Jean-Luc Godard

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aox
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Re: Jean-Luc Godard

#1102 Post by aox » Wed Mar 03, 2021 3:55 pm

Well, that's the end of cinema. Pack it up.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Jean-Luc Godard

#1103 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Mar 03, 2021 4:01 pm

I don't have time to watch the video now, and I'm not sure if it answers this question, but is he indicating that those two films are made already, will be made in the future, or will be left as scripts?

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Big Ben
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Re: Jean-Luc Godard

#1104 Post by Big Ben » Wed Mar 03, 2021 4:08 pm

Godard will only retire when he physically dies.

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Noiretirc
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Re: Jean-Luc Godard

#1105 Post by Noiretirc » Sat Mar 06, 2021 5:16 pm

Well, he is 90. Don't all working 90+ year olds hint at retirement?

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knives
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Re: Jean-Luc Godard

#1106 Post by knives » Sat Mar 06, 2021 5:40 pm

Not Eastwood, he’s just taunting death.

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dda1996a
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Re: Jean-Luc Godard

#1107 Post by dda1996a » Sun Mar 28, 2021 1:34 pm

Does anyone remember (and can post a link to) the music "video" Godard did? I'm almost 100% it's Godard, and from what I remember it's supposed to be an anti-video, being a one shot of a tape deck?
Can't remember what it's called

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hearthesilence
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Re: Jean-Luc Godard

#1108 Post by hearthesilence » Sun Mar 28, 2021 4:08 pm

dda1996a wrote:
Sun Mar 28, 2021 1:34 pm
Does anyone remember (and can post a link to) the music "video" Godard did? I'm almost 100% it's Godard, and from what I remember it's supposed to be an anti-video, being a one shot of a tape deck?
Can't remember what it's called
When did he do this? FWIW, it sounds just like the Replacements when they did their first major label videos - they just filmed a speaker, using different takes for different videos/songs. (I don't think any of them watched Godard, and they released an anti-MTV song called "Seen Your Video" just a year before on their last indie LP, Let It Be, which is a landmark and still once of my very favorite LP's ever.)

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Rayon Vert
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Re: Jean-Luc Godard

#1109 Post by Rayon Vert » Sun Mar 28, 2021 4:29 pm

I don't think this is it by the description, but it is a music video clip Godard did in 1996. I'm not seeing anything else in the IMDB credits that fits the bill.

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Edw
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Re: Jean-Luc Godard

#1110 Post by Edw » Sun Mar 28, 2021 6:19 pm

dda1996a wrote:
Sun Mar 28, 2021 1:34 pm
Does anyone remember (and can post a link to) the music "video" Godard did? I'm almost 100% it's Godard, and from what I remember it's supposed to be an anti-video, being a one shot of a tape deck?
Can't remember what it's called
The France Gall song Rayon Vert links to is the only music video listed in Michael Witt's extensive bibliography (in "Jean-Luc Godard: Cinema Historian") of JLG's filmed and written work through 2012. At Letterboxd someone refers to the Gall video as the second one Godard made, without unfortunately saying what the first one was.
"Faut pas rêver" (1977) is referred to as a music video by someone else at Letterboxd, and it seems to be in the spirit of your inquiry. But it's actually three minutes of a kid looking at an offscreen tv broadcasting a complete video or musical performance while chatting with his Mom and eating an apple - all the sound is diegetic, so the music is somewhat muffled - followed by a bit of text from Godard wondering if tv will be more relevant to the people when the Left take power.

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Rayon Vert
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Re: Jean-Luc Godard

#1111 Post by Rayon Vert » Sun Mar 28, 2021 8:19 pm

Wikipedia has a list of one-shot music videos in case that might help find it (though I imagine it's English-voiced music biased).

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dda1996a
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Re: Jean-Luc Godard

#1112 Post by dda1996a » Mon Mar 29, 2021 3:07 am

hearthesilence wrote:
Sun Mar 28, 2021 4:08 pm
dda1996a wrote:
Sun Mar 28, 2021 1:34 pm
Does anyone remember (and can post a link to) the music "video" Godard did? I'm almost 100% it's Godard, and from what I remember it's supposed to be an anti-video, being a one shot of a tape deck?
Can't remember what it's called
When did he do this? FWIW, it sounds just like the Replacements when they did their first major label videos - they just filmed a speaker, using different takes for different videos/songs. (I don't think any of them watched Godard, and they released an anti-MTV song called "Seen Your Video" just a year before on their last indie LP, Let It Be, which is a landmark and still once of my very favorite LP's ever.)
Yes, it is The Replacement's Left of the Dial video what I had in my head. I guess someone connected it to Godard somewhere so my mind mixed the two up, thinking Godard was behind it. I guess someone wrote it was an anti-music video like Godard made some anti-movies or related the prankiness of both or something, which is why my brain remembered Godard when thinking about the video.
Thank you all for your help!

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zedz
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Re: Jean-Luc Godard

#1113 Post by zedz » Mon Mar 29, 2021 10:42 pm

Edw wrote:
Sun Mar 28, 2021 6:19 pm
The France Gall song Rayon Vert links to is the only music video listed in Michael Witt's extensive bibliography (in "Jean-Luc Godard: Cinema Historian") of JLG's filmed and written work through 2012. At Letterboxd someone refers to the Gall video as the second one Godard made, without unfortunately saying what the first one was.
I don't know who was saying that on Letterboxd, but if they were speaking loosely they might have been referring to his segment of Aria, which is in some ways a subversion of the form of the music video.

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colinr0380
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Re: Jean-Luc Godard

#1114 Post by colinr0380 » Tue Mar 30, 2021 4:11 am

Edw wrote:
Sun Mar 28, 2021 6:19 pm
"Faut pas rêver" (1977) is referred to as a music video by someone else at Letterboxd, and it seems to be in the spirit of your inquiry. But it's actually three minutes of a kid looking at an offscreen tv broadcasting a complete video or musical performance while chatting with his Mom and eating an apple - all the sound is diegetic, so the music is somewhat muffled - followed by a bit of text from Godard wondering if tv will be more relevant to the people when the Left take power.
I would count this as, albeit a rather unorthodox, music video! Its a 1978 television piece for the Patrick Juvet song Faut pas rêver, or "Dream On"

Here's the translation of the bulk of the piece (though not the few lines before the daughter is provided with the apple to eat or the rather crucial end part that runs under the final black screen) from the For Ever Godard book, which also notes that the voice of the mother "Camille" is played by Anne-Marie Miéville:
Mother: Are you going to Olivia's this afternoon?
Daughter: Yeah, sure!
Mother: Have you done the exercises she asked you to do?
Daughter: Well, yes, everything!
Mother: Yes, because you've got to work a little in between classes, the classes alone aren't enough.
Daughter: Yeah... but God... I practice my scales anyway and I study anyway!
Mother: Did you go swimming this morning?
Daughter: Uh-huh
Mother: What did you do? Competitive [...] things like that?
Daughter: We swam a few kilometres, it took ages... You know, it was... it's a 25 metre swimming-pool so when you do twenty lengths... it takes a while.
Mother: For the... er... modern competition system
Daughter: There were only four of us who managed a kilometre
Mother: Why do you do it then, do you like it?
Daughter: Yeah, I suppose... I don't... I dunno... Well, I managed 900 metres, I had another... 100 metres to do, and after that, you forget you're swimming, so...
Mother: Okay, we should put away the crockery from time to time, because its all very well leaving it to dry, but it mounts up, and then... there's... there's loads and it's always me who puts it away, I'm sick of it!
Daughter: Listen, I'll do it later, I've got to watch this.
Mother: You always say you'll do it later, you watch TV, you've always got something to do and you don't do it, and I end up doing it! It's not fair!
Daughter: That's not true...
Mother: Yes it is!
Final quotation:

"When the left has power will television still have so little to do with people?"
Last edited by colinr0380 on Thu Apr 01, 2021 9:41 am, edited 5 times in total.

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colinr0380
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Re: Jean-Luc Godard

#1115 Post by colinr0380 » Tue Mar 30, 2021 4:39 am

And here's a section from Raymonde Carasco's essay "The Forms of the Question" from For Ever Godard about the clip:
Raymond Carasco wrote:As is the case with all the brief forms invented by Godard, this little opus is not in the least a minor work. It is made up of two shots: first, a medium fixed shot of a little girl who is eating an apple for her afternoon snack after coming home from school; she is responding to her mother, whom we don't see (the voice of Anne-Marie Miéville is recognisable) and who asks her about her day, while the little girl watches, distractedly, a television set that is supposedly broadcasting the song of Patrick Juvet (whom we don't see either). Then, the second shot shows the following question appearing as text on a black background: "When the left is in power, will television still have so little of a relationship with people's lives?"

In this everyday dialogue, we find the emergence of a fundamental critical question that, in the mid-1970s, must have been perceived as quite violent (at that time we were right in the middle of the Giscardian regime, and it would take seven more years for the left to come to power). We also find here a little study on the problem of off-screen. The positioning out of frame, in turn, of the song, the mother, and of the television set leaves room for an image of ordinary life, convincing particularly in proportion to its modesty and to its passive nature (the little girl is tired: she is relaxing; she is doing nothing; all the active elements remain at a distance). But this image of ordinary life cannot be the only image called for by the question written on the screen.

The shot here possesses three layers of meaning: first, a polemical meaning, as the shot positions itself, in its simplicity, against false ideological images, since the frame obstructs the televised images and keeps them out of play. Second, an actual and relative meaning, since the shot does not pretend to fulfil the programme that the critical question announces. Third, the shot is a sample or glimpse of an alternative, creating a gap in the ordinary stream of dominant images. In this way, the shot here turns into a "Problem" in the Godardian sense that we are trying to construct: that is to say it is always at the same time polemical, prospective and dialectical.
That's quite a heady reading, but an interesting one. For my part I think it is also key that we cut to the black screen just as the mother starts berating the child for her lackadaisical manner and, after complaining about her not helping to wash up, the conversation continues under the black screen with words like "argent" thrown about, as the frustrated mother cuts her child's reverie short by bringing her own issues to the table about how much all this stuff is costing her.

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Edw
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Re: Jean-Luc Godard

#1116 Post by Edw » Tue Mar 30, 2021 10:20 am

colinr0380 wrote:
Tue Mar 30, 2021 4:39 am
And here's a section from Raymonde Carasco's essay "The Forms of the Question" from For Ever Godard about the clip…
Thanks for the two contextual posts! My casual acquaintance with the piece is betrayed by the fact that I apply a masculine pronoun to the girl. Should have said 'their'…

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colinr0380
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Re: Jean-Luc Godard

#1117 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Apr 23, 2021 2:06 pm

I think that I found the Patrick Juvet television performance that is supposed to be playing on the television behind the Godard film and have been experimenting a little in re-subverting Godard by playing both videos simultaneously! (If watching, use the play buttons in middle of the screen below the videos to start them simultaneously. It works best if you wait a few seconds for the loading bar of both videos to pre-load and then press the speaker button with the red "RES" letters on top of it which changes the volume levels to my preset of full volume for the Godard and muted for the Juvet video) They don't sync up perfectly but I found it still fun to watch, especially the contrast between the stark end title of the Godard and the glitzy wide shot of Juvet behind that piano! I wonder if the hairstyles were meant to be strangely complimentary also, or whether that was just the style of the time!

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rockysds
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Re: Jean-Luc Godard

#1118 Post by rockysds » Wed May 12, 2021 7:56 am

The discussion between Godard and Serge Daney from 1988, which is a significant part of Histoire(s) du cinéma is up (now with English subtitles) on Henri, the streaming service of la Cinémathèque française.

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Walter Kurtz
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Re: Jean-Luc Godard

#1119 Post by Walter Kurtz » Mon May 24, 2021 1:49 am

I saw something on eBay that might be of interest to some Godard aficionados. There's a facsimile version of Godard's screenplay for Le Mepris in a hardbound slipcased limited edition. The volume also appears to be include several pages of Georges Delerue's handwritten score for the Camille theme. It's pretty cool looking.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Jean-Luc Godard

#1120 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Jun 16, 2021 8:27 pm

Je vous salue, Marie

I revisited Hail Mary this morning, a film that I never understood the praise for in my youth, and was completely bowled over by its profound meditation (or rather, confrontation) of our insular corporeal contentions with invasive, enigmatic spiritual conditions, all while Godard amorphously transitions his own recycled interests into a new, even more macro domain of the cosmic. Godard touches on the confounding and indescribable sensations of one’s oppressive position against imposed mystifying yet elusive Truths, those which definitively exist but that we cannot tangibly 'know', and like The Young Pope, takes a specific allegory and uses that to translate the universal experience of this existential-spiritual crisis, flexibly suited for identification regardless of one's relationship with the specifics of the faith texts dissected.

I especially loved how much of the focus was lent to the idea of the imposition of a body onto the soul, and vice versa, repurposing a posture towards priscillianism onto Godard's longstanding ethos of language as a prison. Here so is the body, or all compromised earthly facets which constrict our expressiveness, harnessing our surging emotions and limiting or influencing our thoughts. So, much like Godard extrapolates the conditions he knows (language, image) throughout his work to seek the elusive Truth, Marie does within her narrative, but on an elevated plain where the stakes are acutely high and said tribulations are urgently sobering, leading into a more humbling odyssey through this perpetual vacillation of will power and concession.

For me, this is a film that is immensely compassionate towards one's egotism, or the narcissistic components of our identity, as the only vehicle we possess to transcribe and engage with the unknown; and so for Marie- the allegorical idea of being physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually violated by God without a palpable, comprehensible reciprocity, is symbolic for our own solipsistic struggles with higher powers. The finale is also one of Godard's best and most powerful reclamations of agency by merging the soul with tactile and visible demonstrations of expression, as Godard stresses the experience of wrestling with internal conflict over whether to apply lipstick or not. The camera remains still as Marie's hand stalls, oscillating the object with sincere, passionate attentiveness, barred from capitulating her psychospiritual reservations into a smooth state of poise. The camera needs to alter itself to block the action from behind Marie's head- much like Godard shot his actors in Vivre sa vie- in order to alleviate that stress, or perhaps because we are not worthy as spectators of being participants in Marie's moment of achieving the genesis of grace.

We then watch a paradoxical empowered surrender in Marie having donned the shade and giving herself over to the infinite space of life she cannot control, whilst affirming her desires as personal truths and wearing them finally without shame. What an inspiring presentation of personal growth, and an incredibly emotional way to end a film that continuously exposes the push-pull mechanics along the submission-defiance spectrum. Language, and bodies, and other corporeal phenomena may be inherently restrictive, but there simultaneously exist bountiful possibilities for realising adaptable freedoms. This seems to be Godard's own branded definition of grace, and I love the methods he uses to channel this humbling symbiosis between audience and saint, as much as the ones that segregate us and her from the futile holds on impermanent glimpses of grace- mirroring as synonymous to a comfortability with subjective truth.

Anne-Marie Miéville's unofficial prequel, Le livre de Marie, that plays directly before Hail Mary on the Cohen disc (as one "film"), is integral to complement Godard’s film (and honestly, in some ways hardly distinguishable stylistically- though there's a necessary gentleness to Miéville''s rumination). This first act establishes an innocent’s powerlessness, and yet supreme authorship over interpretative experience given life’s constraints, by placing child-Marie in the center of her parents’ divorce, evoking her resilience and reframing her capabilities from youth. These are not esoterically divine traits that alienate the audience, but familiar ones we too possess. Marie is us, and we are Marie; she represents our struggle on a human level while existing on a more pious layer of existence only through coercive divine intervention, much like Lenny Belardo. We can access what we need to- the endless, exhaustive and miraculous engagement with God- and differentiate ourselves from the concrete circumstances. We all have our own cards that have been dealt, and we process our relationship between acceptance and rejection, indifference and curiosity, serenity and dysphoria, in our own way- but that which is not, at least broadly, all that different from how Marie or Godard use their respective schematic tools to interpolate Truth.

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furbicide
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Re: Jean-Luc Godard

#1121 Post by furbicide » Thu Jun 17, 2021 12:25 am

Serendipitous thread bump, twbb! I just watched Jonás Trueba's excellent 2019 film The August Virgin last night, and parts of it reminded me very much of Hail Mary (although stylistically much more reminiscent of Rohmer than Godard). A late scene in the film seems like a direct quotation.

Personally, I've always been drawn to this period of Godard's work and this film in particular, even if I could never shake the feeling there's less to it than meets the eye – I guess it felt like a poetry reading where the juxtaposition of the words and rhythm seduce you but you soon realise that you're not quite sure what it is exactly that the speaker is expressing. But you describe the film beautifully, and make me keen to revisit it too. (I'm also a big fan of Miéville's short, although I find it hard to consider them as being in any way part of the same project.)

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Jean-Luc Godard

#1122 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Jun 17, 2021 1:08 am

Thanks for the rec! I often feel with this period of Godard that there's "less to it than meets the eye" in the sense of specific intention behind how to read each inclusion of image/sound, but Godard has been outspoken about the subjective truths we find while mining information through novel methods with relentless self and stimuli-awareness. I think the film's general thesis would be that it's about a woman who is forced into a situation- or as Ebert put it, Mary becomes humanized and familiar to us, flawed and all- and copes with it; but on a larger scale that seems to be what all of Godard's films are about: Our challenges and successes navigating the constraints and freedoms of our shackles and tools, in imposed systems of government, economy, culture, language, social/romantic relationships, personal morality, and all the way back out to cosmic order. It makes total sense to me that he would broaden his theme of interest to the immaculate conception, for it aggressively underscores the unsolicited circumstances inflicted upon us that we nonetheless confront with resilience. It's the ultimate relationship between the individual and the faceless system at large, though here emphasizing a possible harmony through viewing this engagement as spiritually opportunistic rather than only oppressive, a reframe from violence into emancipated bliss within the restrictions of our conditions.

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Re: Jean-Luc Godard

#1123 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Jun 22, 2021 2:40 am

I just rewatched Hail Mary again, and had missed a crucial line the other day: When Gabriel aggressively convinces Joseph to stick with Mary, he asks what "'Zero' and 'Mary' have in common," the answer being "Mary's body." Godard's preoccupation with returning to zero has found its inherent paradox in the miracles of the ordinary, starting with the body that holds the enigmatic soul Godard searches for, the body which Marie desires to be a vessel of freedom and purity and yet cannot help but be violated and attach incessant flooding of ideas to in the human struggle to actually practice 'returning to zero'. My favorite part of the film is shortly after this when Marie is beginning to accept her situation and optimistically declares "let the soul be the body," willfully merging her ideals in harmonic cohesion, but this too is fleeting as Godard knows too well.

David Sterritt's essay in the Cohen booklet is quite good, particularly his reading of the final shot, and how Mary's open mouth precedes what cannot be fathomed, what is not effable, and in the silence serves the mirrored function of her chaste body, in signifying all the possibilities of meaning that would be nullified if pronounced in tangibility. However, I think Sterritt misses a crucial element in his connection, that this is the aura she wished her virginal body would provide, and yet her expectation yielded disappointment triggering the psychological crisis she experiences in the central narrative. So, since she did not attain this through her ignorant corporeal mirage -that may be zero but is distracted from the soul, and because in the end she does achieve some kind of empowerment in balancing the space between what is palpable and what is mystical (the application of lipstick is emblematic of the former and the open mouth final shot signals the latter), we arrive at a connotative image of the growth she has accrued through the cyclical stages of acceptance and combativeness, and will continue to attend to this inner conflict as a marker of being 'alive'; of having a soul.

This is Godard's cumulative contradiction of the desire for zero, truth, and meaning- setting elliptical sights on a surrender to spiritual enigmas, yet resigned to a physical substance that does not hold these answers and that cannot be accessed with true purity (whether influenced by 'culture' or socialization or one's own tendency to stray to philosophical or psychological drives clouding that grace). This is also a noteworthy reversal from his usual interests- where the tangible is what is idealized, or manipulated into tools to comb for truth, but here it's recognized as the furthest point from the answer being sought -or rather, than he thought he was seeking- and yet it's undoubtedly a key to the lifelong journey of discovery. It's the only reliable key we've got. So has 'returning to zero' morphed from an absolute theoretical goal into a fluid attitude? I like to think so, and it's a logical evolution of maturity for such a zealous artist and curious human being. As Marie says at the end, Godard didn’t ask for his body, or mind, or heart, but it contains his soul and he will try to tap into that soul with immediacy and, now, humility. This film just builds and builds until it becomes my worldview.

Stefan Andersson
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Re: Jean-Luc Godard

#1124 Post by Stefan Andersson » Fri Jul 16, 2021 1:16 pm

Fabrice Aragno on his feature directing debut, and on Godard´s final two films:
https://variety.com/2021/film/global/je ... 235014630/


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