Date: Wed, 12 Apr 1995 00:13:32 +1000
From: mmcmahon-AT-extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Melissa McMahon)
Subject: Re: The dual requirement


malgosia writes 10/4/95:
>Where does this dual requirement come from?  Let us say that the
>requirement of continuity comes from the fact that the film expresses
>the changes of a whole, or that the film expresses the movements of a
>single conciousness.  Then what about the discontinuity requirement,
>what is _its_ source?  I assume that it has to do with something other
>than economics.

The passage from Deleuze suggests that the 'parts' exert as much of a
demand (on the shot) as the whole - I think it is important to think of the
whole and the parts as the _two_ 'faces' or 'directions' of movement - the
way you have expressed things above tends towards the idea that the whole
is the 'basis' or the 'weighted' half of the movement (which then requires
some kind of additional or outside force to get it off the ground). In any
case, the reason why there are these two 'pulls' is because it is just as
much a characteristic of the whole to divide and differentiate itself
(changing at every division), to articulate itself in its parts as it is
for the articulated parts to reunite in the whole (which is not a
homogenous melting-pot, but, let's say, the 'being' of becoming (as the
parts are the becoming of being)).

> ... What would it mean to make this film as one
>continuous analytic sequence shot?  I imagine that it would involve,
>of necessity, showing the two threads as taking place within one
>geographic entity -- the earth, or some mythical single land -- an
>entity which, as a whole, would be accessible to the camera.  Now would
>that be a proper expression of that whole which is the _real_ whole behind
>the film -- the ideological connection between the two threads, the
>illumination of one by the other, etc.?   And if the answer is "no",
>is it this "no" that is the source of the discontinuity requirement?

I think it is a matter of treating or thinking the 'cinematographic whole'
as an 'analytic sequence shot', rather than actually having to _make_ a
film as a single sequence shot (I'm not really sure what is meant here by
'analytic', but I can only guess it means divided or cut up, which
reinforces the idea that it is not about an uncut sequence, but rather
treating any film from the point of view of continuity, 'pretending' it is
one shot).

But the question remains as to whether a single shot-sequence film would
adequately express the 'real' whole, and I don't think it would. In the
first place, sequence-shots don't exclude the out of field - the camera
usually at least moves and even if it didn't and all the action took place
within the frame you'd arrive at that kind of stagey thing we mentioned
before where the relation to the out of field is in some ways made more
radical. In other words, a film where you are shown 'everything' (ie the
whole) seems _essentially_ inconceivable: in fact the attempt to show the
whole' put in this way, is the same (impossible) project as trying to
construct a completely closed ensemble. It is because the whole is the
principle of the Open (and, later, the Outside) that it can never be
completely given, or completely 'expressed' (which would Close things off
as it were, or make everything Inside). The Whole would be the 'absolute'
out of field that makes _both_ the field and the ordinary out-of-field
possible.

- Melissa






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