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.