Creative Images, Images of (Non)Memory... On Being Fascinated by Film Image

Łucja Demby

Abstract

In the article the author tries to define rules that govern our memory in relation to films. Taking as a starting point Barthes’ fascination with a single movie image presented in Third Meaning, Demby asks whether it is possible to remember a film, as a single image, which condenses the whole sense contained in the film itself? Since films to all intents and purposes are moving pictures, then remembering them as single image, would paradoxically, be a form of non-memory, or forgetting. The film as a whole and its proper movement thus become forgotten. The author argues that our film memory consists of vibrant and moving mental images that contain not only visual elements, but elements of movement, music and rhythm. That is why they do not give a false account of that which is most important in the process of perceiving the film - namely the emotional experience. This “vitality” inscribed in a single image is associated by Demby with Barthes’ third sense, that is impossible to express in words. The author also point to an instance where an entire film had been inspired by a single image that appears in the psyche of the artists (e.g. the death of Potocki,a film operator, in the case of Nikita Mikhalkov’s A Slave of Love (1976). Such initial, intimate images that arise in the film artist’s imagination, probably have the greatest impact on the viewer, and are certainly a source of fascination, awakening emotions and self-knowledge. And in such manner, thanks to the movie image, the viewer meets the Other, and becomes more aware of his or her own emotions. Fascination with a movie image then is an attempt at gaining self-knowledge.