The article is devoted to the problem of duration in filmic experience on the example of comparing the concepts of the Hungarian film theorist B. Balazs and the French philosopher A. Bergson. Bergson distinguished between quantitative time and qualitative becoming, which he called duration and compared with a musical melody. Balazs used this conceptual distinction in the theory of cinema to describe the specifics of cinematic expressiveness. Although Bergson himself did not consider cinema as an example of the implementation of duration, Balazs successfully used the possibilities of Bergson’s philosophy of perception in film theory, paving the way for later and well-known theorists such as J. Deleuze.