The impulse-image passes from the domain of affect into the domain of action, describing a form of cinematics between the affection-image and the action-image as the nascent form of action. As Deleuze puts it, ‘there is something which is like the “degenerate” affect or the “embryonic” action. It is no longer the affection-image, but is not yet the action-image’ (C1: 123). Yet while an in-between, the impulse-image has its own sovereignty and coordinates. In this way, just as the affection-image correlates to cinematic ‘idealism’ and the action-image correlates to cinematic ‘realism’, the impulseimage describes a filmic ‘naturalism’ (C1: 12–14). This naturalism is not so much opposed to the realism of the action-image, but is more the first extension of affect into action (perception → affection → action). This is the impulse; and impulses – with characters – are immediate acts. It is as if the world perceived is too powerful, too affecting; and the correlating act is an instinct, an urge, a compulsion. The genetic sign of the impulse-image is thus a universe of primal forces – an originary world; and the sign of composition a symptom of that primal world permeating bodies. Between this primal realm and its animal embodiment, Deleuze identifies a transitional sign: the fetish. Fetishes condense the primal forces of the universe into special objects, objects which retain the impulse, preserve its energy, an energy which under the right conditions will discharge into the body and – once again – appear as the symptom, and disperse the symptom into the world. Naturalism, in this way, is but the initial inspiration of the impulse-image, an image which will be the foundation of fantasy and horror, even surrealism.

The impulse-image, accordingly, is constituted by the sign series: symptom (first sign of full molar composition) ↔ fetish (secondary sign of composition) ↔ originary world (sign of genetic forces).

Symptom

The fundamental trajectory of the sensory-motor schema describes how we look, feel and then act. Impulses appear almost as a short circuit or lightning strike between perception and action, affects that become ‘primordial acts’ (C1: 125). As Deleuze writes: ‘fundamentally there is the impulse, which, by nature, is too strong for the character’ (C1: 137).