Every Man for Himself
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Synopsis
After a decade in the wilds of avant-garde and early video experimentation, Jean-Luc Godard returned to commercial cinema with this star-driven work of social commentary, while remaining defiantly intellectual and formally cutting-edge. Every Man for Himself, featuring a script by Jean-Claude Carrière and Anne-Marie Miéville, looks at the sexual and professional lives of three people—a television director (Jacques Dutronc), his ex-girlfriend (Nathalie Baye), and a prostitute (Isabelle Huppert)—to create a meditative story about work, relationships, and the notion of freedom. Made twenty years into his career, it was, Godard said, his “second first film.”
Picture 10/10
Jean-Luc Godard’s “second first film” Every Man for Himself gets a rather nice Blu-ray edition from Criterion, who present the film in its original aspect ratio of about 1.66:1 on this dual-layer disc. The new 1080p/24hz high-definition transfer is based on a scan of the film’s original 35mm negative.
It looks shockingly good, about as filmic and clean as I would ever expect a Blu-ray presentation to look. It delivers a staggering amount of clarity, with superb definition and depth in every single frame. There were no digital anomalies present, keeping as pure an image as possible, and colours are absolutely astonishing, with incredible saturation. Just the opening shot of the film, which is of the sky, looks absolutely incredible and as the film progresses it just gets better. With that and the lack of a single blemish this is probably one of the more superb looking presentations I’ve seen on the format. It looks absolutely great, capturing and handling Godard’s unique look and style (which features a lot of extreme slow-motion sequences).
Audio 10/10
The film experiments heavily in mixing visuals and audio so I’m pleased to say that Criterion’s audio presentation lives up well to the impressive video presentation. Though a monaural track (delivered in lossless PCM) it has some unexpected range and depth to it. Dialogue and sound effects are clear, with no distortion or background noise. The only truly weak aspect of the track would probably be the electronic music, which sounds fairly flat, though admittedly that could be intended. Still, for a mono presentation, it’s very effective.
Extras 9/10
Despite a misstep or two Criterion has put together one hell of a special edition for this film, which should please both Godard devotees and newcomers alike, especially those that feel rather lost by the film. First is Scénario de “Sauve quit peut (la vie)”, a short video that can be considered a treatment for the feature film. It was put together by Godard to aid in getting funding for the film. Godard never had a script ready so he would need alternatives to attract money and talent, and though this sounds to be the first time he’s actually put together a short of this nature for such a thing, another feature on here mentions he’s done similar things on paper, using photos and photocopies to explain how he planned the images to appear in the film (he did such a thing for a failed American project on Bugsy Malone starring Robert De Niro and Diane Keaton, though Keaton dropped out because of a lack of a script). And like those paper scenarios Godard simply explains his intent with the film, using photos of the stars he demonstrates how he plans to mix the visuals and the sound, fully displaying the experimental nature of the film, while also recreating (or at least using footage to help in creating) scenes that will appear in the film, all while he talks over it. It’s an incredibly fascinating addition giving a glimpse into Godard’s creative process. The film runs about 20-minutes.
Though the next feature doesn’t completely make up for the lack of an audio commentary, Colin Mac Cabe provides a decent video essay on the film entitled Sound, Image, and Every Man for Himself. It’s a strong 26-minute piece going over the period between Weekend and Every Man for Himself, where Godard experimented with video, and made a number of politically centered films (kind of documentaries, kind of not) in the Dziga Vertov Group with Jean-Pierre Gorin and others. Mac Cabe looks at the experimentation of the films, particularly in their use of image and sound, finding ways to make the viewer less complacent with the film, and then how Godard would implement these techniques in his first commercial film in a long while. He looks at a number of sequences in the film, while going over the themes and the various characters that appear, and what they possibly represent (or don’t). Though I would have loved a commentary I still found this a particularly helpful supplement that aims to enhance one’s understanding of what Godard was trying to accomplish.
Probably my favourite feature, though, is the one I was dreading because I feared it would be so painful: an interview between Dick Cavett and Jean-Luc Godard done to promote the release of Every Man for Himself. I dreaded this one mostly because I feared Godard would be difficult, and with how Cavett is here I guess I wouldn’t have been too surprised: though I’ve enjoyed going through the Cavett interviews that Criterion has been digging up for a number of their releases lately, Cavett does seem a little off his game here. He seems very unsure and almost scared to ask certain questions of Godard as it’s obvious he (and he basically admits this if not in these exact words) doesn’t understand his films, or at least this film. He seems somewhat guarded at times, unsure if he should be asking the question he’s about to (maybe out of fear of looking like an idiot to his guest), and refers to the opinions of others on the film and rarely brings up his own thoughts.
Thankfully Godard, who might be nervous himself, is an incredibly good sport here. He never comes off condescending, even when he gets somewhat into politics, and is far more open than I’ve usually seen when he talks about his work: he never goes a fully cryptic route that he tends to, like he does in another feature on this disc (though with good reason) and really tries to explain what he wants to do with this film, even criticizing sequences he doesn’t think work and explains why. The interview is divided into two 28-minute episodes—though it still feels too short—and the two do manage to cover a lot of ground from Godard’s work to television to commercial cinema and so on. I cringed somewhat when Cavett asked Godard about the popularity of Jerry Lewis in Europe but Godard manages to turn what feels like a fairly frivolous question around and gets into a great conversation about the technique and art that goes into film, focusing fairly heavy on the technical side of things. Godard also talks about American films, surprisingly bashing Woody Allen’s use of black and white in Manhattan but thrilled to see Martin Scorsese’s use of it in the then upcoming Raging Bull (and he’s a big Scorsese fan as he mentions his favourite recent American film was Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore). And despite Cavett’s approach to this interview the two have a great chemistry, garnering a few laughs (despite Godard’s mostly straight face) and keeping the whole thing engaging. I was pleasantly surprised by this feature and it’s probably turned into one of my all-time favourite interviews. (Criterion also includes a 22-second promo for this interview.)
Not great is the next “interview”, which is actually a 1980 short film simply called Godard 1980 made by Jon Jost, Donald Ranvaud, and Peter Wollen. It’s a frustrating 17-minute feature that I had to stop a little after the 11-minute mark (though I came back to it eventually, which wasn’t worth it). It features two of the filmmakers, Ranvaud and Wollen, asking Godard about Every Man for Himself, particularly what he meant by saying it’s his “second first film”, how he got financing, whether the film rejects his other work and whatever other thing pops in their head between awkward moments of silence (which there are a lot of). One of the frustrating parts (or the first of a few parts) is that Godard doesn’t really seem to want to be there and seems a bit annoyed by his interviewees and their questions. During the first bit of the interview he seems willing to answer their questions but as it progresses he becomes more vague, purposely cryptic, and it eventually becomes clear he’s simply messing with them since it’s obvious the two interviewees aren’t sure what to make of some his answers thanks to those awkward silences and their confused glances at each other. But the worst aspect of this interview is that it has been edited together in a similar manner as Every Man for Himself: it cuts off to random images while the interview continues, or goes to black, or messes around with camera placement and movement. It’s irritating and pointless and actually what initially drove me to shut the interview off. I can’t fault Criterion for including since it is related to the film and shows the Godard fans love, but it’s still not worth the time I felt.
The remaining features are all interviews that unfortunately don’t live up to the Cavett interview but are far better than Godard 1980. Criterion has first recorded a new interview with the founder of MK2, Martin Karmitz, who also produced the film. Karmitz recalls first meeting Godard on the set of Cleo from 5 to 7 and the working relationship they had from there. He covers Godard’s period after Weekend and then how Godard came to him to help in getting Every Man for Himself and then its reception at Cannes (which wasn’t very good, though Godard’s reaction to the reaction was pretty priceless by the sounds of it). But Karmitz then shares an amusing (though not entirely surprising) anecdote about showing the film to those critics that trashed it again, telling them Godard had made some changes. The interview runs 12-minutes.
Criterion next offers a couple of interviews from the actors’ perspective: Isabelle Huppert talks for 11-minutes about her experience on the film, which was actually fairly good despite some of the scenes she had to do as Godard led her through the scenes, making her feel comfortable. Interestingly she hadn’t seen many of Godard films beforehand so she wasn’t entirely sure what Godard wanted from the character (he told her he wanted “the face of suffering”) but after she saw Vivre sa vie she finally understood. Criterion also includes a 2010 interview with Nathalie Baye, where she focuses more on the shoot itself, made up most of the time with very small crews (sometimes as low as four people) and having to be receptive and patient when working with the filmmaker. Her interview runs about 17-minutes.
Criterion then digs up a 1981 interview with the two DPs for the film: Renato Berta and William Lubtchansky. This 20-minute segment from the German television program Kino 81 proves to be another rather fascinating interview as the two recall their experience in making the film, which you can gather was not all rainbows and sunshine. The two seem a bit irritated, though it’s hard to say if it’s just about the experience or maybe something. Godard had originally wanted three DPs to work on the film but ended up settling with the two of them, but despite the fact he wanted them he was pretty difficult to work with and seemed generally annoyed by their existence, getting to the point where they would just set up everything and leave to not have to deal with him. They talk about dividing the work and how they would resolve their conflicting styles, basically coming down to whomever was working the camera that day, while also still getting what Godard wanted. Though it’s a bit frustrating as there’s a lag in translations (the two speak French and there’s a German voice over translation, which is then translated in English on screen) it’s a particularly interesting interview covering some unusual aspects of the production.
The supplements then close with another 2010 interview, this time with composer Gabriel Yared, who talks for over 6-minutes about what it was like to work with Godard and delivering the music he wanted, and then the film’s theatrical trailer. An essay by Amy Taubin then covers some of the same ground as the disc supplements, getting into more detail about Godard’s work between this film and Weekend and his experimentations with sound and image, nicely rounding out the release.
Despite the one short film, Godard 80, which I didn’t care for at all, Criterion has put together a solid and fairly thorough set of supplements that really do manage to aid one in understanding what Godard was trying to accomplish. It’s probably one of the more satisfying collection of supplements I’ve come across from Criterion in a while.
Closing
This is actually one of the more impressive and satisfying releases Criterion has put together in a long while. It delivers a terrific audio and video presentation while stacking on a number of great supplements that examine the film from every possible angle. I full heartedly recommend it.
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