The Thoughts That Once We Had

THE THOUGHTS THAT ONCE WE HAD is a personal history of cinema, partly inspired by Gilles Deleuze’s “The Movement-Image” and “The Time-Image” (quotations from these books appear intermittently) and partly by my discovery of the classic Hollywood musical comedy, occasioned by a That’s Entertainment marathon on Turner Classic Movies the night of December 31/January 1, 2014. Perhaps little of these inspirations remain in the film, but it is certainly a personal history of cinema. Of course, many others are possible, and anyone’s history is as valid as mine.
A working title was “Great Moments in the History of Cinema,” but the movie outgrew this title. It became more ambitious. It found a form that satisfied me. The title is not meant to imply that cinema is dead. On the contrary: all art today aspires to the condition of cinema. Instead, the title suggests that moving images and sounds are thoughts in themselves because motion pictures are not perceived, they are remembered. (Thom Andersen)