Art/Cinema Both Deleuze and Eisenstein

Art/Cinema

Both Deleuze and Eisenstein show how cinema allows artists to play with time, to represent temporal reality in ways other art forms do not allow. Deleuze notes that traditional visual arts offer a limited perspective. Not only can they not represent the passage of time, visual arts like painting cannot portray motion in the way cinema can. In cinema, disparate images are linked in ways they could not be on a singular frame on a two-dimensional canvas. Parallels can be drawn between symbols, and that which is out of the viewer's field are meaningful. Moreover, irrationality can work in cinema. Images and symbols are linked in non-linear ways. Eisenstein focuses on montage to illustrate similar points. The filmmaker can arrange a montage for purposeful effects, playing with imagery, symbols, and time. Although Deleuze and Eisenstein use different terminology and different points of reference, both authors refer to the power of motion pictures to accomplish artistic goals.

Eisenstein appreciates notions of dominance in montage. Contrast and opposition become particularly salient on screen when foreground images compete with one another for semantic efficacy. Eisenstein compares a montage with a piece of instrumental music: dominant tones alternate with subordinate ones to create a panoply of images, ideas, and emotions.

Moreover, both Eisenstein and Deleuze refer to the way the brain processes images. Deleuze notes that the "Euclidian coordinates" of the brain are superceded by a more complex representation of reality when film is the predominant medium (p. 209). The Euclidian coordinates to which Deleuze refers are the axes of association and integration. Images can be freely associated, then pieced together or differentiated to allow interpretation. Eisenstein esoterically alludes to the "psychic" component of imagery interpretation (p. 225). According to Eisenstein, the brains' cortex can form gestalt wholes from disparate parts. Montage is an apt medium to illustrate the power of the brain in creating nuanced yet meaningful interpretations of imagery. Eisenstein also mentions the "higher nervous activity" that accompanies perception of motion pictures (p. 225). The physical impact of visual imagery is poignant, according to Eisentstein. Motion pictures are visceral.

Interestingly, Deleuze mentions the ability of film to create what the author calls "false continuity," (p. 207). As Deleuze notes, "It is not quite right to say that the cinematographic image is in the present," and therefore it should not be "confused with what it represents," (p. 207). In painting and other static forms of visual art, symbols are not as easily confused with what they represent because of the added dimension of motion. Whereas Eisenstein is concerned with relationships of dominance and subordination, Deleuze focuses on relationships between past, present, and future. Eisenstein uses montage to illustrate his ideas about how the brain interprets a moving canvas of images, and Deleuze discusses film in a more general sense. Yet Eisenstein's and Deleuze's arguments are strikingly similar. Deleuze refers to "perceptual relinkage" just as Eisenstein emphasizes the links between images in a montage (p. 210).