This article attempts to do three things: (i) to place the concept of the Imaginary as used in recent papers on film theory back in its psychoanalytic context; (2) to show how the psychoanalytic literature from which it has been drawn has itself undermined the concept as an original reference to an autonomous psychic instance; (3) to suggest that this partial collapsing of the Imaginary throws into question the use of the concept to delineate or explain some assumed position of plenitude on the part of the spectator in the cinema.¹