Jean-Luc Godard: S and D

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Have at it!

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 4 March 2003 12:33 (10 years ago) Permalink

(Is 'Elogie d'amour' worth watching? I have no clue about late (or even post-60s) Godard, but my local video shop has two copies of this - which I can't believe anyone has ever take out - and they sing their ph34rful siren song to me whenever I go in.)

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Tuesday, 4 March 2003 12:42 (10 years ago) Permalink

i had this long talk about intermible movies to sit through, and it moved somehow into the maoist rantings of mr goddard. i dont know much about this.

enlighten me.

― anthony easton (anthony), Tuesday, 4 March 2003 13:36 (10 years ago) Permalink

Search: My Life to Live (I would say that's his best that I've seen), Contempt, Band of Outsiders, his hilariously pretentious segment in the movie Aria, maybe A Woman is a Woman, maybe Breathless

Destroy: Nouvelle Vague, For Ever Mozart

― Joe (Joe), Tuesday, 4 March 2003 13:40 (10 years ago) Permalink

My Life To Live, Alphaville, and Breathless are all amazing.

Weekend was dismal.

I haven't seen anything else by him.

― Ryan McKay (Ryan McKay), Tuesday, 4 March 2003 13:48 (10 years ago) Permalink

Week End has many strange, wonderful, and disturbing moments. It's probably best known for the long scene with the traffic jam. So many ideas in this movie. Poor Emily Bronte gets set on fire. Then there's the egg monologue, the pianist, the political essay set to a man eating a sandwich, etc.

― Ernest P. (ernestp), Tuesday, 4 March 2003 14:02 (10 years ago) Permalink

anthony:
Re: Mao comments

After Weekend, Godard did a series of films using Mao, Marx, and Engles in various ways. At the time he claimed he was disavowing "bourgeois" cinema, but later said that this period was a result of experimentation and he never even read any Mao (finding it fun to juxtapose Mao and Coca-Cola or something along those lines). Some of these "Maoist films" include Le Gai savoir (1968), British Sounds (1970), Vladimir and Rosa, and Tout va bien (1972), the last film marking the beginning of his gradual return to more commercial cinema. I've heard Le Gai savoir is the best from this period. I have not seen it though.

― Ryan McKay (Ryan McKay), Tuesday, 4 March 2003 14:04 (10 years ago) Permalink

Search Breathless, Vivre sa vie, Alphaville, Contempt, and Week-End.

Week-End is hard to watch, but I find it ultimately rewarding. After Breathless it's probably my favorite Godard film. It's one of the most messed up road movies I've ever seen (along with Jarmusch's Dead Man--watch them as a double feature, they work really well together).

― die9o (dhadis), Tuesday, 4 March 2003 14:20 (10 years ago) Permalink

Perhaps having judged too harshly, I shall retry Week End this weekend.

― Ryan McKay (Ryan McKay), Tuesday, 4 March 2003 14:24 (10 years ago) Permalink

a woman is a woman, yeah.

― RJG (RJG), Tuesday, 4 March 2003 15:18 (10 years ago) Permalink

Pierrot le Fou: So wonderful. A Jules Verne fantasyland.

Contempt: Sex, sun, sea and twisted automobiles. We've got Brigitte Bardot, Odysseus, Fritz Lang, Jack Palance, and the Casa Malaparte. Cinematic heroin.

― -8-(*_*)-8-, Tuesday, 4 March 2003 15:27 (10 years ago) Permalink

Also search: Two or Three Things I Know About Her. And Masculin Feminin is pretty cute, 60s teenage pop culture at its most endearing.

― Fanfan la Tulipe, Tuesday, 4 March 2003 15:53 (10 years ago) Permalink

I went to a screening of Truffaut's Soft Skin last week, and Raoul Coutard (the cinematographer for many of Truffaut and Godard's films) was there. Unfortunately, I was starving, so I didn't hang around for his post-film talk.

― hstencil, Tuesday, 4 March 2003 15:55 (10 years ago) Permalink

Might be difficult to track down, but "France/Tour/Detour/Deux/Enfants" is very good. It's a series he did for French TV in the late '70s (I think). A lot of it is interviews with children about philosophical and sociological questions. Imagine "Kids Say the Darnedest Things" hosted by Godard.

"Pierrot Le Fou" is my favorite of the films, though. And "Bande à Part" certainly has its moments.

― Nemo (JND), Tuesday, 4 March 2003 15:55 (10 years ago) Permalink

JtN, Eloge is pretty tedious a lot of the way, but there are interesting ideas and some beautiful scenes late on. Worth watching the once, I'd say - I'd say that about anything by Godard, to be honest. I love all of them up to Week-End, and really like that. The early ones with Anna Karina particularly are an irresistible joy.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Tuesday, 4 March 2003 19:34 (10 years ago) Permalink

The key film to see re. Godard's "Maoism" (I'm not certain he was ever an orthodox Maoist, even for a fleeting moment, but he certainly flirted with it; see an especially beauitful/bitter passage in Marker's La fond de l'air est rouge for a spectacular riposte) is La Chinose, along with Week End the last "commercial" film he made for a while. It features his then-g.f Anne Wiazemsky who was instrumental in radicalizing J-L. The film is about a cadre of students on summer holiday who form a Maoist cell and plot the assassination of a Soviet attaché. Also: relationship troubles, sex, sloganeering, exhausted advice from skeptical older figures, etc. You can sense Godard's fascination/repulsion w/r/t these young people (all pre-May 68 mind). Of course it also sort of gives the game away: Godard's politics were always an extension of his aesthetics (Godard, having the most overactive aesthetic sense of anyone alive) and here the revolutionaries are young and beautiful and favor primary colors (red esp.). I've always distrusted Godard even as I've admired him. In Eloge d'amour his target is Spielberg who stands in for American cultural imperialism, crassness, etc. It's not just the anti-Americanism that bothers me, it's the reduction of politics to aesthetics (or the conflation). I hope that makes some sense as I have to get back to work, but more later I'm sure.

― Amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 4 March 2003 19:47 (10 years ago) Permalink

Re. his Dziga Vertov films, I've only seen two. Vent d'Est is very interesting and sometimes beautiful and shocking, albeit even more infuriating than usual for JLG. Letter to Jane is just infuriating, although interesting in the context of his career I suppose. I verges on structuralist experiment and that is how I've seen the other D-V films described. Still dying to see Tout va bien, though, his class-struggle film with Jane Fonda and Yves Montand.

As I've mention on another thread I value some of Godard's later (post-79) work as highly as the '60s films. Esp. Sauve qui peut, Passion, First Name: Carmen, Hail Mary, and Hélas pour moi. A lot of people swear by Histoire(s) du cinéma--I've only seen two episodes of this.

― Amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 4 March 2003 19:54 (10 years ago) Permalink

Ryan, do yourself a favor and just watch Dead Man twice. Not only will you save yourself the torment of realizing you were right about Weekend all along, but DM has a much better soundtrack

― innercitykitty (innercitykitty), Tuesday, 4 March 2003 20:33 (10 years ago) Permalink

I got the chronology a little messed up. Letter to Jane isn't a Groupe Dziga-Vertov film, although it was made by two of that group's participants (Godard and Gorin); it was made after Tout va bien (both '72) and indeed refers to that film. It would take someone more familiar with the films of this period to determine the essential differences (aesthetic and political) b/t the D-Z films of 68-70 and the later films made by some of the same people.

― Amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 4 March 2003 21:10 (10 years ago) Permalink

(One more aside: interestingly the Japanese seem more fond of Godard's films of this period than anyone else. La Chinoise and Vent d'Est are available on DVD there, but are difficult to see in any format in the West.)

― Amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 4 March 2003 21:12 (10 years ago) Permalink

The first two parts of Histoire(s) du Cinema are incredibly moving if you're any kind of film fan.

― Andrew L (Andrew L), Tuesday, 4 March 2003 21:40 (10 years ago) Permalink

1 year passes...

Has anyone read the Colin Macabe book yet?

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Thursday, 18 March 2004 20:39 (9 years ago) Permalink

Also, what are people's thoughts on Two Or Three Things I Know About Her?

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Thursday, 18 March 2004 20:41 (9 years ago) Permalink

I think it is about an airport.

― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 18 March 2004 20:42 (9 years ago) Permalink

Are you sure about that?

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Thursday, 18 March 2004 20:47 (9 years ago) Permalink

I can confirm.

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 18 March 2004 20:49 (9 years ago) Permalink

At the risk of sounding stupid (not that this ever bother me, as you all know), may I ask how?

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Thursday, 18 March 2004 21:09 (9 years ago) Permalink

Also - is godard "funny"?

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Thursday, 18 March 2004 21:10 (9 years ago) Permalink

I just had in my head that it was about an airport.

Some bits of 'Une Femme Est Une Femme' are very funny.

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 18 March 2004 21:11 (9 years ago) Permalink

I kind of love 2 or 3 things.

It's not about an airport. It's about a supermarket, a prostitute, a cup of coffee, et al, etc.

N.'s last line is correct aussi.

― the bellefox, Thursday, 18 March 2004 21:25 (9 years ago) Permalink

I agree.

― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 18 March 2004 21:27 (9 years ago) Permalink

Thanks, I was beginning to think that "2 Or 3 Things" was the most oblique film about an airport I had ever seen.

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Thursday, 18 March 2004 21:28 (9 years ago) Permalink

Bande A Part is very funny indeed as well as being my favourite of his films (and one of my favourite of all time) in spite of not having Belomodo in it (who makes me swoon even more than Mark Ruffalo does, @d@am)

― jed_ (jed), Thursday, 18 March 2004 21:33 (9 years ago) Permalink

Bald dude with his star log?

― Spinktor au de toilette (El Spinktor), Thursday, 18 March 2004 21:35 (9 years ago) Permalink

pierrot le fou is hilarious if you're a misanthrope like me

― dean! (deangulberry), Thursday, 18 March 2004 21:36 (9 years ago) Permalink

All his films are funny.

― Broheems (diamond), Thursday, 18 March 2004 21:51 (9 years ago) Permalink

nouvelle vague isn't.

― dean! (deangulberry), Thursday, 18 March 2004 22:22 (9 years ago) Permalink

haha - yeah, you're right. Actually when I was going over in my head all the films of his that I've seen, Nouvelle Vague was the only one that struck me as humorless. But it was rhetorically neater to say they all are.

― Broheems (diamond), Thursday, 18 March 2004 22:24 (9 years ago) Permalink

can i point out the irony of being a maoist film maker, maybe i dont get it, but if you were making art (or something like it) wouldnt you avoid an ideolofy which is this iconoclastic ?

― anthony, Thursday, 18 March 2004 22:27 (9 years ago) Permalink

i suppose godard finds humor in nv because he is the ultimate bitch. (xpost)

― dean! (deangulberry), Thursday, 18 March 2004 22:30 (9 years ago) Permalink

his maoist flirtations were brief, and about 35 years ago

― !!!! (amateurist), Thursday, 18 March 2004 22:46 (9 years ago) Permalink

'elogé de l'amour' isn't too funny either.

― cozen (Cozen), Thursday, 18 March 2004 23:33 (9 years ago) Permalink

it has its moments. i would say that it dabbles in irony and abject absurdity more than it does in humor. but yes, you're mostly right.

― dean! (deangulberry), Thursday, 18 March 2004 23:37 (9 years ago) Permalink

Breathless is good.

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Thursday, 18 March 2004 23:52 (9 years ago) Permalink

Jed, I would like to see if your Ruffalo lust holds up after his irritating performance in Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind.

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Friday, 19 March 2004 00:01 (9 years ago) Permalink

godard's early films (up till '66 or so) have nothing to do with maoism. after that i can't say, but the early stuff is very funny and interesting. band a parte is my favorite too.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Friday, 19 March 2004 04:43 (9 years ago) Permalink

One to lure me out of retirement!

I've seen most of his films up to the early 80s, and really every single one is worth seeing, even if some of the D-Z ones are almost unwatchable. The best of them is 'Vent d'Est', which was intended by its financiers as a kind of 'Bullet for the General'-style Marxist western, and indeed it has Gian Maria Volonte in it. It ends up as an essay on the politics of film-making, and is so a kind of sequel to 'Le Mepris', which is probably the best point of entry for Godard.

The jazzy score for 'Breathless' is lame, and I kind of don't think of it as a Godard at all. It was co-written with Truffaut.

His politics are always going to be a sticking point: the whole Maoist craze that afflicted France in the 60s was obviously a wrong turn, and JLG was a bit of a gadfly: you wouldn't catch Marker, Varda, or Rouch (more classically 'leftist' film-makers) making the same mistake.

This being so, I prefer his D-Z films, impossible as they are, to 'Tout va Bien', which was an attempt, via stars (Fonda and Montard) to 'reconnect' with the mass audience (it's about student politics, left-wing union politics, media politics); you'd be better off watching more straightforward contemporary films on the same subject by Ken Loach and other BBC directors of that era.

If I had to pick one, I guess it would be 'Masculin-Feminin', made in the winter of 65-66, and the start of his political odyssey, following 'Pierrot le Fou', his farewell to Hollywood.

― Henry K M (Enrique), Friday, 19 March 2004 09:04 (9 years ago) Permalink

'passion' is funny, sometimes just in its audacity

― !!!! (amateurist), Friday, 19 March 2004 10:02 (9 years ago) Permalink

2 months pass...

I wish Criterion made posters out of their box art. I can't wait to watch this and the short that accompanies it.

― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Thursday, 17 June 2004 02:07 (8 years ago) Permalink

that's a cool cover (except for the repeat of the title on the bottom), but the film is one of godard's worst imo. funny enough, criterion is supposed to be releasing "lettre à jane" on dvd, which is another of his worst. i guess they can make it up to us by releasing "je vous salue, marie" one of these days.

― amateur!st (amateurist), Thursday, 17 June 2004 05:39 (8 years ago) Permalink

Skipping 621 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

Some Cahiers lists from Godard:

http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~ejohnson/critics/godard.html

― clemenza, Tuesday, 21 August 2012 02:05 (9 months ago) Permalink

I bought Histoire, looking forward to watching it

― pun lovin criminal (polyphonic), Tuesday, 21 August 2012 02:07 (9 months ago) Permalink

I took it up to the counter for rental yesterday, but postponed when they had Three Women; I'm going to get it when I return the Altman.

― clemenza, Tuesday, 21 August 2012 02:08 (9 months ago) Permalink

all D-V projects: http://ubu.com/film/dziga_vertov.html

― Legendary General Cypher Raige (Gukbe), Saturday, 25 August 2012 15:47 (8 months ago) Permalink

nice one thx

― the late great, Saturday, 25 August 2012 20:22 (8 months ago) Permalink

i forget how deeeeeep ubuweb goes

― the late great, Saturday, 25 August 2012 20:22 (8 months ago) Permalink

while we're crushing

― the late great, Saturday, 25 August 2012 20:23 (8 months ago) Permalink

most beautiful woman of all time probably

― the late great, Saturday, 25 August 2012 20:24 (8 months ago) Permalink

anna karina vs catherine deneuve

― wolves lacan, Sunday, 26 August 2012 00:40 (8 months ago) Permalink

Anna Karina = classic babe for ILM dudes

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 26 August 2012 00:43 (8 months ago) Permalink

seeing that scene for the first time was like a deep & expansive cinematic ~moment~ for me

― very sexual album (schlump), Sunday, 26 August 2012 00:56 (8 months ago) Permalink

I'd give a slight edge to Monica Vitti over either. I got through the first two parts of Histoires, quite absorbed by it, and the disc started acting up--I'll have to return it unfinished. Never got to the really sentimental parts that were my favourite the first time I saw it.

― clemenza, Sunday, 26 August 2012 00:57 (8 months ago) Permalink

I'd do an arty film babe poll if it wasn't such a bad idea.

― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 26 August 2012 12:16 (8 months ago) Permalink

which film is that gif from again?

― licorice oratorio (baaderonixx), Monday, 27 August 2012 14:53 (8 months ago) Permalink

^^Le petit soldat

― Hut Stricklin at Lake Speed (C. Grisso/McCain), Monday, 27 August 2012 17:47 (8 months ago) Permalink

Someone like Jean-Luc Godard is for me intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good kung fu film.”

- Werner Herzog

“… his gifts as a director are enormous. I just can’t take him very seriously as a thinker — and that’s where we seem to differ, because he does. His message is what he cares about these days, and, like most movie messages, it could be written on the head of a pin. But what’s so admirable about him is his marvelous contempt for the machinery of movies and even movies themselves — a kind of anarchistic, nihilistic contempt for the medium — which, when he’s at his best and most vigorous, is very exciting.”

- Orson Welles

“I’ve never gotten anything out of his movies. They have felt constructed, faux intellectual and completely dead. Cinematographically uninteresting and infinitely boring. Godard is a fucking bore. He’s made his films for the critics. One of the movies, Masculin féminin: 15 faits précis (1966), was shot here in Sweden. It was mind-numbingly boring.”

-Ingmar Bergman

― look at this quarterstaff (Hurting 2), Monday, 27 August 2012 18:27 (8 months ago) Permalink

You could basically make a poll of the swipes Bergman took at other directors.

― Eric H., Monday, 27 August 2012 18:28 (8 months ago) Permalink

Bergman was Challops-y before it was cool.

― Hut Stricklin at Lake Speed (C. Grisso/McCain), Monday, 27 August 2012 18:41 (8 months ago) Permalink

"But what’s so admirable about him is his marvelous contempt for the machinery of movies and even movies themselves — a kind of anarchistic, nihilistic contempt for the medium — which, when he’s at his best and most vigorous, is very exciting.”

- Orson Welles

No idea where OW was seeing this. If anything Godard's LOVE for cinema is what spurred him on to question and "play" with it is a medium. The other two guys - ehh.

― Loo Reading (Capitaine Jay Vee), Monday, 27 August 2012 19:14 (8 months ago) Permalink

Herzog and Bergman are great without a doubt but i think JLG just went over Herzog's head. I wouldn't consider Godard a fake intellectual - the man seems to know his stuff re: literature, music, politics. And Bergman - always miserable.

― Loo Reading (Capitaine Jay Vee), Monday, 27 August 2012 19:18 (8 months ago) Permalink

really jay vee? isn't that like NEW WAVE reduced to a sentence?

― the late great, Tuesday, 28 August 2012 00:05 (8 months ago) Permalink

i would say an anarchistic contempt for the machinery of movies is what makes something like pierrot le fou work

― the late great, Tuesday, 28 August 2012 00:06 (8 months ago) Permalink

course all of those new wave techniques are now part of the machinery of movies

not sure why but basically i give zero shits what any film director thinks of any other director

― the late great, Tuesday, 28 August 2012 00:06 (8 months ago) Permalink

herzog is echt deutsch romantisches lieder which is why he "hates" JLG (ie same reason he vocally hates continental philosophy) and i doubt very much herzog is doing anything but trolling there

― the late great, Tuesday, 28 August 2012 00:09 (8 months ago) Permalink

Captain Jay Vee, the important part of Welles' quote for me is questioning the validity of JLG's ideas.

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 28 August 2012 00:10 (8 months ago) Permalink

when i saw herzog talk in LA someone asked him about the connection between schopenhauer and fitzcarraldo and herzog gave this brutally short reply where he said he didn't give a shit about any philosophy let alone schopenhauer whom he thought was particularly lame, and that he thought the tradition of continental cultural crit was basically petty nonsense for a class of small-minded pseudointellectual who cannot approach ART on ART's LEVEL.

― the late great, Tuesday, 28 August 2012 00:11 (8 months ago) Permalink

it's funny i was just about to post “cinema is lies at 24 frames per second in the service of truth" which turns out to be haneke, not godard! i always thought godard said that, based on how i, uh, read my favorite works of his.

― the late great, Tuesday, 28 August 2012 00:13 (8 months ago) Permalink

I bought a used copy of Richard Brody's book yesterday. I looked at it for five minutes, not sure if it was the one I'd already read, which thankfully turned out to be Colin MacCabe's.

― clemenza, Tuesday, 28 August 2012 00:17 (8 months ago) Permalink

Brody's book is interesting. I disagreed with a number of assessments and conclusions he made throughout, but I didn't know a lot about the background of Godard and what he was doing so it was worth the time for me. Enjoyable enough, at any rate.

― Legendary General Cypher Raige (Gukbe), Tuesday, 28 August 2012 00:35 (8 months ago) Permalink

cinema is lies at 24 frames per second = godard's old aphorism, more or less
in the service of truth = haneke's lutheran moralist appendage

― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Tuesday, 28 August 2012 01:24 (8 months ago) Permalink

Curious what year that Welles quote is from. Was period Godard was he referring to? Pre DV or during? Just curious...

― Loo Reading (Capitaine Jay Vee), Tuesday, 28 August 2012 01:33 (8 months ago) Permalink

"What period Godard"

― Loo Reading (Capitaine Jay Vee), Tuesday, 28 August 2012 01:33 (8 months ago) Permalink

The Welles quote is from the Bogdanovich book.

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 28 August 2012 01:38 (8 months ago) Permalink

― Loo Reading (Capitaine Jay Vee), Monday, August 27, 2012 3:18 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

im sure he was talking about godard's movies

― Hungry4Ass, Tuesday, 28 August 2012 01:45 (8 months ago) Permalink

the best ever godard burn belongs to amateurist re: The Dreamers

Bertolucci: 'The Dreamers': Fucking Classic

― Hungry4Ass, Tuesday, 28 August 2012 01:48 (8 months ago) Permalink

xxpost to Alfred: So 70s I'm guessing. If Welles was perhaps referring to the DV films I could see where he was not accepting Godard's (and Gorin's by default?) underlying messages or themes as particularly deep. But I'm only assuming those are the films he was referring to. And as far as the contempt for cinema line: I still don't buy it. The quote implies - to me - a hatred of all movies and their making as fuel for Godard's fire and that just doesn't read to me as plausible with an avowed cinema lover like JLG - and the rest of the Cahiers crew.

Also - Welles dealt out so much bs in those (awesome) Bogdanovich interviews that it seems at times he was just spouting off sh*t just to get that ascot out of his face.

― Loo Reading (Capitaine Jay Vee), Tuesday, 28 August 2012 01:50 (8 months ago) Permalink

I think contempt is a good description for the way he treats the artifice of cinema. Which I always found kind of adolescent.

― look at this quarterstaff (Hurting 2), Tuesday, 28 August 2012 02:00 (8 months ago) Permalink

Sure, Capitaine, but Welles' evaluations of filmmakers are mostly spot on!

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 28 August 2012 02:05 (8 months ago) Permalink

did/does godard really have any explicit one-sided line on the truth or lie of cinema? the line 'cinema is truth at 24 frames per second' is from le petit soldat, i guess it's bazinian and i guess godard could be being a bit ironic by feeding it to one of his characters, but i don't know if that's a lineage he broke with completely.

― tubular, mondo, gnabry (Merdeyeux), Tuesday, 28 August 2012 02:14 (8 months ago) Permalink

i don't think that's it so much as just healthy disregard for formal conventions that welles was engaging with? feels like reading a lot into his quote.

― the late great, Tuesday, 28 August 2012 03:43 (8 months ago) Permalink

" a kind of anarchistic, nihilistic contempt for the medium" = healthy disregard? Seems a little more than that, no? Don't think I'm reading more than what's there.

― Loo Reading (Capitaine Jay Vee), Tuesday, 28 August 2012 04:18 (8 months ago) Permalink

not everyone thinks anarchism or nihilism such a bad thing. welles?

― the late great, Tuesday, 28 August 2012 04:33 (8 months ago) Permalink

esp in the context of 68 or whatever

― the late great, Tuesday, 28 August 2012 04:33 (8 months ago) Permalink

this scene. Then you see the truth has two faces. i think this is genuinely how he sees it, a very simple analogy. cinema as the modulation of visibility, the grammar of film in its ordering of images in relation to each other is the production of truth, relationality, politics. Its not that when he says 'cinema is truth at 24 frames per second' he is being ironic, but rather there is no metaphysical category of truth, no a priori transcendental essence that can be made manifest. rather truth is a production, the derivation of whatever set of legitimising procedures - like a doctors examination, a court case, a forensic report, cinema can make things true, anna karina in a dark cinema. I like him way more than bergman. "his films are boring" what a fucking boring thing to say. godard always seems ignited by something, agitated by it. right from the beginning, a bout de souffle, that itching surface. the romance is stitched together from american movies but its still real, as much as anything else at least.

― judith, Tuesday, 28 August 2012 08:27 (8 months ago) Permalink

One of the interesting things about the Bergman diss is that JLG was a big cheerleader for him during his critic days, saying upon the premiere of (IIRC) The Seventh Seal that Bergman was now the world's greatest director.

― Hut Stricklin at Lake Speed (C. Grisso/McCain), Tuesday, 28 August 2012 09:07 (8 months ago) Permalink

i don't think that's it so much as just healthy disregard for formal conventions that welles was engaging with? feels like reading a lot into his quote.

― the late great, Tuesday, 28 August 2012 03:43 (10 hours ago) Permalink

I think seeing Godard's work as having a "disregard for formal conventions" is kind of missing the point -- it's not about casting tradition aside, but laying bare the illusion, cinema that points to its own tools of manipulation, etc.

― look at this quarterstaff (Hurting 2), Tuesday, 28 August 2012 13:52 (8 months ago) Permalink

nah i'm not missing the point, i agree with you entirely, that's what i was getting at w.o using so many words

there's nuff JLG that isn't as hard-line marxist as you make him out to sound though

― the late great, Tuesday, 28 August 2012 16:10 (8 months ago) Permalink

2 months pass...

Which of these should I hunt down first: Le Gai Savoir or Numero Deux?

― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 20 November 2012 10:59 (6 months ago) Permalink

LGS

gen speaking chron order is the way to go

― saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 20 November 2012 13:06 (6 months ago) Permalink

thx, just watched it. I think this maybe one of my very favourites.

The immediately pre-Vertov films (Weekend, La Chinoise, LGS) and immediately post-Vertov (or about to be anyway) (Here and Elsewhere) are currently my favourites.

Or at least they have to be seen alongside LGS: not so much for the ideas, they seem always half-formed (I mean others have said they make you think you are stupid but there is no way he has engaged that deeply w/them; I'm guessing much of it is derived from overheard cafe conversation), all a bit of a soup but laid thick and assembled in a way that you are unable to stop watching, picking moments and using it for whatever you are thinking at that moment. Or simply to wonder.

Not as if its year zero: that ear for listening into conversation is used for sound -- its nothing less than a virtuoso performance of assemblage. The use of colour (the clothes of the participants), and the manner in which the light falls on Berto and Leaud througout to create these somewhat strange moments of intimacy between them that ring true: a kind of screen chemistry is achieved like no other in cinema.

So much of that derived from years spent in making the disgusting bourgie cinema JLG peddled to the masses for 10 years! Old habits die hard, it seems...

― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 20 November 2012 23:09 (6 months ago) Permalink

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