Jean-Luc Godard: S and D

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