Deleuze and Tarkovsky: the Time-Image and Post-War Soviet Cinema History
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Deleuze and Tarkovsky: the Time-Image and Post-War Soviet Cinema History. Lindsay Powell-Jones Dissertation submitted towards the award of Doctor of Philosophy Cardiff University, November 2015 Summary This thesis is the first sustained encounter between Andrei Tarkovsky’s seven feature films and Gilles Deleuze’s two-volume work on cinema (Cinema 1: The Movement-Image [2005a] and Cinema 2: The Time- Image [2005b]). This is also the first single-author study to offer an appraisal of the historical shifts that Tarkovsky’s films negotiated across his career that also uses Deleuze’s methodology for film analysis. In doing so, I bring Deleuze’s ideas into contact with the so-called Khrushchev ‘Thaw’ cinema of the 50s and 60s, the development of the Soviet space programme, Stagnation, and the escalation of nuclear threat following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. By accommodating a more localised, national context than he undertook in his own readings of Mirror, Solaris, and Stalker, I re-conceive Deleuze’s conclusions about the shift from classical to modern cinema, and the crisis of the action-image, within the context of Socialist Realism and Soviet cinema. This adds another dimension to the rapidly expanding body of work on Deleuze and cinemas by bringing his ideas into contact with a post-war Soviet cinema that he did not discuss. Declaration This work has not been submitted in substance for any other degree or award at this or any other university or place of learning, nor is being submitted concurrently in candidature for any degree or other award. Signed ………………………………………… (candidate) Date ………………………… Statement 1 This thesis is being submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of PhD. Signed ………………………………………… (candidate) Date ………………………… Statement 2 This thesis is the result of my own independent work/investigation, except where otherwise stated. Other sources are acknowledged by explicit references. The views expressed are my own. Signed ………………………………………… (candidate) Date ………………………… Statement 3 I hereby give consent for my thesis, if accepted, to be available online in the University’s Open Access repository and for inter-library loan, and for the title and summary to be made available to outside organisations. Signed ………………………………………… (candidate) Date ………………………… Contents Introduction 1 Deleuze and film theory 2 Deleuze and Tarkovsky 9 Chapter 1: Socialist Realism and the crisis of the action-image 14 Introduction 14 Deleuze and the Second World War 15 Socialist Realism 24 The Thaw 30 Ivan’s Childhood and the Thaw 34 Andrei Rublev and Stagnation 39 Conclusion 46 Chapter 2: national history and the crystal-image 48 Introduction 48 Solaris and the Soviet space race 50 Mirror and national history 63 Conclusion 73 Chapter 3: Stalker and the ‘Catholic quality’ of cinema 75 Introduction 75 The ‘Catholic quality’ in cinema 78 The holy fool 84 The powers of the false 91 ‘Catholic’, ‘spiritual’ or ‘transcendental’ style? 96 Conclusion 99 Chapter 4: thought and agency in exile 100 Introduction 100 Between two worlds: Nostalghia 104 The spiritual ordeal and the outside of thought 121 Thought and the long take 129 Conclusion 132 Conclusion 134 Bibliography 141 Filmography 159 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor Professor Fabio Vighi for his help in developing this thesis, and for his ongoing faith that it would turn out okay. Without his experience and enthusiasm, patience and editorial skills, this work might not have been possible. I would like to thank my parents for their ongoing support. I would also like to thank my friends who have completed, or who are about to complete their dissertation, for reminding my how very funny and fulfilling life in academia is, despite its challenges. Note on translations When a Russian surname ends in -ii or -yi this is replaced by a single -y (e.g. Trotsky instead of Trotskii), and all Christian names end in a single -i. In doing so I follow most English language texts on Russian cinema, which use the Library of Congress system of transliteration. I use the spelling ‘Andrei Tarkovsky’ because this is the most commonly used English version of his name. With film titles I have given the English version in text, unless it is commonly known by its original title (e.g. Je t’aime, je t’aime or Nostalghia). Where possible, I have included the title of the film in its original language in the filmography. 1 Introduction What are the determining factors of cinema, and what emerges from them? What are its potential, means, images – not only formally, but even spiritually? And in what material does the director work? (Tarkovsky 2010: 62) This thesis is the first sustained encounter between Andrei Tarkovsky’s seven feature films and the film- philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, as it is described in Cinema 1: The Movement Image (2005a) and Cinema 2: The Time Image (2005b).1 By staging this encounter, the aim of my thesis is to show how Deleuze’s cinema concepts can work alongside a biographical and historical account of a single director. The aim is therefore twofold: firstly, I offer an extended and original analysis of Tarkovsky’s cinema through a Deleuzian approach; secondly, and by implication, I attempt to recalibrate Deleuze’s cinematic theory by developing a set of historical and biographical considerations on film-making that were generally neglected by Deleuze himself. My constructive interrogation of Deleuze’s ideas about cinema clearly emerges in my critique of his Western European focus – a critique I develop by mapping his theory against the context of post-war Soviet history.2 In rethinking Deleuze through Tarkovsky, I add to the rapidly expanding body of critical work on cinemas not discussed by Deleuze, and provide the first 1 The editions of Deleuze’s cinema books that I use throughout this thesis were translated from the original French into English by Hugh Tomlinson: Cinema 1: The Movement Image (2005a) and Cinema 2: The Time Image (2005b). Unless otherwise stated, when I refer to one of Tarkovsky’s seven feature films I use the Artificial Eye collection: The Andrei Tarkovsky Collection (2011). These are the best quality editions of his films currently available on Region 2 DVD with English subtitles. Where relevant, I have referred to different editions of these films based on descriptions of different editions given by Tarkovsky himself either in interviews, his diaries, or Sculpting in Time (2010), or by Tarkovsky scholars (either English language work, or translations of Russian scholarship). Many of the other Soviet and Russian films that I discuss throughout this thesis are not currently available on either DVD or Blu-ray, so I have provided synopses of those films where appropriate, drawing on descriptions given by Soviet and Russian film historians. 2 My focus is interpreting Tarkovsky’s films within a biographical and historical framework. The historical framework that I use includes the histories of Russian and Soviet cinema, from pre-Revolutionary Russian up to cinema of the Soviet era, and not including post-Soviet cinema. I refer to films of the Soviet republics only in passing, without aiming at a wider coverage of these interesting cinemas. The complex relationship between the cultural traditions and national identity of each Soviet republic film industry and the predominantly Russian language Soviet cinema, is outside the scope of this thesis. My focus is on the specific industrial, social, political, and cultural conditions that Tarkovsky encountered, and I deal with his own sense of national identity as a Russian Soviet artist in Chapter 2. 2 single author study from a Deleuzian perspective.3 The trajectory of this thesis follows the release of Tarkovsky’s films, starting with Ivan’s Childhood (1962), Andrei Rublev (1966, USSR release 1971), Solaris (1972), Mirror (1975), Stalker (1979), Nostalghia (1983), and finally The Sacrifice (1986).4 The chronological approach allows me to plot these films in the context of their historical co-ordinates, particularly the post-war Thaw, the development of the Soviet space programme, Stagnation, and the escalation of nuclear threat following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. I also map these films alongside biographical developments in Tarkovsky’s life like his growing interest in religion and faith, and his defection, and the history of the state-run Soviet film industry as it evolved within his lifetime. Such a procedure will allow me to articulate a Deleuzian reading of the post-war Soviet film industry, which Deleuze himself largely ignored, and to re-encounter his own readings of Tarkovsky’s films while offering a new perspective on all seven of Tarkovsky’s feature films. Deleuze and Film Theory Deleuze’s theory of film contributes an unusual and innovative perspective on the canonical histories and theories of Western twentieth-century film theory. In conversation with Gilbert Cabasso and Fabrice Revault d’Allonnes in 1985, reproduced in Negotiations (2005), Deleuze noted that ‘cinema critics, the greatest critics anyway, became philosophers the moment they set out to formulate an aesthetics of cinema. They weren’t trained as philosophers, but that’s what they became’ (Deleuze 1995: 57). He had in mind the grand film theories of the 1960s, like Jean Mitry’s two volume treatise, The Aesthetics and Psychology of the Cinema (1963-65), journals such as Cahiers du cinéma, Positif, Études 3 Other authors have written articles about Tarkovsky using Deleuze, and I will refer to these where appropriate throughout this thesis. But a book-length single author study using Deleuze’s taxonomy does not exist. Partial exceptions to this might be Nadine Boljkovac’s Gilles Deleuze and an Ethics of Cinema (2013), which focuses on work by two authors: Chris Marker and Alain Resnais, and Emma Wilson’s Memory and Survival: The French Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski, which engages with Deleuze’s discussions of the time-image alongside recent work in trauma theory.