Jean-Luc Godard: S and D

Oh, Rome Open City is artistically great, no doubt, and neorealism in HdC really is a moral rebirth of film, where Rome Open City is central. But I still think Stromboli and Journey in Italy are the more important films, artistically, and no, I don't think anyone else achieved what Bergman and Rossellini did at the time. But that's more mine opinion than it is Godards.

Sorry, derail probably. I just really love that volcano scene.

So do I but that isn't to say its the beginning of a "new filmic psychology" as such. Dreyer was getting up to a lot of similar things too around the same time.

One other thing about this film and looking at the result of the German elections is that whole thing around "Europe is fucked" seems just as - if not more - true now than ever. A lot of issues in his films are just as alive and vital.

The BFI could've curated Godard, made a version of him, instead of screening everything. But that probably wouldn't have been my version. So glad I saw JLG/JLG before Historie(s).. too, they really complement each other.

Anna Karina is in NY; I know Virginia Plain is excited

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-anna-karina-in-new-york

Just realised the AFI Silver Spring is playing Made in USA but at 9:15 tonight and I have work in the morning.

From the film writer Adrian Martin's Facebook:

Surely the one good, positive thing about the bizarre news that Michel Hazanavicius (of all people) will make an 'affectionate satire' based on Anne Wiazemsky's 2015 memoir of living through the heady days of 1967 and 1968 alongside her husband Jean-Luc Godard (to be incarnated by Louis Garrel! How will his Dad allow that??) is this: it'll prevent JLG from going into retirement, as he will need to make at least 2 or 3 more things in fulminating response to it !!!!!

haha Louis as JLG is glamming up to an absurd degree

otm x1000

JLG was kind of handsome in his day, but not in the sultry manner of Louis Garrel

A nice coincidence: shared today on the MUBI Facebook page, Anne Wiazemsky, JLG, Pier Paolo Pasolini

https://scontent.fman2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/13178683_10154136780687387_1300715048745089153_n.jpg?oh=40b7837f800000100b7add388ca36707&oe=57B071F2

https://goo.gl/maps/Br8tefDbPG32

I prefer Rue Vielle du Temple.

Thought revive would be about nice Mubi article about AK

RIP Anne Wiazemsky

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5006-the-daily-anne-wiazemsky-1947-2017

Always thought it was kinda funny that Godard's three most significant others all had first names that were variations on "Ann".

A baker's dozen, n'est-ce pas?

Seven Godard's on Mubi US right now. Well six, now that Pierrot Le Fou, which I finally watched properly, has left. And I guess sixth, Contempt, is coming at the end of the month and then In Praise of Love, I think, in January. Jerry Lewis particularly obvioue is Pierrot. Had not known that his original idea before Alphaville was apparently to film Brian Aldiss's Non-Stop, but he realized he would never have the budget he needed for a generation spaceship story.

Should do the capitalization in the French style, Pierrot le fou.

Ah, another antecedent of Alphaville was a plan to film I Am Legend.

I saw 1 PM last weekend, famously unfinished by JLG, but he's in quite a lot of it. I'd say it's both search and destroy. Richard Brody:

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/one-p-m-all-day

https://vimeo.com/86071508

full version (low-quality) on Ubuweb

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

ICYMI, New Yorkers, gallery exhibit closes Sunday

http://miguelabreugallery.com/exhibitions/memories-of-utopia/

http://www.art-agenda.com/reviews/%E2%80%9Cmemories-of-utopia-jean-luc-godard%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98collages-de-france%E2%80%99-models%E2%80%9D/

just saw Goodbye to Language for the second time. I think it's interesting, but it's definitely made for a small audience

“Aragno said that he and Godard did not want to use 3D as a typical special effect or gimmick. Instead, they wished to use it "to express new things."“

I wish I had seen it in 3D

The Image Book... Sadlol. Nobody told me there would be large swathes without sound, and I'm still not entirely sure it wasn't a mistake. Much slower than usual, most of it the same thing he's done in decades, but a lot of the stuff about the arab world was kinda touching.

Had my first contact with JLG as a film critic - the booklet for the MoC edition of <i>Man Of The West</i> has an essay he wrote back in the day - and jeez. There's one interesting description of the camera work at a pivotal scene but everything else is just grasping hyperbole, comparisons with High Art made with the sole intention of having the reader take this western seriously and a bunch of filler...dunno if it's a good example of his criticism, but based on this I'm glad he turned to directing, there's examples of film criticism in his movies that work better than this.

Cool, we're getting The Image Book in February.

Still digesting it myself. I felt it a step back in many ways from "Adieu À Language", which I think is a late career masterpiece, while still being a very impressive elaboration on his "Histoire(s) du Cinéma" approach to essay film/Godardian rant. The Arab Cinema section was compelling while feeling somewhat naive, if that makes sense.

Jah Bless the Old Maître for still doing his thing, though.

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/01/26/godards-conflagration-of-images/

watched Alphaville last night, really liked it a lot

a 2018 interview

https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/jean-luc-godard-2018-words-like-ants

Great interview. Thanks for the link.

I noticed while reading that JLG's old way of rarely answering questions directly, usually by veering off into word play or tangential responses, seems to be a thing of the past. His answers here are pretty clear and straightforward and he also comes across less pessimistic than interviews of the last 10-15 years. Interesting.

I was entirely pulled in by Image Book

I've written a few times on here about the long road I've taken with Godard: befuddled at 18, started to like certain films through my late 20s and into my 30s, found at least a couple I loved in my 40s, enjoy talking about him with grade-school students as much as I do almost anybody. I found parts of Histoire(s) du cinéma very moving, and plan to see it again in time. The point being, I'm open to anything new. I found The Image Book to be a depressing ordeal, though. It took me right back to being 18 again, the feeling that someone had gone to great cryptic lengths to make sure I knew that his understanding of the world would never be available to someone like me. I'm sure that's not intentional, but that's what it felt like, and that's a terrible place from which to make art.

I'm sure this art wasn't made from that place.

It isn't intentional, sorry you felt shut out. I felt opened up and challenged and humbled, and that I wanted to take someone to see it so we could talk and exchange ideas afterwards.

That's definitely the film I was hoping for (and a good description of how I felt after Histoire(s) du cinéma). The friend I saw it with seemed to be similarly at a loss, so the post-film conversation was rather disjointed.

It helps to do a little research w/ late Godard, before or after. I certainly didn't get all the historical allusions re the Arab world.

I did recognize the final footage as the scene from Ophuls' Le Plaisir where an old man dances himself to death.

I did not, but watched the film afterwards, and it's so perfect. If that's the last thing Godard ever puts out, and old man trying to stay young, but killing himself doing it, there's a great pathos to that.

Are there that many historical allusions? A lot of it is from the same novel. I took a lot of it to be Godard realizing that he wasn't the right person to speak on these subjects anymore.

I wasn't very good at spotting the film clips--Johnny Guitar, Kiss Me Deadly, Un Chien Andalou, Elephant, Jaws, a handful more. I thought maybe he distorted or bleached out a few.

a lot of them are degraded video, yeah

a few are clips he's used before ("say you love me" from JG)

rented Made in U.S.A. and Keep Your Right Up, excited to watch them, particularly the latter - haven't seen any Godard past 1980 besides his segment in Aria.

after seeing The Image Book twice I'm convinced it's a masterpiece. he talks about Faust at the end but the movie is about Sisyphus: "Even if nothing had turned out as we had hoped, it does not diminish our hopes, for they were a necessary utopia." at 88, Godard despairs that the love of his life, cinema, is incapable of properly addressing and much less combatting human suffering. But he keeps going, dancing himself to death. The first time I saw it with friends, who expected a more rigorous and clear political movie (like Ici et Ailleurs), criticized the Central Region section as "problematic" and "othering," and while I don't necessarily disagree (it's all very armchair), I don't think it's a political movie, it's a man looking back at his life and realizing he's failed. Yet he continues. I find that incredibly moving.

I caught maybe a dozen of the films referenced, but I never got the sense that Godard was holier than thou or pretentious. He's always been pretty humble in his presentation and totally open about the creative process. His attitude is inviting, like hey, I'm going to try some stuff, let's see if it works and have fun. This stretches from Breathless to The Image Book. Does anyone except Godard understand even 75% of The Image Book? Probably not, but It doesn't matter.

Armond loved it, of course:

Godard’s international-politics montage reaches for some kind of elusive, prophetic meaning. It’s facile at a higher level than other political punditry, but it’s also personally accountable and expressive — as when new shakey-cam technology is linked to his own hand painting a landscape.

The Image Book shows Godard’s yearning for cinema’s bequest and his belief in its nearly exhausted potential. The supernal image of a heavy ceremonial book from Eisenstein’s magnificent Ivan the Terrible is a key visual quotation, and by the time Godard quotes Ophuls’s Le Plaisir, this survey film — and what it says about our spiritual, political future — becomes simply overpowering.

Just tried to read A.O. Scott's review but it begins with this sentence: "To borrow an idiom from the extremely online, late Godard is amood."

a.o. scott is deep in his self-parodic phase at this point

"Extremely online" is maybe a little too clever, but that opening sentence seems reasonable to me.

it's not the idea behind it, it's that a.o. scott has been doing the whole "like the kids these days say,..." thing for years. it's a shtick.

Just tried to read A.O. Scott's review but it begins with this sentence: "To borrow an idiom from the extremely online, late Godard is amood."

― flappy bird, Saturday, March 2, 2019 10:32 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

come on that's hilarious

Is Amood a Kiarostami character?

coming from him it isn't xp

Yay; The Image Book will screen at the National Gallery of Art on May 19! (It was supposed to play there in January, but the government shutdown prevented that.)