Jean-Luc Godard: S and D

enlighten me.

Destroy: Nouvelle Vague, For Ever Mozart

Weekend was dismal.

I haven't seen anything else by him.

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.

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).

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

You can get The Image Book on Kanopy.

Think you and maybe Alfred are the only ones who still have that.

Are libraries passé?

lots of libraries stopped paying for it (new york's did at least)

I have it and am halfway through the 44 Frederick Wiseman films that are available with my Kanopy subscription

(xpost) True enough--my local stopped, but I was able to sneak back in using my Toronto card (moved away three years ago).

Kanopy depends on a library paying for a subscription and rights. My uni library, well.

Seem to recall that their pricing model made it unsustainable for most libraries.

Some kind of per use surcharge.

They need this guy to play some hardball with them.

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/Etb87Rs8yDz29G5ogXEiJm-970-80.jpg.webp

https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/our-godard/

The Brody bio was for the most part excellen.

t

Well played.

Boys chat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_Ac0Xc4lQw

Love that. OG title: “The Baby And The Dinosaur”!

Saw band a part for the first time. So good. Favorite moment is the voice over lead up and strange walk down the street at night.

I had a strong feeling that the Brody book had a certain personal animus behind it, particularly in his writing about the later years; this could be entirely my projection, but Brody's sting at being rejected by Godard after a day of interviews on his 60s movies really comes across. So I wondered if that explained his emphasis on certain unpleasant topics like the treatment of the young girl in Sauve Qui Peut or the romantic pursuit of the actress in For Ever Mozart. It's still a good book, though.

All of this may have been emphasized for me because the Colin MacCabe biography, which came out earlier, is very reticent about "personal details". It's probably the only biography I can imagine that mentions the subject's suicide attempts in a footnote.

Hm! If anything, he's too forgiving of Godard's uh fascinations. He

And his reporting on the SQP incident was pretty fair imo

Brody very active in defending Godard's reputation on twitter.

Two hour interview.

https://www.cinematheque.fr/henri/film/125365-entretien-entre-serge-daney-et-jean-luc-godard-jean-luc-godard-1988/

Watched about 15 mins. Once Godard gets going (and Daney shuts up) you can feel how important the materiality of the medium is for him. You know this, but I've seldom watched him try and articulate it. Like when he talks about the act of projection.

May read it but that quote is terrible.

Fredric Jameson writes on Jean-Luc Godard.

‘If cinema really is dying, then he died with it; or better still, it died with him.’https://t.co/9pZDvpZHIf

— New Left Review (@NewLeftReview) September 28, 2022

Picture makes it look like Godard secretly killed cinema and is gloating.

Looks like that meme of the girl looking at the camera while the house burns lol

https://i.imgur.com/4CobVKP.jpg

Is that from his Ulysses project?

everything fredric jameson writes is terrible

He's a fan of poptimism

Was wondering.

Scorsese has a piece up on Godard:

https://www.cahiersducinema.com/actualites/martin-scorsese-godard-is-perhaps-dead/#:~:text=When%20I'm%20editing%20a,images%20made%20by%20other%20people.

Nice, thanks!

Just watched ÉLOGE DE L'AMOUR (2001), only 19 years after Jerry the Nipper referred to it at the start of the thread.

I couldn't make much sense of it. Broadly confirms the sense that while early Godard is dazzling, late Godard is rambling.

Of the Godard I've seen from the last couple decades (which is not comprehensive), that one is definitely the weakest.

He made five films from 2000. Image Book > Goodbye to Language (will we ever see it in 3D again) >>>> In Praise of Love and Our Music.

Haven't seen Film Socialisme.

Those top two films would comfortably be in a top ten for Godard.

Lots of shorts and skits and stuff outside those five features tho

(I do need to circle back and see Film Socialisme imo)

It's dire.

I have really never engaged with Godard's short film output at all..

Richard Brody of The New Yorker declared In Praise of Love the greatest film of the 2000s, stating that it is "one of the most unusual, tremulous, and understated of love stories, as well as the story of love itself; ... Godard’s third first film, thus something of a rebirth of cinema."

Unusually preposterous.

Yeah, everyone knows that's Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle

He made five films from 2000

I've seen them, at least two of them twice, but they're vaguer in memory than the superficially similar 80s and 90s movies and I need to see them again.
The first Godard I've rewatched since his death was Made in USA, not especially beloved by most, but I was surprised just how much plot (though heavily obscured) and how many speaking parts the film contains. Was it his last nod at a "genre" film (unless Detective counts)?

Unusually preposterous.

― the pinefox

That's our Richard!

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/12/19/molly-ringwald-on-filming-shakespeares-king-lear-with-jean-luc-godard

Imagine being in a film, not understanding any of it then watching it months later and it never making sense.

i mean a lot of people in POPULAR MOVIE FRANCHISE DELETED must feel like that

quite a little burgess meredith anecdote in that piece