Godard on DVD and Blu-ray

[Billy Liar]

Well how old are you, Billy? Were you around in 1967? Are you familiar with the writngs of Georges Bataille and the Comte de Lautreamont? Do you know who Paul Gegauff was?

These aren't minor questions.

I wasn't around in '67, and no I've not heard of any of the above mentioned. I shall do a Scooby style investigation via the internet.

[duane hall]

Not being well-attuned to the specific politics of the time does not at all preclude one from enjoying Weekend, or any other of Godard's better films. Sure, not being well informed of the cultural contexts limits one's understanding. More knowledge is always helpful, and sometimes its the key. But Godard is a director whose formal accomplishment outweighs (in my opinion) the political topicality of his films, in most cases. (Granted, technique and politics are not always clear and distinct from one another, as Godard would be the first to admit.)

I think an appreciation of (and delight in) the formal possibilities of film is more crucial to enjoying Godard than a thorough understanding of the politics. For those having a hard time figuring out what the big deal is, maybe reading a book on Godard is necessary to realize the significance of his filmmaking. But I find some of these posts a bit sermonic and condescending.

[lubitsch]

The For Ever Godard book also puts across an interesting view on him - that of him as an important social thinker / philosopher / scientist.

Godard may have a small following but as you can see in this quote this small group is fanatical.

Social thinker? Philosopher? Scientist? Maybe even great filmmaker, hm?
Calm down a bit. Partly his films are not understandable. The parts which you CAN understand leave the impression of silly politics or e.g. equally silly analyzing of words. Godard's cinema is a jumbling pretentious mess with its essayistic attempts. He certainly has nothing profound to say or what are his deep messages supposed to be?

I can merely repeat it: Watch a bit classical French cinema and see what these dilettants from the nouvelle vague tried to destroy in their sheer arrogance. Godard's unintentionally funny criticism full of wild statements and evaluations should be already proof of his rather confused views.

[Astroman]

So, you don't like Godard?

[David Ehrenstein]

maybe reading a book on Godard is necessary to realize the significance of his filmmaking. But I find some of these posts a bit sermonic and condescending.

Well good -- then I've hit home. You can play with "formal qualities" til the cows come home, but you would do a lot better to acquaint yourself with Jules Supervielle and Paul Eluard.

[Napoleon]

Godard may have a small following but as you can see in this quote this small group is fanatical.

Social thinker? Philosopher? Scientist? Maybe even great filmmaker, hm?
Calm down a bit. Partly his films are not understandable. The parts which you CAN understand leave the impression of silly politics or e.g. equally silly analyzing of words. Godard's cinema is a jumbling pretentious mess with its essayistic attempts. He certainly has nothing profound to say or what are his deep messages supposed to be?

I can merely repeat it: Watch a bit classical French cinema and see what these dilettants from the nouvelle vague tried to destroy in their sheer arrogance. Godard's unintentionally funny criticism full of wild statements and evaluations should be already proof of his rather confused views.

I'm not one for smileys, but

[lubitsch]

I'm not one for smileys, but

A very thorough and detailed comment, I must say.

Did you read some of Godard's criticism? His statements are so wildly weird it's stunning. All these nouvellau vague critics had no idea about making films and therefore created the distinstion between auteurs and realisateurs which already is very problematic. Even worse is their adoration of everything an auteur made and the attack on everything by an realisateur. It's just one example how simpleminded in their thinking these guys were.

And I really hate the way all this Godard lovers tell you that you should first learn about the whole world culture before you can even dare to speak about him. It's a classical way of intimidating the discussion partner.

After some fluffy attempts to play with genre cinema Godard started essayistic movie making which in itself is not a very good idea, but even more problematic if all you can tell are well known cliches.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

In defense of some of those "nouvelle vague critics" from Cahiers du cinema, Rohmer and Rivette weren't all that "arrogant" and destructive of French film before their own cinematic efforts. Rohmer is very well-spoken and Rivette, though not on Godard's level, is closer to the the front of the line than some. I can understand an aversion to Godard, but not all of his comrades were like him.

[Michael Kerpan]

Of course Rivette idolized that uppity Renoir fellow.

[David Ehrenstein]

And I really hate the way all this Godard lovers tell you that you should first learn about the whole world culture before you can even dare to speak about him. It's a classical way of intimidating the discussion partner.

Fabulous! Those indifferent to culture deserve all the intimidation it's possible to muster.

After some fluffy attempts to play with genre cinema Godard started essayistic movie making which in itself is not a very good idea, but even more problematic if all you can tell are well known cliches.

So much for the "fluffy" likes of Chris Marker, Dziga Vertov, Sacha Guitry and Orson Welles.

[justeleblanc]

I just saw KING LEAR for the first time tonight and it blew me away! I'm confused at what people don't like about this film and I want someone who does hate it to explain their rejection of it.

To me, and I might be terribly wrong, it reminded me a lot of F FOR FAKE in terms of its film-essay quality. And I love how Godard explored the themes in Lear and his use of repetition. This was my first foray into Godard's work in the 80s and I now NEED to watch the rest of these works.

Anyone else with me on the "I love KING LEAR" notion?

This article is worth checking out as well: Godard's King Lear: Referents Provided Upon Request

[David Ehrenstein]

Wow. Those who've seen King Lear are few and the standard reaction to it is "HUNH?"

You're quite right to see it as an essay film of sorts -- particularly at the beginning which recounts with how he came to make it -- including a telephone call from Golan and scenes with Norman Mailer and his daughter. The notion of bringing Mailer and Godard together was rather insane. How could these two enormous egos possibly cooperate.

In any event the film is quite lovely with interesting quasi-performances from Peter Sellars, Molly Ringwald, Burgess Meredith, Leos Carax, Julie Delpy (at her loveliest) and J-l G himself. Plus a special guest cameo by Woody Allen.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

"Alphaville" was my first Godard film as well. It totally sucked me in and I haven't looked back since then. It also started me on my love for Raoul Coutard's cinematography.

[justeleblanc]

I just watched First Name Carmen and I loved it but it doesn't jump out at me as much as Lear did. It was almost Bunuelian at times. Does anyone know of a good article or essay on the film?

[kinjitsu]

I just watched First Name Carmen and I loved it but it doesn't jump out at me as much as Lear did. It was almost Bunuelian at times. Does anyone know of a good article or essay on the film?

How is your French?

From Cahiers:

Prénom Carmen - Hélas pour moi

[justeleblanc]

To quote Woody Allen:

"I don't know French. How about Hebrew?"

I went to the library and just got a book that has a few good chapters on Godard's 80's work as a whole.... mostly Hail Mary and Every Man For Himself.

I translated the page.... it's rediculous and almost worth posting.

The suffering daimer

First name Carmen and Alas for me have jointly to speak about the sufferings of lamour, confidence and treason, the feelings which have evil to be said with words and which new gestures could reinvent, would not be gravity which blocks them.

The gods miss of First name Carmen . Sil remains traces of crowned, cest in the sea and the music of Beethoven. The verticality of the film nest not that which connect the men to the gods, but that of the creatures themselves who fight with pride against gravity, like the dancers or the sculptures which seek the grace of lelevation in spite of their weight of flesh or bronze. Prénom Carmen is finally a rather round film, almost an film-object, like the Contempt in its time, less perforated, less dedicated with lOuvert than the films which will occur thereafter. A film where the language is made image, where all the metaphors are filmed literally: to tackle a piece of musique/attaquer a bank; to case quelquun; draw-vous/attirez me. Since A boils of breath and the Contempt, Godard likes to spare with its couples in escape or conflict a respite in a closed place, a bubble of the account, far from the noise and the fury, where it ny has more quun man and a woman who saiment and which saffrontent. Here, cest the free assembly of the images and the sounds which creates linsularity of the couple encircled by the music and the noise of the sea, in lappartement of loncle Jean (burlesquement interpreted by Godard), before the police force does not find their trace. In the absence of god, there is well a Virgin, played by Myriam Roussel, with lhorizon of the passion of Joseph, but Godard the guard holds some for its following film where it will be her Virgin. I greet you Marie will leave not turned scenes of the scenario of First name Carmen, like Eve of the coast dAdam. God also thus remains reserves of it in this film of the purely terrestrial sufferings daimer.

In Hélas for me the god unloaded on the ground of human ordinary must suffer like undoubtedly it na ever suffered to enter by effraction the unspecified skin dun man to approach his wife, Rachel the faithful one, that which loves its man without the least failure. The gods have evil to include/understand the feelings of the men and their difficulty in living and daimer. This one will discover at Rachel a purity and an intransigence of the feelings which will make waver its certainty of somewhat arrogant god. He will make lexpérience of terrestrial gravity with his body demprunt and will be disturbed by the grace of lamour of this mortal. But perhaps quAbraham Klimt, leditor searches dhistoire, will discover of it while making speak all and sundry quil sest nothing last but dhumain and of tiny, this day, in this small ordinary village at the edge of the lake, between this woman and her man. Simon left Rachel for one night, perhaps was this the first time. A little later, in the evening, Simon returned, in advance. He found his wife, but she had evil to recognize in him her husband. Cétait at the same time him and not him. For the first time this night, it discovered that the flesh could be sad. With the alarm clock, the next morning, they spoke about what had arrived to them takes care it. They spoke each other as ever undoubtedly they did not sétaient spoken up to that point: of lamour, fidelity, body, of this sudden strangeness of lautre in the doubt, these things which say themselves never between a man and a woman which live together, perhaps parce which are too fragile to be known as without being damaged. Godard makes this film to know so at least they are filmables, if they can pass in the silence of new gestures. With linverse of I greet you Marie, the woman here remains human, cest lhomme which will be inhabited, time dune night, by the divinity. But it nen will be never sure. Is this its man who became divine or the god who became his man? The only certainty, cest that this doubt, this jolt of the belief was enough to make emerge between them of the glances, the timid gestures, of the hesitant words, and that something of lindicible of lamour went up on the smooth surface of the everyday life.

In lun and lautre of these two films, Godard thinks that the vocation of the cinema nest not to translate into images already thought and theknown as one, but to find the images new, the sounds inouïs, the new rates/rhythms which should allow sapprocher of this inexpressible, of lamour like mystery.

I'm reminded of the scene in Undeclared when the stoner breaks up with his Japanese girlfriend with a spell-and-speak translater - "Intercourse you!"

Okay, so its more than a thousand dollars to rent a rare Godard video from this website... tell me there's a cheaper way.

[Ovader]

Anyone want to hazard a guess of what this Godard Box Set includes due for release on June 5th? Amazon UK

[spencerw]

Anyone want to hazard a guess of what this Godard Box Set includes due for release on June 5th? Amazon UK

Breathless (1959), La Chinoise (1967), Detective (1985), Eloge de l'Amour (2001) and Notre Musique (2004), according to Movie Mail.

[sevenarts]

I've been watching some late Godard lately and growing more & more enamored of his films, of his incredibly rich, complex approach. There's just no one else who makes films even remotely like these. So far, I've gone through his 80s return to cinema roughly in order, watching Slow Motion, Passion, and First Name: Carmen. I'm going to have to skip around a bit chronologically now, since the only other one I have so far is Nouvelle Vague and a few of the others from the 80s aren't too easy to find. But I just wanted to add some comments here about these films and Godard in general -- as usual when I begin truly appreciating a director's work, I am eager to engage in some discussion of it and try to get my reactions into words.

I've enjoyed Godard's films for quite a while of course -- I loved the whimsical genre play of Breathless and Band of Outsiders, the psychological intensity of Contempt, and Alphaville intrigued and attracted me even though on first viewing it seemed rather confusing (not so much a second time through, I only came to love it more). But oddly enough it's only once I've started watching the later, supposedly less accessible films that I think I've come to truly appreciate his work and genuinely love him as a director. Masculin Feminin was a revelation, marrying the sometimes cutesy aesthetics and whimsical humor of his earlier works to a much harsher moral and social stance. Likewise the devastating misanthropy of Weekend and the in-your-face radical politics of Tout Va Bien, both of which completely defuse any accusations that extreme leftists have no sense of humor -- I found both films wildly funny even as I found them intellectually challenging and formally off the charts.

Obviously, I still have some holes to fill in the earlier period(s) as well, but at the moment I've become very much drawn in by Godard's early 80s films. On the one hand, these films are infected by a sense of resignation and disenchantment with the outcomes achieved (or not achieved) by the radical politics of the 60s and 70s. I think this is especially true of Slow Motion (one film I don't see any discussion of on this board), where the characters are all poised at the moment when they've realized their dreams and hopes are not going to come true, and they must find a new direction for their lives. Dutronc's character specifically mentions the failures of leftist politics and this character is, by his name and profession, a stand-in for Godard himself.

But on the other hand, despite this level of disenchantment, the films themselves are the most formally inventive, visually dazzling, textually complex of Godard's career. Godard was giving possibly the bulk of his attention in these films to the structure, the construction, the actual process of filmmaking, and it's no accident of course that filmmaking itself plays a large role in each film. The most relevant evidence of this concern is in the "Scenario Videos" he made before even starting these films -- in this period he made these shorts before making Slow Motion, Passion, and Hail Mary. I've only seen the one for Slow Motion, and I hope future DVDs gather up the other two Scenarios, because this short was very revelatory about Godard's working methods at this time, revealing that before even starting shooting, he had a loose idea of the plot, and especially the thematic elements that would be expressed through plot, and he also had a pretty good idea of the technical tools that would help him express his ideas.

First Name: Carmen was probably my favorite of this trio, which is perhaps natural since the films show a real progression of ideas and technique from one to the next (one reason I'm disappointed I won't be able to watch Hail Mary next). Here the destruction of soundtrack continuity is complete, featuring the most drastic sound manipulation I've come across in a film to date -- like the continual chirp of seagulls to remind us of Carmen's early line that she's going to be making a film set by the beach; Godard simply inserts seagulls on the soundtrack and suddenly his entire film, as well as the film being staged within it, is set at the shore. It's a truly masterful gesture. In Passion there were already voices speaking deliberately out of sync with the actors' lips. There it has a distancing effect, and Passion is, pervesely enough, a rather cold film about strong feelings, or rather about the lack of strong feelings or passion in these disenchanted people.

Carmen, though, is indeed a very passionate, lush film, and not just because of the copious nude scenes or the always-threatening violence of the actors' relations. The soundtrack of this film is packed with warmth and emotion, from the stunning use of Beethoven's string quartets to the crash of waves and the fiery dialogue of the actors. The music rehearsal scenes have a mysterious elegance to them that lends the film a great deal of its charm, and it's a testament to the chemistry of the two lead actors that their brief romance and subsequent destruction burn brightly despite the deliberately fragmentary nature of Godard's narrative obfuscation.

Anyway, that's probably enough blabbing for now. I'm eager to watch Nouvelle Vague and next on the list of available films is the R2 Detective. Then can anyone clear up for me which are the concensus best DVDs for the rest of Godard's 90s works? The New Yorker versions or the R2 UKs?

[tavernier]

Then can anyone clear up for me which are the concensus best DVDs for the rest of Godard's 90s works? The New Yorker versions or the R2 UKs?

Flip through the New Yorker thread and I'm sure you'll find some comments about their approach to Godard.

[justeleblanc]

sevenarts,

HAIL MARY and KING LEAR are musts!!! Hail Mary typically goes online used VHS for 3 bucks. Lear is a bit more pricey. Both are great films.

[Oedipax]

I've heard the R4 Hail Mary is good. Definitely preferable to the Jef Films R1 mess. I've personally been waiting for Raro to release their version, but I might end up ordering the R4 one if someone can confirm the R4 is worth getting.

[sevenarts]

I've heard the R4 Hail Mary is good. Definitely preferable to the Jef Films R1 mess. I've personally been waiting for Raro to release their version, but I might end up ordering the R4 one if someone can confirm the R4 is worth getting.

yea i'd like to know too. although i have the raro first name: carmen, and it's absolutely gorgeous, so i'll probably wait for their eventual version. i am ordering raro's 3-dvd set of earlier films soon too.

[justeleblanc]

sevenarts,

also, in between his dziga vertov and 80s "second wave" as i like to call it, he did a few experimental films that are quite awesome, though really for completists only. if you feel adventurous, you should check out NUMERO DEUX. it can be difficult to watch at times, but it also paves the way for the great orgy scene in SAUVE QUI PEUT.

[sevenarts]

also, in between his dziga vertov and 80s "second wave" as i like to call it, he did a few experimental films that are quite awesome, though really for completists only. if you feel adventurous, you should check out NUMERO DEUX. it can be difficult to watch at times, but it also paves the way for the great orgy scene in SAUVE QUI PEUT.

yea, i've read up on some of that stuff, sounds very interesting -- particularly numero deux. for now i'm sticking to stuff available on dvd, i have enough to watch (by godard and other filmmakers) without tracking down rare bootlegs and old vhs tapes and such.

and yes, that scene in slow motion is amazing, so aggressively unsexy and yet godard paradoxically films it in a very sensual, almost sympathetic way. the boss character, who we start off despising as a stereotype of the white male capitalist power trip (which is exactly what we'd expect godard to be satirizing), becomes more pathetic and ambiguous as the scene progresses. ultimately, it's a very enigmatic scene.

tonight i watched nouvelle vague and was just completely overwhelmed. i'm not even sure i really liked the film so much as it just completely overtook and overloaded my senses. this obviously demands a reviewing very, very soon. there are even fewer narrative shreds than in godard's 80s films, and here the philosophy and quoting and cross-referencing have completely overtaken the film. out of everything cited in there, the only thing i grasped right away were the references to chandler's long goodbye, though i suspect i won't recognize a whole lot more a second time through. i'll have to watch it again to be sure, but i'm not sure it has anything to say in the conventional sense -- the film seems more like a loose collection of ideas and thoughts, batted around and allowed to exist in relation to a rather flimsy narrative. the film seems designed to trigger mental processes; it's almost free associative in its quoting dialogue, and there are so many blatantly contradictory lines about love and commerce and art that i don't think the film could ever lend itself to one definitive conclusion. it's unquestionably a dazzling experience, both in its breathtaking visuals and in its thought-provoking chaos of language and ideology.