Meeting Woody Allen (Jean-Luc Godard, 1986)

[Cinesimilitude]

this should spark some discussion.

full 26 minutes available on youtube, here is part one. just follow the side links or go to the users videos for parts 2 and 3. pretty interesting stuff.

[domino harvey]

I used to have this as a shaky wmv file in the years before YouTube. interesting stuff.

[Cinesimilitude]

with keepvid.com you can get the flash files or get an avi or mp4 from www.videodownloader.net

[godardslave]

"to me, whats insidious about it... is that it does tend to quell your loneliness..."

[thethirdman]

I did not know Annette Insdorf was in this also until I watched it.

[Anonymous]

Fabulous! Two great artists that I admire, together in one frame.

[pianocrash]

The whole darn thing is available here.

[tavernier]

Those two great artists....are you talking about JLG and WA, or AI?

[Anonymous]

Those two great artists....are you talking about JLG and WA, or AI?

Godard and Allen of course. Insdorf? Are you kidding? She has absolutely no sense of film history whatsoever. Writing books about Truffaut and Kieslowski might impress her students, but generally she is very narrow-minded.

Is it so surprising to admire Woody Allen nowadays? I don't give a damn about his private life and who he is fucking. His films are very well done, intelligent comedies with substance and fabulous dialogue.

[tavernier]

I was hoping that was your answer! =D>

[orlik]

Is it so surprising to admire Woody Allen nowadays? I don't give a damn about his private life and who he is fucking. His films are very well done, intelligent comedies with substance and fabulous dialogue.

I agree. After all, you could refer to Godard as "that former wife-beating apologist for Mao" - but I wouldn't, because I think he's a genius

[justeleblanc]

you could refer to Godard as "that former wife-beating apologist for Mao" - but I wouldn't, because I think he's a genius

Wife-beating?

[jon]

you could refer to Godard as "that former wife-beating apologist for Mao" - but I wouldn't, because I think he's a genius

Wife-beating?

yes, please elaborate.

[Cinesimilitude]

I had only seen a few of Woody's films before watching Manhattan a month ago. I've seen about 12 of them now and I've been working chronologically in reverse. I love all of his recent work (I've yet to see Scoop or Jade Scorpion yet) so from the discussions I've seen on here, it's only going to get better.

[Harvey Domino]

Wife-beating?

yes, please elaborate.

"Audience-beating" is more like it.

[David Ehrenstein]

This Godard video grew out of Woody Allen's participation in King Lear (unquestionably Godard's strangest film.)

[orlik]

you could refer to Godard as "that former wife-beating apologist for Mao" - but I wouldn't, because I think he's a genius

Wife-beating?

yes, please elaborate.

In his last book on Godard Colin McCabe recounts an incident where a jealous Godard hit Anna Karina in a nightclub, as well as frequent domestic fights. But I seriously don't want to dish the dirt on one of my heroes - it was only a flippant remark.

[David Ehrenstein]

Rivette's L'Amour Fou recreatest the end of the Godard-Karina marraige. They locked themsleves in their apartment and a knock-down-drag-out battle that ended when their freinds broke down the door, finding the spair exhausted and spent -- just like Kalfon and Ogier in Rivette's modern classic.

[justeleblanc]

In his last book on Godard Colin McCabe recounts an incident where a jealous Godard hit Anna Karina in a nightclub, as well as frequent domestic fights. But I seriously don't want to dish the dirt on one of my heroes - it was only a flippant remark.

Sounds like McCabe is hitting up Ike Turner memories.

[sevenarts]

Well that was interesting, thanks for the link. It was odd, I felt like they weren't making all that much of a connection, partly because of the language barrier, partly because they just seemed to be in totally different places in regards to film, in terms of their approach to filmmaking and their ideas about the cinema. And Godard's editing and sound-mixing was typically distancing, especially the use of music to drown out the words at times. Of course he does that all the time, but it was probably even more obvious here since so much of the dialogue was in English, so I didn't have subtitles to fall back on. Still, definitely a fascinating little film.

[Antoine Doinel]

A very interesting little film if only because Allen rarely opens himself to such scrutiny. Godard's little video editing tricks got pretty tired, pretty fast though.

As a side note, Dailymotion in terms of streaming and quality is about a thousand times better than YouTube.

[jackson_browne]

Godard's little video editing tricks got pretty tired, pretty fast though.

Welcome to 80's/90's Godard. The style employed in this short is very typical of a lot of his work from that period.

[sevenarts]

Godard's little video editing tricks got pretty tired, pretty fast though.

Welcome to 80's/90's Godard. The style employed in this short is very typical of a lot of his work from that period.

I wouldn't quite say that. In some ways, yes, it is superficially similar, but I think that Godard uses the style much more intelligently and to much greater effect in a lot of his other late-period films. Here it just seems like his editing and sound mixing are particularly random and nonsensical, whereas in a lot of other films employing this type of style (especially the four films on the Godard/Mieville Short Films DVD) there's usually more purpose and meaning behind the editing and mixing Godard employs. In that respect, Meeting WA reminds me more of the "scenario" videos he'd often make as sketches before some of his 80s films, rather than an actual finished film.

[sevenarts]

I re-watched this film tonight, now that I've seen a lot of Woody Allen films, which I hadn't when I first saw this. And I have to say I've considerably re-evaluated my impressions of it. It still seems as though the two directors are missing each other, passing by with very different ideas about cinema and never really coming to a mutual understanding. That in itself is fascinating, and the discussion of the relationship between the finished film and the filmmaker's ideas does a great deal to reveal how each director approaches his work, and why they are so different. Allen seems to think of the finished film as the expression of his original idea -- and an imperfect expression at that, because to him the film never lives up the way the idea was in his mind before he started making the film. For Godard, in contrast, the idea does not come first; he says that he can only grasp the idea of his film after it is finished, not before. For Godard, the idea is not the impetus for the film. The film, rather, is its own impetus, and the process of making the film is the process of forming and discovering ideas.

This fundamental disagreement, seemingly misunderstood by the two participants, is indicative of this short's continual layering of dialogues at complete cross-purposes to each other. And the fragmenting is further cemented by Godard's constant destabilizing tricks, his freeze frames and abrupt cut-offs and the loud obtrusive soundtrack which sometimes drowns out the speakers. I still don't think this is major Godard by any means, but for whatever reason I do have a new appreciation for it now that I didn't really have the first time I watched it. As is usually the case with Godard, there is a lot more going on here than there would seem to be at first glance, even in a relatively minor interview-based short.

[v_konigsberg]

I entered youtube to watch the godard- allen video and it says it has been removed by the user, someone knows where else can I find it, please