Sightlines · a concept

the time-image

what appears when the sensory-motor link breaks: time given *directly* (as memory, duration, coexistence); the character becomes a seer.

On screen: action no longer resolves; the protagonist watches/endures; time is felt as itself, not as the measure of movement

Bicycle Thieves (1948) — With the sensory-motor link cut, plain duration — the poor man's day held as itself — floods the frame in place of resolved action.
Germany, Year Zero (1948) — With action no longer resolving the situation, the film shifts to Edmund enduring and watching; Deleuze dates modern cinema's break to exactly this neorealist moment
Late Spring (1949) — Action no longer resolves the situation; the film withholds its dramatic events and lets Noriko (and us) watch and endure as time is felt for itself.
Umberto D. (1952) — By stripping away even Bicycle Thieves' narrative engine and holding the everyday for itself, the film becomes a source Deleuze traces the modern direct image of time back through.
A Canterbury Tale (1944) — Action no longer resolves situations; the true drama is inward and contemplative, and time — six centuries of continuity — is felt as the film's real subject.
The Flowers of St. Francis (1950) — No protagonist's arc, no rising conflict, no resolution: the closing spin-and-fall sends the friars out to preach without resolving anything narratively, and the film's nine vignettes present…
The River (1951) — Cyclical, memory-framed structure organized around the river and turning seasons rather than cause-and-effect; the death of Bogey absorbed into rhythm rather than dramatized
Tokyo Story (1953) — Action can no longer resolve the situation (children too busy, Tomi's death offscreen between cuts); the parents watch and endure, and time is felt for itself
Wild Strawberries (1957) — The handless clock and blank pocket-watch in the opening nightmare unhook time from action; Isak can no longer change his life by acting, only watch it
L'Avventura (1960) — Action stops resolving situations; time itself becomes the film's material — the held shot of Claudia scanning the empty horizon with Sandro unreachable behind her
An Autumn Afternoon (1962) — Action no longer resolves the situation; the protagonist watches and endures while time is presented for itself rather than as the measure of movement.
Ivan's Childhood (1962) — The dream register suspends action entirely, holding time for itself in extended duration; Tarkovsky welds it to the action plot with abrupt, unsoftened cuts so the seam between regimes becomes the…
L'Eclisse (1962) — Action no longer resolves situations; the narrative stops without concluding and time is felt as itself in the held final sequence
La Jetée (1962) — With action removed, time is felt directly rather than as the measure of movement; the film reaches the time-image by literally stripping out the moving picture.
Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962) — Almost no external event; the 'plot' is the disclosure of what is already known — action can no longer resolve any situation, so characters watch and endure.
Muriel, or the Time of Return (1963) — Hélène summons Alphonse but can do nothing with him; Bernard carries his Algerian guilt but cannot act on it — perception no longer discharges into action.
The Leopard (1963) — Action no longer resolves the situation; the protagonist watches and endures while duration is felt for itself across the film's three movements
The Silence (1963) — Action no longer resolves anything: Ester can't cure herself or reach Anna, Anna's sex changes nothing, Johan can only wander; cuts arrive when psychological information is exhausted, not when a deed…
Winter Light (1963) — Perception no longer flows into resolving action; Tomas perceives Jonas's despair and worsens it, and the decisive act (the suicide) falls off-screen.
Gertrud (1964) — action no longer resolves situations; the film's events are few and the reversals internal, time felt as itself through duration
Red Desert (1964) — Action no longer resolves Giuliana's situation; long takes hold past dramatic resolution so duration itself becomes felt as unease
Woman in the Dunes (1964) — action no longer resolves the situation; the film holds on sand, effort and failure, making time itself — erosion grain by grain — its subject
Juliet of the Spirits (1965) — Action no longer resolves Giulietta's situation; the film proceeds as a psychic case history of encounters and apparitions rather than a sensory-motor chain
Kwaidan (1965) — Across all four tales action ceases to resolve situations; legend's logic (oaths bind, the dead persist) holds characters in endurance rather than sensory-motor agency
Repulsion (1965) — Action no longer resolves the situation; the film abandons plot mechanics for a sustained endurance of a collapsing consciousness
Andrei Rublev (1966) — Action no longer resolves; Rublev mostly watches and endures across 3.5 hours, and the one decisive act (killing to save the mute girl) breaks rather than redeems him
Wavelength (1967) — Action never resolves anything (no investigation, no identification, no one arrives); the monotonic, irreversible narrowing makes duration itself the film's material.
Performance (1970) — Once Chas enters Turner's house, action no longer resolves anything; he becomes a watcher, drugged and performed upon
Death in Venice (1971) — The sensory-motor circuit fails: Aschenbach perceives beauty and the plague yet cannot act, leave, or speak; time is felt as itself
Land of Silence and Darkness (1971) — The film withholds any resolving action; the episodic structure deepens rather than progresses, and time is felt as endurance itself rather than as the measure of movement.
The Go-Between (1971) — Leo is placed at the center of every transaction yet can only carry letters and watch; action never resolves the situation, and 'the camera observes Leo observing.'
The Last Picture Show (1971) — Action no longer resolves situations; the film's engine is what is being lost rather than what will happen, time felt as duration and erosion
Slaughterhouse-Five (1972) — Action drops out entirely; Billy perceives the firebombing, his marriage, the zoo and changes none of it, so time itself becomes the film's subject rather than the measure of movement
Solaris (1972) — Action never resolves the situation; Kelvin watches and endures across 166 minutes while the ocean is never rendered clearly enough to act upon
Amarcord (1973) — Organized by season rather than plot, the film abandons situation-action resolution; the protagonist watches and endures while time is felt as recurrence, not as the measure of an arc.
Sambizanga (1973) — The film refuses the rescue-thriller; action never resolves the situation, and time is felt as the colonial machine's real punishment
The Hourglass Sanatorium (1973) — Nothing Józef does resolves anything; the film's subject is the coexistence of layers of time in one building, presented for itself rather than as the measure of action.
Barry Lyndon (1975) — The film looks like a costume adventure but withholds resolution; Barry is 'more vessel of circumstance than agent of will,' so action no longer drives the cut and time is felt for itself.
Mirror (1975) — No problem posed and resolved; the film proceeds by accumulation and return as time is felt for itself, not as the measure of action
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) — The clocks stop at the rock and the sensory-motor chain never resumes; time is felt as presence rather than as the measure of action.
The Travelling Players (1975) — The troupe can never finish staging Golfo; characters watch, wait on platforms, and endure history rather than act to change it — the sensory-motor link is broken across the whole film.
Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1976) — Action no longer resolves situations; Jeanne watches and endures while time is felt as itself across the three-day repetition-and-variation structure.
News from Home (1977) — No one on screen acts; action drains out entirely and the film gives you the city to endure rather than events to follow — the closing ferry shot letting distance grow for minutes.
Days of Heaven (1978) — action no longer resolves the situation; the film privileges sensation, watching and enduring over event, with editing by emotional and perceptual association rather than causal chain
Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) — The film's overall regime: time felt as itself through somnambulistic duration rather than as the measure of resolving action
Stalker (1979) — The sensory-motor chain is cut; ~100 shots over 163 minutes, action that resolves nothing, time felt as itself rather than as the measure of movement
Nostalgia (1983) — Gorchakov's sensory-motor circuit collapses: he cannot research, love, or return, and the film abandons action-resolution for watching and enduring
Stranger Than Paradise (1983) — Action no longer resolves situations; the protagonists watch and endure while time is held for itself — the film sits wholly on the modern side of Deleuze's hinge.
The Boys from Fengkuei (1983) — The dossier's narrative account: no plot engine, no antagonist, no climax-and-resolution architecture; incidents accumulate episodically and the dramatic mode is elegiac and observational rather than…
Once Upon a Time in America (1984) — Noodles barely acts; in 1968 he returns only to look and endure, action no longer resolving anything
Paris, Texas (1984) — The snapped sensory-motor circuit: Travis perceives enormously but action no longer resolves anything
The Time to Live and the Time to Die (1985) — No engine of goal and obstacle: the father's, mother's and grandmother's deaths are registered through aftermath and the survivors' bodies in space, so duration rather than action carries the film
Down by Law (1986) — Action no longer resolves; duration is felt as itself in the long takes where the three men 'sit, pace, argue, and fall silent'
The Green Ray (1986) — action no longer resolves situations; time is felt as itself through Delphine's enduring rather than measured by movement
The Sacrifice (1986) — Nuclear war is announced and there is nothing Alexander can do to change it; the sensory-motor circuit of perceive-then-act breaks, and the film becomes a man watching and enduring rather than acting…
Babette's Feast (1987) — The two-part anti-dramatic structure of long renunciation and a single consummation, where time is felt as endured duration in the faces rather than measured by action.
Wings of Desire (1987) — The first hour abandons plot for witness; the angels' eternity suspends the perception-action chain entirely
Damnation (1988) — Karrer perceives his ruined world with total clarity but can act on none of it; the one scheme he enacts corrodes him without changing anything — action no longer resolves the situation.
Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) — Anti-narrative structure with no goal-obstacle-resolution; the family metabolizes trauma through endurance and song rather than acts that resolve situations
Grave of the Fireflies (1988) — The film discloses Seita's death in its first minutes and unfolds as an already-sealed decline nothing he does can turn; action no longer resolves the situation