Jean-Luc Godard

[Capo]

_1. Weekend 1967
_2. Éloge de l'amour 2001
_3. Contempt 1963
_4. Tout va Bien 1972
_5. Band of Outsiders 1964
_6. Breathless 1959
_7. Pierrot le fou 1965
_8. Alphaville 1965
_9. First Name: Carmen 1983
10. A Woman is a Woman 1969
11. The Small Soldier 1960
12. Détective 1985
13. Passion 1982
14. Notre musique 2004
15. La Chinoise 1967
16. Masculine Feminine 1966
17. Vivre sa vie 1962
18. Sympathy for the Devil 1968
19. Made in U.S.A. 1966
20. 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her 1967
21. Slow Motion 1979
22. British Sounds 1969
23. Les Carabiniers 1963
24. Charlotte and Her Jules 1958
25. All the Boys Are Called Patrick 1957
26. Wind from the East 1970
27. Pravda 1969

[Capo]

I cannot quite express the effect Godard has on me. Not just as a filmwatcher, or filmmaker, but in terms of my outlook on life in general, and Art in particular. I've just watched the DVD of Weekend, including the Raoul Coutard interview and the Mike Figgis essay. Figgis voices many of my unexpressed thoughts on the guy, and particular when watching his films...

...there are moments, when watching a Godard film, that border on boredom. Figgis says he has no problem with this; it's an interesting boredom, which he'd choose anyday over a boringly entertaining film. I paraphrased there to suit my own wording, and to come back to my old signature, which quoted Clownation: "I'd rather see an interesting failure than a mundane success."

Not to say Godard's films are failures. Quite the opposite. To me, they are anything but; a critic-proof critic simply playing games. Why is he critic-proof? Because he seeks no critics; he abandons them and his audience; his loyalties lie elsewhere...to his chosen medium, to his art.

I wish I could meet him some day.

[Omar]

1. Bande a part Band of Outsiders (1964)
2. Weekend (1967)

Can't wait to see more of his work. I have "Masculine Feminin" ready to watch.

[Omar]

1. A bout de souffle Breathless (1959)
2. Bande a part Band of Outsiders (1964)
3. Week End (1967)

[Vercetti]

1960: À bout de souffle Breathless
1967: Week End

[Michael]

Capo, for the life of me I cannot understand how you prefer Weekend over Breathless, but to each his own I guess.

[Capo]

Two very different films; one quite clearly a directorial feature debut, with the director playing with his brush and colours to re-paint something which had inspired him to make films--American B gangster flicks (the film is dedicated to Monogram). Splashed into this is much philosophy, which Godard jump-cuts with to make even more interesting, or frustrating, depending on taste. A bout de souffle is definitely the more easily accessible film, easier to re-watch and get "into". But Weekend, for me, paints an entirely different picture altogether. More ambitious, far more confident, and, as with Pierrot le fou (so I've heard) it is the film in which Godard tries to do everything. It's much more cinematically inventive, creating visuals you've not seen anywhere else. Both have proved to be endlessly inspiring, perhaps his two most inspiring films to date. And I rate them both with four stars.

Why do you prefer A bout de souffle?

[Michael]

Weekend is a very ambiguous film, which is good, but I felt it dragged on in certain places, making me feel very bored and uninterested. I loved A bout de souffle's fast pace, witty dialogue, and the jump cuts were brilliant. It was also a very ambiguous film, much like Weekend. I felt Godard used Michel as a symbol for France, and Patricia as a symbol for America, perhaps to show his discontent for both nations, considering they were neither very admirable characters.

[Capo]

I think every Godard film has its "yawns". They're interesting yawns, but lulls in the narrative nevertheless. The pleasure in sitting through them is that you know, sooner or later, that the film will explode into something far beyond words and give you a feeling no other film does. Another reason why I like to liken Godard to von Trier, whose work I find very much in the same vain. After watching A bout de souffle many times (perhaps more than any other), I find it dull in parts, too, just as with Weekend.

Weekend's "boredom", though, comes from its intensity, from its constant reinvention of images, so that it's always an engaging "boredom", like, say, the camera circling the courtyard several times while the farmer plays the piano, or the white and black "brothers" echoing one another's thoughts on the world while the other eats away; while A bout de souffle's stems from running out of things to say after rewatches. I find Godard's first film to be, while still fresh to me, as jejune as the iris fades it utilises in comparison to Weekend.

I also think, for what it's worth, that A bout de souffle is a "surface" film, all about style, with the director not as confident in brash, unsubtle philosophies as he would prove to be by 1967. But I'm comparing his two best films, here, and because of that I'm sounding like I prefer one far more over the other. Needless to say, these films are only two of a mere sixteen which stand on my four-star list.

I'd be interested to see how you rate his other films. For a change of pace altogether, lying somewhere between the two films we've been discussing, check out Le mépris (Contempt), another fine, colourful masterpiece.

[Michael]

I'm definitely interested in seeing as many Godard films as I possibly can. The one that most intrigues me is Vivre sa vie.

or the white and black "brothers" echoing one another's thoughts on the world while the other eats away

This is actually one of my favorite scenes in the film. The one that bores me the most is when Corrine is talking about her erotic "dream." I felt that scene was longer than it needed to be.

[Capo]

mikevronsky said:

The one that bores me the most is when Corrine is talking about her erotic "dream." I felt that scene was longer than it needed to be.

I love this scene; the camerawork, how subtle it is, and Godard's (funny) use of music, which comes in at the most dramatically mundane parts of the monologue, something he does in Alphaville too.

[Vercetti]

My two favorite scenes in Week End have to be the tracking shot of the traffic jam and the scene where the truck drivers eat while the other goes on with a monologue.

Another scene I loved out of it's depiction of upper class people is relatively early on when the woman is in a car accident, killing her boyfriend and she keeps on patronizing the farmer.

[Michael]

vercetti said:

Another scene I loved out of it's depiction of upper class people is relatively early on when the woman is in a car accident, killing her boyfriend and she keeps on patronizing the farmer.

Yeah, I loved that too.

[Omar]

1. Masculin, féminin: 15 faits précis Masculine, Feminine: In 15 Acts
2. A bout de souffle Breathless (1959)
3. Bande a part Band of Outsiders (1964)
4. Week End (1967)

[arizonajules]

mikevronsky said:

This is actually one of my favorite scenes in the film. The one that bores me the most is when Corrine is talking about her erotic "dream." I felt that scene was longer than it needed to be.

Like much of Godard's dialogue (especially in Weekend), the text from that scene was lifted straight from a novel (you'll have to forgive me, I've blanked on the novel!). I think that that inter-textuality is one of the main reasons for the extreme length of that scene.

[Michael]

Godard is quickly becoming one of my faves.

[Capo]

How come the Godard boxsets are suddenly unavailable? I have the first, but am now regretting not purchasing the second.

[jake]

After seeing Slow Motion, I have been inspired to rewatch all his work. I think I'll like them a lot more now.

1. Weekend (1967)
2. À bout de souffle (1959)
3. JLG/JLG -- Autoportrait de Decembre (1995)
4. Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1980)
5. Made in U.S.A. (1966)
6. Une Femme Est Une Femme (1961)
7. Le Petit Soldat (1960)

[Capo]

Good to hear, Jake. How much did you pay for your Slow Motion DVD (assuming you did)? I saw it for a staggering £24.99 in Virgin the other week. That's completely unjustified.

[jake]

I agree, it is ridiculous. I would never pay that much for a single DVD, especially a bare bones edition.

I rented it from CD wow, I pay £14.99 a month for a maximum of three discs at one time, which suits me fine as I rarely watch more than one film a day. They have an extensive catalogue and it works out a lot cheaper than paying £2.50 a disc at my local library.

That being said, HMV occasionally have some excellent deals; I found Nostalghia, Andrei Rublev and Solaris all going for £11.99 recently, very rare to see them below £20 there.

Anyway back to Godard, Slow Motion was very impressive, as experimental as ever. Its a simultaneously satirical and despairing look at modern relationships, with important moments slowed down (I wonder if Wong Kar Wai saw this film?) and it seems to be a celebration of cinemas ability to capture every single flicker of movement and expression of the human face. It is also very funny, with Isabelle Huppert playing a prostitute, who completely is disinterested and has to be told when to groan in pleasure, whilst involved in a tryst with another woman and a man. Like I said, satirical and cynical. I liked it a lot.