Jean-Luc Godard: S and D

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