LAURA
FEIJÓ
Last Year in Marienbad / L'Année dernière à Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961)
The Irrational and the False: Connecting Deleuze's "irrational cut" to falsifying information in time-images
By Laura Feijó
February 2020
Undoubtedly, Gilles Deleuze’s books on cinema revolutionized the field of Film Studies. Throughout Cinema 1 - The Movement-Image (Cinéma 1, l’Image-Mouvement, 1983) and Cinema 2 - The Time-Image (Cinéma 2, l’Image-Temps, 1985), Deleuze developed a classification that, roughly speaking, divides motion pictures into two large groups: the ones constituted by sensory-motor situations, in which time is subordinated to movement, and the ones formed by purely optical and sound images, that provide a direct representation of time. (1) For Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener, his theory “can be interpreted both as a philosophy of film and as a history of cinema” (2), a statement that calls attention not only to its relevance, but also to its complexity.
In Deleuze’s view, the Second World War served as a dividing line in the history of cinema. It generated the break of the sensory-motor schemata that constitutes movement-images and, consequently, created a new type of image. (3) This break has numerous consequences on a film’s form and content (although Deleuze’s focus lies on the function of the image rather than on its subject). According to him, a major point of difference between the movement-image and the time-image concerns descriptions, or narrations. “Organic narration,” he explains, “consists of the development of sensory-motor schemata as a result of which the characters react to situations or act in such a way as to disclose the situation. This is a truthful narration in the sense that it claims to be true, even in fiction.” (4) In contrast, the narration presented in time-images is crystalline and refers “to pure optical and sound situations to which characters, who have become seers, cannot or will not react, so great is their need to ‘see’ properly what there is in the situation.” (5)
When differentiating organic from crystalline descriptions, Deleuze talks about the concept of truth. In fact, this is a key term in the distinction. For with the collapse of the movement-image, with the switch from organic to crystalline descriptions, “narration ceases to be truthful, that is, to claim to be true, and becomes fundamentally falsifying.” (6) But what does that mean? In short, it means that the limits between the real and the imaginary, the actual and the virtual, the present and the past, the true and the false, become blurry - or, to use Deleuze’s terminology, indiscernible. But this is not the only possible explanation. A falsifying narration could also mean the proliferation of “non-informative” or “non-referential” information. (7)
Furthermore, Deleuze makes a clear connection between organic and crystalline narrations, the concepts of true and false, and the linkages present in each of the images. For instance,
in an organic description, the real that is assumed is recognizable by its continuity - even if it is interrupted - by the continuity shots which establish it and by the laws which determine successions, simultaneities and permanences: it is a regime of localizable relations, actual linkages, legal, causal and logical connections. It is clear that this system includes the unreal, the recollection, the dream and the imaginary but as contrast. (8)
On the other hand, the crystalline narration is continually and entirely changed, as a result of disconnected places and de-chronologized moments (9), often in the form of what Deleuze calls irrational cuts. This unique linkage of images directly contributes to the disconnection of place, time, characters, and audiovisual elements. Therefore, considering that montage is a key element to storytelling, one could argue how this new device found in time-images, the irrational cut, affects the notion of true and false in those films.
In a nutshell, the goal of the present study is to draw a connection between the irrational cut and the creation of falsifying information. To achieve this, the first step is to understand what exactly an irrational cut is and how it is different from a rational one. Secondly, the concepts of irrational cut and falsifying narration are associated. This is done from two different perspectives: the proliferation of non-referential information in the context of the film; and the indiscernibility between true and false. To better illustrate each case, the works of specific directors are addressed. The first perspective takes mainly into account Jean-Luc Godard’s Two or Three Things I Know About Her (Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle, 1967), while the second perspective considers Alain Resnais’ Last Year in Marienbad (10) (L'Année dernière à Marienbad, 1961). However, it is relevant to point out that the works are mostly used as examples to help interpret each case. The study does not aim to examine any movie in detail but focus instead on the film’s editing and its capacity to bring the notion of the false into question.
Contextualizing the Irrational Cut
“Montage simply is the joining together of different elements of film in a variety of ways, between shots, within them, between sequences, within these.” (11) Still, it is a very broad topic, which comprehends many methods and can be categorized and interpreted in multiple ways. For instance, in an article published in Cahiers du Cinéma, Jean Narboni, Sylvie Pierre and Jacques Rivette suggest that it is possible to distinguish between directors who depend entirely on montage as a creative process and an instrument of discourse (Eisenstein is perhaps the most obvious example) and directors who see montage only as a mechanism for continuation and do not rely on it to create any meaning (e.g. Mizoguchi, Renoir). (12) From another perspective, the authors use montage to determine different phases in cinema history, stating that
one might, very schematically, distinguish four moments: the invention of montage (Griffith,
Eisenstein), its deviation (Pudovkin-Hollywood: elaboration of the techniques of propaganda cinema), the rejection of propaganda (a rejection loosely or closely allied to long takes, direct sound, amateur or auxiliary actors, non-linear narrative, heterogeneity of genres, elements or techniques, etc), and finally,... the attempt to ‘salvage', to re-inject into contemporary methods the spirit and the theory of the first period, though without rejecting the contribution made by the third, but rather trying to cultivate one through the other, to dialectise them... (13)
Deleuze often cites the Cahiers article, and makes himself a similar observation. In his first book, he argues that, when considering montage as the constitution of movement-images, one can distinguish four main trends: “the organic trend of the American school; the dialectic trend of the Soviet school; the quantitative trend of the pre-war French school; and the intensive trend of the German Expressionist school.” (14) Although these four trends may differ drastically in terms of techniques, they all result in the determination of a whole, “the organic totality which presents itself by opposing and overcoming its own parts.” (15)
In his second book, this distinction is not so relevant, and these schools become representatives of the classical cinema, that is, the cinema produced before the break of the sensory-motor schemata. This perspective is especially important in understanding the irrational cut. For Deleuze, montage in the classical cinema is a product of rational cuts and the laws of continuity. In his words, “the so-called classical cinema works above all through linkage of images, and subordinates cuts to this linkage. On the mathematical analogy, the cuts which divide up two series of images are rational, in the sense that they constitute either the final image of the first series, or the first image of the second.” (16)
To better understand what the rational cut means in practice, it is helpful to take a closer look at the classical American cinema. Interestingly, Deleuze refers to this school as organic, alluding to the organic description presented previously in the introduction. The Hollywood formula is known for its efforts to create moving images that follow the rules of continuity editing. According to Hollywood's guidelines, everything that constitutes a film's montage exist to drive the narrative forward smoothly. (17) Techniques like the 180 degrees rule, the eye-line match, the shot/reverse shot, the match cut, and the match on action were therefore created to tell a story coherently and clearly, establishing and maintaining a flow of situations, actions, and new situations.
In a typical scene of the classical American cinema, two characters are portrayed facing one another, creating an invisible axis of action. The camera, positioned on one side of the axis, is never allowed to cross to the other side, to guarantee the audience’s spatial orientation. Furthermore, it is very likely that the characters are shown from three different angles: a medium (usually frontal) shot, showing both characters at the same time; a medium close-up of character A, usually over the shoulder of character B, picturing his point of view; and a medium close-up of character B, over the shoulder of character A. The cuts within the scene exist simply to change the camera’s perspective, showing the character who is talking or the listener’s reaction. To ensure continuity, it is also common to have an element connecting the shots. This could be a sound element, such as the dialogue itself or a background music, which remains uninterrupted despite the cut; or a visual element, such as a character’s movement, which begins in one shot and ends in the following, the cut simply changing the angle from which the spectator watches it. In fact, this technique (match on action) is extremely effective to create narrative continuity. “So powerful is our desire to follow the action flowing across the cut that we ignore the cut itself.” (18)
That is, in the classical American cinema the cut is supposed to be invisible, uniting shots without itself getting recognized. “The shot is effaced on behalf of the whole into which it is integrated. The shot only has an existence in the classical system as part of a structure of accords, but it has no independence, no presence, no power, for it is always constrained, locked into place by the continuities that govern it and that it serves to create.” (19)
At this point, it is necessary to open a parenthesis and quickly address the creation of meaning. Although the rational cut may have no presence and be governed by the continuity between the takes, as in the classical American cinema, it can still add meaning to the whole. André Bazin’s definition of montage makes this clear. For the scholar, montage is “the creation of a sense or meaning not objectively contained in the images themselves but derived exclusively from their juxtaposition.” (20) This is mostly evident in the parallel montage, the accelerated montage, and the montage by attraction. Similarly, the Soviet school is known for its opposition-based way of developing the sensory-motor schemata. Deleuze himself approaches the subject, stating that the classical cinema creates figures such as metaphor and metonymy, which time-images abandon. (21) Getting back to the distinction made by Narboni, Pierre, and Rivette, there are directors in both movement-images and time-images who see montage as a creative process. That said, even though rational and irrational cuts present several differences and belong to two very different contexts, they both can create meaning in their own form and for their own purposes.
Thus, the greatest difference relies on the fact that irrational cuts are not integrated into a totality. (22) Because they are present in time-images (what Deleuze refers to as modern cinema), they do not produce sensory-motor situations, but series of unlinked images instead, with non-commensurable relations between them.
On the one hand, what is important is no longer the association of images, the way in which they associate, but the interstice between two images; on the other hand, the cut in a sequence of images is not now a rational cut which marks the end of one or the beginning of another, but a so-called irrational cut which belongs neither to one nor the other, and sets out to be valid for itself. Garrel was able to give an extraordinary intensity to these irrational cuts, so that the series of anterior images has no end, while the series of subsequent images likewise has no beginning... (23)
The irrational cut may appear in distinct forms and have different effects, as demonstrated by the case studies of Godard and Resnais in the next two sections. However, these are not the only directors who make use of this technique. According to Deleuze, the black or white screens employed by the French director Philippe Garrel, for instance, serve as a common limit to the series of images being connected through the irrational cut, create a “dialectical relation between the image and its absence, and assume a properly structural value.” (24) Other directors, such as Jean-Marie Straub, Marguerite Duras, Alain Robbe-Grillet, and Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, create irrational relations between the visual and the sound, that enter dissymmetrical trajectories. (25) Deleuze calls this “heautonomous images, an auditory image and an optical image, continually separated, dissociated, or unhooked by irrational cuts between them.” (26)
Nevertheless, it is important to notice that not all time-images use irrational cuts. In fact, the Italian neo-realist school, considered by Deleuze to mark the beginning of this new era in film history, is a good example of how montage can take a completely different turn in modern cinema. Neo-realist films portray pure optical and sound images that offer a direct representation of time. Characters no longer react to situations, but perceive them. (27) In practice, what directors like Vittorio De Sica, Roberto Rossellini, and Luchino Visconti seek to depict is the country’s reality after the war and the everyday banality of the people, in the closest way to reality as possible. In this context, montage - actually, the absence of montage - plays a crucial role in achieving realism, as famously argued by Bazin. (28) Here, the cut is merely a punctuation. It assures continuity between shots and scenes, without adding any special meaning to the image.
Before diving into Godard’s case study, a final observation must be made concerning the difference between rational and irrational cuts. Interestingly, Deleuze often contradicts himself when writing whether irrational cuts still constitute a whole or not. On the one hand, the author argues that modern cinema changed the status of the whole - from a whole as open to a whole as outside. (29)
As long as the whole is the indirect representation of time, the continuous is reconciled with the discontinuous in the form of rational points and according to commensurable relations... But, when the whole becomes the power of the outside which passes into the interstice, then it is the direct presentation of time, or the continuity which is reconciled with the sequence of irrational points, according to non-chronological time relationships. It is in this sense that, already in Welles, then in Resnais, and also in Godard, montage takes on a new sense… (30)
Six pages later, he states that modern cinema obliterates the whole or the “totalization of images, in favour of an outside which is inserted between them.” (31) He reiterates this idea later on, when comparing Syberberg to Straub and Duras, writing that “the audio-visual image is not a whole, it is 'a fusion of the tear'.” (32) Nonetheless, both perspectives held the idea of fragmentation as a key concept. Irrational cuts link the unlinked; “each sequence [of images] being independent, and each image in the sequence standing for itself in relation to the preceding and following ones: a different descriptive material.” (33) In this regard, for the purpose of this analysis, it will be considered that only rational cuts constitute a whole (totality), while irrational cuts act as interstices.
Two or Three Things I Know About Her / Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967)
Jean-Luc Godard: The Irrational Cut as Non-Referential
When approaching Godard’s method of filmmaking, the word categories inevitably comes to mind. Categories - which can be anything, from words and objects to people and their psychic faculties, such as memory or imagination (34) - constitute the structure of his films. In this sense, Godard’s montage can be seen as the joining of categories, the relinkage of independent images. (35)
The reason why Godard’s editing creates misleading information can be found in a statement by Rivette. Although not talking about Godard specifically, he does make an observation that fits the present analysis. In his words,
… this desire to empty certain shots, to have a shot filled with information followed by one
which seems to offer none, or, likewise, the proliferation of false information at certain points (false because non-referential in the context of the film, non-‘informative’: false trails where the reader's memory and powers of concentration lose their way...), all this seems to me to form part of what enables the film to function as an account of the unconscious. (36)
That is, falsifying information is not necessarily the opposite of truthful information. Similarly, false is not always a synonym for untrue, wrong, lie. In Godard’s films, false can also be said of something inaccurate, imprecise, irrelevant. Accordingly, it is the irrational cut who brings inaccuracy, imprecision, and irrelevance to the screen. By being valid for itself and not integrated into a totality, Godard’s irrational cut proliferates information that is non-referential in the film’s context - and, therefore, can be considered false.
In Two or Three Things I Know About Her, this process is especially visible. Not only is the editing very dense (“the image is constantly being cut into another image… and the shot itself is less an eye than an overloaded brain endlessly absorbing information”) (37), it applies irrational cuts in at least three different ways: between shots, within sounds (sound images) and within shots. But before exploring each of these circumstances, it is important to spend a few words on the movie’s narrative. Two or Three Things pictures a day in the life of Juliette Janson, a Parisian woman who temporarily takes to prostitution to balance the household budget. (38) As a good representative of time-images, the film does not have a clear sensory-motor schema and, consequently, a classic narrative. Instead, the spectator follows the figure of Juliette as she goes to different places (boutique, coffee shops, hotels, beauty salon, gas station). However, for the sake of this analysis, it is helpful to consider this sequence of events, centered around Juliette, as the main narrative.
The irrational cut between shots
The most evident manifestation of irrational cuts in Two or Three Things is the one between shots. On multiple occasions during the movie, scenes are constituted by nothing but a collage of pure optical and sound images, that does not form a comprehensive whole, nor contributes to the continuity of the main narrative. Sylvie Pierre even talks about a hyper-Godardisation, a kind of “general super-identity” born from the removal of the elements from their context. (39)
For example, three times during the film we see the word idées (ideas), written in yellow against a dark background. This image works as a category, opening a sequence of fragmented images. On one occasion, what follows is an out of focus close-up of a photograph picturing flowers. After adjusting the focus, the camera zooms out, showing the photograph lying in the grass and drawing attention to the camera’s movement. Meanwhile, Godard’s voice whispers: “Undoubtedly, the planning of the Paris region will favour the government’s policy of class discrimination and allow the monopolies to shape the economy without reference to the needs of its eight million inhabitants.” Finally, we see a long shot of the city. The camera quickly pans from left to right and then back, while we hear the city’s noise. (40)
This sequence is followed by a more or less classic scene inside Juliette’s bedroom. She is lying in her bed thinking out loud, when her son walks in, and they begin a dialogue. However, the rational approach does not last much longer. This time, irrational cuts link, in this order: a painting of a woman in a red dress against a blue background, where one can see a car passing by a mountain range; what appears to be the cover of a book, with the words “de classes / nouvelles leçons sur le sociétés industrielles”; a woman taking a bath, who is interrupted by a man aiming to measure the electricity consumption; a brief external shot of the city; a frontal shot of another woman facing the camera; and an external shot showing a crane and a gas station sign. (41)
Both these examples illustrate perfectly well Godard’s intention to fill the screen with all kinds of material, and how he sees this process as naturally discontinuous. (42) As a result, the audience receives falsifying information. At first sight, what one sees on the screen might or might not belong to the main narrative. The woman in the bathtub, for instance, might appear later in the film, play a key role that will somehow influence Juliette, perhaps even interact with her. Similarly, the buildings portrayed during shots of the city may be the location of the action seen in the following scene (what the classical American school calls an establishing shot). However, none of this is confirmed. What appears to be imprecise or incomplete information ends up being irrelevant to the main narrative, to a point where those familiar with the classical cinema might even wonder “Do I need to pay attention to this at all?”.
Instead of creating a new image by associating two others - as it is the case with the metaphoric Soviet school, for example (43) - Godard simply puts images together without developing a relationship between them. He presents one image plus another (A + B = A + B), while Eisenstein, for example, creates a third image (A + B = C).
It is not a matter of following a chain of images, even across voids, but of getting out of the chain or the association.... It is the method of BETWEEN, 'between two images', which does away with all cinema of the One. It is the method of AND, 'this and then that', which does away with all the cinema of Being = is. Between two actions, between two affections, between two perceptions, between two visual images, between two sound images, between the sound and the visual: make the indiscernible, that is the frontier, visible… (44)
Deleuze talks about breaking a chain of images. Volker Roloff goes one step further and argues that “According to Deleuze, Godard thus seeks to free us from our captivity in the chain of images and in the grid of thought.” (45) This statement is particularly interesting, since it calls attention to the viewer’s condition - one is imprisoned in the chain of images and thoughts and needs to be freed. And it is exactly the interruption of a course, the disturbance of the logic, which is so significant to Godard’s work. Nonetheless, this break is not necessarily violent:
Between reading and seeing and hearing, there is therefore... no radical opposition, but rather a complete, partial, or even concealed coincidence: a syn-aesthesia that can be defined in terms of reception aesthetics, but which, as Godard shows particularly clearly, does not lead to a unity of the artwork or to continuity in cinematic narration, but rather to precisely those forms of fragmentation, discontinuity, heterotopias, chronotopies, and interstices... (46)
The word coincidence was especially well-chosen by Roloff to describe Godard’s method. From one perspective, what is read, seen, and heard on screen appear to exist without apparent causal connection, almost by accident, as in “it is such a coincidence that this happened”. On the other hand, words, images, and sounds coexist, they occur simultaneously. It is not a matter of association, but simple addition or even differentiation (contrast). Roloff develops this argument by exploring the documentary Ici et ailleurs (Here and Elsewhere, Godard, 1976). Not only is the word et (and) literally present within the shots (47), the film deeply explores the interstice (Zwischenräume) between two images and, consequently, the irrational cut. As a result, the screen once again proliferates false information, for the viewer will try to connect the elements logically, either failing in finding a reasonable link, or finding the wrong one. In Deleuze’s words,
It can, in fact, always be objected that there is only an interstice between associated images. From this point of view, images like those which bring together Golda Meir and Hitler in lci et ailleurs would be intolerable. But this is perhaps proof that we are not yet ready for a true 'reading' of the visual image. For, in Godard's method, it is not a question of association. Given one image, another image has to be chosen which will induce an interstice between the two. (48)
Two or Three Things I Know About Her / Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967)
The irrational cut within the sound image
On many occasions during Two or Three Things, the spoken word does not drive the narrative forward (does not refer to the life of Juliette Janson), nor does it help to create a coherent whole, but is valid for itself instead. These “irrational sound-cuts” are very present in Godard’s whispering narration, a category which usually interrupts scenes to say things that are either non-referential in the context of the movie (politics, conscience, existential questions), or uncertain, incomplete, and irrelevant to the audience.
The beginning of the movie is already a good example. After portraying different angles of the city while reporting that “on August 19th an act was published concerning the governmental organization of the Paris region… which, according to the official communiqué now became a new and distinct administrative unit,” the screen cuts to a medium close-up of a woman. She looks distracted, playing with her hair while looking to something out-of-field.
The narrator comments: “She is Marina Vlady, an actress. She is wearing a midnight blue sweater with two yellow stripes. She is of Russian origin. Her hair is dark auburn or light brown, I’m not sure.” The woman stares directly at the camera as is being presented, then says “Yes, speak as though quoting the truth. Old father Brecht said that… that actors should quote.” As she stops talking and seems to be distracted again, the voice-over adds: “Now she is turning her head to the right, but that’s not important.” The camera then changes its position, picturing the same woman in the same place, but from a slightly different angle. “She is Juliette Janson, who lives here. She is wearing a midnight blue sweater with two yellow stripes. Her hair is dark auburn or light brown, I’m not sure. She is of Russian origin.” The woman, now Juliette, stares once again and comments “Two years ago in Martinique, just like a Simenon novel. I don’t know which one… oh, yes, Banana Tourists. I’ve got to manage somehow. I think Robert earns 1.100 Francs a month.” She repeats her movements, and the narrator completes “now she is turning her head to the left, but that’s not important.” (49)
As mentioned, this sequence is filled with information that might be perceived as false. Firstly, both character and narrator speak with uncertainty, stating that they do not know exactly what they are talking about. Secondly, what Marina / Juliette says does not follow logic. Instead, it sounds as an excerpt from a dialogue or even a mental process taking place, for it lacks context and completion. However, it is Godard’s narration which creates the biggest doubt. Who is this woman? What is her real name? Why is she being presented as two different people? These are some questions that those who are not familiar with the actress Marina Vlady are likely to ask themselves. Even though, having this previous knowledge does not guarantee that the scene will provide truthful information. One might wonder why Godard chose to present both actress and character in this way and be deceived to pay attention to something that, in the end, could be considered unimportant.
Another relevant category in the film is formed by the extras, whose verbal interruptions create an interesting effect. For Deleuze,
... sometimes the category or genre assumes much more unusual aspects, for example in the well-known interventions of reflexive types, that is, original individuals who exhibit for what it is, in its singularity, the limit towards which a given series of visual images was moving and would move in the future: these are thinkers, like… the extras in Two or Three Things I Know About Her (my name is this, I do this, I like that...). They are all interceders who function as a category, by giving it a complete individuation. (50)
In this context, the boutique scene in Two or Three Things is particularly significant, for it incorporates not only irrational cuts between shots, but also within them. The section starts with Juliette entering a boutique to look for a new dress. She wanders a little, touching some of the clothes. The camera is mobile, accompanying the character’s steps as she walks and moves. When a saleswoman passes in front of the camera, the take changes drastically. Juliette is no longer in the foreground; the camera gives its undivided attention to the unknown woman, who directly faces the lens. She then reports ordinary things about her day (“I finish at seven; I’m meeting Jean-Claude at eight. We’ll eat, then go to the pictures”) and leaves in the same natural and unforeseen way as she appeared, allowing the camera to go back to Juliette. She, on the other hand, speaks both to other characters in the boutique (ignoring the camera) and to the spectator (acknowledging it). This process repeats itself during the sequence. Furthermore, random shots (the city, the words “psychologie de la forme”) are inserted into the scene. (51)
The cuts between shots create the same effect described in the previous section: the images are not linked through logic, figures of speech or rules of continuity. There is nothing happening in the city, for instance, that will affect Juliette or the other characters in the boutique; the words “psychologie de la forme” do not refer to Juliette’s shopping process; and what the saleswoman tells us does not influence the main narrative at any point (we will not see her eating or going to the pictures). Instead, imprecise and irrelevant information is spread.
At the same time, the shot itself creates irrational cuts when characters talk directly to the camera. That is, the cut is no longer dependent on a literal cut, uniting two images, but exist due to the character’s actions and verbal interruptions. This process breaks the take’s dynamic; it changes the focus of the scene and opens a parenthesis in the narrative without further reason or explanation. Besides, this intervention affects the nature of the film itself. It establishes a connection between the diegetic and non-diegetic, calling attention to the fact that the spectator is watching a made-up representation, and that the director has the power to ignore or recognize the audience’s presence. "The viewer always sees both a film and the making of that film at the same time.” (52) In this context, the false takes on a new meaning. The moving image is not created to be perceived as real, as is the case with the American continuity editing or the Italian neo-realism. Instead, one is supposed to identify the image as something fictional. “Categories, then, are never final answers but categories of problems which introduce reflection into the image itself. They are problematic or propositional functions.” (53)
Furthermore, it is interesting how the soundtrack refers directly to the subject of the truth, questioning it. Marina’s line reproduced above (“Yes, speak as though quoting the truth”) is one example. Two other moments provide a clear illustration of this. In the coffee shop, the narration reports: “This is how Juliette, at 3:37 p.m., watched the turning pages of that object known in journalese as a magazine. And this is how, 150 frames later, another young woman, her twin, saw the same object. Where, then, is the truth?” (54) Moreover, in the garage, it is said:
Yet language in itself cannot accurately define an image. For instance… how can one say exactly what happened? Of course, there is Juliette, her husband, the garage. But are these the words and images to use? Are there no others? Am I talking too loud, looking too close?... Why all these signs which make me doubt language by drowning reality rather than detaching it from the imaginary? (55)
In both scenes, what is said questions what is seen. According to Deleuze, “[the direct time-image] works with pure crystalline optical and sound descriptions, and falsifying, purely chronic narrations. Description stops presupposing a reality and narration stops referring to a form of the true at one and the same time.” (56)
A different, but equally valid example of how irrational cuts in the film’s sound are connected to misleading information is the scene in which two men are sitting behind a table full of books and catalogs. One of them reads randomly selected passages out loud, while the second writes them down. The result is the following monologue:
Fortunately, it was not so under Comrade Lenin. / Buy Rigenerato Rubber. Rigenerato Rubber offers special possibilities for rubber objects. / Léon Pelli, removals, transport, excursions… 108 rue Joubert Philips, by the cemetery. Telefon…. / The fountain flows, doleful as a dog’s muzzle. The rose frightens me: it never laughs. / Purify thyself, stranger: I shall enter pure, said Demetrius. With her tresses dipped in water the girl moistened his eyelids, his lips, his fingers. / In the heart of the beautiful Pyrenees you will find a wide choice of resorts. 24 rue du Quatre Septembre, Paris 2. Phone 742.21.34. / ‘I still do not know the manner in which the rash acts of madmen will be circumvented.’ Nikita Khrushchev / ‘I’ll go to Paris soon,’ she said modestly as though Miss Calendar could open doors for her. (57)
For Schaub, "contents, sentences, thoughts are indeed there, but not the possibility of making sense with them or from them.” (58) This statement summarizes perfectly well the connection between irrational cuts as non-referential (non-‘informative’) and the sounds in Two or Three Things. Some monologues in the movie are so extensive and disconnected from the narrative, that they might even challenge the viewer’s memory and concentration and, therefore, might be perceived as false, as observed in Rivette’s statement earlier.
Nevertheless, a closer look at Two or Three Things might reveal that not all irrational cuts have non-informative, falsifying effects. Let us go back to the sequence described above, which includes the woman in the bathtub. Although the images are linked through irrational cuts and remain disconnected from the narrative, the previous analysis did not take the voice-over into account. During the sequence, Godard whispers “enjoying facilities they never had before, people use gas and hot water, without thinking of the bill to come. This means money for the rent or else doing without TV, a car, or holidays. A change from their usual standards, in other words.” (59) With that in mind, the voice-over could actually be considered a connection between the shots, providing meaning to the supposedly illogical chain of images. The painting of the woman with a car and mountains in the background could mean the desire to travel; the woman taking a bath could show the unbridled and unconcerned consumption, and so on. The passage could even be connected to Juliette’s life, since she is struggling to pay her bills. Nonetheless, this is still an exception.
Last Year in Marienbad / L'Année dernière à Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961)
Alain Resnais: The Irrational Cut as Indiscernibility Between True and False
While Godard’s case study showed us that a falsifying narration does not necessarily stand for something wrong or untrue (but may instead present irrelevant information, which is non-referential within the diegetic world of the film), the same cannot be said of Resnais’ work. In fact, irrational cuts play a crucial role in some of his most iconic movies, directly contributing to what Deleuze calls the indiscernibility between true and false.
In Last Year in Marienbad, a stranger (X, played by Giorgio Albertazzi) approaches a woman (A, Delphine Seyrig) in an extravagant hotel. He claims that they met the previous year and starts narrating what happened, in order to refresh her memory. The woman either does not remember or denies it. In this context, the notion of true and false can have many interpretations. For instance, are the images one sees the result of a character’s mind? If so, to whom do they belong? Are the images real? That is, did the characters actually meet before? If so, how? Finally, are the images memories or do they happen in the present? What should we believe? All these possibilities coexist during the movie, not allowing the viewer to know which version is the truth.
Still, it is important to note that what the characters say and what the images depict cannot be considered lies (60), for the act of telling a lie presupposes that one version (of an event, a thought, a statement) is true and what is said intentionally differs from it. In such cases, the audience is either aware of the inconsistency or is deceived, tricked into believing in the wrong version until it is revealed what really happened. In Marienbad, on the other hand, everything might be true and might be false in the same proportion, at the same time, until the end.
Sam Rohdie explains that “in Resnais’s films continuity is almost never the object of shot changes. On the contrary, the shot change for him is an edge between differences that are marked, then used to create groupings of likenesses... [The shot] contains all manner of similitudes and paths and into which it can enter and depart…”61 In practice, Resnais utilizes
irrational cuts as sudden changes in costume and location, repetitions and variations, matches on action that do not respect continuity, and disconnections between image and sound.
Who is responsible for the creation of the images?
For Robbe-Grillet, who wrote the screenplay, “the whole film is in fact a story of persuasion: it is about a reality that the hero creates from his own vision, his own words.” (62) Because of the man’s constant voice-over, it is natural to suppose that he is the one controlling the images seen. At this point, we do not yet know if what we see is his imagination or his memory, but he does seem to be in charge of the movie’s narration. Many of the shots seem to picture his point of view, and all the events are told from his perspective.
Nevertheless, certain images indicate that they could be in the woman’s head, such as the moment in which she is killed. The scene takes place in her bedroom, where a man who may or may not be her husband (M) points a gun at her and shoots. Five cuts follow, each showing A lying dead in a different position or location (left side of the bed, right side, on the floor). (63) As Haim Callev suggests, “her body falls in four alternative positions, as if she [were] trying to choose and visualise the most graceful position for the moment of her death.” (64) Emma Wilson goes one step further and proposes “that the film plays with the possibility that these are shared images that the lovers conjure between them. This collaborative act, ironically, brings its own fear and trauma.” (65)
One scene exemplifies this particularly well. It begins with X and A standing at the counter in the hotel’s bar. The man tells her: “...You never seemed to wait for me. But we met at every bend, behind every shrub, at the foot of every statue, at the edge of every pond. It was as if there were only you and me in this garden. We talked about something. About the
names of the statues, the shapes of the bushes, the water in the ponds…” Suddenly, another image is shown for only a couple of frames. It is a long shot of the woman in her bedroom, wearing a white dress and holding a shoe. Both images are visually very distinct: the bar is extremely dark; the characters wear black clothes and there is a low-key lighting; the
bedroom is bright and well lit. What follows is a series of irrational cuts that join both images repeatedly, the white shots being quick intrusions, like flashes, almost hallucinations. These takes gradually get longer, and the viewer can finally perceive the action happening inside the room. The woman is now sitting, surrounded by shoes. She puts on a shoe, looks up, sees something out-of-field and then laughs. A second sequence of rapid irrational cuts begins, now between images of X, A and another woman at the bar. The takes are very short, and the montage has a fast rhythm, creating anxiety. Finally, A drops a glass. We see the bedroom again, where the man approaches A, who bends looking scared and drops a perfume bottle. (66)
When analysing this segment, “one reading would suggest that these images are traumatic moments of recall…. The threat the man seems to embody suggests force or sexual violence.” (67) Another possibility is that the man is successfully convincing the woman that they met last year - the increasing length of the shots indicate ideas gradually growing inside her head. Still, before questioning the meaning of the images, one should question their source. And it is already in this first step where the viewer faces deceiving information.
In most cases, it is clear for the spectator whose narration drives the narrative forward (for example, if the story is told by a specific character, a third person, an omniscient narrator or even by the camera). That is not the case in Marienbad. Although logic suggests that X is the main storyteller while A is only a secondary source, one cannot know for sure. Both
narrations are possible and indiscernible. In fact, “in Last Year in Marienbad, Robbe-Grillet confuses our normal sense of orientation by subverting our ability to make clear distinctions between divergent points of view.” (68)
Are the images real or the result of someone’s imagination?
The second doubt concerning the scenes’ veracity refers to whether the images are a pure creation of someone’s mind or if their love story actually happened. In this context, the concept of truth differs according to each character. For X, the truth is that they met before. For A, it is the opposite. For the viewer, the truth is to know who is right.
One sequence especially puts the notion of truth into question while incorporating many of the elements listed above. The sequence begins with a close-up of X. Due to a mirror behind him, we see the woman approaching through a corridor. The man says “Do you know what I just heard? Last year at this time was so cold that the ponds froze. That must be a mistake.” After briefly cutting to a close-up of A, the screen now portrays both characters standing outside, in front of the garden. She answers: “What do you want? You know that is impossible.” Cut, the woman is shown standing in her bedroom while we hear the man’s voice: “One night I came to your room. You were alone.” Cut, long shot of A in her room. She looks around and says, “Leave me alone, I am asking you.” Finally, we are back to the corridor, but A is wearing different clothes. She repeats: “Leave me alone”, to what X replies “It was almost summer. Yes, you are right. It could not have frozen.” (69)
After watching the sequence, there remains nothing but doubtful information. Where are the characters? In the hotel’s corridor, outside, in her room? What is she wearing? Was it summer? Did the water freeze? Is anything the man says true? In fact, does the conversation even happens or is someone imagining it?
As a matter of fact, a similar effect is present in Je t’aime, je t’aime (Resnais, 1968), in which sounds and images are put together in a collage that lasts for almost the entire film. The result is a complete uncertainty regarding the life of the main character. Irrational cuts portray fragments of his life in such a way that one does not know whether the images are real, memories, or hallucinations; nor when and where the situations take place.
Back to Last Year in Marienbad, it is hard to believe that X is right at all times. Even those who believe that they met the year before should not be able to tell exactly what happened. This is more than the result of the optical discontinuities created by irrational cuts. The man’s voice-over, responsible for telling both A and us what happened, sounds uncertain at some points, as the following monologue shows.
It was one afternoon. It was probably the next day. I told you we would depart. No. You did not laugh. We would leave the next day and never return. Meanwhile... no, it was not like that. Yes, we were in your room. We had already decided to leave. You had agreed, perhaps reluctantly. I was in your room. From the front door, the bed is the first thing one sees. But the dressing table is not visible from there. You probably stood on the other side of the window. Maybe you looked to the garden. I am not sure anymore. I met him when he came down the stairs. He had just left your room. Maybe it was another day. Everything was empty that evening. The stairs. The corridors. The stairs. (70)
Interestingly, this monologue illustrates the use of irrational cuts within the sound image, similar to what happens during the book scene in Two or Three Things I Know About Her. Here and in many other occasions, X puts thoughts together in a “sound-collage”. More than sounding reluctant and contradicting himself, he says things that are rather valid for themselves (e.g. “The dressing table is not visible from there”) or do not necessarily follow logic (“The stairs. The corridors. The stairs.”) This alone would already be sufficient to generate doubt. Is the man having difficulties remembering what truly happened, since it has been a long time, or is he inventing everything, changing the details as he speaks to sound more credible?
As if uncertainties and contradictions in the narration were not enough, the sound often contradicts the images. For instance, while X gives the monologue quoted above, one would expect to see shots of the bedroom, the woman, and the hotel’s stairs and corridors. However, Resnais chooses to depict only the garden. For Deleuze, this asynchrony between image and sound is a key component of the indiscernibility between true and false. He explains that, because the visual and the talking no longer correspond, but instead contradict each other, it is no longer possible to state which one is right. There is
something undecidable between the two (as Gardies observes, the visual has no special claim to authenticity, and includes as many implausibilities as speech).... The visual and the talking may in each case take over the distinction between the real and the imaginary, sometimes one, sometimes the other, or the alternative of the true and the false; but a sequence of audio-visual images necessarily makes the distinct indiscernible, and the alternative undecidable. (71)
Moreover, Deleuze argues that this asynchrony also reduces the power attributed to the voice-off. “It has lost the omnipotence which characterized it in the first stage of the talkie. It has ceased to see everything; it has become questionable, uncertain, ambiguous…” (72) In other words, it induces the notion of the false by not being credible.
Last Year in Marienbad / L'Année dernière à Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961)
Are the images currently happening or do they belong to the past?
Until this point, the scenes in Last Year in Marienbad 1) may be created by the man (X) or the woman (A); and 2) may be real or the result of someone’s imagination. Yet there remains a third issue: the different time periods are still indiscernible. For Wilson, “as the film dissolves a sense of space, so it dissolves other certainties of time, memory and identity.” (73) The author explains that,
as the man speaks, recalling his memories of last year in Marienbad, images appear on the screen. They do not always entirely match his descriptions of the past and they do not offer a coherent continuity of memory. Where at first certain markers seem to be used to indicate whether the images are, supposedly, memory images or images from the present encounter (in the first ‘memory’ image Seyrig’s dress is pale, for example, where in the ‘present’ it is dark) any such systematisation collapses (she will go on to appear indiscriminately in the same pale and dark dresses in both ‘memory’ and ‘present’ images). We become aware that there is no layering of past and present, that the ‘memory’ images are perhaps conjured in the imagination, choreographed, often on the basis of the very material of the present. (74)
Wilson speaks of memory images, calling attention to the fact that what we see and hear belongs to the character himself - the narrative is clearly told in the first person. Besides, just as one’s memories naturally become blurry or confusing, so do the film’s images. In this sense, Resnais’ approach radically differs from the much more common flashback, which usually presents one version of a past event, not questioning its veracity. (75) A good illustration of a memory image is the moment in which A is alone in her room. Here, irrational cuts are used both to select images which do not necessarily cohere and join them together, and to repeat the same image in slightly different manners. Close-ups of the woman are interleaved with close-ups of different tables with various objects, while each of her movements inside the room (turning her head, walking, lying on the bed) happens in at least four different ways. For instance, as soon as A is pictured lying on the right side of the bed, there is a cut and the action starts again, now from the left side. The result is a scene in which any version can be true, as well as none. The recurrence of images creates uncertainty regarding what is happening (present), what happened (memory) or what could have happened (imagination). The voice-over reinforces the idea, stating “No, no, I do not remember anything. I do not remember myself anymore. I do not remember anymore.” (76)
Deleuze considers memory a membrane, which “makes sheets of past and layers of reality correspond, the first emanating from an inside which is always already there, the second arriving from an outside always to come, the two gnawing at the present which is now only their encounter.” (77) Therefore, many scenes in Marienbad can be thought of as the encounter of (indiscernible) layers of time. According to Deleuze, in Robbe-Grillet’s work
there is never a succession of passing presents, but a simultaneity of a present of past, a
present of present and a present of future, which make time frightening and inexplicable....
Thus narration will consist of the distribution of different presents to different characters, so that each forms a combination that is plausible and possible in itself, but where all of them together are 'incompossible', and where the inexplicable is thereby maintained and created.... Ultimately, the three characters [X, A and M] correspond to the three different presents, but in such a way as to 'complicate' the inexplicable instead of throwing light on it… (78)
Accordingly, the shots in Marienbad are put together in a way that not only past and present coexist, but that each character has its own version of the past and the present. Yet for the spectator these different layers of time are “incompossible”, meaning that only one past and one present can be true - they cannot be simultaneously truthful. Noël Burch even uses the term “dialectic of ambiguity”, considering the amount of time variables that result in Marienbad’s complex structures. (79)
In short, the work of Resnais and Robbe-Grillet applies montage in such a way that everything present on the screen deceives the viewer. The authors play with subjective concepts, like memory, desire and perception of time, to create a narration which emanates doubtful information. In fact, Robbe-Grillet explains that “he [the spectator] is likely to lose ground if he does not from time to time have the 'explanations' which enable him to situate each scene in its chronological place and its degree of objective reality. But we decided to give him confidence, to leave him end to end struggling with pure subjectivities.” (80)
Conclusions
If we take the history of thought, we see that time has always put the notion of truth into crisis.
— Gilles Deleuze
For Deleuze, the break of the sensory-motor schemata that constitutes movement-images generated a so-called crystalline description, in which narration is no longer truthful, but fundamentally falsifying. “Truthful narration is developed organically,” he explains, “according to legal connections in space and chronological relations in time.” (81) On the contrary, falsifying narration (attributed to time-images) is characterized by disconnections in space and time and by the coalescence of real and imaginary / actual and virtual / present and past. (82)
This division is directly connected to the linkage of images: while the classical cinema mostly uses rational cuts to seek continuity, modern cinema often applies irrational cuts as part of the crystalline, falsifying narration. Although Deleuze contradicts himself when distinguishing rational from irrational cuts, there are some fundamental differences between them. The former determine either the end of a series of images or the beginning of the next, integrating associated images, creating commensurable relations and constituting a coherent whole. Irrational cuts, on the other hand, are valid for themselves. They are considered an interstice, forming series of unlinked images and creating non-commensurable relations between them.
The form in which irrational cuts appear and the effects generated by them may vary drastically depending on the director, as the two case studies have shown. Even though Godard and Resnais (more precisely, Two or Three Things I Know About Her and Last Year in Marienbad) share the ability to bring the truth into question, each one has his own method and leads to a distinct notion of the false.
Godard’s method can be thought of as the joining of categories, which results in a collage of purely optical and sound images. In Two or Three Things, irrational cuts appear visually and aurally, to a point where elements such as characters, places, images, words, and thoughts are put together without apparent causal connection. It is no longer a matter of association of images. Here, falsifying information denotes “non-informative” information, the one which is non-referential in the context of the film. The elements presented by irrational cuts are either incomplete, imprecise, or completely irrelevant to the main narrative (e.g. the extras’ verbal interruptions). As a consequence, the viewer might get confused, not knowing why the categories are connected or how they belong to the movie.
Resnais’ work produces a different effect. In Marienbad, all elements belong to the narrative, but they are presented in such a way that one does not know what to trust. Irrational cuts appear as optical discontinuities, repetitions, variations, and asynchronies between sounds and images, which do not necessarily correspond and sometimes even contradict each other. Moreover, there is no method to define what is real and what is a creation of the mind. As a result, the notions of true and false are indiscernible and coexist during the entire film. In fact, any character could be responsible for the images seen; these images could depict the present encounter, hallucinations, perhaps shared memories; present and past could be character-dependent; and we could be seeing different layers of time simultaneously. The narration becomes questionable and ambiguous, and the viewer is constantly deceived and unable to find out the truth.
Even though this study was successful in connecting irrational cuts with the proliferation of false information in time-images, there is still plenty of room for further research. For instance, it would be interesting to look at other effects that irrational cuts can generate. The idea that this device kills the flashback, the voice-off and the out-of-field (83) is a good example of a very questionable argument. Furthermore, one could explore each of the key variables separately: whether irrational cuts are also used as part of organic descriptions (movement-images); which other tools are used by directors to generate falsifying narrations (such as Deleuze’s concept of the forger (84), which calls attention to character development); or how truthful information is connected to montage.
In conclusion, it is safe to state that irrational cuts invented a completely new logic, naturally making room for one last question: the role of the spectator during the watching experience. Robbe-Grillet believes that, when facing the lack of explanations and the rise of subjectivities, two attitudes are possible:
Either the spectator will seek to reconstruct some Cartesian schema, the most linear that he can, the most rational, and this spectator will doubtless judge the film difficult, if not incomprehensible; or, on the contrary, he will let himself be carried away by the extraordinary images he will have in front of him, by the voice of the actors, by the noises, by the music, by the rhythm of the editing, by the passion of the heroes... to this spectator the film will seem the easiest he has ever seen: a film that addresses only his sensitivity, his ability to look, listen, feel and be moved. The story told will appear to him as the most realistic, the truest…” (85)
In the end, it all comes down to the acceptance or rejection of whatever false information is being generated. What should the audience do? Try to understand what is seen and heard, even if this means to create a meaning oneself? Or let oneself simply get carried away by pure optical and sound images, even if they do not completely make sense?
Jacques Rivette seems to support the first group: “... it becomes impossible for him [the spectator] to abandon himself comfortably to the telling of a story, to the representation of a fable or pseudo-reality: he must, if he wants to read the film, assume responsibility in his turn for this critical work; if he wants to see the film, he must fulfil this responsibility.” (86) Although his statement was made 16 years before Deleuze published Cinema 2: The Time-Image and, therefore, could not address the irrational cut, he does call attention to the active role of the viewer. With that in mind, when faced by the proliferation of misleading information, the viewer would have the responsibility to decipher what the images depict. There is the need to see actively, to question the images’ veracity instead of trusting them unquestionably.
Noël Burch, on the other hand, defends the second alternative. He mentions the innocent and transparent nature of a work like Marienbad (in the sense that nothing remains hidden) and, like Robbe-Grillet, highlights the importance of absorbing the work with no resistance. For Burch,
The subject of Marienbad is obscure only if one persists in believing that the action occurring on screen has a single underlying truth that explains everything, only if one persists in believing, that is to say, that every film possesses a key allowing one to resolve the various contradictions, to opt for what A says rather than what X says, to decide that a given shot has to do with fantasy while another shot has to do with reality. As those responsible for the film have repeatedly said, Marienbad has no key. The verbal or visual contradictions are the very essence of the work… (87)
Interestingly, a possible interpretation is that the search for the truth is what creates the notion of false. In fact, the same could be said of Two or Three Things: the narrative gets obscure if one persists in believing that the extras’ interruptions will be explained, that Godard’s whispering voice needs to address Juliette’s life, that each element present in the collage needs to be logically connected to others. But if one stops worrying about finding out the truth, then everything becomes true. The visual and the sound are valid for themselves, pure and truthful. This argument seems to capture the essence of cinema. In this sense, both films analyzed here - and possibly many others constructed through irrational cuts - “demand simply to be seen. In every sense they are films that must be approached naively. There is nothing that will do more to spoil the pleasure we should experience by allowing ourselves to become lost in these labyrinths constructed to intrigue our minds and our eyes than the search for a hidden meaning ‘behind’ them.” (88) Isn't that true?
Notes
1 Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), PDF, 260, 261, 271.
2 Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener, Film Theory: An Introduction Through the Senses (New York: Routledge, 2010), 157.
3 David Martin-Jones, Deleuze and World Cinemas (London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011), 10.
4 Deleuze, Time-Image, 127.
5 Ibid., 128.
6 Ibid., 131, my emphasis.
7 Jean Narboni, Sylvie Pierre, and Jacques Rivette, “Montage,” Cahiers du Cinéma, no. 210 (March 1969), in Rivette: Texts and Interviews, ed. Jonathan Rosenbaum (London: British Film Institute, 1977), 88.
8 Deleuze, Time-Image, 126-127.
9 Ibid., 133.
10 The film’s name is translated to the English language both as Last Year in Marienbad and Last Year at
Marienbad. The former is used by most relevant references, including the translation of Deleuze’s Time-Image, and will therefore also be adopted in the present study.
11 Sam Rohdie, Montage (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 1.
12 Narboni, Pierre, and Rivette, “Montage,” 71, 73.
13 Ibid., 82, emphasis in original.
14 Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (London: Continuum, 2005), PDF, 31.
15 Ibid., 56.
Deleuze, Time-Image, 158.
16 Deleuze, Time-Image, 213.
17 David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction (New York: McGraw-Hill Education, 2001), 262.
18 Bordwell and Thompson, Film Art, 267.
19 Rohdie, Montage, 123-124.
20 André Bazin, What Is Cinema?, v. 1, selec. and trans. Hugh Gray (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1967), 25.
21 Deleuze, Time-Image, 173, 182, 214.
22 Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta, introduction to Cinema 2: The Time Image (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), PDF, xvi.
23 Deleuze, Time-Image, 200, my emphasis.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid., 252, 267, 268.
26 Ibid., 252.
27 Ibid., 2-3.
28 Bazin, What Is Cinema?, 37.
29 Deleuze, Time-Image, 179.
30 Deleuze, Time-Image, 181.
31 Ibid., 187.
32 Ibid., 268.
33 Ibid., 182.
34 Ibid., 186.
35 Ibid., 184-185, 214.
36 Narboni, Pierre, and Rivette, “Montage,” 88, my emphasis.
37 Deleuze, Time-Image, 267.
38 Martin Schaub, “Kommentierte Filmografie - 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle,” in Jean-Luc Godard, Reihe Film 19 (München, Wien: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1979), 147.
39 Narboni, Pierre, and Rivette, “Montage,” 75.
40 Two or Three Things I Know About Her, directed by Jean-Luc Godard (FR: Argos Films, Anouchka Films, Les Films du Carrosse and Parc Film, 1967), DVD, 00:08:25 - 00:09:08.
41 Ibid., 00:10:52 - 00:12:11.
42 Schaub, “Kommentierte Filmografie,” 147-148.
43 Deleuze, Time-Image, 160.
44 Ibid., 180.
45 "Godard versuche daher, so Deleuze, unsere Gefangenschaft in der Kette von Bildern, aber auch in dem Raster von Gedanken, aufzuheben.” Volker Roloff, "Zur Theorie und Praxis der Intermedialität bei Godard. Heterotopien, Passagen,
Zwischenräume,” in Godard Intermedial, eds. Volker Roloff and Scarlett Winter (Tübingen: Stauffenburg-Verlag, 1997), 12, my translation.
46 "Zwischen Lesen und Sehen und Hören besteht daher... keine radikale Opposition, sondern eine vollkommene, partielle oder auch verdeckte Koinzidenz: eine rezeptionsästhetisch definierbare Syn-Ästhesie, die aber, wie Godard besonders deutlich zeigt, nicht zu einer Einheit des Kunstwerks oder zur Kontinuität filmischen Erzählens führt, sondern zu eben jenen Formen der Fragmentierung, Diskontinuität, zu den Heterotopien, Chronotopien und Zwischenräumen..." Roloff, "Intermedialität bei Godard,” 13, my translation and emphasis.
47 Ibid., 15.
48 Deleuze, Time-Image, 179, my emphasis.
49 Two or Three Things, directed by Jean-Luc Godard, 00:01:20 - 00:02:46, my emphasis.
50 Deleuze, Time-Image, 186.
51 Two or Three Things, directed by Jean-Luc Godard, 00:15:46 - 00:21:05.
52 “Der Zuschauer sieht immer zugleich einen Film und die Entstehung dieses Films.” Schaub, “Kommentierte Filmografie,” 148, my translation.
53 Deleuze, Time-Image, 186.
54 Two or Three Things, directed by Jean-Luc Godard, 00:25:05 - 00:25:22, my emphasis.
55 Two or Three Things, directed by Jean-Luc Godard, 00:40:23 - 00:42:50.
56 Deleuze, Time-Image, 135.
57 Two or Three Things, directed by Jean-Luc Godard, 00:56:52 - 00:58:39.
58 "Inhalte, Sätze, Gedanken sind zwar da, aber nicht die Möglichkeit, mit ihnen und aus ihnen Sinn zu machen.” Schaub, “Kommentierte Filmografie,” 150, my translation.
59 Two or Three Things, directed by Jean-Luc Godard, 00:10:52 - 00:12:11.
60 Deleuze, Time-Image, 243.
61 Rohdie, Montage, 123.
62 “Tout le film est en effet l’histoire d’une persuasion: il s’agit d’une réalité que le héros crée de sa propre vision, par sa propre parole.” Alain Robbe-Grillet, L’Année dernière à Marienbad, ciné-roman (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1961), 12, trans. Emma Wilson.
63 Last Year in Marienbad, directed by Alain Resnais (FR: Cocinor, 1961), DVD, 01:10:29 - 01:11:53.
64 Haim Callev, The Stream of Consciousness in the Films of Alain Resnais (New York: McGruer Publishing, 1997), quoted in Emma Wilson, Alain Resnais (New York: Manchester University Press, 2006), 76.
65 Wilson, Alain Resnais, 76.
66 Last Year in Marienbad, directed by Alain Resnais, 00:35:23 - 00:37:58, my translation.
Wilson, Alain Resnais, 77.
67 Wilson, Alain Resnais, 77.
68 Anthony N. Fragola and Roch C. Smith, The Erotic Dream Machine: Interviews with Alain Robbe-Grillet on His Films, edited by Patricia St. John (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992), 6.
69 Last Year in Marienbad, directed by Alain Resnais, 00:40:31 - 00:41:43, my translation.
70 Last Year in Marienbad, directed by Alain Resnais, 01:05:31 - 01:06:37, my translation.
71 Deleuze, Time-Image, 250.
72 Ibid.
73 Wilson, Alain Resnais, 69.
74 Ibid., 75, my emphasis.
75 Deleuze, Time-Image, 266.
76 Last Year in Marienbad, directed by Alain Resnais, 01:06:38 - 01:07:50, my translation.
77 Deleuze, Time-Image, 207.
78 Ibid., 101, my emphasis.
79 Noël Burch, Theory of Film Practice (London: Secker & Warburg, 1973), 62.
80 “Il [le spectateur] risque cependant, dira-t-on, de perdre pied s'il n’a pas de temps en temps les «explications» qui lui permettent de situer chaque scène à sa place chronologique et à son degré de réalité objective. Mais nous avons décidé de lui faire confiance, de le laisser de bout en bout aux prises avec des subjectivités pures.” Robbe-Grillet, L’Année dernière, 17, my translation.
81 Deleuze, Time-Image, 133.
82 Ibid., 127, 131.
83 Deleuze, Time-Image, 251, 278.
84 Ibid., 134.
85 "Ou bien le spectateur cherchera à reconstituer quelque schéma a «cartésien», le plus linéaire qu’il pourra, le plus rationnel, et ce spectateur jugera sans doute le film difficile, si ce n’est incompréhensible ; ou bien au contraire il se laissera porter par les extraordinaires images qu’il aura devant lui, par la voix des acteurs, par les bruits, par la musique, par le rythme du montage, par la passion des héros... à ce spectateur-là le film semblera le plus facile qu’il ait jamais vu: un film qui ne s’adresse qu'à sa sensibilité, qu'à sa faculté de regarder, d’écouter, de sentir et de se laisser émouvoir. L'histoire racontée lui apparaîtra comme la plus réaliste, la plus vraie…" Robbe-Grillet, L’Année dernière, 17-18, my translation.
86 Narboni, Pierre, and Rivette, “Montage,” 80, emphasis in original.
87 Burch, Theory of Film Practice, 147.
88 Burch, Theory of Film Practice, 148.