Jean-Luc Godard: S and D

esp in the context of 68 or whatever

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN3uTy8NI78

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.

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.

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.

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

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

LGS

gen speaking chron order is the way to go

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...

on the NYC retro

http://www.fandor.com/blog/daily-jean-luc-godard-the-spirit-of-the-forms

I dunno. I think I could live the rest of my life without seeing anything else by this guy.

Much prefer his last 15 years to the 15 before them.

I like First Name: Carmen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u88CvAD2mWM

Also Passion and King Lear. Though yeah, I'd probably agree overall with that past 15 years comment.

FNC was going to be an Isabelle Adjani vehicle, but she quit on the first day of shooting!

hbd

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2013/12/jean-luc-godard-83-today.html

Promised myself that I'd be sharp and alert all the way through Contempt on Friday night, came reasonably close. I drifted a bit during the room-wandering half-hour--yes, I know it's the film's centerpiece. Found Jack Palance as funny a blowhard as Alan Alda in Crimes and Misdemeanors, and Fritz Lang caught just the right note of wry, eloquent resignation; Giorgia Moll is as beautiful as Bardot. Obviously a big influence on Medium Cool, to cite just one example. Jarring, off-putting use of Georges Delerue's ultra-romantic theme. There are other Godards I like better, but I can see why this is at the top for some people. Pierrot le Fou today, another one I never quite connected with at different points in my life.

I like reading Hoberman on how much Pierrot le Fou affected him when he was 17, and I wish I'd been 17 myself at the time. (Just for the film--on balance, was happier being 17 in 1978.) Today, I don't know. The anger and disgust that's there in Contempt has hardened some more, but there's a glibness in the Vietnam play-acting scene that, to me, does not hold up well. I think the much briefer Vietnam acknowledgement in Persona is a more powerful response. Some of the colour photography is stunning, Sam Fuller is funny, the running call-me-Ferdinand line (hesitate to call it a joke) monotonous. I'd agree with Stanley Kauffmann's original review--that it starts well, then Godard got bored and restless--but Kauffmann said he really came around on Godard later in life, so maybe he changed his mind on Pierrot, too.

Have you seen Far From Vietnam? It's a Nouvelle Vague omnibus film from '67 that's been touring rep houses as of late. There's some documentary footage of an anti-U.S. protest in N. Vietnam including a little pantomime not unlike the one in Plf. I was quite surprised to see that, having considered Godard scene his own (problematic) creation.

I rewatched Pierrot recently, and it was definitely longer than I'd remembered, and tougher to get through. A thing I think is important to remember re: France/Vietnam is that they themselves were thrown out of Indochina in the fifties. You know: History repeats itself, as tragedy, then comedy. There is a certain cynicism on Vietnam, which I don't think is there when they discuss Algiers.

Good point. Far from Vietnam is part of this series (they're playing everything, in order). I saw it once, about 10 years ago.

Something I kept thinking during Pierrot was that the theme music was a direct lift from Bernard Herrmann's Psycho score. I tried to confirm this with a Google search for "Pierrot le Fou Psycho," but nothing came up. When I tried "Pierrot le Fou Bernard Herrmann," though, I got someone from Cineaste who noticed the same thing.

http://www.cineaste.com/articles/pierrot-le-fou.htm

There's a thread for La Chinoise over on ILF, but I'll post here instead. Just like when I saw it 20 years or so ago, I got nothing. Does it date as badly as I think it does? That seems like the most obvious thing to say, I know. I didn't even think it was particularly visually interesting (unlike, say, Made in U.S.A., which I thought silly but loved looking at). Again loved Masculin Féminin last week, though. One of the great reaction shots ever (fill in the question if you've seen it):

http://i41.tinypic.com/ktbh3.jpg

I don't know that Chinoise has dated badly so much as western Maoism has, Badiou and his epigones aside; it's not my favorite edging-into-the-Dziga-Vertov-period film (that would be Week End, but its pace is sprightly and the conversation on the train with Francis Jeanson holds up well.

Week End should be Week-End above, and there should be a close parenthesis after it.

i find la chinoise totally hilarious. for a guy who apparently identified with the young maoist revolutionaries, he has a lot of jokes, most of them at their expense.

When I first saw it and was unaware of the history I thought it was a big joke on leftie student movements.

One of my first dates with my now wife was In Praise of Love at the student film co-op. We both disliked it a lot and bonded around that.

In Praise of Love is pretty shitty.

I haven't revisited La chiniose in a while, but I did like it better the second time. The characters come off as these trustafarian dunces. The Believer did a film issue back in '09 that came with a dvd of Godard rarities, the centerpiece of which was a very interesting hour-long filmed talk w/Godard after an NYC screening of the film, held on April 4th '68. DA Pennebaker (who filmed it) pointed out in the liner notes that because they were secluded in the theatre watching and then discussing a film about revolution, they had not heard about the MLK assassination and were surprised to discover they were walking into a genuine riot upon leaving the venue.

BTW: Oh hai Juliet Berto...

http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Godard-11.jpg

Saw Alphaville for the first time in 30 years. Funnier than I'd remembered.

Always like seeing Juliet Berto, yes.

i find la chinoise totally hilarious. for a guy who apparently identified with the young maoist revolutionaries, he has a lot of jokes, most of them at their expense.

Maybe this would have worked for me in the moment, but their pronouncements (not sure how much of what they say comes directly from Mao's book) are so vacuous, it just seems like fish in a barrel at this remove. Léaud's character in Masculin Féminin is like a milder blueprint, but I find his self-importance and Godard's treatment of him much more engaging.

Saw Alphaville for the first time in 30 years. Funnier than I'd remembered.

― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), 12. februar 2014 13:34 (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Have you watched his Germany Year 90 Nine Zero? It's a pretty interesting quasi-sequel/commentary. I liked it a lot. But well, I also liked In Praise of Love, so...

Trailer for Goodbye to Language. Warning: NSFW because of nudity/Descartes.

http://vimeo.com/92157115

Can't wait! Blogged about 3X3D, Godard's was by far the best segment.

Frederik, interesting review. I really like your writing.

Thank you! I've just finished writing the last post, a week late, so now there is 38 reviews of PIX-films. Wrote a list in the Last (X) Movies-thread.

2-hour interview circa 2010, subtitled

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XcuHub-S8o

The end of this is kind of heartbreaking.

His 1978 lectures on the history of film are to be released in book form: https://www.caboosebooks.net/true-history-of-the-cinema

i need to get that. so psyched for adieu au langage

I know he's never been the most consistent of political thinkers but that oh-so-provocative Le Pen statement was probably the biggest eyeroll moment in his later years (that have been full of them).

i don't know if the problem is inconsistency as much as puerility

he's never been much of a political thinker. pretty good filmmaker, though :)

(FWIW there were people on ILX who expressed hope for a McCain and/or Romney victory for similar reasons

they are also puerile)

I've read Michael Witt's book Jean-Luc Godard: Cinema Historian, mainly on Histoire(s) du Cinema, but drawing in the whole story of Godard's carreer, his views on history, metaphors being used in the work, etc. It was really good. Now I'm rewatching bits and pieces of all those collages where I can find them.

Goodbye to Language is so good!

the best film

seein it in a few weeks --one screening only here. hopefully it will come around again.

AO Scott in a mildly scolding vein:

Mr. Godard has a habit of blending gravity with whimsy. His latest film, a 70-minute 3-D visual essay called “Goodbye to Language” (“Adieu au Langage”), exhibits the formal and philosophical mischief that has been his late-career calling card. It is baffling and beautiful, a flurry of musical and literary snippets arrayed in counterpoint to a series of brilliantly colored and hauntingly evocative pictures — of flowers, boats, streets, naked bodies and Mr. Godard’s own dog, a mixed-breed scene-stealer identified in the credits as Roxy Miéville....

Much of the film is spent with a couple in a state of casual undress and post-coital ennui... it is worth noting that the man and the woman have, within the film, distinct functions and positions. Not only does she remain standing while he conducts his business, but her own business is also, in no small part, to be displayed as an object for contemplation and erotic reverie. He, too, is naked, but the camera is far more interested in looking at her.

An old cinematic god can hardly be expected to learn new tricks, and women’s bodies have often served Mr. Godard — and not only him, goodness knows — as convenient metaphors for the mysteries of nature and the forces that lie on the far side of language. That is, no doubt, a topic for further discussion. In any case this movie, its title notwithstanding, is unlikely to be the filmmaker’s last word.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/movies/goodbye-to-language-the-latest-from-jean-luc-godard.html

At least I'm glad Godard is revealing the atrocious ethics of the french left when it comes to women rights and whatnot.

Bordwell analyzes (prob best after seeing):

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/category/directors-godard/

Godard just ain't riding my wavelength. Five hundred stars.

godard isn't french and it's questionable if he can really be considered of the left at this juncture