The concept of “Duration” in Henri Bergson's philosophy and its impact on narrative in the European art cinema movement

Time, for Henri Bergson (French philosopher, 1859-1941), is continuity, progress, and heterogeneity. In addition, because of this perspective, it can be seen that time conserving and preserving the past. Thus, for Bergson, this is the core of his idea about time and memory. Which memory conserves the past and this conservation does not imply that one experiences the same (re-cognition), but difference. One moment is added onto the old ones, and thus, when the next moment occurs, it is added onto all the other old ones plus the one that came immediately before. This is his answer to the question about human beings and the nature of time, this is the concept of duration. This study intends to explain the concept of Duration in Henry Bergson's philosophy and since the main hypothesis of this research is the effect of the "Duration" in Henry Bergson's philosophy on the "European art cinema movement" in the field of narrative's methods and structures. Therefore, in order to prove this hypothesis, after explaining the concept of duration in Bergson's philosophy, the study will examine some of the films of the European art cinema movement, namely the films of Hiroshima My Love 1959 - last year in Marine Wind 1961 - Immortal 1963 In this way, it shows that these films have achieved different representations of time and duration in narrativity by creating novel and complex chronological order, timelessness in the narrative, and the creation of a variety of internal, external, and composite retrospectives(flashback), which can be interpreted by Henry Bergson's definition of time and his concept about duration. Also, this research seeks to achieve a single model for reading and analyzing this type of time-based narration.