Jean-Luc Godard: S and D

I wish when I was a kid I could have been a student in your class, clemenza

For real. Speaking of cool, are there any academic courses out there about the History of Cool? I feel like Godard would factor into it.

Appreciate that. They'll surprise you sometimes by what you can get them interested in, even 3s and 4s.

(xpost) There's that John Leland book, Hip: The History, but I think it's entirely American-focused.

The '60s were fascinating for the ways American cool got reflected back from all over.

I made these GIFs for the "Three Frames" thread a shocking 17 years ago:

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http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a280/HansHolbein/MF1.gif
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I have such vivid memories of my first Godard viewings in the middle of the vast Canadian prairies. One of the better local video stores had Breathless and Contempt, so those were my first two. My university had a 16mm print of Masculin-Feminin and I got to sit in a little booth and watch it on some sort of mini-projection viewing contraption. Later borrowed a VHS of Alphaville from a film professor, but I wasn't allowed to take it home so I sat in an empty classroom and watched it. When it ended I rewound it and watched it again.

there are a couple of later films available to watch in the list ned posted here

Non-Criterion Boutique Home Video Discussion (Kino, Warner Archive, Arrow, Indicator, Vinegar Syndrome, Code Red, etc.)

but now that i try them, neither play for me in the uk, but you might have better luck.

I've watched bad films by JLG but nothing unwatchable, think Lynsey is referring to the Vertov years.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/15/jean-luc-godard-films-french-swiss-died-life

This C4 80s nostalgia is a tad misplaced. His films are far more easily available to most ppl, but so are most things so ppl never get to them?

i have mixed feelings about it: it was kind of great for a few years to just flip a channel into something so extremely texturally different, every conflicting kind of culture arriving through the same aperture (more or less) for free (and you didn't have to leave yr house and rub elbows with weirdo film nerds ugh, this was yr world not theirs)

actually not dissimilar to my idealised imprint of the rock weeklies of the same era (slightly earlier): c4 as the on-screen realisation of the alt listings weekly city limits

but on the other hand i think a lot of jlg's vertov phase is p hard to decode on a small screen in a space full of distractions (including flipping back the channel) and we were nuts to imagine this utopian space wd simply grow more utopian (same with the weeklies: market fragmentation beckoned and the ideal was dissipated)

"I've seen Breathless but should probably watch it again. Are there any American or French films I should watch before or after Breathless?"

The Left Bank stuff (Hiroshima Mon Amour, Cleo, several of Marker's films) is a lot better than anything from the nouvelle vague.

a world where the consumer's choice is king puts a shaping frame on everything you decide to seek out

this is why twitter is better than criterion lol

The flipside to our age of availability is that what little is left of the monoculture becomes narrower and narrower, and if you're not already predisposed to seek things out you're unlikely to ever be exposed to them. I certainly have friends from rural areas of Portugal that have stories of catching arthouse films on Portuguese public television and that firing up their curiosity for that stuff.

Re: sexism, heard someone say recently that Godard's 80's work (which I really haven't seen anything of) is much better on this count, partially through being co-scripted by his wife.

the pernicious and silly term "influence"

I don't remember seeing all that many Godard movies on Channel 4, certainly none from 1968-70. Fassbinder on the other hand.

I had to actually get off my arse and go to the cinema to see the Dziga-Vertov stuff ... where I remember bumping into Comrade Alph at one, iirc?

I definitely remember seeing Numero Deux on UK terrestrial TV sometime during the 80s, can't remember if it was BBC2 or Channel 4 though.

C4 had two, fairly wide-ranging, Godard seasons!

It was chancing upon the films of Stephen Dwoskin on C4 that was the real mind-eye opener for me.

I had to actually get off my arse and go to the cinema to see the Dziga-Vertov stuff ... where I remember bumping into Comrade Alph at one, iirc?

― Buckfast At Tiffany's (Tom D.), Thursday, 15 September 2022 bookmarkflaglink

Lol my memory is zapped!

i think godard's 80s work might actually seem quite dated in this regard -- viz feminism: it it's a bit try-hard attentive to a fairly 80s modes of feminism?

but it's years since i've seen any of it except king lear (which i don't think falls into this category) so i might be quite wrong about this and in fact dated myself (happy to be wrong if i am ie if jlg learned and grew)

numero deux -- which is terrific IMO -- is definitely p demanding on a small screen!! i also seem to remember chairman alph was in the audience (perhaps he's always in the audience)

ffs i'm starting to write like an early 70s godard movie, i actually have urgent work to finish today can you tell

I definitely remember seeing Numero Deux on UK terrestrial TV sometime during the 80s, can't remember if it was BBC2 or Channel 4 though.

That was BBC2, pretty sure

Lots of male gaze female nudity in the 80s films (and after) that is v dated

I also saw ''Sauve Qui Peut (la vie))'' on TV, maybe in the same season? The scene with the guy sitting at his desk being fellated has stuck with me, unsurprisingly.

xp

Now of course there's a very nice blu-ray box set of most of the Dziga-Vertov films, so we can watch them on bigger screens than we ever had in the 80s, in higher definition and with booklets and video essays etc. You just have to PAY.

i definitely remember BBC2 and C4 introducing teenage me to a whole bunch of idk "difficult", "arthouse", whatevs movies in a way that basically isn't possible for a teenager today. as Daniel said it's far harder to get introduced to stuff now unless there's some genuinely good media out there that i don't know about. i suppose Mubi and stuff maybe. i mean i'm just old and hate terrestrial tv channels now

k@r@g@rg@ definitely the way to go for this stuff and much else besides

GREAT! Movies Christmas, in September, is good though.

never gonna join some stupid online version of the masons just to watch a movie

GREAT! Movies Christmas, in September, is good though.

grade A trolling

i may be prepared to forgive GREAT! movies if they show CHRISTMAS PERFECTION (2018) tho

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7872704/

Yeah I hear MUBI is big with ver kids but again you already have to have decided to become a Cinephile to bother suscribing.

When I went to log Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets on letterboxd a few weeks ago I was surprised to see people writing reviews of it every day. I checked again and they still are. I don’t know where people are watching it but that’s an example of an obscure 70s art movie that a surprising number of people are finding and watching.

Also if you're looking for Godard on streaming, Kanopy (probably the best streaming service, if your library has access to it), has a bunch; lots of 80s movies in particular like Hail Mary, First Name: Carmen and more.

The internet loves leftist politics and Japan.

I had a lousy experience watching Every Man for Himself last June. It was like Godard making a Truffaut film using the muscle memory of his '60s sensibility.

I watched that this week. Some genuinely twisted moments in it. Kinda has the vibe of those Miles Davis comeback albums where he's essentially learning to play the trumpet again.

I find it strange to see people (on this very thread in fact) repeatedly refer to Godard movies by their English titles.

Some of which I think are quite bad and clumsy, eg: BAND OF OUTSIDERS.

But I should then clearly state that if I were talking about eg: Ozu films I would say 'TOKYO STORY' and anyone who knew Japanese would think: what's that odd English person doing, using the ugly English name rather than our beautiful Japanese?

In other words while my inclination with Godard would be to use French, I cannot claim any great consistency in these matters, transnationally or beyond one or two languages. And I admit that the people using the English titles (which I mostly don't like) probably are practising consistency in a quite rational way.

As someone who didn't connect for years, I'd recommend starting with Band of Outsiders, Masculin Feminin, and Vivre sa vie. They're all very accessible. I'd save the later work for later.

― clemenza, Wednesday, September 14, 2022

This post, for instance, also demonstrates the general lack of consistency in these matters (this is not a comment on poster Clemenza, whom I do not know in any way).

Those are the official titles of the releases for those films over here, take it up with Criterion.

You're safe with "Weekend" though.

he shd have called it "the french have no word for weekend"

Tempted to start calling Breathless "About a Soufflé"

Seems to be an American thing? They're always called by their French titles here... I think?

The sheer arrogance.

You're safe with "Weekend" though.

"Week-end"

xpost En effet!

he shd have called it "the french have no word for weekend"

I blame those 10 day weeks Robespierre and his mates introduced.

I'm definitely scattershot with the titles. I'm so particular with English titles--italicizing, capitalizing correctly--and I have a hard time adjusting to not capitalizing French titles after the first word. I want to treat them like English titles, where all the words are capitalized except for those with two or three letters--even when I don't know what those words mean.