The traffic in images : Deleuze and the action film

Since their publication in English translation, Gilles Deleuze's cinema books, Cinema 1: TheMovement-image and Cinema 2: The Time-image, have been primarily examined in the context ofDeleuze's philosophy of time. This thesis approaches the cinema books in the context of the questionof cinematographic time. Time, in one sense or another, has been a central and unresolved issue withinfilm theory. Most philosophies and film theories consider the cinematographic image to be in thepresent 'the image appears and passes before our senses. Deleuze considers the cinematographicimage to be in the past the image that passes before our senses is merely one aspect ofcinematographic time. Film theory and philosophy have also tended to place time outside thecinematographic image, in the apparatus, in the intentions of a directorial, or creative subject, in theimaginary processes of the spectator. In other words, time is what lies above, beneath or behind theimage. Deleuze's concept of cinematographic time binds all these elements in a new way.Deleuze's theory of cinematographic time systematically introduces Henri Bergson's conceptof duration and method of Intuition into film theory. Deleuze does not, however, produce aBergsonian theory of cinematographic time. Bergson, like so many philosophers and film theoristsafter him, considers cinematographic time to be a passing present and the past to be an externalelement. Deleuze argues that if Bergson were to examine his own theory more closely he wouldrealise that his own concept of time is cinematographic. I take Deleuze much further and argue thatDeleuze's concept of cinematographic time overturns Bergson's own concept of duration. I argue thisbecause Bergson writes about the cinematograph so as to draw a fundamental distinction between livedreality and the representation of reality. 1 further argue that this distinction is central to theories thatdistinguish between real movement and cinematographic movement. Bergson's concept ofcinematographic time is then commonplace in film theory, but Deleuze's introduction of Bergsonianduration into film theory is radical. For Deleuze, cinematographic time is real duration.Cinematography therefore produces reality.Realism is necessarily an important issue in theories of time, none more so than theories ofcinematographic time. Deleuze's concept of cinematic realism centres on classical American cinema.Classical American cinema is realist because the past, that is, memory serves action. Realism istherefore based in action. Action film represents the dominant form of cinematographic realism. Theproblem with Deleuze's realism is that it is structuralist. That is, he provides a structural account ofaction film. The problem with a structural account is that it is unable to account for change or, italways already accounts for change. This means that realism is a static form 'that which is essentialto the cinematographic image, duration, change, is withdrawn from the action-image. I show, to thecontrary, that the power of realism is precisely its dynamism, it capacity to change. I demonstrate thisvia an analysis of action film from the mid-1980's to the mid-to-late 1990's. I show that contemporaryrealism is temporally distinct from classical realism