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Readers of André Bazin and Jean Mitry may recognize in Gilles Deleuze's Cinema books a reworking of their already well-established theories on the impression of reality in long sequence and deep-focus shots. For Bazin and Mitry, the deep-focus shot represented a leap beyond the analytic fragmentation of action that characterized earlier forms of montage. Deep focus allowed for a more realistic presentation of events as they occurred. Mitry described this as a change from "actualization' to "presentification'. In the classical forms of montage that precede Orson Welles "we participate in a represented past, rather than a present actuality...what we are viewing is the consequence of an action.'¹ In the deep-focus shot, on the other hand, we witness the development of action and the open time in which this takes place. Bazin's argument rested on a belief in film's direct photographic/indexical relation to reality, which he understood to be a part of a movement toward a more perfect analogical presentation of the world in a "total cinema'.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137324504_3

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