Jean-Luc Godard: S and D

The party scene is indeed all disconnected ad speak. Whether the rest "makes sense" is up to debate I guess but I do think you'd notice a connection to what is onscreen.

Realism never a particular concern for Godard tho and def not in Pierrot.

I haven't checked the subtitles on my CanalPlus Blu-Ray of Pierrot Le Fou (bought for £3 in the Shaftesbury Avenue Fopp a few years ago) - time for a rewatch. But I get the impression that Godard, rather like Jean-Marie Straub, regards English language subtitles as something of a capitulation to American cultural hegemony. In UK cinemas, the print of the relatively recent Film Socialisme came with 'Navajo subtitles' which were at best an approximation of the French language audio and often seemingly a counter-argument to what was being enunciated on screen. And iirc there are marked differences between the French language dialogue and the English language subtitles for Slow Motion too - because Charles Bukowski was involved with the 'translation'? I think that's the movie alluded to in Bukowski's Hollywood, which includes an enigmatic film director called 'Jean-Luc Modard'.

Text has always been v much a part of Godard's aesthetic and I guess subtitles fall within that as a filmic component that can be manipulated, deconstructed, critiqued etc.

The one time I saw Godard in person, at the National Film Theatre in London, he was speaking in English to Colin MacCabe and clearly not that happy about it (his English didn't seem especially good, but that might well have been deliberate non-communication on JLG's part).

I don't think Godard has much control over how his 60's work gets released? Pretty sure if he did these films would all only be available in 3D dubbed into vietnamese or something.

I always wondered whether, back in the old days when Henri Langlois was screening American films at the Cinémathèque Francais, those films were subtitled or dubbed or neither

I think the subtitles may just be running a bit behind teh film. & the bit where tehre are no subtitles at the start is down to taht. Should be in time with taht cos I think that's the drag so something like 30 seconds or something out. Which is a pain and makes it difficult to watch, Just tried it with another set of subtitles and will now probably find out taht was the same as the ones I started with.
Hope i can find a correct set. Not sure how one would go around synching them.

well just found out how you sync things . Mus have been lucky with previous subititles and they staye din sync even if they came from elsewhere. Now just spent an age trying to sync things for La Grande Vadrouille after giving up on this only to find taht the set of subtitles seems to not be in sync with itself. Went out of sync by the next scene.
I thought they ran automatically at the same speed and duration as the film. Yeah must have just been lucky before since they did seem to be in synch.

Bummer.

"But I get the impression that Godard, rather like Jean-Marie Straub, regards English language subtitles as something of a capitulation to American cultural hegemony."

Makes sense, beyond subtitles ppl like Strain have a taste for play with the telling, which includes a species of fast-forward narration (my favourite example is 'Not reconciled').

lol so why do Straub films still play in festivals in Portugal w/ english subtitles, money where yr mouth is

My impression is of an unstable product.

And here Straub's films don't get that much of a play. I've only seen their Bach film at the bfi (because music?) and no wider retro though MUBI did a good job, to their credit.

a solid 25% (probably more) of The Image Book is not subtitled, maybe it's an old habit?

I believe one of the books on Godard suggests that most of the English-language films shown by Langlois were unsubtitled, leading the critics-to-be to focus on mise-en-scene rather than dialogue.

The abbreviated English subtitles in Film Socialisme were actually quite informative, giving the sense of the French dialogue/voice-over. The words go by too fast in latter-day Godard films, I can only make "poetic sense" of them in the moment even if the subtitles are precise translations.

Godard spoke in English at his 1996 TIFF press conference for Forever Mozart, only relying on a translator once or twice, although some of the questions were in French. I remember him discussing one of his earlier films, asking, "You have this word in English, 'catastophe'"?

"clearly not that happy about it"

i mean it was colin mccabe lol

who was tbf a perfectly charming and friendly boss when i worked at the bfi but i don't rate his work explicating godard and i doubt godard does either

think i said all this at greater length upthread

The MacCabe biography spent a lot of time switching focus to wider conceptual and historical topics; Richard Brody's book was more conventional, though he is certainly not ignorant of the wider context of Godard's work.

This clip is probably well known, but just saw it linked to on Facebook - Godard on the Dick Cavett show, speaking pretty good English and generally being quite accommodating

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aBogJonJ1E

Yeah that was good.

"The audience don't go to see framing?"

"But the viewer receives a film through that"

glad i watched through to the end, to hear him talk about how great he expects The Day the Clown Cried is going to be when it finally gets made

"booster kitten"

Pauline Kael wrote about this interview in her review of Sauve Qui Peut.

The disjunction between the first third of Hail Mary and the rest is stark enough to wonder if I watched two different movies or wasn't paying attention.

I found it mostly a wash, with some adolescent peeping at private parts.

I think of it as the start of the latter-day "spiritual" Godard, less world-weary than Passion and Carmen.

⚫ Jean-Luc Godard est mort https://t.co/gDLynUc7Ta pic.twitter.com/LQ5DXWPgap

— Libération (@libe) September 13, 2022

https://www.thecinetourist.net/uploads/7/0/9/9/7099213/1966b-made-in-usa_orig.png

rip jlg

https://live.staticflickr.com/3532/3184470110_13928069f9_b.jpg

I mean not really but sort of. RIP.

Au revoir, Jean-Luc.

RIP to the GOAT

God damn, RIP sir

ah shit, the real greatest, OK RIP for a bit but get yourself reincarnated if it turns out that's an option, then keep moving, keep causing trouble, shit on the bores, make another confusing and marvellous pile of things. There's a fight on and there always has been and you've always known it.

A master. One of the last great ones. He kept at it, breaking conventions and exploring, up til old age. I hope he passed away serenely at his mixing desk. Infinite thanks for helping shape the way I see and embrace films.

this also effectively means RIP Nouvelle Vague right?

pic.twitter.com/f4Omf7oOPv

— Peter Webber (@PeterWebber) September 13, 2022

straub of straub-huillet is still with us tho he hasn't made a film for a few years now

also luc moullet and philippe garrel, but with the best will in the world…

Lots of Letterboxd kids recommend Vivre Sa Vie; what do ILX make of that one?

One of my absolute favs of his early films.

The Letterboxd kids are alright

Hopefully, he was the last bourgeois maoist in Paris.

Quite an interesting piece of hatred for JLG from the situationist international, 1966.

An apt eulogy for one whose "critiques" "never go beyond the innocuous humor typical of nightclub comics or Mad magazine":https://t.co/paLZAzkvFn pic.twitter.com/ZYXCFDxmeA

— Cured Quail (@CuredQuail) September 13, 2022

The couple of write-ups I've seen ignore his work from '68 and jump to the last few years.

What do they know?

Those cinematic tone poems he released in the last 20 years frustrate and move me. RIP.

Not much, but it was amusing xp

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) 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

he was a troll not a maoist (dziga vertov: also not a maoist #ffs)

also wikipedia my new nouvelle vague hero luc moullet: "In 1971, Moullet made his first color film, Une aventure de Billy le Kid, also known by its English title, A Girl Is a Gun. A psychedelic Western starring French New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Léaud, the film was never released in France, but was instead shown abroad in an English-dubbed version. The dubbing, conceived by Moullet as a tribute to the "shabbiness" he always admired in American genre films, is intentionally bad, and the short, slight Leaud is given a mismatched deep voice."

Bad week for nonagenarian Swiss filmmakers.

Cinematheque Ontario, before they moved into their fancy new building and got a little more commercial, actually had a Luc Moullet retrospective. His Billy the Kid movie is basically a student film with three actors running around the French countryside, nothing too special.

Mahmoud Darwish in Godard's Notre Musique (2004) — on the Trojan poet pic.twitter.com/yvC8mOM53s

— Bassem (@bassem__saad) September 13, 2022

a student film with three actors running around the French countryside, nothing too special

no its good (i shall never watch it)

It's not "psychedelic" either.

looking at the various obit pix and u gotta respect the g man's commitment to never combing his hair

Godard never made a film that isn't worth seeing, and never made a film that isn't better on a subsequent viewing (although I probably won't rewatch Un Film Comme Les Autres).

I thought I recognized the name, Luc Moullet's brother is Patrice Moullet, who was the main man in the band Alpes, the band that made so many albums with Catherine Ribeiro, Catherine Ribeiro who was one of the main actors in Jean-Luc Godard's 1963 film "Les Carabiniers"... as was Patrice Moullet!