Notes for chapters 6 & 7

Hello all! A couple of posts providing reading notes for chapters 6 to 11 of Cinema 1. Blogger had for some reason marked my previous post (containing ch. 6 & 7) as preview only and didn't show them on the blog - this is now corrected:

Cinema 1 – The Movement-Image                                                 Janne Vanhanen 16.2.2012

Chapter 6: The Affection-Image; Face and Close-up

Deleuze starts this chapter by making a connection between the (human) face and the close-up image, which he in turn links to the second kind of movement-image, the affection-image (as we remember, the first kind is perception-image, and the third type shall be action-image).

The question is how can one claim – as Deleuze does – that the face is identical to the close-up? Isn’t the close-up merely an image, a representation of a face? Why is the relation between the face and the close-up something deeper than pictorial representation (the close-up as a depiction of a face)? Deleuze begins his explanation by bringing up an example that surprisingly does not involve a human face: a recurring shot of a clock in close-up. This, he claims, has two “poles”: 1) an intensive series of “micro-movements” of the clock hands towards something (a critical instant, such as the “doomsday clock” we discussed in the seminar meeting) and 2) a reflective and reflecting unity of the clock face, a receptive immobile surface.

These two aspects of the clock (and thus, by extension, of the face in general), Deleuze notes, correspond to Bergson’s definition of perception as “a motor tendency on a sensitive nerve” (C1, p. 87). [Please remember the earlier discussion in chapter 4 of the basic structure of life as involving an action–reaction circuit, with the living image’s receiving surface introducing a delay and indeterminacy to the causal chain of movement-impulses, not only transmitting and translating, but also internalizing incoming impulses.] Here Deleuze evokes Bergson’s idea of the receiving agent’s essential immobility: the nervous “surface” has to be immobile to act as a support for perception. Here external movement becomes translated into expressive, intensive “movement”, transmitted between sensitive organs and involving an internal, reflective and affective aspect: the feeling of that which is internalized.

Deleuze likens this combination of immobile unity and intensive expressive (micro-)movements to the face, “this organ-carrying plate of nerves” (C1, p. 87). The face is a neural and sensory nexus that gathers together a number of tiny movements (affects, impressions) from the rest of the sensing body. These hidden impressions (micro-movements) are given expression only in the face. Thus: the face comes to mean every instance when a thing – anything whatsoever, not only the concrete human face – brings together the two poles of reflecting surface and intensive micro-movements. “The face” is therefore a structural term denoting a certain type of organization. What, then, is the relation between the face and the close-up? Deleuze states that the face is the close-up and that they both are affection-image. This has to be clarified a bit later…

A face implies two states: 1) it contemplates (or wonders about) something or 2) it is affected by something. In cinema, there are two types of corresponding close-ups: a) the Griffith close-ups where everything is organized for the face; which gathers together different elements (as in an iris shot) onto the surface of the face to express a certain quality, and b) the Eisenstein close-up where the face becomes variable, the image shifting from a face into a certain look, which in turn shifts into something else, becoming a part of a series of different elements jumping from quality to different quality.

To sum up his considerations, Deleuze then offers a table comparing the two aspects of faciality (C1, pp. 90–91):

“Clock-face” (reflective)	“Clock hands” (intensive)
Sensible nerve	Motor tendency
Immobile receptive plate	Micro-movements of expression
Faceifying outline	Characteristics of faceicity
Reflecting unity	Intensive series
Wonder (admiration, surprise)	Desire (love, hate)
Quality	Power
Expression of a quality common to several different things	Expression of a power which passes from one quality to another

A distinction between quality and power (puissance in French) then emerges. The reflective face expresses “a pure Quality” and quality must be understood as something that is common to several distinct things. The intensive face, in turn, expresses “a pure Power” that denotes a potential of passing from one quality to another.

As an example of this Deleuze brings up a scene from Pabst’s Lulu [in fact, proper English title is Pandora’s Box, 1929] where the faces of the characters Lulu and Jack the Ripper form a sequence, starting from relaxed, reflective wonder of both, until Jack is caught in an intensive series of emotions when he sees a knife, yet finally subsiding into a reflection of death’s inevitability. Deleuze notes that film directors can be categorized according to their preference of either reflecting or intensive face. (C1, p. 91.) He then goes on to compare Expressionist cinema’s intensive treatment of faces with the reflective “lyrical abstraction” of Sternberg. (C1, pp. 92–95.)

In any case, an equation of close-up = face = affect can be reached. The affect has two poles: quality (reflecting surface) and power (intensive series), and the faces passes from one to the other according to circumstances. Deleuze wants to highlight the integrity of the close-up/face: it is not a partial shot or a partial object, but in cinematic close-up the face is abstracted, that is, detached from ts spatio-temporal coordinates and is therefore an entity on its own. (C1, p. 96.)

What, then, is the face as an Entity? In close-up face becomes pure expression, the face is no longer bound to its usual “three roles” which are: 1) individuation (distinguishing a person), 2) socialization (manifesting a social role) and 3) communication (forming relations between people, but also intra-personal relations). Deleuze praises Bergman as the director who has most insistently concentrated on the cinematic link between the face and the close-up: his characters lose their identity, their social roles, their will to communicate… What remains are “pure” affective qualities – “the close-up turns the face into a phantom” (C1, p. 99).

In considering the unity of the expressing face and the affect, Deleuze brings up philosopher C.S.Peirce’s notions of Firstness and Secondness. The aspect of secondness is identity formed in opposition between two distinct things in a concrete situation (between action and reaction or individual and milieu, for instance). “Actual” things belong to the category of secondness. Firstness, on the other hand, is “difficult to define” rightly because it “concerns what is new in experience, what is fresh, fleeting and nevertheless eternal” (C1, p. 98). Deleuze concludes that pure quality or power (the two poles of the affect) belong to this category, firstness being pure Possibility, not actual reality; the quality of a possible sensation, feeling or idea, detached from any concrete state of things, and opening a virtual future of possibilities. This is why the affect-face-close-up is phantasmal.

Deleuze closes the chapter by referring to Franz Kafka’s observation of the effects of modern technology: on one hand technology is communication-translation (transportation technology), on the other hand it is communication-expression which summons up all kinds of disembodied phantasmal phenomena (communications technology).

Chapter 7: The Affection-Image; Qualities, Powers, Any-space-whatevers

We begin again with the scene between Lulu and Jack in Pandora’s Box. Deleuze describes it from two angles: the circumstantial (the actual state of things) and the affective – “the brightness on the light on the knife” etc., pure singular qualities or potentialities. These “power-qualities” do not refer to their cause but rather turn back to themselves. An example from an early film theorist Béla Balász: a precipice may cause vertigo, but does not explain or make comprehensible the expression of fear on a face. The feeling of vertigo is “eternal” in the sense that it is pure quality, it is not dependent on particular spatio-temporal circumstances. (C1, p. 100.)

Power-qualities (i.e. affects) have thus two manifestations: a) already actualized in distinct states-of-affairs and b) expressed in-and-for themselves. First type is essential to the action-image (and medium-shots), the second to affection-image (and close-up). In affection-image the face (or its equivalent, such as a clock) gathers and expresses the affect “as a complex entity” of singular points (different qualities), expressing Peirce’s firstness (i.e. pure quality).

[Remember that for Peirce firstness is freedom, meaning that it stands on its own, it does not have “another [cause] behind it” (Principles of Philosophy, III, §2) – this is why the quality of firstness is “pure”; consider, for instance, the perception of “redness” of a particular manifestation of the color red, detached from its particular details. It just is that particular shade of color. We do not need to consider its causes or its circumstances or relations to any other thing. As Claire Colebrook explains it, firstness (for Deleuze) is not the relation yet (that would be secondness), but rather the potential to relate: a pure quality or power that can actualize itself in a myriad different circumstances (Deleuze: A Guide for the Perplexed, p. 61).]

Expression (the face) is what produces the unity of the affect, bringing together many different singular qualities. Yet it is not dependent on concrete circumstances. Rather, the affect – or the expressed – stands on its own, as firstness and as affection-image in cinema.

Deleuze goes on to discuss Dreyer’s Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) as the affective film. Granted, in the film the whole secondness-level situation is present – historical circumstances, social relations, individual characters; the trial of Joan, in total – but the affective level of the event (the Passion of Joan) goes beyond these states-of-affairs. Through the characters and situations the pure power of anger and pure quality of martyrdom become present. These are the qualities and powers that are present in a particular situation but yet extend beyond the particular actualization. Deleuze then considers the cinematic means Dreyer uses to achieve this affective dimension in the film: affective framing, affective cutting (“flowing close-ups”) and affective montage. (C1, pp. 107–108.)

Deleuze then moves on to consider the cinema of Bresson. We begin by noting once more that the close-up functions by extracting (or abstracting) the face (i.e. the expression) from all spatio-temporal coordinates. Yet, the face “can carry with it its own space-time”. The question is, then, if the affect can obtain its own space in this way, what remains to tie it to a face or to a close-up shot? Comparison between Dreyer’s and Bresson’s Joan of Arc films makes this problem evident. Bresson does not rely on the close-up but rather uses medium- and reverse-shots extensively. (C1, pp. 108–109.) Yet, what he achieves in Deleuze’s opinion is truly affective cinema.

Deleuze describes how Bresson constructs a series of closed spaces which the viewer must approach in a tactile manner in order to piece them together. Here the affect is no longer tied to the face but to the space in medium-shot. These apprehended fragments of space construct not a determined space but any-space-whatever (espace quelconque). This type of space is defined by it not being homogenous any longer. There is no unifying principle of metric relations between its parts to bind everything together in coherence. Rather, linkage between parts can be made in an infinite number of combinations. This space is therefore purely possible (or virtual), not actual, and it is saturated with affective potentialities (qualities and powers). (C1, p. 109.)

Therefore, two kinds of affection-images can be categorized (as two figures of firstness): a) the power-quality expressed by a face (or equivalent) or b) power-quality presented in any-space-whatever. The latter is, for Deleuze, potentially more subtle and nuanced instrument. The advantage of abandoning the facial close-up is that it takes us away from the human coordinates and towards “non-human affects” (C1, p. 110). Here a distinction similar to perception-image can be made: regarding Peirce’s signs, we find two kinds of affection-image. Icon refers to the expression of the face; Qualisign (or Potisign) refers to the presentation of power-quality in any-space-whatever. Icon is a sign corresponding to the mode of composition of the image; qualisign refers to the genetic or differential element of the image (parallel to the gramme discussed with perception-images; see notes for chapters 4 & 5). In the qualisign, as in the gramme, we leave the human coordinates of the sensory-motor schema behind and enter a more fundamental generative dimension, out of which a habitual human reality can be conditioned.

Affection-imagea	Quality or power expressed in the Face	Icon
Affection-imageb	Quality or power expressed in Any-space-whatever	Qualisign (or Potisign)

Deleuze then devotes some thought to the techniques of constructing the generative any-space-whatever. This space is achieved a) through shadow, as in German Expressionism, b) through lyrical abstraction of Dreyer and Bresson (etc.), who alternate space between the actual circumstances and the “spiritual” space of virtuality or possibility, and c) through color, where the colored quality absorbs heterogeneous objects into the affective dimension. Here Deleuze sees Antonioni as the figure that takes cinematic colorism to its limit, in a similar way that Bergman does with the face. Both void their images: Bergman turns to the void with his faces, Antonioni with his any-space-whatevers. (C1, pp. 119–120.)

Deleuze makes a further distinction between aspects of any-space-whatever: it can be divided into two types of qualisigns, signs of a) deconnection and b) emptiness. Shadows (Expressionism), white (Dreyer and Bresson) and colors (post-war cinematic colorists) produce the any-space-whatever, which can be either deconnected or emptied. Deleuze mentions the actual situation of the post-war world which produced similar spaces: demolished cities, waste grounds, abandoned industrial spaces… Contemporaneously, a “crisis of the action-image” in cinema found its characters not in sensory-motor situations but rather the cinematic characters end up wandering aimlessly in “pure optical and sound situations” (C1, p. 120). This can be found in Italian neo-realism, French New Wave, the “German school of fear” (Fassbinder), the New York school (Lumet, Cassavetes) and, ultimately, in experimental cinema (Snow, Duras), leaving behind the human coordinates in favor of any-space-whatever.

***

The concept of expression that Deleuze discusses in these chapters may need some elaboration:

Expression is used here in a specific sense, deriving originally from Deleuze’s treatises on 17^th century philosopher Baruch Spinoza, who famously equated Nature and God as the single substance of the world. Expression is, then, not the outward-projecting expression of some “inner” (and more “real”) content, but rather the power, or potential, of life to structure itself differently. Life expresses itself in continuous variation; life is this virtual potency of variation.

Therefore, in terms of human subjectivity, it is in the power of affection that we get a sense of this originary potential of life. Affects “concern” us, but they do not belong to us. They are pure qualities, singular points in the world before any spatio-temporal (or human) coordinates. Therefore affect combines singularity and generality: it concerns just that specific affection (a certain type of exhilaration, for example) that can, in turn, find its expression in many different times and situations. Affects, as singularities of relations that emerge in various contexts, are therefore “autonomous”, yet they are actualized only within concrete situations. Affects are therefore virtual: “pure” potential to be actualized, time and time again – “real without being actual, ideal without being abstract.”

In considering the cinematic affection-image, we can remember the tripartite structure of the movement-image, where perception-image and action-image form a movement of translation between impulse (perception) and reaction (action). Affection-image, in turn, does not translate this movement outwards but turns it into “internal”, qualitative, reflecting element. In human terms the face is the principal area of concentration for affection. It has sacrificed its mobility in favor of expression. Because what it expresses is the affect, which as we discussed above is ultimately non-personal, the advantage of the cinematic affection-image is to enable the detachment of the face from purely personal or circumstantial coordinates. In cinema the close-up’s expression is abstracted from particular situation and comes to express pure qualities – affects in themselves. What we see on the screen is the face = the affect = pure quality.