This article was previously published in Stadtform, Band 6, 2017.

Ever since cinema started to take a coherent form as a medium it was built around stories. First as adaptations from books and plays which naturally evolved into the art of scriptwriting. But is narrative in film some fundamental criteria? Is it possible to take a break from story? What happens when “nothing happens”? When you reduce something to nothingness, what is left? The answer is: films about nothing.

Throughout the medium’s history there has been a narrow but rich tradition of films that do not primarily focus on narrative. Ingmar Bergman regards the opening sequence of his Persona (1966) as a poem of images. It works as a prologue with cut-up clips, sometimes upside down or mirrored, in a dazzling sprawl. Reels from Buñuel’s famous calf eye scene is mixed with old school cartoons. It essentially deconstructs cinema in two ways. Firstly, there is no story, and secondly, it depicts film reels, the very film reels that is the film physically, being torn apart and burned.

Reversely to Persona, the last sequence of Antonioni’s L’Eclisse (1962) is void of dialogue and even characters. The film itself is about a romantic affair which ends unfulfilled. The epilogue are these places where they spent time together, but now with neither of them being present. Whether it’s to prove that their love was always impossible or that the two people were always insignificant as an existentialist commentary during cold war melancholia is less important. Nothing happens and it’s hauntingly beautiful. Martin Scorsese noted that it was “a step forward in storytelling” and that “the final seven minutes of L'Eclisse suggested to us that the possibilities in cinema were absolutely limitless."

Tarkovsky’s Mirror (1975) does not contain linear narrative, instead it’s made up of fragments of memories and dreams, thoughts and emotions, entwined with poems written by Tarkovsky’s father and news-reel footage from the Spanish Civil War. Mirror doesn’t really have a story, Tarkovsky is sculpting in time, and it is arguably one of the most beautiful films ever made. As with the prologue of Persona or with the epilogue of L’Eclisse, it questions the need of conventional plot or traditional story.

Jim Jarmusch’s approach is more direct and less poetic. In off-beat Permanent Vacation (1980) the protagonist, a typical generation X flaneur, wanders around a gloomy New York. In the beginning of the film he confesses: “What’s a story anyway? Except one of those connect-the-dots drawings that at the end forms a picture of something. It really doesn’t make that much difference”.

Roman Polanksi admittedly made Repulsion in order to finance the delightfully awkward and absurdist Cul-de-sac (1966). It was shot in an impressive medieval castle situated on a remote tidal island in northeast England. When approached by financiers who wanted to see the screenplay he supposedly said “Screenplay? Why do I need a screenplay? I have a castle!”. While being relatively dramatic, as well as being comical in a Beckettian sense, Polanksi stated that he wished not to create a film but an atmosphere.

A prime example of a whole genre that didn’t primarily focus on story was the French New Wave. The Nouvelle Vague was all about atmosphere, dialogue, jump cut editing, fashion, the streets and corners of Paris, youthful liberation from dogma, and sometimes politics. Storytelling was secondary at best; style beat direction, freedom of form triumphed over classic cinematic structure, and atmosphere was more important than narrative.

Godard’s Breathless (1960) and Bande à part (1964) as well as Truffaut’s Shoot the Pianist (1960) are all technically crime thriller films. But the crime and thriller is probably the least fascinating or interesting aspects of these films. What is captivating is the sharp wit and the classic one-liners. What is enchanting is the romantic atmosphere and the quirky characters and the smoky cafés and bars. What is memorable is the record race through the Louvre, the dance scenes, the complete silence, the brilliant internal monologues, and the dizzying jump cuts in the cars. Remove the overarching story and those films would still most likely be exhilarating experiences.

"A minute of silence", Jean-Luc Godard, Bande à part (1964)

Cézanne once proclaimed that “with an apple I want to astonish Paris,” and he succeeded, even in his most deceptively simple still lifes to dazzle and delight. Eric Rohmer, my personal favorite member of the French New Wave, certainly did astonish Paris, and he didn’t even have a single apple.

While Cézanne took his apples and pears from provincial Provence to paint in Paris, Rohmer travelled the reverse route to film La Collectionneuse (1967) on a budget about the size of an orchards weekly harvest in Aix. One of the very few things that was actually afforded was a cook; a cook who cooked nothing but minestrone during the entire shooting of the film.

According to his cinematographer Nestor Almendros, only five photo-flood lamps (the strong but very short-lived bulbs used in film lighting) were available, so natural light was both a choice and a necessity. By the same principle, very few takes were made; extensive rehearsals were preferred to save on the little amount of film stock available. When film was sent for development, the laboratories were sure it was for a short film.

In the film Adrien moves into a villa close to the Riviera for the summer with the prospect of doing nothing at all. The importance of being idle however, is challenged by two other guests; the bohemian artist Daniel, and Haydée, a younger woman with a strong libido, testing the borders of her feminine attraction. As Adrien proclaims: “doing nothing requires incredible dedication and care”.

Sunlight. Camera. Inaction.

Rohmer moves with casual naturalism in the lush light of the landscapes. The film is depicted with such tender romanticism that despite the faults of — and the tension between — the main characters, moving into the villa yourself would seem like an alluring offer.

The dream of doing nothing is beautiful and an apt analogy for Rohmer in general; the subtlety and nuance in his work - how he paints pictures with a palette where even the blues are warm, with real people, true, and natural - are seemingly effortless. He doesn’t need dramatic music, lengthy tracking shots, or even close-ups. He does nothing, yet his films are strikingly beautiful and carry insight into the human condition equaled by very few.

Truffaut considered Rohmer to be one of the greatest film makers of all time, and it’s difficult to disagree. With his sensibility towards what it is to be human, he manages to capture not only actions but the inner life of the people portrayed; not characters in a film, but actual human beings. Rohmer paints with the lightest of touches, but the final work is always complex and whole, something that would surely dazzle and delight even Cézanne.

While Rohmer in general, and with La Collectionneuse in particular, revolve around ideas of doing nothing, pausing, or taking time off (his film The Green Ray for example is about a woman trying to go on a summer vacation), it is mostly thematic – things do happen and events do occur that drive the plot forward. A film maker less reliant on narrative structure and established dramaturgy in “doing nothing” is Chantal Akerman.

She produced, wrote, and directed herself in Je Tu Il Elle (1974) which is divided into three parts. The first part, which lasts for about half an hour, she spends alone in a room re-arranging the placement of a mattress, writes a letter (which the contents of is never depicted), and eats granulated sugar. For long periods of time she is just sitting or lying down staring at the roof or the walls reaching close to the absolute zero of dramatic film making.

While the dramaturgical curve is essentially flat it does take off in the second and third part. Plot development however, is virtually non-existent in Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975). For over three hours single mother Jeanne Dielman cooks, cleans, and shops. This is three hours that would in any conventional film be cut as transportation. Instead the viewer follows the mundanity of one person, often alone, doing nothing. As such it effectively conveys the domestication of women in modern Western society and it is highly potent; the film gets claustrophobic and nigh unbearable, depicting “women’s work” as prison. Jeanne turns to sex work, and in the last few minutes of the film, she symbolically breaks free as she murders a client with a pair of scissors. Sharp feminist critique.

Chantal Akerman, Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)

One of Chantal Akerman’s influences was American artist Andy Warhol, and it is perhaps he who brought matters to its head with Sleep (1963) and Empire (1964). The former is made up of long takes of his friend John sleeping for five hours and twenty minutes, while the latter is a continuous shot of the Empire State Building for eight hours and five minutes. That’s it. Literally nothing happened whatsoever. Sleep premiered at a fundraiser for an avant-garde film-makers organization. Of the nine people who attended the premiere, two left during the first hour.

Is Sleep and Empire at far as it gets? Did Warhol push the ultimate boundary of anti-film?

The Norwegian TV-series Skam (2016) managed in its second season something spectacular. A series praised for its authenticity centres around a group of young adults in Oslo, and while it includes some outstanding writing and directing, it is totally conventional in terms of substance, linear narrative structure, and general norms of the technical and the aesthetic. However, in one episode at the end of the season two the main character, Noora, is in emotional distress, attends a party, and drinks too much. She suffers memory blackouts. These are illustrated by jump-cuts intermitted by 10 seconds of black screen and no sound. 10 seconds of a still in film can feel like a year. 10 seconds of black screen and no sound feels like forever. It should not work but it does. Paradoxically the series is very rich in portraying the full spectrum of human emotion - and albeit by juxtaposition - Skam manages in this moment to reach complete nothingness.

But even with radical minimalism, let’s say a short film consisting of only a black screen without sound (which an avant-garde art student somewhere probably already made), wouldn’t it still depict something? It would still be a black picture, tangible. The solution to an absolute “film about nothing” would be to take it a step further. After his success with International Klein Blue, Yves Klein at his next exhibition chose to show nothing whatsoever. He removed everything in the gallery space, painted every surface white, and then staged an elaborate entrance procedure for the opening night. Thanks to an enormous publicity drive, 3000 people had queued up, waiting to be let into an empty room. Yves Klein had reached total liberation, and proudly proclaimed:

My paintings are now invisible and I would like to show them in a clear and positive manner.