denti alligator wrote:Wow, tell me more!
Can you describe the style and content of the films in more detail. What's "aggressive" about them/it? What's the ideological angle?
I think I posted a long piece on this back before the boards got erased, and when the release was still in the "more-than-merely-speculative" zone. Just found it here in my email.. I think I had Nick Wrigley post this at the time, as I didn't have my account set up yet. Anyway, here you go:
It seems only natural that Criterion would put these two films together in a single release (a single fantastically daring release at that!) as, well, that's the way Criterion have proven themselves to operate. They don't release a single Antoine Doinel film when the whole series will do, nor 'I Am Curious: Yellow' without 'I Am Curious: Blue.' And it's almost certain that their upcoming 'Jour de f�te' will include both the black and white and the color versions of the film. As such, these "sister films" by Godard and Gorin constitute what is almost certainly the most "progressive" release from Criterion since the Brakhage anthology or, indeed, the 'I Am Curious' box. Never mind the coupling of related films -- that Criterion are choosing these films at all (especially before their slated release of the much lighter 'Une femme est une femme' (1961)) is the daring �ber-aspect of this scenario. (Could one even speculate that a Godard+Gorin Dziga-Vertov-Group Films 1969-1971 box might also be a(n even unlikelier) possibility? -- i.e., a box consisting of: 'Un film comme les autres' (1968), 'Pravda' (1968), 'Le Vent d'est' (1969), 'Luttes en Italie' (1969), and 'Vladimir et Rosa' (1971).)
For those of you unfamiliar with 'Tout va bien' ['Everything's Going Fine'] (1972) and 'Lettre � Jane' (also 1972), allow me to paste from my Godard profile at Senses of Cinema [which I'm going to be revising and expanding in the near future, as the original was rather hastily written. -CMK 11/29/04]:
...'Tout va bien' sees star-cum-revolutionary Jane Fonda in the role of a disenchanted American radio reporter stationed in Paris who attempts to reconcile both her occupation and relationship with Yves Montand with Marxist ideology. 'Lettre � Jane,' on the other hand, documents a tag-team analysis, carried out between Godard and Gorin in voice-over, of the notorious photo taken of Fonda commiserating with a group of Communist North Vietnamese. The film brings Fonda's activities and history into relief as, among other things, just another variety of bourgeois dilettantism; the same could be (and has been) argued of 'Lettre � Jane' itself, although the strain of self-questioning that runs through both films signals perhaps a feeling within Godard (if not Gorin) that he had arrived at an ideological impasse, whereby the practice of �revolutionary� filmmaking itself might also be perceived as a form of opportunism.
And so Godard's �retreat� from film. [...]
That only scratches the briefest of surfaces in regard to both films, of course. 'Letter to Jane' continues to be hugely controversial due to the fact that the two filmmakers essentially wrapped shooting on one film, then went forth directly thereafter with the unprecedented action of making another picture whose central focus is an out-and-out lambasting of the star of their just-finished feature. Whether the attack is fair or savage is up for debate, but what's certain is that Godard and Gorin, at the height of their Marxist vitriol in 1972, felt that Fonda (whose star status and revolutionary interests were exploited for 'Tout va bien') was not above reproach, nor was the image of her with the North Vietnamese above ideological-aesthetic (Marxist-materialist, I suppose?) analysis. (Indeed, 'Letter to Jane' is perhaps Godard's purest meditation of that period on the idea of "the Image" -- rivaled only by his 'Le Gai savoir' (1968), which starred Jean-Pierre L�aud and Juliet Berto [greatest actor and greatest actress in the history of the cinema, respectively -- fact]) In later years, Jean Seberg (no less) would remark that what Godard and Gorin did to Fonda in 'Letter to Jane' was "unforgivable." [from February 3, 2004]
