ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the idea of inflection in the context of still pictures. It focuses on to film, where, if inflection occurs at all, it is likely to take temporal form and discusses the conditions that must be met if cinema is to exhibit temporal inflection. Inflection must be carefully distinguished from certain other phenomena. It is not enough that pictorial experience involves awareness of two distinct objects, the picture and what is seen in it; for that is just seeing-in, inflected or not. Overlap is not merely distinct from inflection, but inimical to it. Inflection involves Scene being inflected by other features of the picture. There is, however, a group of Design properties of which people are visually aware. These are temporal properties of the moving images. Only the pictorial and sculptural arts involve inflection in any form and among them only cinema is an art of time.
