“Images like confessions”: Stasis, repetition, and elucidation in film

Abstract

This article deals with the representation of visual elucidation in film. Starting with the analysis of Matthieu Bareyre’s On ne sait jamais ce qu’on filme(2016), we investigate the construction of the cinematic image as proof. Although a key asset in the development of modern surveillance rhetoric, the evidentiary quality of the visual image stems from a century-long history. Louis Feuillade’s early accidental surveillance film Erreur tragique (1913) and Chris Marker’s post-apocalyptic classic La jetee help us to discern the specific procedures of this history. Visual elucidation often resembles an interrogation procedure: images, as witnesses, are submitted to intensive, repetitive questioning. In this paper, we describe the mimetic repetition that is at stake in elucidation sequences: both the image and its observer have to stutter in order to generate an image of the truth.