ABSTRACT
It is no more possible to postulate a continuous chain (or kinship) of “depth of field shots” across the “history of the cinema” than it is to do so for the “close-up.” And the history of this technical device, no more than that of the “close-up” (or any other term of practice or technical metalanguage), is not possible without bringing into play a set of determinations that are non-exclusively technical. Rather, they are economic and ideological determinations. Hence, they spill out over the specific field of the cinematic, reworking it through a series of supplements, making it function on other scenes, and making other scenes inscribe themselves on its own scene; they burst asunder the fiction of an autonomous history of the cinema (of its “styles and techniques”); they operate the complex articulation of this particular field and history with other fields and histories; and they thus allow us to take into account, for the particular technical procedure that is depth of field, its regulation of the functions - that is to say, the meanings - that it assumes in the filmic signifying practice by codes which are not necessarily cinematic (in this case: pictorial, theatrical and photographic codes), and to take into account the (economic/ideological) forces which, whether positively or negatively, exert pressure on the inscription of this regulation and these codes.
