This article is part of a larger research project on the different
forms attraction has taken in the cultural series animated
pictures.2 Here we will
focus our attention on the first signs of the paradigm which we
propose to call cinématographie-attraction, a paradigm
in which the question of thresholds seems to us to be
essential.3 Moving picture programs
juxtaposed, one after the other, a long string of often disparate
views. Viewers of the period, for that very reason, were called
upon to enter into a dozen sometimes completely heterogeneous worlds,
one after the other, at the same screening.4
The cinématographie-attraction experience was essentially
an experience of discontinuity. Full of interruptions and sudden
starts, this experience was a chain of shocks, a series of thresholds.
The concept of the threshold will be particularly useful here, because
it allows us to problematise the various kinds of discontinuity
which punctuate the cultural series animated pictures.
This punctuation took the form of one of two primary structuring
principles running through this series and modulating its development:
attraction and narration.5
Our discussion will begin at its emergence with optical toys such
as the phenakisticope, the zoetrope, and the praxinoscope. We will
attempt to demonstrate the ways in which it might be useful to address
the question of cinématographie-attraction by resituating
it before the fetish date of 28 December 1895, when tradition tells
us it was born. We will be careful to keep in mind that the cinématographie-attraction
paradigm would itself soon yield to the institution cinemato
cinema-narration, we might saythereby diminishing
the importance of attraction by placing it under the thumb of narrativity.
Nevertheless, it is essential in a study such as this to enquire
into the various possible meanings of the term threshold
and the different concepts underlying it. Beyond threshold as a
demarcation zone within a visual experience which extends over time,
we will also inquire into the material thresholds of the different
apparatuses. We will also inquire into the complex play of the various
levels within these same apparatuses where borders and limits may
be at work.
In this study, we will examine, the animated picture
phenomena found between the period 1830-1900. Throughout this period,
during which optical toys and animated views formed
part of the same paradigm, attraction was the primary structuring
principle. The workings of the phenakisticope and the zoetrope,
their rotation, repetition, and brevity, established
the form of attraction which was to dominate throughout the period.
The predilection of the earliest animated pictures for wriggling
about, for trepidation, and the ephemeral is a good indication of
how optical toys and animated views were part of the same cultural
series.6 While socio-cultural
factors, above all, determined that this series would place attraction
centre stage, the role played here by the limitations of the apparatus
need also been akcnowledged. One of the earliest major constraints
that made it possible for attraction to dominate within the cultural
series animated pictures was the medium used to convey
these images.
The phenakisticope, for example, was a cardboard disk upon which
a dozen figures were arranged in a circle around its edge (Fig.
1). Note in passing the extremely limited number of figures
and the overweening simplicity of the series of images: here, a
dancer turning on himself; in other models, a woman sewing, a jumping
dog, a parading horseman, etc. The number of figures was of course
limited by the way the drawings were arrangedradially, on
the axis of the imaginary rays emitted by this wheel, the phenakisticope
disk.
The limitations of the apparatus thus condemned it to a repetitive
and inalterable demonstration of a series of figures forming a loop.
Here it is impossible, in principle, to identify the head or the
tail, giving free reign to attraction. Because of the brevity of
the series of images, attraction necessarily took precedence over
narration, and the ad nauseam repetition inherent to the
devices functioning magnified the attractional aspect of the
moving figures. This series of images was hostage to both circularity
and repetition. No gap was possible, because the virtual head and
the tail had to join up and match. The phenakisticopes very
design meant that the thresholds of beginning and end were absent
from it.
This at least is the impression phenakisticope designers strived
to impart. With a few rare exceptions, the intervals between the
phenakisticopes figures were measured to give the impression
of a gradual moving forward of the action, making it
impossible to identify which of these figures was the very first
in the series. The phenakisticopes figures made up a series
with neither head nor tail. Set in motion by the rapid turning
of the disk, which brought about an inalterable flow of images,
the succession of figures was thus free of any disjunction or aberration.
There was no breach in the rigid continuity of the figures, which
would have allowed a glimpse of narrative. Narrative had no place
in such an apparatus, because of the programmatic limitation of
the dozen images engraved on the disk, images condemned to turn
endlessly, to perpetual movement, to the eternal return of the same.
Here and there we can find a few examples of disks which transgressed
this rule of the endless loop. These disks, despite the limited
narrative potential of the apparatus, appear to have wanted to stray
on the side of narration (or at least on the side of anecdote).
But this was a necessarily repetitive narration. The attempt to
develop a minimal narrative sequence by establishing an initial
situation, followed by its modification and closure, meant that
the action depicted on these disks tried to defy the limitations
of the apparatus. But not without provoking aberrations in the continuity
of the action each time the initial image reappeared. This was the
case with the disk distributed by Pellerin & Cie. (Fig.
2) showing two fishermen harpooning a whale. Here the head and
the tail are easily identifiable. In the first image, the whale
is rising to the surface. The two men throw their harpoon at it,
and it will remain lodged in the whales body until the end
of the series of figures. When the disk is rotated, the final figure
is necessarily followed by a recurrence of the first, in which the
whale recovers its initial integrity in a truly regressive
manner.
Examples of this kind of disk reveal one of the peculiarities of
the phenakisticope. If a designer did not consent to submitting
his figures to the strict continuity/circularity of the apparatus,
he had to accept the fact that each revolution of the disk would
create a visual interruptionunless a clever and ingenious
narrative pretext was employed, as was the case with the disk manufactured
by Thomas MacLean (Fig. 3). Here the characters
nose, which is cut off with an axe, returns with each rotation.
In this way the interruption, by means of the narrativisation of
which it is the subject, was in some way effaced. This is a good
example if ever there was one of how the topic of the disk, or its
story, was subjected to the way the apparatus functioned.
However there are few known examples of this kind of disk. Was it
that the disruption, at the time, was noticeable enough to induce
designers of disks to stick almost uniformly to a model of continuity?
And yet, despite the break in the movements continuity with
each passing of the final image, producing a spasmodic effect, the
element of attraction was just as present here (if not more so,
in some respects, given the repetition of the visual shock produced
by the interruption).
It would appear that the scarcity of disruptive subjects was a result
of the limitations the apparatus imposed on designers of phenakisticope
disks. Dont all apparatuses impose a way of conceiving the
subject they depict? In fact, something proper to the mechanics
of the apparatus itself can be seen in the bodies depicted on the
disk? The phenakisticopes format and the way it functioned
suggest a world in which everything was governed by
circularity and repetition, a world which annihilated any hint of
temporal progression. The subjects are like Sisyphus, condemned
ad infinitum to turn about, jump, and dance. In another sense,
the figures are machine-like: untiring and unalterable, they are
acted-upon subjects rather than acting-out subjects.
The lack of interruption in the sequence of images was essential
to the creation of this effect of uninterrupted and perpetual movement,
this ahistorical temporality within which beings and things could
turn about for ever, without any threshold marking the beginning
or end of their wild journey. Many disks depicting machinery, gears,
and levers (Fig. 4) emphasize this aspect;
as eternal and unbreakable machines, they are emblematic of the
wildest dreams of modernity?
The experiments of optical toy designers brought about a series
of modifications to the apparatus which, eventually, made it possible
to place the subject in a historical temporality, thereby making
it pass to the level of acting-out subject. The zoetrope
arrived on the scene about the same time as the phenakisticope.
With the zoetrope, (Fig. 5) the principle
underlying the illusion of movement remained gyration, and as long
as its drum remained of modest size, the number of images was as
limited as the phenakisticopes. With the zoetrope, however,
the images and the apparatus are no longer joined as one.
When a user picked up the phenakisticopes disk of images,
he or she was also picking up the apparatus itself. With the zoetrope,
the apparatus is on one side and the strip of images on the other.
Users thus felt the presence of the apparatus a little less. Moreover,
the longitudinal rather than radial arrangement of the figures made
possible a major transformation in the conception of animated pictures.
While the zoetrope also appears to have been inexorably condemned
to the return of the same, the transformation it introduced by separating
the images from the apparatus, substituting a flexible strip for
the disk, made possible some minor innovations in the mediums
language, as we shall see later on.
What exactly was involved,
then, in the move from a rotating disk to a flexible strip? With
its rectangular shape, the zoetrope strip necessarily came with
a head and a tail. In order to put the figures into motion, the
user had to place the flexible strip inside the drum and create
a loop, an endless loop. However, like the phenakistiscope, every
time the user placed the strip in the drum, the head and the tail
had to match, thereby voiding the beginning/end distinction proper
to the strip. Circularity thus remained at the heart of the apparatus.
With the zoetrope, the horizontal quality of the strip imposed limits
of another sort on the series of figures: longitudinal limits (at
the upper and lower limits of the strip). While the circular arrangement
of figures in the phenakisticope sometimes pushed them to go beyond
the very border of the disk (as seen in this disk by T.M. Baynes
(Fig. 6), which gives the illusion that
the rats are literally fleeing off the surface of the disk), the
zoetropes horizontal nature encouraged instead the linear
development of the images. The action was conceived of in a slightly
more historical manner, a little more like narrative.
Since it did not always succeed in containing the ebullience of
the images, the edge of the phenakisticope was not always an inviolate
threshold. In addition, on a symbolic level, its circularity limited
the action depicted to an absurd length of time, in which closure
was impossible. The radial arrangement of the images ensured that
they were invariably organised in relation both to the centre and
to the edge of the disk. Centrifugal and centripetal force reigned
there equally, along with a sense of movement beyond the confines
of the disk. The phenakisticope functioned according to both explosion
and implosion (even if it was possible, on occasion, to depict
the tranquil movements of a dancer turning about). Like the kaleidoscope,
the phenakisticope belonged more on the side of the cosmic, of the
big bang, and of the expansion and contraction of the universe (Fig.
7).
On the other hand, the horizontal arrangement of the figures on
the zoetrope strip encouraged a linearisation of the action performed
by the subjects depicted. Despite the repetitiousness of the figures
and their evident quality, in the end, as attraction, the zoetrope
infused them with a hint of self-realisation, with an aspiration
to spread their wings, we might say. A yet-to-come which would of
course never materialise, because everything simply turned in circles.
Because of the nature of its construction, however, the apparatus
allows us to catch a glimpse of this.
So too, the zoetrope was much closer to the terrestrial. Here animated
pictures lost a large part of their propensity to fly off in all
directions, of their whirlwind and high-riding quality. With the
zoetrope we are nevertheless still in the realm of attraction, but
its horizontalisation of the figures, their linearisation,
made it possible for narrative elements to seep into the series
of images. Here, the figures were inscribed in a more matter-of-fact
manner: they were brought back, neither more nor less, to terra
firma, where they moved laterally, a common enough kind of movement
for terrestrial animals (perhaps it was not without cause that the
zoetropes original German name was the zoo-trope).
Moreover, in these scenes the ground was often depicted as part
of the décor, at the bottom of the strip, where
it should be, without the troubling curvature it had in the phenakisticope.
In addition, the zoetrope drum was itself equipped with a floor,
on which the strip rested when the user put it into place.
The use of a flexible strip opened up new possibilities for presenting
the figures. The zoetrope made it possible to exhibit images from
two distinct strips at the same time. This was far from a negligible
innovation, especially if we consider how this kind of manipulation
bears a strange similarity to editing.7
Here are some of the combinations a major distributor
of zoetrope strips was advertising as early as 1870 (Fig.
8):
Very effective
and humorous Combinations can frequently be made by overlapping
one strip of Figures with the half of another strip
Amongst
some of the most effective of these combinations, the following
numbers will give very amusing results: 4 & 5, 7 & 10, 3
& 13 (etc.).8
Note the effect, for
the zoetrope user, of these syntactical combinations:
a systematic alternation between two figures in movement was established,
in the A-B-A-B pattern. Here the imperturbable filing by of the
zoetropes endless loop was called into question. And yet the
basic quality of the images had not changed: zoetropic editing
was more attraction than narration. We are not invited to follow,
narratively speaking, the vicissitudes of this or that zoetropic
figure from one time, space, or situation to another. Rather, we
are invited to take delight in the transformation-substitution relationship
the images are subjected to and which they illustrate. This is a
recurring metamorphosis of the figure, not a reiterated
following of the action.
Such a combination of strips made it possible, all the same, to
transgress the canonic rule of the zoetrope, its homogeneous parade
of images, a rule it shared with the phenakisticope. Here, however,
the series of images contained thresholds, in the form of interruptions,
which broke the rigid framework of figural unicity and opened the
door to bifidity. Yet this form of editing remained a prisoner of
the drums circularity, which was clearly a coercive structure.
The turning wheel continued to turn, indefinitely. Thresholds rose
up, making it possible to pass, first, from the end of series
A to the beginning of series B, and then from the end
of series B to the beginning of series A (ad nauseam),
but these thresholds were repetitive: we always come back to the
same end, we always come back to the same beginning. The alternation
did not allow the action to start up again narratively, nor
to start a new chapter: it only allowed it to start
up again attractionally. The befores and afters
were not, to borrow Umberto Ecos expression, essential befores
and afters, capable of containing the action effectively
and of allowing it to aspire to the status of an embryonic minimal
narrative sequence.9
Émile Reynauds transformation of the zoetrope put this
attraction/narration tension into play in a particularly apparent
manner, as seen in his praxinoscope (1876), praxinoscope theatre
(1879), and praxinoscope projector (1882). In the end, in his optical
theatre (Théâtre optique, 1892), narration came
to the fore as the primary structuring principle.
As the reader is no doubt aware, the three varieties of praxinoscope
functioned in roughly the same way and according to the same basic
principles as the zoetrope (rotating drum, flexible strip, etc.)
The inventions originality lay in its prism of mirrors which,
located at the centre of the apparatus, replaced the zoetropes
cut-out slits. The introduction of this prism made it possible to
get around the serious problem of reduced luminosity and to develop
a system which, after a few alterations, proved to be particularly
well-suited to narrative development. The weak luminosity of previous
optical toys obliged their designers to opt for simple figures with
strong outlines, to neglect the background almost entirely, and
to limit the scene to a repetition of a minimal sequence of events.
With his praxinoscope, Reynaud introduced a new approach to the
figures by emphasising the precision of the drawing and by exploiting
the subtlety of the colours.
This new way of conceiving the figures was strengthened by a constant
tendency on Reynauds part to isolate the figures and to make
them conspicuous. This tendency was seen, first of all, in the large
black lines separating each figure on the praxinoscope strips, and
then by the separation of figure and background in Reynauds
three other inventions, including the optical theatre. When we examine
a stationary praxinoscope strip, the black lines visibly isolate
the figures from each other (Fig. 9),
but what is of greatest importance is that these bars played the
same role when the images were set in motion. With the praxinoscope
(or in Reynauds version of it at least), the image seen in
the show had become a framed image.10
With Reynaud, the moving figure was in fact delineated on all four
sides: by the vertical bars to the left and right, and by the upper
and lower edges of the mirror on the top and bottom.11
Needless to say, this isolation of the figure was not complete;
normally, the viewer of the praxinoscope would see three images
at a time in his or her field of vision. The presence of the vertical
bars on the strip, in conjunction with the play of mirrors, nevertheless
made it possible to set one of these (the one most closely facing
the viewer) off from the others and to detach it from the whole.
Previous optical toys had not sought to isolate the image in this
way. They invited the viewer, rather, to a group performance.
The absence of borders between the figures prevented any of them
from standing out, and the two or three figures in the viewers
field of vision presented themselves to view simultaneously and
more or less equally.
The isolation and conspicuousness of the image was amplified by
Reynaud in the second and third versions of his apparatusthe
praxinoscope theatre and the praxinoscope projectorin which
the number of figures presented to the viewers gaze was generally
even more limited. These apparatuses sometimes allowed only a sole
figure in motion to filter through to the viewer. To obtain this
result, Reynaud placed a mask between the images and the viewer
which functioned as a passe-partout and cast the figures onto a
black background. This allowed for the superimposition of a décor,
which was painted on another material and remained immobile. Reynaud
thus brought about a radical separation between figure and background,
a procedure he retained right through to the optical theatre.
Nevertheless, the optical theatre broke with the model of the toys
which preceded it. In the different versions of the praxinoscope,
the image remained a prisoner to the drum and, as in the phenakisticope
and the zoetrope, the action formed an endless loop. With the optical
theatre, Reynaud repudiated the model of the endless loop. He broke
the intrinsic circularity of the apparatus and turned his back on
the canonical tradition of optical toys. Moreover, the optical theatre
was not, properly speaking, a toy: the viewer no longer
manipulated the apparatus directly, which was now hidden from sight;
he or she simply watched the images file past.
Unlike earlier apparatuses and all other optical toys, the head
and the tail of the strip used in the optical theatre were not designed
to meet. Here we find thresholds of the first degree, literally
a beginning and an end. The principle of circularity was
dethroned in favour of linearity. For the drum, a closed
receptacle which kept the strip of images prisoner, Reynaud substituted
two reelsone dispensing the strip, the other taking it upwhich
made it possible to view the strip, which now wound onto itself,
from head to tail (Fig. 10). Also, not
only was the image seen as a framed image, but it was also
a unique and singular image. The strip was composed
of a series of distinct frames. The isolation of the figure within
the apparatus corresponded to the isolation of the figure on the
screen; henceforth there was only one image, the changes to which
the viewer followed.
Reynauds apparatus thus went beyond mere gyration, beyond
the mere thrill of seeing the strip repeat itself, beyond pure agitation.
Here, even if attraction was still welcome, narrative had taken
over from it as the primary structuring principle. A strip
such as Autour dune cabine (Around a Cabin,
c. 1895) was in fact part of a new paradigm, within which narration
would play a decisive role. The story told in this strip (as well
as in Pauvre Pierrot [Poor Pierrot, c. 1892])
eloquently went beyond the threshold of minimal narrativity. In
Autour dune cabine we see an initial title card, followed
by an establishing shot and a conflict and its resolution,
before finishing with a finale: on the sail of a small boat
in the centre of the image, we read The Show is Over
(La représentation est terminée; Fig.
11). The narrativity this strip demonstrates was possible because
Reynaud was able to give his series of images the development required
for any narrative to occur.
The optical theatre thus carried out a transformation of the apparatus
which was both quantitative and qualitative. It had more
images, many more even, but at the same time and paradoxically,
for the viewer there was now only one image, magnified a
hundred times to boot. In addition, this image was external to the
viewer. In the case of optical toys, the viewer became one with
the apparatus; he or she was in the apparatus, became the apparatus.
In the optical theatre, the image put into motion was, on the contrary,
completely independent of the viewer. The viewer was cast beyond
the limits of the apparatus and was kept at a distance from it,
no longer having anything to manipulate. In short, this new autonomy
of the image depicted, which derived from the conspicuousness of
the image and the configuration of the new apparatus, represented
a turning point in the history of the series animated pictures.
The imposition of first-degree thresholds was a decisive factor
in the advent of this turning point. Before it became possible to
introduce such narrative thresholds as the beginning and the end,
however, it was necessary to establish second-degree thresholds
(the head and tail of the strip, the frame around each image). The
conspicuousness of the representing image on the film
strip itself was reflected on the screen by an equally effective
conspicuousness of the represented image. This exceptional
process of rendering the figures autonomous and conspicuousand
this is essential to our argument hereis also found in the
development of cinematic views, as we shall see below. All things
considered, this process took shape around what we might call dynamic
and static thresholds. In the beginning, with the phenakisticope,
there was no head or tail: the beginning and end were aleatory and
mobile thresholdsand thus dynamicsubject to the wishes
of the viewer-user and to the chance elements of the apparatus.
The beginning and end of the show were purely conjectural. It was
necessary to act from inside, so to speak, in order to impose a
beginning and end as true thresholds. It was necessary, first of
all, to define a common denominator, the figure, by gradually
imposing on it increasingly rigidand thus staticthresholds
capable of rendering it conspicuous in relation to the other images
in the series. In a sense, these second-degree thresholds were the
sine qua non of the eventual introduction of first-degree
thresholds. As long as the figure was seen by the viewer alongside
two or three other images, it could not become part of a narrative
temporality. Each figure referred to those beside it, and necessarily
remained on the level of attraction. Once the figure had been promoted
to the rank of a sole and conspicuous image, by means of those things
used to delineate it, it became possible to envision the migration
of newly imposed static thresholds towards the representational
limits of the apparatus: the head and the tail, the beginning and
the end, which henceforth served to delineate in a clear-cut manner
the entire series of figures.
From this we might conclude that attraction, which is based above
all on repetition and circularity, is more at home in an open system
than in a closed one. It would also appear that its model par excellence
is the endless loop. These two features were present in the first
apparatus for viewing animated photographic views to arrive on the
world market, the Edison Kinetoscope.
This device, invented in the early 1890s, took up a number of procedures
which were in the air at the time, particularly in the work of Reynaud.
First of all, there was the flexible, perforated strip divided into
distinct frames. However, with his animated photographs, Edison
kept his distancefor the time being at leastfrom the
resolutely narrative model Reynaud privileged with his animated
drawings. The kinetoscope remained in the bosom of attraction, thereby
exploiting the immense potential for the marvellous that animated
views first possessed. Moreover, it is significant that the kinetoscope
and the strips designed for it shared many features with optical
toys, which were also in the camp of attraction. Its subjects were
shown against a plain background, without any décor whatsoever.
The strip had no apparent head or tail and was arranged to form
an endless loop through the devices system of pulleys. Most
often, the action depicted was extremely simple and relied heavily
on the agitation of the figures and repetitive outbursts of action
(such that we might describe the kinetoscopes subjects as
acted upon rather than acting out). Finally, viewers themselves
operated the mechanism, this time by inserting a nickel.
Naturally, there are limits to the analogy between optical toys
and the kinetoscope. After all, the short strips it showed were
not meant to be presented end to end, over and over, as was the
case with optical toys. The apparatus designed by Edison and Dickson
imposed without fail initial thresholds, pre-determined limits;
it was necessary that the strip have a starting point and that it
end by stopping at another point. And yet these thresholds were
not first-degree thresholds, which truly delineate the action and
what it depicts. Rather, they were abrupt and unpredictable: the
action began in media res and it ended in media res.
Despite the realism of the images and the pre-determined length
of the film, kinetoscope strips fell fundamentally and resolutely
into the camp of attraction. This is the case with the strip Sandow
[1894], for example.
When the Lumière brothers arrived on the scene a few years
later with their cinematograph, they took animated pictures out
of this jack-in-the-box, thereby contributing to establishing
projection as the standard when exhibiting animated pictures.
The landscape was irredeemably altered as a result, and yet attraction
still remained the primary structuring principle, even if
the cinematograph could no longer be considered a toy. In fact,
it was trumpeted as sophisticated technology. In addition, the viewer
was no longer responsible for setting the images in motion. Moving
picture programs were clearly situated on the side of the stage
show and easily took their place alongside variety shows,
travelling fairs, etc.
Although viewers of animated views appear to differ from users of
optical toys, they nevertheless shared a number of qualities, whose
importance would be reduced with the advent of cinema-narration.
In the cinématographie-attraction, for example, the
viewers remained highly involved in the act of screening animated
views; far from being reduced to silence, they were participants
in a collective experience similar to that which took place in the
parlours where optical toys were consumed. Cinematograph viewers,
like the users of optical toys, could even exercise a form of control
over the unfolding of the figures, as their reactions
influenced the projectionists rendering of the picture. In
addition, early moving picture programs were most often made up
of disparate titles with considerable potential for attraction;
indeed film strips were often presented pell-mell, in a relatively
aleatory manner, like zoetrope strips. The fascination these views
exercised rested almost entirely on the cinematographs ability
to capture and recreate movement. The form these views took, which
was determined primarily by the limitations of the apparatussuch
as the brevity of the film stripwas clearly propitious to
their presentation in redundant and disordered programs likely to
plunge the viewer into a considerably baffling temporal experience.
The cinematograph image, like that of the kinetoscope and the optical
theatre, was framed. The thresholds bordering the image limited
any movement beyond the frame, making the cinematographs subjects
framed subjects. Moreover, these subjects were
acted-upon (rather than acting-out), and thus had
a great potential for attraction. However, the fact that they were
framed created a space which would soon prove to be propitious to
narration. While the adoption of the flexible strip (since Reynaud
in any event) had made it possible to introduce spatial thresholds
which served to enclose the image, most often Edison and Lumière
animated views were, just the same, without truly effective first-degree
temporal thresholds (start/finish): the strip had a beginning (the
head) and an end (the tail), but there were simply material thresholds,
which acted without taking into account the course of the action
depicted. Without well-defined beginnings and endings, these views
thus remained permeable objects, consumed with spontaneous joy by
viewers whose attention did not linger on them after they had sped
by.
As for second-degree temporal thresholds, those gaps, found throughout
the film strip, whose appearance was the product of some form of
fragmentation or another (an out-and-out cut, a spot where filming
had been halted and then resumed, etc.), took a while to appear.
Film images in these very early years resisted breaks and interruptions,
and it seems correct to assert that, within the view at any event,
a fluidity similar to that of optical toys prevailed. When cuts
began to appear in greater number, they were seen by viewers, (many
indicators point to this), as inopportune or even disagreeable interruptions.
However, for narration to impose itself as the primary structuring
principle, viewers had to learn to adapt to breaks in the films
continuity, which would soon be found in profusion in the pluripunctual
animated view. At the same time, viewers had to accept the presence
of first-degree temporal thresholds (the thresholds of the beginning
and the end). These thresholds contained the view and, by their
very presence, short-circuited attractions propensity always
to provide something else to look at, even if only along the principle
of the eternal return of the same. While the end effect of views
was for a long time to be attractional in nature, the introduction
of thresholds for entering and exiting the view at its extremities
made it possible, thanks to the insertion of a few fundamental narrative
elements, for these two systems, attraction and narration, to co-exist
within the view.
The manufacturers of views, just like the viewers, had to gradually
get over the various second-degree thresholds which
soon came to dot views in order, precisely, to be free of them.
To cross a static threshold is to transform that threshold
into something that makes possible a degree of permeability between
things of the same nature. In a word, it turns the static threshold
into a dynamic one. Hence the increasing use of off-screen
space and the increasing use of camera movements, two procedures
which made it possible to take in a larger space and to expand the
range of possibilities offered by narration. In this way it became
possible, within the view itself, to break the unicity and static
quality of the frame with increasing ease and to go beyond the limits
imposed by the photogram.
It then fell to the shot, or rather to the tableau,
to gain autonomy and thereby become in turn (but in a yet uncertain
manner) a rigid entity, a static unit. The earliest pluripunctual
films strung together, most often in a highly erratic and relatively
mechanical manner, a series of unipunctual views which did not enjoy
a great deal of concatenation among them. Here again, however, the
rigidity of these newly imposed thresholds, those bordering the
tableau, was soon overcome in favour of a true permeability of the
constituent parts of the view. This encouraged an edge-to-edge communication
between units that ultimately made it possible for the tableau
to become a shot. In its turn, the linking of shots
created the conditions for the rise of editing, a major factor in
the emergence of narration as the primary structuring principle.
Naturally, we will make no attempt here to describe the numerous
and subtle technological, cultural and economic factors underlying
the process whereby the view became autonomous. Suffice it to suggest
that this delineation of the head and the tail was carried out parallel
to the development of the different forms of narration typical of
cinema-narration.
The question of thresholds is thus very profitable for arriving
at an understanding of the development of the series animated
pictures. It also makes it possible to better understand the
movement from cinématographie-attraction to cinema-narration.
Finally, we could mention here that the nature of the thresholds
we have discussed is closely connected to the medium on which the
images are found. Readers may have remarked throughout this article
how each of the apparatuses impose thresholds which truly fashion
the way the animated pictures are conceived. The phenakisticope
disk, the zoetropes flexible strip, and the celluloid used
in cinema, because of their very material, determine the way in
which the systems of attraction and narration hold sway over the
other and give form to the uncertain desires of the figures which
move about upon them in their respective ways.
In this respect, it is interesting to examine recent developments
in the use of digital animated pictures. As Lev Manovich has remarked,
the sequential images which abound on the Internet (such as Flash
and QuickTime) share a number of features with the earliest animated
pictures.12 This form of animation,
which has inaugurated a new paradigm in the cultural series animated
pictures, bears a strange resemblance to the images we have been
discussing in this article: its images are of reduced size and short
duration, they are shown in a loop, etc. It is significant that
these same forms, whose primary interest rests almost entirely on
their power of attraction, have resurfaced with these new media.
However, as we might have guessed, it is now possible to see on
the Net various examples of short narrative films created with the
help of animation software. This use of the apparatus for narrative
ends is just one of many possible avenues that could be taken. Since
digital images modify considerably the relationship with the reality
they depictand this was the case of the earliest cinematic
imagesit is easier for them to find their way into the camp
of attraction. We must also not forget that the history of cinema,
or rather the history of the cultural series of animated pictures
in general, was not a gradual and direct march towards narration.
The question of crossing thresholds (and of becoming free of them)
illustrates one of the possibilities in the growth of a medium (the
possibility, it must be said, whose central role in the process
of cinemas institutionalisation has to do with external factors
unrelated to the medium alone). As a system, attraction is fully
assumed, so much so that it has never ceased to be present, sometimes
to a considerable extent, in cinema-narration. The recent rise of
spectacular, giant-screen cinema, such as IMAX, is proof of this,
if proof were needed. The expression cinema-narration
appears to eclipse attraction completely, but the system in question
owes its name to the simple fact that narration is its primary
structuring principle. Beyond the primary principle lay many
other things, in particular attraction.
Translated by Timothy
Barnard
André Gaudreault
is a tenured faculty in the Département dhistoire de
lart et détudes cinématographiques at
the Université de Montréal, where he heads both GRAFICS
(Groupe de recherche sur lavènement et la formation
des institutions cinématographique et scénique) and
the CRI (Centre de recherche sur lintermédialité).
He is also the director of the scholarly journal Cinémas.
He has presented a number of scientific papers and has published
extensively both scholarly articles and books on filmic narration
and/or early cinema.
Nicolas Dulac is a
Ph.D. student at both Université Paris III Sorbonne-Nouvelle
and the Université de Montréal, where he is also a
film history lecturer and a research assistant at GRAFICS. His research
interests are early cinema, film historiography and seriality in
mainstream film production.
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