by Alain Badiou
"Peut-on parler d'un film?" Text of the lecture by Alain Badiou in the Studio des Ursulines, Paris, June 7, 1994, published online in L'Art du Cinéma, n ° 6 , November 1994.
A first way of talking about a film: it consists in saying "I liked" or "I was not very enthusiastic." These words are indistinct, since the rule of "please" makes its standard hidden. For what expectation states the trial? A detective novel can please or not please, be good or bad. These distinctions do not make the novel in question a masterpiece of literary art. Rather designate the quality, color, the short time spent in their company. Which is verified after an indifferent memory loss. For the first time the word will be called "the trial indistinct." It has to do with the necessary exchange of views, which are often open, and after consideration of the time it is natural, at that time enjoyable and precarious life sustrae.Hay promise or a second way of talking a film, just the one in which he defends against the trial indistinct. As shown, which is already some argument-that this film is not merely situable in the hiatus between pleasure and oblivion. It is not just that it's great in its genre, but that also makes provision for its purpose, or fix, any idea. One of the superficial signs of this shift register is the name of the author of the film, his words as an author, while the indistinct view, meanwhile, referred primarily to the actors, in order, a striking scene, or the story told. This second type of trial attempts to designate a singularity, whose emblem is the author. This uniqueness is what resists the trial indistinct. Try to separate what is said of the film of the general movement of opinion. Such separation is also one that cuts off a spectator who has seen the uniqueness and the appointment of the mass public. A this trial will be called "diacritic trial." Advocates the consideration of film as a style. The style is what is opposed to the indistinct. Uniting style with the author, the trial diacritic film aims to save something, that something that is not thrown into oblivion pleasures. Some figures of cinema, some names are identified in time.
diacritic In fact, the trial is only the denial of trial fragile indistinct. Experience shows that it saves both films as the names of the authors, not so much the art of cinema as some scattered elements of constant stylistic. I would be more tempted to suggest that the trial diacritic the authors is that the trial indistinct to actors: the index of a temporary recall. Ultimately, the trial diacritic defines a sophisticated form, or differential, in the opinion. Means, is, cinema "quality." But the history of quality film ultimately fails to appoint any artistic configuration. In any case means rather the story, always surprising, the film critic. Well, in all ages, is critical to provide its views expressed at trial diacritic. The criticism refers to the quality. But do not stop being herself, quite indistinct. Art is infinitely more rare than the best critics can suppose. This is something that today is known remote reading literary criticism, say Sainte-Beuve. The vision that undeniable sense of quality, vigor diacritic, gives his century is artistically absurd.
Actually, the purpose of trial diacritic are covered by a second forgetting, in a period different from that forgetfulness indeed caused by the trial indistinct, but ultimately no less urgent. Cemetery authors, quality means not so much the art of an era, as its artistic ideology. Ideology that, always, true art is a gap [trouée].
must imagine a third way of talking about a film, and indistinctly or diacritical.
two traits I see in her field.
First, the trial is largely irrelevant. All defensive position is abandoned. The film is good that you liked, which is not commensurate with indistinct view objects, you have to be distinguished: all this is quietly assumed by the simple fact that he is spoken of, is far from the goal to achieve . Is not this the rule that applies to works of art established in the past? Find a "significant that the Oresteia of Aeschylus, or the Comedie Humaine of Balzac will have" quite liked "? What are not "really bad"? The trial becomes indistinct ridiculous. But The same applies to the trial diacritic. It is no longer a matter of showing fatigue Mallarmé's style is superior to Sully-Prudhomme, who, incidentally, spent his time as the most excellent quality. Then the film will speak on the unconditional commitment to a conviction of art, not to set it, but to draw from it consequences. Let's say we move from a regulatory view, indistinct ("is fine") or diacritic ("exalted"), axiomatic that an attitude about the impact for thought by this or that film. So let's talk
axiomatic trial.
The second feature of the trial on a film is that any element of the film can be called without setting its relationship with the passage of an Idea impura.En my previous conference here, said, the art of film, two things:
"That was the idea of \u200b\u200ba mode visitation, of a passage.
"That was referring to all the other arts, it was all more una.Y so, his treatment of the idea captured uniquely their impurity.
Talk about a film is to examine the consequences of their own way in which an idea is treated well by the film. Formal considerations, cutting, flat, global or local motion, color, body actants, sound, etc. Should not be cited to the extent that contribute to "touch" of the idea and the capture of his native impurity.
An example: the succession of planes that mark in Murnau's Nosferatu, the approach to the site of the prince of the dead. Overexposure of the plains, rearing horses, cuts stormy, all this unfolds the idea of \u200b\u200bplaying the imminence of a visitation day early evening, a no man's land between life and death. But there is an impure mixture of this visitation, which is clearly poetic, by failing to transfer the vision for the expectation and concern, rather than give it to see its outline established. Our thinking here is not contemplative he is taken away, traveling in company with the idea rather than simply appropriating it. The implication is that of the possibility of a thought-poem which breaks the idea, which is less a cut than an apprehension of the loss.
Talk about a film will often show how we are called to this idea on the strength of its loss against the grain of the paint, for example, is art par excellence of the idea carefully and fully given.
This contrast makes me turn to what I believe the main difficulty when speaking axiomatically a film in question. Is to speak of him as a film. Then when the film actually organizes visitation of an idea, and we assume, as we speak, "it is always in a subtractive relationship, or defective in respect of one or more other arts. Indeed, the most delicate to maintain the movement of the defection, not the fullness of his support. Especially when the formal channel, which refers to alleged transactions film "pure" is a dead end. Nothing is pure cinema, indoor and comprehensively as it is polluted in its capacity as "all the arts plus."
Recall for example the long journey from the canals of Venice at the beginning of Death in Venice, Visconti. The idea goes, and that all the rest of the film at a time saturated and dissolved, is that of a man who has done what he had to do in existence, and was then placed on hold, either on the eve of an order, or other life. But this idea is organized by the heterogeneous convergence of a number of ingredients is the face of the actor Dirk Bogarde, the particular quality of opacity and loaded question this face, and that has to do, like it or not, with art the actor, are the countless artistic echoes the Venetian style, all in fact related to the issue of what is accomplished, a soldier, removed from history, pictorial themes already present in Guardi and Canaletto, literary themes, from Rousseau to Proust, there for us in that kind of traveler from the great palaces of Europe, the echo of the subtler uncertainty plot, for example, the heroes of Henry James, is the music of Mahler, who is also the consummation relaxed, exasperated, a total melancholy tone of the symphony and his line of rings (here, the strings alone). And it can show how these ingredients are amplified while corrode each other, in a kind of decomposition too, which gives exactly the idea, as passage and as an impurity. But what is here the film itself? After all, cinema is nothing more than making and assembly. Nothing else. I mean, anything else is "The film." Must be upheld, then, that from the point of view of axiomatic view, the film is exposed by the passage of the idea that making and assembly. How does the idea to take [prize], that is, to his surprise [sur-prize]? And how are the edits? But above all: what it reveals singular being taken and mounted on the one-of-more heterogeneous in the arts, and we could not previously know or think about this idea? In the example of film Visconti, it is clear that making and assembling conspire to set a duration. Excessive duration, consistent with the perpetuation empty of Venice, and with the stagnation of the adage Mahler, as well as the interpretation of an actor immobile, inactive, which is not required, endlessly, rather than the face. And so, what is captured here with the idea of \u200b\u200ba man suspended from his being, or his desire, is that in fact this man is still himself. The ancient remedies have been exhausted, new opportunities are absent. The length film, made in the management of various arts left to their shortcomings, is the visitation of a subjective immobility. Hay with a man freed from now at the whim of a meeting. A man such as Samuel Beckett would say, "still in the dark" until it reaches the untold delight his executioner, that is, their new desire, if it ever arrives.
That is the side of this idea still what we deliver, is what makes your ticket here. It could show that the other arts, or fighting the idea as a gift-the highest degree, the painting, or invent a pure time of the idea, explore movement configurations thinkable "in the highest degree, the music- . The film, by the possibility of its own, recording and editing, to amalgamate without presenting the other arts, can and should organize the passage of the still.
But the immobility of the passage, as can be shown easily in relation to certain levels of Straub remain with the literary text, its escanción, its progression. Or with the dialectic that the beginning of Playtime establishes between the movement of a crowd and the emptiness of what might be called its atomic composition. Axiomatically talk of a film is always disappointing because an activity is always exposed to no more than a rival to the arts chaotic primary. But we can follow this thread: to show how the film transports us with this idea, so that we discover what nothing else could make us discover, that, as Plato thought so, the impure from the idea is always that immobility passes, or a passenger is stationary. And that is why we forget the ideas. Against forgetting
, Plato calls the myth of a vision first and a reminiscence. Talk about a film is always talk of a reminiscence: what coming, how reminiscence, this or that idea is capable, able to us? It is this point that all true film, idea by idea. Ties of impurities, movement and repose, of forgetting and reminiscence. Not so much about what we know, as far as we know. Talk about a film is to speak less of the resources of thought that possible, once insured, the manner of the other arts resources. Indicate what might be there, well there is. Or else: how the doping of the pure open the way to other impurities.
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