After years in prison, Max promises revenge on his brothers for their betrayal. His lover Irene and memories of his past yield him a broader perspective.
EN
“Mankiewicz is undoubtedly the greatest flashback author. But the use he makes of it is so special that it may be contrasted with that of Carné, as the two extreme poles of the recollection-image. There is no longer any question of an explanation, a causality or a linearity which ought to go beyond themselves in destiny. On the contrary it is a matter of an inexplicable secret, a fragmentation of all linearity, perpetual forks like so many breaks in causality. Time in Mankiewicz is exactly as Borges describes it in ‘The Garden of Forking Paths’: it is not space but time which forks, ‘web of time which approaches, forks, is cut off or unacknowledged for centuries, embracing every possibility’. It is here that the flashback finds its justification: at each point where time forks. The multiplicity of circuits thus finds a new meaning.”
Gilles Deleuze1
- 1Gilles Deleuze, Cinema II: The Time Image, translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta (London: Bloomsbury, 2013).
