― Amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 4 March 2003 21:10 (10 years ago) Permalink
― Amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 4 March 2003 21:12 (10 years ago) Permalink
― Andrew L (Andrew L), Tuesday, 4 March 2003 21:40 (10 years ago) Permalink
― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Thursday, 18 March 2004 20:39 (9 years ago) Permalink
― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Thursday, 18 March 2004 20:41 (9 years ago) Permalink
― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 18 March 2004 20:42 (9 years ago) Permalink
― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Thursday, 18 March 2004 20:47 (9 years ago) Permalink
― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 18 March 2004 20:49 (9 years ago) Permalink
― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Thursday, 18 March 2004 21:09 (9 years ago) Permalink
― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Thursday, 18 March 2004 21:10 (9 years ago) Permalink
Some bits of 'Une Femme Est Une Femme' are very funny.
― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 18 March 2004 21:11 (9 years ago) Permalink
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
― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 18 March 2004 21:27 (9 years ago) Permalink
― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Thursday, 18 March 2004 21:28 (9 years ago) Permalink
― jed_ (jed), Thursday, 18 March 2004 21:33 (9 years ago) Permalink
― Spinktor au de toilette (El Spinktor), Thursday, 18 March 2004 21:35 (9 years ago) Permalink
― dean! (deangulberry), Thursday, 18 March 2004 21:36 (9 years ago) Permalink
― Broheems (diamond), Thursday, 18 March 2004 21:51 (9 years ago) Permalink
― dean! (deangulberry), Thursday, 18 March 2004 22:22 (9 years ago) Permalink
― Broheems (diamond), Thursday, 18 March 2004 22:24 (9 years ago) Permalink
― anthony, Thursday, 18 March 2004 22:27 (9 years ago) Permalink
― dean! (deangulberry), Thursday, 18 March 2004 22:30 (9 years ago) Permalink
― !!!! (amateurist), Thursday, 18 March 2004 22:46 (9 years ago) Permalink
― cozen (Cozen), Thursday, 18 March 2004 23:33 (9 years ago) Permalink
― dean! (deangulberry), Thursday, 18 March 2004 23:37 (9 years ago) Permalink
― latebloomer (latebloomer), Thursday, 18 March 2004 23:52 (9 years ago) Permalink
― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Friday, 19 March 2004 00:01 (9 years ago) Permalink
― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Friday, 19 March 2004 04:43 (9 years ago) Permalink
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
― !!!! (amateurist), Friday, 19 March 2004 10:02 (9 years ago) Permalink
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
― amateur!st (amateurist), Thursday, 17 June 2004 05:39 (8 years ago) Permalink
― jed_ (jed), Sunday, 24 October 2004 16:36 (8 years ago) Permalink
― Remy (x Jeremy), Sunday, 24 October 2004 17:34 (8 years ago) Permalink
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0002HSDD2/qid=1098643669/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_11_1/026-3737398-5990003
― PJ Miller (PJ Miller), Sunday, 24 October 2004 17:45 (8 years ago) Permalink
http://play.com/play247.asp?page=title&r=R2&title=162776
― RJG (RJG), Sunday, 24 October 2004 17:47 (8 years ago) Permalink
― --bruno, Sunday, 24 October 2004 17:47 (8 years ago) Permalink
I think I prefer this 'Jean Vigo' thing because it has an interview with Otar Iosseliani:
http://play.com/play247.asp?page=title&r=R2&title=123208
― PJ Miller (PJ Miller), Sunday, 24 October 2004 17:54 (8 years ago) Permalink
I can't remember but.
― RJG (RJG), Sunday, 24 October 2004 17:58 (8 years ago) Permalink
I only have a 'fullscreen' portable telly to watch them on anyway.
― PJ Miller (PJ Miller), Sunday, 24 October 2004 18:04 (8 years ago) Permalink
― amateur!!!st (amateurist), Sunday, 24 October 2004 18:51 (8 years ago) Permalink
Did you watch 'Elogie d'amour', Jerry? I taped it, on the video, off the telly, but I haven't watched it yet.
― Peter Stringbender (PJ Miller), Tuesday, 25 January 2005 16:04 (8 years ago) Permalink
― Miles Finch, Tuesday, 25 January 2005 16:59 (8 years ago) Permalink
― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 25 January 2005 17:05 (8 years ago) Permalink
― Miles Finch, Wednesday, 26 January 2005 09:52 (8 years ago) Permalink
― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 26 January 2005 13:17 (8 years ago) Permalink
― cozen (Cozen), Wednesday, 26 January 2005 13:33 (8 years ago) Permalink
First Half: Paris. moody b/w. a sensitive young man is working on a play/novel/poem/opera. plentiful references to books JLG probably hasn't read. a scene near the canal where part of 'L'Atalante' was shot. Second Half: Brittany. extraordinary colour. an american (working for Spielberg) is trying to buy the rights to a resistance's fighter's autobiography. how awful--the yanks have no history, they have to steal 'ours' to make films. something vague about juliette binoche.
not a very lucid film, and honestly if it wasn't godard doing it no-one would have given a toss.
― Miles Finch, Wednesday, 26 January 2005 15:56 (8 years ago) Permalink
― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Sunday, 10 July 2005 03:33 (7 years ago) Permalink
― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Sunday, 10 July 2005 03:42 (7 years 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
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"
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
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.
― 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
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
― 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
Which of these should I hunt down first: Le Gai Savoir or Numero Deux?
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 20 November 2012 10:59 (5 months ago) Permalink
LGS
gen speaking chron order is the way to go
― saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 20 November 2012 13:06 (5 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 (5 months ago) Permalink