Abstract

The cinematic out-of-frame can work in a number of ways; it can work formally, like Noël Burch and his description of the six segments of offscreen space; it can also work conceptually, as in Deleuze and his depiction of place and space as the out-of-field, where cinematic space and time that can be extended into an absolute or infinite. Burch remains tied to the screen space, whilst the latter has the possibility to stretch out, extending like Melville's sympathetic threads, into the infinite. This presentation looks at cinematic linkage of onscreen and offscreen space through such threads, their causes and effects, with particular focus on Dyke's “The Thin Man,” Coppola's “The Conversation,” and Scorsese's “The Departed.”