April 23, 1985

As soon as there was the talkie, the first great American comedies – I’m not talking about musicals, I’m talking about American comedy – what do we see? Filming the conversation, filming the conversation, but in what form? Indeed, everyone speaks at the same time, except the one who is not in the know, except the one who maintains the social content or the determined social interest. But this guy, he tries to explain, but he is swept away by the game of interactions. It will be the game of interactions. And in this sense, we could classify. … If we didn’t have so much to do, that would make us a session for us – the American comedy is of such richness for the cinema.

Seminar Introduction

As he starts the fourth year of his reflections on relations between cinema and philosophy, Deleuze explains that the method of thought has two aspects, temporal and spatial, presupposing an implicit image of thought, one that is variable, with history. He proposes the chronotope, as space-time, as the implicit image of thought, one riddled with philosophical cries, and that the problematic of this fourth seminar on cinema will be precisely the theme of “what is philosophy?’, undertaken from the perspective of this encounter between the image of thought and the cinematographic image.

For archival purposes, the English translations are based on the original transcripts from Paris 8, all of which have been revised with reference to the BNF recordings available thanks to Hidenobu Suzuki, and with the generous assistance of Marc Haas.

English Translation

Edited

Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1956

 

Deleuze continues on the topic of “speech acts”, reemphasizing how the “readable” aspect of film viewing shifted toward the “hearable”, but also tending to weave together, causing new sorts of visions within the visual image, notably the rise of speech acts. Following World War II, in the second or modern phase, with the sound component gaining its autonomy, the “out-of-field” aspect is eliminated. Arguing this autonomy as being due to the growth of television, Deleuze then derives from Kant two terms with Greek etymology, “autonomy” and “heautonomy”, to indicate that after World War II, sound and the visual become two “autonomous” components of a one and same audiovisual image (cf. Rossellini and Godard), followed by “heautonomous” images (cf. Straubs, Duras, Syberberg), the complex relation developed previously of incommensurability, the irrational point and relinkages. Deleuze addresses the interactional nature of images (cf. Benveniste), but then distinguishes “persons” between which speech acts are engaged (for Benveniste) from speech acts as “interactions” (cf. Lang’s “M”). Deleuze enters the classification proper with three categories of traits, focusing on the first type: interactional speech acts with different poles (cf. in American comedy, Hawks, Capra, Lubitsch). Linking how conversations and sub-conversations develop a direct representation of conversation with its madness, Deleuze moves toward an aspect of this first type of speech act involving time and its bifurcations (cf. Mankiewicz). He argues that these bifurcations suggest a second kind, an “off” speech act inserted into the visual image through a circulation between one speech act hidden behind another, concluding with the spoken component’s three properties: causing visions as interactions and bifurcations; to be seen itself, the voice itself becoming visible in space; and itself to see, moving toward the second category, the reflexive speech act. [Much of the development corresponds to The Time-Image, chapters 9 & 10.]

 

Gilles Deleuze

Seminar on Cinema and Thought, 1984-1985

Lecture 19, 23 April 1985 (Cinema Course 85)

Transcription: La voix de Deleuze, Marina Llecha Llop (Part 1), Nathanel Amar (Part 2) and Stéphanie Mpoyo (Part 3); additional revisions to the transcription and time stamp, Charles J. Stivale

English Translation Forthcoming

 

Notes

For archival purposes, the augmented version of the complete transcription with time stamp was completed in September 2021. Additional revisions were added in February 2024 and February 2025.

Lectures in this Seminar

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Reading Date: October 30, 1984
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