I like A Film Like Any Other most... just give me the rawest shit from that period. Tout Va Bien is imo the only real keeper from 68-72 (actually I'd throw Le Gai Savoir in there)
Loved him touching his face so much lmfao
GODARD NO!!! pic.twitter.com/zrjmWEDud3— Nicky Smith (@nickyotissmith) April 7, 2020
― flappy bird, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 17:54 (four years ago) link
i saw The Image Book the other day and loved it, what else has he done in the last 40 years that measures up
― ban laggy jazzer (imago), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 17:55 (four years ago) link
'Histoire(s) du Cinema' and 'Nouvelle Vague' and 'Goodbye to Language' aaaaaaaand that's it, I think
― Frederik B, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 17:56 (four years ago) link
ok cool haha
― ban laggy jazzer (imago), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 17:57 (four years ago) link
JLG par JLG
― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 17:57 (four years ago) link
don't listen to fred about anything
― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 17:58 (four years ago) link
i will listen to all of you
(but, thanks!)
― ban laggy jazzer (imago), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 17:59 (four years ago) link
Hey, I love a lot of it, but at the level of The Image Book? Very little is
― Frederik B, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 17:59 (four years ago) link
i've not seen about half of them but (including one plus one) but the period from la chinoise (1967) to numero deux (1975) is probably actually my favourite: he's swapped out "the girl, the gun" (american cinema's primary language) and swapped in "a third-world marxist student's notion of revolutionary ideology, the gun" and is falling dizzily in and out of amused lust with the latter as the relationships go awry (exactly as they did with "the girl" in every one pre-chinoise) -- all the while basically inventing ultraleft-shitposting-on-twitter as cinema's coming language (which no one takes him up on) (until twitter)― mark s, Sunday, 26 January 2020 17:37 (two months ago) bookmarkflaglinkalso "basically inventing" = "largely stealing off of debord" as debord never ever stopped huffily pointing out lol― mark s, Sunday, 26 January 2020 17:40 (two months ago) bookmarkflaglink
― mark s, Sunday, 26 January 2020 17:37 (two months ago) bookmarkflaglink
also "basically inventing" = "largely stealing off of debord" as debord never ever stopped huffily pointing out lol
― mark s, Sunday, 26 January 2020 17:40 (two months ago) bookmarkflaglink
― mark s, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:21 (four years ago) link
yeah if you like The Image Book his Histoire(s) du Cinéma is the only equal really. ~5 hours, thoroughly brilliant, though I like The Image Book more for its severity and concision.
Also check out all his millennial era shorts... Origins of the 21st Century, The Old Place, Je Vous Salue Sarajevo, and Liberté et patrie are all great and all "sampled" in The Image Book.
Maybe I'm in the minority but imo it's pretty thin gruel post-1980. For Ever Mozart, First Name Carmen, Hail Mary, In Praise of Love, Goodbye to Language, Film Socialisme... BOOOOOORING! but they have their moments. specifically all of the impressionistic experimental video work.
xp
― flappy bird, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:22 (four years ago) link
His 'second wave' in the eighties was boring (except for Passion) but I like In Praise of Love as well. The colors in part two are insane!
― Frederik B, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:36 (four years ago) link
So many hot and steamy wrong takes. His Eighties run was fantastic for the most part. Nineties as well.
― SQUIRREL MEAT!! (Capitaine Jay Vee), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:44 (four years ago) link
It's the '60s run that sucked!
― Vegemite Is My Grrl (Eric H.), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 19:32 (four years ago) link
Jestin' obviously. Godard reminds me of what someone said about Prince once, that there are few artists whose fans disagree so much about what his best and worst efforts are.
― Vegemite Is My Grrl (Eric H.), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 19:33 (four years ago) link
Film Socialisme > King Lear > Contempt
― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 19:34 (four years ago) link
I haven't seen King Lear but yeah Contempt is overrated
Love the second half of In Praise of Love, i.e. all the stuff he included in The Image Book
Every Man for Himself stands out though, I don't think he made a movie like that before or since.
― flappy bird, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 19:42 (four years ago) link
i saw king lear when it came out (1987, packed showing at the london film festival) and didn't really get it but remember being struck by the sound detail, which just seemed amazing compared to any other film
saw it again at an nft godard season maybe three years back (chair alph will recall): found it easier to follow but less remarkable, and i guess the world of cinema sound has by now long caught up with late-80s godard, bcz i could no longer hear that element, or anyway why i thought it. it was full of lots of small things i enjoyed which i thought would have stuck with me from my earlier watch (but i'd totally forgotten) as well as some things i now felt confidently enough a lol cineaste to be mildly irritated by
probably i need to see it again to calibrate properly: i don't think actually his gift is in bringing his mind to the canonic classics of literature tho
― mark s, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 19:45 (four years ago) link
pic.twitter.com/K7xlQvX9Xr— Frederik Bojer Bové (@FBBove) March 23, 2020
― Frederik B, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 20:01 (four years ago) link
That's a tweet I did about how Godard worked with sound in the late eighties and how it blew the mind of Wim Wenders. And now I've just doxxed myself. Sigh.
― Frederik B, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 20:02 (four years ago) link
In the last forty years its been fascinating to see him in his essayistic work (begun in the 70s) and try to reboot his classic 60s work.
Hella Pour Moi is probbaly the best of the latter effort with Depardieu (mostly he often just can't quite get the actors, it seems to me) so in the main its mostly his essayistic work like JLG/JLG, Histoire(s), Image book, and Goodbye to Language has that fscinating use of 3D.
Really like to see Germany Year 90 Nine Zero, King Lear - there is a lot to discover. Plenty that measures up, in some ways he is a rare artist that went further onto other planes and places when he left the scene that made him - and it should've killed him!
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 20:03 (four years ago) link
"Fantastisk, Frederik"
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 20:06 (four years ago) link
i'm too flibbertigibbet to put the work in really -- or anyway the time -- but i'd like to see someone write abt JLG soup-to-nuts who's a sound-based critic rather than an image-based one, bcz it feels under-explored from that angle. i've seen it touched on at sight and sound now and then, but generally in passing and never at the hands-on level i imagine he's working
― mark s, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 20:11 (four years ago) link
alph when was the nft jlg season?
― mark s, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 20:13 (four years ago) link
Really like to see Germany Year 90 Nine Zero, King Lear
Saw King Lear during the single solitary week it played the Swiss Centre cinema complex in London, lone gone now but back in the day a weird cluster of screens showing mainly art house fare - the lobby looked like the foyer of a tiny hotel. At the time it was owned by Cannon, who of course funded King Lear. I guess it's fallen down some copyright/ownership black hole.
Re: Godard and sound - I wonder if Michel Chion has written on this topic?
― Ward Fowler, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 20:30 (four years ago) link
The use of sound in The Image Book is totally lost at home w/o a surround sound system--I saw it 3 times in a small theater and in the last 40 minutes he completely expands the stereo field, iirc most of the first half of the movie is essentially mono or simple stereo. By the end, there's different shit coming out of every speaker.
Didn't like Goodbye to Language but I watched at home w/o 3D glasses
― flappy bird, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 20:33 (four years ago) link
He's always had a knack for memorable sound effects, too. I've been tempted to steal the gunshot sound from Masculin Feminin and the one from Ici et Ailleurs (which is featured in The Image Book).
― flappy bird, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 20:34 (four years ago) link
Nouvelle Vague his most accomplished of the recent ones imo and no way in hell will I waste my time streaming/DVD-ing those films again. A heater with a sharp sound system, I'd recommend, if you can get it.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 20:36 (four years ago) link
er I meant Notre Musique.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 20:37 (four years ago) link
― mark s, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 bookmarkflaglink
It was about three years ago, maybe a bit more than that.
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 20:40 (four years ago) link
Never watched it but I used to listen to the soundtrack to nouvelle vague quite a lot (xpost to ecm thread!)
― Microbes oft teem (wins), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 20:40 (four years ago) link
That's a great musique concrete work in and of itself. Sorta.
― Frederik B, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 20:42 (four years ago) link
Notre Musique just sailed by me, just like Helas Pour Moi.Desperately seeking JLG/JLG, Nouvelle Vague, and Germany Year 90 Nine Zero...
― flappy bird, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 20:57 (four years ago) link
I remember Helas Pour Moi having really amazing theater sound.
― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 21:33 (four years ago) link
I remember bumping into your mate, xyzzz, at a screening of The Wind From the East!
I was at this screening too!
Dumb movie tbh, what surprised me about La Chinoise was that I'd seen it dismissed as JLG going full maoist and humourless but it's not that at all, much of it is a satire of student politics and he's questioning himself all the way through. This one felt like what ppl accuse La Chionise of being, just a hectoring polemic by a dude who's pretty bad at politics. So much yelling at the Soviet Union for wanting to avoid nuclear war, he's like a maoist version of a UK reporter harassing Corbyn about Trident. Glauber Rocha wasted, too.
mark s's original shitposter theory is seductive but I think by this point JLG was taking himself far more seriously than any twitter dirtbag, and not in the troll-y way that his more recent persona has
― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, 9 April 2020 10:05 (four years ago) link
A lot of what you say is 100% otm, but Glauber Rocha singing Gal Costa is good not bad.
― Frederik B, Thursday, 9 April 2020 10:10 (four years ago) link
i think he briefly took himself super-seriously yes, but everyone did for a season or two then, it was a terrible time (for mainly external reasons tbf to radical youth): the issue is how quickly he re-emerged to be funny abt it. and i don't think it lasted very long before his underlying quickness of multiple contradictory response got him quite sly abt late 60s ultra-political earnestness
(not least bcz A: french maoists were the WORST so B: some of JLG's self-seriousness was almost certainly protective rhetoric adopted after harangues at self-crit sessions -- can you justify your work!!?? -- and of course C: he had already in his pre-pol phase noted that "youth" as a sacred characteristic leads to terrible outcomes which are combination tragic and hilarious)
― mark s, Thursday, 9 April 2020 10:14 (four years ago) link
your Debord comment upthread made me chuckle cos when i was watching Image Book recently i kept thinking of parallels to the movie of Society of the Spectacle
― a slobbering sombrero moment (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 9 April 2020 10:17 (four years ago) link
tbf the 60s in france was like a bad ilx thread, locked by the mods* after 204857309847510938 posts
*de gaulle
― mark s, Thursday, 9 April 2020 10:31 (four years ago) link
That could be a double-bill xp
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 9 April 2020 10:33 (four years ago) link
surely it has already been one
― mark s, Thursday, 9 April 2020 10:38 (four years ago) link
I have a soft spot for Sympathy for the Devil, the weird Rolling Stones doc that kinda becomes a meditation on how to find a new path forward. The film sequences not about Rolling Stones are kinda abysmal, but also sorta touching in the way they are grasping for something new but just never finds anything. Especially when a group of Black Panthers shows up, after the death of Martin Luther King. It does take it to a different level. And it is lucky for Godard that the Rolling Stones ends up finding a very new and brilliant sound, even if Godard ended up struggling for basically twenty years after that.
― Frederik B, Thursday, 9 April 2020 10:53 (four years ago) link
Here and Elsewhere and Numero Deux sure was the look of a struggling artist.
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 9 April 2020 11:02 (four years ago) link
"I've been tempted to steal the gunshot sound from Masculin Feminin"
haha i actually used this for a video project when i was in college
― circa1916, Thursday, 9 April 2020 13:20 (four years ago) link
I also remember liking Notre Musique but I'm damned if I can remember a thing about it now. True for most Godard movies from the last 30 years. (Goodbye To Language's split 3D shot aside.)
― Vegemite Is My Grrl (Eric H.), Thursday, 9 April 2020 15:37 (four years ago) link
might fuck around and rewatch a godard or two on amazon prime later
― mark s, Thursday, 9 April 2020 15:40 (four years ago) link
idk I don't go to a Godard film to remember stuff about it after. He's mostly dabbling at coherence.
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 9 April 2020 15:56 (four years ago) link
Yeah the pleasure is mainly in the moment, at least as far back as Weekend
― a slobbering sombrero moment (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 9 April 2020 16:04 (four years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3FP_zV4BqQ
Auto translate for English is... manageable
― flappy bird, Wednesday, 15 April 2020 05:38 (four years ago) link
Full interview with subtitles now up:
https://vimeo.com/411300705
― the grateful dead can dance (anagram), Monday, 27 April 2020 13:57 (four years ago) link
Discovered via last night's Mrs. America (also used in Killing Eve, evidently--I must not have noticed).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3ntMc2Fbq4
― clemenza, Saturday, 16 May 2020 20:51 (four years ago) link