I am going through another Deleuze phase. And this time, I am trying to decipher his writings on film. The french philosopher, certainly one of the most important Western thinkers of the last century, has left us with two incredibly dense tomes: Cinema 1: Movement-Image (which I am currently reading) and Cinema 2: Time-Image. In the quite useful handbook Gilles Deleuze: Key Concepts, one can find this summary of his thinking on film: "For Deleuze, the cinematic apparatus functions as a translator of the movements of images and consciousness of perception within temporal modalities of worlds (real, imagined, past, present and future)." (144)
He describes movement as a "translation in space" (18, French edition) and defines cinema as a "system that reproduces movement appending it to arbitrary moments" (15). The most interesting passages in Cinema 1 are the ones where he directly applies his philosophical concepts to specific films. In the book's third chapter Montage, Deleuze identifies four different stylistic approaches to montage: the "organic approach" of the école américaine, the "dialectic approach" of the école soviétique, the "quantitative approach" of the école française d'avant guerre, and the "intensive approach" of the école expressioniste allemande (47).
So let's follow his train of thought and reconsider some classics of world cinema through the deleuzian lens using some of his concepts, starting with Sergei Eisenstein's two-parter Ivan The Terrible.
With Eisenstein, "the oppositional montage replaces the parallel montage under the dialectical law of one unity that splits to form a new elevated unity", writes Deleuze (52). In other words, Eisenstein, contrary to D.W. Griffith, recognizes that the different elements of a story are not given axioms but result from opposition. "Griffith ignores that the rich and the poor are not intrinsic individual phenomena but result from one common cause: social exploitation" (50). The forward momentum of Eisenstein's stories, according to Deleuze, depends on two opposing elements that add up to a new plot point. "Opposition defines the progression of the dialectical unity from its initial situation to its final situation" (52).
Story is spiraling from a beginning to an end, always propelled by opposition. That in itself is nothing new to people who study screenwriting theory, but Deleuze finds an interesting angle: this story spiral, undulating thanks to opposition, expresses "genesis, growth and development" (51) on a social level, not a personal one. Story jumps from one level to the next thanks to a social dialectic that combines two situations to express and explain a new setting. Such an approach is a pretty good way to represent history in cinematic terms, and it's certainly not a coincidence that Eisenstein's most successful films deal with historical movements that slowly transformed society over time.
In Ivan The Terrible Part I, a terrific film, maybe my favorite Eisenstein, one doesn't have to look any further than the very first scene to find a practical example of all this theoretical babble. Ivan crowns himself under the watchful eyes of his cousin who opposes the crowning because she wants to see her own son on the throne, and the parents of his fiance who favor his political ascension. Different dignitaries comment the proceedings: his ambition to unify Russia will never be accepted by the other European emperors. On the other hand, if he is strong enough, he can impose his will on all the doubters.
The dialectical spiral begins to spin when the boyars who feel bereft of the throne openly defy him, Karzan declares war on Moscow, and his closest ally betrays him when Ivan seemingly succumbs to a fatal illness. The main through-line here is Ivan's quest to unify Russia. The film is then divided in several elongated sequences that all result from what came before. Every sequence channels opposition so as to shape a new setting from which Eisenstein spins yet new conflict, etc. The plot advancement that traces Ivan's development from an overly confident and ambitious political leader to a man forced to exile and tormented by doubt, all of which is defined by his opposition to the boyars, never relies on personal conflict between the characters. It is social conflict that is at stake here, and Ivan goes from attempts at political compromise with his enemies in Part I to "their social and physical extermination" (53) in Part II.
Indeed, Ivan Part I and Part II can themselves be seen as dialectic entities that push forth the character Ivan's narrative. At the end of Part II, Ivan sits on the throne and proclaims that his "hands are free", meaning that the boyars have been defeated and with them any movement against his plan to unify Russia. Part I shows us how Ivan goes about it on a geopolitical and imperialist level. Part II focuses on spiritual and social issues. But to achieve his goal, Ivan must get all his ducks in a row - politically, as well as spiritually. In that, Part I and Part II are opposing forces that help the spiral turn further.
Even Sergei Prokofiev's edifying score plays along. Dramatic scenes are frequently accompanied by upbeat music, whereas lighter moments are burdened with solemn orchestration. Rather than go for the obvious, the underlying meaning of a scene emanates from the opposition of action as seen on screen and the accompanying score. Where both don't match in a traditional sense, there is tension. And tension means dramatic momentum.
Of course, Eisenstein's film is a lot more complex than this write-up makes it seem. It is interesting enough though that Deleuze finds philosophical terms to express what are essentially screenwriting techniques that use protagonist/antagonist tropes to stage conflict that must be overcome by the hero. Hollywood has, of course, vulgarized this storytelling device, and, for the most part, usurped any wider social and/or political considerations. The difference is mainly that Hollywood is obsessed with the potent hero who alone steers the fate of the narrative, while Eisenstein is less interested in individuals than in social movements that are anonymous and can't be grasped through individual destinies. Ivan The Terrible stands as an oddity in Eisenstein's filmography in that regard. Wholly focused on one man's deeds, the director abandoned the detached narration of October or Strike!. But more than characters, the individuals in Ivan are stand-ins for social movements, caricatures, tropes that express an idea, not a psychology.
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