What did Henri Bergson mean by the cinematographical mechanism of thought?

In his work Creative Evolution, Henri Bergson used the term "cinematographical mechanism of thought" to describe how human intelligence typically perceives reality.1

He argued that the mind functions like a cinematograph (a film projector), which creates the illusion of movement by stringing together a series of static, discrete snapshots. Bergson believed that philosophical and scientific thought often falls into this "mechanistic illusion" by breaking the continuous flow of reality—which he termed duration—into fixed, spatialized concepts.12

By imposing these static categories on the world, intelligence effectively falsifies the nature of reality, which is characterized by perpetual flux and becoming. Bergson maintained that because this mechanism is designed for practical action, it is useful for navigating the world but fails to grasp the essential, dynamic nature of life. To truly understand reality, he proposed that one must move beyond this analytical, conceptualizing approach and instead rely on intuition, which can grasp the whole of experience immediately and sympathetically.13