Time has a way of making fools out of many serious and committed activists and artists. With the collapse of communism many left-wing artists and intellectuals just look foolish, no matter what their genius. In the sixties, maybe early into the seventies, partly because of Vietnam there was a concept of the “World Wide Revolution.” With the rise of “Al-Fatah” the Palestinian cause became a part of the “World Wide Revolution.” Today, in my opinion, that concept just looks silly. I mean wherever the “World Wide Revolution” succeeded it has failed to bring about any change for the betterment of mankind. Here I’d certainly include Algeria, Vietnam, Cuba, and the upcoming Palestine. This is not necessarily to say that these entities are worse than their predecessors, though usually they are, but certainly they are not better. If one artist brought into this concept of the “World Wide Revolution”, and blew his talent and soul over this concept, it is Jean Luc Godard. Jean Luc Godard’s films after the sixties are probably not worth seeing though I’d probably watch anyhow. Many left-wingers, whether artists or not; would probably defend themselves by saying they favored the “World Wide Revolution” even for the U.S.S.R. and China. That’s no defense; most of them, and especially Godard, our subject, wasted their time, their talents, and even their lives due to left-wing nonsense and the “World Wide Revolution.” Hopefully here we’ll examine Godard before, during, but not after his “World Wide Revolution” nonsense. All of the countries I listed sucra (legal term) consumed Godard at one time or another.
Who is Godard? Why should we care one way or the other whether he squandered his talent! If you didn’t know, and I’m sure you did, Godard is (I believe is not was) a film-maker who burst into prominence with Breathless, starring Jean Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, speaking of buying into the “World Wide Revolution,” although that doesn’t excuse the FBI hounding her to death. He was part of what is known as the “Nouvelle Vogue.” Like Rohmer, who never went off the deep end, he made highly intellectual films. Unlike Rohmer or Chabrol or Truffaut, he gave up on narrative style as we know it. Even more unfortunately he gave up on coherence (let alone plot) and he let his political beliefs overwhelm his talent. On CUNY TV I recently saw a film in which the set was like a chessboard maze with men on horseback in knightly costume riding around the chessboard. Occasionally they interacted with and sometimes abused women. It was Godard! I have no clue what it was about, but I guess it proves lie is still working. Now what prompted me to think about, let alone write, about Godard. Well, on Martin Luther King’s birthday Bravo showed Contempt, Le Mepris in French and Weekend! Let me have the pleasure of digressing by bashing Bravo. This station is owned by the New York Times. They constantly put a disclaimer to each film that they cut and mutilate by stating that they are dedicated to the concept of the artist’s work while they cut the sex out of the film, worse still these Philistines put commercials in. I mean Godard is hard enough to. understand when seen continuously, but with bathroom breaks it’s even worse. Write in and tell Bravo that you’re thankful for them showing the films, but like CUNY there should only be discretionary warnings and like “Showtime” the film should be only altered so that it has been “formatted to fit your. screen. Back to our topic I saw Contempt years and years ago on ABC late at night. I loved it then. Peter Bogdanovich writing in the New York Observer gave it a rave. The Times in its one-liners called Contempt “contemptible.” This before Godard went off the deep end. As for Weekend the commercials probably give you a chance to gather your sanity! The revolution begins; Godard is starting off the deep end and the critics split. More in a moment, but first a word about sources.
Grand Army Plaza has Godard on Godard: Conversations with Tom Milne. You have to remember Godard was a film critic before he was a film-maker. He is a highly literate and articulate man. This book, like the next, is reference. Next is Focus on Godard edited by Royal S. Brown. From there I copied Roger Greenspun’s review of Weekend. Circulating is Jean Luc Godard by Richard Roud in the Cinema One Series. I have Sarris’ Confessions of a Cultist with reviews of Masculine Feminine, My Life to Live, A Woman is a Woman, La Chiroise and Weekend.
Since he is so articulate let’s let Godard speak for himself on Contempt:
“The point of ‘LeMepris’ is that these are people who look at each other and judge each other, and then are in tum looked and judged by the cinema represented by Fritz Lang, who plays himself, or in effect the conscience of the film, it’s honesty.”
Oh! by the way, Jack Palance plays a producer who wants to film the Odyssey but put some sex in it. Godard has a big budget and Brigitte Bardot. I’m not sure if he ever had Bardot again, but I doubt he ever had a “big budget” again. Not with my money you don’t! Godard waxes lyrical:
“When I think about it “Le Mepris” seems to me, beyond its psychological study of a woman who despises her husband, the story of castaways of the western world, survivors of the shipwreck of modernity who, like the heroes of Verne and Stevenson, one day reach a mysterious deserted island, whose mystery is inexorable lack of mystery, of truth that is to say. Whereas the Odyssey of Ulysses was a physical phenomenon, I filmed a spiritual odyssey: the eye of the camera watching these characters in search of Homer replaces that of t-e Gods watching over Ulysses and his companions.”
Get it? Fritz Lang didn’t and he was in it! I did get it when I watched it and it is beautiful. Yet from his words, you can see that the old western world is dying. The World Wide Revolution will save us.
Now My Life to Live is a fairly conventional film by Godard. Sarris says:
“My Life to Live consists of twelve tableaux depicting the adventures of a Parisian salesgirl who drifts into a life of prostitution.”
Anna Karina, then Godard’s wife, plays the girl. At the end she is murdered, somewhat when you don’t expect it. Sarris again:
“Time seems to work for Godard, and in time the apparent coldness of My Life to Live will be perceived more clearly as admirably formal control of the wildest romanticism in the cinema, today. My Life to Live, by the very evidence of the reactions it evokes, is the most profoundly modern film of the year.” (1963)
Maybe Sarris is right about the film but he is wrong about Godard – “wildest romanticism” – very unlikely. However, to refute me and support Sarris I give you Alphaville, the most romantic science fiction film except for Blade Runner. I have space problems because I wanted to rail against the World Wide Revolution. So let’s end with Weekend where the train goes off the track. It won’t set back on. Greenspun says:
“Our hero and heroine are on their way to her parents’ house to grab her dying father’s money before her mother can grab it for herself, and their car has been smashed up, and all they want are some directions.”
After that, all you see is traffic wrecks on the highway, yet they get through. You see Emily Broitte’s black revolutionaries, American Indians, and they all intersperse commentaries on left-wing themes: revolution, Brecht in Hollywood, the price of luxury goods, black power, etc. What does it all mean – who cares? The key thing is this becomes endemic to Godard. After a while it all becomes not just incomprehensible, but boring.
Greenspun says Pauline Kael (Sarris’ enemy) praised it as “Godard’s version of Hell.” I doubt that! Godard is still enjoying himself. Greenspun:
“Weekend accomplishes a number of significant dislocations as it moves from bourgeois to anti-bourgeois, from advanced technology to primitive technology, from mass culture to barbarism, from the present to the future.”
Need we know more? Taking Sarris out of context, and with apologies:
“With Weekend Jean Luc Godard has been to the wailing wall once too often.”
He won’t come back, but you should see almost everything he did before. Jean Luc Godard was once a great film-maker. As I asked once before: Is Jean Luc Picard named for Godard? I’m sure!