In passing

When I turned 10, my mother bought me a small microscope, entirely black, with a magnification of x100. It came in a red box, with ready-made slides and preparations. It was probably one of the great moments of my life. But I was never able to make the preparations myself and always had to rely on others.  Five years later, I had no problems preferring filmmakers who are about seeing, those that one watches in the action of seeing, the filmmakers of the frame and adventures: Bresson, Lang, Mizoguchi, Hitchcock or Hawks. It was much harder with filmmakers for whom the frame wasn't as important, the frontal filmmakers: Walsh, Bunuel, Rossellini, McCarey. And it took me even longer with the filmmakers who were primarily about showing, exhibiting something, often themselves: from Chaplin to Fassbinder. That being said, I think that cinema can be reduced to two fundamental scenarios: to see and/or to show. With all possible intermediary cases: Langlois as a shower, Godard as a seeer. 

- To see.

- To see what one shows.

- To see that one shows. 

- To show what one sees.

- To show that one sees.

- To show.

Serge Daney, L'Exercice a été profitable, Monsieur, POL, Paris, 1993, p.280.