TIME–IMAGE ATLASP4 THEATER · DELEUZE
中文

TEXT → SHOT → SCHOLARSHIP · 2026-08-13

Sheets of Past and Peaks of Present: How the Order of Time Enters the Image

A version-based analysis of coexisting pasts, divergent presents, and the chronosign

RELATION MODEL

Concept relation

  1. 01Several temporal versions appear
  2. 02Each version receives a temporal position
  3. 03Pasts coexist / presents become incompossible
  4. 04Temporal relation directly links images
THESIS

Sheets of past and peaks of present are parallel forms of the order of time. Sheets present the whole past as coexisting degrees of contraction; peaks present several de-actualized presents of one event as simultaneous and incompossible. Temporal relation thus replaces continuity of action as a principle of narration.

Cinema 2 chapter 5 establishes both temporal orders and directly analyzes Citizen Kane, Last Year at Marienbad, and Muriel. Kaili Blues is an atlas comparison.

PRIMARY PASSAGES

Primary coordinates

DELEUZE PRIMARY TEXT

sheets of the past

01

FACT → RELATION → TEST

The past as a structure of coexistence

Recollection is not stored content in a mind but selection and actualization from coexisting sheets of the pure past.
A shaft of overhead light illuminates a long archive table and manuscript while Thompson and an attendant stand as silhouettes on opposite sides第3分段 00:00:15 / Part 3 00:00:15
KEY SHOTCitizen Kane第3分段 00:00:00–00:00:40 / Part 3 00:00:00–00:00:40

The investigation does not return to one past; it enters one sheet through a witness document.

VISIBLEA single overhead beam cuts out the large reading table and manuscript while the figures recede into silhouettes.

AUDIBLEThe attendant directs Thompson to the chapters of Thatcher's manuscript concerning Kane.

SITE ANALYSISThe manuscript is not a key that solves a life but one sheet opened by witness, document, and image; later testimonies enter other sheets.

Cinema 2, chapter 5, pp. 105, 110–111, 115–119.Bilibili at 第3分段 00:00:15 / Part 3 00:00:15 Bilibili · Citizen Kane, part 3 · verified 2026-08-14
DELEUZE PRIMARY TEXT

The whole past is preserved at once yet stratified by degrees of contraction, tone, theme, and points of brightness. Recollection does not retrieve fixed data from storage; it selects a sheet and actualizes recollection-images within it.[1, pp. 98–99, 105–110][2, pp. 152, 162, 168–169]

DELEUZE PRIMARY TEXT

Citizen Kane lets each witness open another sheet of past. Every sheet provides real material, while none totalizes Kane; Rosebud cannot close the life into a single explanation. Depth of field performs a search, making the actual image a space of access to the virtual past.[1, pp. 105, 110–111, 115–119][3, pp. 79–120]

Citizen Kane1941 · Orson Welles / 奥逊·威尔斯
RESULT

Mark each past sheet's entrance, tone, object, witness, and actualized result; the sheets coexist without being totalized.

COUNTERTEST

If a flashback merely supplies causal information and restores the action-chain upon return, it remains a recollection-image serving narration.

02

FACT → RELATION → TEST

The present as simultaneous divergence

Peaks of present allow several presents of one event to persist simultaneously; each works internally, while their conjunction is incompossible.
The male and female statues in the garden in Last Year at Marienbad00:01:45
KEY SHOTLast Year at Marienbad00:01:33–00:01:54

The same statues carry two accounts: he says the man stops the woman; she says the woman is the one who first sees something.

VISIBLEThe image cuts from the woman in the garden to paired statues and then circles behind them.

AUDIBLEA male voice first offers the reading that the man stops the woman, then recalls the other reading in which the woman sees something.

SITE ANALYSISThe film does not resolve the two readings into one recoverable past. The same visible object sustains two present versions, leaving the past in an incompossible relation to the present.

Cinema 2, chapter 5, English translation pp. 101, 106, 108; atlas shot analysis.Bilibili at 00:01:45 Bilibili continuous original-film excerpt · moimoichou · verified 2026-08-14
DELEUZE PRIMARY TEXT

In Last Year at Marienbad, the encounter has already happened, has never happened, and is taking place for the first time. Repeated shots do not return to an original event; they distribute different presents across figures, speech, and space.[1, pp. 101, 106, 108, 122, 124]

SCHOLARSHIP

Rodowick treats this structure as time reorganizing narrative truth. Peaks are not successive hypotheses but simultaneous de-actualized presents; analysis must keep versions parallel rather than select a winner too early.[3, pp. 79–120]

Last Year at Marienbad1961 · Alain Resnais / 阿伦·雷乃
RESULT

Mark each present of one event, its internal evidence, and conflicts among versions; simultaneity and incompossibility jointly establish peaks.

COUNTERTEST

If an authoritative narration ultimately orders several versions in sequence and judges their truth, they may remain part of an investigative structure.

03

FACT → RELATION → TEST

Temporal relation takes over image linkage

A chronosign appears when coexistence of sheets or simultaneity of peaks directly organizes shots.
In grainy 8mm footage, soldiers rest in the Algerian hills while the subtitle says that they told him her name was Muriel第11分段 00:00:25 / Part 11 00:00:25
KEY SHOTMuriel第11分段 00:00:00–00:01:25 / Part 11 00:00:00–00:01:25

The routine soldiers' footage does not show torture; Bernard's present voice presses the absent event into the image.

VISIBLEThe 8mm footage shows soldiers sitting and resting in the hills; it does not show the torture Bernard describes.

AUDIBLEOver 8mm images without synchronized location sound, Bernard's present voice names Muriel and continues his account.

SITE ANALYSISThe wartime past is neither fully restored by the footage nor contained in speech; the split between routine images and torture testimony makes the past act in the present as an untotalizable sheet.

Cinema 2, chapter 5, pp. 121, 123, 125.Bilibili at 第11分段 00:00:25 / Part 11 00:00:25 Bilibili · Muriel, part 11 · verified 2026-08-14
The male and female statues in the garden in Last Year at Marienbad00:01:45
KEY SHOTLast Year at Marienbad00:01:33–00:01:54

The same statues carry two accounts: he says the man stops the woman; she says the woman is the one who first sees something.

VISIBLEThe image cuts from the woman in the garden to paired statues and then circles behind them.

AUDIBLEA male voice first offers the reading that the man stops the woman, then recalls the other reading in which the woman sees something.

SITE ANALYSISThe film does not resolve the two readings into one recoverable past. The same visible object sustains two present versions, leaving the past in an incompossible relation to the present.

Cinema 2, chapter 5, English translation pp. 101, 106, 108; atlas shot analysis.Bilibili at 00:01:45 Bilibili continuous original-film excerpt · moimoichou · verified 2026-08-14
SHOT PENDINGKaili Blues

The query “路边野餐 毕赣 2015” was run once (general ranking, all time, page 1) and returned no precisely locatable original-film carrier for the Dangmai long take. BV1ef4y1x7d1 was also checked: its main image is present-day location footage with the film only in an inset, so it was excluded as an original-film passage.

verified 2026-08-14
DELEUZE PRIMARY TEXT

Muriel moves the Algerian War past across rooms, furniture, broken speech, and abrupt montage. The characters cannot restore the fragments to a stable chronology; distribution of the past organizes the image before action can explain it.[1, pp. 121, 123, 125][4, pp. 151–156]

ATLAS ANALYSIS

The Dangmai long take in Kaili Blues contracts search, former relations, future premonitions, and spatial traversal into one present. Marking how past and future anchors modify current action tests whether the passage forms sheets, peaks, or a transition between the two orders.[4, pp. 151–156]

Muriel1963 · Alain Resnais / 阿伦·雷乃Last Year at Marienbad1961 · Alain Resnais / 阿伦·雷乃Kaili Blues2015 · Bi Gan / 毕赣
RESULT

Record version, temporal position, mode of evidence, and action-consequence; when temporal relation links shots directly, the order of time becomes an image principle.

COUNTERTEST

If chronological rearrangement fully serves revelation, goal progression, and causal closure, time remains indirectly represented by action.

COMPARATIVE TESTS

Film comparisons

DELEUZE PRIMARY TEXT1961

Last Year at Marienbad

Several presents of one encounter

Already, never, and first-time persist together as incompossible peaks.

The male and female statues in the garden in Last Year at Marienbad00:01:45
KEY SHOTLast Year at Marienbad00:01:33–00:01:54

The same statues carry two accounts: he says the man stops the woman; she says the woman is the one who first sees something.

Bilibili at 00:01:45 Bilibili continuous original-film excerpt · moimoichou · verified 2026-08-14
ATLAS ANALYSIS2015

Kaili Blues

Temporal anchors in a long take

Tests both orders by tracing how past and future alter present action.

SHOT PENDINGKaili Blues

The query “路边野餐 毕赣 2015” was run once (general ranking, all time, page 1) and returned no precisely locatable original-film carrier for the Dangmai long take. BV1ef4y1x7d1 was also checked: its main image is present-day location footage with the film only in an inset, so it was excluded as an original-film passage.

verified 2026-08-14
SCHOLARLY DIALOGUE

How scholarship advances the problem

REFERENCES

References

  1. 01

    DELEUZE PRIMARY TEXT Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta (University of Minnesota Press, 1989).

    Chapter 5, pp. 98–125Publisher record and purchase access
    Atlas record Open source
  2. 02

    DELEUZE PRIMARY TEXT Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, trans. Nancy Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer (Zone Books, 1991).

    Chapter 3, pp. 133–177; memory cone at pp. 152, 162Publisher record and purchase access
    Atlas record Open source
  3. 03

    SCHOLARSHIP D. N. Rodowick, Gilles Deleuze's Time Machine (Duke University Press, 1997).

    “Time and Memory: Orders and Powers,” pp. 79–120DOI record and purchase access · DOI 10.1215/9780822396871
    Atlas record Open source
  4. 04

    SCHOLARSHIP David Deamer, Deleuze's Cinema Books: Three Introductions to the Taxonomy of Images (Edinburgh University Press, 2016).

    “Chronosigns,” pp. 151–156Publisher record and purchase access
    Atlas record Open source