Jean-Luc Godard

[Michael]

I have yet to enjoy watching a Godard film.

Not even Breathless?

I can see how Contempt can be a torture for some folks to endure but may I recommend you to stroll over to the Contempt thread to pick up some of colin's wonderful insights?

[ando]

Among the things Colin wrote this stood out:

... I would venture to suggest that to hate Contempt is to hate the very idea of cinema itself!

Therein lies the problem. When I watch this film I'm completely aware of the idea of cinema. Godard's approach separates me so much from the material considered that one's usual concerns: time, narrative, character development - become irrelevant. Suddenly we're in a modal realm of film reality and I'm forced to make associations that have no direct emotional basis - either in collective memory or the film's diagesis. I don't want to think when I watch a film - I want to feel. The idea of cinema is not nearly as powerful to me as the experience of cinema itself. And with this film, to a large degree, we're denied the experience. I certainly have a problem with considering the cinematic experience while I'm experiencing it. It's far too abstract an activity where the production (and reception) of pleasure, let's face it, is of paramount importance.

[Noiretirc]

Among the things Colin wrote this stood out:

... I would venture to suggest that to hate Contempt is to hate the very idea of cinema itself!

Therein lies the problem. When I watch this film I'm completely aware of the idea of cinema. Godard's approach separates me so much from the material considered that one's usual concerns: time, narrative, character development - become irrelevant. Suddenly we're in a modal realm of film reality and I'm forced to make associations that have no direct emotional basis - either in collective memory or the film's diagesis. I don't want to think when I watch a film - I want to feel. The idea of cinema is not nearly as powerful to me as the experience of cinema itself. And with this film, to a large degree, we're denied the experience. I certainly have a problem with considering the cinematic experience while I'm experiencing it. It's far too abstract an activity where the production (and reception) of pleasure, let's face it, is of paramount importance.

I almost cried while watching Notre Musique (again) tonight. You cannot deny me this feeling. "Usual" shmushual. Reconsider all that you expect of film while dancing with Godard. The "idea" of cinema yields so many more doors and angles. Feel and think.

I'll experience Contempt. Soon.

[Michael]

... I would venture to suggest that to hate Contempt is to hate the very idea of cinema itself!

Therein lies the problem. When I watch this film I'm completely aware of the idea of cinema. Godard's approach separates me so much from the material considered that one's usual concerns: time, narrative, character development - become irrelevant. Suddenly we're in a modal realm of film reality and I'm forced to make associations that have no direct emotional basis - either in collective memory or the film's diagesis. I don't want to think when I watch a film - I want to feel. The idea of cinema is not nearly as powerful to me as the experience of cinema itself. And with this film, to a large degree, we're denied the experience. I certainly have a problem with considering the cinematic experience while I'm experiencing it. It's far too abstract an activity where the production (and reception) of pleasure, let's face it, is of paramount importance.

I haven't seen Contempt in years but what you wrote wholly fits my first few experiences with Pierrot le fou. But it was that one very lazy day I decided to give it another chance, with my brain half-numb, meaning I was not planning to participate the film with brain work. I just took the film "as is" then the emotions "fossiling" underneath the "vinyl wallpaper" of pop references started to seep through, but it did require some work, just on a different level. My respect for this film remains tremendous however I prefer Breathless which I had just rediscovered. It doesn't beat on your head or stuff in your throat with what cinema means to Godard, etc. blah blah. Breathless seems a very pure film, at least to me. With all the modern techniques Godard threw in the film, the film still manages to burn up with emotions, especially sweet melancholy as love, hope, dream, youth getting dashed scene by scene. I love its pacing, it flies by so quickly, like a dart that when I'm left with Michele sighing the last blow of smoke and his love Patricia turning back to us for good, I get blown away. How simple that is and it remains so breathtakingly effective.

[LQ]

I love its pacing, it flies by so quickly, like a dart that when I'm left with Michele sighing the last blow of smoke and his love Patricia turning back to us for good, I get blown away. How simple that is and it remains so breathtakingly effective.

You've reminded me of Godard's terse but perfect account for the sense of urgency in Breathless, "Adolescence, youth, fear, despair, solitude". No scene in Breathless so powerfully captures all those elements more than the last...and it leaves me breathless too.

[Noiretirc]

Do you CriOrgs accept the periods that have so often been ascribed to Godard? (ie New Wave = 59-67, Political = 68-72, Second Wave = 79-88, etc.) Is that partitioning just a little too convenient?

Watching Notre Musique again, I got the sense that Godard is a damn good actor!

[domino harvey]

If you want to see Godard playing perfectly to the camera, watch Wenders' Room 666, where Godard times his speech perfectly to the length of film in the camera and masterfully plays his entire performance within the limits afforded

[justeleblanc]

Do you CriOrgs accept the periods that have so often been ascribed to Godard? (ie New Wave = 59-67, Political = 68-72, Second Wave = 79-88, etc.) Is that partitioning just a little too convenient?

Maybe 67 should be renamed '67ish', same goes with 88ish, etc etc.

I'm also not a big fan of the names. His first 15 features definitely stand out to me as a period, but I'm not comfortable calling Contempt, and those that followed, new wave films. Would it make more sense to use certain major films that mark turning points in his career thematically and formally? If that's the case then I would use these mile-markers:

Contempt
Week-End
Tout va bien/Numero Deux
Histoire(s) du Cinema

But I suspect others would disagree.

[Mr Sausage]

I don't want to think when I watch a film - I want to feel.

Surely one can do both?

[justeleblanc]

I don't want to think when I watch a film - I want to feel.

I'm getting a dot com vibe from that.

[domino harvey]

I don't want to think when I watch a film - I want to feel.

I'm getting a dot com vibe from that.

I thought this was just as bad:

I certainly have a problem with considering the cinematic experience while I'm experiencing it.

A Godard thread is probably not the best place to look to for support for anti-intellectual arguments

[ando]

probably.

[FerdinandGriffon]

@Noiretirc: I would second Domino's alternative suggestions for good Godard primers. I might also add University press of Mississippi's Jean-Luc Godard: Interviews, as I do think that the absolute best way to understand the man is through his own work and writings. Speaking of which, pick up Lionsgate's Godard Directors' Series collection of 4 later films, you won't regret it.

As for For Ever Godard, it's indispensable for the serious Godard fanatic, but virtually useless if you're not familiar with his late and experimental work. There's very little in that has to do with the sixties films that you've enjoyed so much. Instead. my other recommendation would be a much older collection of essays called The Films of Jean-Luc Godard. It contains at least one essay for each of the sixties films through One Plus One, is well illustrated, and small enough to carry around in a jacket pocket. Long out of print, it can be picked up cheaply on amazon.

I wasn't looking.

Ando, if you really don't want to think when you watch a film, and actually believe that thinking and feeling aren't intimately, inseparably connected, then not only should you give up immediately on Godard, you should also probably abandon serious film altogether, as with that attitude, you'll never be able to fully appreciate the vast majority of the great works of art the medium has produced. One of the major themes of Godard's work (especially his later films) is the connection between emotion and intellect, feeling and thought. He understands this relationship, and as a result, loves film perhaps more than any other director ever has.

[colinr0380]

If you really don't want to think when you watch a film, and actually believe that thinking and feeling aren't intimately, inseparably connected, then not only should you give up immediately on Godard, you should also probably abandon serious film altogether, as with that attitude, you'll never be able to fully appreciate the vast majority of the great works of art the medium has produced. One of the major themes of Godard's work (especially his later films) is the connection between emotion and intellect, feeling and thought. He understands this relationship, and as a result, loves film perhaps more than any other director ever has.

I wish I'd had the eloquence to have written something like this back in April! ( 8-[ )

[Michael]

I agree with you, Ferdinand.

My biggest fault with Pierrot le fou was thinking too much into the film, missing out the emotional core of the film. After a few viewings, it still didn't do anything for me but it was that one morning when my brain was half numb, half awake and I was just feeling like giving Pierrot le fou another chance. I just kicked back on a sofa and let the images of the film sweep over me. Finally the emotions emerged through the very stubborn surface. Sometimes it's good to shut down your brain a bit and just let the images find their way to your heart. Godard is not manipulative in that department, something in which movies like Steel Magnolias and Terms of Endearment excel in.

[Kirkinson]

if you really don't want to think when you watch a film, and actually believe that thinking and feeling aren't intimately, inseparably connected, then not only should you give up immediately on Godard, you should also probably abandon serious film altogether, as with that attitude, you'll never be able to fully appreciate the vast majority of the great works of art the medium has produced.

I think I'd go even further and say that such a person would never be able to fully appreciate the vast majority of the great works of art any medium has produced.

[Noiretirc]

@Noiretirc: I would second Domino's alternative suggestions for good Godard primers. I might also add University press of Mississippi's Jean-Luc Godard: Interviews, as I do think that the absolute best way to understand the man is through his own work and writings. Speaking of which, pick up Lionsgate's Godard Directors' Series collection of 4 later films, you won't regret it.

As for For Ever Godard, it's indispensable for the serious Godard fanatic, but virtually useless if you're not familiar with his late and experimental work. There's very little in that has to do with the sixties films that you've enjoyed so much. Instead. my other recommendation would be a much older collection of essays called The Films of Jean-Luc Godard. It contains at least one essay for each of the sixties films through One Plus One, is well illustrated, and small enough to carry around in a jacket pocket. Long out of print, it can be picked up cheaply on amazon.

Thank you, Ferdinand, and others who are helping me as I begin this journey. I suspect that For Ever Godard is at 35000ft/600mph heading in my general direction as I type. (As is that Lionsgate box, plus several other Godards.) I fully expect that, for a time, the cart will be rolling down a hill, with the horse chasing after it!

I have this strange inkling that I'll enjoy late Godard as much as, or more than, early Godard. I do believe that Notre Musique is vastly underappreciated amongst CriOrgians in general, with some notable exceptions of course.

I will check out these other recommendations.

[ando]

if you really don't want to think when you watch a film, and actually believe that thinking and feeling aren't intimately, inseparably connected, then not only should you give up immediately on Godard, you should also probably abandon serious film altogether, as with that attitude, you'll never be able to fully appreciate the vast majority of the great works of art the medium has produced.

I think I'd go even further and say that such a person would never be able to fully appreciate the vast majority of the great works of art any medium has produced.

Am I really supposed to think about that?

Whenever I watch a Godard film (Contempt, in particular) I'm acutely aware that I'm watching a film about film: about the history of film; about the history of the persona in film, about the use of reference in film, about the history of the use of reference in film... ad infinitum. Godard is not a born filmmaker. His narratives are too full of quotes. His flow is simply too cerebral for my taste. It's like watching a b-ball player mimic every move he has ever learned so adroitly that you can't discern the soul of the guy. You can't feel it - there's something vital missing. And to me, a film has to have that soul - it doesn't always have to be transparent, but it has to be there.

Godard isn't vital to the form. He may be necessary (in many ways), granted; but vital? No.

[FerdinandGriffon]

Whenever I watch a Godard film (Contempt, in particular) I'm acutely aware that I'm watching a film about film: about the history of film; about the history of the persona in film, about the use of reference in film, about the history of the use of reference in film... ad infinitum. Godard is not a born filmmaker. His narratives are too full of quotes. His flow is simply too cerebral for my taste. It's like watching a b-ball player mimic every move he has ever learned so adroitly that you can't discern the soul of the guy. You can't feel it - there's something vital missing. And to me, a film has to have that soul - it doesn't always have to be transparent, but it has to be there.

Godard isn't vital to the form. He may be necessary (in many ways), granted; but vital? No.

First of all, you just wiped out pretty much the entirety of Post-Modernism (in any medium) with one blow there. Maybe not so wise. Secondly, I'd like to repeat that thinking and feeling are inseparably tied, even if paradoxically. Pierrot le Fou being a perfect example. Throughout the film, an intellectual man and an instinctive, emotional woman are struggling to love one another, something that often seems an impossibility, but at the film's end they both die, and we hear them united permanently, as they quote lines from Rimbaud in voiceover, as the camera pans across the ocean. It's one of the most beautiful, heartfelt, soulful moments in the cinema. So much so that one critic wrote that he had, in viewing the film, watched Godard die of heartbreak at losing Anna Karina. Godard has soul, as anyone who has watched Contempt, Pierrot, Hail Mary, or the Histoire(s) with both an open heart and an open mind can tell you.

I think that you hit the nail on the head when you said that Godard is to cerebral for your taste. You may be too confounded by his intellectual side to see his poetry. Just don't make the huge mistake of assuming it isn't there.

One more thing, I challenge anyone to watch Histoire(s) du Cinema and tell me that Godard isn't vital to cinema, past, present and future. (edit: Anyone except for Ando)

[Mr Sausage]

Whenever I watch a Godard film (Contempt, in particular) I'm acutely aware that I'm watching a film about film: about the history of film; about the history of the persona in film, about the use of reference in film, about the history of the use of reference in film... ad infinitum.

Ok. So what do you do when you're watching Hamlet and you get to the play-within-a-play stuff, and then realize really the whole play is about acting and theatre? Does it ruin Hamlet for you?

Godard is not a born filmmaker. His narratives are too full of quotes.

I guess John Milton was not a born poet, then, because there's at least one allusion per line in Paradise Lost, but usually much, much more. It's a book written on top of other books (critics surmise Milton read everything available for a European then to read, and then stuck it all into Paradise Lost). Speaking of what critics say, they often say of Shakespeare that he was a born comic playwright but had to teach himself how to write tragedy. Don't think that's ever taken away from Hamlet, Lear, MacBeth and stuff.

But going back to the use of quotes in film: very, very few filmmakers ever have the chance to invent their language whole. Everyone else has to learn how to communicate through images from other films, just as writers have to learn how to write books and poems and plays from other books, poems, and plays. All but a few movies must, by necessity, quote others. It's just how things work. Originality does not require having no sources at all. And having a lot sources has never hindered originality (sometimes all it takes is one single source to destroy an artist's individual voice).

Anyway, I'm always surprised when film fans state artistic principles that assert films shouldn't be doing things which are perfectly acceptable in other arts and artists whom most would consider at the pinnacle of western culture.

[HerrSchreck]

if you really don't want to think when you watch a film, and actually believe that thinking and feeling aren't intimately, inseparably connected, then not only should you give up immediately on Godard, you should also probably abandon serious film altogether, as with that attitude, you'll never be able to fully appreciate the vast majority of the great works of art the medium has produced.

I think I'd go even further and say that such a person would never be able to fully appreciate the vast majority of the great works of art any medium has produced.

I can't resist.

I'd go even further and say that if you guys can't understand the very simple point that ando is trying to make here-- especially without sniffing down thru rarified air some personally insulting piece of condescention at him/her ("First of all, you just wiped out pretty much the entirety of Post-Modernism (in any medium) with one blow there. Maybe not so wise." "not only should you give up immediately on Godard, you should also probably abandon serious film altogether, as with that attitude, you'll never be able to fully appreciate the vast majority of the great works of art the medium has produced")-- then you probably shouldn't be Engaging In Artistic Discussion With Other People.

What is it with Godardians? This sneering and belittling, and refusal to brook some of the simplest and most obvious-- and rather common-- allegations of weakness in JLG, is reaching Furmanek proportions.

Ando's point is simple-- he/she doesn't find the film "a good film". He/she doesn't find enough of a film in there. Nowhere in The World Book of Laws & Iron Facts does it say "JLG Works; Violators Will Be Prosecuted". In fact it is acknowledged by one of Contempt's most vocal and illustrious defenders that the film is problemmatic and took them years to accept it on it's face as a functioning artwork (was that Rosenbaum or Sarris?).

If Albert Einstein decided suddenly that he was a director and made a bad melodrama woven around the cultivation of the theory of Relativity, and ando said "yes I understand that Einsteins theory of relativity is in itself a work of genius, but as a piece of filmmaking the film is fricking terrible, Einstein just doesn't know what he's doing here, and if I want to break my suspension of disbelief and actively ponder Relativity and thus shatter the magical spell woven by the cinema, I'll at least watch a documentary!" is ando truly a lost cause in the arts because he won't engage with the work's discussion in 'intellectual terms'?

Of course not. Everybody has something that bugs them in a film, or a filmmaker that just gets on their nerves. That JLG can get on anyone's nerves should certainly be a surprise to no-one, much less the most devoted Godardite. I'm a Frank Zappa lunatic, but the last thing I'd expect is that the man be for all tastes.

I think Contempt is one of the two or three worst films in the CC, and the most overrated, frankly. I swear on all that is unholy I'd buy Armageddon before I bought Contempt... at very least I could pull it out when company comes over and pass the time with it. I find JLG's "cinema dialog" pea under the shell to hide the fact that the man has no filmmaking chops. For me talking about cinema, and riffing about forms & genres (not to mention forms & genres one hasn't even worked with beforehand, let alone mastered; for example Zappa riffed and parodied all forms & genres of music-- and took them beyond the frontier-- but showed he could execute them as well as anyone) is not cinema itself.

I think this 'cinema dialog' way too loud to be rewarding, not to mention poetic. Good filmmakers reference other filmmakers and Film all the time in their works... echoes, touches, tributes... but for the most part, when it comes to melodrama (the narrative of Contempt), cinema is good enough on it's own. It doesn't have to be squared, notwithstanding so unsubtly.

For me JLG is the ultimate impatient juvenile, in a rush to his legend without making the neccessary stops of time and craft and experience along the way. He always seems--ironically-- less interested in cinema than in his place in it. Less interested in his films than in the way his films fit into history. He seems to want to engage history directly, rather than by subtler proxy through the medium of a great film.

For me real cinema comes, not from the "thing" that is cinema itself, but from the inside of human beings. The thing that is cinema is merely a medium for something that comes from within highly skilled individuals who have learned a very difficult craft that integrates multiple conceits. It's this 'something'-- and the sense of craft-- that I find missing in Godard. If you turn the volume down from 'blaring', everything disappears. Pea under the shell.

[accatone]

you cant resist-thats fo' sure
(everything has allready be said and i/we allready know only too good where you coming from so there is nothing more to add besides a silly emoticon.) thank good people can resist posting on silent threads when the dont have anything new to add to good disussion.

[Michael]

Godard is not a born filmmaker.

I don't know about that after seeing the fantastic, weird, gorgeous Alphaville last night. I thought Breathless was nothing but a piece of pure cinema. Maybe that makes me a JLG convert now.

[FerdinandGriffon]

First of all, apologies all round if I've been snarky or condescending. It's just that, to me, Ando's argument that Godard is not a born filmmaker, not "vital to the form", just because his films demand some level of intellectual effort on the part of the audience, is pretty intolerable. Even his statement that film's (and I think we can safely extrapolate this to the rest of arts) primary goal is pleasure is one that I find terribly troubling. There are a hundred works of art that it would be revolting and perverse to take pleasure from, but that nonetheless are works of art.

And HerrSchreck, I understand that you don't find the "I know not what" that makes great cinema in Godard. That's a matter of personal taste that I respect. But as much as you may dislike Godard, do you really Ando should approach film insisting that it's a problem if a film makes him think? Also, I do think you're only confusing matters with your Theory of Relativity metaphor. There is little or no place in a scientific theory for poetry. However, intellectual exploration, intellectual theorizing has always been a part of cinema. Cinema is not just aesthetics, it's also intellectual; the two can be separated within an individual film, but not within the medium as a whole.

As for poetry being impossible withing the "cinema dialog", I press you to watch the Histoire(s). There you have a work almost entirely assemble from quotes and references, but even if one doesn't pick up on all (or any) of the references, it's breathtakingly beautiful, and the closest thing to a visual poem that I've ever seen.

[tavernier]

Made in USA trailer.