Convergent Codes

Chapter 2 provides an overview of Gilles Deleuze’s work on cinema and highlights the role that the black or white screen plays in his theorization of the movement-image. It traces the concept of the black or white screen through the components of the frame, shot, and montage as fundamentals of cinematic analysis. The chapter scrutinizes various aspects of the film frame—such as its genetic power and tendencies toward either rarefaction or saturation—before emphasizing the enabling role of darkness with respect to the cinematic shot. After establishing the difference between rational cuts in movement-image cinema and irrational cuts (or interstices) in time-image cinema, the chapter then deliberates on the black or white screen as a rational transition, delving into the history of the fade as a cinematic code. The chapter discusses the emergence of fades during the transitional period of cinema and considers the ways in which filmmakers have subsequently experimented with fades of different colors. This chapter mainly probes fade-ins and fade-outs in terms of relative deterritorialization and reterritorialization. In contrast to the divergent use of the black screen in early cinema, the fade, among other cinematic techniques, has gradually acquired a stable function in classical cinema. Such a convergence of filmic codes has been facilitated not only by the work of early film practitioners but also by the accounts of early film theorists, which together provide important insights into the institutionalization of the fade as a narrative device in cinema.

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