Seven years younger
― Tom D., Tuesday, 23 October 2007 17:35 (sixteen years ago) link
she was friends with cohn-bendit and that lot, and he was kind of fascinated by them. she was possibly an adviser on masculin-feminin, his first film on "that lot". he met a bunch of them at that time, late '65 -- j-p gorin, who he also worked with, too.
i think she's done an autobiography.
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Tuesday, 23 October 2007 17:38 (sixteen years ago) link
A compilation of Godard bits would be his greatest film ever, and a project he might himself approve. Other than Breathless and Band of Outsiders and maybe Pierrot le Fou, his films have as many dull or awful moments as wondrous ones.
(I did like Notre Musique a lot though).
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Tuesday, 23 October 2007 23:16 (sixteen years ago) link
one doesn't have to marry one's research projects!
― Dr Morbius, Wednesday, 24 October 2007 15:33 (sixteen years ago) link
Week-End Bande A Part Contempt Masculin Feminin A Woman is a Woman
are all wonderful
Alphaville Breathless Eloge d'amour
are okay
the rest are either forgettable or i haven't seen them
― remy bean, Wednesday, 24 October 2007 16:21 (sixteen years ago) link
hooray: band of outsiders, la chinoise, weekend, most of breathless, pierrot le fou
alright i guess: two or three things..., masculin-feminin, the little bit of histoire(s) du cinema i watched once
buhhh: alphaville, the parts of contempt that don't have bardot in them
sauve qui peut has a funny isabelle huppert getting spanked scene if i recall
― impudent harlot, Wednesday, 24 October 2007 16:30 (sixteen years ago) link
i don't know what i think about any of them any more, but i think it's important to see all of his films up to the early seventies, or maybe a bit later. i don't get much out of the later ones that i've seen.
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Wednesday, 24 October 2007 16:39 (sixteen years ago) link
I mostly find Contempt a beautiful bore.
Tout va Bien is fun! (esp long supermarket take)
― Dr Morbius, Wednesday, 24 October 2007 16:43 (sixteen years ago) link
i think 'alphaville' is one of my favourites, today.
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Wednesday, 24 October 2007 16:43 (sixteen years ago) link
faves: Alphaville Masculin Feminin Pierrot le Fou
the others i've seen, all lovable in one way or another: Bande A Part Breathless A Woman is a Woman Week-End Contempt Two or Three Things...
― sleep, Wednesday, 24 October 2007 16:44 (sixteen years ago) link
I stick up for alphaville, too
― RJG, Wednesday, 24 October 2007 18:08 (sixteen years ago) link
that isn't my penis
my faves: week-end tout va bien pierrot le fou contempt alphaville notre musique too
everything else i have seen I have at least liked.
― t0dd swiss, Thursday, 25 October 2007 04:50 (sixteen years ago) link
le mepris is the only one i really like
― gershy, Thursday, 25 October 2007 04:56 (sixteen years ago) link
Alphaville: tonight, watching it for the first time in a decade. That strange home-made collage effect of different modes and cultural flotsam: Orwellian dystopia, hard-boiled detectives, computer capitalism. It reminds me of Brecht's consciously half-baked fantasies of America, in its feeling of making it up as it goes along - a sort of experiment in imagination, trying to see what happens if you treat Paris as Alphaville and these scenes as happening in an improbably distant future. How about when Lemmy Caution asks an associate 'Dick Tracy - il est mort?': throw in any bit of cultural fantasy or fiction you want, in some kind of late version of new wave Americana.
Space: walking round and round corridors.
Also space, as in reference to galactic distances.
― the pinefox, Friday, 23 November 2007 21:58 (sixteen years ago) link
Capitale de la Douleur
― baaderonixx, Friday, 23 November 2007 23:53 (sixteen years ago) link
I was watching Alphaville tonight, too. Where can I get a Seductress Third Class?
― Joe, Saturday, 24 November 2007 00:22 (sixteen years ago) link
That's quite a coincidence. I know what you mean, too. The second one, who appears after about an hour, is particularly appealing somehow in her ... I don't know, her divergence from the Godardian / Karina norm - she looks very real.
A pretty crazy picture, in the end. Abstract car chases, film suddenly going negative, that throaty Alpha-60 voice all over the soundtrack along with the usual temporally disruptive spots of music (which run their automatic course then end before anything has finished happening - this more pronounced in Le Mepris than in Alphaville in fact) ... an ending in which the city is suddenly doomed and notre heros is driving away. The missing link, someone else who isn't even Paul Morley must have pointed out, between Nineteen Eighty-Four and Blade Runner.
― the pinefox, Saturday, 24 November 2007 00:25 (sixteen years ago) link
Alphaville
― James Redd and the Blecchs, Saturday, 24 November 2007 02:00 (sixteen years ago) link
How weird, I watched Contempt for the first time last night.
― Rock Hardy, Saturday, 24 November 2007 02:40 (sixteen years ago) link
Sometimes I think ILX's art/culture impulses align like sorority sisters' periods.
― Rock Hardy, Saturday, 24 November 2007 03:09 (sixteen years ago) link
There's a cinema here that's doing a retrospective of all of Godard's films - currently in the 80s period. Screenings are less than 2 euros, so I could potentially go to all of them but I also have to maintain the appearance of having a social life. Which of the following should I see?
Prenom: Carmen Je vous salue, Marie Detective Soigne ta droite King Lear Nouvelle Vague Le rapport Darty Les enfants jouent a la Russie Allemagne année 90 neuf zéro Helas pour moi JLG/JLG - autoportrait de decembre For Ever Mozart Histoires du cinema
― danzig, Saturday, 24 November 2007 19:29 (sixteen years ago) link
From that list the ones I've seen and can recommend are JLG/JLG, Detective and Histoires du Cinema.
― Capitaine Jay Vee, Saturday, 24 November 2007 19:33 (sixteen years ago) link
Arrested.
http://a.abcnews.com/images/US/ap_rockefeller2_080805_mn.jpg
― sanskrit, Wednesday, 6 August 2008 11:55 (fifteen years ago) link
That actually looks like a still from a film
― Tom D., Wednesday, 6 August 2008 11:55 (fifteen years ago) link
I'm gonnae watch A Bout de Souffle ... pour la premiere fois? Can this be? Then Bande a Part which I have definitely not seen.
― the pinefox, Thursday, 23 October 2008 13:20 (fifteen years ago) link
Breathless, at least, maybe the others too, isn't really an exception to this generalization.
― Mister Jim, Friday, 24 October 2008 02:16 (fifteen years ago) link
otfm.
search: breathlessdestroy: breathless
― the bourgeoisie and the rebel (Stevie D), Friday, 24 October 2008 02:44 (fifteen years ago) link
Has he done anything as fun as Band of Outsiders? I haven't seen any films of his that I outright disliked, but there aren't many that I'd actually want to re-watch within a short span or purchase.
― circa1916, Friday, 24 October 2008 03:07 (fifteen years ago) link
breathless, bande a parte, pierrot le fou and weekend at least are among my fav films ever. apart from that he's spotty but all of the films i've seen are at least worth watching. (one that should've been good but wasn't: a woman is a woman)
― J.D., Friday, 24 October 2008 05:13 (fifteen years ago) link
nothing's as fun as bande a part. like nothing. watch la petit soldat, though, for something as fully realised, but tonally different, dark and aloof. as much as i'd agree that his output isn't necessarily all good, that somehow doesn't make me like it any less - the very existance of the first eight or nine years worth of his stuff is a beautiful thing; he worked as a magpie, stealing stuff and documenting his obsessions in his films, and being able to dip into them like a diary is a unique thing in film. cf. two or three things i know about her for this - it isn't a great film, but it's a really interesting sketchbook page of where he was at.
― schlump, Friday, 24 October 2008 06:00 (fifteen years ago) link
I mostly agree with the second half of that last post (haven't seen the films mentioned in the first half). I watched DEUX OU TROIS CHOSES for maybe the 4th or 5th time this week and it remains one of my favourite films.
― the pinefox, Friday, 24 October 2008 08:33 (fifteen years ago) link
I started A Bout de Souffle last night, made it 12 minutes in, stopped and read the LRB instead - well it was after midnight + I was tired + hungry. I'll finish it today I hope.
― the pinefox, Friday, 24 October 2008 08:34 (fifteen years ago) link
No love for Alphaville?
― baaderonixx, Friday, 24 October 2008 08:37 (fifteen years ago) link
Bande a Part - does anyone rate this? It has a great cachet, but not really a lot going on.
― the pinefox, Monday, 17 November 2008 13:29 (fifteen years ago) link
cachet = I mean, lots of people out there seem to love it
― the pinefox, Monday, 17 November 2008 13:32 (fifteen years ago) link
Good Madison.
― Enrique (Raw Patrick), Monday, 17 November 2008 13:36 (fifteen years ago) link
how can anyone not like bande a part? it's such a joyous film. getting to the end and thinking that it was hastily resolved or whatever ignores how much fun it was.
― schlump, Monday, 17 November 2008 14:09 (fifteen years ago) link
I'm not at the end. My DVD doesn't work too well. I've only seen an hour or so, so far. It's not nearly as joyous or fun as I would have hoped. It seems pretty dour and melancholy to me - no wonder, as the characters are nervously planning a crime. Maybe the idea of it as thoroughly joyous reflects the memorable dance sequence, which is striking to be sure but of course only takes a few minutes.
― the pinefox, Monday, 17 November 2008 14:13 (fifteen years ago) link
I think it is about an airport.― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 18 March 2004
― the pinefox, Monday, 17 November 2008 14:19 (fifteen years ago) link
Yeah, it's only partly joyous, but lighthearted by Godard standards, I guess. I wouldn't rate it as one of his best, but it's cute.
― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 17 November 2008 14:56 (fifteen years ago) link
It's maybe his most "let's just riff on my fave American genre" film.
― Dr Morbius, Monday, 17 November 2008 15:03 (fifteen years ago) link
OK, I just finished it. Actually the very end, the last 2 minutes or so, IS joyour. Maybe this gives people a happier feeling about it than they would otherwise have - cos in the previous 20 minutes we have two masked robbers binding and gagging and slapping the pathetic Odile, slinging the lady of the house in a wardrobe where she seems to be dead (but later apparently isn't); then the two gangsters shooting each other. I can see the Tarantino-appeal of this last moment - a sense of Pure Cinema Action, sort of set-piece fun. But most of the film is NOT joyous or cute, as I perhaps had imagined it would be. That's not to say it's not good (though a lot of it did feel quite disappointing to me). And I *do* like the FIN.
― the pinefox, Monday, 17 November 2008 15:38 (fifteen years ago) link
joyour = joyeux
― the pinefox, Monday, 17 November 2008 15:39 (fifteen years ago) link
Well, the thing about the shooting, and the lady not being dead, is that Bande A Part is all about film noir as kid's stuff. There are no real consequences to the movie's mayhem, it's all make-believe, children playing at cops & robbers. I think the slow realisation of that is what makes the movie so joyous, and it wouldn't work if the mood wasn't relatively dour at first
― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 17 November 2008 15:58 (fifteen years ago) link
'at first' = up to the 85-minute mark in a 92-minute film?
That lady of the house may not be dead, but Arthur is, at the end, and so is his uncle, after they have shot each other.
― the pinefox, Monday, 17 November 2008 15:59 (fifteen years ago) link
I don't know, I remember the realisation that the movie isn't quite as bleak as it's making out to be hitting me a bit earlier than that.
I don't know how seriously we're supposed to take Arthur's death, cos the shoot-out is just so rididcolously playful and OTT. I realise that pointing out one person's non-death and discarding the other's actual death might be a bit having my cake and eating it, too, but I really don't think we're supposed to see Arthur's death as something more than the guy playing the baddie getting called out 'cause that's how the game works. It's not a movie that strives much for realism, I guess.
― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 17 November 2008 17:06 (fifteen years ago) link
I never liked it so much, but the Hal Hartley tribute made me appreciate it a little bit more.
― Retrato Em Redd E Blecch (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 17 November 2008 17:09 (fifteen years ago) link
What tribute? In a movie?
Now you say that, I can see HH as resembling this (it's probably obvious), though I don't really like him much from what I've seen, have never understood the acclaim anyway.
BaP as genre and vs realism: OK, yes, that is a properly Godardian way of thinking after all. The voice-over is also very artificial (and quite interesting and poetic). But still, watching a distressed woman being tied up and slapped around by two thugs is not fun whatever generic frame you apply to it, and that sequence arrives in the last quarter of the film.
I think if they *weren't* violent criminals, if the film was just about carefree young people (ie ... if it was a different film), then it would be more like the film I thought it was, and that the acclaim for its charm often seems to imply.
A Bout de Souffle is also about a murderer, of course - not much innocence there. Maybe Une Femme est Une Femme (which I like a lot, especially its more musical and comic sequences) is closer to what I imagined this was.
― the pinefox, Monday, 17 November 2008 17:35 (fifteen years ago) link
Yeah, I see that. Basically I do think that there's a sort've childish macho side to Godard, he makes the characters criminals because hey criminals are awesome (in movies.) This doesn't entirely go away when he becomes more politicized, either - La Chinoise just swaps gangster chic for terrorist chic. I find it a forgiveable enough weakness, maybe because I like gangster movies too and can definitley identify with Godard's fanboyism.
― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 17 November 2008 19:13 (fifteen years ago) link