic "transmission code.'' 

Montage, though not part of the transmission code, is, nevertheless,a similar type of disruption; "morphemic,'' say, rather than "phonetic'' or "phonemic.'' While physiologically speaking, montage disruptions are not subliminal, their psychological effect, determined largely by syntax, often renders them completely unnoticeable. Thus we often "read'' a sequence of shots as an "organic'' totality in a manner similar to the way we combine iconographic signs for nose, mouth and eyes into an integral image of a face in a painted portrait.

The rules of "positive montage'' syntax enable the film maker to deal with each shot in such a way that the sense of a continuous, abstract, overall "time field,'' as in a continuous, long, unedited shot, would be preserved despite the breaks in continuity necessitated by the cuts. In a good, professional job of editing, the great majority of cuts will literally not be seen. Thus montage also "lives on the denial of difference.''

Cinematic "Passage'' 

Let us carry our parallel between pictorial and cinematic syntax a bit further in order to clarify a key aspect of montage strategy. We have already discussed the threat to the uniformity of traditional pictorial space when a painter tries to accomodate certain aspects of perceptual experience (e.g., the enlarged appearance of a distant mountain) to the rigid demands of "scientific perspective.'' Such accomodations had been made by the "old masters'' as a matter of course. A device such as passage, which creates areas of vagueness, permitted discrepancies to co-exist side by side without being noticed.
Remarkably similar devices have been used for years in conventional film editing. Here, for example, is a passage from a recently published film manual:

When a match cut, a cut between shots of the same subject in what is to appear a precisely continuous time span, is used, the rule is to cut on motion to minimize viewer awareness of the cut. Cutting on subject movement helps cover up slight mismatches from one shot to the next, since the action is what draws the attention of the viewer.5

As defined above, the match cut involves the transitional use of motion to cover over discrepancies in a manner strongly analogous to the workings of passage. Less subtle transitional devices are the cutaway, frequently used to absorb temporal elisions, and the dissolve, which literally means "passage of time.''

As the positive syntax of spatial perspective was powerful enough to endure a certain amount of deviation without a breakdown of the effect of uniformity, so the positive syntax of filmic "time perspective'' is able to absorb discrepancies of continuity and temporal elisions. The conventional "language'' of montage is thus very close in its treatment of time to that of the modified perspective "language'' of the old master painters in their treatment of space.

The Secondary Role of Screen Space

As should by now be clear, the analogy we are drawing is between pictorial space and cinematic time. Any attempt to apply principles derived from the study of pictorial space directly to cinematic screen-space as some theorists have done, will remain incomplete and only partially satisfactory.

The importance of screen space to cinematic positive syntax should, of course, never be underestimated. The great majority of films depend on the creation, in the mind of the viewer, of a unified space (or, as Stephen Heath has put it, "place'') which must survive any number of montage displacements. The creation of this sense of "off-screen'' space which contains and unifies a series of limited on-screen spaces is as essential an illusion of narrative film as the sense of space-in-depth in traditional painting.6 Yet, as is the case with pictorial depth, off-screen space is a product of positive syntax, not its ground. As the syntax which induces the sense of depth operates on the two-dimensional space of the canvas surface, so the syntax which induces off-screen space operates on the one-dimensional, time-producing space of the film strip.

The relative priorities are reflected in montage "grammar,'' much more permissive with respect to space than time. Within the overall purview of a suggested off-screen unifying space, montage is remarkably free to produce a wide range of spatial displacements. We can go from a mountain range to a cabin interior to a close-up of a pair of eyes with no difficulty. We can cut from a medium shot of someone opening a door on screen left to a close-up where the doorknob is suddenly on screen right and there is no problem. If the turning of the knob is partially repeated, however, or omitted entirely, we perceive a break in "continuity.''7

Two Kinds of Clarity

When montage is carefully achieved according to conventional codes, there is a clarity of off-screen space and time "depth'' equivalent to the clarity of spatial depth in old master painting. The representational effect of such montage, like that of perspective painting, involves a clarity that is, however, essentially conceptual, abstract. Clarity of seeing-determined-by-meaning is what emerges from all the various codes.
That the Russian avant-gardists were aware of the potential of montage for the clarification of vision in quite another sense is evident in the following statement of Eisenstein's contemporary and fellow Kuleshov pupil, Pudovkin:

When we wish to apprehend anything we always begin with the general outline, and then, by intensifying our examination to the highest degree, enrich the apprehension by an ever-increasing number of details. The particular, the detail, will always be a synonym of intensification. It is upon this that the strength of the film depends, that its characteristic speciality is the possibility of giving a clear, especially vivid representation of detail...The camera, as it were, forces itself, ever striving, into the profoundest deeps of life; it strives thither to penetrate, wither the average spectator never reaches as he glances casually around him.8

By thus presenting us with vivid details, film can intensify our apprehension of reality, continuing that "struggle to see'' begun by Cézanne. The filmic close-up is indeed intimately related to Cézanne's ability to present an object or facet in its own space. Montage can go farther, however, by breaking up temporal vision. A prolonged glance becomes simply an "autistic'' stare, analogous to the vague trance-like view obtained when we try to fix our attention on a large part of the field of vision all at once. It is only when the spatial close-up is coupled with the temporal "close-up'' (the focussing of attention on the temporal detail through rapid montage) that the vividness of the glance can be intensified beyond the limits of a non-temporal medium. 

The Negative Time Field

The notion of a temporal "close-up'' calls forth yet another analogy. As a spatial detail generates its own space, so a temporal detail can generate its own time. In positive montage, the various "micro-times'' are reconciled (through the use of devices such as the match cut, cutaway, dissolve) within the "macro-time'' field generated by "perspective'' time.9 They and the movements in them are thereby tied to the fictitious, integral "movement'' of that "abstract, uniform and invisible'' time deplored by Bergson; all sense of duration in the Bergsonian sense is lost. If the various micro-times are juxtaposed with no attention to the codes of positive film syntax, they will still become united within a vaguely defined but nevertheless essentially "positive'' time through the workings of the context of implication.

Clearly, any temporal reconciliations that are also going to preserve the unique temporal quality (duration) of each shot must involve some kind of actively constituted negative time, which would tend to separate, rather than unite, the various micro-times. As with Cubism, where discontinuous negative space is the equivalent of negative syntax, liberating the signs, so, in some sort of analogously ordered film, the discontinuous negative time field would be the equivalent of a negative syntax, keeping the "signs," the images, separate and distinct. Thus, not only would each shot be preserved in its own characteristic time, but, by virtue of that, each image imprinted on that micro-time field would preserve its own unique look, free from the context of implication, uncompromised by any need to "redeem'' itself through association within some conceptual scheme. The "intensification'' dreamed of by Pudovkin, synonymous with "clear, especially vivid representation of detail,'' would become a reality--but the detail, seen simply as light projected from the film strip, would be presented, not represented, an image simply, not a thing.

Time and the Struggle to See

The development of filmic negative syntax would carry us far beyond the rather naive naturalistic project of re-creating the way we "normally'' see. The "normal'' mode of vision is too closely tied to conceptual synthesis, to the piecing together of disparate images to form an ideal whole. It is positive montage which more or less successfully attempts to recreate this kind of vision. As our discussion of ideology has shown, this is not realIy seeing, however, but essentially a mode of thinking, returning us to the idealist world, revealing, in fact, the idealist roots of simplistic naturalism.

To more fully grasp this, let us return to our original description of the visual process. We see by placing our attention on specific details, one after another, in a manner analogous to conventional montage. Each view is spatially discontinuous with respect to those before and after it. The spatial discontinuities break up temporal experience as well. But there is a continuous, subjective sense of "lived time'' which underlies all the spatially and temporally disparate views and makes a coherent series out of them. It is this almost subliminal linear temporality (analogous to that of the "invisible'' film strip) on which we are able to "hang'' all the disparate views and synthesize them into what we think we see: a stable, homogeneous, unproblematic, spatially and temporally continuous external scene.
This is the sense of underlying time which Bergson associates with our traditional notion of becoming, the "illusion'' of "cinematographic time.'' It is this uncritical "becoming,'' this "denial of difference,'' which turns the question of the way we "actually'' see into a conundrum; which makes our apparently innocent and natural "ordinary, everyday,'' vision of the world so profoundly vulnerable to "ideological effects'' such as positive syntax and the context of implication.

In order to counteract such effects, negative montage would not seek simply to recreate "ordinary'' vision but actively oppose the invisible, continuous "lived time'' sense which underlies it. Since we cannot "simply see,'' we must "struggle to see.'' The movie camera and montage, no longer simply metaphors for "normal'' vision, would, in negative montage, become tools in the active struggle for fresh vision, the deepest sense of Pudovkin's "camera ...ever striving...to penetrate, whither the average spectator never reaches as he glances casually around him.''


C. The Search For Negative Montage

Futurism, Constructivism and Film

If any one aspect of the above analysis deserves emphasis, it must surely be the distinction between simple discontinuity (the montage cut) and the disjunctive principle (negative montage). Failure to discriminate on precisely this level led the Futurists to both underestimate the radical nature of Cubism and overestimate the "modernity'' of the popular films of their day. Indeed, as Bergson's analysis makes clear, in choosing such films as a model for their theories on art, the Futurists were flirting with a danger that has seriously compromised many "modern'' art movements: the reconstitution of the idealist point of view with its naive emphasis on a "wholeness'' that is in fact a completely artificial systemazation of fragments into a dubious synthetic product. Boccioni's idealism as revealed by Rosalind Krauss (see the conclusion of chapter 5), is indeed a direct outgrowth of the kind of synthesis that Bergson finds so questionable in film.

But the situation is not quite that simple. The Futurists could write idealistically of "persistent symbols of universal vibration'' and the " `dynamic sensations' with which painting must render the universal dynamism,''10 and yet, on another occasion state that "against the conception of the immortal and the imperishable, we set up the art of the becoming, the perishable, the transitory,and the expendable.''11 

There was, indeed, a genuine split at the heart of Futurism, an idealist -- materialist conflict which, as might be expected, was greatly amplified as Futurist ideas prompted the development of Russian Constructivism. The ideological split gave rise to two distinct wings of Constructivist activity. One, best known in the West, led by Naum Gabo, was, in the words of Rosalind Krauss, concerned with "the kind of sculptural idealism which we have seen operating in the work of Boccioni...obviously directed toward the revelation of a transcendent reality...'' The other, led by Vladimir Tatlin, was concerned primarily with the surface of its materials and the contingincies of the situation, spatial and otherwise, of its immediate existence.12

Eisenstein

The latter group, calling itself the "production group,'' won out over the former and was the dominant force in the Russian avant-garde at the time Eisenstein appeared on the scene. Eisenstein in fact associated himself actively and enthusiastically with the "production group.''13 Nevertheless, as we have seen, his attitude toward modernism generally was deeply divided along the very lines which divided the two Constructivist groups.
In a sense Eisenstein was in a position close to that of Cézanne, who, after all, wanted to reconcile the fragmentary details of the motif, to preserve its overall integrity. 
Eisenstein's films, like Cézanne's paintings, are compromises employing a sort of ad-hoc, negative-positive, syntax, now favoring connections between details so they begin to merge to form wholes, now isolating details so they begin to assert themselves as equals to the whole.

Moments in certain Eisenstein films do seem to verge on something akin to Cubist disjunction.14 But such moments function as tours de force, always controlled by a strong narrative context. It was, of course, in the acceptance of narrative that Eisenstein made his greatest concession to convention. But use of narrative is secondary to the presence of the kind of compromises that permit narrative to arise through montage in the first place. At his most compromised, Eisenstein's shots are simply symbols to be read through synthesis with other symbols within the context of a visual rhetoric closely akin to Futurist fetishization of the negative. Indeed, his early tendency to speak of both montage and dialectic in terms of "collision,'' "explosion'' or "shock'' betrays a strong kinship with Futurist hyperbole.

Vertov

Except for certain brief tours de force, Eisenstein never really arrived at montage disjunctions comparable to those of Cubism. He was, however, certainly not the most adventurous of the Russians. We have, in fact, thus far neglected to mention the most brilliant of Eisenstein's contemporaries, very probably the most radical and innovative of all the Soviet directors, Dziga Vertov.

Not only was Vertov among the earliest and most vociferous promoters of extreme montage, he was also among the earliest exponents of what today is called the "documentary'' film. And if this is not enough of a contradiction, we must add that his particular approach to documentary, as original as his montage technique, anticipated by decades many of the basic principles of cinéma vérité.15 The polemical writings of this extremely interesting figure reveal some remarkable insights into the nature of film realism. Anticipating to some extent current semiotic thought, Vertov rejected the notion of a dichotomy between formalism and naturalism. To Vertov, the camera was a research tool for systematic exploration of "the chaos of visual phenomena filling the universe,'' on the road "toward the creation of a fresh perception of the world.'' Vertov's "Kino-Eye'' introduces itself "into the apparent chaos of life...to find in life itself an answer to the questions it poses.''16

Vertov's version of the camera "eye'' is much more complex and sophisticated than that of Bazin. To Vertov the camera was a magnificent "eye'' not because it could imitate the passive human eye, but because it could actively outdo it in dozens of ways. Montage was simply an extension of the resources of the camera-eye. Indeed, Vertov embraced every device, no matter how artificial, that could enhance and extend perception. True to his word, he produced films that were at once spontaneous penetrations into the life around him and dazzling montage contrivances. Best known, and probably his masterpiece, is Man With a Movie Camera, an essay-poem on the powers of the Kino-Eye that is, among other things, a superbly "semiotic'' self-analysis.

Vertov's work is certainly highly relevant to a study of negative film syntax. There is a good deal in his theories of montage time and space which, to some extent, parallels the analysis presented here. There is much in his montage practice that evokes a sense of what we have called "negative time.'' Yet, for all his radicalism, there is really nothing in either his films or theories that can be said to partake wholeheartedly of the uncompromising and rigorous attack on conceptual-seeing that is at the heart of true Cubism. Despite his many attacks on literary modes such as narrative and conventional drama, Vertov's work depends heavily on the rhetorical codes that were a major preoccupation of the Russian Formalist literary critics: metaphor, simile, synecdoche, parataxis, hysteron proteron, etc.17 While Cubism reveals such codes only in the process of deconstructing and defusing them, Vertov's films draw upon them for their life's blood.

Gance

No discussion of montage experimentation can afford to ignore the astonishing work of Abel Gance. In his films La Roue (1922) and Napoléon (1926) he created incredible tours de force of the most extreme montage to be seen until the American experiments of the Sixties. Such brilliant set pieces as the pillow fight and snowball fight sequences from Napoléon sustain barrages of extremely short (4,3, or even 2-frame) shots over appreciably long periods.

It is not difficult to grasp the obvious links of such montage with Futurist pictorial rhetoric. The above mentioned "battle'' sequences call to mind paintings like Carra's highly dramatic Funeral of the Anarchist Galli, where extreme fragmentation (fetishization of the negative) leads to reinstitution of positive unity in an overdramatized form. Gance's montage fragments fuse with one another stroboscopically at a level only slightly slower than that of the shutter mechanism itself. Each detail is completely subordinated to the recreation of a sense of a unified (really overunified-"electrified'') temporal field within which the action takes place. Montage like this can be truly exhilirating but presents no real problems for the viewer, who can easily grasp the dramatic message.

Films Inspired by Cubism

The existence of the book Cubist Cinema by Standish Lawder encourages us to consider the Cubist links of the film artists with whom he deals.18 Lawder's study, excellent as history, is compromised theoretically by a too easy acceptance of the most idealist notions about Cubism and Futurism. The films he discusses are inspired by Cubism but, with one important exception, fail to develop the radical fragmentation of space and visual syntax that lies at its heart. The completely abstract works of Eggeling and Richter are especially weak in this respect, aping abstract paintings and constructions of the kind that grew out of Cubism, but invoking few of their visual tensions. Any potential spatial tensions are instantly dissipated by the animated movements or transformations of the forms. The temporal structures are continuous and matter of fact. All motion takes place within a totally conventional positive time field.

Léger

The single exception among the film makers discussed by Lawder is also the one to whom he devotes the most space: Fernand Léger. Léger was, of course, one of the founders of Cubism, a key figure of Twentieth Century art. As the only major Cubist to concern himself directly with film, he is of special interest to us. The relevance of Leger's ideas to the context we have evoked is evident in an important article of 1926, "A New Realism-The Object (Its Plastic and Cinematic Graphic Value).'' Dismissing "all current cinema'' as "romantic, literary, historical, expressionist, etc.,'' Leger invites the reader to "forget all this and consider if you please: a pipe-a chair-a hand-an eye-a typewriter-a hat-a foot, etc. etc.''

The technique emphasised is to isolate the object or fragment of an object and to present it on the screen in closeups of the largest possible scale. Enormous enlargements of an object or a fragment gives it a personality it never had before and in this way it can become a vehicle of entirely new lyric and plastic power...19

Leger's historic first and only film, Ballet Mécanique, may well be the only non-abstract film of its period to completely do away with both narrative and rhetoric. True to his word, Léger makes his film a study of objects, mechanical and human. And as we might hope, Ballet Mécanique does, to a certain extent, invoke perceptual disjunction. It is mainly in the "irrational'' choice of images and juxtapositions, however, that Léger's "negative syntax'' makes itself felt. Understandably for one who had concentrated his past efforts on the purely spatial, his film fails to establish a true negative time field.

We see disparate images juxtaposed in some extremely clever and amusing ways. Machines seem almost human; humans are fragmented and mechanized like machines. As there is no strong negative time field to break up the context of implication, ambiguity arises, calling forth a distinct Surrealist quality, probably not intended. Lawder's remarkably thorough and probing analysis reveals the extent to which Leger did indeed work to give the film a rational temporal structure. but the effect is merely "musical,'' conventionally so, lacking the boldness and sophistication with which Leger has treated space in his own paintings and constructions.

Surrealism and the Aesthetization of Ambiguity

Irrational disparities in the juxtaposition of images and spaces are, of course, characteristic of Surrealist films. As with all Surrealist works, the ambiguities resulting from such juxtapositions are deliberately cultivated. The context of implication is brought into the foreground, questioned, explored reflexively. The viewers are encouraged to react critically toward the workings of their own minds vis a vis the various relations of things and spaces on film. They are not encouraged, however, to vividly see. There is no link with realism, hence no need for a negative temporal field.

Many other "artistic'' films, abstract and otherwise, depend on the context of implication simply as a vague mechanism of continuity. The "artistic content'' is often heavily centered on the "esthetic'' aspect of the images, the way they move or are transformed, and/or such qualities as design, texture, color, etc. Often the various images are vaguely linked more through the context of implication than any active structuring on the part of the artist. The resulting ambiguity adds to the overall "esthetic effect.''

The work of Kuleshov, Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Vertov, Gance, Leger, Richter, Eggling and the Surrealists belongs to what is now sometimes referred to as the "old avant garde,'' the initial wave of experimental cinematic activity that crested in the Twenties and had spent itself by the mid-Thirties. 

In the late Forties, largely in the United States, a new film avant-garde began to develop. To some extent, especially in its early stages, the new avant-garde took up where the old left off. By the early Sixties, however, it was apparent that the new movement had become radically different from the old, a difference rooted in significant technical and social developments.

During the earlier period film making had been a cumbersome, complex and expensive undertaking, The Soviet experimentalists were, through a remarkable series of developments, actively encouraged and subsidized by their government. The others depended either on considerable private support or, as in the case of Richter, the financial backing of a large commercial studio. In no sense could films produced under such conditions be compared, as personal statements and stylistic explorations, with the paintings, poetry or music of the same period. These arts had long since liberated themselves from the more extreme demands of private patronage and public subsidy.

Not surprisingly the experiments of the "old''-avant-garde did not produce a truly Cubistic cinema. Not only would films of so radical a kind have failed to find much of an audience, even among the cognoscenti; the deep involvement with the medium required by such a difficult undertaking on the part of the artist would have necessitated heavy funding purely for the sake of preparation. Even the most poverty-stricken painter can experiment on drawing paper or work the same canvas over repeatedly. 

Artists like Vertov and Eisenstein, who, of course, were able to develop a deep involvement with their medium, were commited to a social program which precluded the kind of experimentation for its own sake that would have been required. Their films had to and did speak to large audiences. The artist most likely to have developed a truly Cubist cinema, Leger, was either unwilling or unable to completely immerse himself in the medium.

By the time the new avant-garde had begun there had been radical changes in film technology which made a great deal of difference. Foremost among these was the development of 16 mm film, initially as an inexpensive means of "home-movie'' production. This new format, followed, of course, by even less expensive "8'' and "Super 8,'' made it possible for individuals of below average incomes to produce films entirely or almost entirely on their own.


Parallel with this was a social development of much greater impact. Heralded by the "beat'' writers, jazz musicians and abstract expressionist painters of the Fifties, a new anti-authoritarian spirit sprang up which was ultimately to dominate the Sixties. To the yoing film makers this meant that all established "codes,'' from the rules of montage language to narrative itself must be ignored, rethought, or actively opposed. For the most committed, deep personal involvement and exploration took the place of theoretical study and apprenticeship. Among the outstanding figures of this cinematic revolution is the individual who is to be the real focal point of our inquiry into the secrets of negative montage; the development of whose work parallels and recapitulates the whole evolution of the realist impulse from Cézanne to late analytic Cubism: Stan Brakhage. (See following essay.)




Notes

1. A typical example, from the realm of art history, of such trivialization, can be found in Linda Nochlin's Realism (Harmondsworth and New York:Penguin, 1971), already becoming a standard text. With regard to "the painting of the future,'' Nochlin writes of "the transformation of the Realist concept of truth or honesty, meaning truth or honesty to one's perception of the external physical or social world, to mean truth or honesty either to the nature of the material--i.e. to the nature of the flat surface--and/or to the demands of one's inner `subjective' feelings or imagination rather than to some external reality.'' (p. 236) Many a modernist "theory'' has foundered on just this point.

2. Baudry, op. cit. pp. 42, 43.

3. Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution (1907), trans. A. Mitchell (New York:Holt, 1911) pp. 304-306.

4. Bergson's formulation of "pure duration'' is actually more complex than that presented here, which may best characterized as inspired by Bergson.

5. Edward Pincus, Guide To Film Making (New York:New American Library, 1969) p. 124.

6. Important studies of screen-space have been made by Noel Burch and Stephen Heath, among others. The contribution of both authors to our understanding of the role of mise-en-scène in the creation of off-screen space is especially meaningful. But, as I hope my argument makes clear, for all its elaborative value in the enhancement of cinematic illusionism and the generation of narrative, screen-space, unlike the stable pictorial space of painting, can never in itself be a determiner of syntax in any fundamental sense. See Noel Burch, Theory of Film Practice (1969), trans. H. R. Lane (New York:Praeger, 1973); To The Distant Observer (Berkeley:University of California Press,l979 ); Stephen Heath, "Narrative Space'' (1976), "On Suture'' (1977/78), Heath, in Questions of Cinema(Bloomington:Indiana University Press, 1981),

7. The primacy of the temporal with respect to cinematic continuity goes far in explaining the special nature of the jumpcut, in which a slight spatial discrepancy is perceived as discontinuous while a larger one is not. The former case can only be interpreted as a spatio-temporal break; the latter, by asserting spatial difference more forcefully, can be accepted as a purely spatial break within temporal continuity.

8. Pudovkin, op. cit. p. 91.

9. The discontinuous spaces of montage do not pose the same problem. As each spatial field is replaced completely by each new shot, the shots need not be spatially reconciled (except within a purely mental off-screen space). The discontinuous times do need to be reconciled because the time-field of which they are a part cannot be replaced. A shot which is, say, 35 frames long, takes its place as part of the determination of the overall time of the film--even after those 35 frames have been seen, they remain as part of the experience of the time-field, just as a patch of red one inch long on a painting is always a part of the spatial field of that painting.

10. The Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting (1910), quoted in Jane Rye, Futurism (London:Studio Vista, 1972) pp. 20, 23.

11. Marinetti, Le Futurisme (1911), quoted in Rye, op. cit. p. 107.

12. Krauss, op. cit. pp. 51-57.

13. see Standish Lawder, "Eisenstein and Constructivism,'' in The Essential Cinema, ed. Sitney (New York:New York University Press, 1975) pp. 60, 61.

14. See Annette Michelson's description of the drawbridge sequence from October in her "Camera Lucida Camera Obscura,'' in Artforum XI, 5 (Jan. 1973) p. 34.

15. Indeed, his term Kino Pravda literally means "film truth.'' The French cinema vérité was first used in 1961 specifically in homage to Vertov. See Louis Marcorelles, Living Cinema (1970), trans. I. Quigly (New York:Praeger, 1973) pp. 34,35.

16. Dziga Vertov, "Resolution of the Council of Three'' (1923) and "Kino--Eye, Lecture II'' (1929), quoted in Dziga Vertov, "Selected Writings,'' trans. S. Brody, in The Avant-Garde Film, ea. Sitney (New York:New York University Press, 1978) pp. 3,5,11.

17. Vertov's use of rhetorical codes is the subject of Annette Michelson's "From Magician to Epistemologist,'' in The Essential Cinema, op. cit.

18. Standish Lawder, Cubist Cinema (New York:New York University Press, 1975).

19. Quoted in Malcom LeGrice, Abstract Film and Beyond (Cambridge, Mass.:MIT Press, 1977) pp. 36, 37.