ker’s film does not seem to fit Koningsberg’s conception of the slide-motion film.
La Jetéeis presented as a“photo-roman”, a photo-novel (from the film’s titles).
One might, therefore, expect to see a film using a series of still pictures,“but in
which the camera seems to move among the picture’s elements by means of
panning or a zoom lens”.However, not onlyLa Jetée, but the entire field of
“photo-romans”, filmic or televisual“photo novels”or“photo plays”(includ-
ing the French series of short films simply called“Photo-Romans”which I will
turn to later) seems excluded from the term slide-motion films, not because they
are narratives, not because their stories are fictional, but because they do not
appear as films presenting photographs. One could argue that we should leave
Koningsberg’s definition of the slide-motion film behind and reserve it just for
those films he had in mind. However, the terms used to describe films likeLa
Jetée–photo novel, photo play, and sometimes even photo montage–has
some of the same problems as Koningsberg’s term when it comes to under-
standing the filmic space as well as narration and temporality. The films are
understood in terms of photography. For the photo novel, the photoplay, and
the photomontage, the notions explicitly signal this as such. In Koningsberg’s
definition of the slide motion film, photography is implicitly a premise, which
arguably is insufficient for bothSolvornandKarins Ansikteand presumably
also for the other documentaries that fit into Koningsberg’s definition.
The photo novel, the photoplay, and the photomontage are all notions used
for films including photographic stills. These films are, however, more often,
referred to as“films similar toLa Jetée”, a practice that must be considered a
sign of the lack of a proper term. I will argue that a photo-related designation
has more drawbacks than advantages. To understand a film like in terms of
photography often implies paying little or no attention to its sound and editing
principles. Moreover, naming it after something photo-related also reproduces
unrecognized assumptions about photography that have an influence on the
conception of the film that may not be beneficial. The tendency to consider a
documentary effect as intrinsical to photography is an example of this. Instances
of this can be found in users reviews forAño Uña, like one at the Internet
Movie Database (imdb.com) saying“Nobody knows what he [Cuarón] was ac-
tually documenting at the time [he was making the photographs] but the story
Cuarón created...is poignant and funny”.It can also be read in film reviews,
like James Dennis’s at the websitetwitch, who characterizesAño Uñaas“A
work of fiction with no actors, a documentary with a fictional narrative.”This
description actually echoes the introduction of the film, written in Spanish and
English with white letters on a black screen:“FromtoI photographed
my surroundings. At the end of that year, I ordered the images in such a way
that they suggested the following narrative.”In the next image, again with
white letters on a black screen, we read:“These are documentary images. The
The Temporalities of the Narrative Slide Motion Film 89