Hypnosis-Images: Indiscernibility and Hypnotic Agency in Gilles Deleuze’s Heart of Glass

Abstract

Werner Herzog’s Heart of Glass (1976) is one of the few films that is discussed in both volumes of Cinema, suggesting that it cuts across Deleuze’s crucial distinction between the movement-image and the time-image. In Cinema 2, Gilles Deleuze also makes the remarkable claim—given the great importance he places on what he calls the “crystal-image”—that the film contains “the greatest crystal-images in the history of cinema”. This chapter examines in detail the claims that Deleuze makes about Herzog’s film, particularly in terms of the distinction he draws between the “hallucinatory” and the “hypnotic”. It concludes that Deleuze’s readings of Heart of Glass beautifully exemplify some of the philosopher’s central ideas both about film and about human agency, while also pointing towards some significant challenges that might be raised against them.