No salvation outside the divine rays of the camera». The word « divine » is not innocent, or purely incidental (his point was there about the relation to death, off-screen). Is the fundamental difference between cinema as a reproduction device or an instrument of revelation purely rhetorical? If, for the cineaste, it must takes some nerve trying to bring the world from nothing, from a tensed hand or an eye's blinking; for the viewer, the effort cannot be lesser to accept such a wager – an act of faith. There is no proof; there can't be any proof. You just buy it or you don't, as says Jean-Pierre. However, I don't think it's so superfluous to stress again that "all is on the screen". In relation to the above words by Daney, Chabrol wrote somewhere some insightful comments about Lang's last pieces, where the negation of off-screen would be more radical than ever: the character exists if and only if he is on screen. When the screen delimits not only what is – objectively, obviously – to be seen, but also – moreover – what comes to the world.
Serge Daney, "Veillesse du Même", Cahiers du cinema.
