149Cartier-Bresson: Man, Image, World. A Retrospective(London, 2003 ),
pp. 348 – 55.
8 Launched in France in 1920 and manufactured by Debrie, the
clockwork Sept had become popular by 1922. It took 17 feet ( 250
frames) of 35 mm film and had seven (sept) functions. As well as
shooting stills, short sequences and movies, with the addition of a
lamp housing it converted to a contact printer, optical printer for
film-strips, projector and enlarger. Sales were not sustained, since
it was complicated to use. Rodchenko is known to have shot
sequences of market traders with his Sept.
9 Jean-Luc Godard, ‘Introduction à une véritable histoire du cinéma’,
Camera Obscura, nos8-9-10, pp.75–88( 1980 ). See also ‘Angle and
Montage’, in Jean-Luc Godard and Ioussef Ishagpour,Cinema
(Oxford, 2004 ), pp. 15 – 18.
10 Dziga Vertov ‘We’ [ 1922 ], reprinted inKino-Eye: The Writings of
Dziga Vertov, ed. Annette Michelson (Berkeley,ca, 1984), p. 8.
11 Dziga Vertov, ‘Kinoks: A Revolution’ [ 1923 ], reprinted inKino-Eye,
ed. Michelson, p. 17.
12 Alexander Rodchenko inNovy Lef, 4 ( 1928 ).
13 Helmar Lerski,Köpfe des Alltags(Berlin, 1931 ).
14 August Sander,Antlitz der Zeit: 60 Fotos Deutscher Menschen
(Munich, 1929 ).
15 Siegfried Kracauer noted: ‘None of Lerski’s photographs recalled
the model; and all of them differed from each other. Out of the
original face there arose, evoked by varying lights, a hundred dif-
ferent faces, among them those of a hero, a prophet, a peasant, a
dying soldier, a monk. Did these portraits, if portraits they were,
anticipate the metamorphoses which the young man would under-
go in the future? Or were they just plays of light whimsically pro-
jecting on his face dreams and experiences forever alien to him?’
Siegfried Kracauer,Theory of Film(London, 1960 ), p. 162. See also
Helmar Lerski,Metamorphosis through Light(Essen, 1982 ).
16 Moï Ver,Paris(Paris, 1931 ). Born in Lithuania, Moï Ver studied at
the Bauhaus and under the influence of László Moholy-Nagy, and
went on to Ecole Technique de Photographie et de
Cinématographie, Paris.
17 Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Photography’ [ 1929 ], trans. in Thomas Y. Levin,
Critical Inquiry, 19 (Spring 1993 ), p. 428.
18 Hollis Frampton ‘For a Metahistory of Film: Commonplace Notes
and Hypotheses’, inCircles of Confusion: Film, Photography, Video.
Texts, 1 968–80(Rochester,ny, 1983 ), p. 114.
19 See Victor Burgin’s discussion of this in his introduction toThe
Remembered Film(London, 2005 ), pp. 7 – 28.
20 Sergei Eisenstein would refer to the cinema of the long take as
‘starism’ (stare-ism).
21 Wim Wenders, ‘Time Sequences, Continuity of Movement:
Summer in the CityandThe Goalkeeper’s Fear of the Penalty’ [ 1971 ], in
TheLogic of Images(London, 1991 ), pp. 3 – 6.
22 See, for example, Michelangelo Antonioni’s loose trilogy
L’avventura,La notte(both 1961 ) andL’eclisse( 1962 ).
23 In fact, Wearing hired actors to play police officers.
24 James Coleman,La Tache aveugle( 1978 – 90 ).
25 Similarly, Adam Broomberg’s and Oliver Chanarin’sChicago( 2005 )
documents a mock Palestinian settlement built deep in the Israeli
desert for the training of troops.
26 See Campany, ‘Safety in Numbness’. See also Peter Wollen,
‘Vectors of Melancholy’, inThe Scene of the Crime, ed. Ralph Rugoff
(Cambridge,ma,and London, 1997 ).
27 Fredric Jameson sees Grant’s movements as almost Brechtian in
their estrangement. See his ‘Spatial Systems inNorth by Northwest’,
inEverything You Always Wanted to Know About Lacan... But Were
Afraid To Ask Hitchcock, ed. Slavoj Zizek (London, 1992 ), pp. 47 – 72.
28 Laura Mulvey notes that in the melodramas of Douglas Sirk, for
example, the actors’ performances are ‘slightly marionette-like...
to privilege gestures and looks, suspended in time’. Laura Mulvey,
Death 24 x a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image(London, 2005 ),
p. 146.
29 Robert Bresson,Notes on the Cinematographer[ 1975 ] (London,
1986 ), pp. 4 and 22.
30 Cinema has endless versions of this scene. Two of the best known
are from films by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. InBlack
Narcissus( 1946 ), Kathleen Byron plays a troubled nun with mur-
derous passions. In the denouement she bursts through a convent
door and stands there charged with rage. Her habit and veil are
gone and she stares wild-eyed into the camera, her hair dancing in
the mountain air. InA Canterbury Tale( 1944 ), Sheila Sim stops on
a hilltop on the Pilgrim’s Way, seeming to hear sounds from the
time of Chaucer. In the wind, she listens intently.
31 Katherine Albert, ‘“A Picture That Was No Picnic”: Lillian Gish Has
Something To Say about the Location Tortures Accompanying the
Filming of “The Wind”’,Motion Picture Magazine(October 1927 ).
32 Harold Evans,Pictures on a Page: Photojournalism, Graphics and
Picture Editing(London, 1978 ).
33 Mike Leigh presents a similar sequence inSecrets and Lies( 1996 ),
in which a high-street studio photographer provokes momentary
mirth in his awkward or unhappy sitters. With practised speed
he snaps their smiles, fixing forever images of happiness that last
barely longer than the camera’s click.
34 Roland Barthes, ‘The Face of Garbo’ [ 1956 ], inMythologies(New
York, 1972 ).
35 Truffaut was well aware of the potentially overpowering effects of
the freeze, but continued to explore its potential: ‘... it can quick-
ly get to be a gimmick. I stopped doing it as a visual effect after a
few films. Now I use freeze frames as a dramatic effect. They’re
interesting provided viewers don’t notice. It takes eight frames for
a [still] shot to be noticed. A shot under eight frames is virtually
unreadable. Unless it’s a big close-up. So what I try to do now – in
La Peau Douce, which I find satisfactory is to freeze the image for