> Speculation: if speeded-up action, as in Keystone Cops sequences, is for > comedy, does slowing down the action, whether via slow motion or repeated > action, suggest the opposite (whatever we want to take that to be)? There are plenty of examples of slow motion in comedy. The most memorable one is Peter Sellers as inspector Clouseau, sailing through the air into the kitchen in slow motion as pots, pans and bits of ceiling fall on him. Monty Python also stretches time in HOLY GRAIL using repeated action, when John Cleese as Sir Lancelot runs interminably towards the castle, from very far away, with drum rolling, as two castle guards watch and wait, eating an apple, until suddenly he runs past them, slitting one's throat while the other says "hey!" There are plenty of examples of accelerated motion being serious, as in Koyannisqaatsi which uses sped-up traffic or crowds in Grand Central Station to make a cosmic statement about natural systems, people's place on Earth, the chemistry of humans as particles, etc. Accelerated motion is often used to show us a world normally invisible in our time frame, such as time-lapse photography of plants growing. In fiction too, accelerated motion can be serious: 2001's astronaut Frank Poole, in space, his oxygen hose disconnected by HAL's pod, frantically tries to stick it back into his ear in accelerated motion, and after trying to rescue Frank's body, Dave Bowman must explode himself through vacuum space without a helmet into the emergency airlock, which he does in accelerated motion. I would also argue that the stop motion sex scene in CLOCKWORK ORANGE is not meant as comedy, and that the accelerated motion is meant to create a time axis in opposition to the slow motion violence scenes and the fantasy orgy scene at the end of the film. I would also posit that slow motion, which renders consecutive frames more similar, tugging cinema towards a still image, photography, it's historical roots, is often used to simulate regression, going back in time, and eventually death, the death of movement as time is slowed down to a standstill. Some more Kubrick examples: the freeze-frame at the end of Barry Lyndon; in 2001, Hal's regression and death is realized through a slow-motion effect (though this is not a slow-motion -- his singing remains in key, and is thus merely electronically filtered -- thereby HAL can be revived in 2010...); in THE SHINING, Jack, too, regresses, becoming child-like, then ape-like in the snowy maze, losing his language like HAL, and finally, literally, frozen, into a photograph taken many years previously. These ideas are not limited to Kubrick, and I think many examples can be found in which slow motion and freeze frames stands in for death (the last shot in THELMA & LOUISE comes to mind). However, given the many counter-examples, I think there is no general rule defining slow or fast motion as a rhetorical figure for death, for comedy, for cosmic statements. I have never been able to find a satisfactory theory about time in cinema that even comes close to critical writing on spatial effects (zooms, deep focus, close-ups, shot-countershot, etc.). Again, seventy years ago Jean Epstein wrote convincingly about slow- and fast-motion as being like microscope and macroscope, but this does not go far enough. Any ideas on this would further film theory enormously, as film is a temporal art form. -Pip Chodorov ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]