In his writtings about cinema, Deleuze defines different forms of (classic and modern) cinema mostly by referring various directors (Eisenstein, Resnais, Antonioni, Godard, Kubrick, Cassavetes etc.) and their perceptions and styles. Also he characterizes differences between classic and modern cinema which emerged after World War II in terms of different examinations such as movement-image/time-image, linkages of imagery/unlinkage, rational cut/irrational cut, whole/outside etc.
After reading Deleuze’s considerations my thoughts are shaped as:
Classic cinema works like language, it is a constituted system of images in which every image has its determined place and value differentiating from others so that every image signify a specific concept like supposedly every image has its counter-meaning (signifier-signified; so image becomes a certain sign) as if defined concretely in an imaginary-dictionary. Watching a classic movie is an experience like reading a text in which images are created to give spectator obvious and apparent meanings. This is also the method behind the usage of metaphor and metonymy in classic cinema in context of denotations and connotations.
In order to exemplify, ″showing a door″, for instance, in its denotative meaning, generally associated with an action like ″someone will come″, ″someone will leave″, there is something about the door that is releated to either previous or following scene or have an importance in the whole plot. The image of the door is important because it announces an action take place, an action which is releated to door. Or by its connotative meaning, ″opening the door″ corresponds the thought ″a new beginning″. But these thoughts are not random, they are conventional in spectator’s mind.
On the other hand, image of the door in modern cinema, may not undertake a role as it does in classic cinema, it does not need to be the submission of an expected action, but the door, itself, becomes the image of the scene, it is the door, it does not tell that there will be an action about it, but the presence of door, only, is the action. It is not constituted with definite meanings that human mind is conditioned, it is against human memorization of door ″a usually swinging or sliding barrier by which an entry is closed and opened*″. Door do not need to call for the action/thought that which is releated to it: ″to enter″, ″to leave″, ″to come″, ″to knock″ or symbolically ″to begin″, ″to end″ etc. It is the purified image of door which do not call for a specific thought that spectator already knows, however as leaving the conventional, expected reactions, giving meaning to the door should be resulted in spectator’s free mind, by his/her intellectual activity which will touch his/her own experiences and memories. This is what modern cinema aims: active participation of the spectator rather than just being the viewer.
* http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/door