421 Pierrot le fou

[Mr Sausage]

I don't know, Welles managed it - after three hours with Greg Toland.

Heh, well, Welles had little film experience, but he still had a clear and firm practical grasp of filmmaking (helped by his collaborators and his years as a theatre director).

[Murdoch]

The film plays with the lovers-on-the-run genre in such a bizarre, nihilistic manner that it's next to impossible to view any of those films like Bonnie and Clyde or Gun Crazy with any degree of seriousness.

Really? My impression was that Bonnie and Clyde was heavily influenced by the New Wave. In any case, it's far from being a straightforwardly serious film: in fact, to my knowledge it's the best film ever made about the comic/pathetic/tragic distance between idealism (or myth) and reality. It's an amazing film, exploring thoroughly and intricately this quite profound theme, yet managing at the same time to be entertaining in all the ways a work of art can be entertaining. And for sheer nihilism, in this case Bonnie and Clyde's ending beats Pierrot hands down (though I guess Arthur Penn and Warren Beatty might disagree).

Bonnie and Clyde was a bad example for me to use, I just couldn't think of another lovers-on-the-run film off the top of my head. Although I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree about the nihilism of both films since I thought Bonnie and Clyde created a certain level of sympathy for the leads - however pathetic they are - while Pierrot has seemingly no sympathy for its leads and even ends with the camera panning out to the sea as if bored with what has just taken place and seeking something else to film.

[Sloper]

Perhaps you're right there, but I feel that the bleakness of Bonnie and Clyde's ending has all the more force because we sympathise with the lovers and have, to an extent, bought into the myth enshrined in Bonnie's clumsy poems. It's very disturbing to see these two heroic, elevated figures being torn apart by bullets, in a scene of then-unprecedentedly serious, realistic, un-glamorous violence. And don't forget that last shot, looking through the shattered car windscreen at Frank Hamer's granite-block face. The nihilism of Pierrot le Fou is more (as you say yourself) sarcastic, detached, like that of a joke or a shaggy dog story; the nihilism of Penn's film is far more likely to induce a real sense of despair and loss.

[Murdoch]

Well, that is an interesting point about Bonnie and Clyde playing with our sympathy, and I feel the need to revisit the film now if only to pick up on the aspects of it you mention, it's been a good several years since I last watched it. This is actually difficult for me to respond to since both films have such different methods in tearing down their protagonists - in Pierrot both characters are rather stupid and never come across as anything but self-absorbed, while B&C the fall from grace is so sudden it hits you like a ton of bricks. Hmmm, very interesting indeed, I remember the ending of B&C being sort of traumatizing to me when I watched it, but in Pierrot the deaths are actually expected, or at least don't contrast sharply with anything that came previously in the film.

[Noiretirc]

As for me, when I first saw Contempt, like the film's producer, I wished there was a bit more of Bardot's bottom to relieve the boredom. Nowadays, hardly a month goes by I don't feel the need to revisit the movie, if only to reaffirm my love of cinema, and for alot more as well.

Like her arse for instance.

Sloper talked about conventional forms of entertainment and Godard, in the same paragraph even! What?

I agree with Murdoch; the "classic" 60s period is an illusion of sorts, a magnificent preamble, the 50 year Godard Film trajectory and look at us now, 40 years after one small step, the same year as Gai Savoir, and Giant Leaps since......blah blah blah, ho ho ho.......

I watched Pierrot 7 times and cried during the 4th, 5th and 7th viewings. You shall not deny me my tears.

[HerrSchreck]

I don't think anyone could be as self-consciously playful and experimental and allusive with film form as Godard without first having a firm practical grasp of all the elements of filmmaking.

I think that's why HerrS is making the distinction between skill and talent. Godard may grasp the concepts, but can he use that knowledge to form something that can be considered good? Personally I think Godard is good when he's not jerking off the critics.

I said "practical grasp," tho'. No one could make Contempt, or Breathless, or Pierrot le Fou with solely a conceptual grasp of filmmaking. You cannot play with a language unless you are competant with its traditional forms.

I can see no point in discussing the distinction between skill and talent (as tho' anyone could find it useful).

Agreed-- this was a red herring that FerdGriffon brought out in an attempt to I guess demonstrate that my point was scrambled. The whole subtopic is a tiresome off-road from the larger point. Talent and skill are not the same thing; you can increase your skill level through practice.. you can't increase your talent level, which is generally perceived to be innate. But the rapidity with which your skill level increases can be determined by your talent. I see little of either in evidence in JLG-- shots, performances have been recorded, edited, soundtracks synched, etc... revealing a team effort to prepare a product for consumption which at the basic and strictly technical level was apparently successful: a film was made, and successfully projected for an audience, and some people liked them. Some even deem them classics.

But it's at this point that I and folks depart with each other.

[colinr0380]

I suppose it all comes down to whether you feel that you need identifiable characters and a moving narrative for a film to be 'successful', or to use Schreck's criticism from Contempt, as 'entertainment'. I don't really find this an example of the filmmaker's lack of skill in making properly entertaining manipulations (look at Breathless for an example of a succesful, 'entertaining' work), but that they moved past such ideas. We could argue whether it was for better or worse - perhaps more classical technique would have reached a broader audience instead of allowing for other, less talented filmmakers, to properly exploit these ideas in a more commercial form, but then would that have diluted their work and their talent?

Instead of not understanding how to work with actors it feels more that Godard (and maybe Antonioni) grappled with the idea of actors as mouthpieces to convey the plot along and just made it more obvious than in usual entertainments, while directors like Bergman took the opposite route of an examination of character to such an in depth extent that it also exposed the surface deep characterisation in most films. Bergman and Antonioni strike me as being sort of a matched pair in that for both the world outside can come to seem significant only as an expression of their character's inner lives - but whereas in Bergman the characters create their worlds as an external expression, the characters in the mid-period Antonioni films are less 'developed' because they are buffeted around by situations and environments that they do not properly understand themselves and would not be able to properly articulate. They are just elements in the landscape, significant elements but elements nonetheless, adding to the picture being built up by the director that is bigger than they are.

Godard seems to use his characters is a similar way, but even more obviously as symbols - he strips away the usual niceties and pretence so that the viewer is bluntly presented with an intonation of a political view, for example. I find it less manipulative somehow to do that, as the viewer can confront these issues head on rather than through 'entertaining' obfuscation. Plus the energy of the filmmaker that would normally be diverted into trying to hide the message, or make it as palatable to as wide an audience as possible, can then be channeled into more interesting areas such as the problems of adaptation in Contempt; power struggles in relationships, in work and in representation of the world which is always in flux in Tout Va Bien and Letter To Jane; or memory and war and how that itself can be modified. Removing that artficial entertaining barrier lets fuller consideration of the issues - of course it runs the risk of seeming obvious or rather comical if it goes wrong (the first view of the EUR tower with the barn testicles and pubic hair trees in L'Eclisse always seems too obvious for me, and thus too funny to the extent it always takes me out of the film when it turns up! Similarly Godard can seem overly comic - just because of having seen it recently the "Ouiii/Noooon" exchanges in Aria are wonderful but could also be evidence of Godard at "his pretentious worst" to his detractors!), but then entertainment pieces similarly run the risk of being comically over-emphatic, and with more damaging consequences to their message.

For example, just because I finally got around to watching it last night, John Q in which John Cassavetes' son displays none of his father's 'talent' (for however we are trying to define such a word) and wastes a wonderful cast in an overly manipulative piece of work that pushes all the right commercial buttons (appeals to God; family above all; evil hospital bureaucrats in luxurious offices quibbling over the cost of operations; a debate about HMOs that would be perfect for an actor/lecturer to intone to camera Godard-style but is utterly ridiculous when presented as a naturally occuring conversation, and which nullifies the important issue through inept handling; the blood type of the dying boy being "Be Positive"; etc). He knows all the tricks but cannot create a satisfying final product out of them in terms of its muddled message (that taking hostages is right in the right circumstances), so has to fall back on creating a 'skillful' but intellectually suspect entertainment. Because audiences have been conditioned to accept a hollow but entertaining film as being successful compared to the failure of a thought-provoking but 'unentertaining' or difficult seeming one. I find a Godardian focus on the actors as tools of the director less manipulative somehow and therefore actually more emotionally involving due to the distance, but understand if that view is not shared by the majority!

[HerrSchreck]

I suppose it all comes down to whether you feel that you need identifiable characters and a moving narrative for a film to be 'successful', or to use Schreck's criticism from Contempt, as 'entertainment'. I don't really find this an example of the filmmaker's lack of skill in making properly entertaining manipulations (look at Breathless for an example of a succesful, 'entertaining' work), but that they moved past such ideas. We could argue whether it was for better or worse - perhaps more classical technique would have reached a broader audience instead of allowing for other, less talented filmmakers, to properly exploit these ideas in a more commercial form, but then would that have diluted their work and their talent?

That's not it, Col. I don't need identifiable characters or a moving narrative. This is a common reflex, I find, when folks want to explain away a negative reaction to not only Godard but any filmmaker whose work they value-- to say, "Oh, well, they're used to more traditional forms of filmmaking and of course JLG is going to be a bit much for them". The fact is that the "avant"-ness/self-reflexivity of JLG is not particularly alienating or 'out there'.

Entertainment, which you mentioned: To me all cinema is entertainment. This is merely code for my reminding myself out of any tendency towards snobbery because of the eclectic nature of my tastes. No matter how bizarre, alienating, avant, confusing to the masses, no matter how surrealist, impressionist, expressionist, Lettrist, cubist, absurdist, dadaist, now matter how angry, vitriolic, no matter how open-ended, symbolic, crowd maddening, challenging, I still see art as entertainment. It is there to be consumed at your own leisure.. you 're not paid to take it in, you 're not required to take it in or like it. This does not mean it's melodrama, simplistic, easy to digest, shields you from painful facts, numbs the intellect or any such thing. Even philosophy to me is entertainment when read at leisure, Human All Too Human just as much so as Curious George Brains a King With A Beef Bone-- although one may donate more to one's own personal sensibility, it's not guaranteed. We take these things in seated on a couch, in our free time, because we want to.

The problem I have with JLG is that his films simply don't work for me. It sit there with incredulity throbbing through me that people think this stuff is good-- Sloper and I share this common reaction. I find them clumsy, boring, poorly made specimens of cinema, which wear their author's pretensions and ambitions with a special kind of peculiar obviousness.. and if you don't buy into the author's own myth, or find his social comment particularly enlightening, the works go out the window.

Don't try and analyze it too much or explain it away. I just don't like his films. My opinion is that of a single unimportant individual, and JLG's legend will live on forever.

[colinr0380]

The problem I have with JLG is that his films simply don't work for me. It sit there with incredulity throbbing through me that people think this stuff is good-- Sloper and I share this common reaction. I find them clumsy, boring, poorly made specimens of cinema, which wear their author's pretensions and ambitions with a special kind of peculiar obviousness.. and if you don't buy into the author's own myth, or find his social comment particularly enlightening, the works go out the window.

Don't try and analyze it too much or explain it away. I just don't like his films. My opinion is that of a single unimportant individual, and JLG's legend will live on forever.

That's nice to hear, and I agree that this is all based on personal reactions to the work - what we find enlightening or comical can be wildly different from person to person and can depend on the point of development at which we encounter a work as to whether we find it an eye-opener or a "been there, done that" kind of film, I suppose.

[tartarlamb]

I suppose it all comes down to whether you feel that you need identifiable characters and a moving narrative for a film to be 'successful', or to use Schreck's criticism from Contempt, as 'entertainment'.

I don't think your intent is to call all of us anti-Godardians philistines, but it must be a bit obvious that its a matter of taste and temperament whether or not one 'gets' his work, rather than an inability to enjoy or appreciate non-narrative, untraditional, or avant-garde cinema.

You do make an excellent point about treatment of actors, though, which I think drives at a particular problem of character that rankles with me in Godard's work. There's a bland variety of crudeness is fashioning a cinema so dominated by the director's ideas, that the actors in the films become props, or symbols as you say. I don't think Godard is technically inept as a filmmaker, but he is as a director of actors and as a collaborator on the set. If the clumsy notion of auteurism still exists, and hasn't been exploded by directors like Bergman (and, say, Rivette), who truly use(d) the medium as a collaborative art, then Godard stands as its grouchy and sloppily tyrannical role model. A director that can't respect actors (and ESPECIALLY actresses), or must abuse them, is usually misanthropic and arrogant to a special degree. That sort of director requires special attention for someone like me to enjoy their work.

His films are mouthpieces for his ideas and personality, and I suppose the problem is pretty simple. I don't like Godard as a human being, and there's not enough there to convince me that he's a truly great filmmaker outside of that enormous asterisk.

[HerrSchreck]

His films are mouthpieces for his ideas and personality, and I suppose the problem is pretty simple. I don't like Godard as a human being, and there's not enough there to convince me that he's a truly great filmmaker outside of that enormous asterisk.

An eloquence that dwarfs my attempts over the years to explain myself on this. That's it in one cystal clear nutshell.

[jbeall]

And with that, the mighty Godard is brought down to the level of Kevin Smith and George Lucas. Bravo, tartarlamb!

[Sloper]

The question as to whether all art really is ‘entertainment’ seems to me to be crucial when discussing Godard, maybe because, as I said earlier, he comes across as a rather ‘academic’ film-maker, producing the sort of films you would expect to be produced by a certain sector of academia. This is certainly a problem I have as a beginner-academic: at least in the field of medieval studies, there seems to be an impatience with the whole idea of talking about the aesthetic qualities of art, as if that had gone out of fashion with old-school ‘gentleman’ critics like C.S. Lewis, Charles Muscatine and so on. There’s a sense that it’s irrelevant at best, and irresponsible at worst, to simply talk about whether art is entertaining or not – whether it works – and most of what I read or hear at conferences seems driven by a need to talk about history, feminism, sexuality, in short to say something ‘useful’. When I talk to other doctoral students, some of them seem to have lost touch with the idea of enjoying anything they read, or of even stopping to think about whether the texts they’re studying have any aesthetic value. In the Middle Ages, art had to be morally improving as well as (or instead of) being entertaining; for a while critics focused on the entertainment part to the exclusion of the morality; and now we ignore both parts and take a cold, theoretical or historicised approach to these things, as if they were merely cultural events to be learned from – or not even learned from, just deconstructed and anatomised and turned to meaningless, non-signifying crud. (More of an impression than an observation...)

To me, this is what Godard is like: he’s impatient with ‘good’ films, and when he references Gosta Berling and Johnny Guitar in Weekend (I think they’re the anarchists’ code names), it’s like a snide footnote, intended to emphasise the yawning gap between the beauty of those films and the punishing 90-minute finger-wag to which he, Godard, is currently subjecting us. I guess this is related to what Murdoch was saying about the way Pierrot changes the way we look at other, more earnest, films of this type. It’s not unlike what T.S. Eliot (another artist/academic) does in The Waste Land, throwing his hands up in despair of ever being able to escape from under the weight of literary debris from past centuries, but somehow managing to forge a new poetics for his age in the process. It took many hours of study before I really began to enjoy - rather than simply be fascinated by - The Waste Land, but it felt worth it because it was obvious from a first reading that there was something beautiful hidden away amid all the nonsense and hieroglyphics. So far I don’t get the impression that Godard is doing anything nearly as intricate or impressive, but I think that, if I were a film student (oh if only) I’d enjoy the challenge of studying these films. It often is more rewarding, as a student, to focus on something you don’t like very much, because that process of learning more about it, and then suddenly realising that you’ve come to respect it, feels very good. Sort of a long-drawn-out form of entertainment.

Anyway, I suspect that, as Noiretirc says, Godard is not attempting to provide conventional forms of entertainment, but to share insight, analysis, observation, much like a philosopher or academic.

And yes, tartarlamb has really hit the nail on the head with this one: I don’t care that Lang and Curtiz were utter shits, because they’re such great entertainers. But to spend time in someone’s head, you’ve got to like them. (People would feel a lot less animosity towards Freud if they read his books – he’s so eloquent and humble you can forgive him for permanently tarnishing your relationship with mummy.)

[knives]

Lang and Curtiz were utter shits

?

[HerrSchreck]

Lang and Curtiz were utter shits

?

I think what he means is that Lang was a notoriously difficult man to get along with.. the first man to fire pistols on the set, be completely domineering, and sneeringly irascible, despised by actors, etc (as far as I know hes the only guy who had a murder plot hatched and put forward an inch short of actual execution by the crew who loathed him.. stopped for their own well being rather than his own). I find that many of the artists I deify are misanthropes hobbled by disorders and addled with problems... Obviously they are in their works to greater or lesser extents (some say that all art is biographical, which is true to a great extent)-- but it's the JLG Program For Self-Promulgation has a certain special aspect that I cannot jibe with, and I find that when this is removed, there's really very little to appreciate there.

[Titus]

His films are mouthpieces for his ideas and personality, and I suppose the problem is pretty simple. I don't like Godard as a human being, and there's not enough there to convince me that he's a truly great filmmaker outside of that enormous asterisk.

This is a perfect summation of Godard's work -- and I say this as a big fan. The reason the characters in Godard's films are almost all ciphers (there are exceptions, of course, such as Contempt) is because Godard is the only character of any real importance in his work. He's the main star. And there's an immediacy to his presence in all his films that is stronger than any filmmaker I can think of that is, at least ostensibly, working within the boundaries of narrative film. So I think that in order to have any appreciation for his work at all (barring occasional, more accessible films, like Breathless and Band of Outsiders), one has to have at the very least a fascination with Godard himself. Most great filmmakers become more interesting with every new film you see of their's -- more is revealed about their personal character, their ideas, their view of the world, etc. But the pictures are still self-contained. You don't need to have seen 3 or 4 dozen Ford films to recognize the artistry in The Searchers or How Green Was My Valley. But with Godard, the value in most of his films only becomes apparent with the context of the rest of his work. In other words, he's more interesting than his films are, individually.

[Giulio]

Oh I can quite clearly understand why people don't like a filmmaker whose signature artistic device is Brechtian alienation . . .

Has nothing to do with it-- "Brechtian alienation" as you call it, or rather the self-reflexive style of filmmaking that you're really referencing here is never a problem for me. It's a filmmaking skill issue. Godard's cinema is primarily a series of ideas-- ideas seeking desperately to be new ideas, breakthrough ideas, cute ideas, deep ideas, ideas that seek to solve the nature of mankinds problems, ideas that wail and scream, ideas about women, sex, commodity, etc-- that to me would be better off on the page. His cinema almost always fails as Cinema for me. I just don't see him as a talented filmmaker-- it always registers as the work of an amateur who skipped the ABC's and tried to go straight for innovation.. but he's no Welles, EPstein or Mamoulian.

Sorry but I'm a little bit disappointed (I usually agree with you and I read you with pleasure),
technically speaking godard's camera work is much more innovative and creative than (just to say) truffaut. Wes anderson's visual style, the rhythm of his films got lots of influences from g. style, some of g. films are boring, true, with too much dialogue, too much voice off but you will still find something fresh, new, openminded than the average film director around, if you need a classic film structure and you call it 'Cinema' well Godard (and a big part of modern european cinema and american avantgarde) is not for you right

[tartarlamb]

I find that many of the artists I deify are misanthropes hobbled by disorders and addled with problems... Obviously they are in their works to greater or lesser extents (some say that all art is biographical, which is true to a great extent)-- but it's the JLG Program For Self-Promulgation has a certain special aspect that I cannot jibe with, and I find that when this is removed, there's really very little to appreciate there.

Yes, thank you. That clarifies what I was digging at. There are directors that are misanthropic, arrogant, or otherwise emotionally hobbled that make fascinating cinema (Hitchcock and Lang are good examples. Greenaway, Zulawski, and Kubrick when I can stand him are others). But you are invited into the spectacle of their horrendous worldview, and they are good showmen. You may not walk away thinking that the director is a candidate for a Nobel, but the experience is richly fascinating. Sloper brought up Freud, and I think thats a great example of the phenomenon. Freud is batshit crazy and offensive, but a damn pleasure to read. (As a classicist, I also understand completely his irritation with the lack of aesthetic criticism and focus on purely academic or theoretical concerns, but thats another issue -- maybe one a bit limited by the similarity of our fields).

I won't take any more shots at Godard -- I can sense his champions on this board are growing restless and, understandably, annoyed with all of this. Its a matter of taste, and I don't mean to dismiss him outright; I like to think that I give earnest consideration to everything that critical consensus endorses and that well-meaning, like-minded cinema fans enjoy. I've been to the trough many times with Godard, each time expecting and trying hard to appreciate what I see. More often than not, it leaves a bad taste.

[HerrSchreck]

Sorry but I'm a little bit disappointed (I usually agree with you and I read you with pleasure),
technically speaking godard's camera work is much more innovative and creative than (just to say) truffaut.

A film requires more than just camerawork (which in JLG's case, beyond a few interesting formal ideas viz tracking & unconventional framing, just doesn't dazzle me anyhow).

but you will still find something fresh, new, openminded than the average film director around,

Hardly the recipe for a "great" director, wouldn't you say, with the status quo being what it is..

if you need a classic film structure and you call it 'Cinema' well Godard (and a big part of modern european cinema and american avantgarde) is not for you right

This proves that, although you may usually read me, you haven't been today-- we just put this red herring explanation to bed in the immediately preceding posts.. and it's just silly. On the avant scale of 1 - 10, JLG is a 5, and not very challenging at all as far as "difficult" cinema goes.

[Giulio]

I suppose it all comes down to whether you feel that you need identifiable characters and a moving narrative for a film to be 'successful', or to use Schreck's criticism from Contempt, as 'entertainment'.

His films are mouthpieces for his ideas and personality, and I suppose the problem is pretty simple. I don't like Godard as a human being,

that's because I LOVE HIM [-o<

[Sloper]

My earlier remark about Lang and Curtiz was really more directed at the latter: the story of how he treated the extras on Noah's Ark is genuinely chilling, and a lot of his peers seem quite ready to speak ill of him as a person. But he was also one of the very best directors in Hollywood in the '30s/'40s, and no doubt was as admired as he was disliked. I don't know these people, and I don't judge them - I was just saying that, whatever their personalities may have been, they are not manifested in their work in any obvious or intrusive way.

Incidentally, I love how these involved discussions always seem to spring from a casual aside, or a new member throwing in a provocative statement and then vanishing. Maybe it's the same guy... Fantomas vs CriterionForum.

[Dr. Geek]

Incidentally, I love how these involved discussions always seem to spring from a casual aside, or a new member throwing in a provocative statement and then vanishing. Maybe it's the same guy... Fantomas vs CriterionForum.

If you're referring to me, my intent was hardly to be provocative (though I certainly understand how it can be taken as such); I was simply sharing my thoughts upon viewing the film, one that I did not enjoy from a director I was not particularly keen on.

[Giulio]

Sorry but I'm a little bit disappointed (I usually agree with you and I read you with pleasure), technically speaking godard's camera work is much more innovative and creative than (just to say) truffaut.

A film requires more than just camerawork (which in JLG's case, beyond a few interesting formal ideas viz tracking & unconventional framing, just doesn't dazzle me anyhow).

but you will still find something fresh, new, openminded than the average film director around,

Hardly the recipe for a "great" director, wouldn't you say, with the status quo being what it is..

if you need a classic film structure and you call it 'Cinema' well Godard (and a big part of modern european cinema and american avantgarde) is not for you right

This proves that, although you may usually read me, you haven't been today-- we just put this red herring explanation to bed in the immediately preceding posts.. and it's just silly. On the avant scale of 1 - 10, JLG is a 5, and not very challenging at all as far as "difficult" cinema goes.

Right, you insisted on film technique, to me for 'a work of art' is less important than your average meal. The recipe for being a great director to you is to be a 'great entertainer' (I read now the rest of your posts), now it's evident that godard can't be your favorite director (he's and always been against the average idea of film as pure entertainment, most of his works got this brechtian tendency to let you 'emotionally think', his references must be understood through your intellect or culture and then emotionally absorbed in a subtle, profound way) if, to you, this is not 'Cinema' we strongly disagree about what is and what is not cinema, to me everything's filmed is cinema if it finds a public).

But I'm curious, you demolished the nouvelle vague (you see now I read all of your posts in this thread) as pretentious but which directors are you talking about? The nouvelle vague wasn't an ideological monolith as soviet society, it was a 'mouvement' of rather different (and often in fierce contrast) directors and personalities from different classes (mostly bourgeois, white, european, cultivated and westernized) most of them doing many different 'cinemas', so again tell me which european director from the sixties you save from your black list, thank you)

[HerrSchreck]

Right, you insisted on film technique, to me for 'a work of art' is less important than your average meal. The recipe for being a great director to you is to be a 'great entertainer' (I read now the rest of your posts), now it's evident that godard can't be your favorite director (he's and always been against the average idea of film as pure entertainment, most of his works got this brechtian tendency to let you 'emotionally think', his references must be understood through your intellect or culture and then emotionally absorbed in a subtle, profound way) if, to you, this is not 'Cinema' we strongly disagree about what is and what is not cinema, to me everything's filmed is cinema if it finds a public).

But I'm curious, you demolished the nouvelle vague (you see now I read all of your posts in this thread) as pretentious but which directors are you talking about? The nouvelle vague wasn't an ideological monolith as soviet society, it was a 'mouvement' of rather different (and often in fierce contrast) directors and personalities from different classes (mostly bourgeois, white, european, cultivated and westernized) most of them doing many different 'cinemas', so again tell me which european director from the sixties you save from your black list, thank you)

I'm sorry Giullio, but my biggest conversational pet peeve is to have words put in my mouth, or for my reasonings to be extrapolated out of the blue sky "You don't like JLG because you ________ ". I suspect in your case there is less to be aggravated about since it may just be a simply language barrier issue.

I don't "insist on film technique"-- I simply mentioned in the case of JLG I see very little impressive application of it and in his case it's a hindrace. When it comes to film I don't insist on anything; nothing is more delightful than being surprised by some crazy cinematic concoction of unexpected elements. Take a film like Robot Monster or Esper's Maniac-- there's very little in the way of accompished technique: the technique goes beyond, in classical terms, ineptness to the degree where it's all visceral. And yet I love them both. I derive enjoyment from them, even though in terms of aesthetic achievement I don't put them in the same category as say La glace a trois faces or The End of St Petersberg or Maldone. Each film comes on it's own terms. Yet these directors manage to put together a film that "works" for me. JLG seems so determined celebrate cinema, belittle it, endlessly reference it, feign having the sum of its history under his belt, that his feeble sense of technique is a fatal gaffe.

And I never said "The recipe for being a great director ..is to be a 'great entertainer'". I merely said that I consider all film-- all art-- no matter how challenging or intellectual or philisophical, to be entertainment.

As for "most of his works got this brechtian tendency to let you 'emotionally think', his references must be understood through your intellect or culture and then emotionally absorbed in a subtle, profound way. if, to you, this is not 'Cinema' we strongly disagree about what is and what is not cinema,"... first and foremost: we've been through this already. Twice in as many days, now a third time. Can we put to bed once and for all this notion of Godard doing something that is extraordinarily intellectual, challenging, rigorous, and deep? Or at least this notion that it is this perceived (by others, not me) aspect of his cinema that is the barrier preventing enjoyment of his films for those non JLG-ites. There's nothing particularly rigorous about P Le Fou.

But you've hit on something with "his references must be understood through your intellect or culture and then emotionally absorbed in a subtle, profound way"-- I find his authorial voice very UNprofound. Therefore there's little else to appreciate when little stimulation is gleaned from his references and editorializations. Most of what he says I have heard already in other forms, by voices I consider more profound, more poetic, more impressive and more insightful. I find him the opposite of intellectual and profound; I find him crude and clumsy.

As to what is or what is not cinema-- again this is not relevant to what's been discussed. I never said JLG's works were not cinema. I said I don't enjoy them. I may think they're Bad Cinema, but neither I nor anyone else has the power to disqualify anything from the medium of cinema. Anything that can be projected and viewed can, I guess, be considered cinema. My family's old 8mm home movies from the 60's can, I guess. Some might see, rather than my parents and their kids on grainy old color 8mm stock, the poignant images of middle century America, a lost age of hope and possibility, of naivete, etc.

I'd suggest you stop trying to 'rationalize' my dislike of these films-- you're making me the subject of the topic rather than the films themselves and what they specifically do for you and how. You're trying to get inside my head and you're misfiring left and right, and putting me in a position of having to clear up your misattributions. You seem to want to 'quiz' HerrSchreck to get at the root problem here.. tweeze out a psychological profile which will lead to an "aha!" moment that will explain it all, as if perhaps if you get enough information about my beliefs and likes and dislikes you can tie it all together whereby JLG will triumph, untarnished.

The fact is he's already untarnished. He's a wrought iron, unshakeable cinema legend, and it doesn't matter what I think about him. My opinion is zilch nada nyetski vs the size of his contribution and global mystique.

[Giulio]

Right, you insisted on film technique, to me for 'a work of art' is less important than your average meal. The recipe for being a great director to you is to be a 'great entertainer' (I read now the rest of your posts), now it's evident that godard can't be your favorite director (he's and always been against the average idea of film as pure entertainment, most of his works got this brechtian tendency to let you 'emotionally think', his references must be understood through your intellect or culture and then emotionally absorbed in a subtle, profound way) if, to you, this is not 'Cinema' we strongly disagree about what is and what is not cinema, to me everything's filmed is cinema if it finds a public).

But I'm curious, you demolished the nouvelle vague (you see now I read all of your posts in this thread) as pretentious but which directors are you talking about? The nouvelle vague wasn't an ideological monolith as soviet society, it was a 'mouvement' of rather different (and often in fierce contrast) directors and personalities from different classes (mostly bourgeois, white, european, cultivated and westernized) most of them doing many different 'cinemas', so again tell me which european director from the sixties you save from your black list, thank you)

I'm sorry Giullio, but my biggest conversational pet peeve is to have words put in my mouth, or for my reasonings to be extrapolated out of the blue sky "You don't like JLG because you ________ ". I suspect in your case there is less to be aggravated about since it may just be a simply language barrier issue.

I don't "insist on film technique"-- I simply mentioned in the case of JLG I see very little impressive application of it and in his case it's a hindrace. When it comes to film I don't insist on anything; nothing is more delightful than being surprised by some crazy cinematic concoction of unexpected elements. Take a film like Robot Monster or Esper's Maniac-- there's very little in the way of accompished technique: the technique goes beyond, in classical terms, ineptness to the degree where it's all visceral. And yet I love them both. I derive enjoyment from them, even though in terms of aesthetic achievement I don't put them in the same category as say La glace a trois faces or The End of St Petersberg or Maldone. Each film comes on it's own terms. Yet these directors manage to put together a film that "works" for me. JLG seems so determined celebrate cinema, belittle it, endlessly reference it, feign having the sum of its history under his belt, that his feeble sense of technique is a fatal gaffe.

And I never said "The recipe for being a great director ..is to be a 'great entertainer'". I merely said that I consider all film-- all art-- no matter how challenging or intellectual or philisophical, to be entertainment.

As for "most of his works got this brechtian tendency to let you 'emotionally think', his references must be understood through your intellect or culture and then emotionally absorbed in a subtle, profound way. if, to you, this is not 'Cinema' we strongly disagree about what is and what is not cinema,"... first and foremost: we've been through this already. Twice in as many days, now a third time. Can we put to bed once and for all this notion of Godard doing something that is extraordinarily intellectual, challenging, rigorous, and deep? Or at least this notion that it is this perceived (by others, not me) aspect of his cinema that is the barrier preventing enjoyment of his films for those non JLG-ites. There's nothing particularly rigorous about P Le Fou.

But you've hit on something with "his references must be understood through your intellect or culture and then emotionally absorbed in a subtle, profound way"-- I find his authorial voice very UNprofound. Therefore there's little else to appreciate when little stimulation is gleaned from his references and editorializations. Most of what he says I have heard already in other forms, by voices I consider more profound, more poetic, more impressive and more insightful. I find him the opposite of intellectual and profound; I find him crude and clumsy.

As to what is or what is not cinema-- again this is not relevant to what's been discussed. I never said JLG's works were not cinema. I said I don't enjoy them. I may think they're Bad Cinema, but neither I nor anyone else has the power to disqualify anything from the medium of cinema. Anything that can be projected and viewed can, I guess, be considered cinema. My family's old 8mm home movies from the 60's can, I guess. Some might see, rather than my parents and their kids on grainy old color 8mm stock, the poignant images of middle century America, a lost age of hope and possibility, of naivete, etc.

I'd suggest you stop trying to 'rationalize' my dislike of these films-- you're making me the subject of the topic rather than the films themselves and what they specifically do for you and how. You're trying to get inside my head and you're misfiring left and right, and putting me in a position of having to clear up your misattributions. You seem to want to 'quiz' HerrSchreck to get at the root problem here.. tweeze out a psychological profile which will lead to an "aha!" moment that will explain it all, as if perhaps if you get enough information about my beliefs and likes and dislikes you can tie it all together whereby JLG will triumph, untarnished.

The fact is he's already untarnished. He's a wrought iron, unshakeable cinema legend, and it doesn't matter what I think about him. My opinion is zilch nada nyetski vs the size of his contribution and global mystique.

Oh no!
Misattributions, well I just wanted to know what was your point of view as I read your posts and the tone was very aggressive as you were defending yourself from JLG and the nouvelle vague! Don't take it too seriously man, I still prefer to read your posts and watching JLG films