DORT ON BRECHT/GODARD AND BRECHT

Written in 1960 and published in the Cahiers du Cinéma, Bernard Dort's text "Towards a Brechtian criticism of Cinema" exposes the Brechtian methods, aims and structures in theater and how those can be looked at in cinema, though Dort says that Brechtianism "rejects and strongly refuses all relation with the cinema in its open claim to be specifically and exclusively theatrical." Though it is specifically theatrical, since Brecht focused on theater, Brechtianism does not exclude cinema per se, and Godard proves it. Brecht's aesthetic is based on the involvement of the viewer in the story to make him an active member of the spectacle. Indeed, rather than implicating the spectator in a piece, Brecht's epic theater turns the spectator into an observer, an active thinker, by creating a distanciation or alienation effect ("Verfremdungseffekt").

Moreover, "the audience should never forget it is at the theater" and will therefore study what it is seeing and instead of being involved in something, it is made to face something of a social and political nature. Brechtian methods remind the spectator that this is a spectacle, would make sources of light visible by the audience, have billboards to indicate the time and place or to summarize action.

Brechtian theories which seem to deny cinema, actually reject its continuity and the viewer's identification with a character, which lead the viewer to become a passive watcher of the action.

Therefore, because of that, one can say that it excludes cinema. But how can a film still be considered Brechtian since in its nature cinema can seem contradictory to the Brechtian philosophy? Can a film not exist as an autonomous language?

Any film author can choose what he wants to deal with in a movie, and it can deal with its own process, a part of alienation coming from Brecht - cinema can chose to reflect cinema and remind the viewer that this is a film we are watching.

In accordance with this perspective, elements of Brechtianism can be found in many of Godard's films, whether it be in "Le Mépris" which deals with the making of a film (film inside a film, "metafilm"). In fact, the credit sequence is given in a voice-over in the opening scene and in the first scene we see a camera filming.

Le Mépris — Opening Scene

Le Mépris — Shooting scene

Another example would be "Week End" where the actors actually comment on the film, such as Roland: "What a rotten film. All we meet are crazy people." The intertitles offer a running commentary on the action: “A film adrift in the cosmos’’ — “A film found on a dump’’—“The Lewis Carroll Way’’—“From French Revolution to Gaullist weekends: freedom is violence.’

In his essay, Dort suggests when giving the example of Dudow's 1932 "Kuhle Wampe" that a modern viewer wouldn't grasp the message conveyed in the film since it doesn't know the German political and historical references that appear throughout the film.

However, Godard does give us the information necessary to understand the location and time the film is taking place in, though the questions it asks remain timeless in certain cases like in "Vivre Sa Vie".

The most obvious Brechtian element would be the fact that it is divided into twelve parts -"tableaux" - each chapter having a title and a small resume of what is to come, but also like as a commentary of what is to come.

Vivre Sa Vie — First three tableaux

Also, the music used throughout the film is more of a commentary to the film itself and what is happening in the film rather than music "simply" appearing at the peak moments of sadness, to make sure that the audience understands "this is a sad moment", like in most films.

The fact that the music keeps repeating itself also comments on the lack of free will of Nana's character. The movie is divided into tableaux, which breaks with the continuity of film, as we are reminded that it is a film we are watching. Godard also said "“Why twelve, I donʼt know; but in tableaux to emphasize the theatrical, Brechtian side", clearly an strong influence in his films.

If everything's going bad...so we're going bad as well!

One of my favorite film movements has barely been discussed in class, the readings, and the blog -- Czech New Wave. Running parallel with French New Wave, Czech New Wave used a lot of the same practices seen in Godard films in the 60s. The films had political undertones and used non-professional actors, but yet they do not get the same recognition as the French New Wave/Godard's films. I've read that Godard considered "Czech cinema at the time being too 'bourgeois.'" (link!) I completely disagree with him, because often these films depict the working class such as 1966's Ostře sledované vlaky (Closely Watched Trains) or Hoří, má panenko (The Firemen's Ball) -- which apparently used no actors, and all the firemen were the real firemen from the town the film is set.


But if there is any Czech New Wave film to go head to head with any Godard film it would be 1966's Sedmikrásky (Daisies). Now for comparing purposes, I've picked Week end to go against Daisies; Both came out around the same time [Daisies came out a year before] and both are known for its absurdity.


While the car represents the bourgeois culture in Week end, in Daisies the scissors represent the destruction of that culture. Both Marie I and Marie II use scissors to cut up sausages, pickles and bananas (phallic symbols), themselves, and even the film screen itself.

Within the first 3 minutes of the film, the Maries both decided that "if everything's going bad...so we're going bad as well." is the complete opposite of Week end, where we see these people who are already bad, doing bad things. The Maries see the only way of destroying the society they were brought up in is to be exactly like it until it destroys itself. Mind you, their vision of being bad is pulling pranks on old men "sugar daddies" and other silly antics.


Eating is a theme shown in both films. In one corner: Week end ends with cannibalism, and in the other corner: Daisies always shows the Maries constantly eating and the film ends with the Maries finding a huge royalty-like dinner set up.

While Week end has overtly political messages such as the dialogue in the scene with the two garbage men, Daisies is already political between it uses two actresses [or are they non-professional actresses?] who are in relations with themselves and forget the world of men. The film passes the Bechel test, a "rule" from a character from the comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For, who would only watch a film follows these requirements:
1. It has to have at least two women characters
2. Who talk to each other
3. About something other than a man.


Godard films will always fail the Bechel test. But how can I or any other female filmmaker who want to destroy the failed, non-Bechel model? Should we go bad and make completely absurd films with only men? Or absurd rom-com?

A decent quality of Daisies is on youtube:

-arv

Godard and Cars (Alfa Romeo 1962)

In doing research for my paper on how Godard uses cars in his films of the 1960s, I came across a website devoted to cataloging the different makes + models of cars in films, so I thought I'd share the links for the pages for Pierrot le fou and Week-end:


http://imcdb.org/movie_59592-Pierrot-le-fou.html
http://imcdb.org/movie_62480-Week-End.html


People can comment on each photo, and I found a pretty interesting comment for this photo:

According to Esquire (July 1969) page 42, the Alfa Romeo on fire is Jean-Luc Godard's own car. 


That particular car - a 1962 Alfa Romeo 2600 Sprint - was not cheap, nor especially common. Only around 7,000 were produced from 1962-1966, and they cost $5400 - or around $40,000 in today's dollars. If Godard really did throw his own car onto a heap and set it in fire, it gives some indication of how serious he was in the message he's trying to communicate.


The lone source for this comment is from that issue of Esquire, which I am now in search of - it seems to be a pretty neat issue with not only the Godard issue, but McLuhan also featured, as well as lots of moon stuff.

Godard's Use of Light

In our last class, Sam said something that I had discovered as I was working on my final paper regarding light; it is not about the amount of light but the right light. This is the crux of my final paper. As I was investigating various art movements devoted to light and refining my paper topic, I concluded that this point, the right light, is most pertinent to a discussion of Godard. As we know, even in his black and white films, he utilized natural light and did not rely on the industrial lighting standard for filmmaking. Because my final paper focuses on two specific examples of Godard’s relationship to light, (Alphaville and Passion) in this post I will focus briefly on some of the ways in which Godard uses light to communicate major themes in the films Contempt, Weekend and L’Eloge de L’Amour, namely sexuality, consumerism and memory.

Light in Contempt exists in many forms but what makes it specific to the film is its use to emphasize the sexuality of Brigitte Bardot. From the tinted red and blue to the reflection off the sea or as her backdrop, whether intentional or not, light’s main function is to draw more attention to and accentuate Bardot’s sex appeal.

(But Godard’s use of the natural light of Capri makes the film’s look unforgettably beautiful whether Bardot is in the scene or not.)

Weekend has a different relationship to light. It looks duller or washed out compared to Contempt.

And while so much of it takes place outside or among nature, the dullness remains. It is this dullness which adds to the feelings of alienation or enhances Godard’s critique of consumerism. (Think Marx's alienation theory)The absence of light corresponds to the absence of joy and the ugliness of the main characters. The world that the characters live in, reminiscent of a warzone, feels somehow other than our world when the muted light is taken into account. In this way, his use of light warns the audience of the consequences of consumerism. One lingering question is the role of the fires in Weekend; how can they be understood in relation to light?

Finally, L’Eloge de L’Amour, which uses light so cleverly and skillfully. In this film, Godard often obscures the faces of the main characters.  He again uses light to emphasize a characterization in the film, in this case memory. He actually obscures and manipulates the film through his treatment of light to communicate his points.

Godard maintains a command of light even when the film is in black and white. Nothing is not sharp unless he chooses. The power of Paris as the "city of lights" is not diminished when captured in black and white. (There may be a statement here about Paris for the wealthy vs. the Paris of the worker from the two images below, as one remains crisp and the other is covered in darkness.) Memory is explored and exposed in Godard's use of light.

Godard uses light is such a deliberate way that enhances the overall themes of his films and illuminates the subtelties of his point of view. I continue to investigate his search for the right light…

CARNAL GODARD

It’s difficult to believe that there is an aspect of Godard’s work that we haven’t discussed in detail.  With so many images, or perhaps interpretations, there is a component of Godard’s work that has remained primarily latent…at least until we consider Sauve qui peut (La Vie), aka Every Man For Himself aka Cover your ass.  In Sauve qui peut, the audience is treated to a blatant expose of carnal desires.  Throughout the film, there are robust expressions of erotic content.  Ultimately, these themes have been present in Godard’s work since Breathless.  At the same time, the vigorous approach to corporeal analysis transforms into the focus of Sauve qui peut.

There are several examples of erotic discourse within the Godard trajectory.  Several that come to mind include the Hotel room discussion between Michel and Patricia in Breathless.  Speaking of lovers past, the characters count on their fingers to calculate their number of sexual encounters.  During Michel’s turn, he flashes his whole hand once, twice…multiple times to show that he has had numerous experiences. 

In Week-end, Godard makes use of Georges Bataille’s Histoire de L’oeil to construct Corinne’s explicit dialogue scene.  The use of suggestive sexual dialogue informs the viewer that this is a more profound level of interpretation from the director.  As Morrey states, “The appeal to this novel, in which the narrator and his lovers repeatedly smear each other in their piss, shit, blood and sperm, would seem to be an abject, unclean, unrecuperated sexuality, in which the true strangeness of desire appear ungovernable by an normative discourse.” (75)


   

In Tout va bien, the sexual nature of Godard’s exploratory is expressed via graphic imagery of the male phallus.  During the “On va au cinema, on bouf, on baisse” scene, Yves Montand debates libidinous dynamics with Jane Fonda.  After exclaiming that the couple is reduced to “going to the cinema, eating, fucking,” Montand is exposed by Fonda. In her argument, Fonda reduces Montand’s thought process to a single visual: The image of a penis sitting static within a female hand.  The penis serves as an exclamation point to the dialogue within the scene.

These examples serve as a precursor to the shock value that awaits in Sauve qui peut.  After an extended period of time away from feature filmmaking, Godard returns with his most explicit approach to sexualized cinema. The more prominent scenes include the suggestion that a cow’s tongue can serve as an adequate source of carnal pleasure.  Likewise, Paul Godard questions whether a soccer coach has ever had erotic thoughts in relation to his daughter, “Do you ever have the urge to feel up her tits or to fuck her up the ass?” The scene in which Paul Godard jumps over a table to embrace his ex-girlfriend suggests the impossibility of connection between men and women.


Perhaps the most explicit scene in Sauve qui peut is what Morrey labels the “orgy” scene.  Although it is not an orgy in the traditional sense (refer to Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick, Stanley for perceived mainstream orgy) the scene does bring several questions to light.  During the scene, the boss gives succinct directions in relation to sexual acts and process.  The absurdity of the scene has the tendency to promote laughter as opposed to erotic stimulation.  However, when compared with the wealth of examples that precede this sequence, the viewer can legitimately question the intent of the director.  First, how does the sequence fit within the area of gender studies?  Should we accept the depiction at face value and view it as a harsh criticism or reinforcement of the male gaze?  Secondly, what do these examples suggest about Godard?  During the course we’ve been speaking of the presence of the Godard surrogate.  Does this depiction show Godard for what he really is?  A cinematic Henry Miller or a highbrow Ron Jeremy?  Lastly, should these depictions have extenuating consequences?  It’s widely known that Nabokov faced intense scrutiny for his authoring of Lolita.  Is it justified to expose Godard to similar examination?

I’m curious to hear the dialogue during our next class session.  Unlike before, it is no longer possible to turn a blind eye to Godard’s sexual dynamics.  Quietly, he has dispensed carnal representations within his films.  Like a slap to face, I believe that we have all been woken by the director. If before, we chose not to address the matter, following Sauve qui peut, we have no other option.

echeverria

A full mouth and the shit of it

In Godard’s films we see the role of a participating capitalist consumer from gaze to touch to taste.  With mouths so occupied in their delivery of lines and musings, it’s surprising that they even have time to ingest anything at all.  And the cigarettes, yes, these are another ingestion completely- a distraction, a poetic abstraction of a species domesticated on terra Americana and repackaged abroad.  Something so French, so intellectual, so useful at the cafes…like coffee (the galactic microcosm in Deux ou trios choses que je sais d’elle [1966]), like sugary desserts and chocolate; like pommes frites…it does often percolate back to the American capitalist-dream-landscape, yes?  So the smoking, it’s an intentional, capitalist mannerism as well as an imbedded, addictive after-thought most accused in Deux ou trios choses que je sais d’elle and always present in Godard’s other films (having not seen all of his films “always” is a definite but no less firm assumption).

So the food: in Week-end (1967) there is the bread, or rather sandwich scene of the garbage workers.  However, the image of the sandwich itself escapes me and is overshadowed by the hefty loaves of bread and their ensuing mess of crumbles and the full-mouths of the worker’s monologues.  Monologues thus colonized and glutenized by this ensuing signifier of French sustenance and therefore existence; monologues hurriedly eaten through (however lengthy) and chomped-down lest they run out of time to nourish themselves (like the workers in Tout va bien [1972] who run out of time to urinate, etc. in their five minute breaks).  Do I remember much of what these garbage (one Arab, one African) men said?  No, I mostly remember that very French bread; those very full mouths. 

Later in Week-end there is the cannibalistic scene that ends the film with Corinne consuming her husband’s ribs.  Cannibalism aside, I don’t think of ribs as a French dish but rather as an American gustatory trope (at present); or a camping food (Hollywood westerns?); or as a dish habitually derived du porc- one of the two animals sacrificed in tribal scene.  The pig: a devoted consumer full of an expansive desire and willingness to engorge itself- even in its/our own waste- for pure pleasure.  The rib: as in Adam?  Thus, is Corinne participating in a metaphorical self-consumption as well?  Is she a consumer so obsessed with pigging out that it leads her to the ultimate degradation[1] of the self?  Is the/her return to zer0 only possible through ingesting one/herself?  But can a zer0 exist in the archeological traipsing-about of all that shit and in all those remains?

Next.  In Tout va bien (1972), co-directed with Jean-Pierre Gorin, the majority of the mise-en-scène occurs within the Salumi sausage factory.  A space that is “anti-realistic” and “a metaphorical representation of the state of the political struggle in France in 1972” (Morrey, 99).  It could come as no surprise then that the state is represented through the production of a meaty phallus.  (Or could it?  This shows a marked difference from his earlier work when the capitalist hegemony was represented through variations of “literal” prostitution: Vivre sa vie [1962], Alphaville [1965], Deux ou Trois que je said d’elle [1966]).  In Tout va bien, Godard and Gorin present the analogy of the dominant phallus not only as a factory product but as a producer of oppressed rights within the factory (even at a most basic, physical level as in the aforementioned urination scene where we witness male workers address the complications of the simple act of peeing) and within the society as a whole.  Towards the end of the film, this image of oppression is further propagated with the black and white photograph of an erect pecker exhibited by Jane Fonda’s character, Susan[2].  As the scene with the CGT representative initiates (“flanked by two goons” [Morrey, 100] and placed in front of a meaty poster), the hegemony of the “giant” food producers encompasses more than the production of food, but system of trade as well (from salumi to other industrialized products [coffee, cigarettes, sugar, oranges...]).

To conclude: the supermarket and the oranges.  There is a scene in the factory in which Susan and her husband Jacques (Yves Montaud) sit with some of the workers to talk.  They have a spread of food before them consisting of bread, sausages and meats and some fruit I think, however, the only fruit I remember is the segment of orange, peel intact, that Susan sucks and nibbles on.  Later in the (awesome) tracking shot within the supermarket, large bags of produce are repeatedly piled onto the automated conveyor belts ready to be tallied by the checkout workers.  Bags of firm oranges repeatedly appear.  (Where were those ripe oranges grown)?  So here we are, ending this film that began within an “anti-realistic” factory within the hyperreal invention of the system of trade that is the supermarket.  We track back and forth on the 0°/180° degree line[3] and each time the same consumers unload their baskets (sometimes they even unload the same item as revealed right before [!]).  We see this ingestive behavior factorized in the body- these consumers without dialogue repeat their dance with their products accompanied by the mechanical rhythm of the registers, meanwhile activists or “agitators” (Morrey, 104) behind them give voice to an uprising and everything is free…. Well anyway, these ripe oranges, plump potatoes, French baguettes etc. are a different genre of waste than Silverman addresses.  These are necessary wastes unlike a new Hermès bag or an Alfa Romeo, however they are nonetheless illusory in their mechanically perfected natures.  They are a means to sustenance and then, ultimately evacuation: the coffee, the bread, the ribs, the salumi and the oranges are all assimilable modes of absorption within this marketed slurry of production and sa bouche gustative.

clip (in Spanish) of tracking sequence in Tout va bien:

                                                       

---

[1] Morrey writes of Silverman’s commentary on the “serial degradation” in that “each new product implies the degradation of the previous one into so much waste and, as the time allotted for the enjoyment of each new commodity becomes briefer and briefer, the entire system of value on which consumerism rests is revealed as so much shit” (78).

[2] Granted, this is an image relating to communicative duress of their marriage, but it is also representative of the total imagery of Tout va bien as well.

[3] À la Week-end (Henderson, 423).

C. Krantz

Halloween Weekend

Zombie bourgeois murderers, kids dressed as Indians, twisted corpses of burning cars and human bodies, Emily Bronte and Tom Thumb in the forest, the son of God and Alexandre Dumas pulls a rabbit from a glove compartment, cannibal hippie revolutionaries nonchalantly eat flesh...it’s a Halloween Weekend.

The horror!

Before fights at Ricky’s over pre-packaged costumes based on Hollywood blockbusters and opportunities for cleavage, once, masks and costumes were worn on Halloween to ward off evil spirits on the sacred day in which the boundaries between the dead and the living slipped and blurred, and the light half of the year gave way to the dark. In Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend (1967), naked capitalism exposes only horror and more horror, as the living dead screw each other, kill each other, and eat each other; feeling emotion only for their cars, Hermès bags, and cash. Their all-consuming consumption reveals Weekend's main characters, Corinne and Roland, to be masks with clothes that ride in machines. Halloween’s symbolism of light and dark has no place here; we are in a flat world without season. Relentlessly without respite, the outlook is dark, though on this weekend night never comes. No rest for the greedy.

          

Worker, bourgeois brat, 
just another exchangeable costume, 

Weekend’s incisive critique of the culture of consumption begins as deliciously humorous, and then leaves you feeling as empty as the cartons on the garbage truck Corinne and Roland hitch a ride on. And yet there are moments of rupture, almost rapture, which Kaja Silverman describes in Speaking About Godard as “the desire for a resacralization of a flat or desacralized world.” She points to a scene I am particularly interested in, that moved me for a moment out of the world of waste and the sound of car crashes: one of the hippie cannibals beats on a drum facing away from us, towards the river, chanting “I greet you ancient ocean.” 

Harun Farocki reads this moment as one in which there is an acknowledgment of the “desire for absolute value” which disappears as we realize the river is not “the domain of the gods...but a little watering hole where families go to swim.” While I agree that this rupture is contained and ultimately unsustainable, I also read it as the suggestion of the potential call to a return to year zero that Godard speaks of. A return to year zero is also a terrifying possibility. What would it entail? This is not a moment of redemption, no matter how much I might want it to be, but the primal sound of the drum and call to the river remind us—briefly—of a different state of being, or a place of origin. And yet, the incantation is spoken with the same indifference as Corinne’s recounting of her sexual adventures, the same indifference with which Roland allows Corinne to be assaulted. 

The river is not portentous—again, there can be no deep symbols here. As we read in Godard on Godard, the sea in Pierrot Le Fou and Le Mépris is not the sea of the gods, but just “nature, the presence of nature, which is neither romantic nor tragic” (219). Perhaps this is why in Weekend, the river retains some charge, because it simply is, pre-existent, the same and yet always different.  

Following this incantation, we come to the final scene in which Corinne eats Roland’s flesh, another moment that could be ritualistic but, as Silverman and Farocki point out, is devoid of meaning or sacrifice (107). This scene communicates the trouble facing any revolutionary movement: by employing the violence of the oppressive regime of consumption, you open yourself to the possibility of becoming another version of the same. It’s far too easy. After all, you are what you eat.

-Ruchi Mital

The Unseen Speaker

There is an image in many of Godard’s films where the face of the speaker is in some way obscured. This is different than narration where the audience expects never to see the speaker. It is more similar to Godard’s method of talking through an eyepiece and having the actor repeat what he says; though we see the actor’s image transmit the dialogue, it originates from an unseen speaker. Even if the speaker is not unseen, his/her face is often covered. I am trying to understand the role and impact of the unseen or obscured speaker in three ways, 1) a method used by Godard to demonstrate, as Douglas Morrey says in Jean-Luc Godard, “the violence which accompanies the process of learning.”(pg.68) 2) the attempt, as Godard says in Godard on Godard, to show how a person sees “what surrounds him.” (pg 241) and 3) the Brechtian alienation effect as described in Bernard Dort’s “Towards a Brechtian Criticism of Cinema.”

The first idea is from Morrey and I take it to mean that Godard’s use of an unseen speaker can be understood as a device which explores the idea of learning and knowledge by not giving the audience an image he/she can relate to within the given context or is expecting at all.

Rather than present us with images, sounds and ideas that can be immediately recognized and assimilated to our pre-existing categories of understanding Godard forces us to confront the difficulty of making sense of the world, the violence which accompanies the process of learning. Often Godard will cut into an image or a sound that is not instantly recognizable and presents us with a pure, inassimilable difference.

The above image from 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her can be an example of the first theory. The faces of the speakers covered and replaced by travel bags with logos on them achieve the end of difference and chaos in understanding what is happening.  

In the second idea, Godard’s own analysis from Godard on Godard (pg. 239-41) refers to his strategy for creating 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her:

I cannot avoid the fact that all things exist both from the inside and the outside. This can be demonstrated by filming a house from the outside, then from the inside, as though we were entering inside a cube, an object. The same goes for a human being, whose face is generally seen from the outside. But how does this person himself see what surrounds him? I mean, how does he physically experience his relationship with other people and with the world?

In Weekend, two laborers stop to eat sandwiches. The face of the actual speaker is replaced with the face of a different man eating a sandwich. The speaker is not seen as he gives a lengthy speech about war and injustice; the audience only sees the face of a different man eating a sandwich. (To see this scene, click on the link below.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQW_dcTQFJ0

This seems to exemplify Godard’s desire to show how humans physically experience seeing the world around them. When we talk, we do not see ourselves talking; we see the person we are talking to, even if he is eating a sandwich.

The third idea is from Brecht as Dort describes his alienation effect as that which “allows us to recognize its subject, but at the same time makes it seem unfamiliar.” (pg. 238) And although Dort is skeptical of this working in the world of cinema (as opposed to theater), Godard seems to use this very method in La Chinoise, most obviously in the scene depicted below. (Jean-Pierre Leaud explains his idea of Brechtian acting as demonstrated by a Chinese protester.)

These three ideas may intersect and there may be more or better examples than the ones I give above. However, I hope that this explanation of the unseen or covered speaker begins to address an image that has been repeated and expanded on in many Godard films.

Sienna