universe”, that is the productive power of a filmmaker. From this standpoint,
we can say that in Fassbinder’s films at issue is the question of bringing things
to a standstill and suddenness. The freeze-frame here serves either as a blockage
loaded with symbolic character that announces eternal repetition–that would
be the nihilistic version–or can be seen as a virtualization of the filmic narrative
itself–that would be the utopian version of his poetics of expulsion.
If, for the film analyst, as Thierry Kuntzel writes, the filmic lies neither in
movement, nor in standstill, but somewhere between the two, the utopian mo-
ments of standstill in Fassbinder’s oeuvre can be understood as something in-
between, as an interval between privileged instant and any-instant-whatever (or
between pregnant and fleeting moments), as an opening towards a non-measur-
able time or towards a space in which the imaginary force develops and where
the image is temporalized, not as eternal, but as becoming.
Translated by Brian Currid, revised by Christa Blümlinger. Reprinted with the
kind permission of Bertz+Fischer Verlag, from the digital, English version of the
bookWord and Flesh: Cinema Between Text and the Body, eds. Sabine Nessel, Win-
fried Pauleit et al. (Berlin: Bertz+Fischer Verlag),.
Notes
. See for instance Laurent Guido/Olivier Lugon (eds.),Fixe/animé, croisements de la
photographie et du cinéma au XXe siècle, Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme,
. Jean Epstein,“L’intelligence d’une machine”(), in vol.ofEcrits sur le cinéma,
-, (Paris: Seghers,),,and. On the relation between the in-
animate and life in Epstein, see also Laura Mulvey,Deathx a Second: Stillness and
the Moving Image(London: Reaktion Books),.
. André Bazin,“The Ontology of the Photographic Image”(), vol.ofWhat is
Cinema?, (trans. Hugh Gray, Berkeley, CA: UC Press,),.
. Laura Mulvey argues similarly to Raymond Bellour, who upon commenting on
Rossellini’sLa macchina ammazacattivi(), establishes the dualities of the
narrative (tradition and modernity, God and devil, life and death) in the relation-
ship between standstill and movement by way of the figurations of the photo-
graphic. See Laura Mulvey, Deathx a Second,; as well as Raymond Bellour,
“Le spectateur pensif”() and“L’interruption, l’instant”(), inL’Entre-
Images. Cinema, Photo, Cinéma, Vidéo(Paris: Edition de la Différence),-and
-, Eng. trans.“The Pensive Spectator”,Wide Angle, no.,,-; and
“The Film Stilled”,Camera Obscurano.,,-.
. Garett Stewart,“Photogravure: Death, Photography and Film Narrative”,Wide An-
gle, no.,,p.-(here: p.), see also Garett Stewart,Between Film and
Screen: Modernism’s Photosynthesis, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,),-
.
The Figure of Visual Standstill in R.W. Fassbinder’s Films 83