excessive signification concealed in cinephiliac moments appearing suddenly, like

lightning flashes, in this highly coded and commercialized cinema look like? Or, to

paraphrase Niklas Luhmann's question cited in the epigraph, is there a critical approach

that can make use of the experience of cinephilia? Perhaps the best place to begin

thinking about this critical approach is with a moment of cinephilia. As Walter Benjamin,

whose work deeply informs this project, puts it: "In the fields with which we are

concerned, knowledge comes only in lightning flashes. The text is the long roll of thunder

that follows" ("N [On the Theory of Knowledge, Theory of Progress]" 456).

 On the cross section of an ancient sequoia, a black-gloved hand traces the passage

of a lifetime in a moment. The concentric rings on the felled trunk denote the celebrated

events of history, marking the conquest of territory, the promulgation of a charter, the

birth of a nation. But Madeleine Elster is not entranced by this imposing

dendrochronology. Her finger lingers over a gap in that grand narrative, where it

enigmatically sketches her own life and "death." "Somewhere in here I was born. And

there I died," she says, "It was only a moment for you. You took no notice." The camera

now pulls back, showing Madeleine turn away from the sequoia and from Scottie in a

trance-like state. In a long shot, we see her wander away into the forest, her diminutive

figure receding into the dark, brooding redwoods. Scottie trails behind her, but in a

moment Madeleine disappears among the immense Big Basin sequoias.

 Every time I watch this scene from Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), I find

myself surprised by its visual intensity. I am taken aback by this charged moment, but I

cannot quite point out why.6 I scan the image of the lingering finger pointing at the dead

trunk for clues. Is it the starkness of the black glove moving slowly across the white