La Jetée… On Moving and Still Images

In films, throughout its history, moving images and still images, slow and fast motions, super impositions, freeze frames and other visual manipulations have been used together. Each of these manipulations and their use collectively has different effects on viewer and create different experiences. Also in theories, they are associated with life or death. In this paper, the film La Jetée will be discussed in terms of its use of these visual manipulations. It will mainly be focussed on the still and moving images’ effects and their associations with life and death. Since La Jetée is formed by still images, except one scene, first it will be focussed on some thoughts about still and moving image, and the relationship between photography and film. Then La Jetée will be discussed in terms of these issues.

Laura Mulvey, in her book, Death 24x a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image, mentions that photography and film are considered to be related to reality (Mulvey, 18). She says, ‘the technological drive towards photography and film had always been animated by the aspiration to preserve the fleeting instability of reality and passing time in a fixed image’ (Mulvey, 18). Both photography and film has technological aspects which relate them to objectivity and science. It can be said that photography is an element in film and also film is invented thanks to photography. Although, they are in that sense strongly related, still, they have different essence. On the one hand, photography has the ability to catch a moment in time but on the other hand, film captures movement in passing time. Although they are both considered to be related to reality due to their technological aspects, both photography and film are associated with magic or capability to overcome death as well (Mulvey, 18). For some, photographs are associated with life and for others it is associated with death. These associations were made based on the use of movement in photography and film. Photography freezes moments and saves the objects from corruption and their faiths, which is death. So people can associate frozen, still images with life or overcoming death because you resist to passing time and its outcomes (Mulvey, 22). So, one might say that stillness is symbol of life but by saying life it is more meant eternity or immortality, because actual life includes death as well. From this perspective then, movement is the symbol of death or real mortal life, because movement takes place in time and movement in time is something lifelike and as it is mentioned before, life has death at the end. So moving images of film signal that time is passing and this movement will come to an end which is death. When time passes things eventually die. So films, although they use series of still images, they capture movement in time, so everything in the film comes to an end as well. Then, one might suggest that, films are representations of mortal life which includes death at the end.

But on the other hand, for some it is the reverse. For example, for Barthes and Bazin, photography is associated with death (Mulvey, 60). According to Barthes, even tough photography captures moment, that shouldn’t be considered as immortality but rather just a reminder of death. You know that no matter how beautiful or alive that person looks on that photo she/he will die. Mulvey also talks about Freud’s concept of ‘Uncunny’; confusion, between natural and supernatural, animate and inanimate, regarding photography’s early association with death (Mulvey, 60, 61, 62). Related to that, she also talks about Barthes’ concept of punctum and studium. She says;
‘Barthes’s punctum….provokes a sudden and involuntary emotional response, differentiating it from the studium, the term he uses to describe the presence of social, cultural or other meanings that have been consciously invested in the image. The studium belongs to the photographer; the punctum to the viewer. Barthes also associates the phootgrapher’s punctum with a sudden and overwhelming consciousness of death’ (Mulvey, 61, 62).
She continues with an example; the photo of Lewis Payne who was photographed by Alexander Gardner before his execution. The guy in the photograph is the studium and the knowledge, which is the fact that he will die, of the viewer, is the punctum (Mulvey, 62).

Shobchack, on the other hand, disagrees with Bazin and its idea that photography is like mummification (Shobchack, 146). Sobschack says;
‘the cinema presents us with quite a different perceptual technology and mode of representation. Through it subjectively visible specialization of a frozen point of view into dynamic and intentional trajectories of self-displaying vision and through its subjectively experienced temporalization of an essential moment into lived momentum, the cinematic radically constitutes the photographic’ (Shobshack, 145).

According to Shobshack, photographic ‘functions to fix a ‘being-that-has-been’ (a presence in a present that is always past)’ (Shobchack, 146). So she thinks photographic has something to do with death. But it must be said that this is not so much different what Bazin thinks, although she thinks she disagrees with him. In addition to this, she thinks that cinematic and moving image has something to do with life (Shobchack, 146). She says ‘the moving picture is a visible representation not of activity finished or past but of activity coming into being and being. Furthermore, and even more significant, the moving picture not only visibly represents moving objects but also-and simultaneously –presents the very movement of vision itself’ (Shobchack, 146).

At this point it is useful to start looking at La Jatee, which was made by Chris Marker in 1962. It is a film about a World War III survivor, who is sent back and forth to the past for the sake of helping out humanity by this scientific experiment. Although the film is formed by still images, the audience sees them in certain flow, while they are moving. This is very much like what Shobchack tries to say. The spectator sees the ‘very movement of vision itself’. So the even though the images are still, the vision on the screen moves (Shobchack, 148). So the striking feature of Shobchack’s discussion is, she focuses on moving image instead of film or cinema and so on because the still images flowing on the screen is also a moving image and when one looks at the photography and cinema relation from this aspect the discussion can change its direction.

She also talks about how photography is controlled and can be considered as a thing while moving image is not either possessed or controlled (Shobchack, 148). These ideas can be related to Mulvey’s ideas about time. She makes a focus on time. She says ‘the problem of time, its passing, and how it is represented or preserved’ (Mulvey, 22). The arrangement of the scenes and images in passing time plays crucial role in terms of effects and the ability to control your experience. She also discusses how the control of the audience over the film changed thanks to the invention of video and then later recent technologies (Mulvey, 22). But in La Jetée, since the year was 1962, the audience has no control over the time, which creates a big difference in terms of experience because the temporal flow of the images makes the vision move.

She focuses on the scene that the woman blinks her eyes and starts to move while she was lying in the bed. She claims that the woman started to move she lost her immortality and her image as an object of desire (Shobchack, 146). So these thoughts support the idea that still images and photography has something to do with immortality and eternal life. But previously she said photography has something to do with death and past and loss. On the other hand, in the movie the protagonist travels back to prewar times and sees her in the park sleeping or sunbathing. He stares at her and says she is death because he is travelling to the past. So this can be a good reference to Barthes’ theory. The protagonist, although he is in the same frame with her and also stilled like her he looks like an outsider and he is an outsider and he looks like he is looking at a photo of her not her. So this is quite related to Bathes’s concept of punctum; the audience see her as beautiful and in a way living in that frozen moment, which is stadium, but on the other hand, they and the protagonist know that she will die or she is death by now-punctum. Also the idea that he is travelling to his own past, which is illustrated thorough photographs, looks like the director inspired by Barthes’ theory on photography’s relation to death. The main character even sees his own death through photographs.

In La Jetée, when woman blinks she loses her immortality of being an object of desire says Shobchack (Shobchack, 146). So by saying this she supports the idea that stilled image is immortal and moving image, which gives her a body, makes her mortal.

On the other hand, in the screenplay when the protagonist goes back in time and meets her, stares at her while she was sort of sleeping in the park he says she is dead. And this can be considered as a reference to Barthes’ theory on photography. Although the image in front of him is frozen in time he knows that she is already dead because he is travelling in time. This emphasizes the delay of viewing in photography and its relation to past as well.

In La Jetée there are complex relations with stilled and moving images or photography and cinema and their relation to death. It seems like the director refers Barthes’ theory on photography and death relation by using still images but on the other hand, he moves still images in a temporal flow and creates moving images. He makes them cinematic and again it ends up with death. By moving them he gives them mortal life which is, this time, different from what Barthes says. So it seems like the director relates both still images and moving images to death. Especially the scene, where the woman blinks, again emphasises her immortality. It takes her from fantasy world and makes her ‘real’.

So to sum up in La Jetée, very complex relations and effects between and of still images and moving images, reality and unreality, mortal and immortal, life and death, photography and cinema can be observed. In addition to this, many references to different theories can be traced. It is easy to relate it to thoughts which claim still images has immortal effects but also the movie can be easily associated with ideas of Barthes about death in the photograph. The use of one moving image in the movie; the scene with the blinking woman makes the audience question what is going on. But on the other hand, based on my experiences and small survey among the audience that I have seen the movie together, it could be suggested that it doesn’t have a very strong or different effect after all those other still images flowed through the film. So this supports the idea that even though they are still images since they moved on the screen as visions, they don’t create a very different effect than the actual moving images. But on the other hand, it would be said that the moving woman image is more mortal then still woman image. So La Jetée is such a nice example to analyse the effects of movement and stillness on the screen and the effects of time.

Bibliography

Mulvey, Laura, Death 24x a Second; Stillness and the Moving Image. Reaktion Books, 2009.
Shobchack, Vivian, Carnal of Thoughts; Embodiment and Moving Image Culture. University of California Press, 2004.