Jean-Luc Godard (1930-2022)

[Fred Holywell]

Jean-Luc Godard (1930 – 2022) | TCM Remembers

[Stefan]

Today the one true and one last soul of modern cinema died, allegedly by assisted euthanasia: https://www.liberation.fr/culture/cinem ... OABOVFREM/ Let us keep him in our prayers, raise a glass to him and watch "Pierrot le fou" tonight.

[colinr0380]

I'm so glad that this is still online: one of the great fan music videos the internet has to offer (NSFW) is the mash up of images from Godard's Je Vous Salue, Marie! (or Hail Mary!) with the song Hard To Explain by The Strokes.

[JSC]

I was trying to decide which of his films to watch this afternoon and actually ended up
watching Origins of the Twentieth Century, which to my mind is one of his best
films. It's easy to imagine portents after the fact, but I couldn't help but think of his
passing in connection with an image which occurs, taken from Max Ophuls' Le Plaisir,
in which...

SpoilerShow

A dandy-ish man with a strange face appears at a 19th century Parisian nightclub
and dances vigorously with the young women before collapsing on the floor in exhaustion.
It is only later revealed that he is in fact an old man wearing a mask

Godard seemed particularly taken with this sequence as he used it in several other films
including The Image Book.

RIP JLG.

[FrauBlucher]

RIP Godard...Which seems ironic for him

Where is the biggest Godard supporter on this forum? I'd love to hear his thoughts......

[colinr0380]

I'm trying to remember who it was who said that Godard when he was at Cahiers was perhaps the last film critic who possibly could have been able to watch and digest the entire history of cinema up to that point. I'm guessing it was Tarantino but am not entirely certain.

[DarkImbecile]

Richard Brody’s remembrance in The New Yorker

[nowhereisaplace]

I'm trying to remember who it was who said that Godard when he was at Cahiers was perhaps the last film critic who possibly could have been able to watch and digest the entire history of cinema up to that point. I'm guessing it was Tarantino but am not entirely certain.

This was actually Godard himself, taking about himself and his Cahiers colleagues. RIP - you influenced us all in so many ways. An original thinker to the very end.

[colinr0380]

I must admit to still reeling about this. I was kind of expecting Godard to do a Manoel de Oliveira and still be making films at 105. Who knows, maybe he would have been if he had not decided otherwise, and I greatly respect his decision to depart on his own terms and of his own choosing.

To maybe invert MichaelB's question from earlier, is there any current filmmaker who remained so relevant, vibrant and adding something new to the lexicon of cinema with every film until his late 80s? (Eastwood and Allen come to mind again inevitably) I mean, he was the only director who had anything particularly relevant to say about the banking crisis of 2008 with Film Socialisme, which handily has some of the only footage of the pre-accident, still floating for the moment Costa Concordia vessel in it as well!

I wish I knew what Godard thought of the internet, or indeed if he had any thoughts about it. Its fractured, rough and ready for anything cherry picking out of splinters of imagery and music getting remixed into new forms, with scant respect for rights and new superimposed titles transformatively graffiting over old imagery with new polemics always made me think the medium is particularly Godardian.

[jegharfangetmigenmyg]

No one has mentioned the obvious fact, which I think is very powerful; that he actually directed his on life to a stop with the assisted suicide. I can't imagine he didn't put filmic thoughts into his decision. Final cut indeed. What a trailblazer he was. Immensely enjoyed all of his multi-faceted work, including The Image Book, one of my favorites of that year...

[Rayon Vert]

No one has mentioned the obvious fact, which I think is very powerful; that he actually directed his own life to a stop

[therewillbeblus]

Filmmakers pay tribute to Godard with words from Scorsese, Ferrara, Denis, Reichardt, Boorman, Leigh, Cousins, Guadagnino, Schrader, Morley, Davies, Macdonald, and Webber

[zedz]

No one has mentioned the obvious fact, which I think is very powerful; that he actually directed his on life to a stop with the assisted suicide. I can't imagine he didn't put filmic thoughts into his decision. Final cut indeed.

I think that's a rather dodgy metaphor. You could say that anybody is "directing their own life" with any decision they make. In fact, I was directing my own life this very morning when I decided to have a mochaccino instead of a latte.* Just because it's Godard doesn't mean it's any less pretentious. And who knows, maybe he actually considered his life as a life, not as a film.

* I am lying. When it comes to coffee, I have the agency and tastes of a noir protagonist.

[Calvin]

Thinking about it after this sad news, Goodbye to Language is the only Godard I've been fortunate to see on the big screen and what an incredible experience it was. For a director, then in his 80s, to be experimenting so radically - and wonderfully! - with technology was incredible. It's maybe the only film that could tempt me into buying a 3D TV again next time around, if there are even any still being made. I wish that I could see his 3X3D entry as well.

Hopefully we now see some new releases of his work expedited - namely the long-awaited King Lear from Criterion and the new 4K restoration of Notre Musique, but Passion and Germany Year 90 Nine Zero are in desperate need of new transfers. And won't anyone ever put Six fois deux and France/tour/détour/deux enfants on disc?

[therewillbeblus]

Thinking about it after this sad news, Goodbye to Language is the only Godard I've been fortunate to see on the big screen and what an incredible experience it was.

I never got a chance to see this in theatres and have kicked myself ever since. I own the blu, but while I enjoy the film, it's obviously not the same - Here's hoping it comes back into a theatrical run as some memoriam retrospective. And yes, I want a 3D TV for similar reasons and expect to be asking swo et al for recs of 3D-compatible 4K TVs either this Nov or next for Black Friday... god help my bank account

Hopefully we now see some new releases of his work expedited

A few of his shorts/commercials have had subs translated and uploaded to back channels today, where obviously very little work is involved but the motivation is there. His Schick aftershave commercial is hilarious, as is all his commercial work (which riffs as much on his own difficult characteristics and artistic brand as his derisive views of capitalist advertising on culture, all spawned from Pierrot le fou's biting commentary). This one self-consciously shows a couple fighting over the husband's demand to listen to political radio in the morning, only for aftershave to save the day and magically alleviate the hostility. Nothing beats his Closed Jeans / Metamorphojeans commercials though

[swo17]

I actually don't know of any 3D-compatible 4K TVs, but I do have a 3D projector and have been able to watch Adieu au langage that way maybe five times, more than any other 3D film

[MichaelB]

I don't believe there is a 4K TV with a 3-D viewing option, although you'll still find 3-D compatible projectors.

I use an Oculus Quest 2, which has the huge advantage of delivering a separate image to each eye without any kind of filtering system, so 3-D images are far brighter than I've ever seen them in cinemas. Although the downside is that I have to rip 3-D discs via possibly nefarious means in order to create a viewable file (side-by-side images, 3840x1080).

[Rayon Vert]

- Quelle est votre ambition dans la vie?
- Devenir immortel et mourir.

Aims achieved.

[therewillbeblus]

- Quelle est votre ambition dans la vie?
- Devenir immortel et mourir.

Aims achieved.

Rewatched this one last night and got emotional at this exchange in the film, thinking the exact same thoughts. It's amazing that he essentially achieved this dream within the subsequent seven years, realized there was no way to be 'satisfied', where stopping growth would be suicide.. Then he continuously pivoted for the rest of his life in cheekily self-conscious but persistent pursuit of this goal, broadening it into the comprehensive but vague definition that is inclusive of all life has to offer, yet still venturing deeper into the margins on the Sisyphean search for 'more'

[somnambulating]

SpoilerShow

Could someone please name what this screenshot is from?

[colinr0380]

I went back yesterday evening to Godard’s first short film from 1957 Charlotte et Veronique, or All The Boys Are Called Patrick. That is a wonderfully playful piece in which two female students sharing a flat (and seemingly a single bed!) together make plans to meet up at a park later that afternoon. Whilst waiting on the bench reading the blonde girl gets ‘targeted’ by a young lothario played by Jean-Claude Brialy who eventually badgers the girl into going to a nearby café with him and arranging a date to meet her the next day (she cannot that night because of dinner with some cousins, leading to Brialy exclaiming about how everyone has cousins nowadays), all whilst saying that he has not been out on a date in over a year and ending with a tap on the girls shoulder to make her briefly look the other way before going in for a surprise kiss when she turns back.

Then on that couple parting, the other dark haired girl who has given up waiting for her friend in the park bumps into Brialy on the way out and he again impulsively targets this new girl, dragging her to a café despite her objections and uses entirely the same “been a year since my last date” spiel on her and the same kiss tactic at the end! Only this time there is a bit more of a complication since this girl is also going out for dinner with their cousins that evening (naturally so, since Veronique is going out with Charlotte! This leads to yet more exasperated Gallic proclamations of how many cousins there are around!) but when the girl readily suggests the next day for the date, the young man who already has something lined up on that evening has to decline because of ‘family commitments’ himself and then has to cajole into meeting the day after that instead despite the girl being a bit unwilling due to it being a bit too far away to make plans for!

I love that even in this piece which otherwise owes a lot in story terms to its screenwriter Eric Rohmer (with its wryly comic take on philandering boys and playfully seducible girls), structurally it already feels rather Godardian. I really love that the short is broken into mirroring halves with a brief scene at the opening of the two girls in their apartment and then the long scene outside in the park and streets of Paris with Brialy; then the second half is a long conversation between the girls in their apartment (in which the tiny space of the bed and the bathroom is masterfully blocked to have the girls constantly going back and forth between the two so there is always something visually interesting going on), and then there is a short coda scene on the streets of Paris as the girls wait for their dates (or rather, date!), see Brialy catching a taxi with yet another woman and doing the same moves on her, and then not too disappointedly ask if each other will be their dates for the next two evenings and casually walk off down the street together to the rising comic underscore of Mozart! It is pretty much the structure of Contempt in miniature!

This is such a beautiful short and already has all of the key aspects of the French New Wave within it. The focus on somewhat fractious relationships which go back and forth between being played out in public spaces and intensely, intimately private rooms is present and correct (which is something that Rohmer really came to epitomise).

The Godardian in jokes are already present although in this case more actually existing in the world of the film with a background figure in the café holding a paper proclaiming the death of cinema (already!) and the girls’ bathroom wallpapered with images of James Dean rather than, as they would later become, layered metatextually on top of the film for purely the audience’s benefit in a gleeful fourth wall destroying (nay, obliterating!) manner. And the idea of playing around with the soundtrack is there too with one of the girls playing with the radio at the beginning turning off the Mozart over the opening titles, and then later on during their chat the other goes and puts on a record on the player on the floor by the bed to give themselves some music to converse by!

And my favourite aspect of all these early French New Wave films is the verité shooting on Parisian streets. Will they never not appear to be vibrant, full of life and ‘real’ as contrasting against the somewhat fake actors playing out their choreographed dramas in front of them? Maybe that is the point: to emphasise how reality is the barely perceivable ‘flow’ of traffic and people busily going back and forth doing things, whilst our actors are the ‘zoom in’ to see individual dramas play out that presumably every person is going through, just shown with an extra air of theatrical and performative playacting to the interactions. I think I have talked before about particularly loving those shots in Une femme est une femme (which is otherwise the Godard film that I like the least, ironically perhaps because it is too in the vein of Rohmer but with the wry irony replaced with meta-cinematically imposed musical-comedy beats that trivialises and undermines the drama, and vice versa. At least in my opinion, although I can see others feeling differently and in some ways the ‘fakeness’ is the point as much as feeling any empathy for the, frankly pretty insufferable, characters!) in which Anna Karina elfinly skips through the streets and past the ‘key Godardian figure’ (at least for me!) of the little old lady bundled up in a coat carrying shopping bags and eyeing the camera warily! That is the wonderful aspect of these early Godard films, where reality and fantasy momentarily clash up against each other. Maybe there is a bit of mutual jealousy there in each wanting to be in the other’s world? That aspect of on location shooting was something which arguably reached its culmination in one-two punch of the coldly clinical environments that are just as emotionally affectless as the people within them in the sci-fi film Alphaville and especially in the magnificently apocalyptic black comedy Masculin Feminine.

[Fred Holywell]

SpoilerShow

Could someone please name what this screenshot is from?

It's from Le Prestige de la mort (Luc Moullet, 2006).

[somnambulating]

Thanks now I’ve got this in my queue.

[domino harvey]

Moullet has a very funny tribute film to Godard as well, with one of my favorite lines: “The struggle with erotic art is how to depict the breasts and the ass at the same time”

[diamonds]

Jonathan Rosenbaum's reflections on (and encounters with) Godard