Formal Renewal: Godard and Nietzsche

In an interview entitled "Nietzsche and the Image of Thought", Gilles Deleuze illustrates the way Nietzsche creates new conceptions of thought by introducing new forms to philosophy. This ‘formal renewal’ occurs when the philosopher or artist has something new to say that cannot be enunciated using old forms.  New content demands new form.  Perhaps this is what Nietzsche alluded to by naming his 1888 book Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer (quoted below).


Interestingly, Deleuze points to Godard as an example of an artist that creates new forms demanded by new content.  He says, “Godard transforms cinema by introducing thought into it.  He didn’t have thoughts on cinema, he doesn’t put more or less valid thought into cinema; he starts cinema thinking, and for the first time, if I’m not mistaken.  Theoretically, Godard would be capable of filming Kant’s Critique or Spinoza’s Ethics, and it wouldn’t be abstract cinema or a cinematic application.  Godard knew how to find means and a new “image”-which necessarily presupposes a revolutionary content”(141).  This “new image” or thought that Deleuze is referring to is the injection of philosophy into film. Not film as a medium for explaining a particular philosophy, but rather, film as thinking, film as philosophy.


Although he does not point to any particular work from Godard, I think this notion of ‘formal renewal’ is an interesting way to approach 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her.  For the first time in Godard’s work, the audience does not have any familiar cinematic forms to use as an easy point of entry into the work.  The film serves as an example of a new kind of work that functions within the impossibility of language while thinking that very impossibility.  Godard’s approach here is directly analogous to Nietzsche’s.  The content for each cannot be enunciated with old forms so, like the latter’s need to smash philosophy, Godard must return to cinema year zero.

An Imagined Conversation between JLG and FWN.

I listen to commercials

On my transistor radio

Thanks to E, SS, O,

37. You run on ahead?- Do you do so as a herdsman? or as an exception? 

A third possibility would be as a deserter….

First question of conscience.

I set out calmly on the road to dreams

And I forget the rest.

38.  Are you genuine? or only an actor?  A representative? or that itself which is represented? – Finally you are no more than an imitation of an actor…

Second question of conscience.

I forget Hiroshima,

I forget Auschwitz,

40.  Are you one who looks on? or who sets to work? – or who looks away, turns aside… Third question of conscience.

I forget Budapest,

I forget Vietnam

41.  Do you want to accompany? or go on ahead? or go off alone?...

One must know what one wants and that one wants. –

Fourth question of conscience

I forget the minimum wage,

I forget the housing crisis

I forget the famine in India

42.  For me they were steps, I have climbed up upon them –

therefore I had to pass over them. 

But they thought I wanted to settle down on them…

I’ve forgotten

Everything

except that,

Since I am reduced to zero,

It’s from there that I shall have to set out again.

In enacting a ‘formal renewal’ in each of their fields, both artists, in their own unique way, create what John Drabinski calls a primary text (Godard Between Identity and Difference, 2008).  As opposed to secondary texts, which can only reference something previously established, Drabinski sees Godard’s film as primary text in philosophy (xii).  While the notion of 2 or 3 things I Know About Her as philosophy may seem a stretch to some, I think it is safe to reposition Drabinski’s distinction between primary and secondary texts into a discussion of film.  By injecting thought into film with 2 or 3 things, Godard formally renews and creates a primary text in cinema.


CGT

"One Should Put Everything into a Film"

Inspired by Oz’s post on Godard and the nature of translation, I wanted to mention this article by Samuel Bréan from the current issue of Senses of Cinema about Godard’s latest work Film Socialisme.  In this film Godard pushes the presence of subtitles to the fore by subverting the commonplace use for them as a translating tool.  As he distorts the exact (if there is such a thing) translation into what he terms “Navajo English”, the subtitles cease to be a perceived addition to the film existing primarily to assist viewers and transform into an essential element of the film itself.  Godard seemingly has acknowledged the fact that the film, which has dialogue in over 10 languages, will only be shown with subtitles so it only makes sense that they should be part of the film- not an add on to be supervised by a subtitler. 

Subtitles, as we have noted in class, tend to distort the language of the film due to the limiting nature of translation.  With Film Socialisme, Bréan argues “if Godard took the principle of reduction inherent to subtitling to an extreme (and added other peculiarities of his own), it is, among other things, to show how relative it is to try and assess a film without acknowledging the inevitable changes in perception caused by subtitling.”

A rather fascinating article, Bréan tracks Godard’s approach to the issue of translation from Breathless to the present and also considers the debate as to whether the DVD release of Film Socialisme should have 'full’ subtitles rather than, or in addition to, the Navajo English.

godard     english     cannes: The Reception of Film Socialisme‘s “Navajo English” Subtitles

CGT

On Word & Image in Vivre sa vie

As we discussed in class, one of Godard’s central concerns is the relationship between the image and the word.  How can an image engender thought in a manner that is usually reserved for the structures of language?  In what way can the image exceed the potentiality of the word and communicate something entirely new?  This question is posed multiple times within his film Vivre sa vie.

First, in the scene where Nana discusses the value of the spoken word with the philosopher Brice Parian, it is clear that Godard is shifting away from the existentialist issues that dominate the dialogue of the film to ruminate on the issue.  Here Godard, via Nana, questions the ability of words to represent actual thought and wonders if words actually betray the user.  Why is it that words must be used to understand one another?  Why must one always talk?  Is it possible to live in silence yet still communicate?  Finally, can one distinguish thought from the words that express it? 

These questions foreground the longstanding premise that thought is best articulated via language into a film that largely relies on the image to convey thought.  Although Nana never explicitly asks about the image, Godard is posing this very question throughout the entire film through extensive use of close-up photography.  The close-up, as in Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, becomes a communicative means to show thought through the expressiveness of the face as recorded by the image.

Further, in looking at the relation between Poe’s The Oval Portrait and the entire project of Vivre sa vie, Godard seems to be asking whether there is danger in giving over too much power to the image.  Poe’s story tells of an artist that is so obsessed with creating a perfect image of the real that he destroys the real for the sake of the image.  Vivre sa vie can be read as a retelling of The Oval Portrait in the way that Godard wants to identify himself with the artist of Poe’s story by demonstrating through a seemingly endless amount of beautiful close-ups of Nana’s face his obsession with creating a perfect image of his then wife.

I think it is of little purpose to interpret this film as merely a simple love letter to Anna Karina.  By asking these questions on the nature of the image to the word, artist to the image and art to life, Godard still finds a way to ask the imperative questions that matter to his larger project.


CGT

Astruc + Godard = Breathless

It was quite refreshing last week to read Truffaut’s treatment for Breathless and then to watch the film within the larger context of Astruc’s essay La caméra-stylo.  What became immediately apparent in comparing the treatment to the film is that everything that is interesting, fresh and original in the film originates from the camera itself.  Almost as if channeling Astruc’s ideas, Godard took what was a fairly bland treatment and, with his camera, wrote something wholly otherwise which rejected the common practice of effacing the unique qualities inherent to film in order to function merely as a visual means for representing literature.  Breathless could not be approximated by any other medium and, because of this, made apparent all the ways that film differs from every other form of art.  By writing with the camera, Godard destroys the insistence on the invisible (editing) and brings the facticity of the form to the foreground.  How do you write a treatment for a film when the main character is the camera-stylo itself? 

 CGT