Faces and ‘Faciality’

Abstract

For Béla Balázs, the close-up of the face famously constituted the lynchpin of film (Balázs, 1970, pp. 60–88). Implicitly glossing Balázs, but explicitly adding Eisenstein, Gilles Deleuze goes further, pronouncing face and close-up synonymous (‘there is no close-up of the face, the face is in itself close-up’ (Deleuze, 1986, pp. 87–8)), apparently happy to abolish form-content distinctions. Does this mean that, going further still, all close-ups disclose a face: that anything seen in close-up is not merely significant or powerful, but ‘a face’, ‘affective’, permitting something to be ‘“faceified” … even if it does not resemble a face’ (Deleuze, 1986, p. 88).