The Cinema, or The Imaginary Man Edgar Morin Translated by Lorraine Mortimer Bibliotheek Theaterwetenschay ilm-en Televisiewetenschap Uva Niewve Deelensriat 16 1012.CP Amsterdam“Fichck wm cng pe i Fecha no magn i Simp an es de Mit 150. 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Bata MatsaContents 13 ar 85 7 149 im 201 219) 229 268 287 Translators Acknowledgments ‘Tanalator Introdaction The Cinema, or The Imaginary Man: sn Bisa in Sociological Anthropology Prologue 1. The Cinema, the Aigplane 2, The Charm ofthe Image 5, Motamomphoss of the Cinematograph into Cinema 4. The Soul of the Cinema 5. Objetive Presence 6. The Complex of Dream and Reality 7.Binh of aR Langue 8, The Semi-imaginary Reality af Man ron, Blossoning of a Author's Preface tothe 1978 Edition Notes Bibliography Index of Names CitedTranslator’s Acknowledgments 1 people have helped this translation come to lif. swould like to thank Barrett Hodson for first drawing ry attention to the original French text, Johann Arnason, for exposing me to more of Morin's oeuvre, and students in the departments of cinema studies and sociology and anthropology a¢ La Trobe University, Melbourne, who have found Morin’ work both wseful and inspiring, I was foren- nate to be able to refer to the Spanish translation of the book by Ramén Gil Novales, published én. 1972, Dana. olan generously passed on dralts of his own translation of three chapters ofthe book, completed when he was a grad- uate student. Chantal Babin worked with me on translation Aifficutes throughout, and Fuyuki Kurasawa worked on carly chapters, helped mold my conviction that Morin's work should be better known in the English-speaking world, and chen found me a publisher: It would be hard to ask for more! Inthe end, of course all decisions regarding translation are my own, and any errors come back to me. Glenda Ballantyne compiled the indes. Library staff at La Trobe University, Eva Fisch in particular, provided on going, indispensable research support. [also want to thank Alin Masson, Faye Ginsburg, David MacDougall, Wendy Haslem, Simon MeLean, Gabrielle Murray, Wayne Lynch,| Trmaatars Aebnoedgments Cass (especialy for the tables) and Declan Mortimer Fippe, and Charis Eipper, among others to0 numerous to mention ‘Mention must be made of Edgar Morin himself, who was supportive of the project from start to finish. I have Luenefited greatly from engagement with his work—indeed, have needed irto be there. So it sa pleasure ro he able ro present ths translation asa gesture of appreciation. Translator’s Introduction “The purvons and distinctions within the human sciences rovent us fom grasping the profound continsity between ‘magi, sentiment, and reson although this contradictory soit isthe Goran knot of all anthropology: [Magi and sentiment ae also means of knowing And our ritional conceps se thersselvs stil imbued with magic, as Mauss observed agar Morin, Le cna on Pbanoe imagine sa antbrpaogiecgiue, VRS ett ffm tryin ce 1970, 1981 came across Edgar Morin’s The Cinema, or The Imaginary Man was to be soxprised by a plenitude. After May 1968, a politicization oF a discipline had begun. Film studies sowghe legitimacy in the academy and a “seicntic” status, The old impressionistic, “romantic” eriticism had to go, and inspired by Louis Althusser brand of Marxism, film scholars advo~ cated a kind of surgical practice, one tha tended to ext ot the hear, soul, even the gus of the film experience to get to the cancer of Ideology. With Dr. Lacan assisting, they be- gin to treat the radically debiologized subject/spectator as an effect ofthe film text, all (unconscious) mind, stripped of flesh, poetry, skeprcism, and imagination. In the attempt to‘examine and expose the ways that ideologies that enslave us are in the very air we breathe, many theorists practiced what ‘Morin has described as “ideological immunology," barring enemy ideas as though they were viruses, refusing to recog nize common ground with an opponent for fear of eontam= ination or recuperation—fearing complicity hecause they did rot know how toe comples.? Inhisintellectual autobiography, Mes démons, Morin tell us about an incident ata gathering of French intellectuals around 1960, when he declared his love of westerns and an indignant Lucien Goldmann leapt to the platform to explain that the western was “the worst of capitalise mystiications destined to anaesthetize the revolutionary consciousness of the working class."’ Goldmann, as Morin remembers it, was areeted with thunderous applause. Aer the appearance of Morin’ book on mass culture, Lesprit de temps, in 1962, Pierre Bourdieu, says the author, tore the book ro pieces for its “two major mystitications”: Morin had claimed that Charlie Chaplin and Edith Piaf were enjoyed across classes and ages and, in Chaplin’ ease, across societies, and he was suit of concealing the fact that mass culture was “a strument of alienation at the service of capitalism to divert the proletariat from its revolutionary mission." In The Cinema or The Imaginary Man, Motin had seen Charlie Chaplin as the exemplary test ofthe universalites involved in cinema Chaplin she first eestor ofall sime who wagered om uni ‘verality—oa the child, His films... have been welcomed and accepted. by als, blacks, whites the lest, and the illiterate. The nomads of Irn, the children of join Elie Faure and Louis Dellue ina parsiipsion and an lundrstandng thats, ifmoe the sae, a est common’ Tf not the same, at least common—a way of thinking in which different audiences, different groupings, ate seen to hhave a separateness and a relation (o one another. Those in| Translators Iroduction | high society and those excluded from society could love the cinema equally. Although he did not use the label at that ime, Morin was already considering cinema as acomple phenomenon and was struggling against the “paradigm of disjunction/reduetion/ simplification which leads us to shatter and mutilate the ccomplesity of phenomena.” It mattered that the participant investigator Morin and his object of investigation, film, were not respected by intellectuals who wanted to revolutionize the world in dhe 1960s, just as it mattered that a Marxist avant-garde in the 19705 and 1980s often accorded little respect to spectators and their films, deforming both to fit their theories, But more is at stake here than film aad fn viewing. Mutilating thought is not inoffensive. In the end, ‘the willingness to reduce and mutilate, to refuse complexity, can cost ives. Complexity isan intellectual practice, a world= view, a polities, and an ethie. In Introduction 2 le pense com plese, Morin stated his eredo, reiterated in various forms in various of his works and informing them all: he believes that the less mutilaing « thoughe is, the less i will mutilate ‘humans. Simplifying visions have brought abour devastation snot only in the intellectual world but in life: “Much of the suffering that millions of people ae subjected to results from the effects of fragmented and one-dimensional thougiht.”” Beginning with his study on Germany and its people in the aftermath of che war in Liam sire de Allemagne, Morin’ ‘oeuvre, alays radically democratic in complexion, has en- tiled an ongoing dialogue between the “humanities” and the “sciences.” He has written on contemporary life, pop ular culture, fundamental anthropology, ecology, scientific ‘method, and politics? A young member of the French Resistance, Morin had been a war-formed Commonist, Fis Anzcritipu in 1959 ered the milestones along the road to his break with communism, his “imid cultural resistance,” his own and other anti-Stalinist dissidents’ growing. inabil~ lay to continue with the Party, feeling what Solzhenitsynto | Thaler’ Introduction would later formulate as an imperative: “Do not participate in lies® Abiding by such an imperative meant refusing ‘Manichaean thinking and polities, organizing against the Algerian war, but intellectually and morally refusing wncon= ditional support for the Front de liération nationale, Not parccipating in lies meant refusing (existentially comforting) political absoluisins that offer relief from conradietion and complexity. (In relation to Algeria refusing support for the FLN in ts use of terrorist tactics meant being denounced as atmitoe and collaborator by many on the French Left." S did refusing the “reenchancments” offered by Mais, Viet= ccongism, and “Althusseran neodognnatism. jnst a Prench affair. Where the French academic Left went, much of the Western Left followed) ‘Morin’ refusal 10 reduee and mutilate, aspiring to truth and totality while recognizing that totality is impossible and uncertainty our lor (what he calls his “mission impassi ble”), takes place in a context, is played out againsta back drop, thats dramatic in itself For all our incertitude, there is one certainty humans ean count on—death. Resistance to the cruelty of the world is the most profound and primor= dial oF resistances. Asin Camus, a keen appreciation of the rateriality of existence, ofthe concrete and the sensuous, sits with the everspresent consciousness of our unearned death penalty. In Mes démons, when Morin describes what his family taught him, i isthe aromas, tastes, and textures ‘of the Mediterranean that figure strongly. During his im= smersion in the popular culture of Paris’ Ménilmontant, ‘where he became addicted to the cinema, his father’s songs ‘were a part of every life. One popular song in particule, “El Reliquaro,” came to resonate, he recalls, with “infinite Jove and ioremediable death,” His mother died when he was nine years old, and he learned that all that was dearest "This was not to him was fragile, perishable, and would ultimately vanish, ‘Years later, part of his confronting theoretical and existen- til complexity was to throw off che “explcative armory” of ‘Transatr Ptrution | 20 classial science that offered some protection against this fact. It meant abandoning the ideology of Christianity and ‘Western humanism that man is above nature, andl ie meant recognizing the omnipresence of contradiction, the nor~ smality of chanee, and the fact cat “all thats sod melts into sin" We are not on firm ground at the center ofthe world, bbue om a lying earpot” in a marginal galaxy. ‘This notion of man, doomed to die and lost in space, is already expressed toward the end of Morin’ second book, Libornne et la mort, published in 1951." What is ahead of imvsense connie death, tha of world witht lions and aillions of star, ts ncbulte tht speed hy one another at neters per second its suns that extinguish themselves, esplode,disincgeate; world chat «expe like a bubble, universally toward adeath nto which ‘everything vanishes." ovens of thousands of kil I isas though Morin evokes here what will appear inf metaphor a few years later with James Dean in Rebel ithour 18 Cause (1955), with his character's moment inthe planetar~ jum—the immensity and the ineorabily of the universe, the protagonist so small, solitary, andl vulnerable but fll of life Morin ends L'bomme eta mort with the final lines of Percy Shelley’ Prometbens Unbound. In the context of the mass crlture ofthe 1950s jt was Dean, “the Shelley of mass eu ture,” who embodied “the myth of total life" His rage 10 live (La fureur de ziove was the French title for Rebel) in- volved the “anthropological revole” Morin admired and felt. It was in writing Lbomome et la mort that Mosin created his sransdiseiplinary culture that would inform Tbe Cinema, or ‘The Imaginary Man. ‘To write the earlier book, he needed 10 clahorate an “anthropo-scial” conception of two neglected aspects of anthropology that the problem of death threw into relief the biological reality othe human being, mortalst | Trnaators Introduction like all other living beings, and the human reality of myth and the imaginary, which posited life beyond death, ‘He used the word anzrapulogy in the German rather than the Anglo-Saxon sense. Unlike disciplines that carved up into sections the understanding ofa phenomenon, anthropology considered history, psychology, sociology, economies, and so ‘0n as components or dimensions ofa global phenomenon, ach phenomenon had to be considered ‘in its fundamen- tal unity here man) and in its no less fundamental diversiy (men of different character, different envionment, diferent societies, different civilizations, different epochs, etc." Te was Mars’s Keonomic and Philesophical Momuscripts that got Morin interested in anthropology inthis sens, in the ‘dea of natural and cultural, generic man. ‘There being no ‘wall between nature and culture, the sciences of man and nature had to embrace each other. It was from Marx that he ‘was convinced ofthelimited utility ofthe various disciplines and the need to seize on anthropo-social problems in their ‘multidimensionaliy- Marxism was thus an opening rather than a closure for him. Whereas official Marxisms were ex- clusive and excluding, Morin declares that his own was inte _gative and ensured that in a book like L?homome etl mort he ‘was not turned away from any school of thought. Morin speaks ofa “science” of man to insist on the nec- esity of empirical verification.” Striving for thought that is as litte mutilating and 25 rational as possible, he wants “to respect the exigencies of investigation and veriieation proper to scientific knowledge and the exigencies of refiee- tion proposed by philosophical knowledge." Order, elar- ig, distinction, and precision area part of complex thought, but complex thought calls into question hyperspecializa~ tions that mistake the parceled up, neatly packaged theories and moslls of the real forthe ral itself, mistaking discipli- nary boundaries for bounclaris in reality, blinding ws ro the ‘complexity of the real and often rationalizing the irrational. In tune with Frankfurt school thinkers Horkheimer, ; | | | | | | | Adorno, and Marcuse, Morin does not jettison the category cof reason but insists on the necessity of reason questioning itself, knowing that reason can carry within itself is own, recognizes irrationality and dialogues with the wnrationalizable™ true rationality “is profoundly tolerant in regard to mysteries.” “False rationalig;” on the other hand, has always treated as “primitive,” “infantile,” or *prelogical” populations display ing « complexity of thought, not only in relation to the technical butin the knowledge of nature and in myths. As hae emphasized in Pour sorir du vingniome stl, “The struggle _aquinse rhe rationalization, reification, deifaton, instramental- sation af razon i he very task of pon rationality." His fel ing for the value and importance of lteraure, says Morin, was all the more acute once he recognized ehe limits of the human sciences. For him it was writers such as Dickens and Balzac who did justice to the complexity of everyday life, Indeed, he suggests that it was the “mystiel epileptic reactionary," Dostoyevsky, rather than all che great secular thinkers, who had more clearly seen the fanatieal spirit of Bolshevism before ir eame into being (One of the most potent truths in Morin’ book about death concems the way we live: the human being inhabits the earth not just prosaieally but poetically. Myth and the imaginary are not just superstractures, vapors, Human real- ity is itself semi-imaginary. Myth and the imaginary have a :adical place in Morin complex anthropology, which never ‘sees man principally defined by technique and reason, Home npiene an Hom fberace also Homo denen et laden. Mfc tivity and the “lived poetry ofthe surrealist are a the heart ‘of his anthropology? [At the core of Lhmme et le mares the notion of partic- pation, a central activity in The Cinema, or The Imaginary ‘Man an what slater to be thought of as complex thought. Morin borrows the term from anthropologist Lévy-Bruhl, ‘who tried to seize archaie man inthe infinite cosmic richness ‘worst enemy, rationalization." Tive rationel | Trantor: Itreuction of his participations.” Before Lévi-Strauss’ “cerebral sav= fage” was participating “primitive” man, for whom the risk ‘of death was a part of life, who lived the poetic and the pro- sic, who could believe in and act ont the crossing of bound aries between separated parts ofthe world: “Games, dances, ae veritable mimes of the cosmos. ‘They imitate the ere= ation of the world, an original unity and indetermination, as Mircea Eliade and Roger Caillois discovered in thir differ- ‘ent ways." Morin elaborates his conception of anthropo- cosmomorphism, a conception that will also be fundamental 1 his work on the cinema shimself ‘Through the subjectivity of parsiipation, ma analogous with the world and this is wht we eal the cos sxomorphism ofthe “primitive” or the cil tthe sare kim, he perceives the world as aninuated by passions, d= sires, quas-human elings, and thats anchrapomorpis Andhropomoephism and costomorphism simultaneously tnd inetically return man to nature and nature to man" ‘Myth isthe iruption of the cosmos in man. Legends, with their metamorphoses, suppose the analogy of man and the world. When he later retumed to his 1957 book, The Stars, Morin repudlaced the tone of superior irony he had occasionally adopted, rightly persuaded that one must never be insolent tr eondescending in regard to @ phenomenon studied. He had nevertheless written the original hook s “an author who lives in che myths he is analyzing." ‘This is perhaps never more apparent than in his analysis and appreciation of the phenomenon of James Dean. In [homme et le mort, Morin ‘had put forward the notion of the secrets of adolescence and ‘maturty"Phe mature works of great writers often presented «kind of nirvanian vision, a contemplative wisdom, seren- ity, an acceptance ofthe nacuralnes of death. The secrets of ‘maturity involved “the confident acceptance of cosmic re pose, a positive annihilation in Being.” But even in maturity «negation ean appear “# youth of spit and heart eapable of silencing the soothing secrets of harmony.” Even at the brink of death, “revolt and the secrets of adolescence make themselves hear." “Adolescence” involved movement, the conquering activity of individuality. ‘The poet Rimbaud bad illuminated Morin’ own adolescence, and Rimbaud was still dear to him. Revurning to Lhonomeet a mort 1970, Morin wrote of the need to restructure the categories of adolescence and age so that we might try to combine the seerets of ado- lescence and the seerets of maturity, instead ofeach chasing away the other in the model of the “techno-bourgeois” adult. This techno-hourgeais adul, who has put aside in fancile and archaic enthusiasm and wonder, has arguably been the dominane model for the “man of reason. For Morin, James Dean was “a pure hero of adolescence” inhi real and his sereen life, expressing the needs of adoles- cent individuality, which, asserting itl, soulskling and specialized life tht lie ahead. The demand sed to aceept the norms of the for toa ite, the ques for the absokite is every human himself fram the nest of nly only to se before individuals demand when e ta childhood and the chains ofthe im the new ins ad mutilations of soil if Hee quotes critic Frangois ‘Truffaut, who would later help usher in the New Wave of cinema: Ia James Dean, today’s youth discovers itslé. Less for the reasons usally advanced: violence, slim, Iystesia, pess- msm, erly, adil, than for others nfnitely more sm= ple snd commonplace: modesty of felng, continual fantasy life, moral purity wichous elation to everyday maralisy bat all the more rigorous ternal adolesent love of tests and tras, intoxication, pride, and regret at feng oneself “out- Side” society, refusal and desire to become integrated and, Finally accepeance—or refesal—of the world ain5x | Traaltors Introduction In Dean the link hetween the most intense aspiration to life and the greatest chance of death are lived out, Perhaps ‘one sentence inthe James Dean essay in The Stars encapst- lates Morin’ diagnosis of adulthood in the 1950s: “Finally the adult of our middle-class bureaucratized society i the ‘man who agrees to live only alte in order not to die a great deal”* Dean the actor died arhigh speed, Rimbaud the poet ‘umned to trade, Ie was left to Morin the searcher/researcher 1 try to combine the secrets of adolescence and maturity. After World War I, when Rimbaud’ “Season in Hell." che desire “to live in intensity and plenitude,” had served as Morin’ and his comrades’ gospel, Morin had faced failure in “normal” adult life. When he had the good fortune t0 center the Sociology Section of the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) in 1950-1, having exchuded himself from the “bourgeois” and Stalinist worlds he lacked the courage, ashe tells us in his preface to the 1977 edition of Tbe Cinema, or The bmaginary Man, co take on 2 “socio- logically virulent, decay politicizabe subject.” He would write about cinema, a “refuge” subject, but far more than that. Ifcinema was a marginal subject, epiphenomenal for a “sociologist” and seemingly fr from the realities of cold war life, ie nevertheless brought him back to Ais «xm if. There ‘was something physical about the possession involved in cin= ‘ema. He remembered certain films from his teenage years witha hallucinatory intensity Beginning with the idea of surveys, audiences, contents, n= fluence, the scuff of sociology, Morin knew that considering ‘cinema 3s a mass medium and a sociological phenomenon hid the lived aesthetic situation of the fil speetator which was essential to the fil experience, We live inthe cinema in a state of double consciousness, participating and skeptical. It ‘was not that a “sociological” approach had 10 simplify, re- luce, and mutilate films and their spectators, Morin planned Tronaaors ntroetion | ash The Cinema, or The Imaginary Man asthe first volume of _work whose second volume would be “historico-sociological,” inserting the cinema in its “cultura/social problematic.” But to consider cinema as a complex phenomenon meant in- terrogating its very magic. What interested Morin was the modernity of our century and the archaism of our minds. ‘Homo sapiensfaber/demens was a “producer of fantasies, myths, ideologies, magies™"—and the imaginary reality of the cinema and the imaginary reality of man constituted a fertile starting point for Morin, Near the end of The Cine ema, or The Pnaginary Man, he says lictivey everthing enters us is retained, aniipaed, comnicates hy way ofmagesmore of lesinfated by the imaginary. This inaginary complex, which assures and de- ‘ths participation atthe same sine, constitute a placental secretion dhatenvslops and nourishes ws. Fen inthe state of waksflness and even outside of any spectacle, man walls, solitary, serounded bya loud of images, his *an- asi.” And not only in these daydreams: he loves vat he believes to be of fash and teats are animated postcard, Aelrions representations. Images slide baewoon his percep tion and himself, they make him sce what he wants to se. “The substance ofthe imaginary is nixed up with oat ie of ‘the soo, our afetve realty? ‘One of the most erucal “complications” in talking about fil isthe problem of specificity. Ateempting to theorize film, we seem impelled to talk ahout ourselves, those who respond to film, This was no problem for Morin, for whom participation wasalready a crucial central extegory who would Tater go on, in his complex though, to stress the importance ‘of considering the relation of phenomena and environments, investigator and phenomenon, as opposed to closed systems, distinct essences an substances. Inthe prologue to The Cin- ‘oma, or The imaginary Man, be argues thatait | Toumlators Introduction the art of enema and the indy of film are only he parts that hae emetged to our consciousness of a phenomenon ‘we mastery to grasp in its alla. Bar che submerged part this obscure obviousness, confounds itself with our own human substance—itself obvious and obscure, like dhe beat ‘of ur heat, the passions of our sul. This is why, as Jean vedo not know all we do not know” ofthe Epstein su, cinema. Let us add or rather deduce: we donot even know what we know oft A membrane separates Hm cinema graphic fom Home sapien. As it separates ont ie fromm To question the cinema, to envisage it in ity human ‘oul, thats the intention of our researeh, Hit sems too mio, then isthe need for truth itself that would be too ambitions. ‘Morin set out on his mission impossible, aided and sus- tained by companion poets filmmakers, and original thinkers from various disciplines. He sensed a profound lnk between the world of cinema and the kingdom of the dead. For him as for many others, the cinema resuscitated the archaic uni- verse of doubles. IF the double is the one great universal smyth, the latent myth of the cinema isimmoreaity. The threat and promise of death-renaissance comes with this territory ff shadow and light. Cinematic vision has its basis in the archaic vision of the world, where “all metamorphoses are possible and effective within an immense fluid relationship ‘where living or ative things that are notenclsed in the pris: ‘ons of objectivity and identity bathe, Metamorphosis «ri uumphs over death and becomes renaissance” (see chapter 3). ‘The idea that the past does not disappear but takes refuge somewhere is there in every souvenir, says Morin, TThe most banal photographs can recall a presence, an emo= tion, a tenderness. We can warm ourselves in the presence ‘on film of those we eae for: The image can scm animated with life more insnse or more pro found than realy, and even, on the brink of hallucination, fn possesion of supernatualife. Then a free as pose ful as death eats from i, sometimes 2 Proetan power of time recovered, sometimes asprtualist power. tis aif Jinan the eed that bales against the erosion of time fixes ielin a privileged manner upon dhe image chapter 2) Projection, or alienation, being fundamental human pro- cesses, the difference between “pathological” and “normal” doubling lies in the degree of alienation. There being no * pure” perception, stripped of afect and interpretation, veri able hallucinations can be mixed in with our perceptions Gee chapter 5). We can go so far a5 to projeet our own individ ual being into a hallucinatory vision, where a corporeal spec ter appears to us. The image, suggests Morin, contains the magical quality of che double, but interiorized, ascent, and subjectivized, The double possesses the psychic, affective ‘ality of the image but in an alienated, magieal form. Be- ‘ween the poles of the magical double and the image-emotion| lies a Guid, sneretic zone that we call the domain of sen- timent, the soul, the heart: In this incermediate zone, so important in our evolved civilizations, ancient magic is cease lessly reduced to sentiment or the aestheic; new feling, in its youthful impetuosty, ceaselessly tends to alienate itself in magic, but without completely succeeding” (chapter 2). Morin suggest that the properies thar seem to belong t0 che photo are the properties of or mind dat have ied themselves cere and thai sends back tow. Instead of searching ithe photo ripe thing for the so bows and profoundly human galt of phatogéne, we must come baek o man The rch ness of he photograph isin face all hat is noe there, bur that we projet oF fx ont it (ehapter 2)Bur this isnot the end ofthe story: The cherm ofthe image, the phenomenon of pbutagénie, which so compelled earlier French writers, along with the general population is not ex- plained away. There is still a mystery tothe way that every~ day objects and persons seem poetic and moving, “made sublime” and “teansfigured” by being photographed (chap- ter 2) Souriau wrote ofthe “almost congenital” marvelous- ‘ess of the filmic universe Gee chapter 1). For Moussinac, the cinematographic image maintained contact with the rel and transfigured the real into magic (See chapter 2). Morin notes that we have the word magic surrounded by a cortege ‘of “bubble” words like marvelous and anneal, words that lburst when one tries to grasp hold of them, But this is not Fhecause they are meaningles; rather, their meaning cannot be pinned down. They express the helpless desire to express the inexpressible Morin mentions commentators for whom film brings “feeling,” a ait" a “return” toward ancestral affinities of sensibility) The spectator, suggested Epstein, was taken back to *the old animistic and mystical order” (ee chapter 3). Bilinsky saw film as “the greatest apostle of animism” (see chapter 3). Once again, Morin invokes Lévy-Bruhl’ con- ception of archaic societies. The foundations of “cinematic” vision share the features of magical visions ofthe world where the world isin man and man is spread throughout the world ‘Things can be charged with human presence and man ca be charged with cosmic presence. (‘The cinema “gives sod said René Chat, “tothe cabaret, the room, a bottle, a wall”! See chapter 3.) Ie a commonplace of cinema forthe en- twined bodies oflovers to metamorphose into waves crashing ‘onto rocks. The human face hecomes a medium “Ieexpresses storms at sea, the earth, the town, the factory, revolution, ‘war. The fice isa landscape” (chapter 3). Anthropomorphism and cosmomorphism are two moments or poles ofthe same comple. And atthe source of anthropo-cosmomorphism are processes at the heart ofthe cinema experience. In the 1950s films Rebel without a Cause and Kast of Eden, the charaeters played by James Dean are relatively good boys who want to respect and be respected by their fathers. In terms of narrative resolution, these films ae conservative tales. But through processes of projeetion and ideneific tion, moments of refusal, of vulnerability, youthful beauty and energy garbed in a red jacket, can come to stand for “anthropological revol,” which stil means something to cinemagoers in the new millennium, Projection i bil into ‘our very perception. In identification, the subject, instead of projecting himself onto the world, absorbs the world into himself One again, rather than conceiving of these pro- cesses in isolation, we may better think of them in terms of reciprocal transfers—it makes more sense to speak of a pprojeetion-identiicaion comple: Between magic and aubjectivty spreads an uncertain neb- sl, which goes bayond man, without, however, detaching ‘set fom him, We refer to or designe is manifestations with words of soul, hear, feeling. This magma, which has clement of both magic and subjectivity, i nlther magic not subjectivity, properly speaking. Its the kingdom of projection idemifaion orate parca (chapter 8) Neither magic nor subjectivity isan essence. Indeed, any linear, progressive conception of a movement from “magic” to subjectivity” is problematic. “Evolution” tends to disen- chant the universe and interiorize magie, the absorption of magic into subjectivity typifying modernity, but magic re mains in private and public lif, around taboos in relation te sex, death, and social power. Processes of projection- identification are not only at the heart of cinema but at the heart of everyday life, Saree, says Morin, saw the way emo- tion converts itself into magic. All exaltation, lyricism, and lan take onan anthropo-cosmomorphic shading in ther out- pourings, Lyricism naturally takes on the language of magic, nd extreme subjectivity brusquely hecomes extreme magi:xsi | Troaltork Introduction “Our life of feelings, destes, and fears, friendships, love, develops the whole range of projection-idemtfication phe- ‘nomena, from ineffable tates ofthe soul to magical fetish- inations” (chapter 4). When we ae in love we identify with the loved one and project onto him all the love we carry Within ourselves. “His photos, his trinkets, his handker~ cael his house, are all infused with his presence. Inani- mate object are impregnated with his soul and force us to Jove them. Affective participation thus spreads from beings to things and regenerates ftishizations, venerations, and cults” (chapter 4). ‘The idea that we live affectively, poetically, unsuccesflly fashioned into wholly “secular” beings, *techno-bourgeois” adults in a techno-bourgeois world, his profound implica sions. A flag and a fihrer can hecome the site of sensi desires, and fears, symbols of rescue from an ever more rationalizing world. Fortunately, as with his refnsal co reduce mass culture to its posibiltes for what he ealls “low cretinization,” Morin does not completely give over the projection-idenifieaions, “magica” participation processes, to their fascise posites, But he recognizes thei paver A work of fition is itself “a radioactive pile of projection- identifications,” and the cinema offers “cosmic participa- tions ata discount” (chapter 4), ‘The absence of practical participation means an increase in the intensity of affective participation. Isolated and in a group, the spectator is in a situation chat is favorable o suggestion: Se shore he i, led, ue atthe heart of a human envi= ronment ofa great gelatin of common sou, of collective paricipation, which accordingly amplifies his individual participation. ‘When the charms of the shadow andthe double ‘merge on a white sren in «darkened room, forthe spec- tator, dep in his ell, 2 monad closed ff to everything ace the sersen, envelope in the dovble placenta of an nator Intact | sell anonymous community and obscurity, when the channels for action ae blocked, the the Jocks to meh, dream, and rnagie open up. chapter) For Morin, the cinema star is atthe frontier of the 2es- thetic and magie; she or he isthe frit of a particulary vie~ ‘lent projection- identification complex. He says in Tbe Stars "The movies, machines for doubling if, summon the heroic and amorous mythsto incarnation on the screen, tart gain the old imaginary processes of dentication and projection from which gods are bor. The religion of the sas erystl- lings the projstion-iensificatio inherent inal paticipa- tio in ee i= While the star isa specific product ofeapitalsteviliza- ‘ton, linked to contemporary individuality, inereasing ou sl tude and participation at the sime time, he or she responds to deep anthropological needs that express themselves on the plane of myth and religion. Stas are an integral part of an ethic of leisure, born of needs generated in the ewentieth ‘century affirming the personality “beyond the cursed zone ‘of ‘piece-work,' ta the exaltation of those activities which ‘counterbalance and east such servitude into oblivion.” In ‘The Cinema, or The Imaginary Man, Morin writes of the polymorphous character of projection-identifietion. The very word starindicates the imposible, stellar distances that identification can reach across. He notes 1 sce suckeup women loving the tramp they would eck fot the door, industrialists and generals fll of tender fiendship for the vagabond whose el exsteceisheneach ven their contempt: Look at how they all love Chase Cha that ego involvement is move complex chan ie appears tis at play not only in respect tthe hero who ike me, but wo the hero who is unlike me: him srapatetc,adventrous, i, Gelsomina, el Matto, and Zampano! This showssell | Tranaators Introduction fe, and joy me salen trapped, «servant of he sate. Te can also apply tothe criminal othe ous although, on another level, the worthy antipathy of honest people on- ‘dens ht when he commis che et that sisi their pro found longings (chaprer 4) In one of his most knowingly delirious essays ina Iter ‘edition of The Stas, Morin expresses his own fascination ‘with Ava Gardner, "the great mother gouldess of De Rerum [Navura,” fabricated in the Hollywood mold but exploding it, “incamating herself fantastically inthe realist genre of ‘western fli” but making this realism “explode under hee mythic thrust" In keeping with his complex vision of cinema in which the high and the low, the black and the white, the male and the female cross boundaries, Morin notes that this poly 'morphous participation goes beyond the framework of the characters. The techniques of cinema plunge the spectator {nto che miliew and the action ofthe fils. The transforms tion of time and space, along with movements of the cam~ cera and changes of points of view, Morin suggests, pulls objects into an affective circuit: Thus the spectator who sees some farnway automobile race on the sereen is suddenly thrown under the huge wheels of one ofthe cas, scans the speedometer, aks the scoring wheel in hand. He becomes an actor” Lets ade In also becomes, just lit, the ear isl. The eames is everywhere atthe ball: tracking Behind columns, pans, high-angle shoss, sors of musicians, tli aroun a ee ple, The spectator ithe dance, hei the bll, hes the cour, Nor only is this world... acepted 25 she envzonmentin which we temporarily lve, thus replacing our rel physial crvironment, the film theater,” but we are also ourscies ‘his world, we are ourselves this environment, just as we are the stratosphere rocker, che sinking ship (chapter 4)" Trantor Inrouction | axe ‘We participate in a totality of heings, things, and actions thatthe film caries along in is flux. Movement, says Morin, is the key word of his method, bute fs not an abstract prin- ciple. Ie is brought back to man. Humanity here is not “a mystical virte for humanists” (see chapter 8)—projection- identification allows us to bring back fixed things and con= cepmal essences to their human processes, Long before his work on systems theory, eybernetcs, and information the cory, and before his advocacy of la scenza nueva, in his work ‘on einema, Morin is arguing for the significance ofthe fact, ‘hat all mass comes back to energy. We must “Finsteinize” the sciences of man, he argues here (See chapter 8). For amateurs who were also theorists of film, it was as if lm called for an ant-Cartesian method. For Epstein, the ‘inematograph represented the universe as a perpetual, mobile continuity, more uid and agile than directly sensible ‘continuity, where nothing separates mind and matter, where 4 profound identity circulates between origin and end, cause and effect.On film, meramoxphoses of time reveal metamor- pphoses in the universe itself thae generally pass unnoticed, ‘When sped up, noted Blaise Cendrars, the life of flowers is Shakespearean (see chapter 3). Morin draws on Epstein’ Intelligence ene machine ‘The accclerstion of time vis and spisinalies, “Thus, crystals begin tavegetate plans become animals choose their light and their support, exes their vitality in gos tures” The slowing dows of time mortifies and materia ues. "For example, human appearance finds self deprived, in good part, of its spirituality. Thought i exinguished from the glance... In gestures, awhwardness—a sgn of vill the price of iberty— disappears, absorbed by theif lle grace of animal instnc. The whole of man is n0 more than a being of smooth muscles, swimming na dense ene ronment, where deep currents sil ary slong an fashion this clear descendant of ancient marine animal life, oftheeee | Trantor Iniotuction mother waters. Slowed down sill mors, every living substance retuens to i funda cxllodal nate rite tissue.” chapeer 3) scsi, lets is asi Poetic reverie? Morinian myth? In their poetic vision, Epstein and others were expressing the canaecions among. the animal, vegetable, and mineral, beeween the spirivoal and the material, with the human heing corporeally rein- serted in the natural world and the cosmos. When Siegfried Kracauer wrote his theory of film a few years after Morin’ was published, he subtitled ie The Redemptow of Phyvcal Reality.” Acerbie film critic Pauline Kael brilliantly showed. the problemacic narure of ths intelleetual’s anthropomor: ping notion of fil “gravitasing” toward physical reality, having “preferences” of “predilections,” having an afinity with the “Row of lif." Bur again, Kracauer, like Morin, was getting at what we might hea, think, see and feel freshly when involving ourselves in the medium of filin—sights, sounds, thoughts, and feelings that remind us we are not strangers to butatea part of the living animal and vegetable world (afrming our “terranian and cosmic identity, as Morin might later put i). We are conceiving of an wndertandin that protests against the hierarchical and “techno-ourgeo todel of the human and his or her environment. We are ‘conceiving of an cavagy rather than life asa linear progres- sion of atomized individuals toward death, (What Morin says in Terre-Purie [Homeland Barth is apt: “Still today, domi- nant philosophy and anthropology suppress any avareness and any taking into account of the consequences of the liv ing and animal identiy of man, denouncing 2s ierational ‘vitaisen’ or perverse ‘biologisin’ any recognition of our ter- resttal, physical, and biological rootedness."P" Kael placed Kraeauer in “the great, lunatic tradition.” hhow easily one gains entry into that tradition by refusing prevailing insaniies* Te-would be foolish to mistake this enchanted vision, this Morin knows Tensltors reduction | sa reassertion of wonder, for ignorance, fr refusal to consider phenomena in their ambiguity. In talking about partici: pation, projection-identiication, the soul, magic, and the jmaginary, as we are talking about processes rather than. essences, we are not talking about good and bad (epiphe- rnomenal) objets. When civilization can no longer adsere ro ancient magies, says Morin, itll draws on them and nour ‘shes itself on affective and aesthetic participation. Meta- phorically ich, he evokes the richness of the blossoming ‘of hesou, but he ako considers the “hypertrophy,” the “com- placency” and “hypostasis” of what is an “imprecise zone of the psyche," "a metaphor for us to designate unspecified needs, psychic processes" (chapter 4). When the soul mis- takes itself for an essence it cus itself off from communica ton with “the nourishing channels of the universe.” “Our civilization isso smeared with soul,” suggests Morin, “that the spectator, blinded by @ kind of opaque membrane, has become incapable of reeng the film, capable only of feeling ie” (chapter 4), ‘The cinema “everflows" with soul 1k oozes with io the extent thatthe aesthetic of feling bosonic the aesthetic of rage sentiment, to che etent hat the soul ceises co be exaltation and blasioming to become the enclosed garden of inner eomplacences. Lore, passion, csnotion, hear the cinema, ike out world, i al slimy and lachrymal with chem. (chapter $) The reaction against “crude projection-identfiation, the dripping soul,” on the parc of Brecht in the theater, of Bresson in France, Risensten in Russia, Wyler in Hollywood, and Welles wherever he could work, is understandable, Our feelings can deform things, deceive us about people and events. “Te is not by chance,” writes Morin, “that sentiment signifies naiveré or weakness, chat magi signifies error, help lessness, dupery" (chapter 8). But this not the whole story. “The imaginary cannot he dissociated from “human nacure.” For beter and wore, itis martied to material, proctical, andsail | Thanlators Introduction rational man, An integrating and vital part of the human, “it ccnsticutes a veritable seaffolding of projetion-identfication| from which, at the same time as he masks himself, man knows and constructs himself” (chapter 8). ‘Morin’ approach to myth may be contrasted with that of Roland Barthes." Coneemed to account in detail for the “mpstifcation which transforms pesit-hourgeois culture into ‘universal nature," in Myeboleies Barthes had argued that the mythologist had to cut himself off frm the consumers ‘of myth, his relation to the world being of the order of sar asm. While he was aware of the simplifications and re- dductions he was making io relation to the real, his choice was strategic, Desiring a ceconeiliation of men and the “real” description and explanation, abject and knowledge, he nevertheless helieved that the fact that we cannot manage to achieve more than an unstable grasp of reais doubles gives the messure of our preset alienation: we constantly drift beween the object, and its demystifeation, poerles to render its wholeness, For we penetrate the object, we liberate it but we destroy ig and if we acknowledge is ll weight, we respect it, but ve restore it to state which ell mystified. Morin refuses the political strategy adopted in Mythal- gies. Hee shares the notion of powerlessness in relation to totality, and the conception of “navigation” between observer and observed, science and reality, but shrinking or ruling reality o make it amenable to ideologiealinter- pretation and struggle is no solution for him Such an approach to theorizing phenomena, which ate always im- ‘pure, and the refusal to respect phenomens lest they eon~ finue to charm us are alien to complex analysis.” Morin concludes Tie Cinema, or The bnaginary Man by exhorting us to try (question our collectively shared and industrially produced dreams, to reintegrate the imaginary Thamar Intodeton | i {nto our reality: In later work he would elaborate on the idea thae the problem is not w live in some pure reality purged ‘of myth, but to recognize and elucidate the imaginary real- ity of myth and live with myths recognized as myths, having a new relationship with them, possessing them as much as, they possess us. Combating error is less a process of under~ taking naive “demystfcation” than of entering the universe ‘of myths with respec, attention, complexity,” recognizing er reality and their truth, whichis not the same as the truth.* ‘Morin’ conception of the human is close to that of his friend and colleague Cornelius Castoriadis, whom he in- Vokes in Phur sorzir du vingtiéme sgl: Man as Castorns sas, a mad animal whose madness {vented reson. The worst madness would be to think tha ‘we can suppress madness. The ukimate madness is aot to recognize madness. The seeds oF the later ate not onlin the disorders of the human mind, which make it behave cay, but they also allow imagination and invention, ‘Maines is abo in embryo in the nature of reason itl Nonetheless ths reason iat the sae ie what enables ws to struggle agains thi madness” Like Castoriadis, Morin draws on what have been called romantic and Enlightenment traditions. The *heat of our heart, the passions of our soul” cannot he excised from the- ory that sees humans as biological and cultural beings, par ticipaing beings whose existence is rooted ia myth and the imaginary and who are abo capable of self-understanding, Tn Leprie da temps, Morin had argued that it is not only philosophers, writers or blackshire thugs who live out eon- temporary nibilism. Without necessarily knowing it, the masses" are also confronted with the problems faced by Stimner, Marx, and Nietzsche much earlier. In modern lei- sue activities they take part in a kind of game in which it is noe always known who plays and who is played. A vio- lence, a “central ire,” remains inthe “civilized” human, andaie | Traaltors Introduction although mass culture can drug ws, make ws drunk, it eannot cure our “fundamental furies,” only entertain them and pro- ject them in films, sensational news headlines, and so on. ‘Mass culture, which was a produce of mover echnical civilization that brought with i its own abstractions, was at the same time a reaction against a universe of abseract relations. By technical means, it contested the technical hhumanizing, populating, the teehniesl world with the pres- ence of voices, music, images. I dealt with the question of how to live nontechnically in a technicized world. While a kind of prosaic asceticism began to typify many theoretical approaches to the “mystifeations” of mass culare, with is ‘happy endings, stereotypes of romantic love, and ideologies ‘of success (all of which Morin himself had identified and acknowledged), Morin brought back emotion, intensity, and activity into the consideration of mass culture in general and film in particular. A¢ the same time, examining theie role in ineaa meant bringing these elements back into the con- sideration of everyday life ‘Morin is well aware of the dangerous possibilities of participation. If hallucination is a pare of perception, even everyday perception, “possession” is an almost “normal” phenomenon at the heart of strong religious/political he- liefs and accompanying collective ecstsies." Our *fund- mental furies” can make for deadly coekails when mixed with dispossession, disenfranchisement, and our need for participation and communion, Morin has often cited Adorno’ “totality is nontruth” as 4 guiding diceum. Bur in Intraduction a a pense complese, hhe notes that totality i, at the same time, truth and lie. domo, in the wake of Nazism, was allergie ro totality, sus picious of collectivity of any kind. A generation of post- modern theorists have taken Adorno further, critical of his “nostalgic” longing for lost wholeness. longing for unity, ‘myth, the imaginary, and the rerum ofthe biological invokes the specter of fascism for many contemporary intellectuals. Trantor Introduction | xene But the “romantic” Morin is more tough-minded than ‘many postmodern theorists when he refuses 10 alter his ‘conception ofthe human to achieve some kind of imaginary innoculation against tragic outcomes. As Brian Rigby has so aptly putt “In Morin the Romantic affirmation of the self and the Romantic communion with humanity and the eos- sos are combined with the tragie humanism of the Exis- tendalsts."® The acceptance of human tragedy (and the "ragedy of the universe) is for Morin “the condition sine qua ‘on of all anthropolitis."" His stoi romanticism recog- izes that we cannot achieve the dream of eliminating prose and realizing complete happiness on earth, but any complex polities necessitates a fill consciousness ofthe poetic needs ‘of the human being.” In The Cinema, or The Imaginary Man, Morin nores that Lévy-Bruhl endlessly showed that if “archaie” peoples be- lieve that a sorcerer has killed one of their kin, they are nev- ertheless nor ignorant ofthe fact cha the kinsman who had spell put on him was killed, say, by a crocodile inthe river. Although magie is practiced for hunting, there is also fas ‘idious practical preparation of weapons for the kill. Tris our ‘own society chat breaks “the contradictory unity of the prac: tical and the magica, or rather, of that which we henceforth call practical and magical,” although we and our accou- ‘tremens continue to exist and act on both levels (see chap ter 6). The modern West officially separates the “poetry and the “prose” of everyday life, relegating the poctry t0 “private” life. Technology, which has berated many human beings from drudgery, subjects them to new servitdes, t0| the quantitative logic of machines. Bur if we are expected © live in hyperprose, ignoring the fact that we are going t de, the delineations of our lives fashioned by corporations, technoscience, and bureaucracy the poetry docs not goaway. Team take on roxie forms. Morin is not alone in deseribing the double process of the unification and balkanization of the planet, the recur of scient barbarism and ther allianceaavé | Trualtord Introduction with technoscientitic barbarism. Staresman/writer Vaclav Havel evokes our dangerous present and paradoxical situa~ tion, in which “civilization” has essentially globalized only the surface of our lives: Bur our inner self continues to ave a ie of ts own, And the fewer answers the era of ational knowledge provides to the bosie questions of human Being, the move deeply it wuld sem that people behind its ack ast were, ling to the ancient certainties ofthe tbe. Because ofthis indi va cultures rary civilization, are realizing with new urgency their own inner aucononsy and che inner differences of others. C tural cones are increasing and ate understandably more Alangerous today than at any other ime in history. The end ofthe rt of rationalism hasbeen catastrophic: Armed with the same supermodern weapons, often from the same sup- increasingly amped together by contempo- plies, and followed by television cameras, the members of various tba eu are at war with one another By day, we work with satis in the evening we enasale astrologers and fiighton ourselves with thailers about vampires, The abyss between the rational and che spiritual che external tn the internal, che objective andthe subjective, the tech- nica and the mor the universal andthe unique constany rows deeper ‘As Morin puts it in Tere-Patre ‘The betrayal and collapse ofthe poste hope ofthe ive sal eriampl of fatemity has spread a great Blanket of prose coverthe wold. And meansile all around ws, om the euins ‘ofthe poste promise of changing ovr if, ethnic and 3 poeties of commu ows resources strive to regener sal participation.” ‘This dangerous poetry has become even more apparent at the beginning of this new century ‘anstator Tradvction | sect Not long after writing The Cinema, or The Imaginary Man and The Stas, while working on Lepr tomps, Moin col- laborated with anthropologist and filmmaker Jean Rowch ‘on what was to become a landmark “cinema veri mentary, Chronicle ofa Siammer (1960). In this project, which wasboth “ethnographic” and “existential,” Morin and Rouch (ike a “Jerry Lewis-Dean Martin” team), pulled in differ: ent directions. Rouch, Morin has suggested, like a spokes- person for the “life is beautiful” team, veered toward what was “cheerful and lighe" and he toward what was “sad and sorrowful” Turning ethnography on its head and doing participant observation on Parisian, the filmmakers show them eating, drinking, and being merry; people ate bored, lance, ery, argue, hope, and despair, The Algerian war that they ba fiercely hoped! wold end that summer did not end, Instead of harmony, there is discord. Instead of participants coming to affectionate understanding, some become seath- ingly critical of one another. For Morin, the euting down, ‘of more than twenty-five hours of film to one and a half hours was biterly disappointing, indeed a mutilation, and yet Chron remains an unusually powerful document ‘The great Hungarian theorist of film Béla Babies had canecived of the possibility of film as a counter to alien= ation, believing film might play a role in combating the reduetions and occlusions of vital ficets of our being. TF the siscovery of printing had rendered illegible the faces of men and expressive communication had been denigrated among. the educated, film might return us to our “aboriginal mother rongue.”” Bisenstein, Morin notes in The Cinema, or The Imaginary Man, bad seen cinema as the only concrete and dynamic ar capable of “restoring to the intelligence its vital eonerete and emotional sources" (chapter 7). So Morin’ hopes for what cinema verité might achieve were high. Ie might bring us to a “lucid consciousness of brotherhood,” the viewer might find himself "es alien to his fellow man, docucccit | Trot Introduction less iey and inhuman, less encrusted in a false life." Morin asked; “Can't cinema be one of the means of breaking the membrane that isolates each of vs fom others inthe metro, ‘on the street, of on the stairway of the apartment build ing?" If people in the film were asked, “How do you ive?” this might lead us to ask how we cam live, what we ean do, to {question no less than the construction of a new life.” An ‘outrageous and impossible expectation, CChronile grew out of a particular political and historieal ‘moment in Paris, peopled with Left-intelletuals (includ ing a very young Régis Debray), a Renault worker, young |Aican stadents, concentration camp survivors, and former [Resistance militants, Yee when young people in Melbourne, ‘Australia, view the film more than forty years later, people ‘who have never heard of Régis Debray, who know lite about French colonialism and nothing of Marxist theories nation, they are thankful to see it ‘They are surprised by their own engagement with the people inthe film, their intellecual and emotional involvement—they tal about ther vron ies” Tin Luni de Phomme, Morin insists that the unity 10 ‘which he aspires has nothing to do with unification that de~ stroys varity. It can be achieved only amid the blossoming and the eros fertilization of differences. A new civilization ‘cannot be founded on the hegemonie image “of the white, adult, Western man; it must on the contrary reveal and revive the Gvlizational ferment that is feminine, youthful, aged, multiethnic, multicultural. The new society cannot be founded on the homogenizing domination of an empire." ‘Once again, prompred by the viewing of a film, Morin expresses the possibilty of people experiencing sameness and difference, the “if not the same, at least common” of ‘which he writes in Tbe Cinema, or The Imaginary Man. Weis tlkimately what his work is about: ofal Tranlators Introduction | sete Despite the prodigious dispersion of Hem sapiens om the planet for che st fifty to a hundeedthoosaed years, a dise persion through which the color of people’ skin, he form ‘ofthe nose sites, mys, and experiences had dvesfed to the extreme, sil there remained this fandamenal unity of these, and of teas. This fl made me ve subjectively this objective finding. 1 fle profoundly in myself in terms ‘of kinship, that I vas apart ofthese other humans in other respects 0 strange and, 1 express my feeling, let me sy this almost obscene wordThe Cinema, or The Imaginary Man An Essay in Sociological Anthropology| | | | | i | Prologue ining st sone x On ore song nay di plays enormons painted faces, photographs of kisses, cembraces, horse rides, We enter into the darkness of an arti- grotto. A luminous dust is projected and dances on a four grze is nourished there. Ie takes on shape and lite; it draws us into an errant adventure: we cross time and space, until some solemn musie dissolves the shadows on the sereen that has once again become white. We come out, and we tall about the merits and filings of film “The strange obviousness of the everyday. The frst mys- tery of the cinema isin this obviousness. Whar is astonish- ing is that it does not astonish us. The obvious stares us in the face,” inthe literal sense of the erm: i binds us “Let everything said to be normal unsettle you,” said Brecht. Its here thatthe science of man begins. I is here thatthe science of the cinema must begin ‘The artof cinema and the industry of film are only the parts that have emerged to our consciousness of phenom- tenon we must ry to grasp i its fllness. Buc the submerged part this obscure obviousness confounds itself with our own human substance—itself obvious and obscure, lke the beat of our heart, the passions of our soul. This is why, as Jean Epstein said, “we do not know all we do not know” of the cinema,’ Let us add or rather deduce: we do not even know s4 | Prolagve ‘what we know of ft. A membrane separates Homo cinemao~ _grapbicus froma Hlome sapiens. As it separates our life from our “To question the cinema, to envisage it in its human total- ity, that is the intention of our research.’ If i seems 100. ambitious, then itis the need for truth itself that would be 100 ambitions. "The present volume is an attempted elucidation accord ing to a method of genetic anthropology that suffers from ‘ing expounded in astra: it ean be justified only by is effectiveness in rendering the unity and the complexity of the phenomenon studied ‘We have only been able to complete this work thanks ro the Centre national de la recherche scientifique. We thank the CNRS for having allowed us to undertake ie and par sue it within the framework of the research of the Centre <ésudes sociologiques. We thank our colleagues from the cl fifliman and Claude Frere, forthe contin ‘uous assistance they gave us. We thank those who, with their support, provided us with the most precious gift that could ‘he granted to us—confidence and freedom: Messieurs Max Sorte, Exienne Sourian, and, atthe highest level, Georges Friedmann, We are bound by a special gratirude w Georges ‘Friedmann itis natural chat the dedication of this book should go to him. I The Cinema, the Airplane the nineteenth century dies it bequeaths us rwo new ‘machines. Both of them are born on almost the same dlae, a almost the same place, then simultaneously launch theinselves upon the world and spread across continents. "They pass from the hands ofthe pioneers imo those of op ators, crossing a “Supersonic barrier.” The frst machine real- ies at last the most insane dream man has pursued since he looked ae the sky: to break away from the earth. Until then, only the creatures of his imagination, of his desire—the angels—had wings, This need to fly, which arise, well be- fore Iearus, a the same time as the first mythologies, seems toall appearances che most infantile and mad. Ie is alo said about dreamers that they do not have their feet om the ground, Clement Adler® feet, for an instant, escaped the ground, and the dream finally came to life. ‘Ar the same time, an equally miraculous machine pre- sented itself: its wonder this time eonsisted no longer in soar ing into the aerial beyond where only the dead, the angels, and gods sojourned, but in reflecing down to earch reality. ‘The objective eye—and the adjective here carried such a weight that it became substantive'—eaptured life to repro- duce it, to “imprint” it, in the words of Marcel Herbier, Free ofall fantasy this laboratory eye was only finally able co be perfected because it responded to a laboratory needs the6 | The Cinema, the Airplane decomposition of movement, While the airplane escaped from the world of objects, che cinemacograph only attempted to reflect i in order co examine it better: For Muybridge, ‘Marey, Demeng, the einematogeaph and its immediate pre- ecessors such asthe chronophotograph are research instru ‘ments “to study nature’ phenomena," they “render «che samme service as the microscope forthe anatomist.” All che ‘commentaries in 1896 looked toward the scientific foture of the apparatus devised by the Lomigre brothers, who, twenty- five years later, sll regarded the spectacle of cinema as an ecient. ‘While the Lumitre brothers still didnot believe in the cinema future, aerial space was csilized, nationalized, made “navigable.” The aixplane, hobby of the dreamer, hobby= horse of the cavalier of the clouds, let itself he assimilated bythe practical and became the patil means of traveling, ‘of commerce, and of war. Constantly linked to the earth by: radio and radar networks, the “messenger of heaven” has today turned into the courier of the sky, PTT van, public ‘transport, stagecoach ofthe twentieth century? Sel the stuft ‘of dreams, of pioncers and heroes, hut each exploit precedes and points an exploitation. The airplane did notescape the ‘arth, It expanded ita far a the stratosphere, It shrank it ‘The flying machine sensibly took its place in the world ‘of machines, but “works created by the cinema, the vision ‘of the world that they present, went beyond the mechanical ceffeces and all the supports of the film in 2 breathtaking. ‘way. Te is film tha soared, always higher, coward a sky of dreams, toward the infinity ofthe stars—of*stars"—bathed in music, populated by delightful and diabolical presences, ‘escaping the mundane world, of which it was t0 be, to all appearances, che savior and the mirvor. “This astonishing phenomenon scarcely holds the atten tion of historians ofthe cinema, who, witha naive finality, consider the time of the cinema genesis an age of appren= ticeship where a language and means supposedly predestined Tha Cinema the Airplane | 7 ‘to constituce the seventh art are elaborated. They are not astonished that the cinematograph soa, from the time of ts rab, radically diverted from its bis technical r scientific ends, 0 be eed by spectacle and become tbe cinema’ And “seized” is the right expression: the cinematograph could just as well have realized boundless practical possiblities Bur the rise of the cinem:—that is, of film spectacle—truncated these developments that would have seemed natural ‘What inner power, what “mana” did the cinematograph possess to transform itself into cinema? And not only trans= form itself bt appear so unreal and supernatural thar these ‘wo notions can seem to define its obvious nature and Riciotto Canudo was precisely the frst film theorist for having known how to define the art ofthe objective through subjectivity. "in che cinema . . «art consists in suggesting ‘emotions, and notin recounting facs."**The cinema isthe creator ofa surreal life,” declared Apollinare back in 1909. In the abundance of texts devoted to the cinema from the 1920s onward, expressions of chs sore proliferate: “In the cinema, characters and objects appear to us through 2 kind ‘of unreal mist in a ghostly impalpability."” “The worst ein- ema remains, in spite of everything, cinema, that is, some ‘hing moving and indefinable."® We constantly come across expressions such as “surrealist eye,” “spiritualist are” (Jean Epstein), and above all the key word: “The cinema is dream” (Michel Dard) “Ic is an artificial dream” (Théo Varle. “Is nor the cinema also a dream?” (Pal Valéry). “1 4g0 to the cinema as I go to sleep” (Maurice Henry). “Tt seems that moving images have been specially invented to allow ws to visualize our dreams" (Jean Tédeseo)."" But is not everything dreamlike to dreamers and poetic +0 poets? Theoreticians, scholars, and savants come up with the same words to describe the cinema, the same double roference to affecivty and magic. “In the filmic universe there is @ kind of supernatural atmosphere that is almost| The Chem, the Airplane congenital” says Brcnne Sours" Elie Faure evokes the tinea as “a asic which reaches us by way of the ee”? For Mocssnae and Henri Wallon, he cinema brings othe world fclng 2 fth, the “return ro ancestral affinities of sensi” “This is where the mystery begins. As opposed to mose inventions, which become tool and nd up being pt aay in sheds, the cinemarograph escapes this prose te. The cinema ny be reality, but itis abo something els, a gen- trator of emotions and dreams, ll thetextimonies sre us of this: they constr the cinema icf, which nothing withon its spectators, ‘Te cinema i not realy, since rope ‘yn. Hts weal an illoion, ise that chi illson ial hesame its eli. But a the sre time we know that the camera lens is devoid of subjectvy and hat no fanny comes to dstrb the look thai fies onthe ede ofthe el ‘The cinema has taken ght beyond reality: How? Why? We can know this only by following the genetic proces ofthis metamorphosis, But ist, we have feeling that ready the Lomitre cinematograph contained ina state of laren power and energy what would transform it ino an “enormous stolling player” in the words of G. Cohen- Sst, is re hat here is something of the speratal andthe sou! inthe einem, this spears an his sod srere encrypted in the chromosomes ofthe cinematograph Can we imi ourselves by loge and chronologically 0p- posing science tothe imagination? Ie was “a science fst and nothing but a cence. There was required the grind ose imagination of man." Let vs stop there. ‘Nothing but a science? In 1829, Joseph Plateau stare at the summer sun for twenty-five seconds He sblinded by, but inthe meantime, ato, a simple to, she phenakisi- Scope shorn. An eseentrcracegocr makes bet othe ga lop ofa horse and we have Muybridge’ experiments onthe Sacramento racecourse A bricoleur of genius, who goes on to become an industrial potentate, perfects, among other he Cina, the Airplane | 9 inventions, the Kinetograph. Already its legend has given birch to the il-fated ancestor of modern “science fietian,” Villiers de Pisle Adams Timorrva’s Bve' “The fanatics, the madmen, the disimerested pioneers, capable, as was Bern= ard Palissy, of burning their furninure for a few seconds of shaky images, are neither industrialists norsavants, ast men ‘obsessed by their own imaginings," says André Bazin.” But is not the inventor himself possessed by his imagination before he is hailed a a great scientist? Isa seience nothing Duta science? Isitnot always atts inventive source, daugh- ter of the drean Great inventions are born from the world of pet obses= sions, hobbies. They spring forth not from highly developed big business, but from the laboratory of the lone visionary fr the workshop of the bricoleur. (Ic goes without saying ‘hat big business rapidly latches onto invention.) If we now generalize at the level of nations, is it perhaps is backward- ess on the industrial concentration and rationalization front thar made France a counery of inventors? ‘is certain that if ehe cinema isan international inven- tion, i sin this “Lepinian,”® artisanal France of the brico- leur that the number of discoveries ofa cinematographic character was highest (129 patents for the year 1896, as ‘opposed to 50 in England), The birth ofthe einematograph ‘could easily lead us to 2 consideration of the probleans of ‘comparative sociology of inv ‘make this point clear: inventors, bricoleurs, dreamers are from the same family and navigate the same waters where their genius has its source. TThe technical and the dream are linked at birch. We can- sot atany moment ofits genesis and development consign the «inematograph tothe camp of drea Throughout the nineteenth century, enterciners and scientists sen the nascent invention back and forth between them, and, with each of these shuttles, an improvement is auded, Plateau phenakistoscope transforms ite into the ion," hut here we want to alone or science alone.10 | The Cinema, the Airplane ‘2oetrope (Homer, 1834), the animated magic lantern pro: jecting onto a sereen (von Uchatins, 1853), the animated drawing (Reynauels praxinoscope, 1887, and the Théiere ‘Optique, 1889). Arche same time, another coy, associated with thatother game for grown-ups thats photography, through the extravagant fantasy of the billionaire Leland Stanford, ‘once again became an instrument of research ( Janssen’ photographie revolver, 1876; Marey’ chronophotograph, 1882), Better sil, the entertainers turn into scientists, and ‘the scientists turn into entertainers: the professor of natural sciences Reynaud finds himself director of opti theater and Lumigre director of fairground tours. What is going on? Ts ita question of a tay for “Children's Comer"? Of a rifle for ‘the scientist off to track down the movements ofa butterfly ‘OF animated drawings for the Musée Grevin? OF a visual ‘complement to the phonograph? Of a slot machine? OF tool or ofa joke? Tf we ty to delve deeply into its origin, the uncertainty increases: optical science? Magic shadows? “The invention ‘of cinema isthe result f long series of scientifie works and ‘of the taste that man has always shown for spectacles of ight, ani shade,” says Marcel Lapierre The scientific works, Martin Quigley reminds us, go back as far asthe Arab Ale hazan, who studied che human eye, to Archimedes, who sys- tematically used Tenses and mirrors, to Aristotle, who founded 4 theory of optics?" This pilgrimage takes us back to the sources, not only of physical science, but aso, by way of phantasmagoria, of religion, magic, and art. The predeces- sors of the Lumigre brothers are the showmen with cheir magic lanterns, the mos illustrious of whom remain Robert= son (1763-1839) and Father Kircher (1601-1682), who are themselves the heirs of archaie magie= five ehousand years before, on the walls of the caves of Java, the “Wayang™ brought its shadow plays to life. The Greek mystery cults, originally practiced in caves, were aecompanied by shadow performances, if we follow Jean Preylinsky’ hypothesis, The Cine, the Aiplane | 1 ‘which accounts atthe same time forthe origin of the pla tonie myth described in the seventh book of Te Republic. ‘So-where does the cinema come from? “Is birth .. has all the characteristics of an enigma and he who asks himself this question wil get fost along the way, will abandon the pursuit To tell the truth, the enigma isnot in the facts, but in che uncertainty ofa current that zigzags between play and research, spectacle and laboratory, the decomposition and reproduction of movement, in the Gordian knot of sci- ence al dream, illusion and realty where the new inven~ tion is taking shape. Does the cinematograph sever this Gordian knot? Tt springs up in 1895, absolutely faith wo real things through chemical reproduction and mechanical projection, a verita~ ble demonstration of rational optics, and it seems to have ta dispel forever the magic ofthe Wayang, the fantasies of Father Kircher, and the childish preoccupations of Reynaud. Iti consequently enthroned in the university, academically recognized. Burs not this machine dhe most absurd that can ‘be, since i only serves to project images for te please of seing images?2 The Charm of the Image he xg oft snensogrp nvr Eon "Tssdateady animated the photograph, Reynaud had a ‘any projected sited age on tren But the very relay of he cneatograph at he corbnan of ener fete erent sino re ee eee epee rere iets jeg them, Hh ow hein eee he Kine ee caper. ‘odin roy tthe mament hen tho pet fee ity ovr etuned sould hve dined is over cote toplcaons and mae tlw alineretin sec that be hearer amy ere ert pecs Photogénio TThis marvel that is exhibited in 1895-96, says Marcel Meri, like the bearded lady or the cow with wo heads™ isso wonder that itshows the cow with only one head and the lady without a beard." OF course itis not astonishing14 | The Charm ofthe Image that each new invention astonshes and elicits curiosity: OF couse, from its birth and even before (the Kinetoscope), the filmed image was to be draped in exotiism and fan tay snapped up by the comic (Parraeur arrusé [The Waterer Watered), the fantastic (early Melis), History (the frst as- sina di dude Guise [Tbe Assassination of te Duc de Gui), baw (Coucher d'Yoete,Perrewe), Grand Guignol (Ex- éeution capita & Bertin), and festivals, fake newsteels, coro- nations, naval batts. But the wide-eyed wonder involved a wonder that was ‘more profound, At the same time as the strange, new, and entertaining image, another image, banal and quotidian, ‘imposed its fscinaton. The unprecedented craze created by the Limigre tours was noc only born from the discovery of the unknown world, s Sadoul rightly insists, but from Sec ing the known world, not only the picturesque bus the quo~ tidian, Unlike Kuison, whose frst films showed music hal scenes of boxing matches, Lumigre had the brilliant int ition to film and projec as spectacle that which isnot spec~ tacle: prosaic life, passersby going about their business. He ‘sent Mesguisch and Promio out into the streets. He had un- derstood that a primal curiosity mar directed she reflection of reality. That people above all else marveled at seeing anew that which did noe ill them with wonders their houses, their faces, the settings of their familia lives. ‘Workers leaving factory a train enteringa station, chings already seen hundreds of times, hackneyed and devalued, drew the frst crowds. That is, what attracted te fist cruds marmot a exit fra ftry, a train entering a sation (would brave dsen sufciont to go tothe station or the factory), ut aa image ofa train, 2m iage of workers leaving a factory. Has not for the real bt for the image ofthe real tat poople flocked tothe ‘doors of the Saion Indien, Lumigre had sensed and exploited the charm of the cinematographic image. ‘Was this charm going to wear off afer the Lumigre show= ings? One would have thought so. The cinematograph The Charm ofthe Fmage | 15 launches itselinto che world and becomes a tourist. Te rans forms itself into a fairy play* Nevertheless, the frst reflee- tions on the essence of cinema, wenty yeat later, hegin by being conscious of the intial fascination and giving it a nname—photogeni. “This quality that is noe in life but in the image of life, how should we define i? Photogénie i “that extreme poetic aspect of beings and things” (Delluc, “that poetic quality of ‘beings and things” (Moussinac), “capable of being revealed ro us only by the cinematograph” (both Moussinac and Delluc). iesitane in thought in its infancy, its naiveré of expres- sion, both poor and rich like ehe babblings of mystical rev~ clation, the great ineluctable truth stamps down its foot: plotagénie isthe quality proper to the cinematograph, and the quality proper to the cinematograph is phorogéne. Does not Epstein take a step forward when, beyond “the cinema= ographic property of things, a kind of moving potential,” be defines as photogenie “any aspect whose moral character is enbanced by filmic reproduction This magnifying quality (itis not shocking to anite the ‘wo terms dialectcally) cannot be confused with the pic turesque, that invitation co painting that pretty things pres cnt us with, “Picturesque and photogenic coincide only by chhance."5 The picturesque isin the things of life. The dis tinetive feature of plutagende is wo awaken the “picturesque” in shings that are not picturesque. Tnocuous scenes, “familar moments” fixed hy the ciné- y¢ of Driga Verto, can find themselves exalted asa paroxysm of existence” (Chavance) or “made sublime, transfigured” (Agel) to reveal “the seeret beauty, the ideal beauty of every day movements and rte.” ‘What kind of parosysi, what kind of transfiguration is it? Lets cite Chavance's sentence in its entirety: “I find in this paroxysm of existence a supematnral quality.” Let us complete i with Agel’: “The surrealizing power of the ein- ‘ema realizes itselfin the purest fashion.” And letus conclude16 | The Cherm ofthe Image ‘with Valentin: “The camera lens confers on all that comes neat it an air of legend, i transports whatever falls within ts field away from realty.” Ts it not astounding thatthe “ley endan” *surealizing,” “supernatural” quality should spring directly from the most objective image that can possibly be conceived off | Breton marveled at the face that in the fantastic there is only the real, Let us reverse the proposition and marvel at the fantasti that radiates from the simple reflecion of real things, Finally, lot us make it dialectical: in ehe photograph, the real and the fantastic releet one another while identify ing as iin an exact superimposition. Everything unfolds aif, before the photographic image, ‘empirical sight were doubled by an onciric vision, analogous ‘to what Rimbaud called eoyance, not unlike whae psychics call second sight” (nor perhaps that plenitude that “voyeurs” experience by looking) second sight, as they say, which in the last analysis reveals beauties oF secrets ignored at fist sight, And it was undoubtedly not by chance that practi- tioners felt the need to invent, where 1 see seemed suti- cient, the verb to preview. Thus, in the words of Moussinae, the cinematographic image maintains “contact with the real and also transforms the real into magic.” ‘What comes back ance again, but this time applied to the most faithful of images, isthe word magi, surrounded ‘bya cortege of bubble words—marvelous unreal, and so.on— that burst and evaporate as soon as we try to handle them, [Not that they are meaningless; they cannot say anything. ‘They express the helpless desire to express the inexpress= ible, They are passwords for what cannot be artiulsted. We rust treat these words with suspicion in cher stubborn re= hearsal oftheir nothingness. Bu art bbormness is the sign of a kind of blind intuition, as with those animals who always scratch the ground at the same same time this stub spot, or bark when the moon rises. What have they sensed? Tha Charm ofthe Image | 17 ‘What have they recognize this genius ofthe photo? Magic? Phorogéie? What is Genius of the Photo It is photography that brought the word pborogénie into be- ing in 1839." Ie is stil used there, We discover before our snapshots whether we are photogenic” or not, according £0 ‘mysterious enhancement oF diminishment. Photography Aacers or betrays us; ie gives or denies us aj ne sie gu Certainly the pborogcnc of the einematograph cannot be reduced to that of photography. But itis in the photographic image that their common source resides, To shed light on the problem it makes sense to set out from this same source Although morionless, the photographic image is not dead. The proof ofthis is thar we love photos, we look at them. Yer they are not animated. This falsely naive observa- sion clarifies something for us. With the cinematograph, we could believe tht the presence of the characters comes from the life—the movernent—that is given to them. In pootogra- phy, tiv aboiowsy presence that gives life. The primary and pecu- Tier guaicy of photography isthe presence of the person or the thing that is meverthelee absent Tobe assured, this presence has no need for the medlating subjectivity of an artist. The «genius of the photo is frst of all chemical. The most objec tive, the most mechanical ofall photography, that of the automatic photo booth, can transmit an emotion to us, a tenderness, as if in a certain way, to use Sartre’ words, the original had incarnated itself in the image. Moreover, the catchphrase of photography, “Smile,” implies a subjective ‘communication from person to person through the medium of flm, carrier of the message ofthe soul. The most banal of photographs harbors or summons a certain presence. We know this, we feel it, since we keep photographs on us, at hhome, we show them around (significantly omitting co indicate that what we are showing are images—“Here are10 | The Charm ofthe Iago my mother, my wife, my children"), not only to satisfy 2 stranger’ curiosity, but for the obvious pleasure of once ‘more contemplating them ourselves, o warm ourselves by their presence, to feel them close to us, with us, in us, as small presences in the pocket or the apartment, attached 10 ‘our person or our home, Deceased fathers and mothers, the brother killed in the war, ook out from their large frames, watch over and procect the country home, like household gods. Wherever there isa home, photographs take the place ‘ofthe statuettes or abjects around which the cult of the dead was perpetuated. They ply, in an attenuated fashion be- cause the cult ofthe dead is itself attenuated, the same role 18 Chinese tables, those points of connection from which the dearly departed are aliays available tobe elle Has not the spread of photography partially revived archaic forms of family devotion? Or rather, have not the needs offimily worship found in photography the exact rep- resentation that amulets and objects achieved in an imper= fect and symbolic fashion: the presence of absence?" Tn this sense the photograph ean be accurately named, and this identification is far-reaching: souvent? ‘The sou- venir can itselfbe called life regained, perpecunted presence. Photo-souvenr, the two terms are bracketed rogethe betzer sil imerchangeable. Lets listen tothe pearl: "What great souvenirs for you, what fine souvenirs they will make.” The photograph functions as souvenir, and this funetion can play a determining role sin modern tourists, which is pre- pared for and undertaken in expeditions destined to bring back hooty of souvenirs, primarily photographs and post- cards, We can ask ourselves what isthe underlying goal of these holiday trips, where we go to admire monuments and landscapes that we manage not ro visit back home. The same Parisian who ignores the Louvre, has never erossed the portal of a church, and does not go out of his way t0 contemplate Paris from the top of the Sacré-Coeur will not ‘miss chapel in Florence, wil pace up and down museums, | | | “The Charm ofthe Image | 19 and eshaust himself climbing the Campaniles or gecting | the hanging gardens of Ravello, OF course we want to see, tnd not just take photos. But what we ae looking for, what ‘wesee, isa universe chat, sheltered from time, ora leas vie~ toriously enduring its erosion, is already itself a souvenir. ternal mountains, islands of happiness where millionaires, stars, great writers,” hide away, and of course, above all, “histori” sites and monuments, the realm of starues and colonnades, Elysian fields of dead civilizations. ‘That is 10 say, kingdom of the dead, but where death is transfigured into ruins, where a kind of eternity resonates in the atmos phere, chat ofthe memory transmitted from age w age. This is why guidebooks despise a country’ industry and work only to present is embalmed mommy within a motionless nature, What we call foreign fnally appears in an extreme strangeness, a “ghostliness” accrued from the peculiarity of ‘estos and unknown language (always an abundant collee~ tion of souvenirs"). And just a for archaic peoples the for- cigner i potent sprit, and the foreign world afar frontier ‘of the abode of the spirits, so the tourist travels as iF in a ‘world populated by spirits. The camera encased in leathers like his talisman that he earres cross his shoulder. And, for certain frenetic people, raveling ia ride broken up only by multiple clicks of the camera, We do not look at the monu~ rent, we photograph it. We have ourselves photographed at the feet of giants carved out of stone. Photography be- ‘comes the tourist act itself, as if the sought-for emotion is prized only 2s a ture souvenir, the image on film, enriched by a power of remembrance squared. very film is a battery of presence that we charge with beloved faces, admired objects, “beautiful,” “extraordinary,” intense” events, So the professional or amateur photogra pher pops up at each of chose moments where life Teaves is bed of inference: rips, festivals, baprsms, marsiages. Only the funeral—an interesting taboo that we will deal with soon—remains inviolate.20 | The Charm of the Image ‘The passions of love charge the photograph witha quasi- ‘mystical presence, The exehange of photos enters into the heart ofthe ritual of lovers who are united in body oF, fil~ ing that, in soul. ‘The photo received becomes a thing of adoration as well as possession. The photo given is offered for worship at the same time as appropriation, The ex- change of images magically accomplishes the exchange of individualites where each becomes at once the idol and slave of the other, which we cll love, “Taking possession, abandoning oneself. Here these terms are rhetorical. But new light is shed on them if we consider ‘extreme cases where the photograph, integrating itself in ‘ocealt practices, literally becomes a real presence, an object, ‘of possession oF bewitchment, ‘Almost from the time ofits birth, in 1861, photography thas been pressed into the service of oceakis, tht is, a i= gest” of belief and practices including spiritualism, clair ‘oyanee, palmistry, and the medicine of quacks, as well as diverse religions and esoteric philosophies. Healers, sorcerers, nd seers, who until that ime worked ‘on figurines or mental representations, from then on have used photography: ‘They treat and heal ehrough photo _praps, they locate a child ora spouse who has disappeared through photographs, they cast spell ora charm el spells ‘of bewitchment are performed on photographs and these are still (and even more and more frequently) practiced, perhaps thanks to photography itself. In other words, the ‘photograph is in the strict sense ofthe term, a real presence ‘of the person represented; we can read his sol there hisill- ness, his destiny. Beter yet: an action is possible, through the photograph and upon it If you ean possess through a photo, i is obviously the ‘ase that the photo ean possess you. The expressions “to take photo" and *to have one’ photo taker,” do they nor betray a confused belief this power? ‘The fear of this evil possesion, sil evident some years | The Charms of the Image | 21 goin China and in numerous archaic cultures is undoubt- eal unconscious for us Tes perhaps no less unconsciously onjured up for us hy the resGtuive expression “Watch the bid” The psychosis of espionage brings this fear back tothe surface; photographie taboos rapidly go beyond the security objectives that had determined them; one can see everything in a certin foreign city, but one cannot take photographs. An evil hatred surrounds the person raking Photographs, even ifthe later as ony “taken” a wal, He hus stripped it ofa vial and seeret substance, he has taken possession of power. Furthermore, i is peshaps not so much ther fees as their expressions that the unedacated or the acesed hide ‘ven they refs tobe photographed. Théopile Pathé cites the ease, already cinematogeapic, of wienesss to a vl ons erme, who, having accused one of thee aegusineanees, subsequently became troubled before che Pathé-Joural cam era.” Photography ean also be endowed with a visionary genius chat opens onto the invisible. What we call pr nis only the embsyo of a mythical clairvoyance that fixes tn film not only dhe materialized ectoplsms of spiritualist, seances but specter invisible tothe human eye. Since 186, then the Philadelphia photographer Mummler invented “spire photagraphy"—in other words, superimposiion— photos of phantom or divine beings in real landscapes have circulated in ocelis and related milius. ‘Those photographs ae, of couse, accompanied by sto- ries, alway sina ones, dat clam co establish their authen- ticity. Taken by the spectacle ofthe ruins ofan ancient city in Asia Minor, tourist akes a snapshot. Developing it, he discovers to his amazement three cient Magi, of great stature, with Assyrian beards, translucent in front of the stones ofa defunct cemple. We have ourselves witnessed the spontancous genesis and spread of such legends: a relative showed us a photo taken in a deserted place that revealed ‘huge siniling face ofthe prophet. The weekly Maz, for22 | The Charm of the Ima fits part, was able vo reproduce, without denouncing ita a toa, a photograph of the Korean shy withthe gigantic face ‘of Chris superimposed on some bombers in ight Photography covers so vast a reise, i satisfies needs that are so obviously afctive, and dese neds are so exten- sive that is uses—fiom the phoro-presence and the photo- souvenir to the extasensory photo—cannot he considered assimple epiphenomena ofan essential ole, that of archival docuientation or seientifc knowledge. What, then, i the function of the photo? Muliform and always, in the las in- stance indefiable.To be framed, stuck in albums, sipped ino 4 wale, looked at, loved, Hssed? A ofthat, without doubt ‘eben with moral presences it goes as far as bewitehment and spiritualist presence, Berween these wo pols, the photo is amulet, fevsh Fes, souvenir, mute presence, the photo substtates itself or ompets with relics, faded owes rea suted handkerehiels, locks of hat, tiny objects, txinkets, tninire Eifel Towers and Se. Mari Squares. Everywhere, placed om furniture, hung on or tuck to walls, the photo- fuph and the postal reign over acour of vial nicknack, the rear guard of remembrance, combatant of time fighting oblivion and death wih their remnants of ving presence. ‘Where does this rale come from? Not, evidently, from any property particular o wet colloion, glatino-bromide, or cellulose acetate, but from what we ourselves place there Here it is « question of Copernicizing our approach: the properties tha scem to belong othe pho ae the proper- ties of our mind” that have fixed themselves there and chat iesends back tous Instead of searching i the photographie thing for eh so obviously and profoundly human quality of phage, wernt coms back to man. The richness ofthe ‘photograph sin face all that s noe dere, but that we prom ject o ix ono it ‘Bverything tellus hae he human min, soul and heare se profoundly, naturally, unconsciously engaged in the pho- tgraph. eis a if this material image had a mental quality ‘The Charm ofthe mage | 25 In certain cases, it sas i he photo reveals a quality lacking inthe original, tbe quality ofthe dele. Isat this now radix cal feel of the double and the mental image thas we mast try 1 arash phot ‘The Image and the Double “The mental image isan “essential structure of eonscious- ness. mental fanetion." We cannot dissociate i from the presence ofthe world in man, from the presence of man in the worl, The image is their reciprocal medium. Buta thesame time the image is only a double, a rellection—that isan abence, Sartre sty that “the essential characteristic ofthe mental image i a cerain way thatthe object as of ‘being absent even in the midst ots presence.” Lt wie dat add the comer: of being present even in che midst of fis alncnce. As Sarre himself says, “The orginal incamates fief centers the image” The image isa ved presence and a ral absene, a presence-absence Archaie peoples like children, are nota Hist conscious ofthe absence ofthe object and believe inthe realy oftheir reams as mich a in the reality of weir daily ives. This is Ibcause the image can present all the characteristics of real Iie, including objectivity. Sartre cites a text by Leroy that shows us that an image, even recognized sa mene vision, can prscnt perfectly objective characteristics: “When T was studying anatomy. fljying in my bed with closed eyes, would see most vividly and with complete abjecvity the preparation on which I had worked dusing the day.” More- over, this objective image ean poses a quale of ie that the original doesnot have. Let us complete the quotation “The resemblance seemed perfect, the impression of realty and, if L may sy s, of intone fe which emanated from it twas pethaps even deeper than Tesperienced when facing the real object." ‘A subjective magnifeation can thos grow out of simple24 | The Charm of the Image objective representation. Let us go farther: here subjective ‘magnification is a function of the objectivity of the image, that is, ofits apparent material exterioriy ‘One same movement correlatively heightens the subjec- tive value and the objective ruth ofthe image, o the point of an extreme “objectviy-subjctiviy” or hallucination. This ‘movement valorizes the image, which can seem animated ‘with a life more incense or more profound than reality, and {even on the brink of hallucination, in possession of a super~ ‘natural life. Then a force as powerful as death radiates fos it, sometimes a Proustian power of time recovered, some~ ‘times a spiritualist power. Is asin man the need that bat tes against the erosion of time fixes itself in a privileged manner upon the image “This mavement that valorizes the image atthe same time pushes it toward the exterior and tends to give it body, Alepth, autonomy This involves one particular aspect of a fundamental human process, which is projection or alien- ation, As Querey adeprly puts it, “As soon as we have ere~ ated them, our pyehie states are always more or less strange 10 us, In these so-called subjective states, the subject finds ‘within himself objects... Ideas, memories, concepts, num= ders, images, flings, are subject in us, .. to what the Ger= mans call an Buifromdang, an alienation. And if normally ‘only some of our stares, called perceptions, are projected into space, this maximum objeetivation can, it seems, be gener alized oall psychic objects.” In the course ofthis work, we will use almost interchangeably the notion of alienation, with its Hegelo-Marsst ancestry, and that of projection, with its psychoanalytic derivation, One better conveys che nascent ‘movement; the other, the objective concresization of psj~ chic processes. TThe more powerful the subjective need, the more the ‘mage upon which it fixes itself tends wo be projected, alien- ated, objeccivized, hallucinate, fetshized (as many verbs as ‘punctuate the process), the more this image, in spite of and The Charm ofthe Image | 25 Inecause ofits apparent objectivity, is rich inthis need to the point of acquiring a surreal character. In fact, at the hallucinatory encounter of the greatest subjectivity and the greatest objectivity, atthe intersection ofthe greatest alienation and the greatest need, there is the table, the image-specter of man. This image is projected, alienated, abjectivized to such a degree tha it appeats as an ‘autonomous specter, endowed with an absolute reality. This absolute reality is ar the same time an absolute superreality: the double isthe focal point ofall the needs of the indivi ‘ual, as if they were realized there, especially hs most madly subjective need: immortality" "The double i effectively this fundamental image of man, preceding his intimate awareness of himself, recognized in the reflection or the shadow, projected in the cream, the hal |ucinaton, as in painted or sculpted representations, eishized sand magnified in beliefs in the afterlife, cults, and religions ‘Our double ean appear to usin those Hoffmanesque oF Dostoyevskian visions clinically described under the name ‘of antoscopy oF heautoscopy. The vision ofthe double, Dr rete tells us, “is an experience within the reach of every- ‘one.” LHermitte had the very great distinction of underlin- ‘ng the fact chat exch of us is “capable, o-a greater of lesser degree, of seeing his double.” He recognized the anthro- pological root of the double, “the very vivid experience of fone’ self Between the pathological and the normal, the dlffeence is, as always, in the degree of alienation. Ie is reduced even further when we consider not only our eivi- lization alone, but its origins. "The double is effectively universal in archaic humanity. It is pethaps even the single great universal human myth. An experienced myth: its presence, its existence leave no dou. Tes scen in the reflection, the shadow, felt and divined in ‘the wind and in nature, seen also in dreams. Fach person lives accompanied by his own double, Not so much a true copy, yet more stil than an alter eg: an eg ater, an other soll26 | The Charm ofthe nage Other and superios, the double possesses magical force, I breaks away from the man who sleeps to go and live the lierally surreal life of dreams. nthe man who is swake, the double can distance itself, carry our murders and heroic deeds. ‘The archaic person is literally dauhled (this term is also to be ‘understood in its colloquial sense) throughout his life, to finally be lft as remains, acoxpse, upon his death. Once the flesh is destroyed, the decomposition complete, the double frees itself definitively to become a specter, a ghas, aspirit. ‘Then, holding man’ mortality, ic possesses a power so gran- dose that death changes it to hecome a god. The dead are already gods and the gods ae descended from the dead, that {s, from our double, that i, from our shadow, tha iin the {final analysis from the projection of ban individuality nto on “image that bas become external tit In ths fundamental image of himself, man has projected all his desires and feats likewise his spitefulness and gooxd- ness, his “superego” and his “ego.” When, with evolution, the moral dualism of good and evil emerges and develops, the double (or what remains of it in folklore or allucina- tions) isthe carrier, sometimes of good (the gwardian angel) ‘, more often, ofall evl powers (the ghost) Before projecting his terrors there, man frst ofall fixed "pon the double all his life amhitions-—ubiquity, the power of metamorphoses, magical omnipotence—and the funda- ‘mental ambition concerning his death: immortality. He put alls strength there, che best and worst tht he has not been | able to actualize, all the still-folish powers of his being. ‘The doubles his image, at once accurate and radiating with an aura that goes beyond him—his myth. In a reciprocal ‘way, the primary and original presence of the double, at the most remote threshold of humanity chat we ean consider, is the first and indisputable sign of the affirmation of human individvaliy—the fantastic outline of the construction of ‘man by man. ‘Man's double is the model for innumerable doubles Tha Chara ofthe Image | 27 the most archaic reached tall living or inanimate things: Att stop Ling of he dead ip universe of doubles that Sree the universe of thelving in every way. Obj, food, Cee ead are exactly the same as ofa hunting, passions of he dead ae exactly a eh ern tr pen tof dole “The quality of the double can therefore be projected no al things. Tes projected, in another sens, no longer rl an apomtancousy alienated mental images hallcina- seat ao in and upon images or material forms Kis ea he frst manifstasions of bumaniy this projection SFuaterial images drawings engravings, Paintings, sulp- Sie thro the hand ofthe rsa, This anachronis= {aly and impropery called prchistorie art ‘eer since the origins of graphic or sculpted representa- sion there appear, atthe sime time aya tendeney toward tiotorsion and ce nasi, a reali tendency bse on fifi sinned rahe of forms, Les Combareles,Lascam, ‘Nears have preserved the evidence for ws. These orginal nv astonishing cave daguerreotype, payed, in magical ites practiced for hunting or frit, the role of mediating ‘Pat thae permitted ation upon the originals These real is images are effetvely doubles, rom che fail of the subjeeive-objetive mental image, no longer projected ina wei eno bc byte work ofthe hand. Sa (jue, che realist ration reappears in the paintings and Starts of els, ofering to prayer or adoracon the image tht Bes the presence ofthe god. Sil es, rea art Air ‘fe debe thats ofthe objective mental image is exab- shed heough the casi and the naturalists, Reais art tens onan! imitation tha is sometimes metiealosly de- tiled and, at its exmeme, quasi-photographic he word Should be remembered, sometimes typological or synthetic Cera its meanings have evolved since the magic of the Caves of Aurignae; attic resi has developed over se= era centres according to complex requiements—through srhich reality is enriched yr the image and the image is28 | The Charm of the Image cnriched by reality: Nevertheles, inthe same way that the function of artis not only a8 a scientific inventory of realty, so reli not ony the real ue the image ofthe real tis pre= cisely on this account that it possesses a particular quality that we call aesthetie, which has the same origin as the qual- ity ofthe double. Flaubert knew “that isles a question of, seeing things than of representing them to ourselves,” Baudelaire that “remembrance is the great eriteron of art,” in other words, that the aestheti of she ajetve image ties torevive within iself ale qualities mpc tbe mental image. “There is more to this: the imple material image, physi- cally produced hy thinking and what we call ection, pos- sesses the same quality. For archaie peoples, ii the double itself that is present in the reflection in the water or the mirror. The universal magic ofthe mirror, which we have studied elsewhere, is nothing other than that ofthe double, Numerous superstitions stil testify co this: broken mierors (warning signs of death or luck thatthe spirit world sends 1), veiled mirrors (which prevent the dead person's double from escaping), and so on. For us, used to our mirrors, sut- rounded by mirrors, their strangeness wears off through everyday use, much asthe presence ofthe double has itself faded fom our life. Nevertheless, our image sometimes caches a charming or vaguely purled look, a friendly or idiotic smile. We need great soreow, great shock, misfor- tune, to be astonished for any length of time by a strange, disiraught face tha is our own, We need to be eaughe by @ rnitror a night for our own phantom to detach itself sud- denly, a a stranger, almost an enemy. ‘As much and even more than inthe reflection, the dou ble is localized in these natural and impalpable forms that ‘constitute the shadow. The shadow, which always follows us around, manifests the obvious externality of the double at the same time a its everylay and permanent presence. At night when there is only shadow; curled up in his sleep, man The Charm ofthe Ineae | 29 loses his shadow, and ie possesses him. The fantastic reigns ‘Death is like night: i liberates shadows. The dead do not have shadows, they are shadows we call them that. Certainly the decline of the double has nowadays r ‘duced the ticks played hy the shadow. There remain, nev ertheless, those depositories of magie that are folklore, ‘occultism, and art. There remains, in our childhood devel- ‘opment, a stage of fascination with shadows, and our par~ ents’ hands do their best to represent wolves and rabbits on four walls, ‘There remains the charm of shadow cheaters, ‘known to the Far Fast. There remain the terror and anguish that the shadow ean arouse—and that the cinema has ad~ rmirably been able to exploit, in the same way that it has been able to make good use ofthe charm of the mirror In its decline, the double can both become diabolical — «bear, like the portrait of Dorian Gray, the weight of our hhideousness—and bring back the anguish of death thae ie ‘originally drove away. The radiant double, the incorruptible body of immortality, like that of Christ at Emmaus in the past, is today confronted with the Hoflimanesque specter that heralds the dreadful hour of rath ‘Successive layers of beliefs have been superimposed and. mixed in the double, From the time of Homeric Greece, the double as just as well, and even simultaneously, brought anguish or deliverance, vieory over death or the victory of death. This quality of debasement or enbancemen, born from doubling, cam be aorepbied or rendered dormant because te don ‘We stl atrophied and dormant; eno les prvefily present in every being, every thing, in the universe itself, once they are sen through the mirrr, the reflection or memory. The mental ‘nage and the material image potentially enbance or debae the reality they present 20 or view; they radiate fatality or bape, netbingness or sranscendene, amartality or death ‘The unreal world of doubles is gigantic image of mun= dane life. The world of images constantly doubles life, The50 | The Charm ef the Image image and the double are reciprocally models of one an- ‘other. The double posses the alienated quality ofthe image- ‘memory. The image-memory possesses the nascent quality of the double, A veritable dialectic links them. A pryholegi ‘al power a projective one, erate a double of evertbing 0 make it Blasom int the imaginary. An imaginary poser doubles every thing in poeholegial projection ‘The double and the image must be considered asthe two poles of one reality. The image pases the magical quality of ‘the double, ut interiarized nascent, ubectivzed. The doable pos- sess the prycbological, affective quality ofthe image, but alien- ated ond magical. Magie, we will soon have the opportunity 10 se, is nothing other than the reifying and fetishistc alien- aon ofsubjective phenomena. Magic; from this point of view, Js the image considered literally as presence and afterlife "The total alienation of the human deing into its double constitutes one of the two foundations of magic (we will see the other appear with the metamorphosis ofthe cinemato- graph into cinema). [Fits reign has come to an end, the dou- bile stil Iurks, as we have sid, in the ghosts of folklore, the spiritualist astral body, and literary phantoms. [t awakens each rime we sleep. It springs up in hallucinations, where we also believe these images that are in us to be external ‘The double is much more than a fantasy from the origins ‘of humankind, It wanders around us and imposes its pres cence upon our slightest relaxation, at our fst tera, in our supreme fervor So, at one pole, the magical double, At the other pole, there isthe image-emotion, pleasure, curiosity revere, vague sentiment. The double dissolves into attractive reflection, entertaining shadow, fond contemplation, TBerween these to poles lies a syncreic lsd zone that we cal the domain of sentiment, of the soul or the heart. “The germ of magic is there insofar asthe image is presence and, what is more, charged with a latent quality of ime re- covered. But this magic is only in a nascent state and at the The Charm of the Imawe | 31 same time, often, only in a state of decline. For it is en- veloped, broken up, stopped shore in its place by a lucid consciousness. Irs internalized as sentiment. In this inter- ‘mediate zone, so important in our evolved civilization, tncient magic is ceaselessly reduced to sentiment or the aes- thetic; new feling, in its youthfal impetuosity, ceaselessly tends to alienate itself into magi, but without completely seceding, {All that is image tends in one sense to become affective, and all that is affective tends to become magic. In another sense, all that is magic tends to become affective. We can now connect the photograph and the cinematograph, or rather their common photogenic quality, to this “funda ‘mental and instinesive urge to ereate images in living reality [that} goes al the way back ro Adam” that Martin Quigley revoked." ‘The photograph isa physical image, but rch in the rich: ext psychological qualiy If chs quality is projected in the photograph in a particularly clear way, that is because of the very nature of phosography, « mixture of reflection and shadow. Photography, in color at leas, is pure reflection, analogous to that of the mirror. And precisely, insofar as i lacks color, it sa system of shadows, We can already apply to the photo Michorte’ essential abservation: “The things that we see there ate... prouced for the most part by the ‘obscure portions af the image, by he shadows, and we could even say thac che more the latter are opaque, the more the ‘objects appear massive. The great hand of light, on the con- ‘wary, correspond tothe colorless background of thin ar. The shadows... appear tobe the proper calor of the abject. ‘The dark ports are... consictive of eoxporeal objects." ‘Our photographie perception immediately corporeaizes shadows: an impression of reality emerges from the shad- ‘ons, Would this singular face have been possible ifthere was snot beforehand in the human mind a fundamental tendency’ to give body to shadows that has led to che belief in these32 | The Cherm ofthe Imaxe doubtlessly immaterial but corporeal shadows that are spec- ters and phantoms? “The art ofthe photo—by which we understand not only that of “artists” working in the genre but also the popular are of weekends, vacations, and holidays—reveals through its very aesthetic the afective value that is attached 10 she shadr. Tes clear that the framing, the shooting angle, the composition, and so on, ae aso key elements ofthe art of the photo, But above al else, what gets called a “beautiful” photo or a beautiful posteard? What are the amateurs at the seaside or the mountains looking for? Never-ending (or us bilasé people) backlighting, vivid oppositions of shadows on light backgrounds; or else, on the contrary the capture ofa body, a fice splashed with sunshine, devoid of shadows. All, the formulas, the tricks—the Valgate of photography—tend to exaggerate the shadow, to offer i to be seen, of, on the contrary, co exclude i, to make i vanish and make a no less strange shadowless universe appear. At any rate, itis the ‘double that we sense, whether in the universe where we ler shadows speak or in the universe that knows nothing of shadows. In other words, art, whose function isto further enrich the affective power of the image (or co enrich the affective power ofthe real through the image), shovs us that ‘one of the moving qualities of the photo is connected to @ latent quality of the double: A halo of fntasy surrounds the art of photography. It accentuates the latent element of the fantastic implied inthe very objectivity of the image. In ‘ruth, we have, before the photo, the impression ofcontem- plating an analogon, an edolon tha leks anly movement. In fact, it isa mixture of reflection and shadow games that we ‘endow with corporeaity and soul, by infeting them wih the virus of presence. But let us nt yet tackle the problem head-on. What is important is to siruate what we examined atthe beginning of this chapter: photography eer he entire ancbropolegical fel, whieh begins with remembrance and ends The Char of the Image | 33 ait the phantom becans it brings boat the conjunction of sia tancoaly related and diffrent qualities ofthe mental image, the efleton, and the shadow. ‘Whence in the first place its admirable aptitude for con: “retizing memory: better sil, for becoming identified with ig as those family phoros and travel postcards lliptially but rightly named “souvenirs,” ell us. Photography em balms time, as André Bazin says in the only genuine and. profound study devoted to the “ontology of the phoro- ‘graphic image.” ‘Moreover, the photo ean eventually claim tobe “truer than nature,” richer than if itsel€ (tourist photos, photogenic Faces aun things, artistic photos). Center of small intimate or fam- iy rituals it allows itself to be enveloped, integrated into the alfective-magical zone of everyday fetshizations, amu- lets, lucky charms, Its an object of worship in the inner chapels of dream and desite, Ie accompanies feeling. It fin= ally moves on to the realm of the double inthe strict sense ‘when ic ges taken up by occult practices, where archaic magic js transmitted, consolidated whole, intoa secret, permanent science, with multiple branches. The photograph plays pre= cisely the role of substitute, anchor point, or field of influ fence of the double, Ie enables charitable maneuvers as it tloes the worst of evil spells. It is enchanted. Uhimately any thing could happen asin the Mstres di metre by J. Prévert and Ribemont-Dessaigne, where the photo sucks in the liv ing to make ghosts of them, It knows no borders between life and death, Exerasensory it opens onto the invisible. An extraordinary anthropological evineidence: technique ofa technical world, physicochemical reproduction of things, product of one particular civilization, the photograph fooks like the most spontaneous and universal of mental product. Iteontains the genes ofthe image (the mental image) and of ‘myth (he double) or, if we prefer, it is image and myth ina34 | The Charm ofthe Image Batis principal eld of influence is in our modern ea tures, hat intermediate magico-affectve zone where what ‘we call the soul reigns. The evo catchphrses of photog: raphy are soul words. Snie—show your soul throwgh the window of your face; sof, tender, impalpable, erembling, frightened by the slightest thing. And Watch the bia sctange expression thas peshas more than gimmick ro ateract the atenton of children, bus (eather) a naive exor- cism, a magical restution cha responds to the atrophied fear of being caught. The alfectveidentfeation ofthe bird with the soul i universal The soul escapes from the deal the form of a bird in certain Afican cultures, al eae great soul that is the Holy Spits incarnated ina ied. *Watch the hid” then, is addressed tothe sou twill he taken from you but willbe liberated and will geely By aay. Photography transmis all these powers to the cinemato- graph under the gener name of poopie, And now we can put forward a preliminary definition. Phorngéniis tht complex and unique gua ofthe shade, of refetion and the doable, that alles tbe affective pers proper t0 the montal ‘mage tof thomsebes on the faze that aries from pte rape epraduson. other proposed desinition: phage is what resus fram the sraner ona the pbtograpbic image of qualities proper tothe mental image, (0) from the inva sment of the characteris of shew and refecon in the very nature of photographic doling ‘This plunge, which makes us bok a the photo rather than use it as it not played is role in the movement that directed the cinematograp toward spectacle? Genes and Genius of the Cinematograph ‘The cinematograph is heir to pbutagéne and at the same time transforms it. Projeetion offers an image that ean ex- ppand tothe dimensions ofa room, while the photo has been | Me Charm ofthe Image | 35 able to reduce itself to the sizeof an individual pocket. The photo cannot dissociate its image from its paper or eard- board material backing. The image projected on the screen is dematerialzed, impalpable, fleting. ‘The photo is, above all, adapted to private use and appropriation. The cinemato- graph is, ove all, adapted to colletive spectacle. So most ff the fetishizations resulting from private use and appro- pariation of the photo atrophy or disappear. Thus, for exam- ple, there is no cinematic equivalent ofthe photo that one keeps on oneself or has in a frame at home. Admittedly, '8 mm film permits the affective use ofthe film souvenir, a thowsind times more moving than the photo souvenir. Bue the film image presents neither that fixed and permanent localization nor that materiality chat permits the affective crystallization onto an object, that isto say, eo be precise, fetishism, So cinematic eishisms are forced to pass vbrough the medium of photography (photos of stas) or of writing (autographs) However, certain phenomena of photographic magic find their cinematic application, ‘The cinematic image ean- ‘ot be used for bewitchment, but that which in the cine- atograph is material and individvalized (that is, not the spectacle, but the camera and the projector) ean elicit the fear of bewitchment. Iranian nomads protest before the cam- era, “Why have I been photographed?” and the word be- trays the affective equivalence of cinematic and photographic powers. Chinese townspeople, sil some twenty years ago, feared their souls would be stolen away. Archaie or naive peoples consider those who show films as “great magicians.” Tewas while crying, “Into the ire, sorcery.” thatthe peasants of Nizhni Novgorod set fire co the Lumitre projection booth in 1898, In ancient civilizations and the archaic pop- ulations of the five continents, the spread of the cinemato- raph effectively appeared asa magical phenomenon ‘Some years ate ina intersiew with Fh, Colonel March= and and General Gallgni took pleasure i contemplating the36 | The Charm of the Image “pacifying” role of the cinema in the colonies, “which in- tantly gives its possessors the reputation of sorcerers." At the dinner ofthe Chambre syndicale de la einématographie, on ‘March 26, 1914, Monsicur Demaria recalled the “salutory terror" ected by films projected the year before at the pale ace of the sultan of Morocco. In short ifthe cinematograph vas not seriously used by spiritualism, ia leas transformed itselFinto cinema by utilizing sprie photography’ trickery. Al the latent affective and magieal powers are thus just as present in cinematography as in photography. But the photographic image was adapted to individual particular ties. Unlike the photo addiet, the film addict cannot con sider himself the owner ofthe image, The cinematograph iv ‘hue purified, in comparison to photography, of numerous fixations stemming from private appropriation, Projection and animation jointly accentuate the qualities ‘of shadow and light involved inthe photographic image, If the sereen image has become impalpable, immaterial it hes, atthe sume time, acquired an increased corpareality (thanks to movement, a5 we shall see). The phenomenon, already photographic, of the corporealization of shadows is ampli fied accordingly. Michote, inthe article previously cited, has ‘drawn attention to this paradox: "We project on the screen ‘no more than flecks of light, the dark parts having to be ‘considered, from the physical point of view, asa sort of neg- ative, corresponding to those regions of the object that do not stimulate the retina. However, it is exactly the inverse thats produced in che perceptive feld (ofthe spectator)” Cinematographic vision takes shape from the shadows that move on the screen. The substantialization is therefore directly connected to the density or, rather, the a-density of nnonbeing, ofthe great negative emptiness ofthe shadow. If ‘we add that the conditions of darkness favarable to projec- tion, are correlative favorable to the magic ofthe shadow atthe same time as (0 a certain para-oneire relaxation, we must note thatthe cinematograph is much more marked by ‘The Charm ofthe Image | 37 the quality of the shadow than is photography At leas it jwas so up unl the arival of color, and sinee then, it still, hesitates between using shadow and pure reflection. Pechaps, Jet us say even without dou, the quality of reflection will finally et away that of the shadow. But despite the entich- tment that color brings che resistance of black and white is ‘ignificant. Moreover, color cinema and black-and-white ‘nema are as much isotopes as isomers of one another, In view, then, of ts cheomatie posites, the cinematograph ‘beeame part of the lineage of shadow spectacles, from the Javanese Wayang to Robertson (1763-1837). Now we can better grasp the relationship indicated above: from cavern to cavern, from the caves of Java, those ofthe Hellenic mys tries, the mythical eave of Plato, up to the movie cheaters, the fundamental shadows of the universe of doubles have been found lively and faseinating. ‘We understand that even before 1914, 2 particular shadow technique appeared and took on the eloquent name of pho~ togcaphy, Like the art of the still photo, that of animated photography deals wih, accentuates, and exaggerates shadow and ligt, bu tis time in accordance with increased! means, artifice, and systematization. The cameraman filters, chan- ‘els, or eats shadows and light in order to charge the image ‘with maximum affective powers: “No horror can he so hor= ‘ible, no beauty so enchanting, if rally seen, asthe horror for enchantment suggested by its shadow." Conversely, the ‘cameraman can, in eliminating all traces of shadows, make radiant the soa and the spirituality of faces. ALone extreme, the shadow can even be substituted for actors and play apri- mary role in films.” At the other extreme, there suddenly appears the image of a universe that bas lost its shadows and that, by that very loss, equally possesses the qualitative power ofthe double, Color, without changing the aesthetic nature ofthe image, orients it ina different diretion: the quality of reflection becomes dominant. ‘The cinema gains fn enchantment, hu loses in charm.S| The Charm ofthe Ima Finally, animation brings to light phenomena that were cmbryonic or even unknown in photography. Cinemato- graphic vision of oneself is much more moving and rich than photographic self contemplation. Epstein said: “Is i¢ not worthy of attention that on the sereen no one resembles himself? That on the sereen nothing resembles itself?" The samme remark has already been made about hearing record ings of our own voices, always strange, that is, semiforeign ‘We are infact gripped by the profound, contradictory feel- ing of our resemblance and our difference, We appear at the same time outside and identical to ourselves, me and not- sme, that is, in the end, ego alter. “Whether for better or worse, the cinematograph, in is recording and reproduc- tion of a subject, always transforms it, re-creates i a se nd personality, bese appearance crm trouble one’ cescousnes to the point of Heading i 19 ask: Why ame 1? Where ie my erue identi”? Tehappens that dhe double feeling of lterity and identity can he eleaely perceptible, as in the atinude of the Trinian nomad who sees himself forthe fis time on the sereen, He gets up and waves, exclaiming, “Look everyone, here lan.” Tn the space of an instant, from the greeting to the exela- ‘mation *here Tam,” he has managed to be astonished by his alien double admire it, and at once proudly ass ‘We are already able co divine this sentiment in the surprise and exclamations with which we greet our image on the screen. The firs sign of doubling is indeed reacting, how- ever slightly, to ourselves. Most often, we laugh, and the laughter indicates more than surprise, Te isthe polyvalent reaction of emotion. It can successively or atthe same time signify childlike wonder, embarrassment, concealed shame, the sudden feeling of our own ridiculousness. Pride and shame, shame about this pri, irony about our eandid ex pression of wonder; in our auto-cinematographic laughter there is «complex of astonishment, admiration, embarrass ‘ment, strangeness. late it, The Charm ofthe Image | 39 ‘Sometimes embarrassment and shame dominate this com- plex. Epstein once again draws our artention co the fact that the sereen reveals the “vulgarity ofan attitude... awkward ness of a gesture, ... shame ofa look.”* We often react, in fact a f the extrasensory camera were able to tear off our socialized mask and uncover, before our eyes and those of others, our unavowed soul. Is this not demonstrated by the fact that, as soon as we are called before a photographic or fin camera, we “pose,” thatis, adjust 2 mask our most hyp ‘critical mask: a smile o a look of dignity? "Those pompous attitudes we assume in the cardboard cabins of inground sal those triumphant poses of nrchins| in’Teheran, their foot on a friend on the ground, illustrate ‘our desire 10 display ourselves in an image inflated to the proportions of our vanity. The pose equally tries to mask the fear and intimidation that arise due to the camera. Its the expression of this dificaley, chis quasi-impossbiliey of being natural before an extrasensony gave. (We have already cited the case where two witnesses forthe prosecution were suddenly afraid to repeat their accusation before the Pathé- Journal cameraman.) Monsieur Caffary tells us that Iranian ‘nomads, during the projection ofa film that portrays them, straighten ther clothing, take ona dignified pose. Is this not the pose that they were unable to assume when they were being filmed? At the same time as eying to make up for an awkwardness ora sloppiness, sit not their soul that they are atvompting to disguise? Ultimately, have they noc fl, justa lie, che disquieting presence of the double, which is what shames them? For my part, [have strongly felt, on hearing myself on the radio and seeing myself on the screen, a brief, shameful embarrassment, as if my litle Mr. Hyde had suddenly ap- peared before me. Iris likely that in uch cass, a kind of auto- ihostines, related co autoscopic hallucination, is awakened, Of eourse che difference is essential: the hallucinatory dovs ble, although ar the limic of normal perceptive phenomena,40 | The Charm ofthe Image is seen by a subject in a neuroti sate. On the other hand, the auto-spectator sees himself in a psychologically normal state, So his double cannot einematographically display is strangenes, its fintastc side, its fatality. Itvery rarely pro- vvokes horror and only sometimes sorrow, asin those eases Epstein cites, like the one of Mary Pickford, who, “inered- ‘lous, disappointed, seandalized . .. cried when she saw herself on the screen forthe frst time." There is n0 equiv= lence, then, between auto-cinematogeaphie experience and antoscopic vision, but the first can present the nascent char= acteristies ofthe second. Indeed, it i « double in the nascent state that reveals itself to our eyes om the screen; that is why, more than the double of hallucination, itis close to the double the chile discovers in the mirror or the archaie person in the reflec tion—strange and familia, affable and protective, already slightly enhanced but not yet transcendent. That is why our ‘ordinary reactions are richer in pleasure and wonder than in embarrassment and shame within the affective complex where the surrealistic surprise and disturbance of the dis- covery of the double are mixed with the realistic surprise and disturbance ofthe discovery of oneself. That is why the people filmed in the street by Lamigre cameramen rushed 1 the projection rooms. “Another type of auto-cinematographie experience is that of the star. The star has two lives: that of his films and his real lf, In foc, the first tends to command or take over the other one, Iris as though seas, in their everyday life—and ‘se will come back to this—are condemned to ape their cin- ema lie devoted to love, dramas, holidays, games, and ad~ ‘ventures. Their contraets even oblige them to imitate their sereen personae, a8 fhe latter possess the authenticity. The stars then feel themselves reduced to the sete of specters who ‘urerit horedom through “partes” and diversions, while ther true human substance is sucked out by the camera; whence the spleen, depressions, blues that characterize Hollywood. ‘The Charm of the Inage | 41 “te i you who are nothing but a shade; its the phantom living lips that Fondly smile a che love for him revealed [in the fun letter,” Adams, the star hero of René Clair’ novel rmurmars to himsel.” ‘The idea often comes up in Ramin Gomer dela Seena’s ‘Movieland: “And the deceitful cocktails... are poured pro- fasely every day ... to excite all those who have concluded that they are becoming ghosts and are driven to despait.” A stars *Sereen figures! fel as though I were doomed to he a shadow without a soul” And sgain: “You are not interested in the hereafter?’ Pdna Blake asked Pisa, ‘No. Poised as we are, half way between shadow and reality, we know no hereafter" An admirable reply, which suddenly gives us insight into the profound nature of the cinematograph, like the pro- found nature ofthe afterlife: memory, intermediary berween shadow and reality. Which also reveals that the magnification fof the double can devalue our real life. In the apologue of Silenws to Midas, the discourse of Croesus, the myth of the cave, it is we who become ghests in comparison to ghosts who have ceased to be mortal, In the same way, before the inematographic double charged with an affective-magical mag- nification, che flesh-and-blood spectator perhaps feels that hae is going to “see th positive proofs of a world whose end= Jess negative he will always resume.” In ths sense, in Paul ‘Valéry’s admirable formulation, the einematograph “eri izes life.” hint of reverie, imagination, anticipation, is sometimes ‘enough for the moving cinematic image to be suddenly ex- alted to the mythic dimensions of the universe of doubles and death. Let us consider the cinema of the future imagined science fiction, We see the ultimate myth of cinematog- raphy tale shape, which is at the same ime its original riyth. The otal cinema, which eatapults into the unfathorn- able future that which isin embryo in the very nucleus of the image, eveas its latent powers.42 | The Charm of the lage “The firse wave of seience icion hegins by conferring all the sensory characteristies on projected images. Aldous Huxley deseribes, in Brave New Wr, the singing, speak- ing, synthetic fil, in colo, stereoscopic, scented. All the spectators’ senses are enticed by the “felis.” “This timid science fiction is only one or two steps ahead ‘of CinemaScope. More interesting are the imaginings that utterly get rid ofthe room and project the cinema into “the beautifl screen that the sky offers us, the night. We look. for an inventor who ean bring this idea wo life.™® After René Cir, in 1931, Dovzhenko prophesied a cinema without a sereen, where the spectator would take part in the film as if he were at the center of the cinematie action. Tn the mean- time, Barjavel imagines the credits fora film of Sinbad the Sailor projected into the sky. The spectators recline in their seats, Waves are born, and die. Inthe waves ball swells up, ‘opens, and blossoms into alors flower. “At the heat of the flower squats the roe. It ses, spreads is immense wings, and circles the room three times. A tiny man hangs from ‘one ofits legs, which are larger than a thousand-year-old ‘oak.” Better stil, Bajavel describes the telecinema of the Tature; “Waves will cary the images throughout space. Re- ceiving sets will materialize them ae will” And Henry Poulaille: “Tomorrow . .. the image will be before us, ‘woven from threads of luminous rays, without the aid ofthe sereen, staggering." ‘Ac this stage of oncitie science fantasy, the world of film has already become, very precisely, the world of spirits or ghosts, much as it appears in a great number of archaic mythologies: an aerial world, which omnipresent spirits mavi- gate. The serecn has dissolved into space. Ghosts are every- where. But let the imagination go even further ot rather et it rediscover is source, and the ghosts are brought back down to arth, They are among us, comporeal specter, iden tical to ourselves. [isin its pure archaism, in its chimerical presence in the midst ofthe real world, thatthe total cinema The Charm of the Image | 43 finaly doubles our universe. The evolution of the cinema will be complete “when it isable to presene us with characters in the round, colored and perhaps scented; when these charac- ters fie themselves from the Sereen and from the darkness of the theaters co go and walk in public spaces and the apart- rents ofeach and every person" ‘ike the men and women of the Island of Morel, like the lions cinematographico= psychologically projected in Ray Bradbury’ all-oo-perfect nursery ‘This imagining is not random, Thisis proved by the fact. that itis modeled fairy accurately on the mythie archetype thatthe genius of Villiers de Isle Adam was able to dream up, taking off from the inventions of Faison, even before the birth of the Kinetograph, In Timorrom Boe, the “r= cerer of Menlo Park” creates a perfect copy—exeept on the level of foolishness, which isthe inimitable peculiarity of| ‘man—of the superb and foolish Alicia Clary.® This radiane double, Hdl, is of the same essence 2s the Faustine of Bioy Casares, Within seventy years, dreams that preceded the cinema and the dream of the cinematic end of man meet in the world of doubles. This world rediseovers its original charm and even exalts its essential magical quality: a world of immortalty-—that is, a world ofthe dead ‘Asa litle hoy sad to Max Jacob, “They make the cinema with dead people. They take dead people and make them walk and that's cinema." The dead are incarnated, what is more, naturally in Barjavel’s total cinema. “The ghosts of great men will precede memorial processions. The image of the Bastille will drive each Fourteenth of july back into the heart of Pats... .On the bateefields, impalpable Bayards ‘will lead hesitant men to heroie ends." But we are not yet atthe end of our journey: This doubled ‘sorld finds itself trying to absorb the real world. In Mevic- Jand's new invention, the spirits of the spectators will be sucked in through the absorbing funnel of the projector of reali” The sleeping bodies remain in the theater, under4A | The Charm of the mans the surveillance of police officers, Just as the oceultist pho- ‘ograph “drains” the living, the total cinema will draw out ‘our own double to make itive an organized colletive dream, ‘Morel’ invention is still more grandiose, Irs to suppress death tha che brillant Morel has encirely “sucked” the li ing onto his island, committed, from then on, to eternity. Total cinema, which finally engulfs humans in its impalpa- ‘le and conerete, unreal and real substance, in the midst of tragic, playful, and eternal adventures, merges death and ‘immortality in che same act. ‘Morel’ invention proposes the final cinematographic myth: the absorption of man into the universe of doubles 0 that—at last—eternity saves him just as he is, This way, ishows us tha i the latent myth of the cinematograph is immortality, the total cinematograph is itself a variant of imaginary immortality. Ist nor in this common source, the ‘mage, the rellecton, the shadow, that the frst and wltimate rege against death lies? ‘The Birdy ‘The image. The Lumitre cinematograph carries within it all the powers that, since time immemorial, men have stsib- uted tothe image. Theres, even only inthe strict reflection ofnature, something more than nature. The cinematograph enhances the real, tansfigures it without transforming i theough its own automatic power, which some people have named photogéne, as one could have spoken in the past of the soporife power of opium. This photogenic power cov- es che whole field extending from the image tothe double, from subjective emotions to magical lienations. Effectively, the Lumiére cinematograph, limited as itis is already 8 meroeosm of total cinema, which sin a sense the complete resurrection of the universe of doubles, Te animate shadows that bear the magic of immorality as wel asthe terrors of death, But, in fat, hese tricks and these powers are in a The Charm ofthe Haze | 45 nascent, embryonic, atrophied, unconscious state. They are the extreme phenomena of aua-cinomatographic vison, of oto- graphic or cinematic culo, of the mytblogy of total cinema that alse ms to shed light om the undifferentiated conmpex of ‘normal phenomena. Reciprocally, normal phenomena—that is, the curiosity and pleasure attached to cinematographic projections precisely intended for this pleasure and curios- ity~allow ws to divine their magical potentialities. The dou- ble is potentially there, invisible on the sereen, in 2 viral ‘sate, to use Malraux’ word. Te needs only the nave look of the archaie person a litle abandon on our par, in order to reveal it Photography was already the chemical Suine John the Baptist for a cinematograph that delivered the image from its chains, purified i ofthe fdshizaions into which every n= counter between pleasure andl private appropriation hardened, and brought ie the movement of life. The cinematograph is truly the image in the elementary and anthropological state of the shadra-reflestian, Ie revives, in the twentieth century, the originary double. eis am antbrapoloical marcel, preiely in thie capacity 1 projet as spectacle am image perceived as an ac reflection of real if ‘We understand then that all the currents of past inven- sions were naturally direered coward i. We ean get a sense ‘of why it was not necessary to change the device to allow is prodigious fuure developments. The cnematograph tas a ecstry and sufficient machine to give faus to divergent ies: tigations, then to eff is own transformation int cinema. Tt necessarily carried this transformation within itself For the ciné-eye, the ciné-mirror of Lumiere, was only co bbe a tren, ike Vertov' ciné-eye. The cinomatagrsph mas be nly unique and brief mament of transition when the realor fidelity of reflection and the valence of buman povers of projec~ tion ers in equldrnon. Something else had to be born. And this something ele wss precisely implicated inthis force pro- jected in the image and capable of taking ita far asthe magic46 | The Charm of the Image ofimmoreality: ‘The most astonishing magical-afective com= ples, enclosed inthe image, had to try to free itself, co clear its own way toward the imaginary. EAtectvely, the cine- smatograph changed its form according to an astounding, half-affectve,half-magieal proces. A remarkable thing took, pice: “The strange exaltation of the power proper to m= ‘ages in its turn improvised spectacles that were buried away inthe invisible." The bird, always promised in vain by the photographer, was about to come out at ast. Metamorphosis of the nematograph into Cinema here were investigations no only ino the movements Tcrbipeds, eadrypeds and birds at the origins ofthe inematogaph, but also into the charm ofthe mage, of theshadow and reflection. Thischarn kes commando device esentaly destined for setae The flow of inven Sons that meandered ight through the ninetenth centiy hasnow funda bed and sts ther. The deve an he apse of proton sable, As eary athe Exposition of {o00 the cncmatograph apparent had at is dpa the techni mean necewary fo enlrge the finage 1d dimensions ofthe gata even cfr sean Ge cowmeram of Grimcin-Sason and Baron’ Cinéma), torch wth sour he aking ln of Baron in 1978, the Phonorama, the Phoo-Cingns-Théke, cphonog: raphy, and 50 ony to present tin colin shor, pre- fenca ore ith and more complete efevon of things Tiwi et sde thee forsee developments for er eral decades in onder to eff an unexpected, anbivale transformation. This evolaton-—revlaton, we wil s00n talline ot theming eve, ba Ara ym the wayin whichis wee48 | Metemorphoss ofthe Cinemategraph ito Cinema Ontogenesis ‘An extraordinary metamorphosis, which goes, nevertheless, almost unnoticed. For—among other reasons—those who elfect che transition from te cinematograph to the cinema are not honorable professionals, certified thinkers, orem nent artists, but bricolenrs, autodidacts Failures, fakes, en- ‘ertainers. For fifteen years, in making films, chey make the cinema, without worrying about act other than as a pomp= ‘ous justification for the curious. The revolution that these anonymous peopl effect, in isolation and simultaneously, through lite ticks, naive ideas, and booby traps is the fruit of an obscure pressure, quasi-untconscious, bu for this very reason, profound and necessary. Ie is in face impossible to pinpoint the patemity of the scope films were already presenting boving matches, music hall shows, ite playlets. The cinemacograph itself from its frst day, shoved Parraveur arvné (the waterer watered) So seenie “spectacularity” appeared at the same time a6 the inematograph. Tt serve tha in inventing the mise-en-seéne of cinema, ‘Malis even more profoundly committed film to the “path toward theatrical spectacle.” Tei, however, notin theatri= cality but through i ehat we must look for the source and the essence of the great mutation, Special effects and the fantastic are the two faces of the revolution that Melis brings about. A revolution within the spectacle, bur one that transforms it. Moreover, the histori ans know this, They marvel ac the “great Melis,” “whose magic spells actually constituted the germs of the cinemas syntax, language, and means of expression.” But if they marvel at it they are not at all astonished that instead of increasing the realist fidelity ofits image by enlarging it (the50 | Metamorphosis ofthe Cin tosraph into Cinema {giant or circular sereen), endowing it with sound and color 48 the Exposition of 1900 heralded, from 1896, the eine matograph involved itself in phantasmagoria. Effectively, the fantastic immediately sprang up from the most realis- chines, and Maligss unteality was deployed as fa _grantly as was the reality of the Lumiere brothers. Absolute lack of realism (Melis) answers absolute real= ism (Lumiere). An admirable antithesis that Hegel would hhave loved, from which the cinema was to be born and developed, the cinema that i «fasion ofthe Lumiere cine matograph and the Milits fury ply? eof ‘The Metamorphosis In the same year, 1898, in Paris and Brighton, Melts, with La caverne maudive (The Cave of the Demons, Reve Wartite (he Artar's Drea), Les quate ttes embrrassantes (be Pour ‘Troublesome Head), and Dédenblement cabalistigue (The Triple Lady), and G, A, Smithy sth The Corsican Brothers and Pho- regrapbing # Gbas, introduce the ghost and the double into film by superimposition and double or multiple exposures, “This trick, which Méliés ranked fourth among the vari~ us techniques in his major cext of 1907, “Cinematographic Views," immediately inspires imitation, and doubles prolif- erate on sereens: doubles ofthe dead (ghost) as ofthe liv- ing, doubles to the power of two in the ease of a phantom twin asin Tbe Corsican Brotbers. Specter spring up in super= imposition with disturbing spontaneity a8 if to inscribe the cinematograph unequivocally in the lineage of the shadow spectacles of Father Kircher and Robertson. Indeed, the ‘magic antern enlightens us with its magie and illuminates its magic with our understanding, One year after its birth, the cinematograph follows in the footsteps of this “lite rmachine” thac delights in skeletons and ghosts andl “makes tas seein the darkness, on a shite wall, a number of hideous specter, in such a way that those who do not know the Meuamorphanis ofthe Cinematograph into Cinema | SI secret believe that itis done through magical art.”* So trae js this thatthe shadow, any shadow immediately summons up fantasy and surreaiy ‘The sudden apparition ofthe ghostly ‘opens up the magie enclosed in the “charm of the image.” “The ghosts nota simple efllorescence. It plays genetic sad structural role Ic is remarkable that where the genesis fof the cinema occurs, in Brighton and in Pars, the double is immediately summoned up, mobilized, and provides the point of departure for one of the key techniques of film: superimposition” We have given ghostly superimposition and doubling pride of place because they have for us the familiar erits of that “magic” aeady evoked, but also because they possess the characteristics proper to the new world of the cinema they are tricks bose effi fre ofall faci, but that subse quently go om to become techniques of reals expresion. They integrate in an amalgam where Méliés adds his original for- nal to those of the Théstre Robert-Houdin and the magic lantern, They are part of this systematic insercion of trick, cffects into the heart of the cinematograph ‘They area part ofthis luster of illusions that, once the fantastic recedes wll constitute the elemeacary and essential rhetorie ofall fiz, In face, all Malis conjuring tricks tke root in key seh= niques of the art of film, including, and above all even, the art of documentary and newsreels. Superimpositon, the close-up, the fade, the dissolve, are, soto speak, the distilled products of the imaginings of Star Fil Historians—even the Anglo-Saxons—are aware of the sreneti importance of Méliés, Bu these same historians are Tike halfsdumbfounded, halé-shrewd specators who would hhave gone backstage 10 find out how things were done. “Tricks, these are tricks, only tricks.” And in tum address ing the public, they solemnly announce: “These liale magic formulas actually constitute the germs of the syntax, lan- ‘guage, and means of expression which enabled the cinema to translate he reality of life.”52 | Metamorphosis ofthe Cematosraph into Cinema ‘They know that these tricks changed the soul ofthe cin= ‘ema, but they know nothing of the soul of these “riks.” Sadouf’ sentence, cited once again, evades the true question ‘while posing it. How were simple tricks, unbelievable fairy plays, able to play this driving, genetic, and structural role? Why, in what say, dd they revolutionize the einematograph? “How is it tha che father ofa new language and art was only ‘an entertainer who hid a pigeon up his sleeve? Why did such small and comical machinations have such great and mov- ing effects? Why does the cinema go by way ofthese “magic spells” in order to be able “ta translate the reality of life™® We should first of all examine the common nature of _Maliés various ries. They are those ofthe theater of fan- tasy and the magic lantern: although enriched by innov- tions, they all aim for effects that are precisely magical and fantastic, to use once again the terms associated with these spectacles that preceded the cinema and that have nowr- ished it. ‘Magical and fantasti, these cic, like these spectacles, are of the same family as sorcery or occultsm, Prestdigi- tation, like soreery, produces apparitions, disappearances, an metamorphoses. But the sorcerer is believed t0 be a sorcerer, whereas the conjurer is known to be a trickster Conjuring spectacles, like Melis’ tricks, are decadent and fairground offspring in which the fantastic has ceased co be taken literally. The fancati, nevertheless, constitutes the lifeblood of these spectacles. And, although aestheticized snd devalued, itis the magical vision of the world that is perpetuated through them. ‘We still cannot provide the essential charaeveristcs of this magical vision of the world, for the cinema will ilu- sminate them as they will illuminate it. Let us make it clear jn the meantime that we are referring to magic not as an essence, butasa certain stage and certain states ofthe human ‘mind In order to describe i, we refer to the vision of the archaic world, it is because there alienation is manifest, Metamorphosis ofthe Cinematograp int Cinema | 53 (etishived, If, forthermore, we grant a preeminence to the archaic vision of death, itis because no empirical veneer, pone of the sludge of realty, prevemts us from considering its fantastic nature. In the preceding chapter, the study of the image- -eflection led us to one of the two poles of magic: the dou- ble. Te stopped at that moment where the image remains a faithfal mirror and is not yee transformed under the fax of desire, of fear, or the dream. Yer the universe of magic is not only populated by shadows and ghosts: itis, in essence, open call metamorphoses. All thats fantastic comes back finally to the double and to metamorphosis? In the archaic worldview all metamorphoses are possible and effective within an immense fluid relationship where liv= ing or active things that are not enclosed in the prisons of ‘objectivity and identity bathe. Metamorphosis triumphs over death and becomes renaissance. Death-remaissance isa second immortality, parallel and related to the survival of the dou- ble. Doubles move freely inthe universe of metamorphoses, and the fatter is animated by spirits, chat isto say, doubles Metamorphoses have remained alive and active in child hood fairy tales, in the ales and fantasti stories of young: children, and, on the other hand, in prestidigitation, which, although reduced to exhibition at fairs, is precisely a magic cal art, not only of transfers from the visible o the invisible and vice versa (apparitions, vanshings), but also, and above all, of eansmutations and transformations "Now, if we go back to Mélits, tha is, to the transition from the einematogeaph to the cinema, not enly do we find prestiigitaton erick effects) withthe resulting fairy play at the riin of bis fle, but me dicaver that tbe fst rick, the opera- tive act, cen, that initiates the transformation of the cinema graph into cinema is a metamorphosis. [At the end of 1896 (in October, Sadoul surmises)—that is, seareely one year after the frst presentation ofthe cine ‘matograph—Mélits, like any Lumiere cameraman, films the54 | Metamorphosis ofthe Cinematograph inte Cinema Place de POpérs. The film gets jammed, then, after a min- ute, starts running again. In the meantime, the seene has changed; the horse-dravn Madeleine-Bastillecolleybus has given way to a hearse, New pedestrians traverse the field taken in by the eamera. Projecting the film, Mls suddenly secs a trolleybus transformed into a hearse, men changed into women, “The substitution tick had been discovered.” In 1897, the year when “he hecomes conscious of his smission,” a6 they say in the naively definitive mguage that biographers affect," Melits exploits the process. The first transformations met with great success (Le manair de dia- Yl [The Devils Manor, Le dible au couvent {The Sign of the Cras, Cendrillon (Cinderella, Fans et Marguerite [Posse and Marguerite}, Le carefour de Popérs, Magiediaholigue [Black Art). As one “effect leads tp another,” Mélits seks and finds ‘ew processes, and only then goes on to employ the machin- cry and prestidigitation of the Théitre Robert Houdin and the magic lancer. Still with the aim of ereating fantasy, he will invent the lap dissolve and the tracking shot ‘There is no doubs about it the fairy play and the Fanta tic, the magieal vision ofthe universe, and the technical pro- cesses ofthe cinema merge in their nascent state inthe genius of Mélits. More precisely tll, metamorphosis was not only chronologically the first effect, bu the essential one. "Ten years later and after many many tricks, Mi ‘emphasized the fundamental role of metamorphosis in dis- tinguishing films according to two categories, one of com- posed subjects or genre scenes and the other of called ‘rangfirmation views. But ivis notin the frst eategory that he innovated and became famous. Faison had already dreamed ‘of making film into a sore of mirror of the music hall pro- duction, Melis leaped headiirst through the looking glass held out by Faison and the Lumigre brothers and landed in the universe of Lewis Carroll. The great revolution was not only the appearance of the double in the magic mirror of es ill, Metamorphonis ofthe Chematagroh inte Cima | 55 the sreen, butalso this crossing through the mirror orig= inally, essentially, the Lumiare cinematograph is doubling, the cinesa of Meles is originally, essentially, metamorpho= sis: But hy the same token, we ean grasp the profound con~ tinsity a the heart ofthis profound difference. In the same ‘way that in magical vision there is continuity and syncretic ‘unity from the double to metamorphosis, che ual nature of the cinematographic image already summoned or et us pre= view the fantastic world of metamorphosis. Whence the almost immediate transition from one to the other. “The magician’ wand is in every camera and the eye of Merlin the Magickan rurned into 2 lens." Or, rather, the eye of Merlin the Magician only rammed into a lens when Melits the magician’ lens tuened into Meclin ‘The Other Metamorphosis: Time “Tricks, the supernatural, the fantastic, metamorphosis, are so many faces of the same Méligsian realty tha transforms the cinematograph into cinema. Bucafter Mélis the domain ‘of the fantastic and of the supernatural shrinks: the tricks lose their conjuring powers. And above all, although meea- ‘morphosis was the driving force behind the transition, it was not its indispensable means. This revoluion that Mees admirably symbolizes was not the work of Métis alone and does not end with Melis alone. Like their respective political histories, che evolutionary (English) phenomenon and the revolutionary (French) phe: ‘nomenon confront each other. In the frst case, there is 2 ‘continuum of small qualitative mutations i the other, a rad {cal ransfiguration. But in both eases, as Sadoul has shown, the same techniques emerge ‘Once again we note that these discoveries ae simultane ‘us, spontaneous, that is, necessary. We also note that the history of the cinema could possibly have done without56 | Metomorphore ofthe Cnematosraph into Cinema ‘Malis, but cha che magic of metamorphose, although not ‘necessary, proved at any rate sufficient ro create the cinema, (On the one hand Mélis, the magician, puts the cinemato~ graph into a hat to pull out the cinema, But on the other hand, in Brighton, brain waves of fantasy are empirically grafted onto film and transform it from within, slowly and imperceptibly. The cinema is produced not only from the action of the magic of metamorphoses, but by undergoing n internal profound metamorphosis. For us, itis a ques- tion of reciprocally illuminating the evolutionary and the revolutionary phenomenon. ‘The techniques of the cinema—the differentiation of shots according tothe distance from the camera to the ob- ject, camera movements, use of sets, special lighting effets, fades, dissolves, superimposition, and so on—are joined, oF rather combine, and take on their meaning inthe supreme technique: nantage. Our aim here isnot to take an inventory’ fr examin, in the manner of catalog, these techniques or formulas, which have been very well described elsewhere.” Moreover, we will have the opportunity to turn our atten= tion to each of them successively. What is important is t0 boring to light their reoolasonary and structural traits Film stops being an animated photograph to break up into an infinity of heterogeneous animated photographs or shots, But, atthe same time, it becomes a stem of animated photographs that has acquired new spatial and cemporal characteristics. ‘Time in the cinematograph was precisely real chrono logical time. The cinema, by contrast, expurgates and breaks ‘up chronology; it pats temporal fragments in harmony and continuity according to a particular ehythm, which is one snot of action but of images of action, Montage unites and arranges the discontinuous and heterogeneous succession of shots in a continuum. Is this rhythm tha, tating from a temporal series of tiny, chopped-up morsels, reamsutes sew, fd ie. r Metamorphosis ofthe Cinematogreph into Cinema | 57 ‘This fluid time is subject to strange compressions and From the first Orhello in art film, “the principal roles ap- pear ta belong to the handkerchief and the daggers of Tago and Othello” (Max Nordau). “On the screen no more sil lites itis as much the revolver asthe murderer hand and his tie as mach as him that commit the crime” (Bilinsky) The avant-garde of 1924-25 had such a feeling for this life of things (in part, under the influence of painters) that we see inthis period films about objects, ballets mcbanigues. Since then, numerous objects have acceded to stardom, such as the snow dome in Citizen Kane or the statuette in The Mal- tese Falon, ‘This animation of objects takes us back, in a sense, 10 the universe of archaic vision, or to the gaze of a child. Epstein, like Landry, moreover perspcaciously noted thatthe spectacle of things brings the spectator back “tothe ‘old animistie and mystical order." ‘The animating power of the close-up ean be exercised not only on the total object, but on one of is parts. At the extreme, a drop of milk (in The General Line) is endowed with a power of refusal and adherence, with a sovereiga ie A curious operation is performed on certain parts of the human body? the close-up reveals various litte loeal68 | Metamorphosis of the Cinematoraph inte Cinema souls related to those pupil souls and thunb-high souls that EE. Monseur sted in archaic religions and maps." Epstein had already foresee tis “Teno longer seems tome a fable that there fa particular soul ofthe ee, ofthe hand, ofthe tongue, a6 the vias believed." The nose, the ey, the mouth are endowed with autonomy, of rather, soul “Did you know what» foot was before having seen it lve in Shoe, under table, onthe sreen?™ Epstein even recog ized the grim reaper, waiting in ambush behind the gaze (the tational window ofthe double “inthe pit of the propia spirt forms ts oracles, One would like to touch this boundless guze were it not charged with so much force that fs pethaps dangerous" For archaic peoples as for children, subjective phenom- ena are alienated in hing that become catiers of oa. The feeling ofthe spectator at the cinema tends toward this ani- anism, Etienne Sourau pti apy: “Univeral animism is fimological fact that hat no equivalent inthe theater™! Let 1 add, "that has no equivalent in any contemporary ar” "The cinema i the greatest apostle of anim.” Bry thing effectively takes on a on, the orange pee, the gust of wind, a blunder.“ Inanimate objects, now you have a soul inthe Hid universe of the einem Tt is abviously the cartoon that completes, expand, ex- alts the animism implid inthe cinema, to sucha degre that this animism blossoms into anthropomorphisi The fam- yard speaks and ings to us, lowers leap about on thei it te feet, tool open their eyes, stretch ou and start dancing. The cartoon only exaggerates the normal phenomenon: fi “reveals this anthropomorphousphysiognomy in every abject" Everything bathes ina latent anthropomorphisn, and this word signals well he profound tendency ofthe cin- cama in regard to animals, plats, an even objects: at der ent stages and strats the screen is at once infised with sul anal populated wih souls. Objects radiate with an astonsh- ing presence, with a kind of mana” that i simultaneously Metamorphosis ofthe Cnemetograph iat Cineme | 69 or alternately subjective richness, emotive power, autono- ‘mous life, particular soul ‘The Landseape of the Face In addition to anthropomorphism, which tends to charge things with human presence, there is more obscurely, more ‘weakly, cosmomorphism, that is a tendeney to charge man ‘with cosmie presence. Thus, for example, the bodies of two lovers in an embrace metamorphose into a wave breaking ‘ona rock, and are only returned to, their desire appeased, in the following shot. The cinema makes use ofthese cosmo- _morphie representations in extreme cases, precisely such a8 this one of human coupling, Most often whet comes across js an atenuated cosmomorphism, where the human face is the mirvor of the world chat surrounds it, The Russians have made great use of the cosmographie powers of the face, “You want to show a great civilization, great technical progress?” sad Balizs, “Show them in the men who work: show their faces, their eyes, and then we shall be able to tell whae that civilization means and what itis worth." In yet another way, the face isthe mirror, no longer of the uni- verse chat surrounds it, but of the action that takes place offcreen, that is, out of frame. Agel puts it very well “If itis a question of a physiognomy, the eamera is at once a microscope and a magic mitror.™* The fice has become a medium: it expresses storms a sea, the eatth, the town, the factory, revohition, war, The face i a landscape. In actual fact, it is later on that we will be able o envi age in all its fullness the cosmomorphiso implied by the cinema, when we will no longer consider only film, a uni- verse satueated with soul, but also the spectator sol sata- rated with the universe, For now, however, we can understand, without going back to the very crux ofthe problem, that fil implies an- ‘theopomorphism and eosmomoxphism, not as svo separate