![]() ![]() ![]() The dialectical image, then, is typified by a “flash-like” coming together of past and present, which forms a constellation of ephemeral, fleeting duration, whose potential meaning or affect is elusive, shifting, polysemic. not archaic) and the place where one encounters them is language.” (1) – Only dialectical images are genuine images (that is. For while the relation of the present to the past is a purely temporal, continuous one, the relation of what-has-been to the now is dialectical: is not progression but image, suddenly emergent. In other words, image is dialectics at a standstill. “It’s not that what is past casts its light on what is present, or what is present its light on what is past rather, image is that wherein what has been comes together in a flash with the now to form a constellation. #Day of defeat source montage full#In several passages from Convolute N (titled: “On the Theory of Knowledge, Theory of Progress”) of The Arcades Project, the German critical theorist introduces this notion, and it is worth quoting from the first of these passages in full (from section N2a,3), as it gives a succinct overview of how Benjamin conceives of the dialectical image: Irresistibly, Walter Benjamin’s concept of the “dialectical image” imposes itself as a conceptual framework for understanding the effect of this sequence. No sooner does the spectator register the effect than the micro-sequence is over, and we are returned to the original scene as if nothing had happened. The resonance Marker achieves between these historical moments – between the Soviet Union as the vanguard of political and aesthetic revolution, and the same country, four decades later, as oppressive superpower shifting its weight against a smaller neighbour – occurs in a flash: each of the two shots from Potemkin inserted into the sequence last barely a second, with the montage-act functioning close to the threshold of perception. Immediately upon this plea appearing on screen, Marker cuts back to the original scene: the Russian soldier, Vakulinchuk’s distant descendent, stares towards the newsreel camera trained on his face, in utter perplexity at the historical stage onto which he has just stridden. The content of Vakulinchuk’s utterance is quickly given, as the sequence cuts now to one of the most famous intertitles of the silent cinema, taken from Potemkin: the word “Bratya!” (“Brothers!”) in block Cyrillic lettering. ![]() Invoking an innate sense of solidarity from the youth, stupefied by the attention he has suddenly been given, the Czechs attempt to pierce through the shroud of incomprehension by calling out to him in the few words of Russian they know – from within the crowd, cries of “Comrade! Brother!” can be heard.Īt once, Marker enacts a cut which transcends nations, historical eras and even cinematic genres, by transporting the spectator from the streets of Prague to a close-up of the sailor Vakulinchuk, hero of Eisenstein’s Bronenosets Potyomkin ( Battleship Potemkin, 1925) making an impassioned exhortation direct to camera. Czech citizens and news crews huddle around a callow Red Army soldier as he emerges from a tank, and implore him not to acquiesce in the invasion. After presenting us with a prolonged sequence shifting from newsreel footage of Soviet tanks freeing Prague from Nazi occupation in 1945 to the same tanks returning to the city 24 years later, this time not to liberate the city, but to crush the political aspirations unleashed by the Prague Spring, Marker homes in on an emblematic scene from this event. Shortly into the second part of Chris Marker’s epic 1977 compilation film Le Fond de l’air est rouge, one of the great acts of montage in the history of the cinema takes place. ![]()
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