Ontology of Movement: Painting and Cinema according to Merleau-Ponty

In addressing the fundamental issues of Merleau-Ponty's last ontology, for which Being is an expressive movement, this paper focuses on Merleau-Ponty's reflections on painting, sculpture and, mainly, cinema. Two reasons justify such a choice. The first one is that Merleau-Ponty's reflections on films as artistic objects are starting to become better known, while an exclusive privilege has been too long given to his texts on painting, sculpture and literature. An enrichment of our reading of his aesthetics and ontology is thus made possible. The second reason is that, although it is true that Merleau-Ponty's general aesthetic doctrine introduces us to the question of movement, of its meaning and its ontological status as ``expression; it is even more true that, in the framework of this general aesthetic doctrine, his analyses of the mode of expression of cinematographic images become especially significant.