Profane love, the heartening story and sublation : the dialectical image in film

Abstract

This thesis develops an understanding of the application of Walter Benjamin’s dialectical image. Benjamin’s theory of the dialectical image is examined through the comparison of avant-garde and realist film productions and considered through his writing on aesthetics, literature and history. Methods and theories of the sifting of historical debris, second nature, montage, allegory, profane illumination, sublation, experience and the literary, are explored and utilised for the purpose of the identification of the dialectical image in what Benjamin called heartening film. The effectiveness ot this method in deconstructing historical myth and establishing Benjamin’s sense of a now-time is considered.