Jean-Luc Godard: S and D

enlighten me.

Destroy: Nouvelle Vague, For Ever Mozart

Weekend was dismal.

I haven't seen anything else by him.

After Weekend, Godard did a series of films using Mao, Marx, and Engles in various ways. At the time he claimed he was disavowing "bourgeois" cinema, but later said that this period was a result of experimentation and he never even read any Mao (finding it fun to juxtapose Mao and Coca-Cola or something along those lines). Some of these "Maoist films" include Le Gai savoir (1968), British Sounds (1970), Vladimir and Rosa, and Tout va bien (1972), the last film marking the beginning of his gradual return to more commercial cinema. I've heard Le Gai savoir is the best from this period. I have not seen it though.

Week-End is hard to watch, but I find it ultimately rewarding. After Breathless it's probably my favorite Godard film. It's one of the most messed up road movies I've ever seen (along with Jarmusch's Dead Man--watch them as a double feature, they work really well together).

Contempt: Sex, sun, sea and twisted automobiles. We've got Brigitte Bardot, Odysseus, Fritz Lang, Jack Palance, and the Casa Malaparte. Cinematic heroin.

"Pierrot Le Fou" is my favorite of the films, though. And "Bande à Part" certainly has its moments.

As I've mention on another thread I value some of Godard's later (post-79) work as highly as the '60s films. Esp. Sauve qui peut, Passion, First Name: Carmen, Hail Mary, and Hélas pour moi. A lot of people swear by Histoire(s) du cinéma--I've only seen two episodes of this.

Some bits of 'Une Femme Est Une Femme' are very funny.

It's not about an airport. It's about a supermarket, a prostitute, a cup of coffee, et al, etc.

N.'s last line is correct aussi.

I've seen most of his films up to the early 80s, and really every single one is worth seeing, even if some of the D-Z ones are almost unwatchable. The best of them is 'Vent d'Est', which was intended by its financiers as a kind of 'Bullet for the General'-style Marxist western, and indeed it has Gian Maria Volonte in it. It ends up as an essay on the politics of film-making, and is so a kind of sequel to 'Le Mepris', which is probably the best point of entry for Godard.

The jazzy score for 'Breathless' is lame, and I kind of don't think of it as a Godard at all. It was co-written with Truffaut.

His politics are always going to be a sticking point: the whole Maoist craze that afflicted France in the 60s was obviously a wrong turn, and JLG was a bit of a gadfly: you wouldn't catch Marker, Varda, or Rouch (more classically 'leftist' film-makers) making the same mistake.

This being so, I prefer his D-Z films, impossible as they are, to 'Tout va Bien', which was an attempt, via stars (Fonda and Montard) to 'reconnect' with the mass audience (it's about student politics, left-wing union politics, media politics); you'd be better off watching more straightforward contemporary films on the same subject by Ken Loach and other BBC directors of that era.

If I had to pick one, I guess it would be 'Masculin-Feminin', made in the winter of 65-66, and the start of his political odyssey, following 'Pierrot le Fou', his farewell to Hollywood.

I wish Criterion made posters out of their box art. I can't wait to watch this and the short that accompanies it.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0002HSDD2/qid=1098643669/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_11_1/026-3737398-5990003

http://play.com/play247.asp?page=title&r=R2&title=162776

I think I prefer this 'Jean Vigo' thing because it has an interview with Otar Iosseliani:

http://play.com/play247.asp?page=title&r=R2&title=123208

I can't remember but.

I only have a 'fullscreen' portable telly to watch them on anyway.

Did you watch 'Elogie d'amour', Jerry? I taped it, on the video, off the telly, but I haven't watched it yet.

First Half: Paris. moody b/w. a sensitive young man is working on a play/novel/poem/opera. plentiful references to books JLG probably hasn't read. a scene near the canal where part of 'L'Atalante' was shot.
Second Half: Brittany. extraordinary colour. an american (working for Spielberg) is trying to buy the rights to a resistance's fighter's autobiography. how awful--the yanks have no history, they have to steal 'ours' to make films. something vague about juliette binoche.

not a very lucid film, and honestly if it wasn't godard doing it no-one would have given a toss.

and the latest Criterion news re: Godard is their forthcoming release of Masculin/Feminin

Oh man, I hadn't heard about this. I'm debating ordering it from Amazon UK.

:D :D :D :D :D :D :D

BOUT FUCKING TIME, SHEESH.

New Yorker Video is also putting out Week-end this August.

That Vigo box set looks impressive. They need to release that here in the States -- the only Vigo available is the excellent L'Atalante.

There's a great Vigo retrospective at BAM right now. They're showing (or have showed) his three plus If..., Before the Revolution, the doc abt the '68 Columbia takeover and a few other things.

xp i like that it, masculin fem is poppy, the girl eating her apple, all the fidgeting isnt there more to take issue w with his women than his politics, then? i find him pretty wise, now. what are you referring to tho? general juvenalia, adolescence? vietnam shit

ooh bam! ive been hoping to see vigos docs, sighing for america

I'll give Grouchy Old Man Godard credit for being completely OTM about Michael Moore's uselessness and F9/11 backfiring.

xp um, gimme a sec

i didnt send you mail. i admire trife i suppose! he likes mandy moore! tmw ill read like addl rob lowell letters and work out a more nore east style

i'm sorry but i can't quite parse the tone or meaning of your posts so i'm not sure how to respond.

so much more dangerous than advocating maoist revolution!

do you mean me???? i try pretty hard not to be obscure, well most of the time. i don't really see a value in being obscure. when i'm being obscure it's because i don't really have much to say or only a little to say and am trying to avoid people coming to that realization. but i'm trying to have that happen less and less.

ray durgnat's posthumous thing in film comment recently was good on this point. for godard, spielberg isn't allowed to make a film about the resistance, but godard is allowed to make a film about the algerian war. hey-ho.

And Palenstine!

Only in the least denigratory manner possible. It comes from someone who thinks that Godard these days is, as per Network, crusty but benign.... er, neither does that mean I'm calling you crusty. Never mind.

but i'm trying to have that happen less and less.

Whereas Godard appears to be doing it on purpose more and more, I suppose.

Should I see La Chinoise?

alba -- you mean 'the terminal'.

HE says... Like mid-'80s Morrissey's claims of celibacy, I bet.

Style over oeuvre!

I see my library just got a copy of Notre Musique. Should I rent it?

I rent it when it ws available at mine. Its so incredibly disjointed -- there isn't enough of that energy you get between the formal stuff and simplicity of any of the message.

Watched "Elegy for Love", and I love the shots -- you still get the feeling he's out there somewhere with his digital camera (or whatever) and just getting his eye working, whether it ends on a film or not.

I saw La Chinoise again last night and liked most parts I was awake for.

I still haven't seen it yet but school library has the full Histoire(s) Du Cinema, which I'm desperate to see. Also one of my professors mentioned a recent study that proved Godard's quotations usually come from either the first or the last few pages of whatever text he is quoting from. So he's just like the rest of us, really.

haha i am glad people are doing studies of that sort of thing.

tho i think jlg copped to it himself.

"lols i haven't really read marx i was too busy sexing anna karina losers"

Wouldn't you?

well obv.

though i get the impression from the biogs that he wasn't rly, much...

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/culturevulture/vivresavieblog.jpg

No wonder she always looked so bored

what did he see in Anna Wiazemsky tho?

she was a research project into lefty student youth, kindd of, plus she worked with bresson.

Seven years younger

she was friends with cohn-bendit and that lot, and he was kind of fascinated by them. she was possibly an adviser on masculin-feminin, his first film on "that lot". he met a bunch of them at that time, late '65 -- j-p gorin, who he also worked with, too.

i think she's done an autobiography.

A compilation of Godard bits would be his greatest film ever, and a project he might himself approve. Other than Breathless and Band of Outsiders and maybe Pierrot le Fou, his films have as many dull or awful moments as wondrous ones.

(I did like Notre Musique a lot though).

one doesn't have to marry one's research projects!

Week-End
Bande A Part
Contempt
Masculin Feminin
A Woman is a Woman

are all wonderful

Alphaville
Breathless
Eloge d'amour

are okay

the rest are either forgettable or i haven't seen them

hooray: band of outsiders, la chinoise, weekend, most of breathless, pierrot le fou

alright i guess: two or three things..., masculin-feminin, the little bit of histoire(s) du cinema i watched once

buhhh: alphaville, the parts of contempt that don't have bardot in them

sauve qui peut has a funny isabelle huppert getting spanked scene if i recall

i don't know what i think about any of them any more, but i think it's important to see all of his films up to the early seventies, or maybe a bit later. i don't get much out of the later ones that i've seen.

I mostly find Contempt a beautiful bore.

Tout va Bien is fun! (esp long supermarket take)

i think 'alphaville' is one of my favourites, today.

faves:
Alphaville
Masculin Feminin
Pierrot le Fou

the others i've seen, all lovable in one way or another:
Bande A Part
Breathless
A Woman is a Woman
Week-End
Contempt
Two or Three Things...

I stick up for alphaville, too

that isn't my penis

my faves:
week-end
tout va bien
pierrot le fou
contempt
alphaville
notre musique too

everything else i have seen I have at least liked.

le mepris is the only one i really like

Alphaville: tonight, watching it for the first time in a decade. That strange home-made collage effect of different modes and cultural flotsam: Orwellian dystopia, hard-boiled detectives, computer capitalism. It reminds me of Brecht's consciously half-baked fantasies of America, in its feeling of making it up as it goes along - a sort of experiment in imagination, trying to see what happens if you treat Paris as Alphaville and these scenes as happening in an improbably distant future. How about when Lemmy Caution asks an associate 'Dick Tracy - il est mort?': throw in any bit of cultural fantasy or fiction you want, in some kind of late version of new wave Americana.

Space: walking round and round corridors.

Also space, as in reference to galactic distances.

Capitale de la Douleur

I was watching Alphaville tonight, too. Where can I get a Seductress Third Class?

That's quite a coincidence. I know what you mean, too. The second one, who appears after about an hour, is particularly appealing somehow in her ... I don't know, her divergence from the Godardian / Karina norm - she looks very real.

A pretty crazy picture, in the end. Abstract car chases, film suddenly going negative, that throaty Alpha-60 voice all over the soundtrack along with the usual temporally disruptive spots of music (which run their automatic course then end before anything has finished happening - this more pronounced in Le Mepris than in Alphaville in fact) ... an ending in which the city is suddenly doomed and notre heros is driving away. The missing link, someone else who isn't even Paul Morley must have pointed out, between Nineteen Eighty-Four and Blade Runner.

Alphaville

How weird, I watched Contempt for the first time last night.

Sometimes I think ILX's art/culture impulses align like sorority sisters' periods.

There's a cinema here that's doing a retrospective of all of Godard's films - currently in the 80s period. Screenings are less than 2 euros, so I could potentially go to all of them but I also have to maintain the appearance of having a social life.
Which of the following should I see?

Prenom: Carmen
Je vous salue, Marie
Detective
Soigne ta droite
King Lear
Nouvelle Vague
Le rapport Darty
Les enfants jouent a la Russie
Allemagne année 90 neuf zéro
Helas pour moi
JLG/JLG - autoportrait de decembre
For Ever Mozart
Histoires du cinema

From that list the ones I've seen and can recommend are JLG/JLG, Detective
and Histoires du Cinema.

Arrested.

http://a.abcnews.com/images/US/ap_rockefeller2_080805_mn.jpg

That actually looks like a still from a film

I'm gonnae watch A Bout de Souffle ... pour la premiere fois? Can this be? Then Bande a Part which I have definitely not seen.

A compilation of Godard bits would be his greatest film ever, and a project he might himself approve. Other than Breathless and Band of Outsiders and maybe Pierrot le Fou, his films have as many dull or awful moments as wondrous ones.

Breathless, at least, maybe the others too, isn't really an exception to this generalization.

otfm.

search: breathless
destroy: breathless

Has he done anything as fun as Band of Outsiders? I haven't seen any films of his that I outright disliked, but there aren't many that I'd actually want to re-watch within a short span or purchase.

breathless, bande a parte, pierrot le fou and weekend at least are among my fav films ever. apart from that he's spotty but all of the films i've seen are at least worth watching. (one that should've been good but wasn't: a woman is a woman)

nothing's as fun as bande a part. like nothing. watch la petit soldat, though, for something as fully realised, but tonally different, dark and aloof. as much as i'd agree that his output isn't necessarily all good, that somehow doesn't make me like it any less - the very existance of the first eight or nine years worth of his stuff is a beautiful thing; he worked as a magpie, stealing stuff and documenting his obsessions in his films, and being able to dip into them like a diary is a unique thing in film. cf. two or three things i know about her for this - it isn't a great film, but it's a really interesting sketchbook page of where he was at.

I mostly agree with the second half of that last post (haven't seen the films mentioned in the first half). I watched DEUX OU TROIS CHOSES for maybe the 4th or 5th time this week and it remains one of my favourite films.

I started A Bout de Souffle last night, made it 12 minutes in, stopped and read the LRB instead - well it was after midnight + I was tired + hungry. I'll finish it today I hope.

No love for Alphaville?

Bande a Part - does anyone rate this? It has a great cachet, but not really a lot going on.

cachet = I mean, lots of people out there seem to love it

Good Madison.

how can anyone not like bande a part? it's such a joyous film. getting to the end and thinking that it was hastily resolved or whatever ignores how much fun it was.

I'm not at the end. My DVD doesn't work too well. I've only seen an hour or so, so far. It's not nearly as joyous or fun as I would have hoped. It seems pretty dour and melancholy to me - no wonder, as the characters are nervously planning a crime. Maybe the idea of it as thoroughly joyous reflects the memorable dance sequence, which is striking to be sure but of course only takes a few minutes.

I think it is about an airport.
― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 18 March 2004

Yeah, it's only partly joyous, but lighthearted by Godard standards, I guess. I wouldn't rate it as one of his best, but it's cute.

It's maybe his most "let's just riff on my fave American genre" film.

OK, I just finished it. Actually the very end, the last 2 minutes or so, IS joyour. Maybe this gives people a happier feeling about it than they would otherwise have - cos in the previous 20 minutes we have two masked robbers binding and gagging and slapping the pathetic Odile, slinging the lady of the house in a wardrobe where she seems to be dead (but later apparently isn't); then the two gangsters shooting each other. I can see the Tarantino-appeal of this last moment - a sense of Pure Cinema Action, sort of set-piece fun. But most of the film is NOT joyous or cute, as I perhaps had imagined it would be. That's not to say it's not good (though a lot of it did feel quite disappointing to me). And I *do* like the FIN.

joyour = joyeux

Well, the thing about the shooting, and the lady not being dead, is that Bande A Part is all about film noir as kid's stuff. There are no real consequences to the movie's mayhem, it's all make-believe, children playing at cops & robbers. I think the slow realisation of that is what makes the movie so joyous, and it wouldn't work if the mood wasn't relatively dour at first

'at first' = up to the 85-minute mark in a 92-minute film?

That lady of the house may not be dead, but Arthur is, at the end, and so is his uncle, after they have shot each other.

I don't know, I remember the realisation that the movie isn't quite as bleak as it's making out to be hitting me a bit earlier than that.

I don't know how seriously we're supposed to take Arthur's death, cos the shoot-out is just so rididcolously playful and OTT. I realise that pointing out one person's non-death and discarding the other's actual death might be a bit having my cake and eating it, too, but I really don't think we're supposed to see Arthur's death as something more than the guy playing the baddie getting called out 'cause that's how the game works. It's not a movie that strives much for realism, I guess.

I never liked it so much, but the Hal Hartley tribute made me appreciate it a little bit more.

What tribute? In a movie?

Now you say that, I can see HH as resembling this (it's probably obvious), though I don't really like him much from what I've seen, have never understood the acclaim anyway.

BaP as genre and vs realism: OK, yes, that is a properly Godardian way of thinking after all. The voice-over is also very artificial (and quite interesting and poetic). But still, watching a distressed woman being tied up and slapped around by two thugs is not fun whatever generic frame you apply to it, and that sequence arrives in the last quarter of the film.

I think if they *weren't* violent criminals, if the film was just about carefree young people (ie ... if it was a different film), then it would be more like the film I thought it was, and that the acclaim for its charm often seems to imply.

A Bout de Souffle is also about a murderer, of course - not much innocence there. Maybe Une Femme est Une Femme (which I like a lot, especially its more musical and comic sequences) is closer to what I imagined this was.

I think if they *weren't* violent criminals, if the film was just about carefree young people (ie ... if it was a different film), then it would be more like the film I thought it was, and that the acclaim for its charm often seems to imply.

Yeah, I see that. Basically I do think that there's a sort've childish macho side to Godard, he makes the characters criminals because hey criminals are awesome (in movies.) This doesn't entirely go away when he becomes more politicized, either - La Chinoise just swaps gangster chic for terrorist chic. I find it a forgiveable enough weakness, maybe because I like gangster movies too and can definitley identify with Godard's fanboyism.

I agree about that childish streak, I'm sure you're right, and about the continuity to later pictures.

I am re-viewing and can report that the minute's silence (one of those coups de grace that make the films irresistible occasionally) lasts 35 seconds.

The dance sequence (still on BaP): the music shuts off often and we hear live dance noise and voiceover instead. The music is, I suppose, imposed on the soundtrack? So, come to think of it, they weren't dancing to any actual music. This explains, I guess, why they don't seem to be in time - though my first sense was that the nature of this dance was to be out of time, that was the point. And I do feel that some kind of awkwardness and untimeliness is the essence of this sequence - it's cool and elegant and one level, but also very odd, very gauche, very stylized (Franz dances like a Thunderbird puppet!) and of course very episodic in relation to the rest of the film.

A lot of things in the story are clearer on re-viewing - eg in the cafe, Odile giving the love-testing gadget to Arthur, but not saying what it is: Franz then uses it at the end and his love is apparent. In fact the whole story from before it starts is only clear to me now. Also, the underlying fact throughout of Franz's desire for Odile, and his melancholy at being sidelined, till in the last reel or two he tries to reel her back - this may seem the film's most basic dynamic, but I wasn't fully aware of it first time round.

(courtesy of Captain Sleep form ip3's three frames thread)
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f185/PappaWheelie/01.gif
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f185/PappaWheelie/24.gif

It's quite literary: taken from a source text by a Mme Hitchens; Franz recites a tale from Jack London and in the café offers a parallel with The Purloined Letter (which goes unnamed). And the voiceover, as mentioned before, is strikingly literary in tone.

Franz's head does look big, especially in the first of those pictures.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3048/3039770456_9e96e0ed61.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3152/3039770906_9337be8cbf.jpg

http://www.videogamecritic.net/images/2600/super_breakout.png

Has anyone else watched the A-Z of Bande a Part that comes with the DVD? I've hardly seen its like before. It's bitty - you have to keep restarting on each letter - and maybe it's not stunningly insightful, but it is the work of people who've watched the picture very closely and related it to Godard's career (and it features a quite healthy-looking Karina, interviewed, what, this decade?) -- and of course it's an aptly formalist device a la Barthes.

i watched band of outsiders again last night, the end of that movie always makes me inexplicably happy. the last line of the narration is one of my favorite moments in all of cinema.
― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Sunday, 10 July 2005

You mean 'my next film, in Cinemascope and Technicolor, will concern the further adventures of Franz and Odile au pays chauds'?

True, what someone said upthread, about a dog in that last shot.

I watched most of the extras on this Sunday night, and have it sitting next to me to finish off.

Timely thread.

pinefox i am disturbed by the idea of you basically liveblogging a film viewing. films should be watched in one without pausing in dark rooms only eating foods if they are not crunchy or distracting.

about the a-z thing though; i think i watched a bunch of the bfi extras, is one of them - uh, m, i guess - for magpie director? it's one of the things i love most about the stream of sixties godard films; that they explicitly document his pasttimes and preoccupations, that if he wanted to interject something into his film he just gave the words a mouthpiece and let it stumble into shot. this was kind of less successful later on, but i remember it adding to the mood, the picture of a literate bohemian parisian society, in bande a part.

i just love the atmosphere of the film -- that melancholy little refrain that plays over those long shots of the car scurrying around, the fact that it seems to be drizzling throughout the whole thing, the playful narration. i don't know what it adds up to, really, but i can't think of many films i'm more attached to.

it's been a long long while since i've actually seen bande a part, but my memory of the score is that it's wes montgomery at his peppiest twinkling a score for parisian street scenes. my memory is patchy and all, but i can't see the darkness in the descriptions of bande a part above - the content could be as macabre-as-could-be, and it'd still be carried along by its zippy momentum. la petit soldat is my favourite godard, and i think is a genuinely darker, colder film to contemplate, i guess an interesting counterpart to the liveliness of some things from the same period.

http://eurekavideo.co.uk/moc/catalogue/une-femme-mariee/

^ Anyone?

woah

"Long out-of-circulation and unavailable on home video" is no joke. i've seen pretty much all of godard but this one has always evaded me. not convinced it's been on tv even (i saw most of them for the first time on tapes taken of channel 4).

think it's an anti-consumerist thing.

only one of the 60s Godards I haven't seen.

Yeah I saw it at the while browsing at the nft shop last night.

Also, very pleased that Eureka have also bought out Resnais' Muriel on DVD - would've bought it straightaway except its being screened on Bank Holiday Monday so I'll watch it then instead.

I've had the US DVD of Une femme mariée sitting on my shelf for a couple months, haven't gotten around to watching it yet

I saw it (Une femme mariée) on a shitty bootleg vhs a few years back. It's not great, but there is a cool montage set to a Sylvie Vartan song, and--if you are pretty literate on Godard's next few films--you'll notice him trying out a few things (negative footage, ye-ye pop) that he'd quickly reuse in 65-67.

started searching the thread to see if i'd groused about contempt on it yet, and found morbius grousing for me:

I mostly find Contempt a beautiful bore.

otm.

(NB: there are many of his ostensible classic that i haven't seen and want to, including weekend and alphaville. i like breathless, love bande a part and love parts of masculin/feminin. but contempt seemed sorta hollow and awfully pleased with itself.)

the long argument scene in the middle of contempt is one of my favorite godard moments. it so accurately captures the dynamics of a relationship falling apart, I can't fathom allegations of hollowness. also love palance's american caricature, that's funny stuff.

I'd recommend pierrot le fou but you are quite possibly mentally deranged.

contempt is the worst date movie ever.

the long argument scene in the middle of contempt is one of my favorite godard moments. it so accurately captures the dynamics of a relationship falling apart

eh. it's a good scene, but it seemed a little stagey to me. and since i really didn't care about either of them as characters or archetypes or whatever godard conceived them as, i mostly just wanted to be let out of the room.

(i felt that way about the latter half of l'avventura too, fwiw. a lot of that '60s "candor" about "how relationships really are" hasn't aged very well, imo.)

I saw it just a couple of years ago and it resonated

http://eurekavideo.co.uk/moc/catalogue/une-femme-mariee/

Macha Méril! aka Traunitz from Fassbinder's Chinese Roulette!

omg omg omg Traunitz! gwee!

I mostly find Contempt a beautiful bore.

otm.

yeah, but 'mostly', because it's simultaneously really entertaining and satisfying; geeking on fritz lang bigging up M, enjoying the technicolor etc. it's like watching radio days and sitting through mediocre woody allen for the few good jokes. i think the beautiful thing about the sixties godards is that the stars aligned for a few of them and everything was in place to make them great, deep, rounded films, but the rest are almost like a travelogue or a diary, where he'd voice whatever interested him, throw it in like a magpie and just stir it around. this is BEST when some philosophy is voiced by jean seberg or by a passer by in bandé a part, but it's still absorbing even if it's in something sketchy (almost literally sketchy) like 2 or 3 things.

Macha Méril! aka Traunitz from Fassbinder's Chinese Roulette!

omg omg omg Traunitz! gwee

Always loved the venomous letter Truffaut sent to Godard after his scorching attack to La nuit américaine.
Best bit: "Il y a encore à Paris assez de jeunes gens fortunés, complexés d’avoir eu leur première voiture à dix-huit ans, qui seront heureux de se dédouaner en disant : “je produis le prochain Godard".

Ouch!

I liked it when Truffaut calls him the "Ursula Andress of the protest movement" (or something like that).

Yeah, one of the few occasions the usually quiet Truffaut really flew off the handle.

My problem with Le Mépris is that Brigitte Bardot is terrible in it, would have been a hundred times better with Anna Karina.

it's stunt casting on a meta level

the only thing I remember not liking about contempt was bardot's denouement. it plays like sour grapes from godard. "I will have my revenge! things will end terribly for you in my motion picture!"

now I'm thinking about what a completely different film contempt would be with anna karina in it... karina is awesome in general but bardot's bombshell cinema goddess really works in context of the movie.

rewatched Pierrot last nigh. God, Anna Karina...

Does ILM accept Dailymotion links?

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xo15z_a-bout-de-souffle_shortfilms

guess not :-(

i think bardot is right for 'contempt'; it is an incredibly meta movie and she was the face of the new wave*

*kind of. i think back then (1963) vadim wasn't seen as a completely different breed from the cahiers lot, of whom rohmer and rivette were very obscure anyway.

She wasn't so much the face of the New Wave as she was (in the eyes of the public at large) the face of all French cinema at that time. Deneuve was just starting to make a name for herself, and I guess an argument could be made for Jeanne Moreau, but really now, BB was one of the most famous women in the world in the early 60s.

yeah, if you watch some of the extras on the contempt criterion disc you can get a sense of the media circus bardot brought with her to the production... like if some indie filmmaker cast beyonce as the lead in his new movie

Yeah, that Paparazzi one is nuts. Photographers hanging off the cliffs on the island set trying to score pictures.

yea that's pretty much what i mean.

"the new wave" was a huge thing from 1956 cos of her and vadim. the first book in english on the subject covers ~50 directors.

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/images/covers/200905.jpg

(this looks good)

http://criterion_production.s3.amazonaws.com/release_images/2656/512_box_348x490.jpg

In April

all this fiftieth anniversary ish for breathless is sheer myth, no disrespect for the film

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/movies/23scott.html

Mr. Godard’s film quickly took its place among those touchstones of modern art that signified a decisive break with what came before

no

don't remember 'hiroshima mon amour' or 'l'aventurra' or 'la dolce vita' getting this kind of hyperbole

hmm? It's been spoken about like this for as long as I can remember (the late '70s)

don't remember 'hiroshima mon amour' or 'l'aventurra' or 'la dolce vita' getting this kind of hyperbole

― long time listener, first time balla (history mayne),

don't remember you alive in 1960.

Less a "decisive break" and more a "successful one," though I guess two of those other three movies you mentioned didn't do too badly at B.O. either.

Breathless has always seemed, to me, a sort of porridge-just-right situation in terms of its reputation against other landmarks of the era.

don't remember you alive in 1960.

― Filmmaker, Author, Radio Host Stephen Baldwin (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, May 27, 2010 3:49 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

a. o. scott wasn't around in 1960 either

i do a lil thing called "research"... anyway, i don't think "breathless" was a big decisive break, less so than "HMA" by a long shot. of the four films, i think "la dolce vita" was probably the biggest commercial success -- not a "decisive break" (formally) either, but a huge deal in terms of increasing the art film's visibility.

anyone seen Film Socialisme?

Mr. Godard’s film quickly took its place among those touchstones of modern art that signified a decisive break with what came before

no

don't remember 'hiroshima mon amour' or 'l'aventurra' or 'la dolce vita' getting this kind of hyperbole

that's because breathless *is* different from those three, which are film extensions of 20th century high art ennui. breathless was the marriage of low and high art, concerned with stuff like gangster films, youth culture, rebellion, bringing the kineticism of b movies to the art house. so I def see it as a break and something that influenced folks like scorsese in a big way, but also agree it hasn't aged as well as some of godard's other 60s films.

breathless is different from those three, but not more important or better

i wouldn't bat 'em away by saying they're about ennui: they are sincere responses to the human condition/life in post-war europe/__________

i don't see where the high art is in breathless: it's in french? they have pretentious convos?

resnais was a huge and vocal comic books guy, l'aventurra is kind of working with a 'lady vanishes' plot line, and la dolce vita is all *about* the alleged breakdown in cultural standards... but these are all secondary concerns

i don't like the high culture/low culture idea you're using anyway: a good gangster movie is only 'low art' if you buy into that bipolar view of culture in the first place. go back to the 1920s and the highbrows were greeting popular genres because they abolished the bigh/low split.

it's inarguably "a decisive break with what came before" It wasn't called the new wave for nothing. The reverence which it's afforded is a different matter (and I don't think it's much elevated critically from your choices in the wider scheme of things), but the original nature of the film is difficult to counter.

Watched Slow Motion again recently, having not seen it for years. That's a strange but hypnotic piece of work.

fellini was a comic bk guy too, THE WHITE SHEIK is even abt fumetti (photo comic strips)

still think BREATHLESS *feels* different to L'AVENTURRA and LA DOLCE VITA (and most other films of the period), and that's partly to do w/ the improvised feel, the naturalistic lighting and performances, and of course the jump cut. godard of course wasn't the first to use the latter, but i really can't think of a filmmaker who had made it so central to their technique before. Wld love to hear (and see) counter-examples.

It wasn't called the new wave for nothing.

yeah but JLG wasn't even the most famous new waver -- came after truffaut and chabrol (and resnais though of course he wasn't a cahiers guy)

i think 'new wave' was even applied to vadim -- it was just a quasi-sociological term to do with 'liberated' postwar french youth [via bardot, trintignant, et al] that got applied to the cinema c. 1958–9

there were pretty good critics (like raymond borde) who were having none of it

xpost

i think the feel of 'shadows' is not dissimilar to 'breathless'... the overuse of the jump cut is basically a result of godard not knowing what he was doing, yes? can't remember where it's documented, but fritz lang gave him a stern talking-to and tried to teach him the basics later. of course it's fine to use jump cuts for a reason, but i think antonioni and resnais were manipulating form in a way way more interesting way.

you cld say that godard's ignorance of basic film technique meant that he wasn't held back by the dogma of the 'well made film' and therefore was more likely to do something new, different (tho' it's surprising to me that someone who'd been such a student of movies the previous ten years or more didn't pick up more classical film grammar). i'm also guessing that raoul coutard *did* know the basics, and took charge of the technical side of things on goard's first few features (there've certainly been plenty of other film directors who have leaned heavily on their dps and editors.) i'm always struck by the fact that fellini and (especially) antonioni had been making movies, working in or around the film industry, for quite a while before they had their big breakthrough hit - i don't know the history well enough, but it seems as if the french film industry was a much more of a closed shop than the Italian film industry.

i don't know enough about that. i think there was some crisis in the french cinema that led to lots of cheap first features being commissioned, and that the international breakthrough of 'and god created woman' encouraged.

the question of breakthroughs has to relate to the wider picture of art-house distribution... get the feeling this ramped up in the 1950s, especially in america. no single film or filmmaker is responsible for that, but there is a kind of temperature-change about 1960 (for convenience's sake). i don't think antonioni's debut was even shown in the UK for example.

breathless is different from those three, but not more important or better

yeah, I didn't say that, neither did that NYT quote. punk rock existed before never mind the bollocks but it's hard to argue it wasn't a landmark cultural detonation for a lot of folks.

the overuse of the jump cut is basically a result of godard not knowing what he was doing, yes? can't remember where it's documented, but fritz lang gave him a stern talking-to and tried to teach him the basics later. of course it's fine to use jump cuts for a reason, but i think antonioni and resnais were manipulating form in a way way more interesting way.

the idea of lang talking sternly to him is, if I can extend the punk rock metaphor here, like elvis giving johnny rotten singing tips. there was a method in the madness. I've said this before, maybe not in this thread, but godard made 10 films between 1960 and 1965, and at least 5 of them (your pick) are some of the best films ever made. a lucky naif with a movie camera can make a great film but godard's track record belies he was something more than that.

(btw I have watched the lang/godard interviews, godard was totally in awe of the guy but it's evident there's a gap in where their respective heads were at)

and at least 5 of them (your pick) are some of the best films ever made

lol

tbrr i just don't think the extreme reverence for the new wave is a good thing

i like a o scott, but there are some really bad offenders out there

obviously it's fine paying tribute to good things that are old, but spare me yr "touchstones of modern art"

5 YEARS

Pierrot le fou (1965)
Alphaville (1965)
Une femme mariée (1964)
Band of outsiders (1964)
Contempt (1963)
Les carabiniers (1963)
Le petit soldat (1963)
Vivre sa vie (1962)
Une femme est une femme (1961)
Breathless (1960)

if you don't like godard I guess it doesn't mean a hill of beans but I'm always gonna find that run as staggering as eno's first 4 albums

and he kept going, too. 15 in 7 years. gah.

Week End (1967)
La chinoise (1967)
2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967)
Made in U.S.A. (1966)
Masculin féminin (1966)

i like contempt a lot although anytime it gets referred to as "subversive" i cringe but yeah i dont get godard most of those movies are unbearably corny to me. week end in particular is just str8 shameful

i like em better than brian eno's first four albums, but not as much as a whole bunch of other stuff

lot of them have some really memorable images, but they're also often really dumm, and have patches of boring stuff, are badly constructed, or whatever

i think the worst thing about all the contemporary godard adulaish is his being misunderstood as a profound/original thinker. he's a very muddled thinker and a pretentious so-and-so to boot. politically he's all over the place, but somehow he gets a free pass/is taken to be a leftist

Pretty much OTM there - apart from the Eno bit

part of my appreciation of godard is driven by looking at his 60s work as a whole, pieces of an enterprise or approach. you can pick any one of these films in isolation and push them around for their deficits and weaknesses, but godard was landing more punches then he was missing on the whole imo.

breathless is not my favorite godard but it lays out the ground rules he'd work from during the 60s. watching breathless is more of forensic activity for me, hearing faint sounds that would become bigger echoes in contempt, band of outsiders, and pierrot le fou. in a way, band of outsiders is breathless remade by a godard who was much more in control of his materials.

and yeah I finally read that whole NYT article, it does get a little cloying with the hosannas.

I really have no patience for Godard except for Breathless, Contempt, and bits of Masculin-Feminin. Criterion did us a favor by releasing those films in beautiful prints though.

i think the worst thing about all the contemporary godard adulaish is his being misunderstood as a profound/original thinker

haha yeah the idea that just having your characters talk about hölderlin makes a movie "intellectually challenging" or w/e is kinda :/ and a lot of his "critiques" feel like point missing/obfuscation

it'd be ok if they talked about all this cultural art hotness in a way i understood, but i don't, and more to the point, i don't think godard does either. i did actually read a blog post recently that said he was clearly very erudite because of all the references/allusions he makes, but that isn't quite right. it doesn't work that way.

i've also seen it said that the cahiers writers all felt like outcasts because they weren't university graduatess and french cultural life is very snobbish and exclusive, and that maybe they overcompensated a lil bit by being deliberately obscure. i find other intellectual filmmakers -- like resnais -- comparatively lucid anyway.

i 'get' the 60s ones, and even the dziga-vertov movies to a degree, but 'eloge de l'amour', the 80s movies, not so much

anyone ever manage to sit through one of the dziga vertov group films? (i did, a couple of nights ago. rough going, to say the least.)

hah xp

never seen any of the dziga vertov group films and seeing ici et allieurs pretty much put me off them; the film basically seems to say "we were sort of full of shit, weren't we?"

i paid a lot of money to see the d-v films

but here are some of them, apparently

http://www.ubu.com/film/dziga_vertov.html

That's money, uh, not well spent

contempt - subversive, yeah I don't get that. playfully irreverent and satirical is more like it.

i think the worst thing about all the contemporary godard adulaish is his being misunderstood as a profound/original thinker. he's a very muddled thinker and a pretentious so-and-so to boot. politically he's all over the place, but somehow he gets a free pass/is taken to be a leftist

agree with this. godard's politics are the least interesting thing about him. he's a super intelligent guy and he did a lot of original + memorable work, but he's not as deep as he thinks he is. you throw some lines of sartre at ppl and some are gonna be like "wow, deep thinker!"

godard's value for me is as an aesthetic trickster. he's brilliant but take him seriously at yr own risk. but y'know I wouldn't trust bob dylan with my personal effects either.

The roughest going for me Godard-wise was having to sit through godawful Jefferson Airplane trying to recreate the "Let It Be" rooftop jam in "One P.M" - though I'll guess most of that is DA Pennebaker's doing.
Anyway - I think he's brilliant. Far from a "pretentious so-and-so" (what's that, exactly?)
Here's a good recent interview.And I can't recommend "Histoires du Cinema" (sp?) highly enough as a hallmark of DIY video filmmaking. Great shit.

Godard is into quoting a lot of sources he hasn't understood or cares to understand/engage with to draw something out of (having started to watch them when I had already read/listened/experienced some of the sources not first seeing them through a G film as a 16 year old) but I always pictured that he was using it on the moment, and if it did the job on the day...he is probably one of the few I picture as somehow 'living' as a filmmaker on a set, on a day-to-day basis. I see a real struggle for inspiration: sometimes coming through, sometimes not.

It lead to a lot of boringness that you could pick apart retrospectively but as a whole its a rollercoaster rush at the cinema. Really unique without the preciousness that implies.

Hate all the films I've seen post-68. Look forward to watching the "Histoire" docs one day.

I really have no patience for Godard except for Breathless, Contempt, and bits of Masculin-Feminin. Criterion did us a favor by releasing those films in beautiful prints though.

― Filmmaker, Author, Radio Host Stephen Baldwin (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Donnerstag, 27. Mai 2010 18:19 (1 hour ago) Bookmark

have you seen "vivre sa vie"? it's probably the most devastating film i've ever seen.

Pierrot le fou (1965)
Alphaville (1965)

These are two of my very favourite movies. I haven't seen any of his other work. I don't think. Maybe I should.

Didn't Ophuls have a hand in kickstarting the New Wave? La Ronde really is one of my top movies too; it's a total headspin, and has that impish sense of modernist New Wave fun to it as well. Feels a lot more modern/timeless/whatever than it actually is, and the cinematography is sorta level-up at points, especially in that opening scene

watch any of these next

Band of outsiders (1964)
Contempt (1963)
Vivre sa vie (1962)
Une femme est une femme (1961)

Godard's political confusion is a big part of why I like him, to be honest - I think his movies are pretty upfront about not having any answers, or even a medidated grasp on what the problem is. Which works well with their breakneck pace, they're these ADD pieces where pop culture, love, politics, everyday shit all gets jumbled and played around with. Which jives well with a certain (perhaps excessively fetishized, I grant you) vision of the 60's, it's all about big, colourful chaos. Not a good life model or anything but as an aesthetic I enjoy it.

ah cool, Ed III

Daniel Rf, that sounds pretty on the mark. Alphaville is perhaps more pointedly political of the two I've seen but even it has many ambiguities - it works best AS a piece of cerebrally-playful science fiction. PLF is such a blast of escapism it manages to get away with having two perfect endings, one after the other

godard's best films are this run, i think: sauve qui peut (la vie) / passion / prénom carmen / je vous salue, marie / détective / king lear / nouvelle vague / allemagne année 90 neuf zéro / hélas pour moi. somewhere in there is soigne ta droite which isn't up to the same level. but to make up for that there are several short films i love: grandeur et décadance d'un petite commerce de cinéma, soft and hand, armide (from aria), puissance de la parole.

passion-->détective, in particular, are films i watch all the time. they are just ravishing. and i know this will sound weird, but they are all "catchy" in the way a pop song is "catchy"--they stick in my brain. sequences from them run in my mind all the time. more than in almost any other films.

that's not to say i don't love many of the other films from other periods. my favorites from the '60s are probably vivre sa vie and la chinoise. the latter is very, very funny.

i also really like the television essays (?) he made just prior to his so-called comeback: six fois deux, sur et sous la communication and especially france/tour/détour/deux/enfants. the latter might actually resemble political lucidity in a weird way. i don't generally turn to godard for his politics, though, which are quite capricious. i'm not sure has has much to "say" in that respect. read recent quote, someone responding to brouhaha over new film: "he's a poet who thinks he's a philosopher." that seems close to apt. but a lot of people don't seem ready or willing to even find the poetry in his films of the last 30 years.

for some reason i went to see hélas pour moi with my mom who is not a big cinephile and she was like WTF. have you guys seen (or rather heard) that one? the weird croaking voice, man. let's see if i can find that. no, i can't.

but i have to admit i kind of like this mashup:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvRen4eiPQ4

in fact, fuck it, i'm going to watch je vous salue, marie right now. might be my favorite film.

and here's the opening to nouvelle vague:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6_K2NXLyFs&feature=related

just LISTEN to that.

by the way it really sucks now that when i type in "nouvelle vague" into any kind of search, i get stuff from some shitty british band or whatever.

oh fuck, never mind that last clip, it's got some russian guy speaking on top of the french dialogue. try this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h80izhcPfPM

Saw The Old Place for the first time tonight, which I rather liked, bcz for one think I didnt know there was a jazz version of the Rosemary's Baby lullaby.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0183595/

It played w/ JLG/JLG, which is pretty much the only thing of his I'm passionate about post-1970.

I remember the sound of Hélas pour Moi being astonishing. What it all meant I wasn't clear on.

hmmm, a post 1970- JLG poll could be quite interesting

curious fact: 'le mepris' (1963) had not been released in the UK as of september 1967

life imitating art:

Worst traffic jam ever? Gridlock spans 60 miles

He's getting an honorary Academy Award this year. They trotted out Satyajit Ray and Elia Kazan when they were on death's doorstep, so maybe this means he's sick. In any event, I hope it's part of the televised ceremony, and I hope he attends. It will be very moving to see him get a standing ovation from Miley Cyrus.

...as she mouths "who???" to the person seated to her right.

Le Mepris is great, everything else I've seen has been mostly a bore.

lol at the thought of the compendium of clips

No clips; Billy Crystal will do a lighthearted song-and-dance reenactment of everyone's favorite scenes from Weekend, La Chinoise, and Letter to Jane.

Have they found him yet?

Somehow missed this news.

He's not coming, and good for him.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/jean-luc-godard-to-be-an-oscar-no-show/story-e6frg8n6-1225915014578

he should send polanski

i would think more "good for him" if this wasn't the reason:

"He just told me, 'It's not the Oscars,' " she says, referring to his reaction on learning about the award. "At first he thought it was going to be part of the same ceremony, then he realised it was a separate thing in November."

At a time when a movie like Crash can win best picture I don't know why anyone gives a shit.

Ugh, that was worded badly.

I think that article probably overstates the non-televised thing as being a factor. I doubt he'd have shown up anyway, and that was just another reason to skip it.

Well, maybe not that article, but a different one I read that used the same quote. Definitely bed time.

At a time when a movie like Crash can win best picture I don't know why anyone gives a shit.

― optimizing the emotional effects of Redneck Hoe by Insane Clown Posse (corey), Tuesday, September 7, 2010 5:54 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah im sure jlg wishes it were the 50s, when classics like 'around the world in 80 days' took best picture

all gone downhill since then

wait Jackie Chan's 80?

JLG is meant to be a know-nothing misanthrope, I think it's part of the charm

i would think more "good for him" if this wasn't the reason

It's a perfectly good reason, just as it was insulting to have Bacall and Corman wave from the audience last March while the telecast spent 15 minutes on a tribute to John fucking Hughes.

either he's dissing the academy awards for being shallow/worthless/idiotic, or he wants more screen time. u can't have it both ways.

If he was so shrewd, he'd film himself in his limo getting stuck in the traffic jam on the way to the Academy Awards.

can't believe they snubbed the great auteur corman while paying tribute to john hughes

loooool

mayne swinging for zing thread

swingin' for a zingin'

Corman >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Hughes

^^always hoped the day wld come that i cld agree w morbs abt something, and this is that happy day! even if you discount all the fucking great movies corman directed, no other producer can claim to have given so many notable young directors their first proper break in the biz (coppola, hellman, towne, dante, scorsese, demme etc etc)

if u discount the movies u have no argument whatsoever! he gave ppl starts, yay!

better to say like french critics that his films were "desperate cries from the heart of a grotesque fastfood culture", a phrase i like to pass off as my own while applying it to whatever the current topic is.

Sixteen Candles vs The Masque of the Red Death

is Chic-Fil-A shedding tears?

k, having been to Atlanta last month I know what Chick-Fil-A is, but huh?

"desperate cries from the heart of a grotesque fastfood culture"

A dispatch from the grotesque fast food culture.

One opened on campus a few weeks ago – still haven't tried it.

oh i guess

can't wait for nrq's "zing" after these Oscars on merits of Godard second-class award vs Corey Haim tribute

Chick-Fil-A = crinkle fries + pickle on chicken sandwich + weird Christian bent

xps

would rather watch the Lost Boys than Pierrot le Fou again tbqh

i met kevin brownlow -- very briefly -- this summer. true story.

winstanley >>>> any fucking godard film post-1967 imho

I had no idea Corey Haim was in Winstanley

if u discount the movies u have no argument whatsoever! he gave ppl starts, yay!

oh right, they don't give out 'honorary' oscars to producers, then?

but don't let me keep you from making hilar generalisations abt 'french film critics'

omg beef

The Thalberg award goes to producers, right?

Film Socialisme got me drunk on movies high-definition video again

how anti-semitic on a scale 1-10

just right, like the porridge Goldilocks chose

(I think some of the walkouts that seemed to occur whenever a PALESTINE title went on the screen made me think "well, old Jews, Lincoln Center...")

yeh i was glad glen kenny 'went there' re jlg's anti-semitism. 'lol european intellectuals' basic'ly.

more like anti-Israel imho

Kenny was quoting somebody, mostly

No, there's def. stuff in FS that goes beyond anti-Israel. At least in the fan-subtitled version. Not sure how it's rendered in "Navajo English".

i dunno the 'gold mountain' gag doesn't sound too much related to israel

How completely arrogantly inscrutable is it on a scale of In Praise of Love to Notre Musique?

I didn't mind Notre Musique. If you're willing to yield to the trance-like state the film induces.

yeah I liked Musique far better of those two

in the panel discussion after FS, I discovered that Richard Brody has an unruly Catskills-socialist beard

As Vanessa Redgrave might say, here come da Jews!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/02/movies/02godard.html

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2010/11/the-oscar-question.html

Researchers at the academy’s Margaret Herrick Library turned up no sign that any aspect of a Godard film had ever been so much as nominated for an Oscar, despite awards and festival recognition abroad.

Haha, an Oscar nod for a Godard film? Get real, researchers!

As Vanessa Redgrave might say, here come da Jews!

ugh

but also lol: anti-semitism not exactly unknown among upper-class brits, let alone upper-class british trotskyists

Do you know the whole Redgrave story of the '77/78 Oscars, nrq?

not in detail. -- s.thing about "zionists" getting on her nerves? because zionists are really the enemy of the jews or whatever, presumably? because zionism, unlike palestinian nationalism, is a terrible thing. her opponents of the time sound pretty crazy, but we shouldn't have to choose between crazies. she was part of a weird, sinister, sexual-abuse-oriented trotskyist cell at the time.

Look, whatever it takes to make for an interesting Oscarcast.

Oscarcaust.

it's sort of useless to present someone with an honorary award, if he hates the entire thing it represents right. I wouldn't have bothered if I "was" the Academy, or whoever decides who gets these things.

http://grab.by/grabs/52562e75af330aaf7093e94a603a16af.png

Mr. Godard has blamed Moses for having corrupted society by bringing mere text, in the form of written law, down from the mountain, after having encountered an actual image, the burning bush.

WAHT

he was expecting a graphic novel.

The Godard award is not on the Oscarcast, Eric, and I'm pretty sure we'll see 6 seconds of tape of JLG's chosen flunky picking it up.

For Mr. Robinson, the art and the artist are separate. “D. W. Griffith got an honorary Oscar in 1936,” he said, “and the man was horribly racist. Also, Kevin Costner? What a dick.”

btw to me that Times piece confirms that Tarantino will present Godard's Oscar

you must be psyched

Watched Une Femme Mariee the other week. A cracker! The accompanying booklet -- which looks lush, btw -- has a transcript of an internet convo between a few film theorists, and I'm willing to bet its crackers.

Mr. Godard has blamed Moses for having corrupted society by bringing mere text, in the form of written law, down from the mountain, after having encountered an actual image, the burning bush.

Big fan of Celine, isn't he?

Jungen: Once again, there is a debate in Jewish newspapers about whether or not you are an anti-Semite. Does this hurt you?

Godard: That's nonsense! What does 'anti-Semite' mean? All peoples of the Mediterranean were Semites. So anti-Semite means anti-Mediterranean. The expression was only applied to Jews after the Holocaust and WWII. It is inexact and means nothing.

this smirky evasive shit really makes me sick and upset

only anti-semites come out with that shit, fuck this guy

cue morbs for the defence

boooooooooooooooring

what's boring?

it actually gets way fucking worse tbh

http://landscapesuicide.blogspot.com/2010/11/everything-or-nothing-2.html

The Jews have inhabited your intellectual universe since the late sixties. Is there a certain reason for this?

When the Holocaust happened, I was 15 years old. My parents kept it a secret from me, despite belonging to the Red Cross. I only found out about it much later. Even today I still feel guilty, because I was an ignoramus between the age of 15 and 25. I am sorry I couldn’t stand up for them. Today, in my own thoughts, I would like to have a critical look at them. I am generally interested in the ‘other’. It’s the same thing with blacks. First, they were colonised, and later everyone acted as if they were just as we are. Of course, a black person can wear glasses and a watch, but this doesn’t make us the same.

In Film socialisme it is said that although Hollywood was founded by Jews, everyone is looking in the same direction. Do Jews stand for diversity?

For commerce. The big studios were founded by Jews from central Europe, especially from Germany. Why did they go to Hollywood? Because they could get access to the American financial sector. The Jews were neither authorized to be bankers or doctors, nor lawyers or professors. That’s why they concentrated on something new: cinema. The Jews also came to an arrangement with the mafia quite quickly. But if you say this, immediately you are accused of being an anti-Semite, even though this is not true. People don’t see the images — one should have a closer look at the people who founded Las Vegas.

is Jews starting Hollywood a controversial thing to say?

can't we all just get along

i founded las vegas

give me a break that's all he 's saying

The Jews also came to an arrangement with the mafia quite quickly. THE JEWS.

these quotes are appalling, im actually furious, i guess because i know so many people who'll let it slide

Why did they go to Hollywood? Because they could get access to the American financial sector.

apart from the anti-semitism and racism, he doesn't even know anything about the history of the movies

The Jews have inhabited your intellectual universe since the late sixties. Is there a certain reason for this?

haha

don't know how anti-semitic the Jews in Hollywood stuff is

are you Mediterranean?

i like feta cheese

mmm tzatziki sauce

heyo

"Of course, a black person can wear glasses and a watch, but this doesn’t make us the same."

Salient.

so I guess he's a racist/anti-semite? I'll run with whatever guys.

don't know how anti-semitic the Jews in Hollywood stuff is

― Gukbe, Tuesday, November 16, 2010 11:50 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

it's kind of weird and inaccurate: think very few of the moguls were german. thomas ince, d w griffith -- pretty sure they were not jewish. and the segue to vegas and the mafia... is that not a bit anti-semitic? why do we need to look closely at the people who founded vegas? what's the big idea? i have no idea what he is talking about, with hollywood coming to an agreement with the mafia 'quite quickly'. so far as im aware the 'mafia' weren't much in california till hollywood was up and running. lansky and meyer weren't in vegas till the 1930s iirc.

Well I wasn't really referring to the Vegas thing, as I don't know much at all about it.

but

The founders and inventors of this "quintessential America" were almost without exception, immigrant and first-generation Jews. Within a few years of each other, Carl Laemmele built Universal; Adolf Zukor and Jesse Lasky, Paramount; Louis B. Mayer and the Schenks, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; and Harry Cohn, Columbia. Together with the Warner Brothers, William Fox, and Samuel Goldwyn, these Moguls, whose lives and times are richly documented in the archives of the American Jewish Historical Society, created a constellation as brilliant as any the firmament could offer.

Who were they? A remarkably similar group --Yiddish-speaking immigrants or their sons, born in grinding poverty in shtetlekh or ghettoes, to pedigree-poor families, headed more often than not by ne'er do-well fathers. The Moguls, the men who invented the majesty and mystery of Hollywood, were a rough-hewn bunch of ambitious men determined to thrust themselves into the epicenter of American life.

Also I thought it was fairly well known that the Hays code was engineered not just to allow autonomy from the government but also to head off possible anti-semitism.

By the way, I'm not at all advocating some "Jews control the media" nonsense.

The Jews were neither authorized to be bankers or doctors, nor lawyers or professors.
The Jews were neither authorized to be bankers or doctors, nor lawyers or professors.
The Jews were neither authorized to be bankers or doctors, nor lawyers or professors.

how can someone so erudite believe this? and even if his interviewer didn't know that 60% of the doctors in vienna in 1900 were jewish, they must surely recognise the above as fanciful

i can only conclude i) he just makes it up as he goes along to give his trolling a bit of spontaneity or ii) he is so deranged from empirical thought that he unknowingly invents history when he is trolling

I seem to recall the imposition of the Hays code was also to try to take autonomy away from Jewish producers, to Christianize the industry? Though I might not be remembering my film classes correctly.

Xpost: yes, the evasive "what does Semitic even mean" comment would imply trolling.

It was brought in by the Jewish moguls to make the industry seem less Jewish/more Christian.

The Jews were neither authorized to be bankers or doctors, nor lawyers or professors.

how can someone so erudite believe this? and even if his interviewer didn't know that 60% of the doctors in vienna in 1900 were jewish, they must surely recognise the above as fanciful

― nakhchivan, Wednesday, November 17, 2010 12:20 AM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

This seems like a broad generalization, but weren't Jewish immigrants locked out of certain professions like law and medicine? I might be totally misremembering something unrelated btw.

gukbe -- yeah im aware of the provenance of the hollywood moguls. just pretty sure few if any were german. the other details ring false. sure, they were mostly jewish immigrants. and?

Why did they go to Hollywood? Because they could get access to the American financial sector.

which was, of course, centred in southern california...

guy is just a bit of an idiot

no, i mean you've probably heard of felix frankfurter, but there were quotas for 'the wrong sorts' at ivy league schools etc

Hmmmn, I'll try to look up my notes to check, since I can't verify things one way or another. I do seem to remember hearing that it was more anti-semitic in nature.

And yeah, I also seem to recall that the early Hollywood producers were less fat cats looking to break into lucrative financial positions so much as working class dudes (at least Zukor) who were taking chances with new businesses that arose with cinema and hit the jackpot when it turned out to be Cinema. But again, don't take my word on this.

which was, of course, centred in southern california...

guy is just a bit of an idiot

― rip whiney g weingarten 03/11 never forget (history mayne), Wednesday, November 17, 2010 12:33 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

Pretty soon after the cinema studios starting paying dividends Wall Street became an absolutely huge part of the industry.

why are you defending this shit? they didn't go to hollywood to "get access to the American financial sector." yes, im aware that eventually hollywood had to go to wall street for financing.

didn't they go to Hollywood because the land was cheap and the weather was nice?

Yes and according to Godard it wasn't too far from the desert sands in which they could bury their shekels.

that and colossal issue over patents iirc
xp

jews did world trade center, a movie about 9/11

I honestly don't understand what's so horribly anti-semitic about those comments. xxp

There was a little bit of 'running from Edison' in the very early days that led some away from the early New Jersey studios. xp

I honestly don't understand what's so horribly anti-semitic about those comments. xxp

Q: Do Jews stand for diversity?

A: For commerce. The big studios were founded by Jews from central Europe, especially from Germany. Why did they go to Hollywood? Because they could get access to the American financial sector. The Jews were neither authorized to be bankers or doctors, nor lawyers or professors. That’s why they concentrated on something new: cinema. The Jews also came to an arrangement with the mafia quite quickly. But if you say this, immediately you are accused of being an anti-Semite, even though this is not true. People don’t see the images — one should have a closer look at the people who founded Las Vegas.

rly dogg?

all jews were told to leave hollywood the day heaven's gate was released

ya rly xpost

I'm probably just misreading it though.

you don't see attributing criminal characteristics to an entire ethnic/religious group based on the fact that a few members of that group were infamous criminals to be offensive?

I don't see that's that what he is doing.

Again, I'm obviously just misreading this.

The Jews also came to an arrangement with the mafia quite quickly. ... one should have a closer look at the people who founded Las Vegas.

really?

The big studios were founded by Jews from central Europe, especially from Germany.

not true

Why did they go to Hollywood? Because they could get access to the American financial sector.

not true

The Jews were neither authorized to be bankers or doctors, nor lawyers or professors.

not... wait, they weren't authorized to be bankers? then how were they to get access to the American financial sector?

That’s why they concentrated on something new: cinema.

the moguls were not 18-year-old kids weighing career options. they did not choose cinema over academia/the law/banking/medicine/_____. but this is just typical godardian pseudo-smart crap, not anti-semitism.

The Jews also came to an arrangement with the mafia quite quickly.

really? not sure where he's going with this

But if you say this, immediately you are accused of being an anti-Semite, even though this is not true.

what is his point? "the jews" came to an agreement with the mafia? instead of what? did other groups in american society stand up to the mafia? or take longer doing it? or what? seems kind of like a bullshitter at work to me

People don’t see the images — one should have a closer look at the people who founded Las Vegas.

warren beatty even made a film about them... not sure, again, what he's getting at, feel kind of like he's being a lil bit anti-semitic, in context

hmm. maybe.

I really don't see him broadly talking about all Jews in that interview. Mayne, I also contend that some of your disagreements are wrong or, at least, open to other interpretations.

go on

Not arguing that there's a degree of pseudo-smart crap here, btw, I just don't think it's anti-semitic.

I think part of the thing is his inability to distinguish a small handful of Jewish guys from THE JEWS (which I should hope encompasses more than a handful of guys, most of whom aren't pursuing the American financial sector and Mafia cooperation).

but that question was about the Jews that founded Hollywood.

(i don't think they pursued wall st cooperation: the business went into mild decline in the mid-1920s (hence sound cinema) and they had to reach out, but anyway how the fuck would a major business operate OUTSIDE the financial sector? did they cooperate with the mafia more than other ethnic groups? i never heard that said before. all of this is infuriating.)

meanwhile we're all kind of sleeping on

Of course, a black person can wear glasses and a watch, but this doesn’t make us the same.

The big studios were founded by Jews from central Europe, especially from Germany.
not true

Not all or even most from Germany, but basically from Central and Eastern Europe.

Why did they go to Hollywood? Because they could get access to the American financial sector.
not true

Not really true (though it started happening early and people who came out to make their fortune were not doubt influenced by the Financial sector investment dollars), but not really anti-semitic.

The Jews were neither authorized to be bankers or doctors, nor lawyers or professors.
not... wait, they weren't authorized to be bankers? then how were they to get access to the American financial sector?

They got access to the funds because they had created a product that people wanted to invest in.

That’s why they concentrated on something new: cinema.
the moguls were not 18-year-old kids weighing career options. they did not choose cinema over academia/the law/banking/medicine/_____. but this is just typical godardian pseudo-smart crap, not anti-semitism.

agree

The Jews also came to an arrangement with the mafia quite quickly.
really? not sure where he's going with this

But if you say this, immediately you are accused of being an anti-Semite, even though this is not true.
what is his point? "the jews" came to an agreement with the mafia? instead of what? did other groups in american society stand up to the mafia? or take longer doing it? or what? seems kind of like a bullshitter at work to me

I'm not sure what this is originally referring to, or what in particular the anti-semite charges that the question in the interview was referring to were, but presumably he means that saying that Hollywood Jews were connected to the Mafia is seen as anti-semitic when it's not. It strikes me as an odd comment because I thought it was pretty well known that Hollywood moguls had mob ties at some point.

People don’t see the images — one should have a closer look at the people who founded Las Vegas.
warren beatty even made a film about them... not sure, again, what he's getting at, feel kind of like he's being a lil bit anti-semitic, in context

Again, I think he's just saying that by making those comments people will say he's anti-semitic.

God, I hate this board

boooooooring

say something meaningful or fuck off morbius, seriously

Godard will be 80 in two weeks. Go talk to your 80-yo relatives and report back on how lucid they are.

I'd think you guys could at least bond w/ him over how much he hates Spielberg and Truffaut.

(i don't think they pursued wall st cooperation: the business went into mild decline in the mid-1920s (hence sound cinema) and they had to reach out, but anyway how the fuck would a major business operate OUTSIDE the financial sector? did they cooperate with the mafia more than other ethnic groups? i never heard that said before. all of this is infuriating.)

Wall Street investment was happening well before the mid-1920s.

meanwhile we're all kind of sleeping on

Of course, a black person can wear glasses and a watch, but this doesn’t make us the same.

This is just an extension of his interest in studying 'the Other', right?

You and nrq don't have shit-meaningful to say about Godard or film in general, 5lut5ky. Go review some fucking FOOD.

Godard will be 80 in two weeks. Go talk to your 80-yo relatives and report back on how lucid they are.

right, but we're supposed to take you seriously why?

I dunno. I think early Hollywood moguls Jewish identity has been a pretty big part in studying the era, although maybe I'm channeling An Empire of their Own vibes.

Maybe what we're really learning here is that a treatise on class is fine but a treatise on ethnic groups is off-limits.

jesus christ gukbe, no one is saying pointing out that early moguls are jewish is anti-semitic in and of itself

and sorry morbs, i didnt realize being old was a valid excuse for being a racist

and honestly, if you really have anything to say yourself, i'm still waiting for it. your argument, as usual, is basically "i like or dislike this thing and if you disagree with me you're an idiot." i guess you really don't go much deeper than that huh

There's a certain amount of accepting that that's how old people are, and if he's being honest about the holocaust thing that I'd expect that would play a big role in being fascinated by the group as The Other.

How is everybody reading the "Are Jews for Diversity? For Commerce." thing?

he said "the jews" made a deal with the mafia and we need to "look into it." for fuck's sake

How is everybody reading the "Are Jews for Diversity? For Commerce." thing?

― Gukbe, Tuesday, November 16, 2010 8:34 PM (8 seconds ago) Bookmark

the same as the rest of this bullshit

I have no idea if JLG is anti-Jew. I don't particularly care, anymore than the kids who stuck their tongues up Public Enemy's racist homophobic fat asses cared about that.

slocks, you make it sound like he's asking for an investigation when he's just trying to back-up why saying that Jews had involvement with the Mafia is not anti-semitic lies.

but how in particular are you reading the diversity/commerce thing?

do u not recognize that a jew, and a film lover, and a GODARD lover such as myself, might be upset by him saying this shit?

sorry, i didn't mean racist, i meant ANTI-SEMITIC [sic]

xp

I don't really care if JLG is anti-semitic or not, btw. Same way I don't care that Heidegger was a nazi.

Great artists are mostly fucking self-absorbed assholes. Deal.

To be totally transparent, Morbs, I DO find homophobia in classic hip-hop problematic. In not-classic hip-hop, it's merely convenient.

I don't really care if JLG is anti-semitic or not, btw. Same way I don't care that Heidegger was a nazi.
--Gukbe

i care abt this wrt heidegger than the othets but for reasons i disagree w/ in theory

I don't really care if JLG is anti-semitic or not, btw. Same way I don't care that Heidegger was a nazi.

― Gukbe, Wednesday, November 17, 2010 1:37 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

http://i655.photobucket.com/albums/uu275/leonardo_ARG/seinfeld.gif

Go review some fucking FOOD.

^^^ meme potential?

jews being 'for commerce' -- idk, how complex is this, really? in the new film someone apparently explains how 'goldberg' means 'gold mountain'. european conservatives, and sympathizers like eliot, often associated jews with commerce, usury, greed, which threatened to disrupt the 'stable' 'homogenous' pre-capitalist society they wanted back [via nazism].

this meme's relevance to the foundation of hollywood is slight. the founders of a massive business enterprise were pro-commerce? woooow.

that "for commerce" quote is the most incriminating imo

Dunno, thought he meant that everyone is looking in the same direction, which is commerce.

Even so, it's hardly shocking, controversial, or new to say that the Hollywood moguls were interested mostly in commerce as opposed to, say, art, or diversity etc... They quite famously clamped down on director's who went over-budget or made difficult films (Von Stroheim, Wellman in the early days, more and more etc etc) that didn't sell or that they didn't think would sell to the audience.

I've not seen Film Socialisme, so I'm only going on that interview. While it is annoying and yes, art-smart crap in places, I don't think it's particularly anti-semitic. Especially when the point in the end there seems to be that if you say anything like "Hollywood Jews were interested in money" then you get called anti-semitic?

I do however understand that it's a sensitive topic, and if he is painting Hollywood Jews as obsessed with money because they're Jews, then I see that as a problem.

no, when you say "THE JEWS" stand for commerce or made a deal with the mafia or whatever, that's anti-semitic. classic, old school, fuckin' ugly and venal anti-semitism.

i really cannot tell if you are trolling tbh

but the question is referring to the Hollywood Jews (i.e. the moguls). to start off a question with that reference to his film and then quickly asking a question about 'all jews' is definitely straight up trolling on the part of the interviewer.

This area gets murky though.

xp you're right s1ocki, but on that point it might also be worth figuring out in which language the interview was done, how it was translated etc etc. I'm not trying to bail JLG out at any cost but the subtleties of definite/indefinite articles sometimes get lost in translation.

when i have a mo im gonna scare up the french interview and report back

paying attention to interviews is a bad habit of music fans/writers. If it's not in the work, it doesn't matter.

I don't like Godard's answer on the etymology of "anti-Semitism" either, but at this point I get the feeling his only goal in interviews is to fuck w/ the questioner.

don't you post links to interviews all the time?

i mean i kind of agree but i'm not using his comments to judge "film socialisme"

it is simply a case of somebody saying some hateful shit and me having an emotional reaction to it, sorry i'm not some detached aesthete robot

Again, I've not seen the film, so it could be violently anti-semitic and I'd have no idea. Not trolling btw, I asked for a specific interpretation of the diversity/commerce line last night. I get the impression I'm totally misunderstanding what he meant by 'diversity'.

http://www.nzz.ch/nachrichten/kultur/aktuell/ich_werde_nicht_gern_mit_picasso_verglichen__er_malte_zu_viele_teller_1.8293071.html

^ original interview. unfortunately in german not french.

don't you post links to interviews all the time?

yeah, sure. I read stuff that doesn't matter a lot. (ie, in the end, it doesn't matter to judging the art if it's extrinsic)

I detest Mel Gibson and am sort of intrigued to see this Jodie Foster film he stars in.

that movie looks so bad, like the most generic "lars and the real girl" indie dramedy

What's your stake in this, Morbs? Godard has pretty much always been indefensible as a human being.

Morbs is saying that most artists are indefensible as a human being.

*human beings

I don't really see how that cliche is germane here since no one is really using this against his work.

great. more jaded received wisdom.

xp

I don't have a stake here. It's obvious to me Godard is a muddled thinker at best and at worst a, yes, anti-Semite.

*an

not sure if "an" is necessary there, that is an interesting conundrum

But how is he as a filmmaker?

the last Godard I liked a little was Notre Musique.

http://www.nzz.ch/nachrichten/kultur/aktuell/ich_werde_nicht_gern_mit_picasso_verglichen__er_malte_zu_viele_teller_1.8293071.html

^ original interview. unfortunately in german not french.

― google street jew (s1ocki), Wednesday, November 17, 2010 12:20 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark

this reads pretty much the same in german as it does in english, so I don't think the perceived anti-semitism is a translation to english issue.

I'm guessing the original interview was done in french (unless JLG speaks fluent german, I have no idea really), so maybe there was some mistranslation there.

There's a well-known quote from Godard where he says that, as much as he despised John Wayne politically, the moment near the end of The Searchers where Wayne lifts up Natalie Wood and says "Let's go home, Debbie" made him love Wayne. Seems like you're having more or less the same discussion on Godard himself.

The other day someone said to me, upon realizing that I was Jewish, "oh you've got nothing to worry about then, you'll do fine HERE" HERE being Hollywood I suppose. It was not Godard, just some woman I was talking to at the AFI festival.

And I'm about to graduate - how do I get my resume to be more "Jewish"?

I don't really see how that cliche is germane here since no one is really using this against his work.

They are, bacause they've made a thread about his films about this topic, and I imagine it will be the dominant topic on this thread until he dies. See also Polanski's film thread since the week he was seized.

what a lowering of the discourse it is to discuss an interview a filmmaker gave to a newspaper

Perhaps we should have a thread for "bad celebrity personalities," and "Roger Ailes slams the White House" links could go there too to save a lot of fucking time

i mean considering the amount of bullshit you spew on threads about movies you haven't even seen, the charge of dishonouring the thread topic or whatever it is you think we did here is really fucking rich dude xp

yes, what a lowering of the discourse it is to discuss two sentences in an interview nonstop for 3 days

xp

the amount of bullshit you spew on threads about movies you haven't even seen

^ILX's version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion

actually, we were discussing several paragraphs, for about half an hour, before you barged in and insulted me using my real name for no fucking reason at all

what you "were" doing is past, what you "are" doing is probably about 500 more posts on this single issue.

I'm sorry, I thought I sufficiently googleproofed your name. And don't forget to friend me.

haha

i believe a good reason we're still talking about it is because you're also, still talking about it

okay so this is not an allegation I make often, or one that I particularly like to make, but: you have got to be pretty damn sensitive — or deliberately uncharitable in your interpretation (i.e. the person upthread going 'wah wah godard said jews can't be doctors, doesn't he know there were tons of jewish doctors in vienna' just no, shut the fuck up), or just bored and looking for a high-profile witch-hunt — to get butthurt about this.

we are not talking about a gibson- or richards-esque freakout revealing a white-hot core of hatred at the heart of a seemingly normal human being.
we are talking about a notoriously anti-hollywood dude, saying some shit in an interview about the jews who founded hollywood which, while maybe not a 100% accurate reflection of the historical truth, is also hardly an elders-of-zion-level crazy paranoid distortion of said truth.

I'm maybe even willing to defend his "ah but what does 'anti-semite' even mean???" dodge, because I think at a certain point one has a right to question what, exactly, his self-appointed prosecutors have put him on trial for, in whose name, and what they're trying to prove by it.

but I mean tbperfectlyh, I don't know what the hell kind of non-'anti-semitic' answer you can give to a question like "are the jews for diversity?" — "oh yeah, those dudes love diversity! it's cuz their rootless cosmopolitanism has deprived them of any authentic sense of cultural belonging, so now they find themselves drawn, like moths to a flame, by whatever's most appealing in all the other real cultures!" so I guess maybe I blame the interviewer.

and the stuff about blacks seems like even more of a non-issue... or is anyone here going to seriously dispute either the existence or the wrongheadedness of the "hey, look, now y'all have the same opportunities to spend money on shit that we do! everything's groovy!" ideology?

guess gukbe's on his lunch break

you know, i am the LAST person to cry "anti-semitism!" on a hair-trigger, i really resent it when other jewish people do, and i was really kind of upset by this shit, so i guess you can go ahead and call me sensitive or uncharitable if you like, but that's how i felt

look s1ocki, aside from the high-heat of our little flareups I judge you as a decent guy (testimony from rrobyn included). But there are plenty of instances of old artists saying *even more* offensive things in interviews.

And I'm not denying your right to be upset.

anyway, a couple years old:

http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/hes-not-there-20080604

Toward the end of his book, Brody levels a direct charge of anti-Semitism against Godard. His evidence lies in a couple of comments made in moments of echt-assholery, a lifelong fondness for certain rightwing French authors, a questionable reading of certain sequences in his later films (such as the "invention of stereo" monologue from JLG/JLG), and the testimony of vacuous pop philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy. Since the '70s, Godard has explicitly identified himself as "anti-Zionist but not anti-Semitic." That's a distinction that doesn't really exist in America's mainstream political discourse, and it doesn't carry much weight for Brody either, which isn't too surprising given his apparent disinterest in radical politics and philosophy. It's true that in recent work Godard has been waging a polemic war against the word, and that he mentions Judaism in this context as a "culture of the Book" (complicating this considerably are his occasional assertions, as in his video short Meetin' WA, that he regards his own frequent use of text as imagistic rather than literary, also that one of the primary sources for his notion of image is Walter Benjamin). He also has a beef against the category of a chosen people or chosen nation—whether the term is used by Jews, Germans, or "the Americans of the North." However, it is also true that he views the Holocaust as the defining event, the central horror, of the corpse-ridden 20th century. The Histoire(s) mark it also as the moment of cinema's fall from grace, obsessively worrying at the question of how the medium could have failed to perceive it, whether a "true image" could have prevented the atrocity.

Godard's political and philosophic statements can be elusive, arrogant, profound, or silly, but they too are an attempt to find ways of speaking and showing outside the rigidities of dominant thought. They can and should be argued with, but labeling them simply anti-Semitic is hardly conducive to dialogue. It is what they call a conversation stopper.

i know lots of artists say bad and stupid shit in interviews, and i think they should be called out for too!

xxpost: okay that's fair, sry to question motives, just feels like this is really not a big deal compared to, I dunno, like a zillion other things even just within the world of 'potentially offensive things famous people say'. (but also nb I have not seen Film Socialisme, which seems to be the 'real' cause for this whole discussion, and sounds like it's maybe much more anti-semitic than any of the stuff quoted here?)

look as a fairly left-wing, anti-zionist jew myself i have to field so much persecution complex from my friends and relatives that when i genuinely get upset about something anti-semitic, having it batted away as such is really frustrating

ok, I don't mean to bat it away. I'm sorry if I did.

Having no real, emotional tether to a cultural background I obviously can't begin to understand the where the line of offensive, anti-semitism is.

The way he's phrasing these things are pretty stupid and baiting, but again, I don't see any problem with asserting that early Hollywood Jewish moguls were interested in commerce (as opposed to art). fwiw I think the fact that they were Jewish has no real relation to any of the output other than the Hays code and the deliberate attempts to 'Christianize' their output to ward off the government and anti-semites who think they're indoctrinating the nation. I don't think the fact that they were Jewish informs their desire to make money. On the flip side, I don't think the fact that they were Jewish meant they were using their films to create an America they could fit into. I don't think that makes me anti-semitic though.

http://www.tamemymind.com/blog/images2007/smiley-bangheadonwall.gif

fine, Godard is a raging anti-semite.

i'll take that over the same exact post you've been making and re-making for 24 hours

I probably just missed where you explained why it's so offensive (other than HE'S TALKING ABOUT ALL JEWS)

THAT'S WHERE IT'S OFFENSIVE