the time reversal of the cinema

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The time reversal of the cinema

Paul-Emmanuel Odin

To cite this release:

Paul-Emmanuel Odin. The time reversal of the cinema. Musicology and performing arts.University of the new Sorbonne - Paris III, 2011. French. <NNT: 2011PA030179>. <Tel00842577>

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Jury:

Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3Graduate School of Arts and Media 267

UFR "Cinema and Audiovisual"Research Institute for Cinema and Audiovisual

Doctoral thesisin Film and Television Studies

Paul-Emmanuel ODIN

Thesis supervised by

Philippe Dubois, ProfessorIRCAV, University of Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris III

Backed December 7, 2011



Raymond BELLOUR, Emeritus Research Director,Research Centre for the arts and language, CNRS-EHESS

Ms. Nicole BRENEZ, Professor,IRCAV, University of Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris III

Philippe DUBOIS, Professor,IRCAV, University of Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris III

Michel POIVERT, Professor,History of contemporary art / history of photography,Université Paris 1 - Panthéon-Sorbonne

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Lofredi to Olivier and Jean-André Fieschiwho did not know,

in tribute to their fierce passion for life



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executive summaryJean Epstein puts the temporal inversion in the heart of cinematic revolution. Cinema is theonly experience that gives us not only time but also the time reversal as aperception. This is to take over and continue the thought of Epstein by redefining timeown cinema from the notion of temporal inversion designed in the most transversal way: fromdandruff reversing the narrative rétrotemporalité, time of thought. We shall call replayof classic texts, film analysis and experimental videos, music, literal examplesrary. Theoretical anchors are rétrotemporel myth of Plato policy, designthe irreversible time of Vladimir Jankélévitch, written theoretical and poetic Jean-Louis Schefer, thenotion of Aion at Gilles Deleuze, the outcome psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan.Are addressed first film as an against-time inseparable from philosophical reversalsaesthetic, moral, political. Starting from Plato, then explores the various forms of feedbackin the past, the narrative rétrotemporalité travel in time. Then approach the images withoutcauses, with burlesque and dreamlike aberrations, the unity of opposites time temporal inversionspatialized. Finally, the time reversal film not only shows us that thinking is backwardsin time, but for durum mystery of a thought down. The reversibility of the intellectual act isthe ultimate threshold where ideas appear without upside down and no place.

Tags: film, video, time rétrotemporalité, Epstein, inversion, Plato thought

abstractJean Epstein seats backwards time in the heart of the revolution of film. The cinema is the only experienceThat Delivers time have a perception to us, time and backwards too. The purpose is to follow and continueEpstein's thought; we Elaborate a redefinition of the proper time of cinema Intimately linked to the conceptbackwards in time icts of various meanings: ie from the time the film backwards to the narrative retrotempora-lity Reviews towards the thought time. We help us with famous classical texts, film and experimental video analysis,music, litterary examples. The Theorical anchorage point are: the backwards time in Plato's myth Politic,Vladimir Jankélévitch's conception of irreversible time, Jean-Louis Schefer's poetical works Theorical-GillesAion Deleuze's notion, and Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytical studies.We first Consider the cinema as a counter-Time That can not Be detached from philosophical, Aesthetical,moral, and political reversal. Examining Plato's theory Then we explore the different forms of retrieving the



Past, from the narrative retrotemporality to the time travels. Then we analyze the causes without pictureswith the comical, onirical aberrations The Contrary times unity, the temporal inversion qui spatialized.At last, the cinema's backwards time not only shows us That thinking is regressing in time, the goal Concernshard mystery of an opposite thought. The reversibility of the intellectual act is the ultimate threshold Wherethe ideas APPEAR, without a wrong gold right side.

keywords: cinema, video, time, retrotemporality, Epstein, backwards, Plato thought

Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris IIIGraduate School of Arts and Media 267

UFR "Cinema and Audiovisual" | Research Institute for Cinema and AudiovisualCentre Censier 13 rue Santeuil 75231 Paris Cedex 05

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THANKS

In Professor Philippe Dubois, for his confidence, his wise counsel, encouragement, remarksvivid, accurate, benevolence,

At Raymond Bellour to Mrs. Professor Nicole Brenez to Mr Michel Poivert who agreedgenerously to be members of the jury,

To my father, Roger Odin, to whom I owe the pleasure of the theory,

To my friends Didier Da Silva, Marianne Houspie, and my mother, Andrée Odin, who devoted a lot of energyand attention to the manuscript at the time of its completion,

The enthusiastic friends, for their many suggestions, support,

Pascal Farré, Till Roeskens Fabrice Métais Jacky The Dévéhat, Florence Pazzottu, Estelle Fredet, Nadia Drici, AdamTolkien, Yann Bailleul, Martine Derain, Jean-François Neplaz Veit Rogge Laurent Rossignol, Frédéric Revol,Dominique Petitgand Luis Bertolo, Jean Doury, Helen Deriu, Christophe Chave, Julie Kretzschmar, IsabelleMassu, Gilles Pourtier, Nicolas Fedoroff, Guillaume Stagnaro,

At Muriel Modr, Alain Castan,

At Sandrine Delrieu Youssef Akhzouz, Sylvie Froment, my colleagues in the company, place of creation in Marseille

In John Paul Ponthot, Paliard Pierre, Jean Cristofol, Marc Aurel, François Lejeau, Willy Legaud, from the Ecole SupérieureArt of Aix-en-Provence, all students of the School of Art of Aix-en-Provence with whom I sharedsome parts of this research,

In Dorian Bauer for his video aid, Louis Daubresse,

At Christophe Bident Jeremiah Majorel Parham Shahrjerdi and the Friends of Maurice Blanchot,

At Abdelkader Benchamma, Marcel Frémiot, Bill Viola, Yann Beauvais, Gary Hill, Lawrence Fiévet,



And, more particularly,At Boutebal Malik for his many finds,At François Billaud, Arno Calleja, Laure Maternati,At Anne-Claude Goustiaux, Jonathan Bidot, Laurent de Richemond, lecturers players in my performanceon the reverse of the time,

To John Fortunato, François Morel,

And finally,To all those who live their life by rejuvenating,To all those who are, will, desire, or any unconsciousness, against time.

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The actual time signiication 14The time reversal film 19The desire for temporal inversion23Put the past to the present 27

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1. THE REVOLUTION OF PHILOSOPHICAL ANTI-JEANEPSTEIN 39

Recording to Projection furious contradiction , 41Behind that is behind the obverse and reverse, 46

2. TWO FIGURES OF REVERSAL (asymmetryTIME PUR) 49



Demolition 50Demolition of the place. View Light Demolition of a Wall (1895) 50Reconstruction, return to order. Peter Mettler, Gambling, Gods and LSD (2002) -Aleksandr Medvedkin, The New Moscow (1938) 55

Loons 57Ferdinand Zecca, Fantastic Diver (1901) - The explosion of the moment. ViewLight Bains in Milan (1895) 57between life and death. Bill Viola, he Passing (1991)61mystical spasms. Bill Viola, Five Angels for the Millennium (2001), 62

3. AGAINST TIME: THE REVOLT OF CHILDHOOD 71

Heckling Music: JeAn Vigo, Zero OF CONDUCT (1932-33) 71The internal rhythm. The flip upside down (1).71The tone of the disorder75a brief history of the inverted Music 76

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4. REVERSE IS EVIL 82

The images cursed 82The vampire clock. ct Dreyer, Vampyr (1932) 84The bewitched wheels90

Temporal anamorphosis (meaning DiaboliqueHidden in reverse) 94

The voice of satan. William Friedkin, The Exorcist (1973)94Backmasking in pop-rock music. L. & J. Ajemian, From Beyond(2007)100

5. COUNTER TO THE PLACE 103

Super-place (1). Dziga Vertov, Kino-Eye (1924) 103

, 111

1. THE RÉTROTEMPORALITÉ PLATONIC TONOSTALGIA IN Jankélévitch 115

Plato: LA RétRotemPoRALité as a model oftemporality 115

Time and policy 115



First time: the ideal rétrotemporel World Golden Age 117Second time: the real-time fatal, disorder and chaos 118The wonder as a tool for knowledge , 119

Jankélévitch: Irreversible THE pastness , 122Refuse to accept the irreversible, 122Nostalgia , 122

2. THE NARRATIVE RÉTROTEMPORALITÉ: AMACROFIGURE 124

Folds cosmological 125a fresco of humanity. Jean-gabriel Periot undo (2005) 125a magnifying glass on the light of the world. Yo ota, Distorted movi sion (1998)129

Rejuvenation 131Reverse literature 133Literature, philosophy, theater: the inverted world of concept andrétrotemporalité135

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a man against time (1). The Curious Case of Benjamin ButtonFrancis Scott Fitzgeraldand its film adaptation by David Fincher(2008) , 138a man against time (2). Man on a centenary of Mircea Eliade andfilm adaptation by Francis Ford Coppola (Youth Without Youth,2007)144

Nostalgia films RétRotemPoReLs staircase 148Lee Chang-dong, Peppermint Candy (2000) - David Hugh Jones, betrayalsmarital (Betrayal) (1984) - François Ozon, five times two (5 x 2) (2004) 148

Regressions 151Regurgitation. tony morgan and Daniel spoerri, Resurrection (1969) - ClearDantzer, we do not talk with your mouth full (2007)152Eisenstein and MLB (back in the womb) 154The location of the place of the location of the time. Peter Fischli and David Weiss, The coursethings (1987) 157

3. REMARKABLE RETURNS IN TIME:MICROFIGURES 158

Returns historically 158The lash-back in skin inversion. claude sautet, things of life(1969)158The second Orphism. Jean Cocteau, Orpheus (1950)161

Super-place (2). Science fiction 165Richard Donner, Superman (1978) - Steven Spielberg, Minority Report (2003) -



Richard Kelly, Donnie Darko (2001) - Leslie Stevens, The Outer Limits, Episode 16:"Controlled experiment" (1963-1964)165The origin below the origin. Driess Verhoeven, he Wide Movement installation(2009)177

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1. MEANING OF ABSENCE 190

The strange, the bizarre 190christophe Bedaguer and marries Péjus, Time Zone (2010) - David Lodge, TheCountess of Castiglione (1999) 190

dream sequences 193

Fatih Akin, Against the wall (2004) - Brothers Quay, The tremors tunerEarth (2005) - Luis Buñuel, The Golden Age (1930) - michel gondry, The Science ofDreams (2006)193

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Madness195ingmar Bergman, Persona (1966) - David Lynch, eraserhead (1977), LostHighway (1997) Twin Peaks (1992) - claude miller, Tell him that I love(1977)195

Reversibility Burlesque , 201The leisure-scientiique dimension Precinema, 201spatiotemporal transigurations in émile cohl 206Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker and David, top secret (1984) - charlie chaplin, PayDay (1922) - Laurel and hardy (Jess Robin), he Lucky Dog (1921) - Jerry Lewis,Uncles pranksters (1965) - Null, The show - Louis trunk, Zazie in theMetro (1960) - John Waters, Desperate Living (1977)208

2. UNIT TO THE PLACE AND TIME(LYROSOPHIE) , 212

simultaneity and coexistence , 212Pipo tafel, The Gift (2005) - Alain Fleisher Going against (2009) -Julio Bressane, o Mandarim (1970) - Faisal Baghriche, The Direction of(2002) , 212

Folds and continuity 215The boustrophédon image. The Rules of Attraction, Roger Avary (2002)215zooming within the time. Bill Viola, Ancient of Days (1979-1981) 218

symmetry 222


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Palindrome. michel gondry, Sugar Water 2005222in both directions: The tIme quartered. Oldřich Lipský, HAPPY END(1966) 225

Living death 232Grimace of representation and vacuum232

3. INVERSION OF TIME AND SPACE INVERSION 235

Reversals 235erismann or stunning eyewear 235Jankélévitch: temporal inversion is space! 236Hans Richter, Ghosts am (Vormittagsspuck) (1927-1928) - h.-S.clouzot, Hell - light René and Francis Picabia, Entr'acte (1924) - Man Ray,emak-Bakia (1926) - Frédric Dumont, Yokohama (2010) 238

When the reverse side of the space left behind the tIme 240The lack of direction. Relecting Pool, Bill Viola (1977-1979)240Spatiotemporal streaks Martin Arnold affected Piece (1989) -. Passagethe act (1993) - Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy (1998)247

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251

1. SCROLL CRITICAL 257

AnA-Lyse: Solve, going back in reverse 257gianni totti, Planetopolis (1994) - Diamantas Narkevicius, one in the XXCentury (2004) - Douglas Gordon, 24 Hour Psycho Back and Forth and to andFro (2008) - Laurent Fiévet, Whirlloop (2009), red ink (2010) Sunday night(2010); Wool Stockings (2011)257Jean-Luc Godard, the Word of Power (1988) - Orson Wells, F for Fake (1973) -Sacha guitry, a cheater's novel (1936) 261

THE tABle From mOunt cinema 267The reverse of the decor, to the cinema. François Trufaut, The American Night(1973)267Materialist thought and black sun. Pedro Costa, where lies buried your smile?(2001)268The sound of fast rewind. Francis Ford Coppola, private conversation(1974)274



The viewer video 278The image devitalized. Michael Haneke, Benny's Video (1992)278Absolute control of iction by his characters. Michael Haneke, FunnyGames (1997)281

2. GARY HILL AND BLANCHOT: THINK COUNTDOWN 282

The false location. Gary Hill, WHY Do Things Get in A Muddle?(Come on Petunia) (1984) 282

Preliminary: reversibility without Maurice Blanchot Back home282Physicality upside 285The metalogue287The meaning Reaches of upside288Voice, asphyxia 291

Speech unique within the folds and folds of tIme. GaryHill, Ura Aru (backside exists) (1985-1986) 292

Preliminary: the reversibility of the intellectual act Piaget to Aion inDeleuze292The upside of airmation295The fold sense296The Aion300The irreversible speech, image and voice returned, 301Meaning, no place and no reverse: the unequivocal, 304

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The work reverses time (1) the absence of meaning311The work reverses time (2): The regression Shrinking Man 315Cinema as an inverted clock 316Towards a phenomenology of the back of the mind320

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drawing Abdelkader Benchamma

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The representation of an event "shot" down and thrown to the place,we found a space-time where the effect replaces the cause; where allwhich is expected to attract, is pushing; where gravity acceleration is aslowing lightness, centrifugal and centripetal not; where allvectors are reversed. Yet this universe is not incomprehensible, andthe same word with the habit can be guessed. Then we consider themysterious recovery of retinal images in this building sleepera dream that seems to conclude on an alarm clock while he is goneher. And one wonders who knows the true meaning of the flow oftime?

Jean Epstein

It will nevertheless make us the obvious: this is taking thingsagainst the grain that is able to reveal the underlying skin, fleshhidden things. "Taking history against the grain" would, in fact,a particularly horrifying expression of the dialectical movementnecessary for recovery - to the bottom overhaul from top - a problemcapital, that of historicity as such. The challenge for Benjamin, wasuncover temporality models both less idealistic and lesstrivial that use models in historicism inherited nineteenthecentury.The only way was to contradict violently thwart "direction of hair"that is to say spontaneous movement which constitutes a historianthe general historicity of its objects of study.

Georges Didi-Huberman

Indeed nothing escapes futurition, not even preterition! This isnot the time, having had to choose between preterition and as futuritionif they were comparable and similar, has finally "preferred" thefuturition: rather than becoming identified with the advent of the future;we détemporalise temporality time when reducing homelessness inback and remember. The irreversible essentially means a futuritionthat can never be transformed into regression.

Vladimir Jankélévitch

Cinema: disentanglement (outcome?) Of all forms of vision, allrhythms and all preformed time in current machines.

Walter Benjamin

Put the past to the present. Magic of the present.Robert Bresson

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The actual time signiication

What fiction, what "imaginary time 1"Does it lends cinematic time

his game, his ambivalence? Which side of the time is her "real meaning" to

in the words of Jean Epstein 2For who, without hesitation, is the temporal reversion

tural that holds the secret of film time, its revolutionary power? What vertigo

we are doomed when everything changes between the inevitable reference of an irreversible time,

that arises as the sole legitimate temporality (Jankélévitch 3) And these mirages of time

the temporal inversion condenses the most elusive part, the darkest, the most restless?

We remember this family in an aircraft cabin in the film Le Neveu de Rameau

Michael Snow4. This aircraft is unstable, unpredictable; a fascination nauseated us

wins in sudden movements, haunting, nightmarish, for international travel

R�� :If the city name is not apparent from the name of the editor, this is Paris.

1- Jean-Louis Schefer, Du Movement and images of the world, Ed. the film notebooks, 1997, p. 18.2- Epstein blames mental inertia which "suggests that the anti-universe, appeared on the screen, is only the vain productan artifice, devoid of any real meaning. "Jean Epstein, the Cinema Writings. T.1 Seghers, Paris, 1974p. 373.3- "The temporality conceives irreversible if the fugitive of futurition, if only a fraction of a second,retraced his steps, and began to dawdle, time is no longer the time ... "Vladimir Jankélévitch, The Irreversibleand nostalgia, Flammarion, 1974 Reed. 2010, p. 5.4- Michael Snow, Rameau's Nephew by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen, from 1972 to 1974, 266 '.

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shabby in a sequence to which we took great pleasure 5. Do Us

not like this family, stunned travelers ever by a storm that shakes violently

ment time, because time is split into two, and it's a whirlwind, where time confronted

Suddenly her towards himself becomes a mirage, a fiction 6?

Vladimir Jankélévitch identified closer to the elusive and abstract (quasi symbols

lic) time: time is what is not being, he insists, he insinuates, he continues unex-

tinguiblement even if the images of the time slow, accelerate, reverse. This nature



inclusive of irreversible time is in the eyes of Jankélévitch who decided to be the enemyphilosophy of time reversal, which should push immediately in chimeras

fiction any return to the past, any reversion time, while time travel, etc.

Time imposes its law that obscures its hidden side. Therefore, when going against the meantime? If

it is only fantasy or absurd, like constantly proclaim Jankélévitch, what to do

these films or these reverse shots and cornered in the theoretical night? Do they not troueront

the fabric explanations since they are doomed to contempt?

Consider three examples to be compared. In Mary Poppins 7, Clean his room

becomes a breeze because the objects fall alone; temporal inversions

are quite noticeable (for example, when the cubes jump from the ground and line up between

the hands of the little girl, their letters ordering so that writing is "Mary Poppins"

or when the books of the boy, first scattered on the floor, piled up in his arms

on top of each other), and at the same time, the alibi of magic in the occult fiction hetero-

formal geneity of these plans reversal film inserted among other plans in place.

In Fahrenheit 451 8When the character Montag puts his fireproof suit, it is a

skin inversion that has no other purpose than to stimulate perception,

fluidize:

"For him [François Truffaut] a good plan was a plan that told the story andhe was the last to be embarrassed when they cut him in his clips foraccelerate or clarify the narrative. So he did not hesitate to turn its plans,

5- "The Camera [sequence] Plane reproduces the movements of the aircraft in flight, complete with twists andloops, sometimes traces of invisible signs in the air, defying gravity. Plane considering dialogue,conversation, as an air flow, sound and meaning, in space and in time. In this perspective,camera movements and volume curves in the registration of the spoken sentence combine tohighlight those qualities of speech. "Ivora Cusack and Stéfani of Loppinot Edition Booklet VHS filmMichael Snow, Rameau's Nephew by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen, Michael Snow Re: see-Exploding, 2002, pp. 29-28.6- To paraphrase Jean-Louis Schefer, fiction is what makes us visible to ourselves "in favor of achanging universe. "(From the Movement and images of the world, Ed. Cahiers du cinéma, 1997, p.21).7- Robert Stevenson, 1964.8- François Truffaut, 1966.

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Robert Stevenson, Mary Poppins

François Truffaut, Farhenhait 451

Martin Campbell, GoldenEye

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rigging, to reverse, although it followed a slight rise of grain. "" Asame plane could be used once in place and once in reverse, whichcreated two directions of different looks in a single stage and gavenew narrative and dramaturgical opportunities9. »



The temporal inversion is there, yet it is hidden by the story and the wholefilm in which nothing legitimate. But we feel a mismatch, something that

begins, that breaks the irreversible direction of time in which the story or the classic film would be the place.

There is not even magical alibi to explain this plan 10Just like in the James Bond

GoldenEye11Why is it that the perception is intimately raped by some plans

showing water falling into a huge funnel, whose status is no reverse

doubt, inserted into a succession plans in place that shows a nautical exit

water? Countless classic films could be cited where temporal inversion arises without

cause, without symbolic recovery (magic back in time etc.) to better affect the

field of cinema and our perception. Something unique, unheard of, and which belongs

at the cinema, her silent dimension should we even say, appears here and is an event

tion important enough that we should stop it. All justifications

magic, burlesque, dream, psychiatric, narrative 12the temporal inversion tend

covering a meaning that escapes the meaning, which only gives the cinema

see.

Has not it time not need to appear in his fiction? Fiction of his double (the

temporal reversion rétrotemporalité also be called), but also of that doubt intro-

product itself? The weather in the place would it towards the time in reverse, which itself

hold the truth of the time? It is on this inextricable area we mean bite

as far as possible with the black tooth regressive time, time looks to the past, with its

9- Yann Dedet "Dangerous coil" The Romance of François Truffaut, Ed. Cahiers du cinema / Éditions de l'Étoile,1985, p. 104.10. This reversal film could be echoed in the film material of the ideological inversion of this worldwhere firefighters are designed not to extinguish the fire, but to turn it on. This is a plausible argument, butlow. Truffaut perhaps amused primarily to do a tribute to silent film. And it's a way to play withclassic cinema codes. For example, it has identified another film inversion whereby Montag mountsslipping on the mast of the barracks; later, while Montag becomes moral disagreement with his job,he no longer succeeds in the feat, so that its upper asks if he is angry with the mast. Fiction refers toan event that belongs to the filmic materiality, for not jumping from one layer to another.11- Martin Campbell, 1995.12- This Adorno says the magic of art is for all these reasons that add a belief, an alibi, a signifi-cation, skipping over substantive rationality of art: "Talking about the magic of art is only verbiage because artis allergic to its decline in magic. Art is a moment of the process of what Max Weber calledthe disenchantment of the world, involved in rationalization. All its resources and production processescome from this rationalization. "Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, news Klincksieck, trans. MarcJimenez, 1989, p. 79.

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microfigures close to the moment or macrofigure a more fundamental rétrotemporalité,

more mysteriously idealizing the other time.



Why does it corrupt that normally establishes idea, if not because the ideasame time has a normalizing principle dimension (and even moral 13), And

thus are excluded (awareness, recognition, speech, analysis, and therefore

theory and history) all these forms including film yet gives us the images

more blatant? Is not it easier to stick to Jankélévitch, the orthodoxy of the time irre-

reversible, rather than construct the hypothesis of a more formidable reverse order of time?

This pulsation else had already tense nerves of philosophy to its origin: the com-

cement, there were the reverse of time. This is what raises the intriguing myth of Plato Policy,

where, first, in a sort of Golden Age, the earth rotates in the opposite direction resulting in a younger average

sanita- of humanity. What to do with this philosophical ground level where the ideal is screwed into the

rétrotemporalité? How cinema is it a second time (with the myth of the cave)

Platonic? Why the cinema?

Certainly, we will see a little during several detours, music - William

Machaut (which at the XIVeHas composed a musical palindrome, "The end is the beginning")

to Bach (reverse counterpoint), walking crayfish in classical music 14to

electroacoustic and the phenomenon of Backmasking - or literature (with HG Wells,

Lewis Carroll, Philip K. Dick, Fitzgerald, Mircea Eliade, Ilse Aichinger and more recently

Martin Amis, Eric Laurrent ...), it is a pattern, a theme, a figure that already has its reputation

and success. But why does it supplants cinema temporal inversion inversions

temporal practiced by other arts? Cinema surely indebted to music or

literature since they often borrow their material or their stories, but it gives them a

makeover because it is the first form to suggest, beyond the story and music in its

abstraction, an image of reality in its temporality, both in its rétrotemporalité.

13. Jean-Louis Schefer has long insisted that dimension. "Movie Monsters are, for example, beInside the cinema at the bottom, as any of his fiction, delegates beings as anamorphosesof this world destined to morality, that is to say, the meaning incessantly addressed to an unknown moral subject,to the one who does not make the synthesis but that strangeness must live as morality. " "Every frame of the film (allprojected image in this world without sun) is accompanied by varying the absolute affects our body simulation[...] This is an enjoyment but delayed enjoyment of the moral. "The ordinary man of the theater, Ed. fromthe star - Cahiers du Cinema, 1980; Reed. Cahiers du cinema / Gallimard, 1997, pp.84-110.14- quote this example of musical palindrome that made me discover my writer friend Didier da Silva: Minuet alrovescio Haydn (Sonaten für Klavier, Vol. II, Urtext, edited by Miklos Dolinszky, K122, Könemann Buda Musicpest). As for the "walking crayfish" is a proper expression in the musical field, which designates a movementwhich, after being played in the place, is played backwards (the end becomes the beginning). Many texts attestthe use of this expression. For example: Umberto Eco, At Backwards as a lobster, the paperback, 2008; orTheodor W. Adorno, Philosophy of New Music, Gallimard / tel, trans. from the German by Hand Hildenbrand,and Alex Lindenberg, 1962, p. 100. crayfish, she walks backwards? Apparently yes, when she is frightened.

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Unlike the music 15and literature 16who remain in a figure of representation



tion, cinema time is credited with an additional reality 17.

The time reversal film

Cinema. He, himself only. It is as the saying goes the famous trial of John

Louis Schefer ( Ordinary Man movie ), "the only experience where time is given

as a perception "and not as a representation. But do we not immediately add,

and correct the situation: cinema would it really as well established and irreversible time

despotic legitimacy in the giant shadow of a symbolic normalization excluding all

other times? Or, is it the first time reversal, to give full meaning

Epstein message? André Levinson already clear that: "operator unit is a

machine to transform the time in space, and down 18. »

"Time is given to us as a perceived" extreme ambiguity sizzles on

this "as a perception." This "like" is specific to the cinema, that traps to

his illusion of representation on which falls the whole swarm of a new perception. Only

cinema gives us the fictional perception of reality, but already the impossible, reverse time,

slips under our ordinary eyes, offering us the spectacle of a reverse reality.

Jean-Louis Schefer paid tribute to the "bewitched wheels 19"In complicity

Epstein admits that his writing. But its formula sentence to dangerous charm, from that moment,

you must jump and argue for a tough hunt better concealment: the cinema is the only

experience where time reversal is given to us as a perception .

15- "The lack of musical art comes to be a blind technique because this blindness is translated into powerlessgrowth to provide representations of forms accredited in space. "Jean Epstein," Alcohol and cinema "(unpublished)Writings on cinema , Volume II / 1946-1953, Seghers, 1975, p. 251.16- "Whether to generate an extended print or duration, rest or motion, color orsonority, literature certainly succeeds, but it can never do this by providing directly to the senses,of extended attributes or duration, rest or movement, color or sound; she knows that offeringto understanding the rational organization of abstract symbols of these qualities. Symbols that intelligence mustrationally examine, sort, convert back imaginations of sensations and feelings. Its universality,literature pays the complexity, weight, slowness, its transmission system, whose operationnot without a considerable loss of energy moving ideas. " Ibid., p. 251.17. The idea that dominates an entire segment of film theory, Jean Epstein Jean-Louis Baudry, JeanLouis Schefer etc., will we return to our subject?18- André Levinson, "For a poetic film (1927)," The Cinema: the art of a civilization from 1920 to 1960 , dir. DanielJosé Banda & Moure, Flammarion, 2011, p.161.19. These are the wheels turning backwards movement of a vehicle. See: Jean-Louis Schefer, "The Wheel"The Ordinary Man film , Ed. the star - Cahiers du Cinema, 1980; Reed. Cahiers du cinema / Gallimard, 1997p. 155.

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20Cinema is the first form to let us see rétrotemporelles images of reality.

Distortion so amazing that it has been constantly obscured, hidden. It is up to them to Jean Epstein

having spent his entire anti-philosophy of cinema. This quote from the "Film

devil "on" anti-universe otherwise time "is famous:

"With the first opportunity to see the world live faster or slower,cinematography brings the first vision of a universe that can move inCountdown. Strange sight that man, so far, had no idea, nosuspicion, if not as a phantasmagoria hardly imaginable. Mysterious,crazy chimera, monster we swore unviable but the screen like thisAnother sensible reality. Revolutionary revelation, which it seems that fewviewers still have recognized the importance. It is believed that she willinglydeserves laughter it provokes first.Moreover, this laughter sounds in a particular way: it does not mean the joy of the heartbut the diversion of the mind. This laughter reflects a defensive reaction - provo-cated by surprise, by a secret worry - against subversive scopeimages that oppose such a blatant contradiction to the routine so many timesmillennium, our image of the universe. A mental state also has its strengthinertia. This command laughter that dispels the alarm, turn from research,avoids the change of opinion suggests that the anti-universe, appeared on the screen, isthe product of a vain artifice, devoid of any real meaning 20. »

Our debt, here, so: Jean Epstein is the philosopher of the time reversal kinetic

tographic. Everywhere involved in his writings the demon of negative time (in this the

Cinema is a diabolical invention) for the cerebral intoxication trample reason and free

life (dizziness that comes time reversal has to do with alcohol 21). The work

Epstein, in the huge electrical discharge which is its style, is not under the sign

both the excesses of the reversal. The cinema is the reverse of everything, of reason.

The temporal inversion Epstein presents with brutality and violence: his words are

eloquent, he speaks of something that "shocks", a "scandal of the visible anti-universe

on the screen "22, A "revolutionary revelation," and he keeps pounding the idea that

audience (viewers, critics, film theorists ...) prefer to "suppress" the thought of that

Indeed rather than face the dire consequences, namely the deep discount in question

tion of rational thinking of the time that dominates everyday life.

We must stand in the center of the cyclone.

20- Jean Epstein, the Cinema Writings . T. 1, Seghers, Paris, 1974, p. 372.21. On these two issues, we need only consider the titles of these two famous articles: "The devil cinema", "Alcoholand cinema. "22- Jean Epstein, op.cit. , p. 379.

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The inverted time: terra incognita ? No, after Epstein, the time reversal of the cinema

can no longer be ignored. It is for us to resume and continue his thoughts, clarify

redefinition of proper time in the cinema from the notion of temporal inversion. His

message is not in the order of knowledge that can be stored in the history placards:

is a vivid thought that must be pursued with our perception of cinema, with our

lived ordinary cinema man. The time reversal film for durum mystery

a thought that folds over itself down. In this, it is still a terra incognita ,

piece of an unknown landscape and begins a journey.

Epstein puts the temporal inversion in the heart of what he calls "the revolution antiphi-

sophical film "and he notes that it is pumped simultaneously. This repression is it

Effective? Yes and no: in many books on film we consulted, the omission

sion of this figure is actually symptomatic, even when they evoke movies

the temporal inversion exists in one form or another; but we could gather

a series of texts where it is processed. However, it does not appear to us that there

was asked, developed in its complexity. Certainly if, for purposes of analysis,

research, and we isolate in a particular film in the powerful rumor film,

it is most often mixed, inseparable from the inexorable chain of signs that the

devours movie ever. But there are many movies where the latter is carried to the highest point,

where its conceptual sovereignty bursts: nothing happens that is not taken now in

birth of his order another . This is where the shine rétrotemporelles works, cinema

to the time, which returns an image reversed, all the cinema: The Strange Story

Benjamin Button by David Fincher, Why Do Things Get in a Muddle (Come on Petunia)? of

Gary Hill, Undo John Gabriel Periot the Orphée Cocteau Five Angels for a Millennium of

Bill Viola ...

For film, we see, we hear the "expanded cinema" under Gene Youngblood 23,

or "extended" under Philippe Dubois 24That is to say, an open cinema in terms

such as video art, its numerical derivatives, facilities, and today the films on television

mobile phone, internet etc. Our inquiry concerns the movement-image and

time-images under both the classical and experimental film, as the video art etc.

If, in 1970, these forms were not recognized a priori as a film, the multiplicity of

what does the term "cinema" has now gained currency 25. It was on this film

23. Gene Youngblood, Expanded Cinema , P. Dutton & Co., Inc., New York, 1970.24. On the extended film, see Extended cinema - cinema is gaining ground , dir. Philippe Dubois, Frédéric Monvoi-sin, Elena Biserna, Campanotto Editore, Pasia di Prato, Italy, 2010.25- The cinema in its form or conventional device remains a reference or an unsurpassable horizonhistory. And it may be necessary in this regard to maintain the difference between film and other forms that deriva-



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designed through a heterogeneous materials and practices, and whose history includes

blurred boundaries - the Precinema, is it already in the cinema? - And transverse, our

look chose to descend .

Our beliefs and our knowledge will be shaken by the complexity. We will be voluntary

Third pleasure, this unhealthy manner approved Avita Ronell:

"However, the followers of the French theory sometimes go too far and destroycomfortable gentleman's club that a university has to protect. They areboth too serious and too attractive for their own enjoyment of the text. These areevil (which is why I agree with), they eroticized academic work, mixinggent genres and presuppose philosophical knowledge 26. »

What was he so annoying in the temporal inversion, otherwise binarism place / to in

which darkens everything singularity of hope beyond the opposition of judgment, where to

turns out, ultimately , bad? Frédérick Tristan, about the iconological tradition of the "world

upside "of the Middle Ages to the late nineteenth ecentury (fish fishing men,

chair sitting on a man, etc.) raises the question as follows:

"Systematization of the inversion of the" world upside down "as it appears on ourimage blocks imagination, not that we can not put ourselves in fourlegs and pull a cart in which we would have installed horses, butbecause by doing so we would imagine nothing; we would only copy aimage. Because it is a dualism system while going here by reverse pairthe "world upside down" admits that finding of this inversion. In this,it is a strictly ethical operating device from which all fantasyfirst degree is excluded. It means and in any form, in an unceasingrehashed, what does it mean?27»

Epstein, in the quote mentioned above, already stressed the search for the "significance

actual cation "of the temporal inversion to be saved with a delivery of a" reaction

defense. " We still could evoke an additional ideological obstacle, recent,

one of our post-modern world where post-political, definitely, and that, almost

since the early eighties, all thought incorporating the negation and denial

negation, that is to say, the dialectic is revoked - Hegel and Marx, have made their

time. On location in reverse, part of our references yet back in this background

necessary.

wind or copy. On this issue see the file of the journal Traffic 79, Fall 2011, POL26- Avita Ronell, American philosophy , Stock, 2006, p. 181.27- Frédérick Tristan, The World Turned Upside Down , workshop Hachette / Massin, 1980, p. 13.



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The desire for temporal inversion

The irreversible time immunizes against the notion of to time; and yet, upside

form a secret society whose outrageous effects break from the daily flow blows.

Behind? It is first, as the historic Robert , the other side of a thing, the one we

does not see, who is behind, hidden:

The word was first used to designate the normally invisible hand, opposedthe place, especially when speaking of a fabric (1229).

The other side is the wrong side then, who, from a moral perspective, crack, alienates

or sprayed orthodoxy on the right side.

The first meaning is the adverb upside (v.1380) "thewrong side ", meaning the sixteenthes. (C. 1526) "in a manner contrary towhich should be "figuratively" knocked down, messy "(1538) and" in a mannerinaccurate. " We find these meanings in several phrases: go backwards(1690) 'collapse, fail, "" go wrong ", the idea of disorder then the taking,for example, have the head, the mind backwards (1690), to put the brainsbackwards.The idea of "wrong" side is evident in upside "backwards" (XVc.) disappeared sense as phrases figured upside down "prostitute"(1640) and dropping upside "give (a woman)" (1690).

Today, still interested in evil, in an era that ousted all morality,

all ethics in favor of a free and universal consumption? Does he need not go

to Lautréamont and reading by Maurice Blanchot to find the end will allow us to

stroll among the signs produced by reverse time?

From the start, so we are trapped by language. And the notion of inversion, it

terms of time or space, comes in a heavy symbolic opposition, since

it weighs on the whole weight of an exclusion from the norm, the theoretical dignity (it would

that deviance, perversion). Cinema, such as Jean-Louis Schefer has been mentioned, never

freed from the foreign body and the symbolic recognition of a legal division.

Can we make it coincide with the division between time and place and time on the set

worms, time between positive and negative time between temporality and rétrotemporalité? Exclusion

unconscious in which is constantly pushing the temporal inversion leads us to this

destabilizing hypothesis.

The temporal inversion crystallizes the problem of orthodoxy. The question of the sense of time,

it is the question of the movement of the mind, its orientation. But the mind is not necessarily



linear, perhaps is it even in its own movements, twists, back and forth,

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freedoms of thought as it offers to those who know how welcome it as Diderot by

example:

"I let the thoughts take over my pen in the same order in whichthe objects are offered to my thinking, because they do represent onlybetter movement and walking my mind 28. »

Diderot, to show the progress of his mind, his movements are required to write

linear, but only to the extent and excess which this will see that his thought follows

During an eventful, with returns, regressions, labyrinthine bifurcations,

digressions. The only marker of the spirit is spirit29.

And if the spirit managed to get to and where he wants, when he wants, by freeing himself of

Similarly, it is the same thing that happens when the temporal image film is released from the

gravity, the laws of matter, the chronology of a story, causality, showing us

it reverses the actions. Behind the days of film, what do we learn about the mind and

time if the voltage of the division where the thought occurs?

That cinema gives us temporality or rétrotemporalité as a perception:

either. But this is above all an illusion, a kingdom where the "like" fades away, hides for

this unimaginable credit offered reality to illusion. Even Epstein agrees: "Walking

irrevocable time actually requires all movements of the universe, a unique sense,

unrecoverable and indestructible value, perpetually positive. Quality sui generis of the

time dimension is a power guiding geometrical space, so that the successive

sions can not it happen in the direction of this polarization 30. »

It is not that we cut the grass under the feet. Because our purpose is the desire

rétrotemporelles of images and all the dreams that cling. Yes, the time reversal

does not exist, but movies, stories, books, philosophers, listen to us to

time as a part of ourselves ignored 31. Behind the times, what unlivable after

he offers the new man (director or spectator) convened in the diversion of

time? What was impossible future behind the cinema time from the cinema?

28. Denis Diderot, Thoughts on the interpretation of nature , Garnier Flammarion, 2005, p. 61.29- Hegel says the same thing: "Mind is only experience itself. "GWF Hegel, ThePhenomenology of Spirit , Volume I, trans. Jean Hyppolite, Aubier, 1941, p. 140.



30- Jean Epstein, "The intelligence of a machine," op. cit , T. 1, p. 285.31- "We are caught between the giant that sometimes imagine or guess and that his eye continues to filmbackwards ". Jean-Louis Schefer, Ordinary Man movie , op. cit , p. 87.

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Yet change perspective. Scientists theorize time, which

some manage a reversal of the arrow of time. Let us Feynman (who

each time a particle attributes rétrotemporelle particle), is it only because

it's a secret references inverted dives Bill Viola 32. You have to see again,

as Kant posed with a disturbing gravity 33That all knowledge is reducible, ultimately ,

the desire for someone on a personal dream, to a singular fantasy, where the so-called objectivity

Science is based on subjectivity which itself is based on a pre-symbolic empty ...

Thinking time reversal film will return to the question: what is

our desire to film rétrotemporalité, what pleasure and enjoyment are there

implemented? For aesthetic objects as are the films that we address the issue of

taste remains essential, fundamental. You can still rephrase this idea inversion

time film, what is its place, its role in desire? She did not touch us

a childhood dream to clean his room a snap, making obey objects,

as in the sequence of Mary Poppins ?

The question that then arises, what our rétrotemporel desire for cinema is reversible

sible: how the movie we rétrotemporel he so desires, if only to find out

we always knew that already, precedence of time on our desire delayed, inverted, irretrievable?

But first, what do we mean by time reversal, otherwise, roughly , returns

in the past? Is it then put in the same bag of dandruff inversions, used

as a detail, as in The Dictator Chaplin 34The rétrotemporalité which is immersed

the set of a film ( Happy End 35for example), the cinematographic rétrotemporels stories

cal without dandruff inversions, with a reversal of the order of the sequences of history

( Peppermint Candy , Betrayal36) Or even the stories of rejuvenation as The Curious

of Benjamin Button37?

It seems to us an approximation is necessary, and that among the inversions pellicu-

lar that cause rétrokinésie (inverse action, more or less formidable and extra

32- Installing Five Angels for a Millenium (2001).33- It is Lacan offering this reading. Seminar VII. Ethics of psychoanalysis , Seuil, 1986.34. "In The Great Dictator (1940), Chaplin uses slow motion, accelerated or reversed to give more grace andfantastic at the scene of his dances with the world map at the end of which he climbs with an unreal agility, otherwise



the walls, at least along the curtains of a window. Here, the process, emphasizing the character's madness has obviouslying a dramatic range. You can not blame him for being used in a manner quite episodic inclean break with the whole rhythm of the film. "Jean Epstein, op.cit. T. 2, p. 92.35- Oldrich Lipstky, 1966.36- Peppermint Candy Lee Chang Dong, 2000; David Hugh Jones, marital Betrayal ( Betrayal ), 1984.37- David Fincher, 2008.

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ordinary, as they are symmetrical or not in their original form 38), And stories

rétrotemporels, we must think less opposition than consider what, from one end

to each other, offers variations or different dimensions of the same tendency, a

same formal orientation, the same concept. Dandruff inversions are not

only symptoms of becoming inverse ; if they prove to be the most direct representation

the time reversal, the most scandalous in its form and in its perception (that's what

favors Epstein), it seemed that stick to that level led us to a kind

deadlock, since it shut reverse time in a technical definition (the in-

film release or "film shown in the opposite of registration" in the words

Epstein), that is to say in an extrinsic difference.

Or follow an idea closely is to assess the intrinsic difference, even French-

chir invisible borders, formal, aesthetic, discovering that the territory that we

conquers expands again and again, it takes us into theoretical meanders where

the thought is forced to move by sudden jumps, in fits and starts, for short circuits.

The temporal inversion will be here as Figure Philippe Dubois has delineated

the restless architecture, where its components, figurative, figurative and figural, wind and

wrap labyrinthine way:

"What a figure? To fast is at once a pattern, shape,a concept and an effect. Notional category as it involves severalfields of knowledge: it operates both in rhetoric and poetics, inphilosophy and aesthetics in art history and psychoanalysis. For whichWe are concerned that proceeds from the images of the world, it refers to a dietrepresentation looking in the modulation structure, the difference inrepetition, the invention in the recurrence. Figure is in this sense an operatornecessarily cross, dialectical and paradoxical, that plays in the order oftriple territorialisation: FIG operates in effect both in the order of readable (whereit defines a meaning system that I call the "figurative"), visible (where itdefines what I will call the "figurative") and visual (where she opened what Irefer to as the "figural") 39. »

38- About rétrokinésie: Blaise Cendrars tells the story of brother Joseph of Cupertino, the saint who levitatedby feedback , the patron of aviators. Blaise Cendrars, Saint Joseph of Cupertino , part of the estatesky . Paris, Le Club Christian book, 1960.



39- Philippe Dubois continues: "The Figure therefore falls simultaneously a knowledge (which is written out of the work,in everything that carries the iconographic knowledge, we wanted to convene here in all its breadthimages and texts in relation to the thematic and cultural pattern of the storm), a View (which falls on the surfaceof the work, in its explicit representation, and can be analyzed for himself as an in-itself, that is to say inits meaning and shape) and something more complex, which would simultaneously agenda and Sensitivethe Intelligible, the concept as active virtuality of meaning, feeling as unknowing and as non-see, but as an experience through the imaging field of work: visual as "symptom" (asFreudian), that is to say, as "unconscious visible". This it is which is called the figural (and is thereforeFigurative reducible neither to see nor to the knowledge Figuratively). "Philippe Dubois," The Tempest and matter-time or

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Put the past to the present

In Last Year at Marienbad 40Delphine Seyrig does not remember. Which

love (who returned a year after they met to the day to find her and em-

carry with it), will soon say, "Why do you still remember anything? "There

therefore all the comings and goings they do in the corridors of the castle between the mirrors

prevail everywhere, where man wants her to remember . In an anteroom while

a moment evocative of the past she still denies, Delphine Seyrig still gradually

walking backwards, as if she allowed herself finally catch up with the past, with love. This

currently pending (man remains motionless) rétrokinésique is intriguing as may

being special effect is already almost a reversal film time. Otherwise,

between all camera movements that are the glory of this film, some move-

ments back into space, but where there is no doubt: these are returns in the

past. This touches anything other than the simple psychological resurgence of a memory, the influx

of the past in the present. The rétrokinésie (inverse movements of the actress or the camera)

introduced by a sense of change in the weather: it goes down.

Time is not it that makes fun of this difference between her and her upside down,

it is in principle by definition irreversible? The cinema is always weigh him

irreversible time because it is at present. Many people have said and written. Jean-

François Neplaz, which has not yet stopped streak in his films of historic sites,

places marked in the past (a concentration camp, a mountain of Italy, which is the landscape

old battles 41) Writes:

"It should go without retracing his steps. But the hypothesisappears absurd from the statement. It is never another who returns and walksthere. Survey the scenery yesterday to look the other in itself ... But there is noAnother nor even in these not I recognize. Replace the spring timewhat mechanism? The cinema has no history. Barely born he died already.Announced such, wanted ... across two, three human generations. So nothing.Its inventors already said no future, it must be remembered and understood asAll spells cast on cradles in the old stories. It is an inventionno future and stillborn. Its future is that of a phoenix. The film story



the sublime and the figural in the work of Jean Epstein, " Jean Epstein. Filmmaker, poet, philosopher , dir. JacquesAumont,French Cinematheque / Cinema Museum, 1998, pp. 269-270.40- Alain Resnais, 1961.41- The other morning ... waiting Mario Rigoni Stern , 2006, 13 '; You , a Polish 1991 film, 13 ', DVD in Number 1- The rise time of Jean-François Neplaz , dir. Jean-François Neplaz and Martine Derain, with textsFrederick Valabrègue, J.-F. Neplaz, Paul-Emmanuel Odin and Rodolphe Olcese, Editions Town, Marseille,2011.

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Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad



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the history of the arts and starts on the walls of caves. Cinema himis only present. »

We feel up here one of the issues still to resolve. How cinema, always

to this, can it be rétrotemporel?

At the narrative level, how much ink cinematic flashback he spilled?

In his book on the flashback, Maurim Tureen 42acts as if the flashback existed de facto .

Or, and this is an idea that is found in other authors, Jean-Marie Straub expressed

a brutal conception of cinema as far as the exclusive present: the flashback

does not exist because cinema is that successive present.

"In the course of a film, the" flashback "does not exist: it always happens (thateither within a "sequence" or a sequence to another "sequence")with or without fade, a bioscopique bioscopique plane to another level, that is,ie a pure block this condensed to another block of pure present condensedephemeral (death at work, as they say) 43. »

Cinema is at present, but we will not hesitate to break this sacred circle: how

past he maintains, despite everything, in him, and how well he goes back in time?

First, even Jankélévitch, who wrote a book against the idea of rétrotemporalité

( The Irreversible and nostalgia ), comes to say that without memory that records and is a

past, awareness of time passing, the futurition, the irreversible time does not exist! This

which is to move forward, as he does, that the needs of the irreversible temporal reversion.

Then take Epstein:

" But the film, which dates only fifty years, is the first devicetrying to make us see time differences, not transposed valuesspace, but represented the values of this same time 44. »

What can be paraphrased by touching the rope: it is in the irreversible time



cinema shows us time differences represented values of that time. He

we have to follow this idea through. Even the flashback is present, then it is a

appears close to the literary analepsis (introduction of a previous story fragment time

narrative in which was). That is the amazing power of cinema (though the homology

unpredictable he makes between the representation of its support and the perception that it imposes

illusion) All rétrotemporalités, pellicle, narrative etc. are present.

42- Maureen Turim, Flashbacks in Film. Memory & history , Routledge, New York & London, 1989.43. Jean-Marie Straub, "Questions to filmmakers," Cahiers du Cinema , No. 185, christmas 1966, p. 123.44- Jean Epstein, "visual Fabric" The film technique , May 29, 1947, the Cinema Writings , Volume II, Seghers,1975, p. 93.

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We are near the river of time while reminding us that the only conceivable definition

the time reversal is a trend or a movement towards pastness. But between

the pastness and movement towards pastness, do we not feel a foreign body to set in?

How untie pastness of the ideal, what persists or insist, as a symbolic shadow

ether, an unconscious determination? Or, to put it more bluntly, all rétrotempo-

ralités Are Platonic, Epstein is it also still platonic? Risky question,

which it introduces the imbalance in itself, seems to me to have a heuristic value. But

we shall not go beyond what it is we do.

We could summarize numerous philosophies of the time (inherited from Aristotle) by

the idea that the movement is the measure of time and, conversely, that time is the measure

movement 45. Next to that proposal, what the opposition between rétrokinésie and

rétrotemporalité, which does not go away this darkness a formula Anne Souriau summary

vividly:

"A film passed backwards gives the impression of a strange action news, butsuccessive, and not at all the impression of a series of historical information46. »

Our question will be precisely measured among the forms of appearances rétrotemporelles

greater or lesser involvement of the idea back in the past . Many rétrokiné-

sies express the temporal inversion directly and explicitly (in the Orphic Returns

Cocteau, the withdrawal of Stormcaller Epstein), but those that express the least in-

temporal Version (those with Anne Souriau finally speaks, and which constitute what is

called false to time, with his burlesque or magical use) yet hold



one of the most hidden aspects, this whole dimension close to the absurd and nothingness whereTime out of joint shines in both directions, without justification, without cause. And it is perhaps

be there - it will be one of our assumptions - that are already experiencing all the deep cut,

psychic division, which will come out thinking. And if it were the true measure mishaps

the movement? And if it was the rétrokinésie the true measure of the time? Both formulas

hide asymmetry: where we will ask the necessity and priority of mishaps on

the opposition was introduced in time and in motion.

45- This is the meaning of several selected texts and joined by Alban Gonod in the collection Time , Garnier-Flammarionmarion, 2001. The double volume on film Gilles Deleuze ( The Movement-Image , The Time-Image , Midnight,1983-1985) is no exception to this idea (he repeats the Aristotelian gesture of mutual understanding of time andmovement).46- Anne Souriau, "Succession and simultaneity in the film," Etienne Souriau, eds., The filmic universe , Flammarion,p. 70.

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The temporal material is a cabinet of curiosities is the enigma of a symbolic division

where the past splits between a distant reference and fiction of a real presence

back between the pastness and the instant of the past-present. The temporal inversion spoils the highway

impassible time, finally incorporates all the symbolic medium that ensures the outcome, the

end of all thought.

Jung came at the end of a long intellectual journey, this conclusion a bit harsh, but

without sadness: "It is somewhat painful, humiliating, understand that there is in you

nothing else to do than to play children's games 47. "Unless flaw consider

not childhood, but opacity and invisible extensions of a hazy margins of

Because, when exceeded, seems essential.

"All lies so much in the ideas we have of it in some poweroblique suggestion of ambiguity in the frenzied speculation on hunger hasman to invent, to think, to build the complex, the pervert, the dark.But this is what there is distressing, tragic 48. »

This is by bringing the signals that have been folded in numerous circumstances

entangled that has developed this story, this novel by reverse time.

It is well for us to follow the idea of temporal inversion of cinema, to enter all

the effects, all effects, all forms of work, deform, reverse

also in turn, to better see. However, we do not claim to be exhaustive, we

do not even want to do a catalog: the very idea of taxonomy is foreign 49.

Thinking (not just time reversal) is irreducible to a list 50. Thinking is

doubt, question, lost, wander, face the wall fragmentary meanings constituted



kill systems, remove them immediately, identify trends, develop hypotheses, to

other models attempts, and continue thus for intuitive open bites, flashes, discounts

in question uncertainties in a matter that only obstinate hands knead. Rather

that classify different types of inverse time frames, rather it is to follow in the cinema

as a single film, changes in our thinking as we approach these ill signs explanation

47. Carl Gustav Jung, The Soul and life , quoted in Vassili Golovanov, praise of fools trips , Verdier, coll. slovo,11220 Lagrasse, 2008, p. 59.48- Gracq, A Beautiful dark José Corti, 1989, p. 185.49- Diderot hated taxonomists, those endless classifications that ignore the fragmentary, discontinuous,and where was lost the whole texture of subjective thought engaged in his time in the body, with the effort ofsynthesis that characterizes it. "How would it not volumes to contain only terms in which wewould name the distinct phenomena collections, if the phenomena were known? "Denis Diderot, Thoughtson the interpretation of nature , Garnier Flammarion, 2005.50- Umberto Eco has yet written a fine book on this subject: Vertigo list , Flammarion, 2009.

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ble - it should be recognized that distance that keeps them out of comments, where the

cinema lights without justification.

The four parties have set themselves the different moments of our research are

traps or nets which themselves communicate. Often such a film could

be mentioned in another part. Where the actual films are no holes, no cut, the separation

intellectual tions were needed only for demonstration purposes, esthetics,

poetic, philosophical.

First we will discuss the anti-philosophy of Jean Epstein, who is a real apology

temporal inversion, while the film itself being a time against which incorporates all

time. Epstein and sees a supertime time of cinema. We perceive this reversal

time from the Light Views. The against-time could be associated with the revolt of the children home

Vigo, the communist revolution (Vertov's cinema embodies in its vividness use

This ideological aesthetic form) and even evil.

It was then for us the meeting of the myth of Policy Plato and the certainty that

Plato, should a second time 51Serve as a model for a film thought. Indeed it has

a theoretical device in which the rétrotemporalité is the ideal model of temporality.

This film also implies, in our view, the notion of nostalgia developed by Jankélévitch which

also plays well in the movies rétrotemporelle narration in travel stories

in time.



Then there was the discovery of these images we can say without question, without justification,without the alibi of pastness or causation: so many aberrations of the skin inversion

Service of a strange rétrokinésie, crazy or burlesque. Also receive various forms

unit of the place and time to, as mixed inversions, spatio-temporal

tural. It is a way of approaching a time characterized by the absence of meaning.

Finally, we address the fundamental dimension of time reversal to think

thought, on the crest of the moment where past and future communicate, even the thought

is also returned, to think backwards. The reversibility of the intellectual act is the ultimate

stop which appear ideas, without spot and without reverse.

These four movements all tend to show that cinema is not only the form

which was finally released and deployed the truth of the time, but this is cinema as counter

time holds the truth of the time. This trajectory of thinking is paradoxical, because it relies

51- After the myth of the cave that accompanies whole approach to cinema Edgar Morin Jean-LouisBaudry.

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a commitment to the notion of truth (in the wake of Hegel, Lacan, Badiou, Žižek ...) and

symbolic function, and also on taking into account the willingness intellectual margins

or social, aesthetic or political: it is still not out of the truth by defending the truth

false, setbacks 52. How to spot a theoretical and practical which is excluded from the

society of thought? The temporal inversion is not a prisoner of a movement

self-exclusion? Is it out of duality that splits time or exacerbate this tension

to remove the maximum positivity?

Our intimate thoughts of ordinary man of cinema are dependent on a war studies of

temporal inversion.



52- My poet friend Arno Calleja had written for the play My body is zero (directed by LaurentRichmond, 2010, Théâtre des Bernardines, Marseille), these inspired words of mine, and were part of myText as an actor on the project: "This is the other side which is always true in the end, it is the biased side of the largerepresentation that is always true, the biased side nobody perceives and it is in that side (very littlepeople perceive) that really goes the fact something that is going to the event something done, for exampleif I take an example we'll see what I mean, and we'll see that what I say is true actually. ".

the time reversal of the cinema

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