April 30, 1985

We haven’t finished the first aspect of speaking films yet. This will be our goal today, including from the point of view of music in sound-visual relations. But it is not this aspect – I’m trying to be very clear — it is not in this aspect that will appear what I had announced as my important problem in the music. For I hope today that we have completed this first aspect of speaking films; and you remember our hypothesis — which is not, which has nothing original – notably, that it’s not between the silent film and the speaking film that a real change occurred in the regime of the image. So, what will come normally, what should come after, from the next session forward, would be: to approach the second stage of speaking films and the new image regime that it implies. Needless to say, it seems completely coherent with the aggregate of our year, which turned on the confrontation between a so-called relatively classic image and a so-called relatively modern image in its relations with thought. So there, it is on the level of sound that we would return to a so-called modern image.

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

Fritz Lang’s The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, 1933

 

Returning to the pre-World War II stage of spoken films, Deleuze reflects on what it means for the sound component to gain its autonomy, and noting different sub-divisions of noises and voices depending on the style, he indicates how music develops a sound framing and a sound continuum, this continuum related to the existence of the out-of-field (hors-champ). Deleuze provides distinctions of an absolute out-of-field and a relative out-of-field; a broader global transformation, a “Whole-that-changes”, distinct from simple movement in space, developing a temporal change; and voices “off” in relation to voices “in”, linked to two categories of speech acts, interactive and reflexive. With reference to Michel Chion, Deleuze examines facets of such speech acts and voices, and then shifts to musical elements as a special facet of the sound continuum linked to the visual image. The role of music first considered as exterior to the film in the silent period, Deleuze addresses music’s shift in the first speaking period as subjugated by the visual image. Through Deleuze’s extended conversation (only partially audible) with Pascal Auger on moments in the sound, music and visual image intersection, he indicates the importance of vibration as infinitesimal element of visual movement in common with musical movement, also linking work by several musicians to the term the Whole-that-changes. Deleuze turns toward Nietzsche’s conception of music in The Birth of Tragedy, also linking this to Schopenhauer and Wagner’s Parsifal in order to confirm the distinction of levels of the Whole, indirect representation in the visual image and direct presentation in music. [Much of the development corresponds to The Time-Image, chapter 9.]

Gilles Deleuze

Seminar on Cinema and Thought, 1984-1985

Lecture 20, 30 April 1985 (Cinema Course 86)

Transcription: La voix de Deleuze, Ali Hadi Ibrahim, correction : Sidney Sadowski (Part 1), Silvia Perea (Part 2) and Rudy Pascarella (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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Reading Date: April 30, 1985
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Reading Date: June 18, 1985
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