By the Bluest of Seas

from top to bottom: At Sea (P. Hutton); Miami Vice (M. Mann); As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (J. Mekas); Film Socialisme (JLG); City of Pirates (R. Ruiz); Water and Power (P. O'Neill)

Godard Marathon: Final Thoughts/Crude Rankings

29 films in 7 weeks, spanning 45 years. One director. My plan to run through the essentials in the oeuvre of Jean-Luc Godard was something that had been brewing in my head for awhile. As I first talked about in my initial post Preparing For A Godard Marathon, I went through a large handful of the director's work awhile back, and though I was unquestionably intrigued by the films I was watching, I skipped around the years with little knowledge of how Godard had evolved as a filmmaker over the decades and the intimate ties between his cinema and his life, and was thus entirely befuddled and, quite frankly, put off by a few of these works that played as a kind of cinema I never knew existed, let alone had seen before. And so while I initially chalked the experience up as a kind of "Interesting filmmaker, but I'm not quite sure I 'get it' " type deal, I was never close to being satisfied. Does one really have to be an academic to appreciate this filmmaker? Can a regular guy who is just interested in interesting movies enjoy watching these films? These were the question that nagged me. And so this marathon was born.

So now that I'm done, now that I've watched a majority of Godard's essential films in order, what's the consensus? Well, in short: I've found the experience of watching these movies, and the experience of reading, discussing and thinking about them to be one of the most rewarding cinematic ventures I've ever partaken in. In my "Preparing..." post, I stated - in admittedly obscure terms - that my goal with the marathon was to "get a better handle" on Godard, and to "identify the shape of this man's body of work; something that would make sense of it all." I had a small epiphany around the midway point of the marathon where things clicked, and I realized what my real goal was; I wanted to simply learn how to watch a Godard film. An abstract notion yes, and one that I feel I'm still in the process of learning (and one that will continue as I revisit these film in the years ahead). But I certainly feel as though this marathon has given me a leg up. It is rare to come across a filmmaker such as Godard; one who so thoroughly challenges your preconceptions of what cinema is and can be on a consistent basis; one that, through even his most subversive works, is able to conjure up such beauty and stimulation as to render the final product something much closer to a piece of glorious art than merely a "film". The fact that Godard's work over the years remained so resoundingly personal was perhaps the biggest revelation for me, and it's another fascinating aspect that makes his body of work one of the most singularly unique and compelling in all of cinema.

So needless to say, I deem this marathon a grand success. At the very least, it's given me a fair amount of insight into a director who remained enigmatic and impenetrable to me for a long time, and it's also given me a large handful of rich, exciting cinematic works to revisit and scrape more from for years to come. My original intention was to do this on my own, without blogging about it at all. I finally decided that it would be neat to keep a record of my initial reactions and thoughts on these films for future reference, and so while the write-ups were often sloppy and done in a hasty manner, I like to think that they at least accurately reflect my raw impressions. Getting comments in the comments section was one of the funner aspects throughout all of this for me. In particular, Ed Howard from Only The Cinema, who helped me comprise the list of titles for the marathon, provided commentary throughout that was just awesome; insightful, intelligent and full of tidbits. Erich Kuersten from Acidemic always had kind words and gave me a plug over at his great site, which was really cool. Doniphon, another frequent commenter, is in the early stages of going through the films of Jean-Pierre Melville (another filmmaker I am sadly lacking in) at his wonderful site The Long Voyage Home, and I will enjoy keeping up with that. And I implore everyone to check in with Jake at Not Just Movies, who's been conducting his own run through of Godard's films (his project predates mine), and the intelligence and thorough analysis he brings to his breakdown of these films has never failed to amaze me.

At first I thought it would be fun, once I was all finished, to rank the films from the marathon. Then I figured that these rankings are always kind of goofy and arbitrary, and it'd be a little silly for me to rank all these films on mostly just first impressions after driving home the fact that they are, for the most part, incredibly dense and no doubt command repeat viewings. Then I said, ah what the hell, someone might find it interesting. So here it is, my rankings of all 29 films I watched during this marathon, warts and all, and obviously open to constant revision as I continue to revisit them in the future:

1. Contempt (1963)
2. Pierrot le fou (1965)
3. Passion (1982)
4. Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1966)
5. Nouvelle vague (1990)
6. Week End (1967)
7. Notre Musique (2004)
8. A Married Woman (1964)
9. La Chinoise (1967)
10. Masculin, feminin (1966)
11. Hail Mary (1985)
12. Made in U.S.A. (1966)
13. First Name: Carmen (1983)
14. Vladimir and Rosa (1970)
15. Vivre sa vie (1962)
16. JLG/JLG, autoportrait de decembre(1995)
17. Helas pour moi (1993)
18. Numero deux (1975)
19. Breathless (1960)
20. King Lear (1987)
21. Alphaville (1965)
22. Anticipation (1967)
23. A Woman Is A Woman (1961)
24. Band of Outsiders (1964)
25. In Praise of Love (2001)
26. Le Gai Savoir (1968)
27. Tout va bien (1972)
28. A Letter to Jane (1972)
29. Detective (1985)

Godard Marathon Day 17: In Praise Of Love (2001); Notre Musique (2004)

In Praise Of Love (2001); viewing: first

Ravaged with a nasty bout of allergies (as I've been for the past week, ugh), I finally settled in for my final day of Godard viewing. Up first was Éloge de l'amour aka In Praise of Love, the 2001 feature from Godard that I knew very little about, apart from the fact that while it received a pretty dismal reception from American critics upon its initial release (a mere month after 9/11), Godard aficionados generally tend to hold it in extremely high regard as yet another epochal film in the directors oeuvre. The film is a quiet yet deep meditation on age, love, memory and of course, cinema, that is split up into two parts: the first, filmed in black and white and set in Paris, deals with a man named Edgar (Bruno Putzulu) trying to realize a project that is to be about the four stages of love: "the encounter," "physical passion," "separation," and "reunion." For this project, he is seeking a mysterious, unnamed woman (Cecile Camp) whom he feels will be perfect for the part of the lead character, Eglantine, and goes about tracking her down. Around the hour mark, the film switches to saturated, acidic color and the title card "Two Years Earlier". Here, in addition to learning that indeed Edgar and the mystery woman (whose name we learn is Elle) had a history together, we are shown the story of the proprietors of a hotel who are former Resisters, and have sold the story of their lives during that period to Steven Spielberg to make a Hollywood film out of, starring Juliette Binoche.

By now I've gotten quite used to the abstract methodology of these later Godard films that places minimal importance on plot, and major importance on emotion and the senses, and have found for the most part no trouble connecting with the majority of them on both emotional and aesthetic levels, getting swept away by the poetic beauty of the images and the graceful flow of the dialogue. Those qualities are undoubtedly present in In Praise of Love, and while I did admire the film quite a bit, I never found myself completely enraptured by it, and yet I am utterly baffled as far as identifying what it was that kept me from fully embracing it. There were things here I loved: the switch to brilliant colors for the last half hour; the use of literary quotations once again for much of the dialogue that seemed heartfelt and unusually poetic; and one particular scene towards the end I found to be simply gorgeous, involving Elle questioning her grandmother on her wartime experience. The grandmother sits with Elle and recounts tales of traveling across America, relaying her experiences in the concentration camps to audiences who listened to and viewed her then the way people do television now. There is a pronounced sadness to the scene, and all throughout it the grandmother is holding a lit cigarette at rest, her hand positioned underneath a lamp, the smoke rising up through the top of the shade giving the impression of a quiet volcano spewing steam. It's a poignant visual metaphor for the years of pent up emotions the grandmother has obviously been carrying around, and which are only now finally being expressed in the presence of her granddaughter.

And yet for all of the wonderful things, I still can't help but feel that something was lacking for me here on a single viewing, and I just can't rank this among the best Godard pictures I've seen. It's frustrating for me that I'm not able to work out what exactly it is that left me slightly underwhelmed; there were many things particularly in the first hour of the film, having to do with the relationship Edgar has to an older art dealer and various characters appearing in both segments that highly confused me, and perhaps this aspect of the film (an aspect I felt was probably an important one) will clear up for me with future viewings, and allow me to pick up some subtle stuff I missed. But I would be lying if I said that In Praise of Love didn't leave me quite intrigued, especially in regards to its form and the implications behind it. And don't get me wrong, I did feel the ideas coming out of it and the undercurrent of sadness and nostalgia here. I just didn't feel it for some reason. And so I will leave it at this: Though there was something missing for me in the experience, I am far from through with this film.
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Notre Musique (2004); viewing: first

My last film in this Godard marathon is 2004's Notre Musique, a haunting and despairing movie separated into three parts inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy: the first part, titled Kingdom I: Hell, is a 10 minute montage of war footage - both real and fake - depicting the carnage of battle and the suffering that is brought about by war, set to classical music. The second part, titled Kingdom II: Purgatory, takes up the bulk of the film, and it introduces a narrative involving Godard himself arriving in Sarajevo to give a lecture at an arts conference. A second narrative strand introduces us to two young women; the first, Judith Learner (Sarah Adler), is a Jewish journalist from Israel, who has come to speak to the French ambassador to Bosnia regarding peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. The second women is named Olga (Nade Dieu), and is the niece of Godard's translator, who broods and expresses to her uncle the desire to commit suicide. The third segment, titled Kingdom III: Heaven, shows Olga, now apparently in the afterlife, wandering around a wooded area by the sea guarded by U.S. Marines. She eventually settles down near a young man eating an apple, and the film ends as she takes the apple from him and begins eating it, in a bit of Garden of Eden imagery.

Notre Musique is above all a deep and lyrical reflection on the meaning of conflict, the effects of war, and the fragility of communication. It is also of course firmly entrenched in Jewish history and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, a subject I am sadly undereducated in. Nevertheless, the performances are wonderful all around, particularly Sarah Adler as the Judith character, and do a great job, along with Godard's thoughtful camera, of conveying the gravity and historical significance of the images presented. The film is also fascinating for its structure, introducing the viewers first to a literal Hell by way of brutal war imagery, then to the Purgatory of its characters trapped in the void of a life surrounded by tragedy and pointless violence, and finally with a tortured soul roaming about an enigmatic afterlife. There is a great profundity to the way Godard ties the various themes together, and it in many ways to me feels like his wisest and most considerate work. It is certainly the most accessible of his later films, with a somewhat cohesive narrative framework and more intimate cast of characters. It goes without saying (and I feel like a broken record to keep harping on this in every writeup) that a film as dense as Notre Musique will surely require multiple viewings in order to sift additional meanings from its various layers and complexities, but for right now I am content in saying that it's up there for me alongside my favorites of all the late Godard films I've watched recently. Pretty stunning stuff.

Godard Marathon Day 16: Helas pour moi (1993); JLG/JLG - autoportrait de décembre (1995)

Helas pour moi (1993); viewing: first

Helas pour moi is a deeply mysterious and abstract retelling of the Greek myth of Alcmene, the mother of Heracles and wife of Amphitryon, who has a brief and unknowing affair with Zeus over the course of three nights after he disguises himself as her husband. Here, Alcmene is represented by Rachel Donnadieu (the radiant Laurence Masliah), and Amphitryon by her husband Simon Donnadieu (Gerard Depardieu). Zeus in this story is God, and is played as a small, shadowy and peripheral figure with a gurgling, guttural voice (reminiscent of the voice of Alpha 60, the computer system from Alphaville), and indeed late in the film he appears to inhabit the body of Depardieu's character and play out Godard's own version of the myth. Before you arrive at that, the film introduces you to a host of characters who ruminate and contemplate and journey in and out of the frame constantly, most importantly among them a publisher named Abraham Klimt (Bernard Verley), who is tracking down the Donnadieu's for the purpose of documenting their experiences (I think).

It's certainly one of the most challenging and elusive Godard films I've seen yet, and while I'm not going to pretend as though I came close to understanding everything that happened (as though that's possible with any of these later films), I will say that I was at least able to connect strongly with it on an emotional level. This is a movie rippling with anxiety of all sorts: the anxiety of isolation and romance ("I think a lover only wants to love, and not the other in front of him."), and when the Depardieu character reveals himself as God halfway through, the theme of reconciling one's love of God with romantic love recalls the existential anxiety that was experienced by the main character in 1985's Hail Mary . There is one quick scene in particular, involving Depardieu comparing falling asleep to jumping into an endless dark hole, that really spoke to me and felt like a microcosm of the dark, anxious undercurrents running through the movie. If the film's not somber enough for you by this point, just wait until Dylan Thomas's Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night is read multiple times over ominous imagery, and that should give you a sense of the darkness being dealt with here.

Of course it goes without saying that the film is wallowing in visual beauty, and Caroline Champetier's sumptuous photography is as ravishing as any I've seen in a Godard film yet. The interesting thing in Helas pour moi is that the turbid emotional climate of the film often times gives these gorgeous images an uncharacteristic sense of urgency, a feeling likely heightened by the palpable dread infused in the haunting performances of the leads. I also really loved a visual motif that runs through the film, where often a shot will begin out of focus and then be slowly brought into focus, an aesthetic that to me felt like memories slowly coming back into someone's head (or even being created), giving many of these moments a wonderfully ethereal edge. I will say that I got a bit frustrated at the film a handful of times, as aside from the general confusion and non-sequitors abound, Godard allows his characters dialogue to overlap one another frequently, and for this overlapping dialogue to overlap quick intertitles. During these scenes the subtitles would flash by so quickly trying to fit it all in that I would have to rewind over and over again just to catch everything. But all in all, Helas pour moi is one of Godard's darkest and most puzzling films, a stark meditation on life and love and myth, and despite its obscurity I still found it to be a rewarding and intriguing experience. And I really loved this quote by Jonathan Rosenbaum in his piece : "I’d much rather hear Godard talking to himself than Spielberg addressing half the planet."
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JLG/JLG - autoportrait de décembre (1995); viewing: second

JLG/JLG - autoportrait de décembre is pretty much exactly as the title says: a cinematic self-portrait of the eccentric filmmaker. Taking place mostly in his Swiss home and areas surrounding, JLG/JLG documents, in the usual abstract and confounding ways, various aspects of Godard's personal and creative lives. On the personal front, we are given scenes showing Godard thoughtfully pacing through his apartment while ruminating, quoting literature, sketching, writing, and of course operating various screens and tinkering around with images. We even see him playing tennis, and his spry movements and energy here reminded me of the entertaining physical presence he showed in films such as Vladimir and Rosa and King Lear. On the creative side, we see late in the film (which clocks in well short of an hour) Godard in his editing suite, working with a blind assistant while he appears to be editing Helas pour moi. It's probably the most interesting sequence in the film, and seems to hold some deep insight into the methods that made up Godard's film making during this period. Taking place in December, the film, as expected, digresses numerous times into shots of nature; this time with chilly overcast skies and snowy landscapes creating the scene, and these shots are breathtaking as always and give the film a rich texture. There is something about the snow in this movie that makes it feel all the more personal.

This first time I saw JLG/JLG I liked it very much, responding to it mostly on an aesthetic level, but also being extremely interested in the subject of Godard himself, who was very much an enigmatic figure to me at the time. Of course, he is still largely mysterious to me even now, however being more familiar with his interests and style, and being keyed into some of the idiosyncrasies of his personality made the film all the more enjoyable for me this time. Despite its running time, it's a dense work, as dense as any of his post-60' s stuff, but it also plays as a tone poem to the methods of a man who's always worked outside of the box. I very much enjoyed watching JLG/JLG again, and can only imagine that this is one that I will grow even fonder of with future viewings.

Godard Marathon Day 15: Nouvelle Vague (1990)

Nouvelle Vague (1990); viewing: first

Godard's Nouvelle Vague is a wonderful film, a rich tapestry of music, image and language whose grace and invigorating sensual beauty are nearly unparalleled in the director's oeuvre. Once again, as is the case with most of these later Godard films I've watched, there is a narrative present in only the loosest sense of the word. This time it primarily involves two characters, a man and woman played by Alain Delon and Domiziana Giordano. The Giordano character knocks over Delon in the street with her car, takes him in, and the pair become lovers while staying at her beautiful summer estate. One day the two go out water skiing, the man falls in the water and she let's him drown. Some time passes, and Delon reappears (as either the dead man resurrected or the dead man's brother). The two jump right back into their romance, this time with Giordano taking a more passive role in the relationship and Delon a more dominant one. Once again they return to the lake, and it is now she who falls into the water. This time, however, there will be a different outcome.

Of course, following the "plot" is not critical to experiencing Nouvelle Vague. This is a film to be admired and felt on a sensual level, and it never let's you forget that as William Lubtchansky's elegant photography fills the frame with opulence and beauty at every turn. Much like Hail Mary and First Name: Carmen before it, Nouvelle Vague trains its eye towards nature in all its glory, incorporating many images of rippling waters, trees swaying in the wind, brooding overcast skies and so on. I think part of what made this movie so enjoyable for me was that I was able to let go of any expectations of following a coherent narrative fairly early into the viewing, and simply allowed myself to take in the majesty of the images and the rich textures and moods of Manfred Eicher's amazing music, whose incorporation marks somewhat of a return to classicism for Godard, who here opts for a sweeping, cinematic score instead of simply sampling classical and pop music for the soundtrack as he had done with his last handful of films.

The third important component in this film of course is the dialogue, which is entirely made up of literary quotations and texts from various works throughout the history of literature, including Hemingway, Shakespeare, Faulkner, Dante, Bataille, Schiller, Lacan and Chandler, amongst others. This of course recalls 1985's Detective, which likewise used literary quotations for a majority of its dialogue. In that film however, the dialogue, for me, seemed to work merely as a way of injecting novelty into a muddled and disjointed premise that never added up to a compelling whole. Whereas in Nouvelle Vague, it is a key component to what Godard seems to be going after, a literary function of his plan to - as Richard Brody writes in his book Everything Is Cinema - "reconceive the history of cinema, and his place in it, as a biblical allegory". Whether Brody's take on the film is accurate or not (I also like Jonathan Rosenbaum's piece which describes the film as "a meditation on the end of the world"), there is no denying that Nouvelle Vague is a late masterpiece from Godard, a carefully crafted work of art that filters and refines the beauty of the world through its abstract eye and provides a powerful cinematic experience of lucid, overwhelming splendor.

Godard Marathon Day 14: King Lear (1987)

King Lear (1987); viewing: first

King Lear wrapped up my viewing of Godard's work from the 80's, and it is a dense, mystifying and often fascinating film - only loosely based on the canonical Shakespeare work - where Godard seemingly resurrects both the image and cinema from a zero state after a devastating nuclear catastrophe. The film follows a man by the name of William Shakespeare Jr. the Fifth (theatre director Peter Sellars) on a journey through a land nearly obliterated from the effects of the Chernobyl incident - which has destroyed all works of art as well as most of civilization - as he attempts to rediscover and collect the plays of his famous ancestor. He will cross paths with many important players along the way, among them: gangster Don Learo (Burgess Meredith) and his daughter Cordelia (Molly Ringwald); the mysterious Edgar and Virginia (after Allen Poe and Woolfe, played by Leo Carax and Julie Delpy); and the eccentric Professor Pluggy (Godard himself), a gravel voiced sorcerer donning a headpiece of audio/video wires who is obsessed with experimenting with various television screens and images. The film follows this group of characters as Professor Pluggy searches, through a variety of experiments, for what he calls "the first image".

I will give King Lear this - it never lost me. Or rather, it never lost my attention. I found the experience of watching it extremely muddled, and I was often scratching my head trying to discern what exactly was happening in the narrative (or what there was of one), but there are so many fascinating touches here that my mind was never allowed to wander in the midst of my confusion. The imagery is par for the course for 80's Godard - that is to say, excellent. And there is a wonderfully haunting ambient score lurking in the background, a touch I particularly loved that perfectly matched the gloomy apocalyptic atmosphere. The Professor Pluggy character played by Godard is really fun and quirky, and while I couldn't understand over half of what he was saying (I really wish this had come with subtitles, despite it being Godard's only full English language film), the stuff I did catch was mighty interesting, having to do mostly with the creation of images and the symbiosis between these images and human emotions. One sequence in particular stood out for me towards the end of the movie with the Pluggy character - involving him placing petals back onto flowers through reverse photography - as one of the more poetic and poignant scenes I've seen in these 80's films yet.

Similar to my experience with Passion, I can't really say how much I was able to glean from a single viewing of King Lear. As I've said, I did find it to be a consistently compelling film, though one with a bevy of murky elements that left me in the dark. Hopefully I will be able to sift through these on future viewings and the picture will congeal a little better for me. It did aid me to read the section for King Lear in Richard Brody's book Everything is Cinema and it helped shed light on some of the film's more confounding elements. I found it particularly helpful to learn that King Lear is a film fully informed and molded by the circumstances it was created in. For instance, in the curious opening, we see author Norman Mailer and his daughter (actress Kate Mailer) in a hotel room discussing adapting King Lear as a modern mafia story. We actually see the scene twice, the first time played through normally, and the second time with a voice-over from Godard, chastising Mailer for his "star behavior" and telling us how the writer and his daughter left the set for good after the scene we are viewing was shot. It turns out that Mailer was originally tapped to pen the screenplay of the film for Godard, then eventually agreed to actually star in the film, but found Godard to be so disagreeable on his one day of shooting that he quickly abandoned the movie entirely. I had no idea what to make of that beginning initially, but I found the Mailer anecdote to be fascinating, and I am always intrigued by a film like this that incorporates the biographical aspects of its production into the final product; it's really interesting stuff.

I went back and watched Passion again the day after my original viewing, and that confirmed for me that the film was a true masterpiece and one of my very favorite Godard's yet. While I can't speculate as to whether the case will be the same for King Lear (Passion hit me emotionally on a gut level; King Lear didn't really at all), it is a movie I feel almost as equally compelled to revisit immediately, and to read as much information available on it that I can get my hands on. Though this first viewing left me with a bit of uncertainty, the film has genuinely intrigued me and even haunted me a bit, and I suspect there to be a wealth of ideas and revelations for me to discover in King Lear past the single, hazy experience I had with it.

Godard Marathon Day 13: Hail Mary (1985); Detective (1985)

Hail Mary (1985); viewing: first

Hail Mary is Godard's controversial 1985 modern retelling of the story of Mary and the Immaculate Conception as found in the New Testament. The film stars Myriem Roussel (the deaf, nude extra from Passion and the violin player from First Name: Carmen) as Mary, a fairly typical teenage girl who plays basketball for the school she attends, works for her father's gas station, and dates Joseph (Thierry Rode), a dropout cab driver who doesn't have much going for him. One day a mysterious stranger named Gabriel arrives via plane to inform Mary of the news that she will become pregnant, a monumentally difficult pill for her to swallow, seeing as how she is a virgin and is in a strictly chaste relationship with Joseph. The film then deals with Mary and those close to her attempting to reconcile this impossible situation and Mary's apparent role in God's plan.

I was mildly surprised and rather pleased at how gracefully and tactfully Godard approached this subject matter. There are all kinds of routes this material could have taken, turning it into some kind of anti-media or anti-religious statement that could have mirrored the type of didactic stuff Godard was producing merely a decade earlier. But 80's Godard had something different in mind, and wisely keeps the events and their ramifications concentrated solely on the small group of characters who are directly affected, creating a quiet intimacy and beauty to the story that is underlined by the gorgeous visuals. The film frequently cuts away from the story to show images of sunsets, rippling bodies of water, flowers swaying in the wind and a luminous moon, and their incorporation gives the film a certain meditative quality that beautifully contrasts the emotional tumult experienced by Mary. And Roussel is a revelation as Mary; I enjoyed her in her previous two appearances for Godard just fine, but here she brings emotional intensity and depth to the role and delivers a performance as capable as any given by a leading lady for Godard before. Hail Mary is - like the previous two Godard's I've seen from this decade - deliberate, reflexive, philosophically complex, and slow - but never boring; it is in fact quite fascinating. I particularly loved the ending: we flash forward a couple of years in the future as Mary and her son Jesus stroll in the park, when Jesus suddenly runs away, shouting that he is off to take care of "his father's affairs." We then see Mary in a gas station parking lot, embracing her sexuality for the first time as she applies pink lipstick to her mouth, and the final, haunting shot lingers on her vibrant, colored lips, uncomfortably pooched into an awkward, quivering oval shape.

I also want to note that the version I saw was preceded by a wonderful short feature directed by Anne-Marie Mieville titled Book of Mary, which deals with the daughter of a recently divorced couple and her experience commuting back and forth from her father's new apartment. It's a poignant and sharp little movie that in its short running time deals with the subject of divorce in a more thoughtful and realistic way than a multitude of feature films concerning the same topic have.
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Detective (1985); viewing: first

During post-production on Hail Mary, Godard embarked on a more commercial offering for producer Alain Sarde with the intention of box office success that would in-turn help pay for Mary. That film ended up being Detective, an homage to retro detective themed movies and novels. The plot (and there is only the slightest remnants of a "plot" present in Detective) concerns a variety of people staying in a hotel and the different situations and mysteries they're all mixed up in. These include: a trio (Aurele Doazan, Jeanne-Pierre Leaud and Laurent Terzieff) investigating the unsolved assassination of someone named "The Prince" that occurred in the very hotel room they are staying in two years prior; a couple (Nathalie Baye and Claude Brasseur) attempting to collect a debt from a boxing manager (Johnny Hallyday) who is himself indebted to the mob and has a fixed fight coming up; and a Mafia boss (Alain Cuny), who wonders around the hotel with his crew threatening everyone.

I'll be perfectly honest: this one just didn't engage me. It's tough to pinpoint exactly what went wrong; the threadbare plot wasn't an issue for me (Passion was probably even more elusive in its narrative, and I found that an utter masterpiece), but something about this movie just felt so jumbled and tough to digest. It is quite possibly the most verbose Godard film I've seen yet, almost obnoxiously so at times, and apparently the vast majority of dialogue spoken in Detective is quotations and literary citations. I wish I'd known that before I watched it, I wouldn't have strained so hard to make heads or tails out of what everyone was saying and trying to connect the dots. The casting by all means looks inspired on paper, but I just felt a kind of distance between the camera and the characters, almost as though Godard detested having to work with a more mainstream collection of actors, and refused them the intimacy and care he so often affords his actors. And the performances themselves were fairly tepid and restrained I felt, just lacking in some kind of spark. Johnny Hallyday being an exception, his sad, soulful eyes were a perfect match for the faux pride and defeated body language of his character who finds himself trapped in a potentially fatal corner. There are certainly things I liked here; the hotel setting recalls Resnais at times and lends itself to some really striking imagery. As always, Godard does some interesting things with image and sound experimentation, and the dense barrage of allusions to past cinema and literature ensures that there will be more to gain from repeated viewings. And I do plan on revising Detective sometime in the future; I'm at the point now where I find Godard too fascinating a director to simply write-off any one of his movies after a single viewing. But as far as first viewings go, the movie just felt scrambled, hard to keep up with, and uninspired compared to these other movies from the 80's that have been wonderful. It ultimately left me with not much to hang my hat on and unfortunately resulted in one of the lesser experiences I've had in the marathon yet.

Godard Marathon Day 12: Passion (1982); First Name: Carmen (1983)

Passion (1982); viewing: first

My journey into the 80's films of Jean-Luc Godard started with 1982's Passion, a thoroughly bewildering yet richly emotive and beautiful film that to me felt as personal as anything I've seen from Godard yet. The movie tells, in its own elusive way, the story of a small group of characters in a little town in Switzerland, among them a Polish director (Jerzy Radziwilowicz), who is plodding through the laborious filming of a big-budget picture that is essentially made up of gorgeously composed tableaus of classic paintings and notable historical moments. The other important characters include Isabelle Hubert as a rebellious factory worker, her boss (Michel Piccoli), and his wife (Hanna Schygulla). The Hubert character begins an affair with Jerzy (the characters names in the film are actually that of the actors playing them, in an interesting meta-flourish), while the Schygulla character auditions for a role in the film and ends up in an affair with the director as well, while Michel Piccoli constantly lurks in the background as the menacing factory owner with an unnerving chronic cough.

Of course, Passion does not spell all of this out for the viewer, and I'm not even sure that I have the details above entirely accurate. It is a challenging and extremely elliptical work, and is not so much worried about narrative cohesion as it is moments of fleeting, evocative beauty and its themes of the intimate and inseparable connection between art, creation, love, and yes, passion. This is beautifully summed up in the film's most powerfully gorgeous scene, where Schygulla and Radziwilowicz sit in a room and watch the tape of her audition, and as Schygulla squirms uncomfortably with self-consciousness at viewing herself on the screen, Radziwilowicz's hand gently comes into the frame to caress and cradle her head with affection, which leads to a semi-recreation of the very audition scene they are viewing while lush operatic music plays over the background. It is a scene of almost overpowering emotion and tenderness, and it nearly took my breath away. What I experienced with Passion was a film of stunning sensual beauty about the fragility of the artistic process, but there is no doubt it's operating on many other levels I've not even tapped into yet, and it feels like a futile task for me to discuss it with much meaning after only one viewing, but it definitely left a pretty big impact on me, and is one I can't wait to revisit sometime in the near future.
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First Name: Carmen (1983); viewing: second

First Name: Carmen was the first non-60's Godard film I originally saw awhile back, and to be perfectly honest, it didn't do a whole lot for me that first time. It is an adaptation of the Bizet opera Carmen (which I am completely unfamiliar with), and tells the story of Carmen (Maruschka Detmers), an attractive young terrorist who falls in love with a security guard named Joseph (Jacques Bonnaffe) during a botched bank robbery. The two share a brief and torrid love affair before Carmen tosses her lover aside as quickly as they got together, and tragedy ensues.

Despite that initial viewing underwhelming me, there were images from this film that I was unable to shake from my head, even months after viewing; the pair lying on the bank floor in a passionate embrace in the midst of smeared blood and a dormant rifle laying next to them; the Joseph character hugging a blue static screen tv in longing while a Tom Waits song plays over the soundtrack; the gorgeous shots of the beach that continuously pop in and out of the film, punctuating some of the more poetic moments. Godard himself even has some memorable moments in a delightful performance as Carmen's uncle, a "sick" filmmaker named Jean-Luc Godard dealing with cinematic exile and looking to make a comeback film. So I definitely knew something was there, and I was eager to give the film another shot with a completely different perspective, and wasn't shocked in the least to find that I enjoyed it much more this second time around. I suspect the problem for me that first time was that I quite simply wasn't patient with the film; its methodical pace and almost vignette structure lost me somewhere in the middle and I felt a strong disconnect with the characters for some reason, I just didn't care about them. This time, I was able to simply sit back and let the quiet beauty of the movie sweep me away. There is an intoxicating quality to First Name: Carmen, with its lush photography and orchestral score, and I think my patience with the movie this time allowed me to engage with the obsession of the Joseph character, to feel his pain, and thus to attach some very real emotional resonance to those striking images that made such an impression on me that first time around. The experience of watching First Name: Carmen again is precisely what I was hoping to get out of this marathon, and while I probably still like Passion a little more between the two, I certainly found it to be a deeply compelling and affecting work, and I'm pretty thrilled I was able to get this much out of it from only a second viewing. Needless to say, huge start to 80's Godard for me; these two films were really fantastic.

Short break from Godard Marathon

Things have been a bit hectic for me this week and I've had to put the Godard marathon on temporary hiatus until I have enough time to give the upcoming 80's films my full attention. In the meantime look for possibly another Scenes From A Career blog before the week is out.

Godard Marathon Day 11: Numéro deux (1975)

Numéro deux (1975): viewing - first

My final encounter (at least for this marathon) with the 70's work of Jean-Luc Godard was Numéro deux, a mysterious, haunting and epochal experimental essay film Godard made in 1975, following the dissolution of the Dziga Vertov Group and his collaboration with Jeanne-Pierre Gorin. It also marked the beginning of a lifelong creative and personal relationship with filmmaker Anne-Marie Miéville. The film begins with Godard alone in an editing room giving a somewhat cryptic monologue that seems to be a thinly veiled account of how this movie came to be made. The bulk of the rest of the film takes place in a blackened room containing only the presence of two television screens (recalling the visual aesthetic of Le Gai Savoir), which at first seem to be displaying arbitrary and random images of people murmuring sparse, poetic dialogues, before it becomes apparent that we are witnessing a family of six (mother, father, boy, girl, grandmother, grandfather) and being given an intimate glimpse into the sexual, economical and philosophical textures of their lives. The dual television screens often juxtapose multiple characters pov's and dialogues against each other, which often makes for challenging and ambiguous disunions in the visuals as we observe the members of this family and come face to face with the myriad dysfunctions that accompany them.

top: Le Gai Savoir (1969); bottom: Numéro deux (1975)

The mother and father (amidst a fight over the mother's infidelity) engage in graphic sexual activities, which are rendered cold and clinical and disturbing to watch, despite the almost voyeuristic nature in which they are presented. Equally disturbing is a scene where the parents show and explain their genitals to the curious, isolated children, presenting them as a mouth and pair of lips that kiss when in love, an analogy which works in stark contrast to the way these acts have been presented to the viewer up to this point. Godard seems to be out to mine some uncomfortable truths from these taboos and fractured relationships. Take this piece of dialogue either spoken or thought by the husband (the film is vague on this) of his wife late in the film: "I think of his mother's cunt. Why do I mind when guys stick there cocks in? I'm thinking of love. To screw and be screwed. Sometimes, she's the man and I'm the woman. Since I'm a guy, sometimes it's like I was screwing another guy." The character clearly contemplates sex as basically the opposite of how it's been described to the children; a soulless, loveless act between two interchangeable genders disconnected from their genitals and each other. Also take the grandparents, who only come into focus in the second half of the movie. The grandmother is frequently engaged in cleaning work, rarely exposing her face while ruminating on her mortality, while the grandfather, a crabby drunk, sits around thinking of days long gone and wallowing in self pity. After summing up a forty year span of his life in about two minutes, he sits at a table, naked from the waste down, and opines: "It was stupid, but that's history. It's not the movies....Sometimes I look at my prick. That's not the movies. The proof we don't have time for movies." It's a moment that stings, both because of the defeated delivery of the lines and also out of a twinge of brutal honesty, in part because one can't help but feel that it in some way might reflect Godard's own disillusionment with cinema at this point in his career.

The backstory to how Numéro deux was made is quite interesting; producer Georges de Beauregard proposed that Godard remake Breathless. Godard accepted the offer, however after Beauregard had successfully raised the funds it became apparent that Godard had no intentions on remaking his landmark cinema debut; instead he spent most of the money buying additional equipment to finish his previous work Ici et ailleurs, then upon completion of that project quickly churned out Numéro deux with Miéville to fulfill his commission. Similar to Le Gai Savoir, I found Numéro deux to be a fascinating film if only as an aesthetic object, but clearly its intrigues go far beyond that. Aside from the trenchant view of its subjects and the exploratory techniques of the filmmaking on display, the movie as a whole has an air of anxiety around it. It very much feels like something of a creative crossroads for Godard, and according to most of what I've read about the film (Ed Howard's piece over at Only The Cinema is a must read), it created the path Godard would trail creatively for most of his following career. It's of course hard for me to say I "enjoyed" Numéro deux, but it certainly held my rapt attention, and after finishing it and letting the experience marinate, I have to say I've found it to be one of the most unique and singularly fascinating Godard films yet. It somehow feels like an appropriate way for me to wrap-up my brief foray into Godard's 70's work, and I'm highly looking forward to what the 80's have in store.

Godard Marathon Day 10: Tout va bien (1972); Letter to Jane (1972)

Tout va bien (1972); viewing: first

Tout va bien was the final feature film produced from Godard's collaboration with Jeanne-Pierre Gorin under the name of the Dziga Vertov Group. With its respectable budget and the presence of two stars cast in the leading roles, it was the closest thing to a commercially viable film Godard had made since Week End. Tout va Bien begins cleverly, citing its Brechtian influence during the opening credits with a voice repeatedly calling scene numbers and clapping the slate, eventually cutting to a hand signing a series of checks while two directors in voice-over (Godard/Gorin?) discuss various aspects of getting a political movie made. We are subsequently introduced to a couple (Jane Fonda, Yves Montand), she an American reporter living in Paris with her lover, a former director who's been relegated to commercial work. One day the couple visit a meat factory to conduct an interview with the manager, only to find him imprisoned in his office by the workers who have gone on strike. The couple become briefly trapped in the manager's office as well, and eventually the movie shifts its focus in the second half to a time in the future focusing on the couples struggles, both with their rapidly deteriorating relationship, and with their individual existential anxieties during the volatility of '72 France, where the echoes of the events of May '68 are still extremely palpable.

There are many extremely interesting things going on in Tout va bien, among them the daring mise-en-scene, which removes the fourth wall from the factory setting, rendering it a cutaway and showing all of the activities taking place inside at once. There is also a phenomenal back-and-forth tracking shot towards the end that nearly outdoes the famous one in Week End; this one taking place in a large supermarket that at first seems to be highlighting the mechanical nature of consumerism before turning into a stark outburst of violence and revolt. There are also unfortunately some stretches of tedium where Tout va bien feels ponderous and lacking in Godard's typically poetic visuals. Of course the movie indulges in Godard's leftist leanings and Maoist beliefs and becomes quite talky in spots that were a little too trying for me. Something about the film also felt antsy to me as it jumped all around; I wish it had sustained more of its ideas, and also developed the relationship between the Fonda and Montand characters more (they are actually quite good in their roles). Despite the emotional disconnect I felt with the couple, the film is at its best when it's drawing parallels between their relationship and the tumultuous political climate of France post-May '68. These moments are poignant, sobering and inspired, and by far the most successful and emotionally resonant achievements of the picture for me.

One of the more interesting things I read about Tout va bien in its (surprisingly little) section from Richard Brody's book Everything Is Cinema is that Godard had actually been in a motorcycle accident and month long coma prior to shooting, and was really only involved in the development of the film on a conceptual level. Gorin himself did the majority of hands on directing, and perhaps this accounts for the overall lack of, I dunno, spark(?) that I felt while watching the movie. Something was definitely missing here for me, visually speaking and just with its overall feel and energy. While Tout va bien didn't completely work for me, and doesn't really inspire me to rush and seek out other Dziga Vertov Group works, I am glad I watched it because, as I've said previously, you can always count on a film with Godard's name attached to be at least interesting, and on that level Tout va bien has a lot going for it.
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Letter to Jane (1972); viewing: first

Probably not the best thing to watch while on the verge of falling asleep (as I was), Letter to Jane is a 50 minute follow up to Tout va bien that focuses on a photograph of Jane Fonda during her controversial visit to North Vietnam, while Godard and Gorin talk through voice over throughout the duration of the film and scorn Fonda for not entirely clear reasons. Their critiques link the photo to everything from Tout va bien and its central question (what is the role of the intellectual in a revolution?) to the class struggle to capitalism and so on. It is analytically dense, going so far as to break down the blocking of the photograph into symbols of the respresented countries politics. It also analyzes the faces of both Fonda and the anonymous Vietnam man in the background and compares them to other notable mugs such as Marlon Brando, Renee Falconetti, John Wayne and Richard Nixon in an attempt to figure out why exactly Jane Fonda's face in the photo lends itself to separation while the Vietnam's remains a part of its surroundings.

There's not a whole lot for me to say about Letter to Jane; it is obviously quite didactic and was a bit of a chore for me to sit through, even at its slim running time (being tired of course made it more difficult). This isn't helped at all by the fact that Godard and Gorin are both speaking English here in consistently monotonous drones that quite simply aren't that rousing to listen to, despite the fact that a lot of the time they are actually saying some compelling stuff. The film is aesthetically and formally interesting however, and does make a good companion piece to Tout va bien, and certainly should be of some interest to Godard fans. Once again, didn't completely do it for me, but glad I watched it.

Godard Marathon Day 9: Vladimir and Rosa (1970)

Vladimir and Rosa (1970); viewing: first

Vladimir and Rosa was one of several films made by Jean-Luc Godard and his collaborator Jean-Pierre Gorin under the name of the Dziga-Vertov Group. The group was formed to potentially usher in a new cinema - one that relied heavily on Brechtian technique to express its political ideologies in polemical, essay-style films. I've made no qualms about the politics in Godard's films being of little interest to me, and so needless to say the prospect of these films left me a bit wary. However if I want to come to the greatest understanding and appreciation of Godard as a filmmaker that I can (the ultimate goal with this marathon after all), no era must be left unturned, and so I stuck in a copy of Vladimir and Rosa and prepared for whatever was to come. My knowledge of the film prior to viewing was minimal; I knew it dealt with the trial of the Chicago Eight, and that's pretty much it. So I will tell you I was extremely (and pleasantly) surprised to find that viewing Vladimir and Rosa ended up being quite an enjoyable experience.

The title Vladimir and Rosa refers to the narrators of the movie, Vladimir Lenin and Karl Rosa (Godard and Gorin), who compare their omniscient perspectives to those of a bird in the sky who can see rain in the clouds before anyone else can, and indeed they will be our guides through the film, which is basically structured around a series of coarse Brechtian skits involving the trial of the Chicago Eight, the group of people arrested for protesting during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The Chicago Eight of the film however don't correspond exactly with the eight people in the real life trial; only two of the subjects in the film are actually patterned off the real people, those being Bobby Seale (Bobby X in the film), the black panther whose trial was eventually severed, and David Dellenger. We are introduced to the Eight being arrested in a overtly Brechtian scene involving fake blood and cops wielding phony batons, and from here a majority of the movie takes place in the courtroom where the trial is being overseen by the loud, annoying, fascist oaf Judge Himmler, a caricature if there ever was one. These scenes portray the courtroom as a kind of cartoonish bedlam, especially the moments with Bobby X on the stand, bound by chains with guns held to his head, where he eventually utters the best line in the film: "You can jail a cake, but not a revolution." There are also memorable scenes that take place out of the courtroom, one of the best being between Anne Wiazemsky (Godard's wife at the time), and Dellenger (Claude Nedjar), which takes place in an apartment and has the pair discussing and arguing the exploitation of women in the workplace and the oppression they endure due to the social status quo. The scene culminates with a text written by an African woman being read aloud by the characters and is probably the most overtly didactic scene in the film, but is so ripe with playful touches (including Wiazemsky handling Dellenger like a puppet) and honesty from the actors that it somehow feels remarkably real and interesting.

Godard and Gorin often appear themselves during the movie, in such notable scenes as one where they pace around on a tennis court with a microphone, interviewing each other with a machine that distorts their thoughts as they speak them, or in scenes where the pair portray a fascist cop and judge, one of the particularly interesting moments involving Godard zipping down his fly and pulling a baton out of his pants where it clearly appears as though he's about to pull something else out. Godard is energetic and spry during these scenes, bouncing around and doing physical routines with a sly grin on his face, and it made me think of a feature on the Pierrot le fou Criterion dvd, where Anna Karina in an interview talks about how youthful and energetic and vibrant Godard was all of the time in private, but few would ever see this side of him. I think one of the reasons Vladimir and Rosa works so well is because Godard does feel free and revived and energetic here, and we see it and feel it, not only in his appearances but in the flow and vibe of the movie. Godard and Gorin are obviously deeply fascinated with the subjects the film probes, and seem to be relishing the experience of making this film in their own style. Vladimir and Rosa is, when all is said and done, a serious yet winsome piece of filmmaking that balances out its polemical and political elements with a dose of cheeky humor and playful wit, and shows that though Godard had faded from the spotlight during this time, he was nevertheless still creating compelling and unique cinema.

Godard Marathon Day 8: Week End (1967); Le Gai Savoir (1969)

Day 8 wrapped up my viewing of Godard's 60's work with a rich sojourn into dark surrealism and a challenging essay film that I'm conflicted on.


Week End (1967); viewing: second

Week End was by all means the dividing line in Godard's career. It would mark the end of his "Cinematic Period", the prolific and impressive stretch of more narratively conventional genre films that lasted for most of the 60's, before giving way to the more intensely political and radical "essay" style of films that would mark the next phase of his career. Week End is, however, a fiery beast of its own; a blacker-than-black apocalyptic road comedy driven by a vignette structure and full of surrealist flourishes that attacks everything from the class struggle to consumerism to U.S. politics to (literally attacking) famous literary figures. In short, nothing is safe from its bite.

Audaciously asserting itself through intertitles at the beginning as both "A film adrift in the cosmos", and "A film found on a dump", Week End centers on a husband and wife, Roland (Jean Yanne) and Corinne (Mireille Darc), who at the beginning are discussing their wishes for Corinne's father to be killed so that they may collect the inheritance. The film follow the couple (who, it becomes quickly apparent, are planning each others deaths as well), endlessly across the country in a series of alarming vignettes as they travel to Corinne's parents house to collect the inheritance. The despondent, apocalyptic atmosphere is almost overwhelming in this picture, with fires on the road side and wrecked cars and dead bodies constantly littered about, all of this fully on display in the most famous sequence from the film, a nearly ten minute tracking shot detailing a seemingly endless traffic jam the couple must navigate through. Godard takes every opportunity to skewer his bourgeoisie caricatures, as in one scene where after a nasty car wreck and fire, Corinne screams in anguish for many seconds before we realize the source of her agony is the designer handbag burning in the car. Brechtian technique is also of course prevalent in Week End, as the couple is constantly making references to the fact that they are merely characters in a movie, and seemigly use this as an excuse for their own heinous actions, which includes one particularly venomous scene where they attack English poet Emily Bronte and burn her alive. Eventually the couple are captured by a group of cannibals who reside in the woods, hippies who address each other by codenames such as "Johnny Guitar" and "Battleship Potemkin", and here Rolando and Corinne will each meet a different fate - one becoming the predator and the other the prey - leading up to one of the most haunting final shots Godard's composed yet.

I initially watched Week End during a period where I was getting heavily into surrealism and viewing stuff by Bunuel and Cocteau and Rivette (among others) on a regular basis. At the time I knew I really liked it, but was hesitant to fully embrace it, probably because I was put off by some of its Godardian qualities: the occassional launches into political rambling, the use of Brechtian technique and the odd relationship between the visuals and music etc. But watching it again at this pivotal moment in both my marathon and Godard's career, I had no qualms in fully embracing this wicked, potent film - it's truly a maddeningly ambitious and angry work with poison coursing through its veins and teeth to spare, and it quite appropriately ends Godard's most famous period of filmmaking with a bang in the form of a bold declaration: Fin de Cinema. End of Cinema.
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Le Gai Savoir (1969); viewing: second

Godard's 1969 Le Gai Savoir was originally produced for (and subsequently rejected by) French national television, and instead received a brief release in French theaters before being banned and relegated to relative obscurity in the context of the rest of Godard's 60's output. The film stars Juliet Berto and Jeanne-Pierre Leaud as Patricia and Emile, two people of ambiguous origins (the film hints they may be otherworldly) who meet on a barren, blackened sound stage nightly over the course of three years to engage in various methods of dissolving image and sound in order to go "back to zero". Le Gai Savoir is thus an essay film built around this contemplation of the nature between sounds and images and layers and how they interact with one another, examining and deconstructing this relationship through use of stills, intertitles, and a dense barrage of philosophical abstractions.

The first time I saw Le Gai Savoir, I was left pretty mystified. I knew that the prominent aesthetic of the completely black room with only the mysterious characters lit was very appealing; there is a classicism and quiet beauty to it that - along with the presence of the two wonderful stars - makes it extremely interesting and pleasing. But I remember feeling almost overwhelmed at the density of the material and dialogue, and indeed a second viewing confirmed for me that this is, quite simply, a film that I have a hard time grasping. It is by far the most didactic film Godard had made at this point, and while it's not busy indulging in nearly inscrutable philosophical abstractions and reflections, it's heaping on a barrage of still photographs and thick political proclamations dealing with Marxism-Leninism and Maoism, among others. It at times becomes almost sensory overload, and I have a feeling that with the characters constantly talking over each other, and with the stills and intertitles likewise overlapping their dialogue, the subtitles can only do so much, and there is a ton of stuff that likely just didn't translate (a problem I've also heard some have with Godard's supposed magnum opus, the Histoire(s) du cinema series). There are plenty of charming moments here though, among them a word association game played with a small boy and an old ultra-fascist man, and various little references both Leaud and Berto make to past characters they've played in Godard films. I'm glad I watched Le Gai Savoir again, because it is quite the curious object and feels like it's spilling over with ideas, but it's one that still remains shrouded in a kind of murky obscurity to me. While it's not one of my favorites from the 60's when all is said and done, it's poetic aesthetic and interesting formal approach still make it worth watching for any Godard fan. At the end of the day though, I just have to admit it's one that went a bit over my head.

Godard Marathon Day 7: Anticipation (1967); La Chinoise (1967)

Day 7 saw the late addition of a lesser known short from this period, as well as an unexpectedly entertaining foray into the political youth.


Anticipation (1967); viewing: first

Anticipation was Godard's contribution to the 1967 Joseph Bercholz production The World's Oldest Profession, a compilation film dealing with the subject of prostitution through different periods in history. Bercholz tapped six French directors to each come up with a segment, and Godard concocted this extremely odd yet thoroughly interesting futuristic tale of John Demetrios (Jacques Charrier), a traveler from another planet visiting Earth who, immediately after he lands, decides to grab a prostitute and have some fun. However, his prostitute doesn't speak, a fact which bothers him a great deal, so he trades her out for one who can stimulate him on a verbal level. Thus arrives the replacement, Eleonore Romeovitch (Anna Karina, in her last appearance for Godard), and everything seems to be in order, but alas, when John asks her to take her clothes off, she replies that she can't; that's not what she's meant to do. She's a prostitute of "sentimental love" rather than a prostitute of "physical love". In other words, a prostitute who loves in language. On this version of Earth, true love, a reconciliation of the two types, is deemed illogical and outlawed. You just simply can't have both. Or can you?

Obviously Godard was a clear choice to participate in this anthology; prostitution may very well be the most consistent thematic thread running through all of his 60's work. Anticipation, with a running time of twenty minutes, is clearly meant to be somewhat of a companion piece to Alphaville. Both films are futuristic, sci-fi stories shot in black and white, dealing with outsiders and their relationship with a prostitute, and with true love prevailing in each to crash the computerized fascist regime around them. Interestingly enough, I got a mild Lynchian-vibe from many of the touches in Anticipation; the eerie, almost industrial score pervading in the background; the odd, deliberately clipped mannerisms with which John speaks; and most notably one absolutely bizarre sequence where John and Eleonore, as maybe a type of foreplay (?), engage in an utterly strange activity that involves spraying each other in the face with a water bottle as they eagerly lap up the liquid with their tongue; certainly a suggestive and, quite frankly, disturbing few shots. Overall I found Anticipation to be extremely interesting, both aesthetically and conceptually, filled with striking imagery and compelling ideas, and with not a moment of its twenty minutes wasted it manages to accomplish more in that brief time than the majority of features produced in Hollywood today. It's a highly interesting footnote to the body of work Godard produced in the 60's, and one well worth seeking out for fans of the director.
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La Chinoise (1967); viewing: first

Godard's 1967 loose adaptation of Dostoyevsky's The Possessed was the surprisingly entertaining La Chinoise. I say surprisingly because coming into this film, I was well aware that it was the most overtly political film Godard had made yet at the time, and seeing as how Godard's politics is one of the least interesting aspects of his films to me, I almost approached the film with the mindset of expecting to be a tad put off and uninterested. The result ended up being far from that. Set almost entirely in the apartment of its five main characters, all young French students and fervent Maoists, La Chinoise uses parody and humor to chart the course of this group through its initial plans in setting off a revolution to its eventual dissolution.

The group is centered on a couple, Guillaume (Jean-Pierre Leaud) and Veroniqe (Anna Wiazamsky), and also includes Henri, Kirilov, and Yvonne (the sublime Juliet Berto). Guillaume and Veronique slowly push harder and harder for a terrorist style attack to trigger off a revolution, and Kirilov and Yvonne seem to be content going along with this, but Henri vocally disagrees with this course of action, and the key moment in the film comes when he separates from the group after a vote leaves him in the lurch. Veronique, in particular, seems to be thoroughly blinded by her ideals, and the greatest sequence in the film comes when she and a former professor of hers sit on a train together and have a lengthy discussion on the practicalities of triggering a revolution using violence, and how in what ways Veronique's situation differs from past instances of successful revolution. In short, the professor is trying to give her a reality check, so disillusioned is Veronique. The two are positioned in front of a window which blurs the environment outside as the train hurtles on and they engage in this discussion, giving one the sensation of the world literally passing them by as they are stuck in the muck of these issues. I'm not sure if that's what Godard intended, but it's what struck me and I thought it was an amazingly poetic touch.

Eventually an assassination is planned of the Soviet Minister of Culture, though the film makes it clear from early on that this group is improbable to accomplish anything at all, and watching the assassination get completely bungled up is equally frustrating and amusing. The film is also ripe with Brechtian technique, giving us many shots of the slate in front of the camera, and even one of Coutard himself filming the action. Though La Chinoise is indeed firmly entrenched in the politics of its time, it still retains enough bite, playful humor and brilliant Godardian touches to make it an enormously interesting and entertaining affair, even for those, like myself, who lack knowledge of the myriad politics discussed in the film and the various references and gestures made towards them. It is a hopeful sign that the impending political films from Godard won't be entirely inaccessible for me, and will indeed retain his signature wit and impressive visual originality.

Note on the Godard Marathon & NCAA this week

For college basketball junkies such as myself, this week is one of the very best of the year, as I'm sure all of you who have filled out your multiple brackets for the NCAA tournament can relate to. And even with as much fun as I've been having with the marathon so far, the tournament takes precedent for me. With games on all day, my free time will mostly be dedicated to basketball, so needless to say my progress on the Godard films will slow down a bit for this week.



I have only three films from Godard's 1960's period left before I chart into unknown waters with the 70's stuff and his work with the Dziga Vertov Group. I should have no problem squeezing the three 60's ones in, but seeing as how I will want to be fully focused jumping into the 70's movies, I'm not sure how many, if any, of those I'll get to this week.

GO TECH!!!

Godard Marathon Day 6: Made in U.S.A. (1966); 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967)

Day 6 once again offered a strong pair of films, one of which I've had a pretty massive change of opinion on.


Made in U.S.A. (1966); viewing: Second

Godard's 1966 Made in U.S.A. received a single showing in the U.S. at the '66 New York Film Festival, before settling into obscurity in the states for over 40 years, tied up in legal matters over adaptation rights, before finally being given deluxe treatment from the Criterion Collection with a superb DVD release in 2009. The film (dedicated in its credits to directors Nicholas Ray and Samuel Fuller) is supposedly based off the novel The Jugger by the late, great crime fiction writer Donald E. Westlake, and opens with Paula Nelson (Anna Karina, in her last starring role for Godard), investigating the death of her lover in an undeniably French version of Atlantic City (inhabited by characters named Mizoguchi and Richard Nixon and streets named Preminger), having arrived there to meet him and learning that he has very likely been killed. Paula sets out for answers, and encounters many shady individuals along the way, eventually getting drawn deeper and deeper into a thick web of political conspiracy that produces more mysteries than answers as the body count steadily ratchets up. This ubiquitous sense of ambiguity and mounting inscrutability recalls the other major influence on Made in U.S.A., Howard Hawks classic film-noir The Big Sleep.

To be perfectly honest, I didn't care much for this film the first time I saw it. It was one of the first few Godard's I watched, and while the slim running time (85 minutes on the dot) and vibrant imagery got me through the viewing, the plot utterly lost me halfway through, thus turning on the autopilot and leaving me with really nothing to hold onto when all was said and done. Being much more familiar with Godard's style now and armed with the knowledge that you actually have to - get this- pay really close attention during these films, I settled down for another viewing with a clean slate and open mind, ready to absorb every image and sound produced from this challenging work. And challenging it is. In fact more so than any other Godard I've seen to this point, Made in U.S.A. demands that you pay rapt attention to every detail; and even then, like The Big Sleep, I'm fairly sure you're not really supposed to understand everything that's happened. What I suspect made the film much more digestible for me this time around was being able to somewhat separate the stuff you're supposed to grasp from the stuff you just have to let go. Coming at it from this angle - and subsequently not overwhelming myself with the desire to understand everything- resulted in what was, quite surprisingly, one of the breezier and more sheerly enjoyable viewing experiences I've had during this marathon yet.

This is not to suggest that there isn't significant weight attached to this work; if Godard was just getting his feet wet in the political pool with Pierrot le fou and Masculin, feminin, then he dunks his head completely under the water with Made in U.S.A. Godard's anti-capitalist and anti-consumerist sentiments are as distinct as ever, and the film is very much wrapped up in the political happenings of the moment, with quite a few references to matters such as the Mehdi Ben Barka affair. Occasionally the movie even devotes single shots lasting a few minutes to a simple tape recorder playing back a long winded, leftist diatribe spoken by Paula's dead lover, Richard (the voice of Godard). Even when some of this stuff went over my head, Made in U.S.A. is so ripened with unique, stunning imagery and the most complex sound design I've heard in a Godard picture yet, that on a purely sensory level I was never less than fully engaged. But make no mistake about it, there are plenty of wonderful (and wonderfully coherent) sequences contained in Made in U.S.A., and while it may not be the most accessible Godard film of the 60's, I think its dense, challenging nature is very much a part of its ultimate appeal. It's a film you have to work with, but it makes the rewards all the more sweeter. I am shocked at how much a second viewing changed my feelings on this work.
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2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967); viewing: Second

Here, on the other hand, is a film that needed no second viewing from me to confirm its greatness; however, watching 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her for a second time did in fact prove to be every bit as rich and mystical of an experience as I had remembered. Filmed at the same time as its predecessor Made in U.S.A., 2 or 3 Things... is ostensibly about Juliette Janson (Marina Vlady), a Parisian housewife and mother who doubles as a prostitute during the days to supplement her consumerist-driven desires. She treats both the dishes and clients as equal tasks, handling each with a quick and cold efficiency, and while she's not giving herself (and the viewer) dense philosophical abstractions to ponder, Godard whisks the camera away from her to show us a Paris under constant reconstruction, and to whisper into our ears his own thoughts and musings on everything ranging from politics to groceries to the very creation of the Earth itself. The latter being contained in an absolutely brilliant sequence where Godard ruminates and quotes literature over a closeup shot of a swirling cup of coffee that seems to contain no less than the entirety of the universal cosmos.

It's a difficult film for me to talk about quite frankly, so rich and layered is it with ideas and digressions and gestures that even after two viewings, I feel as though it's not nearly enough to grasp everything being presented here. But it's effect on me has been profound nonetheless; rarely does one see a movie that is so totally engrossing on both an intellectual and sensual level as 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her is; it's borderline hypnotic in its effect. The film opens in bold style, first introducing us to Vlady the actress and giving us a few details about her, before cutting to introduce her now in character as Juliette, and one gets the sense that they could likely be one and the same, and that it may not matter which we perceive her as, and that at any point in the film it very well could be either of them speaking to the camera. The movie also has fun playing with the question of who the eponymous "Her" could be; Godard announces in the opening that it is, of course, Paris. But the subsequent playful introduction of Vlady/Janson immediately calls this into question, and the sheer scope of the film's subjects may even suggest the the "Her" could refer to something far grander. This film is also notable to me for, among other things, introducing the exquisite Juliet Berto, for whom I will always harbor a monumental crush on. It's only fitting that her sole sequence, in which she has a conversation with Julliete's husband in a diner, is one of the very best in the movie. 2 or 3 Thing I Know About Her is an absolutely wonderful film, perhaps the most beautiful and poetic Godard I've seen yet, and I count it as the third true masterpiece I've watched at this point in the marathon after Contempt and Pierrot le fou.