Jean-Luc Godard

[Rayon Vert]

Wasn't there also something about Godard perhaps directing Bonnie & Clyde for his American debut at one point?

Yes, the screenwriters approached Truffaut, who turned it down because he was about to do Fahrenheit. He in turn showed it to Godard - this was summer '64 in between Une Femme mariée and Alphaville - and there were meetings but it didn't work out.

[Cold Bishop]

And Godard famously scared the producers off with his clear disinterest in the material, making clear he would take their money and doing as he pleased. I believe a suggestion of filming in Vietnam is what severed talks.

[Ovader]

IMAGE AND WORD Synopsis and Worlwide Distribution is available.

[accatone]

Is this info available without joining facebook (even in 2017)?
Thanks!

[domino harvey]

It doesn't work even with Facebook, the posting has been deleted

[Ovader]

It doesn't work even with Facebook, the posting has been deleted

I just checked and the image is still available on Adrian Martin's FB account. I couldn't find any other online source for the image which explains why I linked to AM's post.

[Petty Bourgeoisie]

I'm not sure what the link is (I can't access it either) but here is an article by Nick Newman from just after Christmas:

https://thefilmstage.com/news/new-detai ... et-parole/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I've yet to catch a Godard feature in a theater. Maybe this will be the one!

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

And Godard famously scared the producers off with his clear disinterest in the material, making clear he would take their money and doing as he pleased. I believe a suggestion of filming in Vietnam is what severed talks.

It was either New Jersey or Japan, depending on whose version you believe—the suggestion came up after Godard said he was so excited about the project that he wanted to start shooting it in just a few months (January '65), even though the screenplay (which Godard probably wouldn't have used anyway) was still only a first draft and there was no studio deal yet in place. The producers pointed out that the weather in Texas wouldn't be right in January, prompting Godard's remark. He also purportedly complained that "I'm talking cinema and you're talking meteorology."

[domino harvey]

Une femme coquette has finally surfaced on back channels!

[TMDaines]

Une femme coquette has finally surfaced on back channels!

I love this article on connoisseurs and goofs, and this film being a holy grail.

[kubelkind]

well, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzpFi0uBmzs
looks surprisingly good too, despite being an old, scratchy print. I've paid money for DVDs which look worse than this. Very enjoyable too, great street scenes of Geneva in '55.

[Superswede11]

Two tidbits from Rob Sheffield's Dreaming The Beatles that I had never heard before:

They even discussed plans to turn each song {from Sgt Pepper's} into a movie. "It started with 'Let's get Antonioni to film a track, and let's get Jean-Luc Godard to film a track,' their press agent Tony Bramwell recalled. "But there was no budget for it."

And the kicker, One Plus One bashing aside:

The closest the Stones came to this fantasy {of being movie stars} was when they hooked up with Jean-Luc Godard. The French director had wanted to film the Beatles recording, and met with Lennon to offer him the lead in a movie about Trotsky's assassination, but Lennon turned down both ideas. The Stones seemed like a better match—Jagger vs. Godard in a clash of the Sixties-alienation titans. "Godard is a very nice man," Mick said in 1968, tongue so far in cheek he could taste his inner ear canal. "I mean I've seen all his pictures and I think they're groovy." The director filmed the band in the studio on two historic nights, as they cooked up a new song that turned out to be "Sympathy for the Devil." Godard, having no clue what he'd just witnessed, cut up the footage and spliced it into a tedious student-protest drama called One Plus One. At the premiere, Godard announced the Stones had ruined his film and urged the audience to walk out. He then punched the producer in the face.

Over/under on how many Godard films Jagger actually saw? 2?

[domino harvey]

What a spectacular misreading of the infamous punching incident

[Hopscotch]

Is there a comprehensive treatment somewhere of unrealized Godard projects? I knew about him getting offered to direct Bonnie & Clyde, and his adaptation of Long Day's Journey into Night, but I haven't read anything about the Trotsky assassination movie starring Lennon.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

There's a little bit on it in the Brody and MacCabe bios. A Greek film producer invited Godard to make a film in Britain; Brody (citing Richard Roud) says this was originally to be a film calling for the liberalization of abortion laws that was abandoned when the Wilson government actually did it, but this doesn't fit the given timeline—Brody writes that Godard first met the producer in the spring of '68 and Britain had already revised its abortion laws in 1967. Godard wanted to work with either the Beatles or the Rolling Stones and (per MacCabe) had two meetings with Lennon about a Trotsky project (to be scripted by Robert Benton and David Newman), but Lennon was "extremely suspicious" and didn't bite. It sounds like there was also an attempt at doing One Plus One with the Beatles instead of the Stones, since Brody writes that Paul was willing to work with Godard but John wouldn't let him film in the recording studio. In his 1969 interview with Rolling Stone Godard offhandedly mentions "I'd like to see John Lennon play Trotsky in a film."

I'll also add that MacCabe's earlier book Godard: Images, Sounds, Politics has quite a bit of material on the unrealized The Story (which Godard hoped would star Vittorio Gassman and Charlotte Rampling, then Robert De Niro and Diane Keaton), as well as a project for Mozambican television that's written about in some detail here.

[Hopscotch]

Thanks for that. I've read the Brody and MacCabe texts and actually worked with Colin on his most recent collection for Oxford, but I haven't found any texts yet that deal exclusively and in detail with the projects that never came to be.

[accatone]

For my money the 2 most comprehensive collections of JLGs work are the "Bergala" books:
http://livre.fnac.com/a1071/Jean-Luc-Go ... Luc-Godard" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
and the Documents book
https://www.centrepompidou.fr/cpv/resso ... Status=nsr" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

They all contain very interesting original documents and facsimiles concerning the many many projects JLG was working on. In fact he was/is working on several projects parallel and only very few come to life actually. I know there were meetings with DeNiro and Diane Keating for example (late 70s) but also the not made television projekt with Bernard Henri Levy and Claude Lanzman. There is a printed version of this process by Levy under the Le regle du jeu umbrella that i have here too.

Something else: I think in Les Inrocks some weeks ago i read that the new project Image et Parole is described as a Documentary which i find very interesting and an unconventionel description of a JLG project.

[mteller]

Over/under on how many Godard films Jagger actually saw? 2?

Why, because he's a lowly rock musician?

[ola t]

Anne Wiazemsky writes about Godard's meetings with Lennon (and she herself having tea with McCartney under the conference table) in her book Un an après.

[Superswede11]

Anne Wiazemsky writes about Godard's meetings with Lennon (and she herself having tea with McCartney under the conference table) in her book Un an après.

Thanks, I'll seek that out!

[henry001]

I wonder any company would show interest in his masterpieces in later period, such as Notre Musique or In Praise of Love to be available in blu ray.

[Superswede11]

Godard's new film scheduled for 2018, now called Le livre d'images


On a side note, does anyone recommend Daniel Morgan's Late Godard and the Possibilities of Cinema?

[AlexHansen]

On a side note, does anyone recommend Daniel Morgan's Late Godard and the Possibilities of Cinema?

I found a lot to like in it, especially in the later chapters.

[Hopscotch]

On a side note, does anyone recommend Daniel Morgan's Late Godard and the Possibilities of Cinema?

Well, I'm certainly biased because I studied with him and proofed the book, but I think it's the most compelling book-length study of the late work so far.

[Oedipax]

Interesting to note about the new title ("The Book of Images") - he's drawn repeatedly from Hans Otte's minimalist piano work The Book of Sounds in films like Notre Musique and L'Origine du XXIème siècle.

The French word "livre" can also be a reference to weight (i.e. a pound) as well as currency (e.g. the British pound sterling), although that's the feminine la livre, not the masculine as used in the title (which does exclusively mean book).