1 The first level: frame, set or closed system
We will start with very simple definitions, even though they may have to. be corrected later. We will call the determination of a closed system, a relatively closed system which includes everything which is present in the image – sets, characters and props – framing. The frame therefore forms a set which has a great number of parts, that IS of elements which themselves form sub-sets. It can be broken down. obviously these parts are themselves in image [en image]. This is why Jakobson calls them object-signs, and Pasolini ‘cinemes’. However this terminology suggests comparisons with language (cinemes wouid be very like phonemes, and the shot would be like a moneme) which do. not seem necessary. For, If the frame has an analogue, it is to be found in an information system rather than a linguistic one. The elements are the data [donnees], whIch are sometimes very numerous, Sometlmes of limited number. The frame is therefore inseparable from two tendencies: towards saturat1on or towards rarefaction. The big screen and depth of field m particular have allowed the multiplication of independent data, to. the Point where a secondary scene appears in the foreground while the main one happens in the background (Wyler), or where yoU can no. longer even distinguish between the principal and the secondary (Altman). on the other hand, rarefied images are produced, either when the whole accent is placed on a smgle obJect ( Hltchcock, the glass of milk lit from the inside, in Suspicion; the glowing cigarette end in the black rectangle of the window in Rear Wmdow) or when the set is emptied of certain sub-sets (Antonioni’s deserted landscapes; Ozu’s vacant interiors). The highest degree of rarefaction seems to be attained with the empty set, when the screen becomes completely black or completely white. Hitchcock gives an example of thIS in Spellbound, when another glass of milk invades the screen, leaving only an empty white image. But, from eIther SIde – whether rarefaction or saturation – the frame teaches us rhar the Image IS not just given to. be seen. It is legible as well as visible. The frame has the implicit function of recording not merely sound information, but also. visual information. If we see very few things in an Image, thIS is because we do not know how to read it properly; we evaluate its rarefaction as badly as its saturation. There is a pedagogy of the image, especially with Godard, when this function is made explicit,when the frame serves as an opaque surface of information, sometimes blurred by saturation, sometimes reduced to the empty set to. the white or black screen.2
…..
The frame is also. geometric or phYSIcal in another way – in relation
to the parts of the system that it both separates and brings together….Doors, windows, box office
windows, skylights, car windows, mirrors, are all frames in
frames. The great directors have particular affinities with particular
secondary, tertiary, etc. frames. And it is by this dovetailing of
frames that the parts of the set or of the closed system are separated,
but also converge and are reunited.
…..On the other hand, the physical or dynamic conception of the
frame produces imprecise sets which are now only divided into zones
or bands. The frame is no longer the object of geometric divisions,
but of physical gradations. The parts of the set are now intensive
parts, and the set itself is a mixture which is transmitted through all
the parts? through all the degrees of shadow and oflight, through the
whole lIght-darkness scale (Wegener, Murnau). This was the
Expressionist optic’s other tendency, although some directors, both
inside and outside Expressionism, participate in both. It is the hour
when it is no longer possible to distinguish between sunrise and
sunset, air and water, water and earrh, in the great mixture of a marsh
or a tempest
…
There remains the out-of-field [hors-champ]. This is not a negation;
neither is it sufficient to define it by the non-coincidence between
two frames, one visual and the other sound (for example, in Bresson,
when the sound testifies to what is not seen, and ‘relays’ the visual
instead of duplicating it)’ The out-of-field refers to what is
neither seen nor understood, but is nevertheless perfectly present.
…..
The divisibility of content means that the parts belong to various
sets, whIch constantly subdivide into sub-sets or are themselves the
sub-set of a larger set, on to infinity. This is why content is defined
both by the tendency to constitute closed systems and by the fact that
thIS tendency never reaches completion. Every closed system also
communicates. There IS always a thread to link the glass of sugared
water to the solar system, and any set whatever of a larger set. This is
the first sense of what we call the out-of-field: when a set is framed
therefore seen, there is always a larger set, or another set with which
the first forms a larger one, and which can in turn be seen on
condition that it gives rise to a new out-of-field, etc. The set of all
these sets forms a homogeneous continuity, a universe or a plane
[plan] of genuinely unlimited content. But it is certainly not a ‘whole’
although thIS plane or these larger and larger sets necessarily have an
indirect relationship with the whole. We know the insoluble
contradictions we fall into when we treat the set of all sets as a whole.
It IS not because the notion of the whole is devoid of sense; but it is not
a set and does not have parts. It is rather that which prevents each set,
however bIg It IS, from closing in on itself, and that which forces it to
extend itself into a larger set. The whole is therefore like thread
which traverses sets and gives each one the possibility, which is
necessarily realized, of communicating with another, to infinity.
Thus the whole is the Open, and relates back to time or even to spirit
rather than to content and to space.
….
In one case, the out-of-field designates that which exists elsewhere,
to one side or around; in the other case, the out-of-field testifies to a
more disturbing presence, one which cannot even be said to exist, but
rather to ‘insist’ or ‘subsist’, a more radical Elsewhere, outside
homogeneous space and time.
….
Let us summarize the results of this analysis of the frame. Framing
is the art of choosing the parts of all kinds which became part of a set.
This set is a closed system, relatively and artificially closed. The
closed system determined by the frame can be considered in relation
ro the data that it communicates to the spectators: it is ‘informatic’
and saturated or rarefied. Considered in itself and as limitation, it is
geometric or dynamic-physical. Considered in the nature of its parts,
it is still. geometric or physical and dynamic. It is an optical system
when It Is considered in relation to the point of view, to the angle of
framing: it is then pragmatically justified, or lays claim to a higher
justification. Finally, it determines an out-of-field, sometimes in the
form of a larger set which extends it, sometimes in the form of a
whole into which it is integrated.