Cinema 1: The Movement Image - The Crisis of The Action-image

The Crisis of The Action-image

“We hardly believe any longer that a global situation can give rise to an action which is capable of modifying it – no more than we believe that an action can force a situation to disclose itself, even partially” (p206).

The categories of affection and action correspond to C.S Peirce's categories of firstness and secondness. Peirce's category of thirdness corresponds to Deleuze's mental image. Alfred Hitchcock, according to Deleuze, introduces the mental image, where relation itself is the object of the image. And this takes movement-image to its crisis. After Hitchcock, both the small form and the large form are in crisis, as are action-images in general. In Robert Altman’s Nashville the multiple characters and storylines refer to a dispersive, rather than a globalising situation (p207). In Sidney Lumet’s Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon characters “behave like windscreen wipers” (p208). Deleuze develops this theory by detailing the chronology of Italian neorealism, French New Wave, and New German Cinema. Deleuze states that we must think “beyond movement” (p215)...Which leads us to Cinema 2: The Time-Image.