Prostitution and Modernity

Anyone who has seen a few Godard films can notice the recurrence of the prostitute.
Especially when it comes to Vivre Sa Vie amd the image of Anna Karina. Aside from the plot context in which woman appear as prositutes in Godard's work, the prostitute can be used as commentary on  economics.

Godard uses the female form and sale of sex as a metaphor for capitalistic ideas, which is certainly present in the film.  Morrey points out the implementation of distancification techniques used by Godard, in part by the insertion of tableau, as a way for the spectator to not become too lost in Nana's experience and narrative that they cannot draw connections between there own lives as the consumer.  

2 or 3 Things I know about her seem to take this connection between consumer driven society a step further. He again, uses prostitution as metaphor and commentary, this time to address the upper middle suburbia in Paris. A way to again, show the lengths at which society will strive for the consumption of things in which it does not need.

The prostitute can also serve as a metaphor for film, at least classical or hollywoodian film, because of the focus on beautiful imagery or beauty itself, which to Godard is the focus on something so fleeting.

Godard, while critical of both beauty and modernity, does not seem to hide his fascination with the material. Reconciling the allure to a consumer driven society and playing with ways in which it is a destructive force seems to be a large drive in his work. 

Godard and Eisenstein

      For my final paper, I examined ways in which Jean Luc Godard's work can have examples in which it fits into Eisenstein's methods of montage, and ways in which his work deviates from it's linearity.

To do so, I wanted to pick three works that when placed together for comparison, a progression can be seen in how Godard uses montage. The three I chose were Vivre Sa Vie, Deux ou trois choses que je sais d’elle, and Histoire(s) du cinéma.

Through the analysis of these films, I have come to the conclusion that Godard's work primarily addresses Overtonal and Intellectual montage when it comes to Eisensteinian methods. Also, while Godard's montage still shows a progression, he is still constantly looking back to his past work as well as the work of other filmmakers. He is also looking back in terms of method. He finds ways to take simple montage and transform it into new ideas. To me, this is unique to Godard. He is always interested in comparing the past with the present as a means to move forward. 

I also felt that Eisenstein's methods of montage only really addressed montage through shots or the camera. But why should that be the case? If we stick with his dialectical argument for cinema without limiting it to the image, there several ways in which in-congruence can be introduced into cinema. For example, Godard's mixture of noise and silence, text and image, fiction and non-fiction, and rehearsal and improvisational. One might be able to conclude that these are all examples of Overtonal Montage. However, they seem to move past Eisenstein and onto a more complex view on what montage is and what it is capable of. 

For Godard, being a former film critic before he began film-making aloud him to look at what other filmmakers have done as way to see what still needs to be explored and what does not. In his later works, I believe he revisits early approaches to montage such that he has done a "full circle" in terms of discovery what filmmaking is to him, and Histoire(s) du cinéma is a way of not just burying the past for good, but learning how to use it to create new or alternate meaning.

To conclude, I feel that Godard did prove to be an example filmmaker for Eisenstein's "higher pathways" of thinking and montage, but he was not limited by linearity or by any concrete meaning. For Godard, meaning is always something that can be changed though rearrangement. 

Joe V

Vivre Sa Vie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2Uqlz_TQG0

One of my favorite scenes in in Vivre Sa Vi is the record store scene that begins about 9 minutes and 21 seconds into the film.  The scene last for approximately 3 minutes and is done in a long take, making use of a dynamic dollying and panning around the store.   To me, this scene comes across as a hybrid of rehearsed / open filmmaking. It is an example of how Godard’s work being mechanically complex and not just conceptually. In fact, everything comes across as  planned with the exception of how the scene ends when the camera pans to a shot looking outside of the window of the record store.


I also like the examples of Distanciation scene in the film, such as when the repetition of lines, or “pick ups” left in the film, which Morrey points out. I think what is enjoyable is how Godard plays with Narrative fiction/non-fiction. There is a definitely a Brectian influence, certain scenes allow the spectator to get caught up in the narrative, just never for too long. The film allows the audience to get sucked in to the conflict or  Nana's finacial burden and her entering prostitution but repeatedly pulls them back, never allowing for complete identification with the character. This method could be viewed as a way to allow the audience to connect with how capitalism essentially traps them in their own decision making, and as a way to avoid the spectator seeing the negative side of capitalism solely through the scope of Nana's specific situation and problem. 


-Joe V.

Eisenstein + More thoughts on Intellectual Montage

I really enjoyed Eisenstein's call for a new look at montage and film analysis. What particularly  jumped out at me was the way in which Eisenstein reinforces his belief in the massive potential cinema has to offer as an artistic medium. 


In terms of a  dialectic approach, it is important that Eisenstein notes that all forms of art involve an incongruence. In other words they involve some kind of collision of thoughts or images that then produce a new meaning that is created by the observer. One of my favorite examples was the way in which Eisenstein explains how this process is seen in painting.


"What comprises the dynamic effect of a painting? The eye follows the direction of an element in the painting. It retains a visual impression, which then collides with the impression derived from following the direction of a second element. The conflict of these directions forms the dynamic effect in apprehending the whole."


Even in painting Eisenstein suggests that there in additive process taking palace, that once one line is observed, and the next line that the eye meets deviates from that form, an abstract concept or expression in created. What I think Einstein is saying about film is that not only is montage constructed out if the process (A+B=C), but that in other mediums this process is somewhat of a closed system. There is only so much an artist can achieve on one canvas.Film, on the other hand, has multiple convergences happening, on both concrete, straight forward levels and abstract levels in the "higher nerve systems of the thought apparatus"


While I am still trying to have a better understanding on what Einstein is suggesting about what intellectual montage is. My view on it so far is this:


If tonal and over-tonal montage are ways in which ideas and moods are created, they are simply being brought into awareness. They are the abstract synthesis of ideas, moods, and tones etc.  I think a possible way to view intellectual montage as the synthesis of a thesis. Now that we have these concepts, how do we arrange them to make a statement? What is the take home message? Can the observer connect these themes and construct a statement based on the the sociopolitical nature of their time as well as their specific status in life? Perhaps tonal and over-tonal montage are raising certain questions while intellectual montage, taking place in the mind of the observer, is the process of answering them.


-Joe Violette