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    F I L M - P H I L O S O P H Y
    Internet Salon (ISSN 1466-4615)
    http://www.film-philosophy.com

    Vol. 4  No. 10, April 2000

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    Didier Debaise

    The Mechanisms of Thought
    A Jamesian Point of View on Resnais



Haim Callev
_The Stream of Consciousness in the Films of Alain Resnais_
New York: McGruer Publishing, 1997
ISBN 965-90162-0-4
250 pp.

Resnais always described his work as research into the cinematographic
representation of 'mechanisms of thought'. How can one film conscious
states which by definition are not visible? Callev explores the
consequences of such a research, starting with Resnais's proposition that:
'Film is for me an attempt still very rough and very primitive to approach
the complexity of thought and its mechanism' (31). Callev's book, although
analysing in a very precise way some of Resnais's films, is a theoretical
analysis of what he calls a 'stream of consciousness' in the cinema of
Resnais, and attempts to discern the cinematographic possibilities of an
apprehension of such a reality. The book is entirely guided by this notion
of a stream of consciousness, in which he sees a major stake in the cinema
of Resnais; one could say that this cinema aims at an exploration of those
streams of consciousness, making it a cinematographic principle in itself.
This notion is more than just a matter of Resnais's films; it is a real
organizing principle, a way to film, and a real cinematographic
orientation. Callev shows how this organizing principle structures five of
Resnais's films: _La Guerre est finie_, _Hiroshima mon amour_, _Je t'aime,
je t'aime_, _Providence_, and _L'Annee derniere a Marienbad_.

The book attemtps to describe which kind of mechanics and techniques
Resnais uses and invents to make the experience of a stream of
consciousness possible. In order to say that the notion of a stream of
consciousness is a real cinematographic orientation, one would need to do
some real research on cinematographic forms to show how it could be so.
More than just showing these 'mechanisms of thought', Resnais tries to
introduce us to the inside of those mechanisms *through cinema*. The
purpose of this book seems to me to illustrate this passage to a possible
experience of these mechanisms, of streams of consciousness. Callev's book
follows, logically, this analysis: beginning with a description of what a
stream of consciousness is, and how the cinema can apprehend such a
reality, he then develops an analysis of the five films, and finally brings
out, in a third part, and by way of conclusion, some elements, principles,
present in films which allow the showing of streams of consciousness.

I can immediately say that Callev's book seems to perfectly fulfil the
demands that it places on itself: simultaneously a theoretical analysis,
truly original, about the importance of the stream of consciousness, and a
detailed analysis of Resnais's films. He shows its concrete functionality,
and succeeds in making the reader feel the associated cinematographic
experience.

We quoted, at the beginning of this text, the phrase of Resnais according
to which his cinema organises itself around the mechanisms of thought.
Callev examines these mechanisms from the notion of a stream of
consciousness, which he finds at the same time in literature, particularly
in the work of Robert Humphrey, and in psychology, more particularly in
William James. It is James who the first developed the notion of a stream
of consciousness, in his _Principles of Psychology_, to express a
collection of realities: affects, sensibility, memory, imagination, etc.,
prior to the consciousness, the representation, although really
constitutive of the subject. It was a matter, for him, to place the
consciousness into a wider process and therefore to give an increased
importance to pre-consciousness experiences, preverbals,
subrepresentatives, in the constitution and the orientation of the subject.
Moreover, besides this exploration of this set of preconscious but
determining realities, the notion of a stream of consciousness refers to a
continuity, a general flux.

There is a stream because each faculty -- sensibility, imagination, memory,
etc. -- forms with others a flux where consciousness is just one element.
'Memories, thoughts and feelings exist outside the primary consciousness,
and further, that they appear to one, not as a chain, but as a stream, a
flow' (20).

Resnais is effectively quite near to this non-hierarchical view of thought.
His characters, and the situations in which they find themselves, are much
determined by their past (see _Hiroshima mon amour_); by the way in which
they apprehend their future (see _La Guerre est finie_); by the type of
description that they can make of their own situation (see _Providence_),
etc. Characters are determined by a collection of experiences which, as
James described it, are preverbal and presubjective. There is no hierarchy
in the experience, insofar as memory is working as much as the imagination
or the 'real' situation. Therefore, characters form themselves in
comparison to these experiences, to these fluxes of consciousness, notably
by a memory of which they are like a contraction. Different elements of
this stream -- memory, apprehension, etc. -- do not belong to a subject
which, for example, would recollect a past situation, or who would try to
think what would happen; these experiences where an individual decides,
consciously, to cover some elements of his past, or to emit some hypothesis
on his future are finally quite rare. What is more common is the
involuntary emergence of such images or impressions, of such new
alternatives, which envelop the individual -- constitute him. These belong
to the realm of involuntary experiences, to a set of unconsciousness
structurations, and not the contrary. Resnais agrees with James on this
reversal of the psychological analysis; like him, he refuses to see
consciousness as the end of a process or as a determining element of the
experience. He puts consciousness in a general movement, where it might
sometimes appear to hang back.

What is essential is that this set of experiences become the present of the
character. Its past is not an ancient present and its future is not an
upcoming present, but its past is what remains of ancient experiences,
which constitutes the character now, and similarly the future is the set of
possibilities opened by the situation, the way in which characters
apprehend a consequence to the situation. Like in James, different
faculties have an equal weight in the current constitution of subjects. All
together, they form a 'stream of consciousness' which more deeply defines
the character than the conscious description that they can make of their
situation. Therefore, it is always a cross reference to the singularity of
the character, to its idiosyncrasy, to the collection of situation which
determined it.

It is a complete network of experiences which form the idiosyncrasy of the
character: the way by which he is still animated by some obsessions,
through which he sees the situation, through which he tends, immediately,
towards an alternative and not another; 'the coexistence of past, present
and future in the character's mind and their manifestation in every moment
of experience; the coexistence of the factual and the imaginary and their
equal weight in the mind' (22). Through this remark we are referred to a
second characteristic of the cinema of Resnais in the apprehension of the
streams of consciousness and that Callev analysis at length: the relation
between mechanisms of thought, and the situation, or the state of fact --
the 'reality'.

It is always on the occasion of a present situation, of an action, of a
speech, that the movement of the mechanisms of thought are shown. There is
always what Callev calls an 'anchoring reality', a precise point in the
situation which evokes or which opens the situation to something else.
Moreover it is a cinematographic technique of Resnais which consists of
making a correspondence, or more precisely to bifurcate a situation from
something which is given; for example an object (the balcony in _Hiroshima
mon amour_, passports photos in _La Guerre est finie_), to an other
dimension (the balcony referring to a past experience of character).

But if the notion of a stream of consciousness refers to this set of
preverbals, presubjectives, interiors realities, how is a cinematographic
apprehension possible, as it organises itself from images and/or sounds. At
the level of images, fluxes of consciousness are invisible, absent to the
picture; and at the level of sounds it is impossible to make a narration of
these states of consciousness. The whole question is, therefore, to know
how this apprehension is possible; which kind of organization of pictures
and sounds is necessary to make us feel the experience of a stream of
consciousness, being clear that a direct and immediate apprehension by the
image or by the sound is impossible. It is necessary at the level of the
organization of cinematographic pictures that an apprehension of fluxes of
consciousness are possible, that, beyond pictures, situation of characters,
it is possible to *make* the experience of this non-visible part, of this
interiority.

It is on this question that the stream of consciousness exceeds the simple
cinematographic matter to become an orientation, an organisating principle
in itself. Yet, remarks Callev, if the cinematographic medium has some
advantages to show (with its own language) the interiority of
consciousness, it has nevertheless two major difficulties: the first is the
temporal character of cinematographic pictures, which refers to a linearity
and 'the constant flux of images on the screen does not provide time for
deciphering' (16). Comparing the problem by confronting it with literature,
Callev remarks that 'in literary practices similar non linear structures
create a less grave obstacle in comprehension, since the reading process is
not irreversible' (16). Briefly, fluxes of consciousness don't participate
to the irreversibility of images, and it is therefore a difficulty at the
level of cinema to show these fluxes by the way time is used in the
cinematographic medium.

The second difficulty is 'the inherent concrete nature of the cinematic
image' (16). Pictures and sounds seem to reproduce, to depict 'reality', to
imitate it. This concrete aspect of images makes it difficult to recreate
the experience of a sphere as intimate, abstract, and invisible as
consciousness. There is a resistance opposing itself to free associations,
to the vague and fluctuant characteristics of mental pictures.

There is an inherent difficulty for the cinematographic practice to account
for these fluxes of consciousness, something singular which implies methods
and particular 'dispositifs' to show it. The stream of consciousness,
although it can be apprehended in different ways, by literature, by
science, etc., implies a technique, a mode of existence which is very
different at the level of cinematographic space. It is, therefore, from
'the mode of existence of cinematographic pictures', with its limits and
its singularity that we have to account for the experience of a stream of
consciousness. The comparison with other artistic practices can not be
continued because of the singularity of the cinematographic medium,
completely oriented by time and movement.

Therefore, Callev gives a general definition of the stream of consciousness
at the level of the cinematographic space:

'Stream of consciousness in film is the cinematic representation of mental
processes occurring in the minds of fictional characters simultaneously
with the external action, granting a penetration into their inner life'
(23).

Among the techniques used by Resnais, one is the 'Flash of thought' which
consists in introducing, in exterior action, some mental evocations.
Resnais injects fragmentary pictures in the linearity of the action, of the
situation as it is given, either from memory (particularly in _Hiroshima
mon amour_) or from future action (particularly in _La Guerre est finie_).
Sequences which are relative to these exterior actions are usually in a
temporal and spatial unity. The illusion of apprehending a flux of
consciousness arises from the fragmentary, chaotic, and enigmatic
characteristic of these mental evocations which, from then on,
differentiates itself from this continuity.

'It is particularly adaptable to the depiction, or suggestion, of the
chaotic and elusive nature of thought' (26).

They introduce cuts in the continuity of the exterior action. These mental
evocations, these 'flashes of thoughts', are noticeable as the film
progresses by their repetitive form which duplicates the linearity of the
action by an enigmatic dimension, by a virtuality. Talking about flashes of
thought, Callev remarks that their 'repetitive patterns, their gradual
evolution and the mechanism of their evocation, including their triggering
by the anchoring 'reality' and their integration into it, are indispensable
for the cinematic representation of stream of consciousness' (35-36).

The technique of the flash of thought, as it breaks the linearity but also
shows something which is not directly perceptible, is a technique allowing
the introduction of a different reality, just as present as the action and
the situations. Throughout the progression of the film the spectator is
introduced into this logic. Although flashes of thought are more often than
not enigmatic, chaotic, and very close to the real functionality of thought
itself, the spectator slowly seems to be introduced to the characters'
logic. What flashes of thought actually enable is the creation of a
relation between two coexisting kinds of reality, both effective: on the
one hand, the characters' thought, with its characteristic chaos, the free
associations it enables, and its non linearity; on the other hand, the
situation, the 'reality', with its own different logic, its own kind of
linearity, its own succession and irreversibility. These two modes of
existence are very different: at a temporal level, one mode consists in
succession, the other in reversibility and repetition; at a spatial level,
one mode implies very delimitated spaces, the other can make different
spaces coexist, bring distant spaces closer, etc.; at a logical level of
organization, one mode is defined by the situation as a whole, the other is
free, and can take shape according to its own rules. But both the 'reality'
or the situation and 'the thought' or the stream of consciousness are real
and constitutive. The imaginary is not something floating, unreal or 'for
nothing'; it is something which is not shown but which is nevertheless
essential and effective in any given situation. This is fundamental because
it runs through all Resnais's films: memory, sensibility, and imagination
are not added to the situation, to the present, to what is happening at
present, but they are determining; the character is just as oriented by the
situation as he is submitted to his own memory, which stays effective,
really active, he is just as effective and submitted in an imaginary
reality as he is in an 'objective' one. Using the technique of the 'flash
of thought', which we can recognise in _Hiroshima mon amour_ and in _La
Guerre est finie_, Resnais shows this double reality of action, he can
continuously introduce in the situation the experience of streams of
consciousness. 'Once the procedure of interrupting external continuity by
mental images is established, it constitutes a parallel channel which
remains open throughout the film' (98).

We are thus constantly in the presence of two channels of existence.
Therefore, the analysis Callev undertakes aims at linking an external
situation to the logic it produces, to what it refers to at the level of
the character. Every single time it seems that the objects or the
characters have two aspects, one which is actual, present, visible, and one
which is virtual and invisible but which also is present. Every object,
every event of ordinary life, every character, seems double: on the one
hand, they are linked to the linearity of the action, of facts, of
'objective reality'; on the other hand, they refer to theses fluxes of
consciousness with their own logics (an object can be linked to a souvenir
or open a new possibility in the future).

It seems to me that the fact that Resnais doesn't film or edit every scene
in the same way means that the 'mechanisms of thought' are shown in their
own logic. This different showing of reality -- what seems chaotic to the
spectator -- is an important characteristic of his cinema.

Besides, it would be an important mistake to film fluxes of consciousness
as one would film the outside, the situation -- to pretend memory is just a
kind of 'ancient present', a kind of reconstitution of the past (Resnais
has continuously deconstructed this idea of reconstitution). The memory
filmed by Resnais is not a present that is now past. None of the
experiences of memory, in particular in _Hiroshima mon amour_, refer to an
ancient present that Resnais would try to introduce in the actual present,
or to reconstitute; but, in a very different way, the important thing is
the heavy presence of the past, of the remembrance which always vanishes.
The memory in Resnais's work is always active, it determines the
characters, makes them unable to achieve certain actions, or urges them to
achieve others. It is a constantly present memory, continuing its effects.

That's why Resnais refuses a linearity of memory which would make us live
one of the character's past situations again -- such a reconstitution would
be totally uninteresting. The essential thing is, on the contrary,
everything that escapes, exceeds what is forgotten; the filtering the
subject has operated and his own way of apprehending a situation. As the
apprehension of the future does not imply that one will show what is going
to happen but, on the contrary, the new set of possibilities that will
arise with a given situation, subject, and precise point of perspective. As
for example in 'La Guerre est finie', where continuous hypotheses about the
future appear, where new possibilities are constantly offered by a given
situation. By injecting mental pictures, Resnais's cinema constantly opens
the given situation, the visible reality to a virtual reality, at once past
and future, of memory and of imagination.

Nevertheless, Resnais goes beyond what one could call a 'psychologism' by
opening these fluxes to new dimensions. The characters of _Hiroshima mon
amour_, _La Guerre est finie_, and _L'Annee derniere a Marienbad_ are
always grappling with events which determine their existence. Their memory,
whether personal or collective, is stratified. The difficulty they
experience while trying to express what happened to them is linked to the
difficulty to know what actually happened, whether in Hiroshima, the war of
Spain, etc. Their memory is individual and collective, linked to complex
situations, making heterogeneous registers intervene. The events in which
the characters are situated are not just added to their own individuality;
on the contrary, they are inside, constitutive of these fluxes of
consciousness. Therefore, Resnais's cinema is at the same time an attempt
to account for the processes of thought, and a cinema of the event, of the
difficulty to explain, to relate what has happened, even when these events
are constitutive of the characters. Events, like memory or imagination, are
not added to consciousness; altogether, they form a network that determines
the character; he is just as much the event that has determined him as he
is the way he feels or imagines a situation.

By the perspective (quite similar to James) of the 'stream of
consciousness', Callev points out an extremely rich idea about Resnais's
cinema. He shows how a cinematographic approach of this heavy, implicit,
pre-subjective world of memory and of the 'mechanisms of thought' is
possible, that it implies a set of singular techniques, of cinematographic
inventions, which enable to experience it. The concept of a 'stream of
consciousness', as I have said before, exceeds the simple matter of a film
and becomes a real cinematographic orientation. From _La Guerre est finie_
to _Providence_, the problem always was to experience these 'streams of
consciousness', to make the film in itself become a kind of 'mechanism of
thought'. His book, although it is essential because of the point of view
that it develops on Resnais's cinema, also opens up a set of more general
questions on cinema itself.

It is important not to do a psychological analysis, as everything in these
films actually goes beyond the notions of subject or of consciousness. The
mechanisms of thought do not belong to a subject; and memory, when filmed,
is not purely subjective or individual -- it is stratified, creating what
Deleuze called Resnais's 'memory world'. [1] And in his book on Resnais,
Callev successfully avoids the 'psychologism' that the notion of a stream
of consciousness might imply.

Darwin College, University of Cambridge, England


Footnote

1. Deleuze, _Cinema 2: The Time-Image_, p. 118; _Cinema 2: L'Image-temps_,
p. 154.


Bibliography

Henri Bergson, _Matiere et memoire_ (Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1990).

Gilles Deleuze, _Cinema 2: L'Image-temps_ (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1985).
--- _Cinema 2: The Time-Image_, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta
(London: The Athlone Press, 1989).

Robert Humphrey, _Stream of Consciousnes in the Modern Novel_ (Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1955).

William James, _The Principles of Psychology_ (New York: Dover Publications
Inc., 1950).
--- _Essays in Radical Empiricism_ (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1996).

E. Souriau, _Les Differents modes d'existence_ (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1943).



Copyright © _Film-Philosophy_ 2000

Didier Debaise, 'The Mechanisms of Thought: A Jamesian Point of View on
Resnais', _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 4 no. 10, April 2000
<http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/film-philosophy/files/debaise.html>.

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