Jean-Luc Godard

[earl_roberts2002]

Director of the most boring film I have ever seen. Everytime I see his name though it makes me feel strangely guilty. The film I've seen of his is Contempt and I absoloutely hated it. Then the next night I watched the first fifteen minutes of Alphaville and then thought "No more Godrard for me!"
That was about a year ago and I can't help feeling I was a little hasty. The thing is I was reading about him last night, reading about all the filmmakers who praise him and all the innovative things he's done in his films and my feeling about him makes no sense to me. When I read about his films, the plots always sound interesting to me, they're, mostly, about stuff I'd care about watching, some of his 'innovations' sound amazing {latest one that's got me is in Band Of Outsiders where there is a dance sequence with the three main characters who then all stop for one minute and we hear what they are thinking. I've been thinking about this all day!** but I just cant seem to stomach the man. Have you ever read an interview with him :gag:
Breathless has been in my 'video' {yeah, I know!** shop for like the past year, and it only costs £1.25 to rent for seven days! But I still just cannot bring myself to ever watch another Jean-Luc Godard film again.
Does anybody here think he's worth bothering with? Anyone seen one of his films and now has the same problem I have? Also, what should I see that would make me a fan? I always read though that Contempt is one of his best :eek: films and it has me worrying that I'm never gonna see anymore of his films!

[Noel M]

I must admit that I also find a lot of Godard unwatchable - Une Femme Est Une Femme has some interesting ideas, but it's very lightweight. I've never been taken with Band of Outsiders or Weekend and Alphaville is as you say, unwatchable - but if you can't get to like the towering masterpiece that is Le Mèpris (Contempt), there is no hope with you for Godard. His interviews with Fritz Lang on the Criterion edition are superb.

[SimonI]

I found that the booklet essay (also here (http://www.criterionco.com/asp/release.asp?id=171&eid=260&section=essay) - watch out for spoilers though) in the Criterion edition of Contempt was hugely illuminating after I'd watched the film.

I often wonder if Godard doesn't suffer from the Citizen Kane syndrome a bit - so many people say he's important that it puts everyone else off (or raises their expectations too high).

I haven't seen a lot of his stuff but have always liked what I have seen, even if I couldn't articulate why; I'd love to see Detective on DVD.

[phlebas]

The only two Godard films I've seen are Weekend and a Band of Outsiders. The former took a lot of effort to get to the end (the traffic jam scene was especially painful) but I quite enjoyed the latter (especially the aforementioned dance scene) and it was interesting to note the influence he had on the likes of Quentin Tarantino.

[brunny78]

i love Breathless but wasn't that taken by Band of Outsiders, likewise i wasn't blown away by Alphaville either.

in terms of the french new wave i much prefer what i've seen from Truffaunt and Melville.

[cervaro]

Alphaville has always been one of my favorite films. Watched it to fill in some time at college one morning between lectures. Granted, you need to be in a certain mood to watch Alphaville, but it's still a good movie.

[Narshty]

Totally agree with Noel - much of his work leaves me irritated and/or bored, but Contempt is an unqualified masterpiece and one of the very greatest films I've ever seen.

[anield]

It's also worth mentioning that Jean-Luc Godard's ouevre is so diverse. I'm sure that someone unaware of his work would be able to recognise, say, 'Charlotte et son Jules', 'Alphaville', 'One Plus One', 'Vent d'est', 'Letter to Jane', 'Hail Mary', 'King Lear' and 'JLG/JLG : Self-Portrait in December' as all being made by the same director.

EDITED for spelling.

[Squirrel God]

Isn't Breathless the one with Richard Gere and Valérie Kaprisky?

Very watchable due to Valérie showing her Kapriskies all the time :norty: :D

[dazza001]

Squirrel God - I think you're referring to the remake! ;)

Another (more recent) Godard film I thought was worth watching was "Eloge de l'amour" (In Praise of Love). Can often be found quite cheap in HMV sales etc.

Dazza.

[earl_roberts2002]

Oh man! The impossible has happened. I read over this thread and couldn't stopped cringing because I now, as of today:

Like A Godard Film! Not one but TWO!!!

As I said I always had this guilty feeling about not liking his films right? Okay so I got 30 mins between lectures and I'm in the library. I see Pierrot Le Fou. The front covers cool. It sounds good on the back. I put it in the video player and put the headphones on.

WOW!

After half an hour I'm completely taken with the film so I book it out and watch it that night. Its completely unlike anything I've seen before! The plots hard to follow and stuff but, as is usually said about his films, the plot really doesn't matter. You're just watching these characters and it's just hard to describe but it really is a beautiful little film.
So I take this film back and see what other Godard stuff there is. Alphaville, the film I gave up on before. I watch the opening ten minutes {up until the man comes crashing through the doors in the hotel room** and it happens again, I can't really describe what I'm watching. I just know I really like it! So I finish Alphaville off at home and I like it even better than Pierrot Le Fou!

This is kinda major for me as Godard wasn't exactly a 'hated' director of mine but I just couldn't see the fuss over him. I didn't like his work at all. But now I can't get enough. So then I searched for 'Godard' and up pops this thread and there starts my cringing and the typing of this post.

So basically, the semi-impossible has happened and I now dig Godard. The only film left in my library though is Breathless then I'm gonna have to start buying :(. I'm looking into getting Band Of Outsiders. Anybody recommend? I'm also reconsidering whether I'll like Contempt now too so I may go for that as well.

[cervaro]

Alphaville was one of those movies that I enjoyed, but couldn't explain why. Must find a decent DVD edition soon.

[Batesman]

I must say that I have liked (to various degrees) all of his older films (pre Hail Mary, maybe) but his later stuff can be pretty excrutiating. And then again...I suffered through Nouvelle Vague a couple weeks ago and almost left. Instead I just stopped reading the subtitles - knowing full well I would never understand what the hell is going on - and focused on the visuals and especially the sound design which are both oustanding and beautiful. So that made it work.

What generally frustrates me with all of his films is the simple fact that I can't speak french. Often there so much going on, overlapping dialogue etc., you end up only reading subtitles.

And watching his Histoires De Cinema series without knowing the language is simply impossible.

[Mark B]

Wow - well a Damascene experience always makes a thread more interesting. I was not going to add to the Godard bashing but was about to point you to Pierrot le Fou which is one of my faves by him.

I think the problem with Truffaut and Godard (and most of the Nouvelle Vague) is they haven't all aged exceptionally well - Rohmer's dialogue is so convoluted it's uncanny, some of Truffaut and Godard's tricks that were once clever, fresh and interesting are now as passé as the bullet-time and the scenario's are very -well- Nouvelle Vague!

A prime example of that is A bout de souffle (Breathless) which never fails to be hailed as one of the most inovative films of all time but I haven't yet met someone who actually liked it. It was however a breath of fresh air at the time and is probably best appreciated with a good knowledge of French but yes it does look rather like a not very good indie film - but 20 years before the indie scene took off!

[Mike]

Well you've met me Mark and I think "A bout de souffle" is one of the best French films I've ever seen, and certainly an incredibly important piece of filmmaking. I also think it's fairly accessible, especially if you're steeped in American films.

[Narshty]

I personally don't like having "subversive" devices and techniques thrust in my face, which is why I'm sure I like Contempt the most by a furlong. It's a great film because it reigns in his usual stylistic excesses to make something that says just as much about the conventions of cinema as much of his other work, but does so in a far more mature and nuanced manner. Because he constructs real, complex characters, you can't help but get drawn into the story, but he still liberally sprinkles his own flourishes that remind one that, after all, it's only a film. There's a fascinating tidal ebb-and-flow where you get drawn in to the film, then pushed away again throughout.

Throwing in the director Fritz Lang as himself grounds the film in reality, giving us a constant reminder of the artificiality of the film we're watching, yet he's interacting the false characters around him as if they were real people - which is exactly what an audience does during a film.

There are other examples, like the famed 35-minute apartment sequence where Bardot and Piccoli's relationship slowly disintegrates before our eyes. Godard directs the film in a pretty conventional manner, at least for him, yet our attention is drawn to it as a piece of cinema precisely because it's so unusual for a scene of this length and this level of domestic normalcy to be shown in a film.

Godard sets up brilliant paradoxes like this all the way through the film and I find it, along the likes of Peeping Tom, one of the most complex and extraordinary films ever to explore the relationship between the audience, the filmmaker and the movie itself, and yet it still manages to be a moving and profound exploration of marital breakdown, personal and professional integrity and how life imitates art and vice versa.

Earl - please give it another go. The Criterion DVD will probably never be topped and it might be a little pricey, but it's one hell of a set nonetheless (have a look at the liner notes (http://www.criterionco.com/asp/release.asp?id=171&eid=260&section=essay) at least).

My personal problem with films such as Band of Outsiders and Alphaville is that Godard is seemingly bouncing up and down, waving his arms and yelling "Look! Look how unconvential this is!!!", which just makes me grit my teeth in irritation. I also find it very condescending, because he doesn't seem to be letting an audience actually think for themselves - all the points he wants to make are just bludgened into the viewer, so I always just give up in sheer frustration.

[CARL]

I prefered him when he was captain of the Enterprise !!


















I`ll get me coat !!

[Rik Booth]

I'm resurrecting this thread whilst I'm studing French cinema and filmmakers such as Godard. I will try and get some of his films on DVD - which films, from other directors as well, best sum up La Nouvelle Vague?

[anephric]

Les Quatre Cents Coups
Weekend
Alphaville (which if you don't like, you smell, soz)
L'Annee Dernier A Marienbad
Hiroshima, Mon Amour
A Bout De Souffle
2 ou 3 Choses Que Je Sais D'Elle
Jules et Jim

N.B. Do Bresson and Cocteau count as New Wave? I know Bresson's often discounted...

Personally I find the latter two far more interesting than the others, but I'm more inclined to their cinematic proclivities...

[Lontano]

cocteau and bresson predated godard etc by decades and in any case share only incidental similarities, cocteau was vaguely a contemporary of epstein and bunuel, and bresson has no such lineage to speak of, that was a sort of virgin birth if you insist on crowbarring artistic figures into narratives.

i tend to think it unhelpful to suggest a shared nationality is particularly significant, with the exception of cases where an often nebuluous 'movement' gestated among a group of like-minded artists. the nouvelle vague being one such example although godard seems to tower above most of the other names, perhaps excepting eustache and rivette with whom i'm unfamiliar.

[anephric]

Now, it can be argued that Bresson was as much a part of the "nouvelle vague" as anyone else (he certainly came out of the Cahiers crowd; his cinema just doesn't seem as "arch" and emphatic as most other new wave) because if we take the "new wave" to be a wind of change, Bresson's cinema was as radical as Goddard's or Truffaut's in destroying the cosy period drama that had become the mainstay of French cinema.

What are you basing your criteria of "inclusion" on? Cocteau's influence on the nouvelle vague can't be denied...

Try this for size:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1373/is_n7_v46/ai_18473732

[Lontano]

well bresson wasn't remotely affiliated with the 'cahiers crowd'.......that he was a very important figure to godard and bazin has rather more to do with his formalism and catholicism in the vein of the adulation afforded to hitchcock and rossellini. those things being far more significant than the fact that pickpocket was being shot in paris at the same time as a bout de souffle........

i don't really know about cocteau, i'm sure he had some influence on the nouvelle vague although probably a lot less than mizoguchi, vigo, hawks, ford, renoir, antonioni......again that he was a compatriot and contemporary isn't especially significant imho.

[anephric]

Bresson's praises were constantly sung by Cahiers, and there are numerous articles on him in its vitals... so there is an "affiliation"... his influence was greatly namechecked (if not always visibly apparent in the films themselves).

Again, try this one for size (oooh, never mind the quality, feel the width) :)

http://www.horschamp.qc.ca/new_offscreen/bresson_godard.html

NB: when I say Bresson "came out" of the Cahiers crowd, I mean his reputation was delineated by them (and it's fair to argue that it had been essentially sidelined before).

[Lontano]

yes that's true and he occupied a prominent place in the cahiers pantheon........

http://onfilm.chicagoreader.com/movies/capsules/577_AU_HASARD_BALTHAZAR

.......although you will find similar hyperbole for other figures eg godard's 'nicholas ray est le cinema' so in that sense bresson could be considered a progenitor of the new wave only in the same way as ray. which isn't to underestimate his influence, but i think it's worth making a little discrimination.

anyway 'balthazar' is out soon on dvd so i suggest anyone even remotely interested takes godard's advice, not that it's necessary to be aware of any of this stuff to appreciate either filmmaker :)

[anephric]

I feel that French influences on its own "new wave" are more pertinant, but I agree with you...

:)