Travelling light : the cinema as time machine

Furby, Jacqueline (2002) Travelling light : the cinema as time machine. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.

Abstract

Film occupies a unique position as storytelling medium adept at the representation of different forms a temporal experience.  This thesis aims to offer an examination of time in film that will contribute to how we understand the multiplication of cinematic time and the relationship between the spectator and the temporalities of film.  I question the importance of time for film;  investigate the differences between film time, intersubjective time, and time in the world outside, and why the ways in which time is represented in contemporary American film might contribute to spectatorial pleasure.  I combine the analysis of film form and content using the contexts provided by film, literary and cultural theory, and with regard to philosophical and scientific theories of time.

The work is organised thematically around the various modes and locations of time in film.  Subjects include the technology of the medium;  film’s physical body’  filmic narrative;  the formal techniques for organising time, and time as theme and subject.  Very early cinema is discussed briefly in order to establish that early filmmakers were aware of the relationship between time and film, and that they exploited film’s status as a temporal medium.  A study of films made in America after 1960 (the primary focus) shows how film’s early potential as a medium for the presentation of an alternative time experience has been realised.  I discuss the effect of editing on temporal order and duration, and other ways by which variations can be achieved in durational rhythm.  There is an analysis of the relationship between form and meaning, and how this is linked to the theme of time.  I explore how and to what extent recent films have made use of the various ideas about the nature of time offered by philosophy and science to enable the spectator to experience freedom and mobility in time.  Contemporary time travel and time shift stories are discussed in this context along with films that address the idea of a malleable past open to change from the present.

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