Everything is Cinema

My experience with Godard essentially begins and ends with ALPHAVILLE, BREATHLESS AND CONTEMPT (I've yet to see PIERROT LE FOU). I can recall reading reviews of much of Godard's output from, say, the mid-80's until the late 90's, much of it by J. Hoberman in the Village Voice, and finding myself utterly uninterested in checking any of it out. Hoberman would actually write rather approvingly of the various works, but it frequently sounded political, self-absorbed and obscure in a way that I felt grateful to read about them rather than see them.

Does anyone have a particular interest in later period Godard? Any recommendations?

I'd love to see his video work from the 70s/early 80s, but despite Godard's earlier and later periods being well-represented this period seems to remain entirely ignored on DVD. A nice Eclipse set of some of these would be very welcome.

Godard's post-'60s work is extremely challenging and difficult to describe, especially when I haven't seen any of it in years. However, the entire post-WEEKEND period often tends to get written about as if his immediate post-'68s films represented the whole oeuvre. Politics and theory don't dominate his recent films the way they did in BRITISH SOUNDS or LE GAI SAVOIR. Anyway, I'd recommend NUMERO DEUX, PASSION, NOUVELLE VAGUE, HISTOIRE(S) DU CINEMA, JLG/JLG and NOTRE MUSIQUE.

Facets released three of his '70s films on VHS, but I wish they'd upgrade them to DVD. ICI ET AILLEURS and COMMENT CA VA struck me as relatively minor, but Serge Daney was quite fond of the former.

Godard's post-'60s work is extremely challenging and difficult to describe, especially when I haven't seen any of it in years. However, the entire post-WEEKEND period often tends to get written about as if his immediate post-'68s films represented the whole oeuvre. Politics and theory don't dominate his recent films the way they did in BRITISH SOUNDS or LE GAI SAVOIR. Anyway, I'd recommend NUMERO DEUX, PASSION, NOUVELLE VAGUE, HISTOIRE(S) DU CINEMA, JLG/JLG and NOTRE MUSIQUE.

Facets released three of his '70s films on VHS, but I wish they'd upgrade them to DVD. ICI ET AILLEURS and COMMENT CA VA struck me as relatively minor, but Serge Daney was quite fond of the former.

I'm surprised that Sauve qui peut (1980) is unavailable in any format. With its screenplay coauthored by the reliably droll Jean-Claude Carrière (of many Bunuel collaborations), its stars like Nathalie Baye and Isabelle Huppert, its ultra-gorgeous color cinematography (not by Coutard, incidentally), the film was calculated to regain all the ground lost in the 'accessibility' department over the previous decade...and then some. Godard has never been more user-friendly. A strong achievement on its own quasi-commercial terms (resembling arthouse fare by Truffaut and Rohmer as much as JLG's past work), Sauve qui peut relaunched the auteur as bankable, and ushered in a varied and very worthwhile series of eighties films, most of them released on video, but not rereleased on DVD, films which gradually reverted to the cranky hermeticism and aesthetic abstractions we love-hate our master for. Prénom Carmen (1983) is on DVD and is recommended.

I'm not surprised that his explicitly political collectivist work of 1969 or so is unavailable in any format. The movies are too forbidding (and often majorly irritating: the audience is lectured as at a Maoist reeducation session), and unlikely to find a home video audience, but these films are worth a look (at least a peek) too should they show up at a retrospective near you.

Well worth rescuing is the totality of his TV work, which combines the best of Godard's educational impulses and his mastery of Audio-Visual techniques, especially the famous (but MIA) Histoire(s) du cinéma, but also the charming "France/tour/detour/deux/enfants"

I wouldn't call Histoire(s) du cinema as MIA because there's a French DVD set (which I have), a Japanese and due very soon a British one.

Later Godard is a very mixed bag and if you liked those 60s films mentioned perhaps the place to start would be Passion or Nouvelle Vague. Sauve qui peut is fine but hard to find. A personal favorite and I think one of his best ever is Germany Year 90 Nine Zero but it's even harder to find.

Still, I'd go ahead first with the early masterpieces like Pierrot le Fou, Vivre Sa Vie, Masculin Feminin and Band of Outsiders.

And even as a huge Godardophile who actually likes some of the Dziga Vertov films I'd recommend taking his politics with a grain of salt.

It is readily available from Amazon.co.uk as an R2 Artificial Eye DVD, but it's easily overlooked if you don't know to look for it under the (seemingly UK-specific) alternate title of SLOW MOTION.

I need to revisit SAUVE QUI PEUT; it's been too long since I've last seen it, and it's always held special meaning for me as it was the first Godard film I saw during its initial US theatrical release.

Great find, Dave! I'm onto it, and am primed for watching as much as I can of Godard, start to (seemingly never-ending) finish all over again (long may he and his films and videos run).

That's the natural way to go, chronologically. Or so it seems to me, having been in synch with the director's ongoing career from the early seventies. Like many Americans I initially got Godard in an initial bombardment of films that simply had to be seen, the key cultural cinematic documents of their time. By accident of age I didn't see my first, BREATHLESS of course, till the early seventies, but I raced breathlessly to catch up with his subsequent blitzkrieg of sixties film-after-films (sometimes made two at a time), an astounding body of work. By the time of Sauve qui peut I was up to speed (several old revelations still in store notwithstanding, especially Le Petit Soldat, maybe my favorite film of his overall), and I've followed alongside since, a committed fellow traveler who knows the past that informs his evolving present.

I've long wondered what it would have been like to start with Godard in late mid-career as you did. I hope that SLOW MOTION worked as well for the uninitated as BREATHLESS did for me, no need for past history with this auteur to see his greatness at once. The Salon editor's NY Times review of the bio makes me despair, cordoning off as it does 'golden-age' Godard from what came after,rejected and dismissed categorically, as if he became bad after he stopped being meaningful to her personally in her own biographical and local context. I think her Godard is a romantic Nouvelle Vague figment of a nostalgic imagination. I'd skeptically-argumentatively quote with gender shift William Demarest's repeated frustrated comment about Barbara Stanwyck in THE LADY EVE: "It's the same guy!" He's always been repellent and attractive in equal measure, relentlessly his stale cigar smoked attitudinizing and alienating self caught helplessly in the thrall of the great dream of communal cinema. That dynamic is the mark of his independence, that last word his hallmark, a free man...within the limits that the prostitution which the production-pimping system he submits to and which he shamefully-proudly serves allows.

Several of the Dziga Vertov Group films are available to watch at the indispensable Ubuweb site.

DV Group at Ubuweb

Thanks for the link Jason - always wanted to see Wind from the East. Will try and view the other films over the next few weeks (only so much Dziga Vertov group one can handle before supper).

Am I right in thinking that the DV group refused to produce a version of this film in which the French voiceover was removed completely, electing instead to just add another English voiceover over the top? This creates a curious situation (common to the translation of foreign speakers in news reportage) in which one language overlays another, an effect that actually has thematic resonance when seen in the context of the film overall.

Also, I think we should be careful when discussing these DV group films solely as the work of Godard - they were very much collective projects, to the extent that votes were supposedly taken on camera set ups, shot choices etc.

Here's another take from the New York Times on the Jean-Luc Godard biography, Everything is Cinema:

Creating a Wave and Riding It to Film's Pantheon

I saw that this morning. Two reviews. Must be, Must Read Cinema.

I think Vent d'est and others are coming on European DVD sometime next year but I can't find the info right now. There are much better quality versions than the Ubuweb ones available on P2P networks though not always with subtitles.

The Only the Cinema site has a comprehensive and rather critical assessment of Stephanie Zacharek's review of the Godard biography.

Everything Is Cinema and Criticism Is Nothing