Cinema Journal (2015) - "Why Did You Have to Turn On the Machine?": The Spirals of Time-Travel Romance
Details
- article: "Why Did You Have to Turn On the Machine?": The Spirals of Time-Travel Romance
- author(s): René Thoreau Bruckner
- journal: Cinema Journal (2015)
- issue: volume 54, issue 2, pages 1-23
- DOI: 10.1353/cj.2015.0003
- journal ISSN: 0009-7101
- publisher: University of Texas at Austin (University of Texas Press)
- keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, David O. Selznick, David Thomson, James Stewart, Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Kim Novak, London, England, Mission San Juan Bautista, California, New York City, New York, Paramount Pictures, San Francisco, California, Selznick International Pictures, Time travel, Tom Gunning, Vertigo (1958)
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Abstract
This article investigates the closely related mechanisms of cinema, time travel, and desire. Through analysis of films that exemplify the subgenre of time-travel romance, and through philosophical engagement with the work of Freud, Bergson, and Deleuze, the article considers whether time machines (and cinema) spatialize time or "temporalize" space. Is desire a matter of assembling time machines to escape from chronological, spatialized time? The spiral, understood as a figure of time, proves instructive in approaching this question.