Melancholia as a Perpetual State. Configurations of Memory and how the Process of Becoming Becomes Externalized in Cinematography
Melancholia as a Perpetual State. Configurations of Memory and how the Process of Becoming Becomes Externalized in Cinematography

Summary/Abstract: The paper focuses on the way melancholia can be rendered visible in movie while perceived as a perpetual feeling – an affect in Deleuze’s terms. Existential crises, horrors, traumas and the unavoidable quest for truth are all tackled by Alain Resnais; the paper strives to analyse the way colours (or lack thereof) are used so as to give rise to a perpetual – yet ephemeral – feeling of melancholia. This paradoxical view is at the core of Resnais’s movies and enables the appearance of haecceties – elements which give a sense of uniqueness to the movie – at the intersection of corporal and non-corporal elements. Resnais’ cinematography goes on the same line on which Picasso imagines painting: Painting is a blind man’s profession. The painter paints what he feels and not what he sees. Similarly, Resnais seeks to create cinematography that suggests rather than shows.Melancholia occurs at the meeting point of time and space in Resnais’ cinematography, coordinates which, once intertwined, greatly influence the characters’ configuration, the imagery and the sound. The paper will focus mostly on Nuit et brouillard and Hiroshima mon amour as they envision this perpetual state of melancholia. The second part of the paper will address the subject of memory, affect and becoming, as seen in relation to identity and the way characters are situated in a space in between, nameless and open to development and to new possibilities.

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