Repetition and the temporal double in cinema: a theory of critical cinematic time-travel

© 2017 Kiri Veronica SullivanThis thesis explores the filmic figure of the double and its relationship to temporality and repetition in cinema. I trace its evolution—extending upon and contributing to the discourse on the trope of the double—by reconceptualising the figure in relation to the function of repetition and manipulation of temporality in film. I consider the dual perspectives of characters and the spectator/scholar, as well as repetition within the individual film, and repetitions forging intertextual connections between films. I posit an original term: the ‘temporal double.’ I define it as a cinematic body/being multiplied by temporal processes, emerging via both narrative and cinematographic techniques. It is characterised by its complex relationship with time, operating as a self-reflexive tool, drawing attention to and deconstructing the function of repetition and temporal manipulations in film. In this thesis, I ask: what is the temporal double’s relationship to patterns of repetition and images of time, and how does this figure continue to be produced and repeated with difference in cinema? To answer these questions, I engage with Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy of time on two connected levels by cross-reading Cinema II with Difference and Repetition. I examine how the images comprising a film speak to each other and understand a film as a synthesis of these repeated images that, in turn, speaks to other films. In my close analysis of three films, I investigate how they extend and complicate Deleuzian conceptualisations of temporality and repetition as elements of both cinema in the form of film as a text, and of film scholarship and discourse. This Deleuzian approach allows me to posit and mobilise another original concept, ‘critical cinematic time-travel’. Critical cinematic time-travel invites contemplation not only by the spectator but also by the film critic/scholar, and occurs within broader cultural and academic contexts of film reception. Critical cinematic time-travel allows the spectator/scholar to alter not only the present and future, but the past, as they re-turn to texts such as Vertigo, which can be re-read through the lens of subsequent films including La Jetée and Primer. Tracing the progression of the temporal double, I demonstrate how this figure becomes increasingly sophisticated in its destabilisation of chronology: the figure’s manifestation renders visible the multiplicities constituting time and the self, drawing attention to and deconstructing the functions of repetition and temporality in and across cinema