Machines for the Suppression of Time - ACE108.2

Sky, trees, countryside. Young man is stopped by a Gentleman and a Labourer but walks on. Coloured engraving of itinerant farm hand. Open scene re-enacted, this time with camera and photographer visible in foreground. Coloured engraving of similar encounter. Photograph of man and the two others. Caption: "What do these words refer to?" amended to "What do these images refer to?" Engraving of labourer. Man walking. Group of people resembling Ford Madox Ford’s Work (1852-1863); the painting. Photograph of the "live" group. Caption: "What actions are taking place?" Man passing the group. Douglas Lowndes quoting "No longer can language be identified with a contract pure and simple… a law ... that is tolerated … not a rule to which all freely consent" while young woman chalks the letters C A T on a wall. Man continues his wanderings, passes woman scrubbing front step, enters room where group is posed as Joseph Wright’s An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (1768), opens a book on Jean-François Millet to show The Gleaners (1857), and a volume of Paul Klee’s Notebooks. Caption: "What do these images describe?" Lowndes: "The sign consists of phonetic oppositions" over someone leaving the room while someone else doesn’t. Newspaper billboard, "Chauffer weds veiled princess". Man. Children. Clocks. Man in library, looks at Illustrated London News supplement on "Imperial Russia, her power & her progress", on the back of which is an advertisement for the Anglo-Russian Bank; photograph of women field workers. Collection of photographs. Books tied together. Caption: "What do these images symbolise?" Lowndes: "In language, the sign consists of phonetic oppositions that are voiced or unvoiced." Man returns past the clocks. Lowndes. Photographs of him and from other parts of the film; books. Woman’s VO: "Language attempts to explain images. All images contain within them an implicit narrative. Roland Barthes, a French critic, claimed that in order to understand a narrative, we need to bring into operation four Codes..." Caption for "Parts of Speech"; commentary says that "These Codes work in a similar way to parts of speech…"; man passing Work group. VO continues to talk – with matching captions and images from the film – about verbs (the Proairetic Code), adjectives (the Semic Code), abstract nouns (the Referential Code), and nouns (the Symbolic Code). A painting of warheads in a box. Lower half of statue; light from door merging with a light ray shining on a painting of a man on a wooden chair; a photograph of the two, and a photograph of the warhead painting with a "gallery attendant" slumped on chair. Labourer engraving.