Stop the Clocks!: Time and Narrative in Cinema

191 Pages·2012·9.85 MB·English

by  Helen Powell

Helen Powell is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Arts and Digital Industries at
the University of East London. She has also worked in the advertising industry
and adopts an interdisciplinary approach in her teaching, writing and research.
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Stop the Clocks!
TIME AND NARRATIVE
IN CINEMA
HELEN POWELL
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Published in 2012 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
www.ibtauris.com
Distributed in the United States and Canada Exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
Copyright © 2012 Helen Powell
The right of Helen Powell to be identifi ed as the author of this work has been
asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof,
may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
International Library of the Moving Image: 4
ISBN 978 1 84885 175 7 (PB)
978 1 78076 216 6 (HB)
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available
Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
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This book is in memory of my wonderful Mum,
Barbara Elizabeth Powell.
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CONTENTS
List of Illustrations viii
Introduction Cinema as Time Machine 1
Chapter 1 Real Time 11
Chapter 2 Future Time 33
Chapter 3 Dreaming Time 61
Chapter 4 Consuming Time 87
Chapter 5 Fractured Time 115
Conclusion Time in the Digital Age 143
Bibliography 165
Index 179
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Figure 1 Rope – Universal Pictures 23
Figure 2 Phone Booth – Fox 2000 29
Figure 3 Voyage dans la lune – Méliès Foundation 34
Figure 4 La Jetée – Argos fi lms 53
Figure 5 Un Chien andalou – RGA 72
Figure 6 Lost Highway – October Films 80
Figure 7 Wings of Desire – Road Movies Film 93
Figure 8 Interview with the Vampire – Geffen Pictures 102
Figure 9 A Matter of Life and Death – ITV Global Entertainment 107
Figure 10 The Usual Suspects – Polygram 132
Figure 11 Pulp Fiction – Miramax 139
Figure 12 Timecode – Screen Gems 160
Images from the Ronald Grant Archive (www.ronaldgrantarchive.com)
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INTRODUCTION:
CINEMA AS TIME MACHINE
‘What, then, is time?’ asks Augustine. ‘I know well enough what it is,
provided that nobody asks me; but if I am asked what it is and try to
explain, I am baffl ed.’
(The Confessions, Book XI, cited in Ricoeur, 1984: xi)
How might we begin to articulate what it is like to experience time? This is the
challenge that Augustine faced (a.d. 354–430) and which continues to provoke
thought across a range of disciplines into the twenty-fi rst century. There are
multiple points of access to this debate but I should like to consider a television
advertisement as an interesting starting point. I have been drawn to the rise of
mobile phone culture and its inter-relationship with all matters temporal: how
we become visible, traceable at any moment when our phones are switched on
but can disappear at the press of a button. How phones can alleviate concerns
of being out of touch, of missing out. My students seem to have them perma-
nently in their grasp and demonstrate the need to respond immediately when
a call or text comes in for fear of severing some kind of invisible umbilical cord
of communication. Yet it was the relationship between the mobile phone and
its response to, or some might say generation of, time pressure that was most
evident in the campaigns that followed their mass take-up. In 2007 Vodafone
launched its ‘Raining Time’ campaign that centred on the rush hour, high-
lighting the amount of time we spend waiting, queuing, staring at our watches
or indeed at the clock on the phone, as for many the traditional wristwatch
has now been made redundant by this mobile device. The skies darken and it
begins to rain. As people run for cover they become aware that it is actually
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2 STOP THE CLOCKS!
clock parts that are falling from the sky and the voice-over begins. Dame Judi
Dench announces:
You might say it’s like striking oil in your garden or fi nding gold in
the loft. Except this commodity can’t be bought or sold and we’ve all
just become rich in it. From now on we all have more time. Because
with Vodafone the internet is truly mobile. So you can make use of every
minute of every day.
This mobile phone company is giving us something we can’t buy: time. Fast
forward then to 2010 and the introduction of the Sony Ericsson XPERIA 10,
a mobile phone which promises to save us even more time. Its print campaign
addresses us: ‘Don’t let time escape. Get it back –’ where with ‘a quick fl ick of
the fi nger and you’re scrolling back and forward through time.’ Studying adver-
tising provides us with an insight into the socio-cultural concerns of any given
moment. The last years of the twentieth century identifi ed a new temporal
turn characterised by time scarcity, of individuals wishing they had more time
to do what they wanted. However, this particular phase in our perception of
and engagement with time and its subsequent media representation is just one
perspective. This book taps into a multiplicity of other temporal trends that
can be identifi ed since cinema began.
From the outset of modernity, the clock has become inextricably linked to
our conceptualisation and understanding of time. However, what the clock does
not represent or communicate is its experiential dimension. For the time of
consciousness, and indeed unconsciousness, contrasts starkly in shape and form
with the rationalised world of mechanical measuring devices. And it is here that
cinema, the subject of this book, begins to play a signifi cant role in this tempo-
ral debate. Cinema needed to represent temporal fl ow visually and chose to do
so boldly from the outset without the aid of a clock visible on screen to mark
duration. Through the omission of this fundamental constraint many different
ways to represent the passing of time in cinema followed and are subject here
to documentation and discussion. Cinema became the primary modern means
of storytelling: through varying degrees of a suspension of disbelief, audiences
were willing and indeed thrilled to be transported to other times and indeed
other worlds, as the genre of science fi ction, examined here, will testify in the
extreme. Yet early cinema existed without narrative. The Lumières’ actualities
captured life as it happened with all its contingencies. Only later did narrative
come to dominate, and in one particular form, in the context of mainstream
cinema. The classical Hollywood narrative embodies a specifi c representation
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