Jean-Luc Godard: S and D

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