Jean-Luc Godard

[domino harvey]

The guy who runs Radiance literally said he likes every Truffaut film and would release them all if able to do so. So those releases aren’t the product of a sea change of rehabilitation, they’re the result of a fan having access to the means of release

[rrenault]

The guy who runs Radiance literally said he likes every Truffaut film and would release them all if able to do so. So those releases aren’t the product of a sea change of rehabilitation, they’re the result of a fan having access to the means of release

Fair enough, although Kent Jones(former head of the NYFF) is also on the "Truffaut's late films are misunderstood works of genius" train.

[pistolwink]

Yeah, it's kind of an about-face to begin one's career railing against critics/awards bait and end it consciously making films in the exact same vein

In a sense, this is just called "getting older" and it's the trajectory of lots of artists. I guess what stands out about Truffaut is the degree of vitriol he directed at the objects of his scorn when he was a young man.

[Michael Kerpan]

Never Cursed -- Looked at the trailer for Pastoral Symphony and that looks pretty dire -- much worse (to me) than any late Truffaut.

[Never Cursed]

Yeah, it's kind of an about-face to begin one's career railing against critics/awards bait and end it consciously making films in the exact same vein

In a sense, this is just called "getting older" and it's the trajectory of lots of artists. I guess what stands out about Truffaut is the degree of vitriol he directed at the objects of his scorn when he was a young man.

He was only willing to put his money where his mouth was for the early moments of his career, though, unlike most of the artists with whom he was associated. While it’s unfortunate he never made it to the age where he could have taken up an elder-statesman reputation like Godard/Rohmer/Rivette/Varda etc. did, he became a less interesting and important filmmaker just as those other artists were hitting their stride. Are you really gonna tell me that he had just as vital a run in the 1970s as most of the remaining directors of the NV?

Never Cursed -- Looked at the trailer for Pastoral Symphony and that looks pretty dire -- much worse (to me) than any late Truffaut.

The studio-Hollywood-aping trailer does the film no favors; it’s crushing rather than melodramatic. Michele Morgan is fantastic. Domino summed it up better elsewhere than I could, and he’s right to position it as a perfect sort of tragedy where “everyone has his reasons.”

[rrenault]

If it’s between Truffaut’s post-Soft Skin output and Godard’s post-Weekend output, then Godard wins for me every time, but I also think one could argue the things people criticize Ike Truffaut’s later work was already present on some level in his heavily praised first 2-3 features, although maybe they had a certain « effervescence » and « flair » the later stuff lacked. I say that as a fan of The 400 Blows and Jules and Jim by the way.

I think Truffaut had a certain utopian view that there was artistic merit in the unbridled enjoyment of « the movies ». This innocent view of « the movies » is certainly one Godard never fully shared, and I personally agree more with JLG on this point, but that’s not what’s important here. It’s merely to point out that « Truffaut the middlebrow sellout » is arguably a misguided characterization of his life story. I still think the guy who made Mississippi Mermaid is the same guy who wrote « A Certain Tendency ». If you think about it, « Mermaid » and The Woman Next Door with their semi-Hitchcockian themes really have more in common with the genre films they praised at Cahiers in the fifties than with the stiff and stuffy literary adaptations that fell under the umbrella of The Tradition of Quality.

As for ‘68, it’s important to keep in mind Truffaut came from a dirt poor working class background and called Godard, the offspring of bankers who founded BNP Paribas (this is partly why JLG’s offhanded remark in that interview about Truffaut being rich feels a tad disingenuous), the Ursula Andres of activists or something of that nature. So Truffaut may have perceived many of the protesters as Marx and Coca Cola kids raised with a silver spoon in their mouth. Saying « well Truffaut was a tone deaf reactionary out of touch with the issues of the day » is probably not entirely accurate. He wasn’t a Louis Malle-type who’d never really left his bourgeois bubble. Even Pasolini at that time said something to the effect that the police clashing with the protesters were « the real working class » and not the student protesters themselves. I’m sure Costa-Gavras was very much on board with the protests, but I’d hardly say his films are any less middlebrow than Truffaut’s. Just my two cents.

I think for Godard there was always deep down this never quite directly expressed sentiment that cinema’s highest calling was to make Red Desert/Ordet/Au Hasard Balthazar type films whereas Truffaut felt « the movies » were already fine as they are and shouldn’t have any need to aspire to a certain level of cultural legitimacy. For Truffaut it was self-evident that movies « were » art, even if some were great and others weren’t.

[hearthesilence]

I wouldn't go to the mat for everything Truffaut did later in his career, but I'm reluctant to dismiss all of those films as if they were all misguided for similar reasons - what I like, I love as much as my favorites from his earlier years, and I wouldn't call such favorites as The Green Room and The Story of Adèle H. the kind of films he railed against as a younger critic either, nor do they seem like the kind of pandering films designed to win awards. I have my reservations about others that seem like that, but he didn't give his whole career into that - at worst he pragmatically split his time between easier to fund crowd pleasers and more disturbing works.

[rrenault]

The Last Metro probably does qualify as the kind of film he railed against as a young critic to be fair.

[The Curious Sofa]

The Last Metro probably does qualify as the kind of film he railed against as a young critic to be fair.

...and that's about the only one that could be described as awards bait or "le cinéma de papa". Otherwise, I like most of Truffaut's later films and I count The Green Room and The Woman Next Door among my favorites of his. Both are dark, deeply idiosyncratic and far from ingratiating. His takes on romantic love are no less discomforting than those of Hitchcock or Fassbinder.

[Stefan Andersson]

On Scénarios:
https://www.ica.art/exhibitions/scenarios

JLG and typography:
https://lwlies.com/articles/jean-luc-godard-typography/

[Oedipax]

Scénarios and Exposé du film annonce du film "Scénario" have been put up for sale as some sort of NFT that will cost approximately $2681.25.

A truly unfortunate circumstance but I trust the films will be liberated soon enough (Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Chime was released by the same distributor and I've certainly seen that one floating around, so...)

Perhaps a group buy could work, say $20 each from around 134 JLG devotees? I really hate that JLG's swan song went out this way.

[domino harvey]

Is this different than what Kino already put out on Blu earlier this year?

[swo17]

Yes, that was Godard Cinema + Film annonce du film qui n'existéra jamais: 'Drôles de guerres'

[hearthesilence]

I feel less bad about paying $30 to see these two at the NYFF. (Not that I felt bad, they were good.)

[Red Screamer]

Could anyone by chance point me to the original French text of Godard's article "Chacun son Tours" in Cahiers du Cinéma n.92, February 1959? I don't have my copy with me.

[diamonds]

Could anyone by chance point me to the original French text of Godard's article "Chacun son Tours" in Cahiers du Cinéma n.92, February 1959? I don't have my copy with me.

Does this work?

[Red Screamer]

Perfect, thanks. I looked there, but couldn't pull it up for some reason.

[Balthazar]

Scénarios/Exposé du film annonce du film “Scénario”

These both landed really well for me. For whatever reason I haven't seen Godard's early 21st century work, so can’t speak to the differences/similarities there. But Scénarios is very much in keeping with Drôles de Guerres, and there's an obvious through line to Exposé... from one of the early lines in The Image Book: "man's true condition - to think with his hands". These final works struck me as stronger variations on the themes.

Even in 2024 there's an undeniable resonance to a Godard montage that slots Only Angels Have Wings in between Week-end and Le Mépris. Or should that be ‘especially in 2024’: you watch these films very conscious of the fact they are his last, and of the premeditated nature of that decision. The final scene of Scénarios, which adds some bathos to the valediction (and which was apparently filmed just a day prior to his final appointment, as it were), makes this explicit.

Exposé... provides a different look behind the curtain, insofar as we see Godard, on-screen, talking us (and his colleagues) through the scrapbooks he created with a view to making a somewhat different Scénarios. Those books are again pretty close in style to the ones used in DdG, but it brought to mind nothing so much as Histoire(s) du Cinema. It’s really fruitful to be able to see how his thought processes link the images, the citations and the quotations together, and how something similar may have played out between 1988 and 1998. Of course time’s marched on since then, and again the film doesn’t shy away from acknowledging that this is a man in his 90s, an auteur whose DoP and others must occasionally help prod him in the right direction in more ways than one. Not exactly a handing over of the baton, but an acknowledgement all the same that this was a collaborative exercise.

[Stefan Andersson]

"world premiere of “Rolle: Inventaire” (2024) by Fabrice Aragno and Jean-Paul Battaggia":
https://www.serralves.pt/en/atividades- ... -scenario/

Exposition of JLG´s still images:
https://www.serralves.pt/en/ciclo-serra ... uc-godard/

[domino harvey]

From a Letterboxd review of La repentie

Read a few months ago “Adjani aux pieds nus » written by producer Michèle Halberstadt where she journals the whole production of La Repentie.
(…)
Anecdotes of Alain Delon turning down Samy Frey’s role, an unexpected story of how Jean Luc Godard designed a productions logo and demanded a suspicious amount of money to the executives

Anyone familiar with this?

[Stefan Andersson]

Rob Tregenza on JLG producing his film Inside/Out:
https://thefilmstage.com/rob-tregenza-o ... ospective/

On JLG and typefaces:
https://www.printmag.com/daily-heller/godards-type/
https://medium.com/@tomjrt/typography-i ... 317ec513c9
https://pampatype.com/blog/jean-luc-god ... vie-camera

[Stefan Andersson]

Fabrice Aragno and Nicole Brenez on Droles de guerre:
https://cinemasparagus.blogspot.com/202 ... -film.html

[ambrose1am]

Zoetrope co-produced Sauve qui peut (la vie). I'm pretty sure that was the extent of the relationship.

Coppola also wanted Godard to direct Hammet, which Wenders eventually directed.

Could you please mention the source you rely on to assert that Coppola asked Godard to direct Hammett?

I worked at Zoetrope a long time ago. Saw it mentioned in the files.

[Stefan Andersson]

On the posthumous short films:
https://www.sabzian.be/text/the-last-th ... e-the-last

New books:
https://www.editionsdeloeil.com/product ... mb-au-film - on Godard’s use of language, voice, and sound
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/jeanluc-g ... 350494596/ - on "over 380 unmade, unfinished and abandoned projects"

Adrian Martin on Histoire(s) du cinéma:
https://www.sabzian.be/text/a-skeleton- ... in%C3%A9ma

[Stefan]

Coppola also wanted Godard to direct Hammet, which Wenders eventually directed.

Could you please mention the source you rely on to assert that Coppola asked Godard to direct Hammett?

I worked at Zoetrope a long time ago. Saw it mentioned in the files.

That's a beautiful anecdote. Just, everyone, for a moment imagine this: late 70''s, Godard working with Coppola at Zoetrope and directing "Hammett"! What meteorite impact this would have had on (a part of) film history?