the same camera would have a completely different selection of guests. The camera therefore stands metaphorically for everything one can possibly shoot. It is but another word for language. Speaking like Heidegger, one could say that the camera is the little dark house of being.
II
Many people never consider the presence of the frame at all. For them, the left and the right borders are more like book ends, the bottom line is the floor and the top the ceiling. They just do not see beyond these markings. The only thing they care about is that, in the middle of the screen, there is a hole through which they have a clear view of what is important: the action that is taking place or the face of the person who is talking. The rectangular screen is therefore just a place that offers an opening onto the narrative universe, a world that makes perfect sense, where one easily understands what is going on. One can relax and enjoy the show. For such viewers then, to use Jacques Derrida's words, ''there is frame, but the frame does not exist." 3
Quite possibly we do not question the existence of strong horizontal and vertical borders around images because we are so accustomed to them. Yet, these perfectly perpendicular lines that we take for granted do not exist anywhere in nature, which is the reason why Rudolf Arnheim labels them "Cartesian coordinates."4 For him indeed, the use of rigid lines "visibly ruptures the fraternity of all things in nature through a promotion of only a few of its aspects."5 In other words, we isolate certain features at the expense of others. From this we should learn that these perpendiculars press upon us a very unnatural way of seeing, that the end product is a cultural display rather than an indigenous phenomenon.
What should the contours of the cadre be like? In painting and photography, the frame often supports the general outlook of the subject matter. To take Arnheim's own examples, a distant landscape calls for a dominant horizontal shape whereas waterfalls and full-size portraits generally summon a vertical shape.6 Alas, the need to standardize the equipment has kept the motion pictures' aperture gate much less adaptable to the patterns of specific subjects. It is therefore shocking to recall the consistent failure of the industry to come up with a sensible solution to the question of a uniform frame. Early on, many formats vied for dominance. Obviously each variation provided advantages and disadvantages when com-
