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

Looking at Death

Death is an idea that Godard explores in his work any number of times. With reference to Douglas Morrey’s book Jean-Luc Godard, I will briefly look at some of the recurrences of death in Godard’s films, and the significance of his preoccupation with this idea.

In Breathless, Michel Poiccard dies dramatically in the middle of the street in Paris, in a manhunt. This event, however, is foreshadowed earlier – for instance, in a moment, which seems to encapsulate the film’s uncertain tone, Michel follows a joke about a condemned man to ask, “Do you ever think about death? I think about it all the time.” Morrey quotes other instances that reference the passing of the years too quickly, the choice between grief and nothingness, and concludes that, the many premonitions lend an air of inevitability to the final event when it happens.

But in his analysis he rejects the clichéd existential interpretation of death in the film. Death is not invoked to remind us of the difficulty of the situation the lead characters face; it is not a device, therefore, to highlight human freedom and the need to take responsibility for our choices. On the contrary, Morrey quotes Maurice Blanchot, who proposes that Michel’s end is a “death without truth” His death cannot therefore be understood or overcome in any proper way, it is a symbol of that the unthinkable, which cannot be understood from within life. It echoes the failure of Michel and Patricia to communicate with each other. There is a strong sense of futility attached to it.

Whereas, in Contempt, Camille and Prokosch’s joint death in a car crash tends to appear absolutely out of the blue. Morrey agrees that it is easy to misconstrue Camille’s death as a form of punishment for her actions, her end maybe seen as being misogynistic twist to the narrative. 

However, he points out that Camille’s death does not have any narrative motivation as in Breathless, and neither is it motivated by the overall circumstance, as in Nana’s end in Vivre sa vie. Nana’s death is again foretold through her identification through Joan of Arc, but Morrey argues that her death in a shootout between Raoul and a rival pimp is not a punishment for her whoredom. He analyses the film to show that Nana is in fact a very strong, and memorable character- she is an existential heroine who engages with the real questions of life.

Death makes an appearance in La Petit Soldat as well when Bruno kills Palivoda, motivated more by emotion, than by any political belief. Bruno also echoes Michel when he asks, “Do you ever think about death”, Blanchot points out that this is the single, central question, the question of everything- the question that cannot be asked. Bruno also refers to the extraordinary sensation of photographing death.

This idea of photographing death is explored further in Here and Elsewhere, when Godard talks about footage from 1970 that features people who are no longer alive- almost all the Palestinian actors died in attacks by the Jordanian Army. Godard then says, “The film filmed the actors in danger of death”. Morrey points out, then, that this idea relates to Jean Epstein and Cocteau’s poetically melancholic ideas that, “cinema films death at work on the faces and in the bodies of actors”

In effect then, we may conclude that in analyzing death in Godard’s films, some patterns exist. For one, the death of characters is often foretold and hangs over the film like a dark cloud, many times the death is not motivated by the narrative and is a symbol for the unknowability of existence, at other times, it is a more empowered sense of death that emerges as an existential victory over life’s meaninglessness.

 - Preeti

Godard/Marker, Erasing the Distance

For the final paper for this class I chose to compare Godard’s work to that of Chris Marker’s. I focused on three films, Here and Elsewhere (1974) Sans Soleil (1983) and Far From Vietnam (1967) - an anthology film orchestrated by Marker featuring Godard, Ivens, Varda and other filmmakers from the Left Bank + New Wave. I was drawn to this topic because I am especially interested in how the documentary form intersects with fiction and vice versa. While, H & E and FFV were both dealing with an overtly political subject in a new way i.e. neither film follows the traditional documentary rules. I turned to Sans Soleil because it is the only film that offered me any deeper insights into Marker’s specific style- in the spirit of the collective- Marker was not forthcoming on his exact contribution to FFV.

In my paper, I began by tracing Marker and Godard’s initial fascination for cinema verite. While Marker caused controversy by offering a very partisan look at the lives of Parisians in Le Jolie Mai – clearly a verite film, Godard used verite techniques to lend a documentary feel to his fiction work. Both filmmakers however looked to create new forms of expression that better suited their interest in a more political cinema. I then discuss how both filmmakers create these new forms of cinema, as Astruc predicted; through the camera stylo approach- their content/ideas are embodied in the form itself- they are writing their thoughts onto film.

The paper then cross references all three films; FFV and H & E both are dealing with similar problems- how can one represent a reality that is so far away? FFV mixes performance and fictional accounts with actuality footage from Vietnam, it contains a long piece by Godard who thinks out loud- and discusses the problem of creating an ethical cinema, I see that, many years later, he solves some of these problems in H & E. H & E also attests to the failure of documentary to be a witness. It is indicative of a crisis of representation in cinema.

One of the key conceptual breakthrough’s Godard has in H & E relate to his concept of replacing the ‘or’ with an ‘and’ i.e. by breaking down a binary way of looking at the world, one can close the distance between here and elsewhere, us and them, France and Palestine (Deleuze) I propose that Marker is also doing something similar with his concept of the horizontal montage in Sans Soleil. He is “adding” words to images, and breaking down oppositions, forcing us to consider visuals and text simultaneously. He too is therefore closing the distance. I quote authors who discuss how Marker’s approach to editing is by turns inspired by Eisenstein, Kuleshov and Vertov. (Michael Walsh) Lastly, I discuss how Godard and Marker see images as tools of capitalism, and specific relationships they draw between history, memory, cinema and uniformity of thought. - Preeti

The Legacy of Band of Outsiders

Godard planned for his seventh feature film release, "Band of Outsiders," to be a commercial success, but unfortunately, at the time, it was one of the lowest grossing films he made to date.  However, today, we see many influences of this film on popular culture, and can surmise from this that the film has gained popularity and an audience, no matter how niche, through the generations.  New York Times film critic, Eugene Archer said, back in 1964 when the film was first screened at a festival in NYC, that this film is before its time and that one day, he predicted that Godard's work would be at home in film museums.  Godard is the king of quoting other authors, artwork, popular culture references, etc. but now that his work is being quoted, I wonder if he has issues with this, especially because the ways his work is usually quoted/adopted/ripped off is in a way he probably wouldn't agree with.  Contemporary filmmaker, Quentin Tarantino, regularly borrows from Godard, but there are news articles that record Godard's anti-Tarantino sentiments, especially regarding the filmmaker's production company, now closed, "A Band Apart."  Tarantino also gained inspiration from the Madison dance sequence from "Band of Outsiders" to use in his very successful film, "Pulp Fiction".  You can see the dance sequence in "Pulp Fiction" here and Tarantino admits that he was directly inspired by Godard for this.  However, Tarantino does not utilize the dance sequence the way Godard did and this superficial treatment must have been annoying for Godard to see compared to his original one.

Godard would also probably be quite annoyed if he caught wind of this Diesel advertisement released as part of their campaign in 2010 that ripped off of Godard's Madison dance scene.  I don't think it is necessary to say what's wrong with this video since it's quite obvious, if you study Godard and his ideologies that this video is the exact thing he would not support.

To top all of this off, the name, "Band of Outsiders" has such a great ring to it that Hollywood Film Agent turned Designer (now that's just too whore-ishly commercial to digest) Scott Sternberg uses the film's title as the brand of his clothing line.  He says that he just liked the name but the label has nothing to do with the film really or anything related to Godard for that matter.  It's just a trendy, catchy name... sad.

if you'd like to read more, it's all in my term paper.

Sunanda

Godard et Rohmer: Four Moral Tales

As a self-proclaimed Maoist in the 60's, Godard in many, if not all, of his films touches on politics and encourages the viewer to ask him or herself questions relevant to contemporary political issues. Although politics is a conspicuous topic in many of his films, gender and morality always seems to have an undercurrent theme throughout the course of his work. Godard’s contemporary however touches on these subjects rather overtly. Eric Rohmer author and director of Six Moral Tales, is one of Godard’s French New Wave comrades, and two of his films that heavily carry the theme of morality, Ma Nuit Chez Maud and La Collectionneuse, share several similarities to Godard’s A Woman is a Woman and Vivre sa Vie.

Angela, Maud, Nana, and Haydeé are all judged by their male counterparts for stepping out of what is considered to be the social norms.  They are promiscuous, coquettish and they challenge the traditional female role and the hegemonic male structure; for these reasons, the men in their lives share a love-hate relationship with them. 

Rohmer literates his films, while Godard builds his films with imagery. The correlation of the two helps to define the French New Wave.

-ar

Godard/FRAME/De-abstraction

(1) Godard: A Letter to Freddy Buache (1982)

Following on the framework definition offered by Deleuze, “… we will call the determination of a closed system, a relatively closed system which includes everything which is present in the image—sets, characters and props—framing. The frame therefore forms a set which has a great number of parts, that is of elements, which themselves form sub-sets. It can be broken down” (Deleuze 12), it seems relevant to develop a critical approach to the contemporary linguistic framework analysis, and correspondingly offer some ways to understand framing within the multilayered environments of cinematic media. One might question the effectiveness of contemporary frame research (coming out of political science and communications) in bringing a reductionary analysis of linguistics into the study of news journalism and television. Though, some scholars have looked at a variety of relational elements of framing, and thus framing as a process that process a multilayered frame environment (Deleuze, de Vreese), the majority of frame theorists have interjected a simplified version of what is a complex web for political analysis. It is for this reason that there is need to readdress new conceptions of ‘process’ oriented framework and potentially apply or develop a typographical approach to the study of framework within the complex media environment that connects medium types and movement images.

If we are to understand Deleuze’s conception of framing as an extensive one, one which incorporates images and sub-sets of images and objects (not triggered by linguistic determination, or a priori value, but experience), then the frame becomes not only made up of the images within a single take or shot, but rather the relations developed between images through time. The frame, in this sense- incorporates the total environment in which the montage develops (image, sound, language, geometry, object, character, etc.). 

(2) Godard: A Letter to Freddy Buache (1982)

Within his Letter to Freddy Buache (1982), Godard’s "frame" becomes both apparent within the linguistic space of his production, as well as within the content and movement image. All of which are "subversive" yet posit a framed vision of urban life. First, as seen in (1) the camera takes a new form of geographic tour, panning over trees, and tracking subway cars, and moving over banks of water, catching locations of color common to the space of Lausanne. here Godard expresses that the frame is the re-presentation of urban life. Godard's production becomes a sort of rearrangement of the data of Lausanne that he presents as most salient in the (re)memory of the space. 

In another sense, the frame is inherently pedagogical, as it asks one to see the marginalized spaces of urban climates (bodies of water at the boundaries of the city, trees which create temporary borders) as the most inherent to an urban ontology. Godard's pedagogical technique, in this sense, becomes the de-abstraction of the urban environment. Those things that tend to be out of the frame, subtracted from the frame, here are recognized as the frame. This all operates in contrast to a traditional documentary in which subjects are featured  (abstracted from the urban environment) in order to speak about the urban environment. 

Jay Bowe

Jerry Prokosch Speaks

My paper will be to contextualize Godard's quote describing a collapse between audience and film ("at the cinema, we do not think, we are thought") using a discussion of ideology, Ranciere's ignorant schoolmaster, Deleuze and Michael Witt's discussions of Godard's work in relation to metaphor and then to show how this position not only generally informs his films but also -and here's the hypothesis- that this position has a direct effect on Godard's narrative, or better, filmic structure. The premise is that it is not enough to say that Godard tends to eschew traditional narrative, but that he does so in particular ways (and perhaps somewhat systematically) to arrive at his unique film rhetoric that is largely determined by the annihilation of distance in his epistemology and all its aesthetic consequences. I might be looking more closely at 2 or 3 things, Ici et ailleurs, Le gai savoir, and Notre musique. 


-Jerry Prokosch